Mark 10:6 - quoted in the article.
Mark 10:6 - quoted in the article.
I had never noticed the timeline implications before.....
Yet, they will stand up in the pulpit and correctly declare that Christ was crucified and resurrected on the third day.
They are correctly willing to take the resurrection literally....but not the creation.
That's where the disconnect happens.
Excellent article; thanks for posting.
Are we sure Adam and Eve were not actually single cell organisms?
So how does Jesus invoking Genesis in order the reach a Jewish audience familiar with the text some endorsement of Young Earth Creationists? Jesus was invoking Genesis to teach about divorce not some scientific statement that the earth was 6,000 years old.
So God made everything 6000 (or so) years ago and the Earth in one week?
Yet somehow the mechanics of the universe and geology seems to contradict all of that?
I’m glad I take God far more seriously for this amazing creation, and all of the genius that we can see and for what we unlock everyday. He boiled it down simply for early man to understand like parents describe things to children. The real story is far more glorious and people should rejoice in the fact that it is.
Either death entered the world when Adam sinned (per Paul) or myriad generations of death had already occurred when Adam sinned.
When lucifer fell from heaven there was great destruction. Jeremiah 4:23-28 describes the chaos and destruction that occurred. So the exact age of the earth is unknown, and an old earth does not contradict the bible. In Genesis God created man, replenished the earth and made things right again. Note that as a result of this event the heavens were dark and there was no life remaining, unlike the Noah flood where Noah, his family and the animals on the Arc survived:
Jeremiah 4:23-28 -
“I beheld the earth, and, lo, it was without form, and void; and the heavens, and they had no light. I beheld the mountains, and, lo, they trembled, and all the hills moved lightly. I beheld, and, lo, there was no man, and all the birds of the heavens were fled. I beheld, and, lo, the fruitful place was a wilderness, and all the cities thereof were broken down at the presence of the LORD, and by his fierce anger. For thus hath the LORD said, The whole land shall be desolate; yet will I not make a full end. For this shall the earth mourn, and the heavens above be black: because I have spoken it, I have purposed it, and will not repent, neither will I turn back from it.”
My interpretation would be that the “beginning of creation” refers to the creation of human beings.
If Adam and Eve were created within days of the creation of everything including the heavens and the earth, when did the angels fall?
I believe Genesis. I think it is God giving us the actual story of our creation, but I think it is meant to be the story of our creation, not a description of the entire universe or limit what God doing before our creation or in other places during our creation.
I think it is hubris to think that there is nothing going on outside of what God tell us in the book of Genesis.
Silly. This young earth junk is just as silly as evolution.
1. Genesis provided an explanation of Creation to people 5,000 years behind us, scientifically. It’s not a lie to tell people what they are ready to hear, at the level they are ready to hear it.
If you tell a 3 yr old that a baby comes “from mommy’s belly,” you haven’t lied because you omitted the sexual nature of reproduction. Trying to use the story of Creation in Genesis to explain the science of Creation is like trying to get from “Mommy’s belly” to conception. There are too many gaps to make any credible leaps. That doesn’t make “Mommy’s belly” a lie. It just means that “Mommy’s belly” was never intended to be a scientific defense of reproduction.
2. It seems to me that one of our chief purposes here is to learn faith. Faith is believing that which is unseen. How can “new earth” possibly be proved as science? If I could prove to you that the Earth is 11 thousand years old, then every other thing we know about science (the junk that is evolution aside) would require us to believe in a divine creation. It would be proven by the facts as they exist. Who needs faith for that? This idea that new earth must be believed misses the point.
In fact, the concept of new earth requires a lack of proof precisely to protect faith (hint, this is EXACTLY why Genesis’ account of Creation is relevant today). If I must have faith to believe in an unprovable new earth, then my faith is and can be just as assured without believing in it, thank you very much. This concept of new earth is adding to that which we’ve been told, unnecessarily at that.
If that’s not the point of the new earth argument, to offer a proof, then what is the point? How is my faith lessened one iota to acknowledge that maybe I don’t know, and maybe the Genesis account wasn’t designed TO BE a proof? You can believe in new earth if you like. That’s not the point of this article. The point of this article is to suggest that I must believe it, too. What is it with new earthists and evolutionists that they aren’t content to believe their own theories, that they must shove them down my throat as well?
3. Ultimately, new earth is a derivative of “Last Thursdayism”. Wiki it. The Omphalos Hypothesis is dangerous to faith. If the world is Created in aged motion, then maybe it was created last week, and you and everything you’ve experienced was just created “in motion”. Taken to its conclusions, this notion denies a permanency to our existence. It is the teaching of the Word that just the opposite is true: we are eternal beings. The underpinnings of new earth theory denies a permanence to Creation that is my birthright.
Faith requires us to believe that Creation involves things unseen and unexplained. Trying to wrap that up in a neat bow of a simplex formula is just as silly as trying to force the evidence at hand to suggest macro-evolution, and for the same reasons.
