Posted on 12/15/2010 5:17:34 AM PST by ImProudToBeAnAmerican
We need to be discussing the same topic and not missing the main point.
God did not tell us the time of His (Jesus) coming. either time. It was predicted and alluded to numerous times in the Old Testament. It was known after he came. Jesus said only the Father knows the end time. We have indications to be aware of ... however every generation for centuries (and Jesus) said the end times are upon us. So? There is much not exactly known. God works His will His way. If we do not know, it keeps us ready or some of us believe so. Since He chooses to keep us in the dark for excellent reasons (being that we should be right with Him and ready for His return at any moment ...
False teaching has been since the beginning. Satan is deceitful and the Prince of this world.
Faith is faith, faith in the thing (proof) in our hand is no longer faith ... it is fact then.
IE. like hope, hope is for the thing we expect to come and desire to come and anticipate and long for it to come because when it comes, there will no longer be any need for hope.
Paul writes of this. Faith, Hope and Charity(love) and the greatest of these is Charity, LOVE!
> “Does it really matter what the needle was, if the ‘concept’ is understood ?”
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Certainly not.
> “how does it differ from the ‘description’ given in the Bible?”
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In one very significant way:
The Bible clearly has Eve partaking of the fruit before Adam did, thus a sexual encounter cannot be the ‘fruit.’
We went through this line of discussion way back when Anthony Grigor-Scott was posting his bizzare nonsense, key to which was an assertion that Eve having sexual relations with Satan generated a “serpent seed” on Earth that could not be saved because they were not Adam’s children. In short, he believed that Cain was the literal son of Satan.
Of course I do. It is Him under the veils.
This is what's important:
"...it is plain that neither the Bible nor a belief in inerrancy is required to be a Christian. If this were so, then skeptics like Frank Morison or C. S. Lewis, who believed in the historicity of the Resurrection but not in the inerrancy of the Gospel reports of it, would never become Christians. People behind the Iron and Bamboo Curtains would never have become Christians in times when the Bible was forbidden in those countries and they often had no more of the Bible than a few pitiable verses handwritten on a paper towel. ... "..God's message in the Bible may be summed up in just a few exemplary verses, upon which the rest are built; and these few verses are the height of simplicity.
... the Bible's messages are mostly straightforward and simple. The Bible has two primary components, OT and NT, that may be summarized easily in a few words.
Jesus and the Jews of His time and before summarized the OT with the two commands to love God with all that was in you, and love your neighbor as yourself.
The NT, too, may be summarized with just a few words - notably those of John 3:16, although certainly there are other good candidates.
As noted earlier, neither the Bible nor belief in its inerrancy is required to become a Christian. All that is needed is acceptance of these few words and what they represent; the rest is equivalent, spiritually speaking, of enforcement codes - how to live the life that God has called you to. Thus there is no need for inerrant copies when the basic message, all that is essentially needed, is so crystal-clear. .."
Closer than 3, which is what a literal reading of what you are trying to math your way around would give us.
OTOH, if you say “Okay, close enough, it’s not meant to be literal,” well, welcome to the real world.
Not being a Protestant heretic :0)I will reply as did the sainted Joan D’Arc when she was on the receiving end of, er, flamage:
If I am not in a state of Grace, may God put me there.
If I am in a state of Grace, may God keep me there.
I do not “know”, nor will I until I die. And neither do or shall you. Every time I thought I was saved God has kicked my butt. As the Man in Black said, get used to disappointment. And ambiguity.
> “God did not tell us the time of His (Jesus) coming. either time”
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That has for some reason become a common misperception.
God gave us his “times” or feasts that predicted his events with absolute accuracy.
Jesus arrived on Earth on September 29, 4 BC, the beginning of the feast called Tabernacles that foretold his coming to “Tabernacle” with us. He will return to rapture his own on the last trump of the Day of Attonement, which is timed by the new moon, which is an event that will be visible. The thing we don’t know until the season is here, is which year.
He was crucified 33 years later, late on Wednesday afternoon, at the beginning of pasach, or Passover, another day that was accurately prophecied by that feast. He arose on Saturday evening by our calendar, the end of the Sabbath, by Gods calendar, thus being his “first day of the Weeks of Pentecost, another day that was thereby prophecied.
All of his events have been foretold.
If God created the world in 6 days...
...couldn’t he also create it too look 20 million years old to scientists?
