Can We Reconcile God’s Word with Prehistoric Man? (Part 2 of 3)

Can We Reconcile God’s Word with Prehistoric Man? (Part 2 of 3)

Science’s ever-contentious battle with God is a losing proposition

Khen Lim

The so-called prehistoric Engare Sero footprints with the 'Mount of God' in the background (Image source: ZME Science)

Dealing with the pre-Adamaic days

The Bible is very clear on the premise that no humans came before Adam and Eve. In Genesis, Moses wrote:

“This is the account of the creation of the heavens and the Earth. When the Lord God made the Earth and the heavens, neither wild plants nor grains were growing on the Earth. For the Lord God had not yet sent rain to water the Earth, and there were no people to cultivate the soil. Instead, springs came up from the ground and watered all the land. Then the Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground. He breathed the breath of life into the man’s nostrils and the man became a living person. Then the Lord God planted a garden in Eden in the east and there, He placed the man He had made. …

“Then the Lord God said, ‘It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper who is just right for him. …

“So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep. While the man slept, the Lord God took out one of the man’s ribs and closed up the opening. Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib and He brought her to the man.” (Gen 2:4-8, 18, 21-22, NLT)

These verses offer us important cues in which we can establish a few incontrovertible facts.

The first one is in Genesis 2:5, which says, “…there were no people to cultivate the soil,” meaning there was no one around to work the land. The term ‘no people’ means no humans because only humans are people. None of God’s other living creations are considered people. In other words, before Adam was created, there was literally no one around and therefore, the land was unworked.

Secondly, in Genesis 2:7 God says, “Then the Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground.” Here, we learn that man – in this case, Adam – was not conceived from another living matter. Adam did not come from another human since that was not possible if none came before him. Adam also was not conceived from any mating of two living creatures because the verse says very clearly that it was God who formed him and He did so using the dust from the ground.

The third is where God in 2:18 declares that, “It is not good for the man to be alone.” Here, we can identify two pieces of important facts. Firstly, Adam was alone. There was no one else around. Adam’s only company was God. Secondly, the verse says ‘man’ as in singular and not ‘men.’ In other words, only he was formed directly by and from God. Eve, on the other hand, was formed using a rib from Adam, meaning the first recorded human being played host to the first created woman.

From all of this, we can safely deduce that every subsequent human being including you and me come from Adam and Eve and no one else (2:18). Conversely, we can also add conclusively that, Cain’s wife came from these two people. 

When Cain murdered his brother Abel (Gen 4:8) and was found out by God (4:9-11), he was consigned to be a “homeless wanderer on the Earth” (4:12). After he departed from his parents – and left the presence of God – he “settled in the land of Nod” (4:16), out east from Eden.

The following verse 17 tells us that Cain laid with his wife and bore his first son, Enoch. This wife, though we know not the name of, was also an offspring of Adam and Eve, making her Cain’s sister. We do know from the Bible that the children of Adam and Eve numbered beyond Cain, Abel and then Seth (4:25). Genesis 5:4 confirms that following the birth of Seth, Adam lived another 800 years and fathered other children within whom was the woman whom Cain married.

Because there were none before Adam and Eve, we can also say with certainty that every race in the world had come from this single point of origin.

But what if there were living beings before the creation of Adam? What if my earlier thoughts were correct and there were prehistoric beings – primates even – who roamed the Earth whom God finally disfavoured and ended that line so that He could introduce Adam who, unlike the primates, was created in His image? 


Image source: acrualidad.rt.com

After all, could these prehistoric beings be the fossils that scientists have been unearthing all these many decades? If they were, this would certainly conclude that there cannot be a missing link that scientists have been pressing on about.

In answering this, again, the Book of Genesis sheds good light on. Let’s have a look at these verses in isolation, starting with this one:

“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth. The Earth was formless and empty, and darkness covered the deep waters.” (Gen 1:1-2, NLT)

As a first piece of evidence, this one is clear. It says that up till this point before Creation occurred, the Earth was “formless and empty.” It was also engulfed in darkness and water filled the Earth deeply. It is hard to imagine an Earth that looked like how God described it but there it is. 

