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[Administrator: This has been transferred from a discussion area under "Baptists Only." So for this thread, only registered Baptists on the Baptist Board will be allowed to participate. Thank you.]
MARK-IN-TX
To start with I understand Genesis to tell us who is the creator of the universe not neccesarily how. But for those who suggest that it tells us how and that we have an earth that is relatively young. How do you understand dinasour fossils?
P.S. I would love a response from Helen.
PASTOR LARRY
Actually Gen 1 does tell us how. It says that God said ... and it was. There is no reason to doubt that this is the way it was done. In fact, when God switched methods to create man, we are explicitly told so.
As for dinosaurs, we believe in them. Most were probably preflood, though some possibly lived after the flood. The vast majority of dinosaurs were very small. Ken Ham has a wonderful little book on this. I forget the title. I am sure Helen will have more info on this.
DOC CAS
MARK-IN-TX
I am not asking you to defend. How do you understand Dinasours. For example They were created on the first day or second or last. Why no mention of giant creatures in the Genesis text?
.
What about the dating? Bones appear to be millions of years old. How old are they.
I just want to hear from your perspective what you believe. I am not attacking what you believe I want to hear it not debate.
No line is being drawn in the sand I just want to hear what others have to say.
listening
ERNIE BRAZEE
Genesis 1:25 And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
The same creatures that were created here were the same creatures that entered into the ark (see Genesis 6 & 7)
The creatures that were called dinasours still exist today, but don't live as long or grow as big.
There are lizards in the Philippines that resemble man's recreation of what they think the dinasours looked like. If they lived as long as pre-flood cratures they would probably be as large as dinos.
KEN HAMILTON
CHRIS TEMPLE
The Bible does not tell us how old the earth is. In a defense of creationism, its important that we don't say more than the Bible says, or else we are in the same boat as the evolutionists who say more than the earth says
In any case, dinosaurs present no problem to young-earth creationism.
KATIE
TYNDALE 1946
Well I guess you put the dinosaurs with the animals that were created before Adam! I will take 6,000 to 10,000 years as the age of the young earth. Remember in creation God finished it all in 6 literal days... Dinosaurs and all... Then he rested... Brother Glen
JOHNV
I just want to hear from your perspective what you believe.
Oh, well since I don't believe in a 6000 year old earth, I guess I'm off the hook then
GRASSHOPPER
6 literal days yes, but how long is a day?
More info: http://www.reasons.org/resources/apologetics/dinocavemen.html?main
A TEENAGE CHRISTIAN
I just accept dinosaurs as a part of life. Why do all the mysteries in life need explanations? Can't we just accept some things as "unexplained" ??????
ODEMUS
Not that I am trying to be a source of strife and contention (I'm just sifting through these boards and making observations), but the old earth/young earth debate has nothing to to with the creation vs. evolution debate. A Christian can very well believe that the earth is billions of years old and the universe is trillions of years old while still maintaining that God is the creator.
HELEN
Mark, I was laughing at your first post. How do we explain dinosaur fossils? Well, dead dinosaurs, of course…
Sorry - couldn't resist.
Like all basic kinds, the dinosaurs existed, as Pastor Larry stated, before the Flood of Noah. However the animals whose fossils we see today give a great deal of evidence of being from several hundred years after the Flood, actually. I'll explain at the end if the various responses to the various posts don't end up covering this.
DocCas already knows I disagree with him about the Flood fossilizing things. If you go to the Bible study on the Flood, you will see why:
http://www.baptistboard.com/cgi-in/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=43&t=000007&p=
The exploding waters were not only scaldingly hot, but they also brought up enormous amounts of debris and pulverized rock material. These conditions just about defy any fossilization at all. Fossilization was the result of continuing activity along the geologically active areas after the Flood, when the mudslides both underwater and above were combined with the vented waters which were so highly mineralized from the earth's interior - these are the conditions which will fossilize, or mineralize, remains.
The dinos were created day six. They were part of the land dwelling, breathing critters. The large sea animals, which some also call dinosaurs (but which aren't) were created day five with the rest of the denizens of the seas.
As far as the age of the fossils, Mark Armitage at Azusa Pacific recently published an article in Creation Research Society Quarterly (CRSQ) regarding finding what appears to be collagen in some T Rex bones. Mark is a personal friend and an excellent microscopist, with a REALLY neat electron microscope in his lab! His research was cautious and presented conservatively. However when I saw him about a year ago and he showed us what he had found, he was pretty excited.
