NT six literal days

[dan e.]

Well here is where we will disagree. I think distinguishing between a literal 24-hour and day-age is critical. The reason being is that Scripture is not open to interpretation. It is either 24 hours or it is day-age.

And it would be impossible from a scientific standpoint for it to be a day age. The reason being is that there would have to be and equal number of years of darkness as light. And the general theory is that the day-age is 1,000 years because of a verse in either II Peter. But there could not be 500 years of darkness because plant and animal life could not survive.

God said there was evening and morning, so it is important that we take Him at His word.

Whether or not it is poetry or not makes no difference. Whether or not it was 24 hours or day-age does make a difference.

PS - Just to add a side note I visited with someone that I consider to be a mentor spiritually and he is MUCH more learned than I will probably ever be and he said he had never heard of this section of Genesis being referred to as Hebrew poetry, which I found interesting.

I first heard of this back in the mid-90s while taking a philosophy class in which we have a visiting Jewish Rabbi as a guest speaker, which said it was.

But again I don't think it matters. Genesis 1 and 2 are true regardless

My point is that although I side with a 24 hour day in the creation account, I don't think it compromises one's faith to question it. Maybe I have missed something, as I haven't kept track of someone's history of posts. However in this thread I haven't really seen much denial of Scripture, only that the creation days must be interpreted to mean 24 hours. Again, I believe they were 24 hour days. I won't separate myself from a brother or sister who thinks that they were not literal 24 hour days. It becomes a serious issue to me when they question that God literally created, or questioning if Adam and Eve were real people, or if the whole thing was just a metaphor, or whatever. I'm backing off because you may be right....I might have missed something, but I haven't seen anyone denying the truth of Scripture. 24 hours or an unknown amount of time....God is the Creator of it all regardless.

 

[J. Jump]

a good reason why one cannot take theology from history.

And yet Scripture disagrees with you.

One of the BEST theological texts on eternal salvation is found in the book of Acts. Matter of fact this book contains the ONLY direct question and direct answer regarding eternal salvation.

Again this argument that you can not do something because of other's mistakes is just silly.

 

[J. Jump]

I won't separate myself from a brother or sister who thinks that they were not literal 24 hour days.

I agree. I don't think it is something that would cause me to be unable to visit with a friend about, but anytime the subject would be discussed I would fight for Truth .

but I haven't seen anyone denying the truth of Scripture.

Well no one in their right mind ever denies the Truth of Scripture directly Well I guess there are some liberal "Christians" that would deny that all Scripture is Truth.

However if one proclaims a falsity they are in fact denying the Truth of Scripture whether directly or indirectly .

 

[DHK]

And yet Scripture disagrees with you.

One of the BEST theological texts on eternal salvation is found in the book of Acts. Matter of fact this book contains the ONLY direct question and direct answer regarding eternal salvation.

Again this argument that you can not do something because of other's mistakes is just silly.

Scripture does not disagree with me, neither does good hermeunitcal principles. There are many questions and answers asked in the Book of Acts. If that is how you were to determine the will of God, your life would be in a mess.

Acts 8:19 Saying, Give me also this power, that on whomsoever I lay hands, he may receive the Holy Ghost.
--A reasonable request--desiring the power of God in one's life

The answer:
Acts 8:20-23 But Peter said unto him, Thy money perish with thee, because thou hast thought that the gift of God may be purchased with money. Thou hast neither part nor lot in this matter: for thy heart is not right in the sight of God. Repent therefore of this thy wickedness, and pray God, if perhaps the thought of thine heart may be forgiven thee. For I perceive that thou art in the gall of bitterness, and in the bond of iniquity.

There are many clear questions and answers in the book of Acts, and in other historical books. However, if the historical event is not backed up by the doctrine taught in the books of doctrine then it is apt to be error that one is teaching. Be careful when taking doctrine from a historical book. It is a basic principle of hermeneutics.

 

[J. Jump]

Scripture does not disagree with me,

Yes it does. Let me point it out again.

All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness,

It doesn't say part of Scripture. It says ALL Scripture. Now why are we to believe Genesis, but we are supposed to somehow overlook this verse?

Even the historical books are inspired by God and profitable for doctrine.

However, if the historical event is not backed up by the doctrine taught in the books of doctrine then it is apt to be error that one is teaching.

Again there are not books of doctrine and books of non-doctrine. ALL Scripture is profitable for doctrine, not just the bits and pieces that you want to stitch together.

 

[Amy.G]

Yes it does. Let me point it out again.

All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness,

It doesn't say part of Scripture. It says ALL Scripture. Now why are we to believe Genesis, but we are supposed to somehow overlook this verse?

Even the historical books are inspired by God and profitable for doctrine.


Again there are not books of doctrine and books of non-doctrine. ALL Scripture is profitable for doctrine, not just the bits and pieces that you want to stitch together.

The world has turned upside down! I agree with you! :laugh:

 

[DHK]

Y
Again there are not books of doctrine and books of non-doctrine. ALL Scripture is profitable for doctrine, not just the bits and pieces that you want to stitch together.