The conjecture here about darkness is that the Sun had not been created as well and this works well with Genesis 1:14, in which God says, “Let lights appear in the sky to separate the day from the night. Let them be signs to mark the seasons, days and years. Let these lights in the sky shine down on the Earth.” 

In verse 16, Moses recorded that “God made two great lights – the larger one to govern the day and the smaller one to govern the night. He also made the stars.”

All of these are important in helping us to understand that in these creations, God had made the distinction between creating the Sun from the moon and the other stars in the sky. But without the Sun at the beginning, the Earth was covered in total darkness. We know from simple elementary sciences that life requires light to form and grow. 

Without the Sun, organic and biological growth is impossible. In other words, nothing on Earth before the point of Creation was alive. Under no uncertain terms, there cannot be any pre-Adamaic life let alone any primate line.

The second verse worth noting is this one:

“Then God said, ‘Let the land sprout with vegetation – every sort of seed-bearing plant and trees that grow seed-bearing fruit. These seeds will then produce the kinds of plants and trees from which they came.’ And that is what happened. The land produced vegetation – all sorts of seed-bearing plants and trees with seed-bearing fruit. Their seeds produced plants and trees of the same kind.” (Gen 1:11-12, NLT)

There is no doubt that before God commanded the Earth to be filled with vegetation, there were no greens whatsoever. There couldn’t be even if we willed it to happen because the earlier verses also tell us that the Earth was devoid of light. Without light, vegetation cannot grow because photosynthesis could not occur. 

And if there were no greens of all kinds on Earth during the pre-Adamaic time, neither humans nor primates could have existed because there would have been nothing to eat, which then brings us to the third and fourth verses where God commanded:

“‘Let the waters swarm with fish and other life. Let the skies be filled with birds of every kind.’ So God created great sea creatures and every living thing that scurries and swarms in the water, and every sort of bird – each producing offspring of the same kind.” (Gen 1:20-21, NLT)

“‘Let the earth produce every sort of animal, each producing offspring of the same kind – livestock, small animals that scurry along the ground and wild animals.’ And that is what happened.” (Gen 1:24, NLT)

Notice that it was only after all of these were created first that God decided to form Adam and then Eve. The logic of course was that He had to lay out His plan so that Adam and Eve could subsist on food that would then be available. Remember too that prior to the Fall, both of them were supposedly vegetarians. 

Adam was to have dominion over all other creatures (1:28, 2:19-20) but when it comes to food, God offered him “every seed-bearing plant throughout the Earth and all the fruit trees” (1:29, 2:16). In fact the Lord made them available to the very creatures (1:30), the very same ones that Adam had the divine authority to identify and name.

From Adam and the Original Plan, we were supposed to live in harmony and balance with the animal kingdom. We were also supposed to subsist purely on vegetables and fruits but in the pre-Adamaic days, God had not created any of these plants and trees and without them, no living creature could have survived since there would have been nothing to eat.

The Ruin-Reconstruction disclaimer

Image source: The Institute of Creation Research

Yet for all of this, there are still scholars – beginning with Roman Emperor Julian the Apostate (c.331-363AD) and Calvinist theologian Isaac de La Peyrère (1596-1676) – who subscribe to a breed of pre-Adamaic humans despite the fact that Earth was in pitch darkness. From La Peyrère, we gained the ‘Gap Theory,’ which eventually became known as the Ruin-Reconstruction interpretation.

In his hypothesis, La Peyrère believed that on the Sixth Day of Creation, God created the Gentiles. This was, according to him, at the time when the Lord said, “Let us make human beings in Our image, to be like Us” (Gen 1:26). He also claimed that the Jews were not created until after the Seventh Day when God rested. La Peyrère’s third premise was that Adam was formed after the Seventh Day because it was his idea that he was the father of the Jews (but not Gentiles?).

As wild as these ideas are, La Peyrère asserted that he could count on Scripture to substantiate his claims. In fact, he interpreted Cain’s fear of being killed (4:14), his discovery and marriage to an unnamed woman (4:17) and then the fact that he established the city of Enoch, named after his first son (ibid) – all as proof that there had to be another breed of men other than the line of Adam. Let’s have a look at these three assertions:

By the time Cain murdered his brother, Adam was already 130 years old (4:25). Seth came after that. However, by the time Abel died, Eve had bored more sons and daughters, beginning with Seth (5:3) but the verse thereafter brings us an important clue:

“After the birth of Seth, Adam lived another 800 years and he had other sons and daughters.” (Gen 5:4, NLT)

Read the above passage carefully because it does not necessarily imply that Adam had other offspring after Seth was born. It simply says that in the 800 years that he lived, he had other children. From these children – and in his lifetime – Adam would also easily have had grandchildren and great-grandchildren even by the time Abel was murdered.

