Few people doubt that the Bible intends to teach that the creation is young. The genealogies of the Old Testament are actual reproductions of the calendar system used in most ancient times. Posted on 02/07/2014 3:11:21 PM PST by fwdude
Genesis 1:1
“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.”
Just when was the “beginning” when God created the heavens and the earth, as spoken of in Genesis 1:1? In these days when scientists talk about “billions” of years, the question of what the Bible says on the matter of origins becomes even more important.
Few people doubt that the Bible intends to teach that the creation is young. The genealogies of the Old Testament are actual reproductions of the calendar system used in most ancient times.
While the subject is very complicated, we can share with you the calculations done by some well-known Christians. You are probably familiar with Bishop Ussher’s calculation that creation took place in 4004 B.C. But did you know that no less than the great scientist Kepler calculated that creation took place in 3877? Martin Luther calculated that creation took place in 3961 B.C. The very oldest ages arrived at through calculations based on Scripture say the creation is about 7,500 years old.
For the Christian, the question of the age of the creation can only be answered on the basis of Scripture. There is no question that Scripture gives us more than enough information to conclude that the creation is young and that God wants us to know it. After that, it is simply a matter of whether we accept Scripture’s authority.
Prayer:
Dear Heavenly Father, help my thinking not to be conformed to this world, but help me to be transformed by Your renewing of my mind so that my faith in Your clear Word is unshakable. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.
Notes:
Painting: Archbishop James Ussher, painted by Peter Lely (1618–1680).
“So why do you only have a problem with Genesis then?”
Absolute no problem. I accept what it says without forcing it to do tricks.
“God knew how long He would create a solar day to be even before He placed the sun and he hammers it home well after the book of Genesis. I hope it will clarify things for you.”
Oh I have clarity. I just disagree with the view espoused in the article.
He was created to be a perfect human being which would conceivably place him in the prime of life.
Jer 4:23-26 I beheld the earth, and, lo, it was without form, and void; and the heavens, and they had no light. 24 I beheld the mountains, and, lo, they trembled, and all the hills moved lightly. 25 I beheld, and, lo, there was no man, and all the birds of the heavens were fled. 26 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.Proponents of the gap theory believe that these events took place before God said "let there be light."
While it may be true scripture may have been created 4000 B.C. it took man 13.8 billion years to read and write.
A women’s naked beauty (even as much as Hollywood typically reveals) is for her husband to behold who has entered into a life long covenant with her, and which esp. in the case of such a one as Welch, is a testimony to special creation, as such did not simply evolve.
It does matter. If things were dying before Adam sinned, then his sin wasnt the cause of death (which the bible says clearly it is).
Yes, but who knows when the Creation week was? Since we don’t, that makes it rather difficult to pin down.
Genesis 1 accounts for the creation in six days.
Genesis 2 recounts the seventh day as a day of rest.
Genesis 1:27 describes the creation of mankind, but not Adam.
Genesis 2:7 describes the creation of a man, presumably Adam, for the purpose of taking care of and working in the garden that was created.
Genesis 2:22 described the creation of a woman, presumably Eve, as a helper to Adam.
Adam and Eve were created to work and take care of the Garden of Eden, and were required to trust and obey their creator.
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The passage you quoted has no instruction for Adam and Eve to subdue the Earth, to be fruitful and multiply. Adam and Eve were not yet existing or were not yet mentioned.
The passage that another poster quoted describing when Adam had his first child Seth at 130 years of age does not follow the instruction to be fruitful and multiply as having a first child at age 130 is hardly being fruitful.
This first child was born after the Fall, so it stands to reason that Adam and Eve were not fruitful while they were still inside the garden.
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The point here is that people interpret what they want from these passages. And this leads to wild-eyed inferences.
I am going to resist to interpret these passages and I am not going to allow myself to be programmed by someone else’s interpretation.
What I see are two groups labeling themselves as evolutionists and creationists haggling about some 6000 year time point which is absurd on its face. The premises are not based on any fact but rather a wild assumption which is shaky. Both groups are engaging in folly and are wasting time. Both groups taint the wisdom of science and the wisdom of the Bible. Both groups are deleterious to science and Bible history.
