Posted on 05/16/2014 12:34:41 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Young earth creationist Ken Ham lashed out at televangelist Pat Robertson over his claim earlier this week that someone has to be “deaf, dumb and blind” to believe that the Earth is only 6,000 years old, accusing Robertson of compromising “the Word of God.”
“Pat Robertson illustrates one of the biggest problems we have today in the church — people like Robertson compromise the Word of God with the pagan ideas of fallible men!,” Ham wrote on his Facebook page. “Pat Robertson is not upholding the Word of God with his ridiculous statements — he is undermining the authority of the Word. And any attack on the WORD is an attack on the person of Jesus Christ, who IS THE WORD!”
Ham, who runs Answers in Genesis, a Christian ministry that takes the Bible’s Genesis account of creation literally, broke down the comments Robertson made on CBN’s “The 700 Club” earlier this week in a point-by-point analysis.
In addition to accusing Roberson of expressing “his utter ignorance of science,” Ham wrote that the televangelist “makes Christianity look silly.”
But Ham took particular exception to Robertson’s claim that there is no way that the Earth could have possibly come to fruition in such a short time span.
“Really Pat Robertson? You mean there is no way God, the infinite Creator, could not have created the universe in six days just six thousand years ago?,” Ham rhetorically asked. “God could have created everything in six seconds if He wanted [to]! And it’s not a matter of what you think anyway — it’s a matter of what God has clearly told us in His infallible WORD!”
As TheBlaze previously reported, Robertson unleashed his critiques on young earth creationists Tuesday, saying that they are mistaken in their views about the age of the planet.
“The truth is, you have to be deaf, dumb and blind to think that this Earth that we live in only has 6,000 years of existence, it just doesn’t, I’m sorry,” Robertson said.
He added, “I think what we’re looking at is that there was a point of time after the Earth was created, after these things were done, after the universe was formed, after the asteroid hit the Earth and wiped out the dinosaurs — after that, there was a point of time that there was a particular human being that God touched — and that was the human that started the race that we are now part of.”
Watch Robertson’s comments below:
(VIDEO-AT-LINK)
Such methods might provide mathematical precision, but fail to address the identification problem.
And on the fusing of heavy elements in earlier generations of stars?...
Well i have no problem with taking the bible literally. However the problem is that people add suppositions and traditions to what is written down.
For example Adam and Eve lived hundreds of years. The bible only lists three sons, Cain, ABel and Seth. Three kids in hundreds of years? That kind of defeats the purpose of go forth and multiply. But the problem isn't that the bible is wrong...the bible NEVER says that these were the only three kids. God inspired stories to be told that can benefit us...he didn't give a detailed history of everything. So Adam and Eve must have had hundreds of kids and the story of Cain slaying Abel could have taken after hundreds had been born and born their own kids. So by the time of Cain's wandering there could have been thousands of people concentrated in the vicinity of where Adam and Eve were originally.
So in the case of a young earth God never SAYS the earth is six thousand years old...BUT the history of the people HE chose to work with goes back about 6000 years biblically. What went before was buried under the waters described in Genesis 1.
I'm sorry, but this doesn't follow any Biblical exegesis I've ever heard.
You're assuming there are two creation accounts, which there arent't.
Adam was created on the sixth day as noted in Genesis 1, then God rested.
So you would say that Adam was a newborn babe when God created him, right?
Or perhaps you would say God didn’t actually create Adam? That the story God told us in Genesis isn’t really true?
This “consistent and ubiquitous evidence of great age” you speak of makes an unwarranted assumption about what the earth looked like when God created it - namely, that it looked “new”. What does a “new” earth look like?
But that is MAN’S assumption. If God’s account of creation is true, that assumption doesn’t fit the facts and can therefore be discarded.
If God created an oak tree, would it be a sprout just about to emerge from an acorn? Disbelievers say yes. Anything else (they say) would be a deception because it LOOKS OLDER than it really is. If God creates a large, shady oak tree, I call Him the Creator, while disbelievers call Him a con artist and a liar.
They tie God’s hands and say He not allowed to create anything unless He makes it look as old or as new as they think it should. But God doesn’t submit to man. It is man who ought to submit to God.
You say the “the story of Genesis is meant to teach morality,” but do you even believe it? What sort of morality can we learn from One who lies to us about the creation and makes up stories from the very start?
You say that the Bible “is not a scientific document, and should not be used like one.” That’s a cop-out for those who don’t believe the Bible. What will you say next? Will you deny the record of Jesus’ death and resurrection because “the Bible is not a history book and should not be used like one”? I hope not!
No one here is looking to the Bible for scientific instruction. We are looking to it to find out how the heavens and the earth came into existence. And that’s what we find, in as much detail as God chooses to give us.
Unless He’s a liar, that is.
If I accept your insistence on the sixth day scenario, from what vantage point would that counting be made?
2) If God is not capable of doing the events noted in Genesis 1, then He is not capable of doing anything else in the Bible. This would also require the nullification of Cross. 3) The last part is the real goal of people who deny God the ability to create ex nihilo.
Indeed, God can take however long He desires to create the universe and all that is in it. The evidence is that God created the universe several billion years ago with the big bang, and that the physical laws He set into motion at that time then caused stars and planets to form, and later, life to evolve on at least one planet. I take that evidence at face value, since I do not believe that God is a liar who faked all that evidence--for what reason, to test our faith?