Aside from that, yes, the fossils are generally dated by the strata in which they are found. Various forms of radiometric dating give very ancient ages for these materials. Sometimes the ages don't agree with each other, but they are almost always ancient. My husband, Barry Setterfield (www.setterfield.org) has done the seminal creation work on speed of light research (which he continues to this day). The evidence via the data is becoming more and more clear that the speed of light was enormously higher in the past. This has a great deal to do with radiometric dating, because the speed of light is effectively in every radio decay rate equation! The higher the speed of light, the faster the rate of decay. Thus, the ancient ages are atomic ages, not orbital (gravitational) ages, by which we measure time.
One of the exciting things about Barry's research is that when the atomic ages are corrected via the existing redshift curve to match the Biblical ages, they both are in total agreement regarding the major catastrophes in the Bible: the Flood, Babel, and Peleg's time.
The age of the dinosaurs was basically between Babel and Peleg's time - that is when conditions were ideal for them. Where conditions were ideal, however, were precisely in those warm, steamy, geologically active areas. So that's where the dinosaur fossils come from.
To Ernie: probably the lizards we see today are NOT relatives of the old dinos. They appear to be a different kind of animal.
And no, the lizards of today would NOT ever grow to be as large as the large dinosaurs. The physical structure is quite different. Dinosaur legs, for instance, did not angle out to the side like lizard legs, but went straight down from the torso. The enormous size of some of the old dinosaurs would have required a very different physical makeup than the small lizards of today. Enormous size has definite physical requirements where muscle and circulatory systems are involved especially.
Ken, the jury is still out on the dinos in terms of warm or cold blooded, actually. There may have been some of each.
We may be looking at some very, very different kinds and tending to lump them together.
To Chris Temple: the earth is about 8,000 years old, actually. This agrees with the speed of light data as well as the more ancient Scriptures.
Johnv, You may not believe in a young earth, but that has little to do with whether or not it IS young…
Grasshopper - the days of Genesis are regular days, as marked by the earth turning on its axis. This is why 'evening…morning' are mentioned. Evening and morning are only possible by the earth's rotation. Exodus 20:11 confirms the fact that these were normal 24 hour days.
Odemus, I don't think you have thought your position through. If death did not come before Adam, and it didn't, what are you going to do with all those long ages you don't think make any difference? They make a great deal of difference.
In the long run, if God cannot communicate clearly in Genesis, which is the beginning and foundation of everything that follows, why believe anything else after that?
ODEMUS
Hi Helen. It's nice to meet you
I have thought my position out and my conclusion is that it doesn't matter how old the earth is in terms of my faith in Christ.If the word 'yom' is meant to describe literal indefinate periods of time as opposed to literal 24 hour days then I am fine with that.If God created the animal kingdom millions of years as opposed to a couple of days before He created Adam and Eve I am fine with that as well.If there was death in the animal kingdom before Adam sinned as opposed to after Adam sinned I am fine with that!
As you can see by verses such as Romans 5:12, The consequence of death as a result Adams sin is specifically applied to man:
Therefore just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, so death spread to all men, because all sinned-
We find in verse 18 of the same chapter that Christ's redemptive work on the cross was meant to reconcile man with God, not the animal kingdom:
So then as through one transgression there resulted condemnation to all men, even so through one act of riteousness there resulted justification of life to all men.
I am most assured that Christ died for me and you, not lions, tigers, bears, or even the cellular material of whatever it was that Adam and Eve ate prior to their fall from grace.
I find this whole discussion is an excersise in futility for two basic reasons:
1) It can only serve as yet another area of strife and contention between Christians who simply disagree on the matter. There just isn't anything conflicting the central principles of our faith no matter which position you take.
2) We are never going to bring secular scientists to saving faith in Christ by presenting a young earth model to them. It just is not going to happen. Even if the young earth model is true that has absolutely nothing to do with presenting the Gospel of Jesus Christ to sinners. I see that you have studied your position and are fairly clear in presenting what you believe and why. I wonder, has it ever been affective in bringing an unbeliever to Christ? I am by no means being cynical with that question, but I am curous if you feel all the effort you invest in guarenteeing that the age of the earth can be explained in terms of a literal six 24 hour day approach to interpreting the Genesis creation account has been affective in your witness to the unsaved.
Five years ago my church was absolutely (and most unecessarily) torn apart by this very issue. Half of the church felt they could not worship under the same roof with the half that differed from (or were tolerant of both sides) their belief! Take a guess at to which half moved out. I hate seeing brothers and sisters in Christ torn apart by such trivialities, and I think if you are honest with yourself you will conclude that this issue is indeed trivial, because in the final analysis sister, me and you are both one day going to embrace in heaven and laugh that this could have ever been a noteworthy disagreement.
