Does the Bible say anything about a pre-Adamic race?

In the light of Gen. 1:27, it is sheer infidelity to speak of man as an evolution from some other being. Three times in this one verse the Spirit is pleased to use the word "created" in relation to man. Man is thus a work of God distinct from every other. The whole human family has sprung from a single pair, Adam being the federal head of the race. He is thus the type of Christ as head of a new race, i.e., of the whole company of those who believe the Gospel. The dream of pre-Adamic man is absolutely forbidden by 2 Cor. 15:45, not to mention other Scriptures. "The first man Adam" leaves no room for man in any form before him.

Man was distinguished from all other creatures in that he was made the subject of divine counsel before his creation. "And God said, Let us make man, in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion," etc. (Gen. 1:26). There is a solemnity about this which commands attention. It was not a new kind of animal that was about to be brought into existence, but a moral being with marvellous endowments and possibilities. "Image" has reference to man's position as set here to represent God and rule for Him; "likeness" has reference to his moral being, as one capable of entering into relationships, and bearing responsibilities. Neither the image nor the likeness of God have been lost by the fall (Gen. 9:6; James 3:9).

There was a twofold act of God in the creation of man. First, his body was formed of the dust of the ground; then life was imparted to the clay by the inbreathing of Jehovah Elohim (Gen. 2:7). The life of man is thus a thing altogether distinct from the body. Let us note this carefully, for the lessons suggested by it are of the most momentous character.

Man was created on the sixth day — last of all the works of God. The work of the sixth day (as that of the third) was in two parts, first cattle etc., then man (Gen. 1:24-31). In connection with the latter there was divine consultation. "Let Us make man in Our image, after Our likeness." When lower creatures were required it sufficed to say: "Let the waters bring forth … let fowl fly," etc., and the creatures required were forthwith alive upon the scene. The grave consultation recorded in Gen. 1:26 should of itself suggest to the most cursory reader that now a being of a different order from all others was to be brought into the world. Man is thus a distinct and independent creation, having no link whatever with beast, fish, or fowl. "Created" is repeated three times in v. 27, as if the Spirit of God would be beforehand with his rebuke of evolutionist absurdity. Moreover, Adam was the FIRST man. The whole structure of Holy Scripture falls to the ground if there were really men before, or independent of, Adam; for the entire volume of inspiration revolves around two men — the fallen first man Adam, and the peerless Second Man, the Lord Jesus (1 Cor. 15:45-47). One man and one stock is God's account of our race and its head. "He has made of one blood all nations of men … we are the offspring of God" (Acts 17:26-29). Such was the elementary lesson administered by Paul to the learned heathen in Athens.

The supposed geological proofs of the existence upon the earth of races of animals which had become extinct before man's appearance there, as showing that death existed among them prior to Genesis 3, do not trouble me. I am ready to admit that these animals may have lived and died, and it may have been intended that even those placed on earth when man was formed should be subject to the laws which obtain with regard to organic forms — such as plants, etc. — as we know them.* But this proves nothing, as no moral question is raised by such death, neither plants nor animals being responsible beings. With man, however, it is far otherwise, as we shall see, and his death is the direct fruit of sin, as his failure in his responsibility. This condition of things, and the creation of the responsibility which is the groundwork of it all, began with Adam, and therefore the theory of previous races of "pre-Adamite man" is a mere idle fancy, unless it is held that they became extinct before Adam was formed, or that Adam was an independent creation. This would of course preserve his moral responsibility intact; but either is a thought very foreign to the theory to which I now refer, and consequently, as man's moral relationship to God cannot be denied (except by those who are wilfully blind and debased), we must not hesitate to sacrifice the vision of men's minds to the truth.