When Cain said, “Anyone who finds me will kill me,” he would actually have had referred to his own family members and no one else. We assume that just as God found him acceptable (Gen 4:4,7), Abel was likely also a popular family member and it wouldn’t surprise me if at least some of his siblings and offspring might have been aggrieved – and angry – enough to seek him out, if not avenge him.

All of this reveals a part of God’s plan to populate the Earth, which we first saw in Genesis 1:28 and also in 9:7 but in order to “be fruitful and multiply” so as to “fill the Earth,” Adam’s family must first begin by breeding among themselves. While this sounds abhorrent and therefore unacceptable, remember that during that time, God had not (yet) outlawed incest. It was only until the Mosaic Law that it was.

It would probably be true that around that time, generations of degenerative genetic malformations had begun to emerge and impact our DNA. However, at that time, the starting point of populating the Earth must begin with Adam and Eve’s siblings and the generations beyond. This explains why Cain’s wife is his own family member; possibly his sister (though impossible to confirm).

It also explains how he established the city of Enoch because by then, there would have been a sufficient populace comprising members of his very own family to form one. Although the Bible does not tell us how old Cain lived to be, a reasonable guess might be around 900 years old since at that time, that was the average life expectancy. In the nine centuries of his life till the day he died, it isn’t too much of a stretch to imagine enough children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren and beyond to make up a small city.

Furthermore if we assume that Cain and his wife had their first son, Enoch, at around the age of 30 and then from Enoch came Irad, again, at the 30 also followed by Irad himself with Mehujael at the same age and so on and so forth, Cain’s line could have given rise to 30 generations by the time he died (30 x 30 = 900 years). Using this simple calculation, it actually doesn’t take much to argue against La Peyrère’s claim.

If these were spurious, his gross misinterpretation of Romans 5:12-14 is even more startling. The verses read as follows:

“When Adam sinned, sin entered the world. Adam’s sin brought death, so death spread to everyone, for everyone sinned. Yes, people sinned even before the law was given. But it was not counted as sin because there was not yet any law to break. Still, everyone died – from the time of Adam to the time of Moses – even those who did not disobey an explicit commandment of God, as Adam did. Now Adam is a symbol, a representation of Christ, who was yet to come.” (Rom 5:12-14, NLT)

Our contemporary understanding of this passage is that death began through Adam’s sin and through this sin, we all face death. Following his sin, death became commonplace for unchecked sin plagued every one’s lives even for those who did not partake in the eating of the forbidden fruit (Gen 3:1-6) or those “who did not disobey an explicit commandment of God, as Adam did” that was, until the Law was handed down to Moses.


Isaac de La Peyrère (Image source: radiolavida.com)

La Peyrère, on the other hand, went for a completely different interpretation. For him, it was the pre-Adamaic Gentiles who sinned against God though less egregiously than Adam. 

In other words, La Peyrère believed that while Adam’s transgression was worthy of death, theirs did not. He maintained that the Gentiles merely breached God’s moral will but in Adam’s case, he wilfully went against His Law.

Despite being warned, Adam (and Eve) knowingly went ahead and ate “the fruit from the tree in the middle of the Garden (that we are not allowed to eat).” La Peyrère called this law that they broke, the ‘Law of Paradise.’ Given this interpretation, La Peyrère asserted that the Gentiles were the ones mentioned in Romans 5:13-14.

Yet he probably overlooked how the Apostle Paul calls Adam “the first man” in 1 Corinthians 15:45. This alone would have obliterated his distorted theology but then, we actually don’t have to stray outside the Book of Genesis to rebuke his claim. 

While La Peyrère contended that there were those before Adam who lived outside of Eden while he and Eve took their pleasure and privilege that came under the so-called Law of Paradise, he conveniently sidestepped Genesis 2:5-8 where in plain words, God made it clear that, “there were no people to cultivate the soil” (2:5).