HELEN
Odemus,
Do you think that God created the universe -- all of creation -- in bondage to decay? Was this 'very good'?
If not, then death did not only come to the humans as the result of sin, but to all of life.
Yes, Christ died for humans, but you will note that the entire creation will be made over, for it all has suffered from our sin.
I have never found it an exercise in futility to study the Bible, or to believe God knows how to say what He means and mean what He says. In fact, I have staked my life on that.
Yes, there are not only lay people but actual scientists who are brought to faith with the knowledge that they can trust the Bible start to finish. For some people that is very important.
For others it is not so important. Barry and I do the work we do for those to whom it matters. We are there for them. Barry is doing what the Lord has given him to do. I am trying my best to do likewise. What I have seen mostly is emails thanking me from those who are already my brothers and sisters in Christ, as what I present often will help strengthen their faith and help them give reasons for the hope they have. Building up and encouraging the body is very important. It is something that is really on my heart to do.
If it is of any interest in you, both Barry and I started out as evolutionists, and then went to a long-ages model and finally, due to the evidence (and it is to our shame, each of us individually, that we did not have enough faith to simply trust the Bible was being clear!) ended up in the YEC position. He ended up there through his work in physics and astronomy, and I ended up there through studies in both cellular and population genetics.
The Bible is absolutely trustworthy. That is the message both of us want to tell anyone willing to listen!
ODEMUS
I am glad you feel that way Helen but I didn't refer to your study of the Bible as an excersise in futility. I referred to this particular discussion as such. Why? Because young earth creationists have a tendency to tell those who differ or are indifferent altogether that this is a core principle of the Christian faith. It simply is not! Trust me, I have the same faith in Christ as my saviour that you undoubtedly profess, and I look to him on a daily basis to help me submit my will to him and lead me to do whatever he has planned for me.Not once has He ever called me to absolutely determine the age of the earth.I certainly wasn't trying to imply that exploring the Bible to determine the nature of our physical world was futile.After all, God's majesty is revealed in his creation
Romans 1:20 For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.
All I have to do is step outside to be reminded of that.
HELEN
I don't think you will ever find me saying that a young creation is the core to the salvation issue!
Jesus is the cornerstone and the capstone. He is the author and finisher. He is all in all.
I ALSO think His Word tells the truth in a straight and simple way!
KEN HAMILTON
My favorite Far Side cartoon shows a scientist having left his time machine, carrying a really long rectal thermometer and he is approaching the back end of a large Sauropod. The caption under the cartoon says, "An instant later, both Professor Waxman and his time machine are obliterated, leaving the cold-blooded/warm-blooded dinosaur debate still unresolved.'
Have you read a book entitled The Dinosaur Heresies by Robert T. Bakker? I spent a few years in the early 90s updating my childhood by reading the latest books and articles and watching educational television programs about dinosaurs.
ERNIE BRAZEE
It amazes me how biologists and scientists can know so much about something they have never seen
So much for the accuracy of science; I will just the trust the Bible, Genesis says God created all creatures and that is good enough for me. Genesis also says every creature was brought into the ark, so dinosaurs are alive today or somehow became an endangerd species and just died out.
The theory that they were destroyed by a large meteor ranks right up there with "Jack and the Bean Stalk" and "Cinderella"....but who knows, there are probably those who believe those were true stories too.
PASTOR LARRY
1) When 'yom' is used in a non-construct relationship, it is always 24 hours.
2) The yamim of Gen 1 are qualified by 'morning and evening' something wholly incompatible with long periods of time.
3) The creation week is the pattern for the work week (cf Ex 20:6). Unless God intended us to work for long periods of time before taking a long period of time off, then we better go with 24 hours.
Scripture is not confused about this. The days are 24 hours.
DOC CAS
What Mr. Ross seems to have overlooked is that a sidereal day is completely independent of any light source or other object. The bible is clear. There were days prior to the advent of the sun, and those days were sidereal, and a sidereal day was then and still is equal to 23 hours, 56 minutes and 4 seconds.
A solar day is 23 hours 59 minutes and 57 seconds long. This is the time it takes from one noon (sun overhead) to the next noon.
The difference in the two "days" arises from the fact that during a day the Earth also travels nearly a degree further on its yearly trek around the Sun so the earth must turn 1 degree past the sidereal day, or about 67 miles, to complete a solar day.
