Posted on 09/24/2023 1:33:14 AM PDT by spirited irish
Ever had someone tell you, ‘You’re missing the whole point! The purpose of Genesis is to teach that God is our Creator. We should not be divisive over the small details. Genesis teaches the theological truth of “Who?” and “Why?” not about the “How?” and “When?”’ Or else they say that the Bible is a book for faith and morality, not history.
An obvious answer is, why should we trust Genesis when it says God created if we can’t trust it on the details? After all, Jesus told Nicodemus, ‘I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things?’ (John 3:12). So if Genesis can’t be trusted on an earthly thing, such as Earth’s age, the sequence of creative acts upon it, or the Flood that covered it, then why trust it on a heavenly thing such as who the Creator was? Also, if Genesis 1 were merely meant to tell us that God is creator, then why simply not stop at verse 1, all that’s necessary to state this?
However, the critic has overlooked something even more important—Genesis is written as real history. This is why the rest of the Bible treats the events, people, and time sequences as real history—not parables, poetry, or allegory.
(Excerpt) Read more at patriotandliberty.com ...
ping
Our notions of history changed a lot over these thousands of years. A lot of things that, say, Herodotus or Titus Livius wrote down, were stories that they heard from someone, who had heard it from someone else, possibly his grandma, and she had it from her grandma, etc. ad infinitum.
Genesis is history. It only reads like science fiction because the world it describes was very different from what we observe...
Psalms 136:3-9
Give thanks to the Lord of lords,
For His lovingkindness is everlasting.
To Him who alone does great wonders,
For His lovingkindness is everlasting;
To Him who made the heavens with skill,
For His lovingkindness is everlasting;
To Him who spread out the earth above the waters,
For His lovingkindness is everlasting;
To Him who made the great lights,
For His lovingkindness is everlasting:
The sun to rule by day,
For His lovingkindness is everlasting,
The moon and stars to rule by night,
For His lovingkindness is everlasting.
Genesis is the foundation of everything in scripture. If you foundation is destroyed, everything built upon it topples.
Amen!
The creation story has to be taken the way a very complex story is told to people who have no--zero, zip, nada--basis for understanding what really happened.
Which details are precisely accurate and which are used (albeit very accurately) to convey the essence of what happened will never be known by humans in our current state of existence.
It reminds me of something that was explained to me when I was an undergrad considering a major in mathematics. I was told math (research, not teaching) was a lonely life because no one could possibly understand what you do for a living. With the exception of a few people doing similar research, others (particularly your family and friends) would be incapable of understanding and you would be incapable of explaining it.
Take that situation and raise it to an infinite power. That is the problem God faced with the creation story.
That answer is only appropriate and acceptable if you allow that nothing has changed with regards to human understanding of creation which is precisely the case.
A lot of moderns believe they are more intelligent than their forebears because they are holding a cell phone in their hands. Almost invariably the opposite is the case.
Our beliefs, yarns, and tales we proudly label "science" have as little to do with reality as the idea that the world rests onto the back of a giant turtle.
The serpent was right there in the Garden of Eden doing what he could to destroy the Heavenly Father's plan... Genesis does not describe the creation of the devil, nor how it was he knew good and evil.
Genesis 1:2 describes the casting down - overthrow of the devil, as described in Ezekiel 28 and Isaiah 14.
In Ephesians it is referred to ‘the foundation of the world’... Paul says that before the ‘foundation of the world’ the saints, elect, or chosen were set aside.
Profoundly true.
That needs to be written on a banner and dragged across the sky by a small airplane...over every city and town...every day.
Our technology increases our hubris and our hubris increases our stupidity.
As regards technology, hubris, and stupidity, you can see examples of it right here on FR. The anonymity of an internet forum makes it almost impossible for people making comments to resist the temptation of pride. You rarely see people apologize or say they don't know something. Their pride is unrestrained because there is no penalty against it.
And pride blinds a person to the truth. It particularly blinds persons to the truth about their own ignorance.
At a yard sale last week, I scored four Ken Ham books on Genesis. And so far I really like what I am reading.
But then, I am a six days Creation believer.
To believe otherwise compromises with the culture and undermines the Word.
Peter penned IIPeter 3 ...
8 But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.
According to Genesis, Methuselah lived 969 years, not quite a day with the Lord.
To believe otherwise compromises with the culture and undermines the Word.
That's not true. There's nothing wrong with being a six-day creation believer but believing otherwise does not in any way undermine Judeo/Christian culture or the Word of God.
That's just like saying "If you don't believe like me, you're damaging the Bible."
Just because God defined a day on Earth as the rising and setting of the sun does not mean that one day to him is the same. In fact, he tells us elsewhere that it isn't...that he is outside space and time (2 Peter 3:8).
2 Peter 3:8 is one way of stating that the Creator is above and beyond time as we know it. When all of creation and history are comprehended into One Eternal Being, without beginning and without end, it has a way of putting sense to the greater reports of Sacred Scripture. I would posit that at just the right time, Moses penned, as inspired by the Holy Spirit because the mind and makeup of men were becoming so corrupt as to need it in writing.
If you look at cosmology, geology ask paleontology you can make a strong argument that the story of earths creation in Genesis is the only accurate depiction of the creation of the universe until about 1980 and the discovery of the Big Bang Theory which largely validates the Biblical account
Amen!
Absolutely agree!
Amen!
No longer, and both evolutionary materialists and seculars dislike the Big Bang. If only they knew that the concept of the Big Bang is nothing new under the sun. For mystical pantheists, Big Bang is the pilapia. For Western pagans it is the Cosmic Egg.
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