And then further down the same chapter, the Lord made it known that because Adam was alone, “there was no helper just right for him” (2:18, 20). In the following chapter, we also learned that Adam named his wife, Eve, because “she would be the mother of all who live” (3:20), which means only from these two would the human race begin.

Deconstructing the Gap Theory

Adam in Genesis 2:7 by Tim Boyd (Image source: tboyd1950.wixsite.com)

As for the pre-Adamaic man, adherents of the Ruin-Reconstruction approach believe that between verse 1 and 2 of Genesis 1, an undetermined amount of time would have passed. In other words, between the time when God “created the heavens and the Earth” (1:1) and the time when it was recorded that the Earth was “formless and empty” consumed in darkness and deep waters, the Gap Theory wants us to imagine that God had created an earlier race of humans within that period and that they’d lived on the Earth alongside other extinct creations (think dinosaurs) until which time, He decided, in His judgement, to end it.

The Theory goes on to say that in His dissatisfaction, He ‘remodelled’ the Earth in the subsequent six days before He rested. In all of this, the Gap Theory dovetails conveniently with the Bible’s Creation story, adding that Adam came into form on the Sixth Day but to spice things up a little more, some even added that Satan fell within that same contentious period.

How did the Gap Theory come so far? Where did it earn any of its ‘credibility’ (if at all)? How could they make such claims in light of biblical authenticity? As in so many other similar cases, the Gap Theory finds its foundation in a convenient ‘mistranslation,’ which itself arose from linguistic misinterpretation. To uncover this, let us revisit Genesis 1:28 but using the King James Version (KJV) translation:

“And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply and replenish the Earth, and subdue it…” (Gen 1:28, KJV)

While the ASV (American Standard Version) shares the use of the word ‘replenish’ with the KJV, compare that with four other more contemporary translations:

“Then God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply; fill the Earth and subdue it…” (NKJV – New King James Version)

“And God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it…” (RSV – Revised Standard Version)

“God blessed them and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it.” (NIV – New International Version)

“Then God blessed them and said, ‘Be fruitful and multiply. Fill the Earth and govern it.” (NLT – New Living Translation)

In intentionally using bold text to bring a key difference between all these English translations, we can see that the KJV translation completed in 1611 under the reign of Elizabeth I’s godson, England’s King James I (aka King James VI of Scotland) used the word ‘replenish’ but interestingly, the more modern versions ditched it in preference for the word ‘fill’ instead.

The mistranslation effect with the word ‘replenish’ is a contemporaneous problem because back in the days of Jacobean era, the English language had peculiarities that modern English long dispensed with. The word ‘replenish’ for example, had a completely different meaning then but proponents of the Gap Theory failed to understand this. 

Theologians under the employ of King James I followed faithfully the way English was spoken and used then and to them – including William Tyndale – based the use of the word ‘replenish’ on the Hebrew original word, which was מלא מלא  (tr. mâlê’, rf. Strong’s #4390), which actually means ‘to fill’ or ‘to be full.’ With Elizabethan English, ‘replenish’ actually meant ‘to fill,’ which was why the theologians opted for it.

However, the Gap Theory mistranslated the word, believing wrongly that it meant ‘to refill’ or ‘to fill again.’ Through this erroneous interpretation, its proponents claimed that the Bible said Adam and Eve were to refill or repopulate the Earth, which in other words, suggest very strongly that there were people before their time and they had all been destroyed. Now, God was to start anew and with Adam and Eve, the human race had another chance to begin all over but to do that, His command was to them to ‘replenish’ the Earth once more.

If you can see where the problem lies, you would also realise that many of the popularly-used languages are dynamic, meaning that the use of certain words is bound to change over time. Today, the word ‘replenish’ means ‘to fill again’ but in the time of King James I, the meaning was simply ‘to fill.’ This dynamism effect also applies to many other words in English. Take for example, the word ‘gay.’ 