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What I do is to seek any biblical claim, declaration, sequence or description that directly and incontrovertibly contradicts scientific fact. I find nothing in biblical passages that contradict known scientific fact.
I have found statistical methods in maximum likelihood estimation used in error by proponents of evolution in positing evolutionary trees. So I know for a fact that evolutionary ‘science’ is riddled with error. And I have sat in many many university (big league) seminars as a PhD in Statistics listening to evolutionary trees, mutation events and rates, to point out the wrongful inferences and misuse of methods and sampling.
Although evolutionists acknowledge weaknesses in their methods they continue to use these methods in their publications because they don’t know what else to do and because statistical methods create a false aura of scientific credibility. Basically if it looks scientific, well then it must be scientific. Write an equation or two, grab a well-known published name and a publication sails through more often than not unchallenged especially in the more dismal sciences of evolution and economics which often resemble astrology more than science.
And to demonstrate the above criticism I am reminded of the experiment conducted covertly on a group of archaeologists and paleontologists who were given a set of fossilized bones found together and were asked to arrange them and identify the creature that the bones belonged to. Unbeknownst to this group the bones had been numbered, scrambled and renumbered preserving in secret the trace of the renumbering to the original numbering. This was repeated for a number of such groups and the results were all conflicting.
Often a subordinate scientist will look to his leader, a scientist of repute who is widely published and known to the field and the lesser subordinate will go along to get along unless he has a completely solid contrarian inference. In other words science can be very political especially in certain fields such as evolution, economics, sociology, psychology, political science and so on; all of it bordering on the astrological.
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The Bible, as opposed to some error-prone scientific investigations, is not riddled with error but instead contains accounts which are not scientifically observable, which are referred to as supernatural.
A rod turned into a serpent, a sea parted, Lazarus brought back from the dead, a Savior resurrected and so on. These things do not contradict science; they are simply not observable or reproducible by means of the scientific method.
On the other hand, a six thousand year old Earth is subject to challenge and especially when it is based on biblical ancestral trees with ages at death that are shaky from the very beginning with uncertainty in the time of creation of Adam versus the time of Adam’s expulsion.
Both creationists and evolutionists engage in nonsense and folly. They are cut from the same cloth and each demeans the wisdom of science and of the Bible. A 6000 year old Earth meme provides target practice for the other bad actors, the evolutionists.
We would do well to tell both we are not interested in their ‘stories’.
Instead let the heart discover the infinite wisdom of Jesus and the wonders of his life on Earth and in heaven. This of course is the spiritual realm which is just as real as the physical realm.
If any is reading that tires of reading, thinking and analyzing but seeks a faithful rendition of the life of Jesus by way of film, without any Hollywood gimmicks or bad acting, without a blond Jesus, let them find Franco Zeffirelli’s ‘Jesus of Nazareth’ and view it multiple times in its entirety. It is one of those works we find in life that one can put a finger on and believe that God was participating in it.
And tell those hucksters in the 6000 year old camps, both creationists and evolutionists ‘NO SALE’.
I disagree. The translation leaves open the starting point. And certain well-respected Christian scholars who study the ancient scriptures and their translation claim that the age of Adam to his death was from his expulsion.
From the time of the Fall, from the time he ate of the forbidden fruit, from the time he chose to follow Satan, Adam lived 930 years.
Adam did not die immediately on expulsion. He lasted another 930 years before he died.
Inside the Garden of Eden, Adam was immortal. Outside the Garden he was mortal.
Inside the Garden as an immortal being Adam had no age. Outside the Garden his fate was death and he aged, his years were counted.
Are you really that ignorant? Are you saying Adam was destined to die before he ate of the forbidden fruit? Before he chose to follow Satan?
Are you so daft to misunderstand that I was referring to Adam inside the Garden of Eden before the Fall?
Adam was told , if you sin you will die. That does not describe immortality.
The Bible was written by man at a time when most people were illiterate. Most knew nothing of the town a few miles away...how could they possibly understand 100 years, much less a billion years? I believe the Bible was written for the simple man of the times, in such a way that he could understand. Saying that man could not have evolved from lower forms of life puts limitations on God. God has no limitations. He created EVERY thing. How he did it does not matter.
