Posted on 03/06/2014 10:24:04 AM PST by rktman
The key to this understanding is the Sabbath. God rested on the seventh day of Creation week.
Exodus 20:8 and 11 show that keeping the Sabbath in memory of the Creator/Creation is a commandment of God.
The Sabbath is also prophecy.
For instance, He swore to Adam that in the day he ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil he would surely die and Adam died on earth having lived (here) 930 years – Gen 5:5
And all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years: and he died. - Genesis 5:5
We see a day=1,000 years confirmed in Psalms 90:4 and again in 2 Peter 3:8 which you already quoted.
See below for the Epistle of Barnabas 15:3-5 (not to be confused with the Gospel of Barnabas a late 16th century fraud.) The Epistle of Barnabas dates back to the first few centuries after Christ’s resurrection. It is quoted by Clement of Alexandria and also mentioned by Origen.
God's Name is I AM.
Well, I’ve been there enough myself.
I’ve come such a long way and yet have so far to go......
I very strongly agree that God is timeless which is also to say that the Spirit is timeless.
Indeed, time is part of the Creation and not a property of, or restriction, on the Creator of it.
That God uses light as a metaphor so often in the Scripture underscores the point perfectly (of course.)
The photon is timeless which is to say it has no mass and travels at top speed (speed of light.)
For the photon as observer no time elapses at all. That is called a "null path."
Conversely, the observer of a photon, from his perspective, would sense time passing.
God uses that imagery in explaining His glory to us:
And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not. - John 1:5
For ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord: walk as children of light: - Ephesians 5:8
Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high; - Hebrews 1:3
I'm still thinking about the idea that time would be created before space, but I wanted to offer the following for anyone following along on the issues concerning the physical beginning ex nihilo:
It is not nothing. It is a spatial point. A singularity is not nothing.
In ex nihilo Creation (beginning of space/time) - the dimensions are not merely zero, they are null, dimensions do not exist at all. There is no space and no time. Period.
There is no mathematical point, no volume, no content, no scalar quantities. Ex nihilo doesn’t exist in relationship to anything else; there is no thing.
In an existing physical space, each point (e.g. particle) can be parameterized by a quantity such as mass. The parameter (e.g. a specific quantity within the range of possible quantities) is in effect another descriptor or quasi-dimension that uniquely identifies the point within the space.
Moreover, if the quantity of the parameter changes for a point, then a time dimension is invoked. For example, at one moment the point value is “0” and the next it is “1”.
Wave propagation (e.g. big bang, inflation) cannot occur in null dimensions nor can it occur in zero spatial dimensions, a mathematical point; a dimension of time is required for any fluctuation in a parameter value at a point.
Moreover, wave propagation must also have a spatial/temporal relation from cause point to effect point, i.e. physical causation.
For instance “0” at point nt causes “1” at point n+1t+1 which causes "0" at point n+1t+2 etc..
Obviously, physical wave propagation (e.g. big bang/inflationary model) cannot precede space/time and physical causality. Again,
In the absence of time, events cannot occur.
To God be the glory!.
One of the things I LOVE about the words of God is that as time passes for us, whether individually or collectively, we discover new layers of meaning in words that have not changed for thousands of years.
The first verse of Genesis is more clear today than it was in the 1950s, prior to the CMB measurements showing there was a beginning of real space and real time. In those days, a steady state universe cosmology was acceptable. But Christians and Jews knew Scriptures start with "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth..."
And before the present age who could have envisioned the following verse literally?
And when the seven thunders had uttered their voices, I was about to write: and I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, Seal up those things which the seven thunders uttered, and write them not. - Revelation 10:4
As Einstein (a Jew) said: "Coincidence is God's way of remaining anonymous."
We should trust God to reveal everything we need to know in its proper time and circumstance according to His will for us:
I will Trust in the LORD with all my heart; and lean not unto mine own understanding. In all my ways I shall acknowledge him, and he shall direct my paths.
The response from Him is sometimes a flood of joy in my soul, sometimes a perfect stillness to my fretting, or the occasional rebuke to my pride, or sometimes a flash of insight completely unexpected. I cherish every one because I have come to believe He is responding gently to my trusting in Him. I suppose it is akin to Esther bowing before the throne ... only I bow in awe, not fear of retribution.
Thank you so much for your beautiful testimony, dear MHGinTN!
Sounds like absolutely the best plan to me, dearest sister in Christ!
Thank you ever so much for your heartfelt, illuminating essay/post!
I like Psalm 121......
I lift up my eyes to the hills.
From where does my help come?
2 My help comes from the Lord,
who made heaven and earth.
3 He will not let your foot be moved;
he who keeps you will not slumber.
