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Results from: Answered Bible Questions, Answers, Unanswered Bible Questions, Notes Ordered by Verse | ||||||
Results | Verse | Author | ID# | |||
1 | How old is the earth scripturally? | Gen 1:1 | Phillip | 4312 | ||
There is an important difficulty regarding the Gospel as to the assumption of an Earth of millions or billions of years old. The Bible is clear that death did not enter into the world until after sin. Rom 5:12 Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned -- In the case of an old Earth, there could have been no death for m's or b's of years while the Earth was being formed. That would mean that the theory of evolution and the Bible cannot both be true as evolution contends that there has been death for m's and b's of years. That would also mean that God did not create Heaven and Earth in 6 days as He said He did. Ex 31:17 "It is a sign between Me and the sons of Israel forever; for in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, but on the seventh day He ceased from labor, and was refreshed." I am not prepared to call God a liar. Heb 6:18...in which it is impossible for God to lie, The only possibility for a different assumption would be that Adam lived in the Garden of Eden for m's or b's of years before the fall. My question to that is why would God take m's and b's of years for the Earth to evolve and only one day to create all of the solar system or all of the fish or animals? Since the Bible says that Adam brought sin and death into the world after the seventh day of creation, there could not have been death before that. Jesus died for the sins of the world from Adam on and not before. If you change the account of Genesis to fit man's account of creation, you will also have to change the Gospel. May His Name be Blessed Forevermore, Phillip |
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2 | How old is the earth scripturally? | Gen 1:1 | Daninjapan | 4392 | ||
Thank you Phillip. May the Lord bless you! I’ll try to respond to a few of the issues you raised, but I still recommend Dr. Hugh Ross’ Reasons To Believe Ministries for a fuller coverage of old earth creationism. First, your introducing evolution into the discussion is off track. I do not believe in evolution. Old earth creationists believe in fiat creation by the one and only all-powerful Creator God, the same as young earth creationists. There is no question about God’s power - of course He could create the earth in six literal days if He chose to - or even in six seconds! The question is, “What did the sovereign Creator God actually choose to do?” Old earth creationists believe that the bulk of the evidence reveals that God chose to take considerable time, even millions of years, in His creative activity. Sure he could have done it a lot faster - but He seems to have chosen to do it slowly. “Why did He do it that way?” is a far more difficult question - which I won’t even attempt to go into here. That said, I agree that Romans 5:12 is relevant to the discussion. This verse, “… one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin …” (NAS) tells us that death came through Adam’s sin. But, what kind of death? The context shows that Paul is explaining justification by faith in this passage - and thus eternal life. Paul is doing a contrast and comparison between spiritual death and spiritual life. The primary meaning of “death” here is spiritual death. The verse may also refer to physical death of humans, but there is little reason to extend the meaning to encompass animal and plant death. In fact, in most verses that speak of the gospel, the word “life” refers primarily to spiritual life and the word death refers primarily to spiritual death. Also, in Genesis 2:17 God tells Adam, “from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you shall surely die.” If God was talking about physical death here then His Word did not come true - Adam did not physically die “in the day that he ate” - Adam lived hundreds of years after he ate the forbidden fruit. But Adam and Even did die spiritually at the very moment that they ate - their harmonious relationship to God was severed. Adam’s physical death was a secondary result that God had not directly said anything at all about. Exodus 31:17, as you pointed out, is also on target for this discussion. The verse states, “…in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, but on the seventh day He ceased from labor, and was refreshed.” At first glance this seems to be a proof text for a literal six day creation. But we must take into account comparison with all other relevant passages. First, before we say that the six days in Exodus 31:17 are absolutely literal, let’s ask whether the seventh day in the same verse is literal. Did God, whose existence is outside of time, literally rest for one 24 hour day? It seems unlikely. Also, while Genesis tells us God rested on the seventh day, Hebrews 4 tells us that some will yet enter the Sabbath rest of God - the implication is that the seventh day rest of God is still continuing. In Genesis 1 and 2, the sixth day is also remarkable. Genesis 1:27 tells us that male and female - Adam and Eve - are created on the sixth day. Genesis 2 has Adam name the animals on the same sixth day. While God