ODEMUS
Well there certainly are plenty of young earthians here
While we may disagree on this issue I think the most important thing of all is to realise is we share the same faith in the inerrancy of God's Word.Man is most certainly fallible but God is not.
The only word of caution I would issue to young earth types is that you are without question going to have to allow room for those of us who believe the earth is very old.
The church had to revise it's understanding of the Bible (and consequently the universe) in the 1600's when Galileo brought the Copernican model of the solar system into prominence, and my belief is that is more than an acceptable precedent to consider when approaching the vast amounts of evidence for an old earth with respect to the creation account.
GRASSHOPPER
ODEMUS
Indeed he does.
GRASSHOPPER
Very good Odemus, seems some on this board think you can't believe in long creation days and still take Genisis literal.
DOC CAS
You can't! Either a day, with an evening and morning, is roughly 24 hours long, or it is not a "day!" You can't believe in a "long day" theory and still claim you take Genesis 1 literally!
ODEMUS
...but an evening and a morning do not have to contain the rising and setting of the sun?
Since the word 'yom' can also be meant to convey a literal indefinite period of time I can and do indeed take the Genesis creation account literally. Please do not presume to tell me what I can and can't claim to believe about the creation account. This is the whole problem with young earth creationists.
PASTOR LARRY
GRASSHOPPER
Try this: http://www.reasons.org/resources/skeptics/whencreate.html?main
Secondly, why is there no evening of the seventh day? Could it be we are still in the seventh day?
PASTOR LARRY
The evidence of the hebrew text does not support Ross. I have given the evidence, can give you the appropriate sources to check it out. What Ross says is true about certain uses of YOM and the examples he uses in English closely correspond to the hebrew uses. For instance, the 'day of the Romans' is a construct phrase. It is similar to YOM YHWH, the Day of the Lord. As i have said, in the construction used in Genesis 1, it always is a 24 hour day and every lexical source supports that.
As for the evening of day 7, it is a huge jump in exegesis to say that there wasn't one. There is absolutely nothing in the text to suggest that there wasn't one. That is a prime case of reading the text in light of your presupposition.
GRACEFOREVER
For those people who think that the world is millions of years old? According to the bible, it's possible I suppose, that the world is older than 6,000,000 years old…… My question, why can't scientific experts tell us what hour that O. J. Simpson killed his wife? If they can't do that with accuracy, why should I believe that science knows how to precisely read how old the world is?
ODEMUS
Aye, never mind that we are in fact very literally still in the 7th day of God resting from his creative works (we can just ignore that).Never mind that the Bible allows for the word 'yom' to denote a literal period of indefinite time, we'll simply apply a rule that says 'yom' must be considered a 24 hour day in the creation account when preceded by a number. Never mind that we must reasses our natural understanding of what morning and evening constitute before the fourth day.We can just gloss over this issue and make the necessary assumptions to confine our God and creator to a literal 24 hour 6 day creation. Finally, never mind the very real historical precedent of the Copernican model of the solar system which forced Christians to reevaluate their literal understanding of Psalm 19:6.We'll just pretend that never happened.
You can continue to use the shoe horn approach necessary to fit the mountain of scientific evidence for an old earth into your view of it. That's just perfectly fine with me.
...but what I do ask is that under no circumstances you ever imply that my faith is in anything but the complete, inerrant and totally sufficient word of God because simply put that's a totally false assumption.
I apologize if I am a bit over the top with this but as I said before I went through an extremely gut wrenching period in my life as a direct result of this very issue. Half of my church left because they could not tolerate worshipping under the same roof with those of us who felt differently or were tolerant of both positions.It sickens me to think that Christians-brothers and sisters in Christ can be that closed minded about an issue which poses absolutely no doctrinal or theological problems to the Christian faith regardless of one's position.
[ June 28, 2002, 09:17 PM: Message edited by: Administrator ]
MARK-IN-TX
To start with I understand Genesis to tell us who is the creator of the universe not neccesarily how. But for those who suggest that it tells us how and that we have an earth that is relatively young. How do you understand dinasour fossils?
P.S. I would love a response from Helen.
PASTOR LARRY
Actually Gen 1 does tell us how. It says that God said ... and it was. There is no reason to doubt that this is the way it was done. In fact, when God switched methods to create man, we are explicitly told so.
As for dinosaurs, we believe in them. Most were probably preflood, though some possibly lived after the flood. The vast majority of dinosaurs were very small. Ken Ham has a wonderful little book on this. I forget the title. I am sure Helen will have more info on this.
