Did Joshua Stop the Sun?

[NobleMouse]

NobleMouse: " I am betting you and I have different 'rules' by which we qualify a piece of evidence as fact. God is who wrote the 10 commandments on the stone tablets (not Moses) - this was directly from God to stone, given to Moses."

You are putting the Ten Commandments on a plane even higher than the Bible by saying that God wrote the Ten Commandments, and that alone, directly. That isn't what I was taught. I don't know anyone who would find that credible.

Here is one reason to think otherwise. The Ten Commandments are given in Exodus 20 and again in Deuteronomy 5. The wording is somewhat different in Deuteronomy compared to Exodus. In the NIV translation, the Exodus TC are 321 words while the Deuteronomy TC are 371 words. (Including verse numbers.)

Since you claim that the words of the Ten Commandments are super-absolute, being given directly by God, why are there differences in wording when they are given in Deuteronomy, as opposed to Exodus? You need to rethink this.

NobleMouse: " I am betting you and I have different 'rules' by which we qualify a piece of evidence as fact. God is who wrote the 10 commandments on the stone tablets (not Moses) - this was directly from God to stone, given to Moses."

You are putting the Ten Commandments on a plane even higher than the Bible by saying that God wrote the Ten Commandments, and that alone, directly. That isn't what I was taught. I don't know anyone who would find that credible.

Here is one reason to think otherwise. The Ten Commandments are given in Exodus 20 and again in Deuteronomy 5. The wording is somewhat different in Deuteronomy compared to Exodus. In the NIV translation, the Exodus TC are 321 words while the Deuteronomy TC are 371 words. (Including verse numbers.)

I see the 10 commandments as part of scripture, on equal par with the rest of scripture, but do understand that the 10 commandments were unique in that they were written by the finger of God (as opposed to being divinely inspired to Moses by the Holy Spirit for Moses to write) - Exodus 31:18. If you were taught something different, you were not taught from what is written in scripture and I cannot help that, but this is what is written. I do not consider word counting in different books to refute that the 10 commandments being written by God. You are of course free to imagine otherwise.

Since you claim that the words of the Ten Commandments are super-absolute, being given directly by God, why are there differences in wording when they are given in Deuteronomy, as opposed to Exodus? You need to rethink this.

You added "super absolute" - I never used those words. Not trying to be nit-picky, but I think it's important to be clear/concise since a subtle change or misquote can completely change the meaning of something or cause one to infer something incorrectly. God wrote the 10 commandments. That is what is written. I gave the scripture reference above.

The fact that the wording in Deuteronomy is not 100% exact as in Exodus does not mean God did not write the 10 commandments. For all we know, the copy in Deuteronomy may have been based off the 2nd set of tablets after Moses broke the 1st set... or Deuteronomy may have been paraphrased and written to a different audience, or may have been intended to be for the same audience, but not being repeated verbatim since knowledge of them as written in Exodus would have already been known, etc... No speculation precludes that the 10 commandments were written by God, for it is written. Jesus used the same reasoning when being tempted by Satan, He said, "It is written..."... so being written is sufficient to be true. Further, Genesis, Exodus, aaaand Deuteronomy indicate working for 6 days and resting on the 7th.

A search for some kind of loophole like this suggests a desperation, trying to look for a reason not to believe, but the foundation of scripture is based upon the early books in the OT. Also, revelation is based upon our understanding of creation. If the new heaven and new earth are going to be this present one restored and made new, then that suggests the present creation was once very different, and in fact it is described as being very different in Genesis... before sin, when God said it was very good. But if Genesis is all just a run-on allegory then there is no historical basis in reality of what heaven will be like. Jesus seemed to understand we were made male and female from the beginning (as it is written), Paul seemed to understand that sin originated from one man (as it is written). Odd then for someone today so suggest otherwise without revealing they simply refuse to believe the Bible. It's a hard sell to convince me that one has a reverence for God, but not a reverence for His word... but I'm not the one who needs to be convinced, so I'll leave it alone. In addition to God stopping the sun in the sky, I also believe He parted the Red Sea and this too was not a natural geological phenomenon that continues to happen every day in various parts of the world; same with being a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night... yes, all of it happened. Jesus agreed with Moses, "If You Believed Moses, You Would Believe Me, for He Wrote of Me" (John 5:46). The creation account is referring to Christ, all things were made through Him (John 1:1-3). Nothing suggesting the Bible is "a Bronze Age publication that has ridiculously inaccurate information about natural phenomena" unless one also believes Jesus was perhaps ignorant of [His] creation since He wasn't on Earth during the modern scientific era to "know better".

 

[NobleMouse]

Fezzilla and NobleMouse,


Your response to my use of Psalm 90:4 is flippant and cannot be taken seriously.

The first four verses of Psalm 90 deal with the creation of the world. They could be called a recapitulation of the creation story, or perhaps a shorter version of it. I did not lift the Scripture that "a thousand years are a day" out of one context and apply it to another. Psalm 90 itself applies the "thousand years are a day" concept to the creation of the earth by God. Instead of giving a sensible response, we see the "Fourth Commandment" dragged in, although it has nothing to do with the subject at hand.

NobleMouse correctly points out that the "thousand years are a day" idea also appears in 2 Peter 3:8.

The notion that the "day" of the Six Days of Creation are not literal but refer to a longer time period is not a human idea. It is in the Bible, it is mentioned in Psalm 90:4 and that Psalm specifically connects this idea to God's creative power and the creation story.

Nowhere in the Bible is it written that Psalm 90:4 makes the creation account an exasperatingly long period of time or that it should be the 'lens' by which the creation account is interpreted - this idea, this "connection", comes from outside the Bible and is from man - not from scripture. What you'll actually find instead in the Bible are passages affirming the creation account as true and real/historical (see post #126) in reference to Jesus / Paul. Also, the 4th commandment is a direct reference to what is written in Genesis [this is obvious]. In reading commentaries regarding the commandments, I find it notable that there are references in fact pointing back to Genesis and at least 1 goes the additional step to point out the difficulty of the day-age interpretation:
Exodus 20:11 Commentaries: "For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day; therefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day and made it holy.

Because throughout the Bible you will find support in favor of creation being actual events and real people, supported by the various authors, the prophets and Jesus Himself, most Bible commentators also find this very compelling as to the inerrancy of God's word regarding creation and the historic events recorded in the Bible. I'm not saying this agrees with the scientific consensus of today, just that if you're looking to justify the scientific consensus by using scripture, you won't find it.

 

[FEZZILLA]

I'm YEC so I don't find OEC credible as I pointed out before. YEC is not a retreat from Scripture like OEC is.

 

[Dale]

I think you might want to study geology before debating this topic. There is no slowness in what causes sedimentary rock. Water forms it. The actual physical process of fossilization may itself not happen quickly, but the rare conditions that made the fossil record do. And the vast majority of fossils are found in sedimentary rock. The dinos all died in a Flood and were rapidly buried in the sediments where they became fossils.

I'll tell you what I do know about geology. As you know, the Rocky Mountains, in the American west, are much higher than the Appalachians, one of several ranges in the east. Geologists have determined that the Applachians were once higher than the Himalayas are now. One evidence is in the coal that they contain. Only enormous pressure, created by thousands of feet of rock, could have caused some of the chemical changes found in the coal in the Appalachians.

The Appalachians, once tens of thousands of feet high, gradually eroded. We are told that much of the sand now on the beach in Florida was washed down from eroding mountains farther north, in the Carolinas, for instance. This erosian of a mountain range once higher than the Himalayas is a very slow process and took hundreds of millions of years. That is one of many ways that we know that the earth is much more than a few thousand years old.