Actually, the name of the schema you are promoting is “The Gap Theory.” It was developed in the late 1800s in order to accommodate the vast ages of time promulgated by the Darwinists.
Serious Hebrew scholars of Genesis today see no evidence at all in the text of Genesis 1:1-3 of Moses implying a gigantic time gap—which would make up 99.99+% of the time earth has existed, according to the Naturalists—compared to the 6,000 years of recorded history.
See for yourself in the text:
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness covered the surface of the watery depths, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters. Then God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.” (Gen 1:1-3)
God’s people too, from Moses to the ancient Jews, to Jesus, the disciples, and into the Church—up through the 1700s, always understood Genesis to be literally true...and the universe not vastly old....
Usher’s exact chronology is certainly not accurate (where he dated the earth to have been created in exactly 4004 BC), however—the great Flood is clearly taught in scripture as literal (as if it were a local flood, all the time and effort building an ark would be silly....), and the worldwide flood is explicitly rejected by old earth creationists & theistic evolutionists.....
Another key issue, demanding a young Earth, is this foundational teaching in Romans 5:12: “Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin...”
If Adam’s choice first brought sin and the resulting death into the world—even the animal world (the WHOLE world), than vast ages of evolution before (which is after all, in the “survival of the fittest” a death-driven scheme of development) are not possible.
The fact that we have the little phrase “according to their kinds” repeated after each creation in the creation account too—refutes the evolutionary key of all creatures coming from one “kind,” (the evolutionary tree) which clearly teaches humans are nothing but animals.
Understood. The Bible leaves it open for discussion and, as someone else pointed out, the more important issue is redemption by Jesus Christ. There’s strong Biblical reasons to go with the Gap Theory but to each his own. What really matters is our redemption through the cross of Jesus Christ.
St. Augustine weighed in on this centuries before Bishop Ussher and Charles Darwin came along:
“North African bishop Augustine of Hippo (354–430) had no skin in the game concerning the current origins controversies. He interpreted Scripture a thousand years before the Scientific Revolution, and 1,500 before Darwin’s Origin of Species. Augustine didn’t “accommodate” or “compromise” his biblical interpretation to fit new scientific theories. The important thing was to let Scripture speak for itself.
Augustine wrestled with Genesis 1–2 throughout his career. There are at least four points in his writings at which he attempts to develop a detailed, systematic account of how these chapters are to be understood. Each is subtly different. Here I shall consider Augustine’s The Literal Meaning of Genesis, which was written between 401 and 415. Augustine intended this to be a “literal” commentary (meaning “in the sense intended by the author”).
Augustine draws out the following core themes: God brought everything into existence in a single moment of creation. Yet the created order is not static. God endowed it with the capacity to develop. Augustine uses the image of a dormant seed to help his readers grasp this point. God creates seeds, which will grow and develop at the right time. Using more technical language, Augustine asks his readers to think of the created order as containing divinely embedded causalities that emerge or evolve at a later stage. Yet Augustine has no time for any notion of random or arbitrary changes within creation. The development of God’s creation is always subject to God’s sovereign providence. The God who planted the seeds at the moment of creation also governs and directs the time and place of their growth.
Augustine argues that the first Genesis Creation account (1:1–2:3) cannot be interpreted in isolation, but must be set alongside the second Genesis Creation account (2:4–25), as well as every other statement about the Creation found in Scripture. For example, Augustine suggests that Psalm 33:6–9 speaks of an instantaneous creation of the world through God’s creative Word, while John 5:17 points to a God who is still active within creation.
Further, he argues that a close reading of Genesis 2:4 has the following meaning: “When day was made, God made heaven and earth and every green thing of the field.” This leads him to conclude that the six days of Creation are not chronological. Rather, they are a way of categorizing God’s work of creation. God created the world in an instant but continues to develop and mold it, even to the present day.
Augustine was deeply concerned that biblical interpreters might get locked into reading the Bible according to the scientific assumptions of the age. This, of course, happened during the Copernican controversies of the late 16th century. Traditional biblical interpretation held that the sun revolved around the earth. The church interpreted a challenge to this erroneous idea as a challenge to the authority of the Bible. It was not, of course. It was a challenge to one specific interpretation of the Bible — an interpretation, as it happened, in urgent need of review.
Augustine anticipated this point a millennium earlier. Certain biblical passages, he insisted, are genuinely open to diverse interpretations and must not be wedded to prevailing scientific theories. Otherwise, the Bible becomes the prisoner of what was once believed to be scientifically true: “In matters that are so obscure and far beyond our vision, we find in Holy Scripture passages which can be interpreted in very different ways without prejudice to the faith we have received. In such cases, we should not rush in headlong and so firmly take our stand on one side that, if further progress in the search for truth justly undermines our position, we too fall with it.”
http://silouanthompson.net/2009/06/augustines-origin-of-species/