It is necessary also to distinguish from the six days' work, what has been strangely confounded with it, the primitive creation of the first chapter and verse, and the ruin into which it had fallen when "without form and void, and darkness on the face of the deep." This used to be, and I suppose still may be called, the common view; and yet the more one looks at the passage the more it seems impossible to make such a mistake. For plainly the work of the six days begins with this: "God said, 'Let there be light;' and there was light." But as plainly the earth, although waste and desolate, was there before that, not created then. Moreover the words "without form and void," for which "waste and desolate" would be preferable as a reading, imply distinctly a state of ruin, and not of development; while a passage in which the first of these terms is used asserts expressly that the Lord did not create the earth so.*

(5). "The greatest difficulty of all is that which meets us from the existence of present evil." "Was He not infinitely wise, and holy, and powerful, when the earth was without form and void? Why, then, should this state ever have been changed by Him till all was very good?" Here creation is ignored, and whatever judgment brought it into the ruined state. No recognition of sin bringing in the misery and evil of the present state. Then, on page 3 he speaks of the "Day of Judgment, and the promised Times of Restitution." Judgment is not restoration, and there are no promised times of restitution of the wicked, as he makes it. It is positively false, and not in Scripture; and it is equally false, as he means it, that the Father will go on working till all things are made new, and everything is very good. When God makes all things new, He leaves the wicked "without," and "everything very good" is never said but at creation.

Days and weeks and years have to do with the human race and God's moral dealings on earth, after God had created and destroyed — it may be, many times — within those vast periods differently characterised before man was made, though not without a beneficent design for him on God's part. The principle and the fact, first of creation, then of disruption, before the immediate preparation of the world for the race, is the revealed communication of Gen. 1:1-2; the days, 1:3 - 2:3, are the commencement of time as we reckon it, not of creation, but of that later and special form when man was ushered into the earth. On the first, God said, "Light be;" and light was. It is not intimated that light was then first created. The previous ruin may have hindered its action till God uttered this fiat with a view to man's earth. On the second day, with the severing of land and sea, came the expanse as we have it (strangely rendered by the Seventy, whence "firmament" came through the Vulgate into the English version); on the third, the vegetable kingdom, herbage and tree yielding fruit; on the fourth, the luminaries in the expanse, not first created but set to give light night and day on the earth; on the fifth, animal life begun in the waters and for the air.

The power that was allowed to reduce the earth to the state of chaos described here has not been made known to us, but an evil power we may be assured it was, and we know that there was an evil power in the universe before the fall of man; neither are we told what kind of creatures they were who had their dwelling here, nor how long their tenure of earth lasted. We can only conclude by the ruin in which it was found before God began to form it for the dwelling of man that some terrible revolt by the creature had taken place, which drew upon the whole scene the judgment of God. That God did not create it waste we are told, and that it eventually was found waste is also affirmed, and that perhaps is all we have got to do with. Heaven does not seem to have undergone any change; the earth only is said to be waste and empty. The heaven spoken of in Exodus 20:1 is, I have no doubt, the heaven that God is said to make in verses 7 and 8 of chapter 1, not the heaven in the first verse.

In chap. 9. we come to the point: "Why should it be regarded as preposterous that we should be descended from angels — now children, as it were, of our former selves?" Does not the author know that the only scripture, which is believed by many grave and intelligent Christians to reveal such an abnormal departure from the divine landmarks, is Gen. 6. confirmed by the allusions of 2 Peter 2. and Jude? and that this frightful anomaly, root and fruit, disappeared in the Deluge? But it is truly preposterous to imagine that our souls have any such source. Gen. 2. attributes the soul of Adam, and consequently of the human race, to the direct inbreathing of Jehovah Elohim. Of man only is this written; and thereon depends the immortality of his soul. See in Prov. 8. the speciality of man's place as the delight of Wisdom, Himself Jehovah's delight for all eternity. And what a comment on it is the Incarnate Word, the Life Eternal, and the Light of men! This accounts for the divine interest in man and the earth to God's glory.

Of God’s ways in creation before He began to form this earth as a dwelling-place for man, we know very little. But we do know that a fall—perhaps more than one—had taken place, and that the earth as originally created had been brought into a condition in which it is described as “waste and empty.” But whatever was the cause of the various convulsions that punctuated its wondrous history, by these throes through which it passed, it gradually became more and more fit for the testing and trying of the creature who was to be made in the image and likeness of God. It may have had a history of many millions of years before man was placed upon it; but millions of millions of ages are as nothing with Him who lives for ever.

Departure from creature subjection had evidently come about before man was upon the scene, which would have the effect of making two great classes. How long it was before Adam we know not, nor what length of time elapsed between their creation and their fall. The number in proportion to the whole which fell is also hidden. This explains, however, the presence of a tempter to whom the first man succumbed, so that he and his posterity are found, like the fallen part of creation, in apostasy from God.