DOC CAS
What problem do you think dinasaur fossils present to the young earth creationist? The flood of Noah provides all of the mechanisms for rapid burial, fossilization, and perservation. I fail to see the problem. Could you point out what you think the problem is, then we would have something to address?
MARK-IN-TX
I am not asking you to defend. How do you understand Dinasours. For example They were created on the first day or second or last. Why no mention of giant creatures in the Genesis text?
.
What about the dating? Bones appear to be millions of years old. How old are they.
I just want to hear from your perspective what you believe. I am not attacking what you believe I want to hear it not debate.
No line is being drawn in the sand I just want to hear what others have to say.
listening
ERNIE BRAZEE
Genesis 1:25 And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
The same creatures that were created here were the same creatures that entered into the ark (see Genesis 6 & 7)
The creatures that were called dinasours still exist today, but don't live as long or grow as big.
There are lizards in the Philippines that resemble man's recreation of what they think the dinasours looked like. If they lived as long as pre-flood cratures they would probably be as large as dinos.
KEN HAMILTON
As I understand it, it is not the bones that scientists say are millions of years old. It is the strata that they are found in it that they claim to be millions of years old based on their presuppositions(all thinking people have them ) that they bring to the table.
For the record, dinosaurs were not reptiles. Reptiles are cold-blooded, dinosaurs were warm-blooded. Dinosaurs were their own group, separate from mammals, reptiles, amphibians, etc.
CHRIS TEMPLE
A young-earth position does not necessitate the earth being only 6000 yrs old. But it does most likely put the earth's age in the 10,000 to 100,000 year bracket.
The Bible does not tell us how old the earth is. In a defense of creationism, its important that we don't say more than the Bible says, or else we are in the same boat as the evolutionists who say more than the earth says
In any case, dinosaurs present no problem to young-earth creationism.
KATIE
Cows,dogs, whales, and that slick snake aren't mentioned in the creation in Genesis either.
TYNDALE 1946
Well I guess you put the dinosaurs with the animals that were created before Adam! I will take 6,000 to 10,000 years as the age of the young earth. Remember in creation God finished it all in 6 literal days... Dinosaurs and all... Then he rested... Brother Glen
JOHNV
I just want to hear from your perspective what you believe.
Oh, well since I don't believe in a 6000 year old earth, I guess I'm off the hook then
GRASSHOPPER
6 literal days yes, but how long is a day?
More info: http://www.reasons.org/resources/apologetics/dinocavemen.html?main
A TEENAGE CHRISTIAN
I just accept dinosaurs as a part of life. Why do all the mysteries in life need explanations? Can't we just accept some things as "unexplained" ??????
ODEMUS
Not that I am trying to be a source of strife and contention (I'm just sifting through these boards and making observations), but the old earth/young earth debate has nothing to to with the creation vs. evolution debate. A Christian can very well believe that the earth is billions of years old and the universe is trillions of years old while still maintaining that God is the creator.
HELEN
Mark, I was laughing at your first post. How do we explain dinosaur fossils? Well, dead dinosaurs, of course…
Sorry - couldn't resist.
Like all basic kinds, the dinosaurs existed, as Pastor Larry stated, before the Flood of Noah. However the animals whose fossils we see today give a great deal of evidence of being from several hundred years after the Flood, actually. I'll explain at the end if the various responses to the various posts don't end up covering this.
DocCas already knows I disagree with him about the Flood fossilizing things. If you go to the Bible study on the Flood, you will see why:
http://www.baptistboard.com/cgi-in/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=43&t=000007&p=
The exploding waters were not only scaldingly hot, but they also brought up enormous amounts of debris and pulverized rock material. These conditions just about defy any fossilization at all. Fossilization was the result of continuing activity along the geologically active areas after the Flood, when the mudslides both underwater and above were combined with the vented waters which were so highly mineralized from the earth's interior - these are the conditions which will fossilize, or mineralize, remains.
The dinos were created day six. They were part of the land dwelling, breathing critters. The large sea animals, which some also call dinosaurs (but which aren't) were created day five with the rest of the denizens of the seas.
As far as the age of the fossils, Mark Armitage at Azusa Pacific recently published an article in Creation Research Society Quarterly (CRSQ) regarding finding what appears to be collagen in some T Rex bones. Mark is a personal friend and an excellent microscopist, with a REALLY neat electron microscope in his lab! His research was cautious and presented conservatively. However when I saw him about a year ago and he showed us what he had found, he was pretty excited.