4. If you’re going to use the syntax of a phrase to make your point, to the exclusion of else, then you can make the Bible say anything you want it to say. Try this: Genesis 11. “Come, let us go down...” Spend a few minutes on that one, cause it’s mind blowing.
There is no reason whatsoever to try to compete with the silliness of evolution. Evolution is a theory because you cannot elevate to Law that which violates other Law. The story of Creation wasn’t designed to be a counter to evolution. It’s a five thousand year concept that stands tall before the passing fancy of an ill-advised theory. There’s no reason to grant evolution credit by comparison (and that, to me, is the point of new earth). That’s like trying to compare Washington to Obama. Why bother?
We have the answers we need without making stuff up.
Agreed, fishtank.
There are a lot of people who just simply haven’t thought the whole thing through, or read the Bible all the way through. Creation is taught in many, many passages besides Genesis. Here’s just a couple of references from Revelation:
Rev 4:11 Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created.
Rev 10:6 And sware by him that liveth for ever and ever, who created heaven, and the things that therein are, and the earth, and the things that therein are, and the sea, and the things which are therein, that there should be time no longer:
We can either believe what the Bible said, or we can call
God a liar. It robs God of glory only He deserves as our Creator, to claim He didn’t create everything. As our Creator, He owns us, and because He owns us, He may either eternally reward us or eternally punish us, according to rules He sets down. This is alluded to in Romans:
Rom 9:21 Or has not the potter the right to make out of one part of his earth a vessel for honour, and out of another a vessel for shame?
Rom 9:22 What if God, desiring to let his wrath and his power be seen, for a long time put up with the vessels of wrath which were ready for destruction:
Rom 9:23 And to make clear the wealth of his glory to vessels of mercy, which he had before made ready for glory,
Rom 9:24 Even us, who were marked out by him, not only from the Jews, but from the Gentiles?
It’s also clearly stated here:
Joh 1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
Joh 1:2 The same was in the beginning with God.
Joh 1:3 All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.
My God created everything in six days and deserves all the glory for His creation. I’m uninterested in any other “god.”
This really isn’t of some sort of secondary importance. Just as important as having faith in God, is the God we have faith in. If we have faith in a “god” of our (or the world’s) imagination, that’s committing idolatry, worshiping a nonexistent “god” that seems to be just the sort of “god” Satan would want men to believe in, a passive and powerless one.
The bottom line, of course, is that nobody alive on earth today was there then. Both views are therefore faith-based. I choose to place my faith in God’s Word.
This is all the young earthers have left? Twisting the scriptures?
I am of the opinion that we will never know the answer to that question...and many others. The earth was shaken up like an etch a sketch during the great flood. I would go with what Jesus said!
I don't know Greek and we don't know what the spoken original (Aramaic?) words were, but one can't rely exclusively on the details of English translations.
you know, i don’t know much yet about this “young earth” creationism. i suppose i’ll learn more as time goes by :). anyway, i don’t think this scripture says much about the “age” of the earth. age is usually a concept based on time. for the idolater and athiest, time == causality == God. God is clearly not dependent on time. so none of what they argue presents the slightest difficulty for me. i guess i should read the article to see how they define “age.”
i think the scripture says loads about the nature of God’s Supernatural, and personal creation of the universe (it restates clearly that He and He alone is the first cause) and, of course, describes the nature of the first marriage and by implication His definition of all future marriage, Thank Jesus.
Simply put: God is Eternal, He is the potter, and time is, of course, His clay. We live before we are saved blind and hopelessly stuck in that mirey clay. Praise Jesus and the Father for His lifting us out of the true muck where we worm around blindly stuck in the dark forever without Him. Enough said.
There are three main maneuvers to escape from a dilemma:
1) create a hierarchy
2) create a distinction
3) change a definition or definitions.
When using maneuver #3, formulate three steps:
Step one:
define the single word “creation” as an object consisting of all of the heavens and earth or all of this world reality, and not as the creation of humanity.
Step two:
define the phrases “beginning of creation,” “beginning of the creation,” “beginning of the world,” “creation of the world,” “from the beginning,” and “in the beginning” as the whole disputed length of time from the start of the act of “let there be light” to the instant where God made Adam and Eve in his image.
Step three:
Let the phrases “from the foundation of the world” and “since the foundation of the world” refer to the period of time after the formation of man.
Thus:
Mark 10:6 “from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female.”
Mark 13:19 “from the beginning of creation”
Mathew 19:4 “from the beginning”
Mathew 19:8 “from the beginning”
Genesis 1:1 “In the beginning”
Romans 1:20 “since the creation of the world”
all refer to the time in step two.And
Luke 11:50–51 “Prophets’ blood was “shed from the foundation of the world” “
Hebrews 9:25–26 “People have been sinning and in need of atonement “since the foundation of the world”
refers to the time in step 3.
When this is done one can accept the preponderance of the evidence in favor of an old creation and still believe the words of Jesus.