Hi knightstemplar,
You responded to one of my posts:
As for Galileo. I researched his papers. That is how I know his point.
I'm sorry if I led you to believe that I thought that you didn't know what Galileo was thinking when he wrote the things that he wrote. I'm not. You may be correct or you may not. What I'm questioning is why you feel that you should put such faith in a man that you really know absolutely nothing about, beyond things written by and about him. We've had very strong men who proclaimed great faith in God that the end of the world was coming on such and such a date. Men who had sizable followings of others proclaiming to be blood bought children of God to follow after their explanations. Were these men right? The earth is still spinning in the universe and man is still full of every kind of wickedness and evil.
So, I'm just asking, on what basis do you believe that what Galileo wrote has any kernel of the truth of God in it? You say that Galileo made some profound statement about the Scriptures. That they tell of how to go to heaven and not how the heavens go. Really? God laid before Job quite a few questions and claims about the creation event. The whole of the first few chapters of Genesis tell us when the earth was created. The law repeats for our dull senses that the heavens and the earth and all that were in them were created in six days. The Scriptures, to me, do tell us quite a bit about 'how the heavens go'.
Yes, absolutely! The Scriptures tell us about God's great plan of salvation and account for us the working out of that plan. But, there are a lot of words in the Scriptures. Depending on the translation there are somewhere between 700 and 800 thousand words. Quite a lot of them have little to do with God's salvation. In fact, other than a few prophecies of the coming Messiah and one or two mentions of a salvation that is to come from God, there is very, very little account of God's salvation in the whole of the old covenant. Was Galileo really right in his claim?
We are a wicked and foolish people. We hear things said by others that just sound so cute and wise, but when we really sit down and ponder them, they often really aren't true. Now, that isn't to say that none of them are, of course. But, is it really true that the whole of the Scriptures give us no information about how the heavens go? God asks Job, "Where were you the foundations of the world were established?" A clear question inferring that there was a time that the foundations of the world were established. The Scriptures tell us that the sun, moon and stars were created to give light upon the earth and to tell seasons and times. That isn't telling us a bit of 'how the heavens go'?
What I find people, who support such comments made by others such as this comment by Galileo, really want to try and tell me, is that I can't trust what the Scriptures do say about 'how the heavens go'. That the Scriptures are not some 'scientific' reading, and I agree wholeheartedly that they are not. But then their next comment is, "So, we can't believe the things that the Scriptures do tell us about the creation because science trumps God". Not in my house!
Science is merely a machination of man to endeavor to explain the things that we see. In those things that we can see in the here and now, that we can repeatedly reproduce, I would agree with science. But, when science tries to then extrapolate what we see and measure and test in the here and now across the ages to a time for which there were no witnesses outside of the heavenly realm; when science tries to tell me that God couldn't have done it as He said He did because we know some things to be true in the here and now, well, I kind of stop and say to myself, "Wait a minute! God made water stand on its head. God made the sun to stand still in the sky. God made it to be pitch black in all of Egypt for three days, and yet the suburb of Goshen which sat right beside the great cities of Egypt, according to the Scriptures enjoyed those same three days with pretty normal daylight and nighttime periods. God made a donkey speak in an intelligible voice. I shouldn't believe that God can make something as simple as the light of the stars to be visible upon the earth in the moment that they were made? I shouldn't believe that this God who can make the sun stand still in the sky and at another time make it go backwards, I shouldn't believe that He created all things just as He said that He did and just when He said that He did.
For in six days God made the
heavens and the earth and all that is in them. I believe that because I believe in a being who knows all things. One who was there when the foundations of the world were established. I believe that God cannot lie. While I have entertained the ideas that are bantered about that we can't really be sure what God meant to say when He used the word 'yom' in the Genesis account. We can't really be sure when 'the beginning' that is written about in the first words of the Scriptures, was. But then I get to the law. The words that weren't transcribed or written by inspired Holy men as they were led by the Spirit. Words that the Scriptures tell us were actually written on the face of the stone tablets by the hand of God, and God wrote: For in six days God created the heavens and the earth and all that were in them. I believe that!
God bless you,
In Christ, ted