God's Word teaches that there was an age before this second age. The first age lasted millions/billions of years. This second age is only thousands of years where we all live in temporary flesh bodies and God fulfills, at a very great price through Jesus Christ, His plan of offering salvation to eternal life in the third age, to every individual 'whosoever believeth in Him'. (John 3:14-21 KJV) regardless of race, nationality, or governmental system they live within.
We were all with God in spirit bodies in the first age before satan's downfall, where a third of God's children followed him. Instead of destroy those third right then, God destroyed the first age - the katabole - and made this second age where we all live in temporary flesh bodies and are born with memories erased in order to see how satan rules and how God rules and choose. God will not interfere if an individual chooses to fight the battles of satan and this world without His help, unless that individual sincerely repents of their own sins that have separated them from Him and asks Him to help. There are some souls that already chose Him in the first age and fought on His side against satan and there are some that have chosen Him in this age and ask Him to work His will through their flesh lives. These are called the 'elect' or 'remnant' in God's Word - some examples of these are Job, Joseph, the prophets.
You can find all three ages written of in 2 Peter 3 KJV. The katabole is described in Jeremiah 4:18-27 KJV, unlike the later flood of Noah's time, there was 'no man' left and 'the cities thereof were broken down'.
Archaeologists find paintings, tools, footprints, cities and evidence of people being here, but no human bone fossils older than 14,000 years because we were in spirit bodies until the katabole.
The word translated into the English word, "God" in that verse is 'elohiym' which means God and His children. We were with Him in spirit bodies when He made this second earth age. So, God made His flesh body look like He looks there.
John 14:9 KJV Jesus saith unto him, Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip? he that hath seen me hath seen the Father; and how sayest thou then, Shew us the Father?
...And God made our flesh bodies look like we look there. *male and female created He them*.
There is a difference in the Hebrew that does not come through in the translation to English between adam=man and eth ha adam=The Man Named Adam. But, you can see the difference here in The Green's interlinear http://s35.photobucket.com/user/hafdcnt/media/Genesispagescan1.jpg.html
a magnified version of the relevant portion http://s35.photobucket.com/user/hafdcnt/media/scan0001.gif.html
Genesis 1:1 KJV In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
Isaiah 45:18 KJV For thus saith the Lord that created the heavens; God himself that formed the earth and made it; he hath established it, he created it not in vain, he formed it to be inhabited: I am the Lord; and there is none else.
Genesis 1:2 KJV And the earth (became)/was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
Three ages Bible studies:
http://www.kjvbible.org/katabole.html
http://www.biblestudygames.com/biblestudies/threeworldages.htm
http://levendwater.org/companion/append146.html
"was" or "became"?
(Genesis 1:2)
Gen 1:2 And the earth became without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
"Some scholars also argue against translating hayah "became" instead of "was" in Genesis 1:2 because they assume this interpretation came about only recently, after geology revealed the strata of the earth to be very old. Thus they consider this explanation a desperate attempt to reconcile the Genesis account with modern geology. The explanation that there existed an indefinite period between the initial beautiful creation described in Genesis 1:1 and the earth becoming waste and void in verse 2 has been called, sometimes disparagingly, "the gap theory." The idea was attributed to Thomas Chalmers in the 19th century and to Cyrus Scofield in the 20th.
Yet the interpretation that the earth "became" waste and void has been discussed for close to 2,000 years:
• The earliest known recorded controversy on this point can be attributed to Jewish sages at the beginning of the second century. The Hebrew scholars who wrote the Targum of Onkelos, the earliest of the Aramaic versions of the Old Testament, translated Genesis 1:2 as "and the earth was laid waste." The original language led them to understand that something had occurred that had "laid waste" the earth, and they interpreted this as a destruction.
• The early Catholic theologian Origen (186-254), in his commentary De Principiis, explains regarding Genesis 1:2 that the original earth had been "cast downwards" (Ante-Nicene Fathers, 1917,
p. 342).
• In the Middle Ages the Flemish scholar Hugo St. Victor (1097-1141) wrote about Genesis 1:2: "Perhaps enough has already been debated about these matters thus far, if we add only this, 'how long did the world remain in this disorder before the regular re-ordering . . . of it was taken in hand?'" (De Sacramentis Christianae Fidei, Book 1, Part I, Chapter VI). Other medieval scholars, such as Dionysius Peavius and Pererius, also considered that there was an interval between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2.
• According to The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, the Dutch scholar Simon Epíscopius (1583-1643) taught that the earth had originally been created before the six days of creation described in Genesis (1952, Vol. 3, p. 302). This was roughly 200 years before geology discovered evidence for the ancient origin of earth.
These numerous examples show us that the idea of an interval between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2 has a long history. Any claim that it is of only recent origin-that it was invented simply as a desperate attempt to reconcile the Genesis account with geology-is groundless.
Perhaps the best treatment on both sides of this question is given by the late Arthur Custance in his book Without Form and Void: A Study of the Meaning of Genesis 1:2. Dr. Custance states, "To me, this issue is important, and after studying the problem for some thirty years and after reading everything I could lay my hands on pro and con and after accumulating in my own library some 300 commentaries on Genesis, the earliest being dated 1670, I am persuaded that there is, on the basis of the evidence, far more reason to translate Gen. 1:2 as 'But the earth had become a ruin and a desolation, etc.' than there is for any of the conventional translations in our modern versions" (1970, p. 7)."