Aside from that, yes, the fossils are generally dated by the strata in which they are found. Various forms of radiometric dating give very ancient ages for these materials. Sometimes the ages don't agree with each other, but they are almost always ancient. My husband, Barry Setterfield (www.setterfield.org) has done the seminal creation work on speed of light research (which he continues to this day). The evidence via the data is becoming more and more clear that the speed of light was enormously higher in the past. This has a great deal to do with radiometric dating, because the speed of light is effectively in every radio decay rate equation! The higher the speed of light, the faster the rate of decay. Thus, the ancient ages are atomic ages, not orbital (gravitational) ages, by which we measure time.
One of the exciting things about Barry's research is that when the atomic ages are corrected via the existing redshift curve to match the Biblical ages, they both are in total agreement regarding the major catastrophes in the Bible: the Flood, Babel, and Peleg's time.
The age of the dinosaurs was basically between Babel and Peleg's time - that is when conditions were ideal for them. Where conditions were ideal, however, were precisely in those warm, steamy, geologically active areas. So that's where the dinosaur fossils come from.
To Ernie: probably the lizards we see today are NOT relatives of the old dinos. They appear to be a different kind of animal.
And no, the lizards of today would NOT ever grow to be as large as the large dinosaurs. The physical structure is quite different. Dinosaur legs, for instance, did not angle out to the side like lizard legs, but went straight down from the torso. The enormous size of some of the old dinosaurs would have required a very different physical makeup than the small lizards of today. Enormous size has definite physical requirements where muscle and circulatory systems are involved especially.
Ken, the jury is still out on the dinos in terms of warm or cold blooded, actually. There may have been some of each.
We may be looking at some very, very different kinds and tending to lump them together.
To Chris Temple: the earth is about 8,000 years old, actually. This agrees with the speed of light data as well as the more ancient Scriptures.
Johnv, You may not believe in a young earth, but that has little to do with whether or not it IS young…
Grasshopper - the days of Genesis are regular days, as marked by the earth turning on its axis. This is why 'evening…morning' are mentioned. Evening and morning are only possible by the earth's rotation. Exodus 20:11 confirms the fact that these were normal 24 hour days.
Odemus, I don't think you have thought your position through. If death did not come before Adam, and it didn't, what are you going to do with all those long ages you don't think make any difference? They make a great deal of difference.
In the long run, if God cannot communicate clearly in Genesis, which is the beginning and foundation of everything that follows, why believe anything else after that?
ODEMUS
Hi Helen. It's nice to meet you
I have thought my position out and my conclusion is that it doesn't matter how old the earth is in terms of my faith in Christ.If the word 'yom' is meant to describe literal indefinate periods of time as opposed to literal 24 hour days then I am fine with that.If God created the animal kingdom millions of years as opposed to a couple of days before He created Adam and Eve I am fine with that as well.If there was death in the animal kingdom before Adam sinned as opposed to after Adam sinned I am fine with that!
As you can see by verses such as Romans 5:12, The consequence of death as a result Adams sin is specifically applied to man:
Therefore just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, so death spread to all men, because all sinned-
We find in verse 18 of the same chapter that Christ's redemptive work on the cross was meant to reconcile man with God, not the animal kingdom:
So then as through one transgression there resulted condemnation to all men, even so through one act of riteousness there resulted justification of life to all men.
I am most assured that Christ died for me and you, not lions, tigers, bears, or even the cellular material of whatever it was that Adam and Eve ate prior to their fall from grace.
I find this whole discussion is an excersise in futility for two basic reasons:
1) It can only serve as yet another area of strife and contention between Christians who simply disagree on the matter. There just isn't anything conflicting the central principles of our faith no matter which position you take.
2) We are never going to bring secular scientists to saving faith in Christ by presenting a young earth model to them. It just is not going to happen. Even if the young earth model is true that has absolutely nothing to do with presenting the Gospel of Jesus Christ to sinners. I see that you have studied your position and are fairly clear in presenting what you believe and why. I wonder, has it ever been affective in bringing an unbeliever to Christ? I am by no means being cynical with that question, but I am curous if you feel all the effort you invest in guarenteeing that the age of the earth can be explained in terms of a literal six 24 hour day approach to interpreting the Genesis creation account has been affective in your witness to the unsaved.
