Daylight before the creation of the sun

[Smidlee]

Rather interesting that you omitted the other half of that verse from 1Cor 2.

Exactly as it continues to write"But God has revealed them unto us by His Spirit..."

 

[shernren]

Good point.

Since there is nothing better to offer that the square city, what is the point of discussing anything else?

Is there a suggestion than a metaphorical reading offers something more intelligible? Granted, the square city is difficult to conceive. None of pretends to have a really good handle on it, other than that its a square city.

Here we see the danger of evolution. It is the danger of a theology that has no real, intelligible hope, but just vague imaginations about what the future might be like.

Is Revelations 21 really about the architecture of Heaven? Would John have been wrong to celebrate the presence of God and the defeat of sin and Satan if, suppose when we get there, we find that all of us were wrong and it is a ... sphere?

God: Welcome to the Heavenly Sphere! Enter all you who have become my sons and daughters during your years of sojo -
Christians: Wait. It's not the Foursquare City?
God: No.
Christians: But You said it was a Foursquare City! And we sang and hoped and dreamed of a Foursquare City! And even when those blasted liberal evolutionists - wait a minute, why are they in the queue?? - told us that maybe it wasn't a Foursquare City, we laughed them down and knew in our literalism that our hopes for the future were far brighter than theirs!
God: But aren't you excited at Me? At the prospect of an eternity with Me?
Christians: So it's not actually a Foursquare City? And that's final?
God: Yes, My children. Now, come and enter into your eternal -
Christians: Screw You. We're suing for false advertising.
​

That's exactly the danger of literalism. Blowing up things like (warning: obscure example) Tobit's dog and lifetimes of ancient patriarchs and God's six workdays at the expense of what the Bible really means. Claiming they stand for the literal truth of the Bible when really they've fallen as hard as anybody else for the lie of using science to adjudicate God. And now: "None of pretends to have a really good handle on it, other than that its a square city." Hello! John gives us a whole freaking bar of handles for Heaven:

• "the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband."
• "Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God."
• "He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away." He who was seated on the throne said, "I am making everything new!""
• "To him who is thirsty I will give to drink without cost from the spring of the water of life."
• It shone with the glory of God, and its brilliance was like that of a very precious jewel, like a jasper, clear as crystal.
• I did not see a temple in the city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp.
• Nothing impure will ever enter it, nor will anyone who does what is shameful or deceitful, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb's book of life.

You might not have a good handle on Heaven as anything other than a square city. Suits you. I'm looking forward to eternity with God and the purified Church, even if it happens to be in a small dirty hovel on an island in the middle of a swamp.

 

[Xaero]

@HuntingMan:

The revelation passage clearly shows that there is NO NEED of any sun after the curtain falls on this existance and that is quite enough for any christian to know that God, the One who CREATED the sun, can certainly be a sufficient source of light to cause 'day and night' in this pinhead of a planet.

So you believe God literally floated in space and gives light upon earth for the first 3 days?
Revelations is full of symbolic stuff and clearly not meant literal. You cannot simply use Rev21 to postulate a supernatural light source for the first 3 days. I believe god can do such thing thats not the problem, but Gen1 doesn't seem to support that. Instead the text of Gen1 shows that the first presence of light on earth was at day4: "And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth"
The supernatural light on earth is just an ad hoc argument to stick to a literal evening/morning.

Youre a scientific sort....how did you 'test' your theory on the matter?
What scientific experiments did you do to show that this light was not what you say it wasnt ?

Just take scripture. Jesus refers to him as "light" or as a "door". He isn't a literal door and he isn't literally illuminating physical things so the light Jesus is referring to is not electromagnetic.
Got it now?

@JAL: The city New Jerusalem is also called the bride of the lamb which is an image for the church. I think this is a good hint what Rev21 wants to describe. Surely no glassy gold freeways

@Smidlee: That's right - but the conditions that existed early in earth history are assumed to be different than today. The experiments showed that PNA forms under electric discharge.

The ease of synthesis of the components of PNA and possibility of polymerization of AEG reinforce the possibility that PNA may have been the first genetic material.

http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/97/8/3868

 

[shernren]

Surely no glassy gold freeways

Having said that, I love the joke where this rich guy gets to carry a suitcase of his precious gold to heaven, whereupon St. Pete takes one look and says:

"Dude, we've got enough pavement blocks already."

 

[Smidlee]

@Smidlee: That's right - but the conditions that existed early in earth history are assumed to be different than today.

