Oh I see, do you think that everything that there ever was was created during that time?
Certainly. Hebrews says that He is still resting with regard to the act of creation. According to Hebrews, we are to strive to enter into His rest.
For he spake in a certain place of the seventh [day] on this wise, And God did rest the seventh day from all his works.
Heb 4:5 And in this [place] again, If they shall enter into my rest.
Heb 4:6 Seeing therefore it remaineth that some must enter therein, and they to whom it was first preached entered not in because of unbelief:
The passage is clear enough. He rested, and we are to enter His rest. It doesn't say, "He rested, and then immediately began working again, and we try to enter into His work." We don't try to enter into His work. We try to enter into His REST.
I'm not contradicting myself. The rest God took was from His work with the earth.
So what has God been creating since then? I'm not sure what you have in mind, but Hebrews doesn't support you.
But that's beside the point. You're still sidestepping the issue. Here's the issue. You admit that God began a particular work in Genesis - according to you it was the work of creating the earth. Did He accomplish that work? Yes, we both agree on that, as you said:
The work that involved creating the earth was accomplished.
So with respect to that work (the immediate goal He had set out to accomplish in Genesis 1), He completed it and then
rested from that work. (Whether or not He began a new work isn't really disputed here - I myself pointed out Christ's statement that the Father's been working till this very day).
With respect to that work (creating the earth), He rested on the seventh day, and is still resting. Here again, your paradigm leads to the implication that He is resting 365 days a year
from that work. There's no way around this. My paradigm is the only one capable of implying that God rests only one day out of His seven-day week (in regard to that particular work undertaken in Genesis 1).
According to Hebrews 'we enter into His (eternal) rest'). Why would I want to enter into a rest that is only one 24-hour period a week? Are we to work six days a week in heaven?
Your paradigm, therefore, is exegetically weaker than mine. A responsible theologian will always gravitate toward the exegetically stronger position.
I don't believe we are to rest 365 days out of the year. I've never even heard of such a thing until I began this dialogue with you.
Duh. I realize that. But you're saying that God set an example for us to follow. Yet your rendering of Genesis as 24-hour periods leads to Him resting 365 days any way you slice it. This can't be what Genesis had in mind because following His example, in that case, would entail resting 365 days a year.
Nope. Genesis holds the position that it talks about. It says seven days, so it meant seven days. You're over complicating it.
Where did I say it was more than seven days? I said:
(1) Genesis 1 defines a day as darkness followed by light, not as 24 hour periods. Care to prove me wrong on that point? Show me the word 24 in Genesis 1, please. (Maybe you're an expert in Hebrew).
(2) Genesis 1 speaks of seven such periods. Care to prove me wrong on that point?
If you can't prove me wrong on point 1 and point 2, then you have no business saying I'm overcomplicating things.
That would be fine. But again, because the bible doesn't tell us what He was doing before then all you've come up with are theories. Not to say they are wrong, but they can't be proven.
This isn't a sound statement. Can you show me the word Trinity in the Bible? No? But you do believe in the Trinity, don't you? Or is it "merely an unproven theory" such as you characterized my position?
I maintain, that with the same logical rigidity which necessitates a Trinity based on the biblical data, we can likewise ascertain, logically, what God was doing before creation. Until you know my conclusions and the full rationale for them, your attempt to prejudge them is just blowing hot air.
There may not have been a "sun" but there was light. And that light couldn't have been the light coming from God as that light would not need to be created.
You're assuming that the statement, "Let there be light" implies "created out of nothing." Thats kind of a silly assumption isnt it? Suppose I walk into a dark room. As I flip the light switch, I say, Let there be light in this room. Or suppose I walk in with a flashlight in my pocket, already turned on, but not yet illuminating the room. As I remove it from my pocket I say, Let there be light.
(By the way, I don't accept the doctrine of creation out of nothing, although that's a different topic). Paul's statement suggest that it was HIS light that shined in Genesis 1:
For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to [give] the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the [radiant] face of Jesus Christ (2 Cor 4)
Note that Paul made this statement right after discussing the Light in Moses' face, which was clearly physical. Did I neglect to mention that this same Light blinded Paul for 3 days? It seared his eyeballs (physical scales formed on his eyes as a result).