If you keep in mind that 6,000 or so years ago, when God revealed Himself to Adam and Eve, people were very primitive and the scientific method was rudimentary, at best. Adam and Eve would not have understood the big bang, the process of gravitationally driven coalescence of cosmic dust into stars and planets, etc. So God gave them the Cliff notes version and left the details for us to discover as our civilization developed. All I can say is that life is certainly a lot more interesting with new things waiting to be discovered. I thank God that He did not tell us everything about the universe up front, and left it for us to discover!
If we look at the Biblical account in Genesis 1 we see that God created universe in six 24 hour days. The Hebrew word yom, when combined with an ordinal number, always means day in the Old Testament.
If you look at the scientific models of the big bang theory you will find a lot of assumption have been built into these models.
Moreover, there isn't an agreed upon consensus of how everything started, other than God wasn't involved.
Just Google theories of life on earth and you'll get a whole bunch of theories.
The Bible however, gives us a clear account of how God created everything.
It's man's fault. I call it one verse theology. Someone will read something in the Bible and think they see something that isn't there. For ex: the catholic church with their claims about Peter being the first pope. The scriptures don't support it.
it doesn't mean thousands or millions of years as some would hope it would.
it doesn’t mean thousands or millions of years as some would hope it would.
You and I have been around this Rock before.
You can play your game about Christ referring to himself in the 3rd person and still be proven WRONG.
What is the meaning then, as Christ continues:
“I will give your the keys to the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”
Adam was created on the sixth day as noted in Genesis 1, then God rested.
You’re assuming there are two creation accounts, which there arent’t.>>>
How do you know there aren`t
One note regarding the Big Bang Theory. It still doesn’t present a scientific view of Creation. Instead, it merely posits another form of Transition, then ignores its predecessors.
As you said, the Bible is a moral code, not a scientific document. I don’t consider a moral code to be proof.
I don’t believe that we scar our thinking by accepting academics instead of sanctifying our education through faith in His Provision.
Other, non-Christians, sanctify their education through faith in what they believe to be His Provision, don’t they?
“There is no proof that God violates the physical laws He created;”
I wasn’t saying that He did but for the record Jesus seems to have done.
I was saying that God does not exist within his physical law but above and around it. What is the Nature of God? Time is His toy. He conceived it and put it into operation. We can no more know the nature of Time than can know the nature of God. I would say that God considers Creation to be as old as He says it is. If He doesn’t say so anywhere then He doesn’t. I haven’t necessarily gleaned a precise age of the world from the Bible and I really don’t care how old it is any more than I care whether or not Evolution is a true force but when The Word of God is attacked to me (NOT REFERRING TO YOU) by haters of God or religion via the vector of it’s seeming outrageous I reply with an absolute Faith in the Power of God. “Believe in Me even unto death and I will give you eternal life”. Now really, it doesn’t get much more ‘outrageous’ than THAT!
The only question the “dinosaurs” raise in my mind is WHY? God does have a reason for their existence.
The word translated “generations” also figuratively refers to the “history” of Adam. In the context of Gen 2:4 and Gen 5:2 describing Creation, we are safe to understand His Word as He presents it in a literal sense. Also reading the rest of Gen 2 in context manifests a communication of Creation, rather than a series of transformations.
We aren’t sanctified by our actions. Instead He sanctifies us.
That sanctification process is associated with a person remaining in fellowship with God through faith in Christ.
The difference between academics and education is that education focuses on changing the way a person thinks, while academics simply present information and perhaps intelligence.
Scripture promotes education because our entire walk in Christ is based upon our thinking and exercising that thinking in our life.
Our souls were always scarred from our living as unbelievers prior to salvation. Once saved, in the Church Age, God the Holy Spirit seals and indwells us, sanctifying our soul by means of our newly formed human spirit in a spiritual walk with Him.
If we turn away from Him, in our thinking, we aren’t unsaved, we don’t lose our human spirit, rather, we fall back into our prior carnal or worldly selves. We allow our old sin nature to prevail over the new man.
In a sense, our soul, our mind and recall are all scarred from our old sin nature and past experience and past thinking. When we turn back to Him, and confess our sins to Him, He is faithful and just to forgive our sins, and if we continue to then walk with Him, intaking His Word, He then uses that Word to sanctify our thinking in our soul.
It’s His work in us which produces the doctrine (thinking, also translated as a noun of faith) in us. His work in us is our faith.
Why would anyone want to change their thinking, instead of just learning more, perhaps increasing their intelligence, and then coming to a conclusion?
I believe God to be quite capable of dealing with each of us on a personal level. So perhaps what you consider to be turning away from Him, is different for both God and other individuals, and He doesn’t see it as turning away, but merely taking a different path.
As you say, it’s His work in us which produces the doctrine (thinking, also translated as a noun of faith) in us. His work in us is our faith which is manifested in each of us, individually.
Gen 1:26-31
Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” 27God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. 28God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” 29Then God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree which has fruit yielding seed; it shall be food for you; 30and to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the sky and to every thing that moves on the earth which has life, I have given every green plant for food”; and it was so. 31God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.
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