That huge assumption is required to make materialism as the universal truth. Science use of "the present is the key to the past" isn't very helpful in the magical RNA world or PNA. All we got to go on is the present in which requires a sun to have sunlight and DNA/RNA combination to have living cells.
I've notice you wrote "Surely no glassy gold freeways" probably because we haven't seen as such (even though glass itself is made of sand) yet have a lot of faith in this PNA/RNA world which can magically produce a living cell. To me the RNA world sounds more of a miracle then the glassy streets of gold.

 

[Assyrian]

And why does the hope have to be intelligible? Wasn't it enough for the Corinthians that Paul could write 1Cor 2:9 But, as it is written, "What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him". Do we tear out that verse now, John has seen it, it is a big yellow city.

Rather interesting that you omitted the other half of that verse from 1Cor 2.

Other half of the verse? That is the full verse 9 unless you have some other version.

The passage does continue on how God has revealed these thing to us through his Spirit.

1Cor 2:10 these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God.
11 For who knows a person's thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.
12 Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God.
13 And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual.
14 The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.

But if you notice, that sort of spiritual understanding is not something the natural man can grasp. Now we have to ask ourselves, is the concept of a cubic city coming to earth from space something the natural man can understand?



Apparently they can. So giant cubic space cities is probably not the meaning of what God has prepared for those who love him that God has revealed to us through the Spirit.

I've notice you wrote "Surely no glassy gold freeways" probably because we haven't seen as such (even though glass itself is made of sand)

While we are at it, in Star Trek the Voyage Home, transparent aluminum is the material Scotty wanted to use to construct the aquarium for the humpbacks. So if Scotty, or more accurately writer and director Leonard Nimoy, can understand the concept of a literal transparent metal, I doubt it is really the understanding of what God has prepared for those who love him that Revelation is meant to convey to us.

 

[Smidlee]

But if you notice, that sort of spiritual understanding is not something the natural man can grasp. Now we have to ask ourselves, is the concept of a cubic city coming to earth from space something the natural man can understand?



Apparently they can. So giant cubic space cities is probably not the meaning of what God has prepared for those who love him that God has revealed to us through the Spirit.

Natural man sucks big time when it comes to imagining heaven. Hollywood is a lot better producing a cube city of Hell than of Heaven as noted in your illustration.

 

[Xaero]

yet have a lot of faith in this PNA/RNA world which can magically produce a living cell. To me the RNA world sounds more of a miracle then the glassy streets of gold.

I have faith that God somehow did it and i'm confident that we can figure it out

 

[gluadys]

But if you notice, that sort of spiritual understanding is not something the natural man can grasp. Now we have to ask ourselves, is the concept of a cubic city coming to earth from space something the natural man can understand?



Apparently they can. So giant cubic space cities is probably not the meaning of what God has prepared for those who love him that God has revealed to us through the Spirit.

While we are at it, in Star Trek the Voyage Home, transparent aluminum is the material Scotty wanted to use to construct the aquarium for the humpbacks. So if Scotty, or more accurately writer and director Leonard Nimoy, can understand the concept of a literal transparent metal, I doubt it is really the understanding of what God has prepared for those who love him that Revelation is meant to convey to us.

Interesting line of thought given the versatility of human imagination. Origen, for example, imagined that our resurrected spiritual bodies would be spherical in shape--circles and spheres being more appropriate to a heavenly environment than bipedal vertebrates.

 

[JAL]

Other half of the verse? That is the full verse 9 unless you have some other version.

My point was clear enough even though the word I should have used is [the otehr half of the] "sentence". You then concede:

The passage does continue on how God has revealed these thing to us through his Spirit.

1Cor 2:10 these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit.

Which is the whole point. Your claim is that these things are unintelligible. Revelation is precisely that act of God whereby He makes something known to the human mind. Far from supporting your assertion, this other half of the "sentence" calls it into question. So stop pretending that my objection was of no substance. That's not intellectually honest - and franikly I don't debate that way.

In that passage Paul goes on to distinguish between the natural man who cannot UNDERSTAND these things of God versus the spiritual man (the one experiencing revelation) who DOES understand them. Again, this flies in the face of your claim that these things are humanly unintelligible.

But you know what, I am not sure I plan to debate this passage any further with you, because I think you were intellectually dishonest the first time you adduced it, and then you only persisted in such the second time. I've about had enough of it.

 

[Assyrian]

My point was clear enough even though the word I should have used is [the otehr half of the] "sentence".

Hardly. A quick look at the versions I have on my computer, 10 of them have the sentence ending in verse 9, including Greens Literal version, which begins the sentence in verse 7. Young's Literal Translation has a sentence which spans verse 6-11. Only the ESV starts in 9 and ends in 10.

You then concede:

Not that either. What Paul gooes on to say contradicts you too.

