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I don’t disagree with any of these definitions but at the same time it doesn’t explain how Exodus 20:11 should be interpreted as anything other than a literal
I believe the Bible is literal, but that does not mean we have all knowledge and all understanding. 10 times in Genesis chapter one we read: "God said". At Calvery Jesus said: "It is finished". Yet that was long before I was born and long before He began to do a "finished" work in my life.
The term “it is finished” was referring to His sacrifice. It was the last thing He said right before He died on the cross. His suffering was finished.
Previously you said that Genesis 1:1 didn’t take place on day one. You said day one began in verse 2. So then according to this line of reasoning you’ve presented here, shouldn’t Exodus 20:11 say that God created the heavens and the earth and the sea and everything in them in 7 days?God as Creator of Nature instantly implies that God created how Nature operates -- sometimes called 'the laws of nature', which we also refer to as the 'physics' of Nature.
So, what we call 'cause and effect' in the natural world is also called 'physics'.
A simple example (and good approximation in most places with macro (not atomic size but much larger) objects) of how nature operates is shown in Newton's Laws of motion:
- An object at rest remains at rest, and an object in motion remains in motion at constant speed and in a straight line unless acted on by an unbalanced force.
- The acceleration of an object depends on the mass of the object and the amount of force applied.
- Whenever one object exerts a force on another object, the second object exerts an equal and opposite on the first.
Newton’s Laws of Motion | Glenn Research Center | NASA
www1.grc.nasa.gov
These aren't accidental, nor do they require God to constantly make effort for Nature to continue to operate.... He designed Nature -- physics -- to begin with and it works.... (He is competent, able...)
And, just like a carpenter that builds a house is not trapped inside it -- the carpenter can make a new door with his tools at any moment he choses -- so also of course the Creator of this physics would not be bound by the physics of this Universe, we can expect.
(This for instance immediately implies interesting things, such as that formulation mere time duration of Creation is irrelevant to God and to scripture, because God isn't constricted by time. Time isn't even slightly affecting God or His actions. A 'day' for Him can be a thousand years, a billion years....
2 Peter 3:8 - The Day of the Lord
Beloved, do not let this one thing escape your notice: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.
biblehub.com
Any length of time is like any other length of time for Him....
So, when we see visually extensive evidence that seems to show this Universe is about 14 billion years old....it fits the Bible perfectly, because any length of time is the same as any other length of time for the Lord.
God can alter time whenever He chooses.
Joshua 10:13 - The Day the Sun Stood Still
So the sun stood still and the moon stopped until the nation took vengeance upon its enemies. Is this not written in the Book of Jashar? So the sun stopped in the middle of the sky and delayed going down about a full day.
biblehub.com
14 Is anything too difficult or too wonderful for the Lord? At the appointed time, when the season [for her delivery] comes, I will return to you and Sarah will have a son.” (at about age 90)
17 ‘Ah Lord God! Behold, You have made the heavens and the earth by Your great power and by Your outstretched arm! There is nothing too difficult or too wonderful for You
Bible Gateway passage: Genesis 18:14, Jeremiah 32:17, Jeremiah 32:27, Luke 18:27 - Amplified Bible
Is anything too difficult or too wonderful for the LORD? At the appointed time, when the season [for her delivery] comes, I will return to you and Sarah will have a son.”
www.biblegateway.com
This is part of how one can realize our own theories including Old Earth Creationism versions, all the very many competing Young Earth Creationism versions -- they are all beside the point. (God chose not to tell us how old the stars are in mere human terms, for good reasons!)
God isn't controlled by what we call 'time'.
For now it is science fiction. Jody Foster did a movie: "contact" where she traveled to other planets. Atheists like Sagan like to talk about aliens from other planets.
Jesus' death and resurrection are central to the doctrine of salvation. The phrase "It is finished" serves as a powerful affirmation of the completeness and sufficiency of His sacrificial work. It signifies the victory over sin and death and the reconciliation between God and humanity through Jesus' ultimate act of love and sacrifice.
There's what might be a subtle problem here, but it's a serious problem we need to address. And it's not even that I never actually wrote that specific wording attributed here to me -- because even though I didn't say that, still the first sentence is at least correct in that I think Genesis 1:2 happened after Genesis 1:1 (so it's correct in that part).
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Yeah and it's because we know when it was sent (observable) ... because we sent it there according to earth time.Based on this guesswork, scientists have sent a rover to land on Mars. It is running around on its surface right now
Why do you say that we don’t know how much time took place between verse 1 and verse 2 if you believe that verse 1 and verse 2 took place on the same day? Right here it’s crystal clear that you’re promoting the concept that verse 1 did not take place on the first day otherwise there’s no point in what you wrote above.
No the word “you” is used to let the audience know who is being addressed in the statement. How else would I ask you a question without using the word “you”?There's what might be a subtle problem here, but it's a serious problem we need to address. And it's not even that I never actually wrote that specific wording attributed here to me -- because even though I didn't say that, still the first sentence is at least correct in that I think Genesis 1:2 happened after Genesis 1:1 (so it's correct in that part).
So, what's the problem? The wording.
Normally for all human beings, when trying to pick a fight with someone, people use "you"
sentences and make accusatory (often somewhat disparaging) statements.