Don't put words in my mouth and accuse me of saying something I never said. Lets go through it again.
1. There are poetical books.
2. There are historical books.
3. There are books of doctrine (like the epistles)
4. There are also apocalyptic books like Revelation.

I never said that you couldn't find doctrine in any book of Scripture. So don't lie.
In fact I gave you an example where doctrine was found in an historical book--the Book of Exodus, in which God revealed the Ten Commandments to Moses. Do you remember, or are you still going to falsely accuse me.
What I have said is that historical books are written primarily for that purpose--to reveal history. When one tries to pull doctrine out of historical events when it is history that is being discussed they are apt to run into doctrinal error, just as the Oneness Pentecostals do. Pentecost was a one-time historical event, for example. Pentecost is not still going on, as many Pentecostals claim. You can't pull one historical event out of history and make it teach obscure doctrine which is not taught elsewhere in the Bible. The events surrounding Pentecost are nowhere else found in the Bible. And they will never be repeated again. Yet we have believers looking for them today.
All Scripture is inspired and it is profitable.

"Thou shalt not surely die." It is an inspired statement, inspired by the Holy Spirit, and it is profitable. At the same time it is a lie of the devil. That is why it is history and not doctrine.

 

[BobRyan]

My point is that although I side with a 24 hour day in the creation account,...I believe they were 24 hour days. I won't separate myself from a brother or sister who thinks that they were not literal 24 hour days. It becomes a serious issue to me when they question that God literally created, or questioning if Adam and Eve were real people, or if the whole thing was just a metaphor, or whatever. I'm backing off because you may be right....I might have missed something, but I haven't seen anyone denying the truth of Scripture. 24 hours or an unknown amount of time....God is the Creator of it all regardless.

#1. The Bible is a house of cards - IF you destroy what the Bible says about God as CREATOR, and man as a sinless CREATED being and the FALL of man-- then you destroy the foundation of the gospel!

#2. IF Adam is simply one of millions of hominids sitting in caves eating their daily ration of monkey brains in a death-starvation-carnage-predation world and it is "from THAT paradise" that "mankind FALLS and is condemned to hell" THEN IT DOES matter because it changes the Bible picture of a perfect, loving, just God -- to an arbitrary, vindictive "non-god" made more in the image of the enemy of God than the God we find in the Bible.

It would also be "nonsense" to suppose that God sends his Son to die for a hominid that "had the wrong thought" while eating his monkey-brain breakfast one day.

In Christ,

Bob

 

[BobRyan]

OK. So there is no theological value in Gensis?

OR, is Genesis a redaction of oral traditions which construct a kind of history which, steeped in myth, serves to build a cohesive theology?

Pick one.

Hmmm Poison option 1 or poison option-2 ... pick one.

Why not just pick "The Bible IS accurate NOT myth, the holy men of old "SPOKE FROM GOD" 2Peter 1!!

In Christ,

Bob

 

[BobRyan]

It demonstrates how it is poetic but not why it is not truth. Should we discount the truth of the Psalms because it is poetic? The Bible in its entirety meets HoGs criteria for we can find 7s and other such things that just fit together perfectly all throughout the Bible. There are 7s throughout Revelation, is this poetry too? It does not mean that we discount the truth of it, it just means we have a God of order, who also happens to be the master poet.

Well said sir.

Apparently, if it's poetry, it is a fairy tale for people can be led to disbelieve the Bible's account of creation. If one believes that a day means a day then one can believe the Bible. It's a big deal because one belief has to be true and one has to be a lie.

Poetic form merely states the literary form of the writing NOT the extent of the literal truth. The problem is that a belief evilutionism demands that we gut the Bible of truth in specific areas and claim that it is "nothing MORE than nice poetic thoughts steeped in myth and false tradition".

Hint: Chiasm DOES NOT Mean "not true".

It means that parallel ideas are presented "in a certain pattern" - it DOES NOT mean that the ideas presented are NOT REALLY true and accurate!

In Christ,

Bob

 

[BobRyan]

Hint: Exodus 20 is not a Chiasm.

hint: EXEGESIS of the text SHOWS that the days ARE in fact real literal days that correspond to our present week.



"FOR IN SIX DAYS the LORD MADE the HEAVENs and the EARTH the SEA and all that is in them".

The SAME SIX days that we are to work in --

Ex 20
8 ""Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.
9 "" Six days you shall labor and do all your work,
10 but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the LORD your God; in it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter, your male or your female servant or your cattle or your sojourner who stays with you.
11 "" 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.

Gen 2
]Genesis 2 New American Standard Bible (NASB)

1 Thus the heavens and the earth were completed[/b], and all their hosts.
2 By the seventh day God completed His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done.
3 Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made.
4 This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made earth and heaven.[/b]


It is left as an exercise for the reader to SEE What the Bible has said CLEARLY in these pointed texts EVEN if some others would flee these texts calling them "keyholes to be avoided".

 

[BobRyan]

The first creation account is a hymn or poem, with each verse bracketed by "On the ___ day..." and "and there was evening and morning, the ___ day."