The first thing God did was say "Let there be light" afterwhich He separated the light from the darkness and what do you know? The evening and the morning were the first day You know it's funny, when men can't understand something about God they go about trying to make it so that their finite minds can comprehend the infinite. I don't see how this is so hard to deal with considering that God spoke into nothing and something heard Him and brought forth what it was He desired.
Well isnt that the pot calling the kettle black. Now youre speaking of daylight on earth without a sun. (Funny thats what I said too). And yet you have the gall to suggest that my view is more complicated than yours? Anyway, the biblical evidence is preponderantly in favor of my position because I am postulating a light-source (radiance from a source). There is plenty of evidence of that in Scripture (viz. any passage that speaks of sunlight, moonlight, or man-made illuminations). His face was shining brighter than the sun (Rev 1:16). This is radiance from a source. Moses said, May the Lord make his face to shine upon you, may He turn His face toward you and give you peace. At night the pillar of Cloud transformed itself into a pillar of Fire. Why? Because Fire generates light (clouds do not). Again, this is light from a source.
You are postulating radiance out of nothing which has no clear support in Scripture (i.e. no clear parallel passages). The preponderance of biblical evidence suggests that if God WANTED to create a light, He would do so by creating a light-source. For instance, when He set out to create a natural daylight (on Day Four), He put the sun in place as the source of that light.
The sort of light you have in mind isnt a naturalistic phenomenon. It doesnt occur mechanistically in nature and is therefore just as supernatural in origin as my own hypothesis. A supernatural light does nothing to exegetially favor 24-hour periods. Since the light was a purely supernatural phenomenon unrelated to the sun, there's no reason to assume 24-hour periods.
What tips the scale in my favor is the overwhelming scientific evidence for a multi-billion year old earth. Therefore God didnt create the world in seven 24-hour periods. In case you havent seen any of this evidence, Ill share some of it now.
The fossil record is huge, extending many thousands of feet underground. Entire mountains are buried beneath us with fossil remnants at every level. Its so vast that only two competing theories exist as to what formed all this material.
(1) Natural processes such as sedimentation laid down these bones over millions of years.
(2) Noahs flood was global and thus laid down all this bone material virtually overnight. Dinosaurs perished in the flood.
(I believe in Noahs flood, but take it as localized to Mesopotamia).
On the upper levels of the fossil record we find the bones of men but no dinosaur bones. On the lower levels we find the bones of dinosaurs but no men. No one has ever found one case of human bones alongside dinosaur bones. This confirms that the dinosaurs came first and, over millions of years, passed away. Hence their bones were buried first, far below those of men who arrived much later. In other words God created the species across long ages of time instead of over seven 24-hour periods.
Whereas if a global flood wiped out men and dinosaurs in same year, the fossil record would have intermixtures of dinosaur bones and human bones (wed find dinosaur bones on all levels, and human bones on all levels). And this problem isnt confined to just humans. In the fossil record there are many, many examples where a species found on a lower level is never found intermixed with species found on higher levels. And what about the very bottom level? Werent men and animals dying even before Noahs flood? Yes. So why dont we find ALL the modern species at the bottom level? Because the modern species didnt exist in the early stages of the earth hence they only exist on the top levels.
Also a global Flood doesnt explain WHY the dinosaurs (and other species) became extinct. Noah was supposed to preserve existing species by taking two of each kind of animal onto the ark for the sake of repopulating the land with these species after the flood. Did Gods plan of repopulating the dinosaurs fail? A more reasonable conclusion is that the earth is old, and therefore these dinosaurs were extinct long before Adam. (Some have tried to claim that dinosaurs were too large to take on the ark, but thats false as there are both large dinosaurs and small ones, and even the large ones were small in youth).
Also a global Flood doesnt explain the extinction of all the sea creatures (many of these species can easily survive floodwaters). Here again, the only sensible explanation is that these creatures died out for miscellaneous reasons over millions of years.