On Earth, God transmits His knowledge to mortal flesh. Mortal flesh decays both literally and figuratively over time in a fallen world, which means that even truth decays in transmission over time unless renewed. As such, texts, being the natural creation of a natural man in a natural environment, may show a drift, either at the time of transmission or over time, from the absolute Truth that is its source. God’s truth is immortal. Man, OTOH, is an imperfect and not always competent amenuensis of that truth. And while the Truth of God inspired Scripture, it passed through the mortal flesh of many hands over many centuries. That means it’s not a schematic diagram of the circuitry of moral life but rather high poetry that is understandable but not to be taken, word for word, as infallible truth.
A God that makes it impossible to be misunderstood would be a tyrant inimicable to human freedom which, it appears, is the whole point of the Creation to begin with. There will be time enough for God’s Inerrant Truth Unalterable when we stand before Him. Here, we get only as much of it as we can comprehend as we stand encased in the flesh we are.
God obeys His own laws. There’s a religion that believes that God can do whatever He wants instead of being subjected to His own laws: it’s called “Islam.” Knock yourself out.
Ah this article skipped Genesis and went on over to Exodus when the newly freed slaves were getting educated in what would be required of them to have and maintain the blessings and protection of the LORD.
Genesis literally does not even begin to suggest how old this earth literally is. Genesis 1:1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. A declaration not a time piece. AND Genesis 1:2 literally says the earth age was destroyed even with a flood. All this long before the Superfund of Superfund clean ups began to make this earth inhabitable for the creation/formation of flesh beings.
It has been man and his traditions that claim Genesis gives a date of the age of this earth, NOT the literal words of Genesis...
If God created the world in 6 days...
...couldn’t he also create it too look 20 million years old to scientists?
>>>
If He were a lyin’ sack of, er, spit? Yes.
> “It has been man and his traditions that claim Genesis gives a date of the age of this earth, NOT the literal words of Genesis.”
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No, it is the written geneologies contained in the Bible that give the exact lifespans, and ages of the fathers at the times of the birth of the children that give the age of the Earth quite accurately.
No, he's a librarian - there's a difference. Further, I don't put much stock in the "social science" interpretive school of theology. Sorry, I just don't. And let's face it - there's a difference between "context" and "the findings of the Context Group." One is obvious from the text itself, while the other is simply somebody's theory about how they think something ought to be interpreted, based on somebody else's theory (not scientifically testable, typically) about some "social context" at some point in Bible times.
Talk about biblically illiterate methods of hermeneutics.
While we're on the subject, however, while the old earthers try to make spurious arguments about young earthers being "biblically illiterate," can old earthers actually provide any positive evidence FOR their position from the Bible itself? And if not, then why should anybody take them seriously?
The religious leaders of Jesus time did not recognize Him. He did not restore the Kingdom at the time which is what His disciples expected.
The timing is not told in even what century it will occur..
Watchman on the wall keeps the new moons and gives warning, but not the year of our Lord's return.
Why assume that? He tells us in the narrative itself that creation was created with the appearance of age. However, the "milllllllions and miiiiiiiiillions of yeeeeeears" jibber-jabber, well, God didn't tell us that, nor does the actual state of the physical world suggest it. That's just a daffy and thoroughly inane idea that man came up with all by his lonesome.
> “couldn’t he also create it too look 20 million years old...”
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But he didn’t.
The world doesn’t look old, it is and looks young.
The old age nonsense comes from absurd assumptions, and absurd extrapolations therefrom.
Genesis states that the universe was expanded, and it follows logically that time, which is a part of the physical universe, was also expanded.
If your point of reference is Earth, the universe is 6000 years old.
Here’s more from the very bottom of my FR profile page:
This is Jesus, Himself, speaking, summing up both the Old and New Testaments in TWO Commandments:
Mark 12:28-31 The two greatest commandments of all: “Then one of the scribes ... asked Him, “Which is the first commandment of all?”
Jesus answered him, “The first of all the commandments is: ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ This is the first commandment.
And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as much as you love yourself’(and no more).
There is no other commandment greater than these.” Matt. 25:35-36
“Now all has been heard; here is the conclusion of the matter: Fear God and keep his [two] commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment, including every hidden thing, whether it is good or evil.” ~ Eccl. 12:13-14
Don’t unwrap the package you have tied up with that neat bow. You might have to re-think everything you ever thought you had all figured out. For some... that’s really scary. :)
"I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life."
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