KW wrote:
Originally Posted by Papias View Post
KW, you are again acting as if your interpretation is the word of God.
Actually, I haven't interpreted anything. I posted the word of God. You guys are the ones doing the interpreting.
Simply false. We've pointed out that it need not be interpreted literally, which you insist on doing.
I'll ask again: Does the plan text of Exodus 19 prove that the Jews were flown out of Egypt on giant Eagles? I didn't see a response from you on that.
You know fully well that Genesis is written as a factual account; that there is no possible way of justifying it with the claims of evolution, and that the generations of man from Adam to Christ belie any such claims of an old earth.
Here again is your explicit interpretation, with nothing to back it up. You simply make statements with no support and expect people to swallow them?
Your claim very simply cannot be justified in the Scriptures - because Genesis itself is clearly poetic.
It's not. God's word is God's word - and it is sometimes literal, sometimes symbolic, and so on.
So far as I've seen, there are no Hebrew scholars who claim that the Genesis account is symbolic. In fact, great pains were taken to leave no doubt that the six days were, in fact, six days. The Scriptures also refer several times to the fact that man was formed from the dust of the earth; that he did not evolve from anything. You know this, which is why no T.E. can justify what he believe with the Scriptures.
Simply false. You have two problems here. First, you make a claim and then expect others to prove you wrong - when a reasonable person instead supports their own claims, instead of being lazy - and second, your other problem is that you are just plain wrong. There are many Jewish scholars today who reject a literal reading of Genesis 1 - in fact, there even have been Jewish scholars throughout history who did so.
Look, I can do some of your own work for you.
Maimonides stated that "what the Torah writes about the Account of Creation is not all to be taken literally, as believed by the masses" (Guide to the Perplexed II:29), and recent Rabbinic leaders who have discussed the topic of creation, such as Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch and Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, saw no difficulty in explaining Genesis as a theological text rather than a scientific account.
From :
Rabbinical Council of America (RCA)
As has already been pointed out, God also speaks through His creation.
Rocks speak to you? In what language?
Math. Math is the language of God - the only language that isn't invented arbitrarily by humans. God has given us the tools, through science, to read more of His word in His creation, through math.
I read the Scriptures and pray to the Lord, and I count on the Holy Spirit to reveal the truth.
You read them in English, which they weren't written in, and I wonder how you know that you are not mistaking your own presuppositions for the "Holy Spirit".
The truth cannot and does not deviate from the Scriptures. Any claim of man contrary to the Scriptures is quite simply false.
Of course, and your claim that one has to only go by a literal interpretation of Genesis 1 is just that - a man's interpretation. In fact, it's a man's interpretation shown wrong both by God's word in His creation as well as by Genesis itself.
Through dozens of different dating method voices, He makes it clear that the Earth is 4.6 billion years old.
You never read the generations of the Bible, have you, where the Scriptures list the births of the generations from Adam to Christ. This means that the Lord knew someday we would wonder about the age of our planet and He gave us the answer in advance.
Of course I have - I've read all of my Bible - more than once. That's why I know that the Gospel of Mt clearly tells us that those generations are to be taken figuratively - since Mt gives a different version than Chr.
Specifically:
My Bible, and likely yours too, clearly shows that they are symbolic, by showing later writers changing them as if they weren't actual geneologies. You can see this by comparing the same geneology in Mt and Cr:
Mt Gen# .................Gospel of Matthew has............... 1st Chron. Has:
1..............................Solomon the father of Rehoboam, ...Solomon's son was
2 .............................Rehoboam the father of Abijah,...... Rehoboam,
3 .............................Abijah ..............................................Abijah his son,
4..............................Asa ..................................................Asa his son,
5 .............................Jehoshaphat .....................................Jehoshaphat his son,
6............................. Jehoram ...........................................Jehoram his son
................................
Skipped.......................................... Ahaziah his son,
................................
Skipped .........................................Joash his son,
................................
Skipped .........................................Amaziah his son,
7......................Uzziah the father of Jotham, .................Azariah his son,
8............................ Jotham ............................................Jotham his son,
9 ............................Ahaz ...............................................Ahaz his son,
10...........................Hezekiah ........................................Hezekiah his son,
11.......................... Manasseh .......................................Manasseh his son,
12 ..........................Amon .............................................Amon his son,
13.......................... Josiah the father of Jeconiah, ….....Josiah his son.
Since we know that the Holy Spirit is behind the writing of the gospel of Matthew, it cannot be in error. If it seems there is an error, it must be with our interpretation. We also know that the Holy Spirit, being also behind 1 Cr, would know if 1 Cr was symbolic, not literal, and could thus tell us about how to interpret 1 Cr by what is written in Mt. Since they both literally list the generations, and Mt clearly skips people, the Holy Spirit seems to be clearly telling us that the geneology in 1 Cr (and by necessity then in Mt) is figurative, and not literal, and hence that the Angican Bishop Ussher and YECs are in error in using it to establish a 6,000 year age for the earth.
Genesis shows us how the Lord created a mature world. Everything from tree to bees were in their mature state from the beginning. had He wanted to take billions of years, He would not have said he did it in six days. BTW, there wouldn't be a Fourth Commandment either.
No, they weren't. First of, Gn is symbolic, as explained by scripture itself, and secondly, even taken literally he has "the land bring forth plants", etc, showing gradual change. The 4th comandment works well with a symbolic genesis too.
Evolution absolutely did not happen according to the Scriptures and the son of God who affirmed their accuracy.
Simply false. Jesus mentioning a well known story doesn't mean he takes it literally - only that he uses it to show a point. I myself have said, when something like a glass breaks, that "we can't put humpty dumpty together again" to my kids. I'm not suggesting to them that humpty dumpty was real - and they are smart enough to know that.
You've chosen to believe the lies of man over the word of your Lord, which is unfortunate. God does not lie. The great deceiver is not God, but the one who blinds men's eyes with delusions of their own enlightenment.
I think that's true of you - not me. Creationism is a human fabrication, obscuring the meaning of Genesis 1.
In Christ-
Papias