As recent as the late nineteenth century, its fundamental meaning was ‘carefree’ or ‘happy’ in the sense of being bright, cheerful and perhaps showy. By the twentieth century, the word became a more prominent reference to gay males and the practice and culture of homosexuality. Just before the start of the current millennium, the word ‘gay’ had encompassed not just homosexuals but had also extended its coverage to include ‘LGBTQ,’ meaning lesbians, (gays), bisexuals, transgenders and queers. Just as it used to refer to cheerful people, it is now also possible to use it as a derogatory term filled with cultural stigma.

For the proponents of the Gap Theory, the word ‘replenish’ was also used as a reference to Genesis 9:1 in which, after the Great Flood, God had told Noah and his sons:

“Then God blessed Noah and his sons and told them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply. Fill the Earth.’” (Gen 9:1, NLT, bold effect is mine)

Now, again, if we had relied on the KJV translation and read the text using today’s modern English interpretation, we could all be misled:

“And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the Earth.” (Gen 9:1, KJV, bold effect is mine)

This time, it is tricky because it is evident to us that indeed, God’s command was for Noah to refill the earth once the flood was over. Proponents of the Gap Theory might then argue why we cannot interpret the same command to Adam to mean the same. 

If Noah was to replenish/refill the earth, why should it be any different with Adam? Why can’t we accept that Adam was to do the same (assuming that they were right in claiming that God had judged the pre-Adamaic human race)?

The simple fact of the matter is that whatever the state of the Earth was before the Great Flood, God had not told Noah to ‘refill’ the Earth. Instead, He simply said to fill it. Based on exegesis, that was the word God chose to use. It was not creatively selected to fulfil any agenda. 

The word ‘fill’ was used to accurately reflect the original Masoretic text and if God said ‘refill,’ that would have been a different Hebrew word. Since He just said ‘fill,’ that ends all arguments that the proponents of the Gap Theory put forth.

Perhaps the single gravest aspect of the Gap Theory is that in the pre-Adamaic human race, the proponents had staked their claim on putting human mortality before Adam’s sin. Yet Scripture is adamant about the fact that death entered by way of Adam’s sin. The apostle Paul says as much:

“…just as death came into the world through a man, now the resurrection from the dead has begun through another man. Just as everyone dies because we all belong to Adam, everyone who belongs to Christ will be given new life.” (1 Cor 15:21-22, NLT)

The Bible brooks no vagueness. When it says that there is no human mortality before Adam’s sin. That much is clear. To reject that is to deny one of the centrepieces of Christian doctrine. 

La Peyrère’s misinterpretation may not be the first in the history of misperceiving Scripture but it certainly helps us to be acutely aware of how anyone can distort it with all manners of warped ideas. This is what we continue to experience today.

Dealing with evolutionists’ evidences

The massive problem we have today is two-fold – the academia and the mass media. Both are in cohorts to shut out Christianity as best as they can. In their pursuit of liberalism dangerously mixed in with socialism and atheism, many of the Judeo-Christianity values have been under the most serious threat in recent decades. And it’s not just America that this is happening. In fact, throughout Europe including Australia and many parts of Asia, Christianity is under attack.

Even so, perhaps an even bigger threat to Christianity is the one we don’t see and that is, from within the church. In broad terms, modern churches in general are getting attacked by Christians who believe they know more, who are tainted by liberal values and who actually accept that the Bible isn’t literal. 

While they accept the Word of God is inerrant, they choose what to and not to believe in Scripture and as for evolution and the origins of man, some young Christians are beginning to think they are believable. And that’s worrying.

By and large, the efforts of the liberal media have been anything but sympathetic or supportive. Coupled to the academia and evolutionist science, the agenda of the anthropological evolution has now arrived right in the living rooms of every family with or without cable television. 

The effects have been devastating because more people are convinced that man’s roots lie in primate origins despite all the so-called facts having no real basis. It seems these days, truth can be founded on hearsay or myths or simply unfounded evidence so long as they toe the evolutionist’s line.

One such myth is the size of the brain. Evolutionists tell us that intelligence is proportionate to the physical size of the brain. In other words, the larger, the better. The better, the smarter. The smarter, the more human-like. And so it goes. Based on this mythical understanding, we can then assume that since a chimp has a smaller brain than a modern man, it is therefore inferior (less intelligent).


