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NASB | Genesis 1:1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. |
AMPLIFIED 2015 | Genesis 1:1 In the beginning God (Elohim) created [by forming from nothing] the heavens and the earth. [Heb 11:3] |
Subject: How old is the earth scripturally? |
Bible Note: 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 |