4 Behold, he who keeps Israel
will neither slumber nor sleep.
5 The Lord is your keeper;
the Lord is your shade on your right hand.
6 The sun shall not strike you by day,
nor the moon by night.
7 The Lord will keep you from all evil;
he will keep your life.
8 The Lord will keep
your going out and your coming in
from this time forth and forevermore.
I don't grieve that He has left me. He hasn't, and won't: Because He knows that I love Him, and acknowledge Him as my Father.
I doubt the language of the Reformed Church can adequately address the sense of "lostness" that I experience in these "dry periods" of sense of separation that strike my soul from time to time. (I figure this is part of the divine pedagogy as it pertains to my soul.)
But nevertheless because I feel such a sense of "lostness" from time to time does not mean that I have been abandoned by God. Rather, such experiences are opportunities for my soul to testify to Him even in times of personally-sensed adversity.
I could be wrong in this. But then, it's up to you to tell me why I am wrong.
For my part, I will cite the example of Mother Theresa of Calcutta.
She was a woman, sanctified by God in all respects, who though experiencing "darkness" in her soul (as her journals, which have surfaced after her death attest), never gave up on executing God's salvific work — among the very least of us, the poor, the suffering, the diseased, the abandoned of society, the castoffs of a vicious caste system. She wrote:
Where is my faith? Even deep down ... there is nothing but emptiness and darkness ... If there be God—please forgive me. When I try to raise my thoughts to Heaven, there is such convicting emptiness that those very thoughts return like sharp knives and hurt my very soul ... How painful is this unknown pain — I have no Faith. Repulsed, empty, no faith, no love, no zeal, ... What do I labor for? If there be no God, there can be no soul. If there be no soul then, Jesus, You also are not true.And yet the testimony of her own life as lived demonstrate that she lived in "faith, and love, and zeal," for the sheer love of Christ. At the same time, she suffered from what St. John of the Cross called "the dark night of the soul" all her life. And she lived with it, almost every moment of her life — not because God was not going to give her a "pat on the back" for every step of the way she took, but because God called her into the mystery of performing the hard duty of relieving human suffering in the here and now.
Which she did, every step of the way: She still carried out her calling, under God, to do everything in her power to relieve human suffering, wherever she found it. And wherever she was temporally/spatially placed — which was mainly in the nasty, dark, inhuman streets of Calcutta, dealing with the castoffs of a vicious caste society. She took care of the sick, the dying, the starving, the abandoned mothers of yet-to-be-born children, lepers, all persons with whom "normal" society would have nothing to do. She served her fellow human beings from dawn to dusk and beyond, for love, because she was called to do it, not because she expected any reward or "applause" in this life so to do it.
When after she died, her journals became public, the first thing the (late) Christopher Hitchens bore down on was the total absurdity (as he saw it) of a life of service like this, without reward in this world. He used this argument to totally delegitimate Christianity, calling it as a game for "dupes," for stupid people. Ergo, Christianity itself — in his mind — was a "con game," a "shell game," conceived to deceive. Ergo: No intelligent person should ever go there. Better to be an atheist.
Yet I wonder: How is Christopher Hitchens faring, where he is now?
I admired him a lot in life for his contributions to the literary arts.
But it seems to me there is a whole lot of salvation that does not depend on excellence in the literary arts....
May the Lord have mercy on his (atheist) soul.
I mean: Really.
Do you think I am totally bereft of understanding of the Holy Scriptures???
Do you not know that I pray for God's blessings, upon you and your family — mr. mm, R, D, and S — every day of my life?
What on earth are we arguing about here?
Should I get an exorcism or something, just to make me fit for Reformed Church company???
Sorry. I'm may be "overreacting" here.
Please advise.
Please write down something that will calm me down.
THANK YOU!!!
OK. I’m really missing something here....
What’s that got to do with Psalm 121?
No, I don’t think you’re in need of exorcizing.
No, I don’t think that you are bereft in any capacity in understanding Scripture.
I’m not arguing about anything.
What’s the Reformed Church got to do with anything?
I sure appreciate the prayers. They are always needed and appreciated and I am humbled that you do it so faithfully. I wish I could say the same for anybody in my life. To my shame, with the good intentions I start with, I don’t always have the follow through.
I’m sorry that I worded something so poorly that it was misconstrued.
Dear sister in Christ, I am always "following up " short myself, too.
Notwithstanding all my good intentions.
So I pray.
I can do nothing by myself that amounts to a hill of beans.
All fullness of such intentions can come only from our Lord.
And so I pray — for you and your dear ones, and all my beloved sisters and brothers in Christ.