Even GOD says there is no gap
Ex 20:9 Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work:
Ex 20:10 But the seventh day [is] the sabbath of the Lord thy God: [in it] thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that [is] within thy gates:
Ex 20:11 For [in] six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them [is], and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.
If SEVEN is not the numbers of Creation days with the day of rest, then words have no meaning
The Bible is the WORD OF GOD. That you either don’t realize this or choose not to believe this is a serious error.
Then you don't believe scripture. Thanks for being honest.
Moses penned Genesis and he sure was not there in the flesh to give a first hand account for all of what he penned. Furthermore, in John 1:1 we are told "In the beginning (that would be Genesis) was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."
Moses was raised and educated by the best and brightest educators Egyptian gold could buy. And God chose Moses to pen 6 books of the Bible. The Genesis account came directly from God, until Moses could write from first hand account.
The first verse of Genesis is a declaration. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Period.
Genesis 1:2 AND the earth 'became' without form, and void: and darkness was upon the face of the deep.
And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
What Genesis 1:2 is describing and points to where other elected holy prophets Isaiah, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, for starters to elucidate the 'student' as to chronology of events. Christ and Paul and Peter speak about those that were chosen 'before the foundation of the world', and that phrase means, 'overthrow - casting down'.
Genesis 1:2 is the point in 'time' where that first rebel rebelled and was cast down. Isaiah 14:12- Ezekiel 28:12---.
Genesis 1:2 says 'darkness' was upon the face of the deep. And this earth contains the evidence that some major 'global' catastrophe in the distant past caused this earth to become uninhabitable.
Now one of these 'illiterate' people as you label them penned this. Isaiah 45:18 For thus saith the LORD That created the heavens; God Himself That formed the earth and made it; He hath established it. He created it NOT in vain. He formed it to be inhabited: "I am the LORD;
and there is none else. (I am not going to type the whole chapter, but to get the full flavor of what The Creator said, it would need be required reading.
The not in vain is a specific Hebrew word(s) and refers directly back to Genesis 1:2. You can find that for yourself, if you have a Strong's and look up the word 'vain' and all the places that word is used in the whole of the Bible.
God did not give Moses an account of the creation of the 'tree of the knowledge of good and evil' also called the 'serpent', but Ezekiel 28:12--- sure does give an account of this.
The Creator apparently saw fit to emphasize the Genesis account, because Peter in IIPeter 3 reminds us to step away from ignorance and know some specific things in regards to 'time' and heaven and earth ages. That first heaven and earth age was abruptly ended and there was a flood just as Genesis 1:2 describes.
I do not know how much of what God told Moses to write down Moses was allowed to fully understand. But I think Moses understood far more than the majority of modern Christians.
Methuselah is recorded to have lived 969 years, and in the method used by God in counting time was not quite one 'day' with the Lord. By the time Noah was 500 years old this earth had become so corrupted that God had Moses pen Genesis 6:3 And the LORD said, "My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years."
Evolution long time or quick time is a hoax. Why? Because the flesh body was formed to give each soul/spirit intellect a vessel to that this flesh journey.
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.
All souls/spirit intellect existed even in Genesis 1:2, Ecclesiastes, Romans, and Ephesians 1:4. The flesh has an expiration date and once it dies it returns to the dirt from which it came. (Ecclesiastes 12) The soul/spirit intellect returns to the Maker that sent it. (John 3:13)
The adherents to the long time story of evolution readily admit they cannot 'test' something they cannot see with their flesh physical eyes. That sure does not mean the soul/spirit intellect, also called the breath of life does not exist. Talk about limiting God.
Yes. Did you know Jesus was destined to die before creation, because of Adam's inevitable fall?
Rev 13:8 "All inhabitants of the earth will worship the beast--all whose names have not been written in the Lamb's book of life, the Lamb who was slain from the creation of the world."
In addition, believers were chosen before the creation as well:
Ephesians 1:4-5 "For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will—"
Well, I guess that is true. Once there, no more worries as the Aussies say.
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