can work at any speed He chooses, Adam is human. Since this is before the fall, Adam may have been more intelligent and energetic than humans are today, but he still basically human. Could he really meet all the animals and birds, name them, and discover that they could not fully meet his emotional needs for fellowship, and then finally find that Eve met those needs after she was created - all in one 24 hour day? Unless you greatly restrict the meaning of “all”, Adam would have had to name dozens of animals a second, non-stop for 24 hours. Remembering that Adam, however, intelligent, must remain fully human, it seems seriously improbable. Finally, in Genesis 1 the days are numbered using an interesting formula, “And there was evening and there was morning, one day” - etc. From my earliest Bible reading days this phraseology bothered me. In various cultures, days have been counted midnight to midnight, sunrise to sunset, sunrise to sunrise, and evening to evening. But I have never ever heard of anyone counting days from sunset to sunrise - that would be counting nights, not days! But if the text is somewhat poetic and is intended to be read as detailing six long periods of God’s creative activity, then the phraseology suddenly makes sense. The sense of the text would then be: “There was a twilight when God’s creative activity was suspended and then a new dawn when God began His creative activity again, creative era #1” - etc. May the Lord bless you! |
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3 | How old is the earth scripturally? | Gen 1:1 | Phillip | 4460 | ||
My New Friend, Daninjapan, I appreciate your spirit of reasoning from the scriptures and I hope through this discussion that we both discover God's gracious truth about His creation through His Word. You have succeeded in relating your thoughts very well and I hope that I may do the same. May God's Holy Spirit lead us into all truth. May I begin by addressing the term evolution as I believe it pertains to our discussion. I would venture to say that those who follow an "old earth creation" as you describe were nonexistent before the evolutionary theories began to emerge in past centuries. Evolutionary thought has had a devastating affect upon believers up to the present day. You may not believe in evolution in it's full implications but the old earth creation view is a stepchild of it's theory of large units of time needed for change and development. You use the terminology "the bulk of the evidence" for which am I wrong to believe is scientific evidence (which changes continually, unlike God) which has been gathered from an evolutionary biased view? I assert that the bulk of the biblical evidence denies the claim of millions of years for creation. I appreciate your support of Dr Hugh Ross and I do not doubt his or your sincerity, but I fear that you may be trying to make scripture fit your belief rather than letting your belief be molded by scripture. May I suggest that you visit the web site of Dr Carl Baugh, a former evolutionist, who discovers the scientific truth of creation without violating the integrity of the Hebrew or Greek text. This allows science to be a servant of the Word of God instead of it's master. www.creationevidence.org You have brought up several thought provoking thoughts pertaining to the Genesis account and I would like to comment on them as well as add a few of my own. Before sin, God called His creation good (1:4,10,12,18,21,25) and in Gen 1:31 it was very good. I do not believe that God would call creation good if it was marred by death of any kind (spiritual,physical, human,animal or plant). Although God gave the plant life for food, (1:30) they did not die. Plants that die from consumption were not yet created (2:5, ...plant of the field). After sin, God cursed the creation (3:14-19) which resulted in physical death (1:19). If physical death was introduced by the curse, then there was no physical death previously. As you stated, Adam and Eve died spiritually when they disobeyed God (ate the fruit) and their physical death was a secondary result. However, God was not literally speaking of spiritual death in 2:17, (for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die) but rather physical death. The word translated die is the Hebrew word taamuwt, which means "to die, to kill, to have one executed, to die (as a penalty), to be put to death, to die prematurely by the neglect of wise moral conduct (from The Online Bible Thayer's Greek Lexicon and Brown Driver, Briggs Hebrew Lexicon, Copyright (c)1993). The verse is denoting the penalty of disobedience, not in an immediate sense of that very day but as an inevitable result or consequence of sin. The spiritual death is made known by God's rejection of Adam and Eve by driving them out (3:24) from the Garden of Eden, thereby separating man from God until Christ reunites us by His atonement if we believe. Therefore they died spiritually first and physically later as the natural result of spiritual death is physical death. It may be noted that the first instance of death and sacrifice was after the fall when God clothed Adam and Eve with animal skins (3:21). I must continue this in another note. I will label it "creation continued". Phillip |
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