It sounds that way to me also, dearest sister in Christ! Thank you for your encouragements!
IIPeter 3:5 For this they willingly are ignorant of,
that by the word of God the heavens were of OLD, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water: (Genesis 1:2)
6 Whereby the world that then *was*, being overflowed with water, perished:
7 But the heavens and the earth which are *now*, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men.
Indeed, 2 Peter chapters 2 and 3 are speaking both to what has happened and what shall happen.
And as those verses suggest, we look back in Scripture to understand prophecy about things that have not yet come to pass. And in this case, we can look to The Fall to reveal the first insight that a 1,000 days to Adamic man is equal to a day to God.
And all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years: and he died. - Genesis 5:5
God's Name is I AM.
Likewise.
Indeed, 2 Peter chapters 2 and 3 are speaking both to what has happened and what shall happen. And as those verses suggest, we look back in Scripture to understand prophecy about things that have not yet come to pass. And in this case, we can look to The Fall to reveal the first insight that a 1,000 days to Adamic man is equal to a day to God. But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. - Genesis 2:17 And all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years: and he died. - Genesis 5:5 But believers frequently disagree over prophecy, so I would not be surprised if you disagree with my understanding of the prophecies. God's Name is I AM.
So when in the 'mathematical equation' of time did the first reb.el re.bel? We know he was already a rebel in Genesis 2:9 described symbolically as the 'tree of knowledge of good and evil'. Ezekiel 28:13 Thou hast been in Eden the garden of God; every precious stone was they covering,......
Isaiah 14:12 How art thou *fallen* from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! (Genesis 1:2)How art thou cast down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations! Revelation 12.
But Moses does not pen anything regarding Satan's creation, nor the creation of each and every soul/spirit intellect. Yet we can know they existed prior to Genesis 1:3.
Ezekiel 18:4 Behold, all souls are Mine; as the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son is Mine: the soul that sinneth, it shall die.
It does not make sense that God would claim ownership of something/someone that did not already exist?
This is what Peter is talking about in the three different heaven/earth worlds (ages). Time before time was recorded. Then this flesh age, and the age yet to come wherein Christ takes His Throne here on this earth.
Yes, Christians do disagree and agree and agree to disagree regarding what the Word is actually saying.
I do not share your understanding of Satan, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, different ages, etc. but I would like to address your question here:
God alone sees all that there is all at once, every where and every when. Everything was made by Him for for Him, i.e. all things are factually His to do with as He pleases:
The earth is the LORD'S, and the fulness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein. - Psalms 24:1
For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him: - Col 1:16
Behold, all souls are mine; as the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son is mine: the soul that sinneth, it shall die. – Ezekiel 18:4
Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour? What if God, willing to shew his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction: And that he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy, which he had afore prepared unto glory, - Romans 9:21-23
Against this way of thinking, the Word of God authoritatively teaches a six day creation, which today is vastly unpopular with most people.
Of the early Church Fathers who wrote on Genesis, all but Augustine who erred by teaching instantaneous creation, affirmed a literal, historic six day account of creation.
It's important that we understand that these men weren't primitive, unscientific goat-herders but rather came from backgrounds of evolutionary pantheism and pagan animism thus were intimately familiar with much of what passes for modern science: Big Bang and Steady State theories, vast ages, the doctrine of emanation and evolution (the universal life force).
Long before Darwin, Greek nature philosophers (600–100BC) were teaching primitive evolutionary conceptions, abiogenesis, natural selection, transmigration, reincarnation and vast ages together with many other modern assumptions. The fragments of Anaximander (c. 610–546 BC) show that he taught that ‘humans originally resembled another type of animal, namely fish’ while Democritus (c.460–370BC) taught that primitive people began to speak with ‘confused’ and ‘unintelligible’ sounds but ‘gradually they articulated words.’
The Greek Atomist Epicurus (341–270BC), the father of contemporary materialism and many of its’ modern assumptions, taught that there was no need of a God or gods, for the Universe came about by a chance movement of atoms. (Evolution: An Ancient Pagan Idea, Paul James Griffith, creation.com)
Darwinism affirms the claim made by Epicurus that living beings created themselves.