"You said ______" (accusatory tone)
Examples:
"You are calling God a liar"
"You are saying we should ignore a verse"
"You are not wanting to include all the sentences."
(try: "we should listen again to see if we got all the sentences" and then literally listen to them yourself also together with the other person in a mutual act of love
It's the "you" that's the problem. It's accusatory, and the message between the lines, implied, is often like: you are wrong/bad/even evil, and I'm right/good/righteous/etc.
While in reality, for human beings, Christ said we are none of us that perfect:
“Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered. “No one is good—except God alone." -- Luke 18
And so the accused person hit with the "You..." sentence reasonably gets angry, etc, and the unChristian arguing begins...
That's the main way all people offend others and cause anger and pick fights.
We are told "Before the creation of the world, he chose us through Christ to be holy and perfect in his presence." Ephesians 1:4. Some translations say before the foundation of the world. It seems to me when there is a new Heaven and a new earth, then we can say: " It is finished". Of course God declares the end from the beginning and he watches over His word to perform what He says He will do.
1 Peter 1:1 says we are chosen according to His foreknowledge. So I believe that God chose those whom He had foreseen before the foundation of the world who would repent, believe, and abide in Christ. I don’t believe in predestination, at least not in the way that John Calvin did. The Greek word translated to predestined also means to choose beforehand or to preordain. I believe He did this according to what He foresaw us do, based on whether or not we acted in cooperation with His will.
The main problem I have with Christians believing in TOE and Old Earth is that it’s not biblical. It derives from people trying to give scientific explanations for miracles that were recorded in the Bible and you just can’t do that. Miracles are by definition unexplainable by science or natural occurrence. What’s the point of trying to explain away what the word of God has made perfectly clear about creation when you still have a talking donkey, a man born from a virgin, two men dying and coming back to life 3 days later, a talking burning bush, a pillar of fire leading people around, bread falling from the sky, paralyzed people completely healed by nothing more than words, a blind man cured by rubbing spit and dirt in his eyes, the parting of the Red Sea, I mean the list goes on & on. So what’s the point of Christians trying to explain the creation process scientifically as if it was entirely plausible for it to happen naturally if we still have all these other miracles that cannot be explained scientifically? Who cares what atheists and scientists think? Let them think what they want but believe in the word of God. If God says He made the universe and everything in it in 6 days why shouldn’t I believe that, because scientists say that’s impossible? Well what happens when scientists say that a man can’t be born from a virgin? Or a donkey can’t talk? Or a man can’t come back to life after being dead for 3 days? Are we going to start diminishing those miracles as well to events that could possibly happen by natural occurrence? If so then what effect does that have on how we are honoring the glory of God when we can’t even believe what He has revealed to us thru His word?Let me say a couple of things that are very obvious, and then something subtle but profound...
First the obvious to us:
That idea of Godless evolution (working as if God isn't around) is the atheist view, as you know!
The Christian view (from John 1) is that God made all of Nature.... (if anyone reading this doesn't agree with that "all" part, please do tell us immediately, but I think many of you agree already)
And that fact (that God made 100% of all of Nature in all ways) instantly means that all natural events -- including so-called 'chance' (!!) -- is only His design working as He made it to do.
Yes? Do you agree?
To think any natural event isn't from God is atheism in a way...
After all, Who made Nature, again?....
Now, we also know that God additionally intervenes.
So, we have both:
A) God made Nature and Nature is only carrying out His will in every last natural event of every kind always....
and
B) God also intervenes at times as He chooses.
The clever deception that some (few) atheists have used to disturb very many Christians is to convince many Christians that if we see in nature some new kind of natural event....like when we first observed neutron stars or first saw fruit fly evolution....that such new information about nature operating is supposed to somehow imply God cannot exist!
It's a very clever trick of the 'enemy' I think. The deceiver, the 'father of lies.'
There is no difference between any particular natural event and God's creation of nature, because all natural events are His design doing as He chose it to do.
So, of course, many large churches like the Catholic Church and main branch of Lutheran, etc. and other very large churches that have had time to understand these things freely allow their members to believe in either Old and Young Earth creationism, either one.
For me, I feel we don't know how old the Earth is from the Bible unless we devise and calculate a date/age with certain key extra ideas I've noticed (often just assumptions) which are brought to the text (but not in the text). People can argue on those, etc. (more to say about that at the end)
Actually He did provide the age of the earth thru the genealogies records from Adam to Christ. Read Genesis 5, notice that for every single person God recorded how many years each person lived before they had their first child. Then He continued recording the years from that child until the next child and so on and so on all the way to Shem.Then read Genesis 11 to find out how many years took place between Shem and Abram (Abraham). Then read Matthew 1 to get the number of years from Abraham to Jesus. Then add 2023 years and you have the age of the earth given to us by the word of God.
Meaning...if someone then adds some certain assumptions then they could do their own project of devising/calculating (with certain assumptions) an age for the Earth (or really at most, to be more precise, it's only then a timeline starting after the moment after Adam is ejected from the timeless Garden of Eden, and is now outside the Garden... So, you could call it a 'timeline of mortal man after the Garden' and that would be a bit more accurate....but still problematic even then... because it's....our own man made thing...).