Five years ago my church was absolutely (and most unecessarily) torn apart by this very issue. Half of the church felt they could not worship under the same roof with the half that differed from (or were tolerant of both sides) their belief! Take a guess at to which half moved out. I hate seeing brothers and sisters in Christ torn apart by such trivialities, and I think if you are honest with yourself you will conclude that this issue is indeed trivial, because in the final analysis sister, me and you are both one day going to embrace in heaven and laugh that this could have ever been a noteworthy disagreement.
HELEN
Odemus,
Do you think that God created the universe -- all of creation -- in bondage to decay? Was this 'very good'?
If not, then death did not only come to the humans as the result of sin, but to all of life.
Yes, Christ died for humans, but you will note that the entire creation will be made over, for it all has suffered from our sin.
I have never found it an exercise in futility to study the Bible, or to believe God knows how to say what He means and mean what He says. In fact, I have staked my life on that.
Yes, there are not only lay people but actual scientists who are brought to faith with the knowledge that they can trust the Bible start to finish. For some people that is very important.
For others it is not so important. Barry and I do the work we do for those to whom it matters. We are there for them. Barry is doing what the Lord has given him to do. I am trying my best to do likewise. What I have seen mostly is emails thanking me from those who are already my brothers and sisters in Christ, as what I present often will help strengthen their faith and help them give reasons for the hope they have. Building up and encouraging the body is very important. It is something that is really on my heart to do.
If it is of any interest in you, both Barry and I started out as evolutionists, and then went to a long-ages model and finally, due to the evidence (and it is to our shame, each of us individually, that we did not have enough faith to simply trust the Bible was being clear!) ended up in the YEC position. He ended up there through his work in physics and astronomy, and I ended up there through studies in both cellular and population genetics.
The Bible is absolutely trustworthy. That is the message both of us want to tell anyone willing to listen!
ODEMUS
I am glad you feel that way Helen but I didn't refer to your study of the Bible as an excersise in futility. I referred to this particular discussion as such. Why? Because young earth creationists have a tendency to tell those who differ or are indifferent altogether that this is a core principle of the Christian faith. It simply is not! Trust me, I have the same faith in Christ as my saviour that you undoubtedly profess, and I look to him on a daily basis to help me submit my will to him and lead me to do whatever he has planned for me.Not once has He ever called me to absolutely determine the age of the earth.I certainly wasn't trying to imply that exploring the Bible to determine the nature of our physical world was futile.After all, God's majesty is revealed in his creation
Romans 1:20 For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.
All I have to do is step outside to be reminded of that.
HELEN
I don't think you will ever find me saying that a young creation is the core to the salvation issue!
Jesus is the cornerstone and the capstone. He is the author and finisher. He is all in all.
I ALSO think His Word tells the truth in a straight and simple way!
KEN HAMILTON
Helen,
My favorite Far Side cartoon shows a scientist having left his time machine, carrying a really long rectal thermometer and he is approaching the back end of a large Sauropod. The caption under the cartoon says, "An instant later, both Professor Waxman and his time machine are obliterated, leaving the cold-blooded/warm-blooded dinosaur debate still unresolved.'
Have you read a book entitled The Dinosaur Heresies by Robert T. Bakker? I spent a few years in the early 90s updating my childhood by reading the latest books and articles and watching educational television programs about dinosaurs.
ERNIE BRAZEE
It amazes me how biologists and scientists can know so much about something they have never seen
So much for the accuracy of science; I will just the trust the Bible, Genesis says God created all creatures and that is good enough for me. Genesis also says every creature was brought into the ark, so dinosaurs are alive today or somehow became an endangerd species and just died out.
The theory that they were destroyed by a large meteor ranks right up there with "Jack and the Bean Stalk" and "Cinderella"....but who knows, there are probably those who believe those were true stories too.
PASTOR LARRY
24 hours:
1) When 'yom' is used in a non-construct relationship, it is always 24 hours.
2) The yamim of Gen 1 are qualified by 'morning and evening' something wholly incompatible with long periods of time.
3) The creation week is the pattern for the work week (cf Ex 20:6). Unless God intended us to work for long periods of time before taking a long period of time off, then we better go with 24 hours.
Scripture is not confused about this. The days are 24 hours.
DOC CAS
What Mr. Ross seems to have overlooked is that a sidereal day is completely independent of any light source or other object. The bible is clear. There were days prior to the advent of the sun, and those days were sidereal, and a sidereal day was then and still is equal to 23 hours, 56 minutes and 4 seconds.
A solar day is 23 hours 59 minutes and 57 seconds long. This is the time it takes from one noon (sun overhead) to the next noon.