With respect to long ages, Plato and many other Greek philosophers taught that the present Universe came about millions of years ago. Writing in the fourth century AD, Lactantius said:
“Plato and many others of the philosophers, since they were ignorant of the origin of all things, and of that primal period at which the world was made, said that many thousands of ages had passed since this beautiful arrangement of the world was completed … .“ (ibid)
After the Greeks, the Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder (AD23–79) said we are so subject to chance,
“….that Chance herself takes the place of God; she proves that God is uncertain.” (ibid)
Greek and Roman philosophers received these ideas from ancient Sumerians (Babylonians), Egyptians and Hindus, whose nature philosophies extended back centuries before Greek and Roman civilization. For example, one Hindu belief was that Brahman (the Void or Universe) spontaneously generated itself (the modern theory of abiogenesis) as something like a seed or singularity about 4.3 billion years ago and then evolved under its’ own power by which it expanded and formed all that exists:
“These Hindus believed in an eternal Universe that had cycles of rebirth, destruction and dormancy, known as ‘kalpas’, rather like oscillating big bang theories. We also read in the Hindu Bhagavad Gita that the god Krishna says, ‘I am the source from which all creatures evolve.” (ibid, Griffith)
In India the doctrine of evolution/reincarnation/karma was thoroughly established from ancient times. It was expounded first in the Upanishads (c. 1000 BC - AD 4), the philosophical-mystic texts held to be the essence of the Vedas.
The idea that the soul reincarnates is intricately linked to karma, the idea that jiva-atmas (souls) pass from one plane of existence to another and carry with them samskaras (impressions) from former states of being. These karmic impressions on the soul are taken to the next life and result in a causally-determined state of being. In some schools of Hinduism liberation from the cycle of death and rebirth (samsara), is considered the ultimate goal of earthly existence. This is known as Moksha in Hinduism or nirvana in Buddhism. Other traditions assert that liberation from samsara is merely the beginning of real spiritual life and beyond nirvana, activities continue, but are no longer of a worldly nature. Both sides agree on the phenomenon of evolution/reincarnation.
Paul, representing six day special creation, contended against Greek Atomists and Stoics, representatives of Cosmic Egg theories (Big Bang), vast ages, universal life force, void, atoms, evolution, etc. And of course they mocked, ridiculed, and derided him unmercifully.
The framework behind this very ancient way of thinking is naturalism: things made themselves. Naturalism is like a leopard. Its' spots cannot be changed even by modern Christians who espouse the Big Bang, billions of years, unfolding processes, etc.
When Peter prophesied about the "scoffers" in "the last days" who claim that "everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation" (2 Peter 3:4) he is speaking of modern people who willingly reject six day, special creation in preference of ancient ways of thinking revised and revamped for our own age.
If God is really Who He said He is, if He is the God Who revealed Himself to man through Jesus Christ, then He can call everything into existence in six literal days, bring about a virgin birth, resurrect Himself from death, ascend unto Heaven, for all of these things are very simple matters.
The real issue behind objections to special creation is what kind of God one believes in. There is an amazing inconsistency to allow that He created in six days that occur at the end of billions of years of evolutionary process. This means that possibly millions of creatures lived and died long before man arrived on the scene, making God the author of death rather than the fall, the sin of Adam.
If God cannot call or sing creation into existence in six literal days then He is not much of a God.
"n the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2He was in the beginning with God.…" John 1:1
Dr. Arnold G. Fruchtenbaum is a messianic Jew and one of the foremost authorities on the nation of Israel, Judaism and Messianic prophecies. In his study of what is known theologically as Messianic Christology Fruchtenbaum surveys all of the messianic prophecies in the Hebrew Scriptures which were fulfilled at the First Coming of Messiah. In Appendix 10 he summarizes all messianic prophecies which have been studied. A few of them are:
Genesis 1:1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
He would be human: Gen. 3:15
He would be both God and man (Messiah is Jehovah): Gen. 3:15; Isaiah 7:14; Jeremiah 23:5-6; Micah 5:2; Zechariah 12:10 & 13:7; Psalm 80:17;1 Chronicles 17:10-14
He would remove the curse due to Adam's fall Gen. 5:21-29
He would be the son of God Psalm 2:7-12
He would be full of the Holy Spirit Isaiah 11:1-2; 42:1-4; 61:1-28
He would appear before 70 A.D. Gen. 49:10; Isaiah 7:14, 8:9-10, 9:6-7; Zechariah 11:1-17; 1 Chronicles 17:10-14; Daniel 9:24-27
He would be rejected at first Isaiah 49:1-3, 52:13-53:12; Zechariah 11:1-17, 12:10; Psalms 22 & 110:1-7
He would only be accepted by a small believing remnant of people Zechariah 11:1-7
The Word is all powerful. Calling creation into existence in six literal days is a simple matter for Him.
toric 6 day creation. It's important that we understand that these men weren't primitive, unscientific goat-herders but rather came from backgrounds of evolutionary pantheism and pagan animism thus were intimately familiar with much of what passes for modern science Many people today believe that modern science has proven the earth to be billions of years old, and that every living thing descended from a single cell which itself is the result of chance combination of chemicals.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.