American Museum of Natural History, New York (Image source: All You Need is Biology, WordPress)

If that sounds right, that’s probably because New York City’s American Museum of Natural History says so. Supposedly so. In the museum, there once happened to be a display telling all visitors that, “Intelligence is the most outstanding trait of the hominids. The best index of it available to us in the fossil record is the brain size as measured by the capacity of the bony brain case.” 

Right below that statement is a chart showing different models of the brain alongside their measured cubic size. According to the chart, at 1,625cc, the Neanderthal Man had a brain that is – gulp – larger than that of modern man’s 1,450cc equivalent!

In another myth parading as truth, we are supposed to be able to tell a person of low intelligence by the receding slope of the forehead. The more swept back the forehead is, the lesser its intelligence. Although this is no longer a popular thing with evolutionists, the broader subject of physiognomy has been one of several mainstays of the Nazi regime.

This photo, which illustrates the adaptation of physiognomic measurement by Nazi 'race scientists,' was published on the cover of the Neue Illustrierte Zeitung on June 1 1933, above the headline: 'Who Is An Aryan? A Fascist Experiences the National Revolution.' (Image source: The Met) 

Called ‘Mischling’ (tr. mixed blood), this was a German legal term practised in Hitler’s Third Reich that not only used to describe persons with an Aryan and Jewish ancestry but denoted a hybrid or a mutt or half-breed. In fact, much of physiognomy is central to Weimar Germany. 

The above photograph illustrates how physiognomic measurements were evidently conducted by Nazi ‘race scientists’ and had appeared on the front cover of the Neue Illustriete Zeitung (tr. New Pictorial Magazine) on June 1 1933 with the headline, ‘Who is an Aryan? A Fascist Experiences the National Revolution.’

Image source: Leftover Currency

By the same measure, the Neanderthal Man was shown to have a low and steeply receding forehead, a feature that is not unlike that of an ape. Yet in the post-Christ era, a statue of a Roman ruler of Egypt was shown to have a similar forehead but people did not consider him of low intellect. The same went with Sweden’s King Gustav who appeared on the 100 Kronor currency note. Surely his similarly receding forehead is not an indication of low intelligence, is it?

For the third myth, a visit to the Natural History Museum in London offers us a good example of how impressions can bypass solid incontrovertible evidence to become fact. Here, at one point in time, there was a display showing a line-up that began with the modern man, working backwards all the way to an ancestor that was identifiably an ape. The skulls used in the display are simply arranged to offer the impression that man’s history inadvertently goes back to apes (even if there are no actual connections between them).

While evolutionists may emphatically deny any links between man and ape, London’s Natural History Museum clearly defies that. Being one of the world’s largest natural science means their displays bear impact. Such a display was for the world to see what they say is the truth. Whether there was solid evidence to back up their display appeared immaterial. 

The fact was this was an artistic impression that carried more weight and legitimacy than any factual data that could have been on offer. Yet there was none. Instead what was seen in the museum were signs that plainly said, ‘Man is an animal’ and another one saying, ‘all human beings are animals, mammals, primates and apes.’ There were also others that continued with the same theme.


The Emergence of Man series by TIME-Life (Image source: eBay)

The same shameless mythical application can be found in the book series called ‘The Emergence of Man’ published by TIME-Life. In the book is the following text: “It is now a proven scientific fact that man was millions of years in the making. The path of his evolution is marked by dead ends and new beginnings, the waysides strewn with relics of his various forms.”

It goes on to say, “Although many of these remains are at best minimal, they are enough to sketch out the key stages of his march through time. The chief problem facing anthropologists today is to fill in the gaps.”

If you reread that carefully, you might notice an inexplicable paradox. Firstly it says that man being a million years in the making is a “proven scientific fact.” Yet the last bit tells us that anthropologists have yet to “fill the gaps” and that constitutes their “chief problem.” 

How can a fact be considered proven when they recognise that a problem exists in not being able to bridge the missing information? How can a fact stand any test of time if the picture of evidence remains incomplete and therefore unresolved?

In next week’s third and final part, we’ll look at some of the prehistoric ‘evidence’ that has been presented over time and see how they stand simple scrutiny.

End of Part 2 of 3

For the previous Part One, check entries under June 4 2017

Final Part Three will be available next Sunday, June 18 2017