The difference in the two "days" arises from the fact that during a day the Earth also travels nearly a degree further on its yearly trek around the Sun so the earth must turn 1 degree past the sidereal day, or about 67 miles, to complete a solar day.
ODEMUS
Well there certainly are plenty of young earthians here
While we may disagree on this issue I think the most important thing of all is to realise is we share the same faith in the inerrancy of God's Word.Man is most certainly fallible but God is not.
The only word of caution I would issue to young earth types is that you are without question going to have to allow room for those of us who believe the earth is very old.
The church had to revise it's understanding of the Bible (and consequently the universe) in the 1600's when Galileo brought the Copernican model of the solar system into prominence, and my belief is that is more than an acceptable precedent to consider when approaching the vast amounts of evidence for an old earth with respect to the creation account.
GRASSHOPPER
I think Hugh Ross would agree with that.
ODEMUS
Indeed he does.
GRASSHOPPER
Very good Odemus, seems some on this board think you can't believe in long creation days and still take Genisis literal.
DOC CAS
You can't! Either a day, with an evening and morning, is roughly 24 hours long, or it is not a "day!" You can't believe in a "long day" theory and still claim you take Genesis 1 literally!
ODEMUS
...but an evening and a morning do not have to contain the rising and setting of the sun?
Since the word 'yom' can also be meant to convey a literal indefinite period of time I can and do indeed take the Genesis creation account literally. Please do not presume to tell me what I can and can't claim to believe about the creation account. This is the whole problem with young earth creationists.
PASTOR LARRY
Not in the constructions in which it is used in Gen 1. Whenever it is used as it is in Gen 1 (singular, non-construct, with ordinal number), it is always a 24 hour day. YOM is that construction is never used as you need it to be used. Hebrew scholar Bruce Waltke (who believes in old earth creation) admits that the author of Gen 1intended his reader to understand the YOM as 24 hour days. Waltke takes them as metaphorical but he knows Hebrew well enough to know the text is not on his side.
GRASSHOPPER
Try this: http://www.reasons.org/resources/skeptics/whencreate.html?main
Secondly, why is there no evening of the seventh day? Could it be we are still in the seventh day?
PASTOR LARRY
The evidence of the hebrew text does not support Ross. I have given the evidence, can give you the appropriate sources to check it out. What Ross says is true about certain uses of YOM and the examples he uses in English closely correspond to the hebrew uses. For instance, the 'day of the Romans' is a construct phrase. It is similar to YOM YHWH, the Day of the Lord. As i have said, in the construction used in Genesis 1, it always is a 24 hour day and every lexical source supports that.
As for the evening of day 7, it is a huge jump in exegesis to say that there wasn't one. There is absolutely nothing in the text to suggest that there wasn't one. That is a prime case of reading the text in light of your presupposition.
GRACEFOREVER
What do I do with dinosaurs? What dinosaurs?
For those people who think that the world is millions of years old? According to the bible, it's possible I suppose, that the world is older than 6,000,000 years old…… My question, why can't scientific experts tell us what hour that O. J. Simpson killed his wife? If they can't do that with accuracy, why should I believe that science knows how to precisely read how old the world is?
ODEMUS
Aye, never mind that we are in fact very literally still in the 7th day of God resting from his creative works (we can just ignore that).Never mind that the Bible allows for the word 'yom' to denote a literal period of indefinite time, we'll simply apply a rule that says 'yom' must be considered a 24 hour day in the creation account when preceded by a number. Never mind that we must reasses our natural understanding of what morning and evening constitute before the fourth day.We can just gloss over this issue and make the necessary assumptions to confine our God and creator to a literal 24 hour 6 day creation. Finally, never mind the very real historical precedent of the Copernican model of the solar system which forced Christians to reevaluate their literal understanding of Psalm 19:6.We'll just pretend that never happened.
You can continue to use the shoe horn approach necessary to fit the mountain of scientific evidence for an old earth into your view of it. That's just perfectly fine with me.
...but what I do ask is that under no circumstances you ever imply that my faith is in anything but the complete, inerrant and totally sufficient word of God because simply put that's a totally false assumption.
I apologize if I am a bit over the top with this but as I said before I went through an extremely gut wrenching period in my life as a direct result of this very issue. Half of my church left because they could not tolerate worshipping under the same roof with those of us who felt differently or were tolerant of both positions.It sickens me to think that Christians-brothers and sisters in Christ can be that closed minded about an issue which poses absolutely no doctrinal or theological problems to the Christian faith regardless of one's position.
[ June 28, 2002, 09:17 PM: Message edited by: Administrator ]