Which is the whole point. Your claim is that these things are unintelligible. Revelation is precisely that act of God whereby He makes something known to the human mind. Far from supporting your assertion, this other half of the "sentence" calls it into question. So stop pretending that my objection was of no substance. That's not intellectually honest - and franikly I don't debate that way.

In that passage Paul goes on to distinguish between the natural man who cannot UNDERSTAND these things of God versus the spiritual man (the one experiencing revelation) who DOES understand them. Again, this flies in the face of your claim that these things are humanly unintelligible.

No just that they are unintelligible to the natural man. If your interpretation is as concrete as a literal golden city, that is quite intellible to people whether they have the Spirit of God or not, and is probably not the kind of understanding of what God has promised that is spiritually discerned.

But you know what, I am not sure I plan to debate this passage any further with you, because I think you were intellectually dishonest the first time you adduced it, and then you only persisted in such the second time. I've about had enough of it.

Write me off as intellectually dishonest if it helps, I am just looking at what the passage says. If you are stuck in a literalist interpretation of scripture, any attempts to show you how scripture uses metaphor to take us way beyond our natural understanding, will seem crazy to you, or dishonest. But it is the way God chose to communicate with us so much of the time.

 

[JAL]

No just that they are unintelligible to the natural man. If your interpretation is as concrete as a literal golden city, that is quite intellible to people whether they have the Spirit of God or not, and is probably not the kind of understanding of what God has promised that is spiritually discerned.

An obviously moot point – which is part of why I questioned your intellectual integrity to begin with. My position doesn’t DEPEND on whether the intelligibility does, or does not, require the Spirit. Fact is, if you make a proposal (a city-less heaven) which you cannot render humanly intelligible (and is therefore gibberish), it has no place in an intelligent discussion.

Unless I’m an irresponsible exegete, I will do the following:

When faced with two possible interpretations, the one which is intelligible and is supported by the text (in this case a heavenly city) and the second is pure gibberish and even seems to originate in assumptions that CONTRADICT the text, I will always choose the first of the two, conscience permitting.

That’s the argument – and your pulling a verse out of context, wielding it inappropriately, and using it to dwell on a moot point does little to refute the argument.

 

[shernren]

An obviously moot point – which is part of why I questioned your intellectual integrity to begin with. My position doesn’t DEPEND on whether the intelligibility does, or does not, require the Spirit. Fact is, if you make a proposal (a city-less heaven) which you cannot render humanly intelligible (and is therefore gibberish), it has no place in an intelligent discussion. [/COLOR]

Unless I’m an irresponsible exegete, I will do the following:

When faced with two possible interpretations, the one which is intelligible and is supported by the text (in this case a heavenly city) and the second is pure gibberish and even seems to originate in assumptions that CONTRADICT the text, I will always choose the first of the two, conscience permitting.

That’s the argument – and your pulling a verse out of context, wielding it inappropriately, and using it to dwell on a moot point does little to refute the argument.

I think the counter-proposition on offer is "Heaven is where we are eternally with God, Borg cube of gold or not". Quite frankly, I find that quite unintelligible in the natural man simply because I have no idea why God would want to be with me for eternity - it is only with the confidence of the Holy Spirit that I am assured that He does.

Are you seriously going to argue that any conception of Heaven that does not consider it a large cube of gold is "pure gibberish"?

Good heavens.

 

[Assyrian]

An obviously moot point – which is part of why I questioned your intellectual integrity to begin with. My position doesn’t DEPEND on whether the intelligibility does, or does not, require the Spirit. Fact is, if you make a proposal (a city-less heaven) which you cannot render humanly intelligible (and is therefore gibberish), it has no place in an intelligent discussion. [/color]

Unless I’m an irresponsible exegete, I will do the following:

When faced with two possible interpretations, the one which is intelligible and is supported by the text (in this case a heavenly city) and the second is pure gibberish and even seems to originate in assumptions that CONTRADICT the text, I will always choose the first of the two, conscience permitting.

That’s the argument – and your pulling a verse out of context, wielding it inappropriately, and using it to dwell on a moot point does little to refute the argument.

But Paul say the revelation of the Spirit is unintelligible to some. So it seeming gibberish is not an argument against it being the correct. You do realise there are two simple reasons why this might seem gibberish to you. The first, and I don't think this is the case, is because as Paul described in verse 14, you still a natural man and do not understand the things of God. Like I said, I have no reason to think that. The other possibility is that you have been blinded to what the Holy Spirit is teaching you by a man made system of bible interpretation that insist on literalism. The result is the same.

Of course there is another possibility, and that is that Paul was wrong and the things God has prepared for those who love him are plain straightforward and fully intelligible to both Christian and non Christians who read about a literal cubic golden city coming down from heaven.

 

[Tinker Grey]

Good heavens.

You're supposed to say "pardon the pun."