The hymn was intended to provide solid theological truths to the listener. There is a Creator, and there is an order to Creation. More than this -- the chemical makeup of the sun, the specifics of gravity and atmosphere and photosenthysis, for example -- was unneccesary. All they needed to know was that God, their Creator, had ordered things and was in control.

If one were so inclined, one could look at the formation of the earth as some scientific theories have posited and see similarities to the opening verses of Genesis. In other words, one does not have to be hammered solidly to a young-earth, absolute six calendar day creation hymn in order to be a solid believer in the Creator and in the One whom the Creator sent to redeem us.

First you point to the "inconvenient DETAIL of TIME" in each of the days of creation an try to "wash it out as nothing more than a literary trick that does not convey time though it says time" AS IF that is anything BUT a blatant attempt at eisegetically IGNORING the fact!!

Then you summarize "it is not necessary" that we believe the time FACT that is given in EACH of the days since you "need to ignore it".

How sad.

In your explanation you simply come up with illconceived argument for "why I can ignore what does not please me in the text"!!

But at least you are honest in admitting this abuse of the text, blatant appeal to eisegesis, and highlighting the part of the text that displeases you most.

It should also be noted that this attempt at "trash the bible but keep the Gospel and the God of the Bible" compromise is "common" among believers in evilutionism. But EVERY time we get into the "inconvenient DETAILS" that ARE referenced IN LAW (the Exodus 20:8-11 SUMMARY of the Gen 1-2:4 ACCOUNT for example) and in the WORDS of Christ and the Words of Paul "It was ADAM who was FIRST created, it was Eve who was FIRST deceived"... "from the BEGINING HE created them MALE and FEMALE" ... "AS IN ADAM all sinned"... the believers in evilutionism simply "vanish" from the discussion!!

in Christ,

Bob

 

[Deacon]

I enjoy a quote by Martin Luther who once said of Genesis 1:
“It contains things the most important, and at the same time the most obscure. …who could explain all these momentous things, with sufficient appropriateness and success: For interpreters and commentators have confused and entangled them with such a variety, diversity, and infinity of questions that it is sufficiently plain, that God has reserved the majesty of this wisdom, and the full and sound understanding of this chapter, to himself alone.”

I don’t normally point people to Answers in Genesis but here’s a responsible article regarding the New Testament and creation doctrine.
New Testament doctrines and the creation basis
by Rev. D. Swincer [LINL]

And to balance things a bit here’s Hugh Ross’s list of Scriptures Related To Creation [LINK]

I don’t see any reason why each article couldn’t be posted on the others’ site.

Have fun boys', I'm outta here.

Rob

 

[BobRyan]

Thanks for the links.

In the first one we find this quote --

Sir Arthur Keith expressed his view of Biblical creation when he said, 'Evolution is unproved and unprovable but we believe it because the only alternative is special creation and that is unthinkable',thus showing that an evolutionist can be at the same time unscientific and a 'believer'.

All atheist darwinists ADMIT to the glaringly obvious fact that the Bible account is NOT the Atheist Darwinist story that is told for evolutionism.

Bible believing Christians admit to the SAME point.

But there are some "Christians in compromise" that pretend "not to get it".

That is the part that ALWAYS amazes me!!

in Christ,

Bob

 

[BobRyan]

Also note that in Hugh Ross' link - he provides a list of texts that speak to the subject without ever actually addressing the problem of denying the truth of the 7 day week shown so blatantly to all in Gen 1-2:4 and how that impacts the rest of scripture and the Gospel itself.

 

[BobRyan]

TP
The first creation account is a hymn or poem, with each verse bracketed by "On the ___ day..." and "and there was evening and morning, the ___ day."

#1. Notice that the "very detail" in God's Word deemed "most untrue" and most unnacceptable to the believer in evilutionism forms the HEART of God's OWN Canon Law in Exodus 20:8-11 as HE SUMMARIZES the Gen 1-2:4 EVENT. HE appeals to the VERY DETAIL these believers in evolutionism can not tolerate as being true!

#2. Suppose we take the sloppy logic argued by TP above and notice that it applies equally well in the following form as argued by the atheist darwinist

The first creation ACCOUNT is no ACCOUNT at all -- it is merely a hymn so it's inconvenient details can be ignored..


We notice that each supposed DAY in God's account begins as might suppose a hymn to begin - bracketed by "AND GOD SAID" and then "AND GOD SAW - that it was good"... since that is merely device for the hymn -- the detail that God exists and that God is Creator -- is merely a literary device for the hymn and is not literally true

 

[Gerhard Ebersoehn]

Quoted by BobRyan:

"Sir Arthur Keith expressed his view of Biblical creation when he said, 'Evolution is unproved and unprovable but we believe it because the only alternative is special creation and that is unthinkable',thus showing that an evolutionist can be at the same time unscientific and a 'believer'. "

GE:

Poor man! Why not say, Evolution is unproved and unprovable, so why should we believe it? Why should we, while its only alternative, special creation, is not only unproved and unprovable, but completely unthinkable! It just goes to show a creationist, while being a believer and for being a believer, can also be honest and therefore be the 'better' scientist!

 

[tragic_pizza]

#1. The Bible is a house of cards - IF you destroy what the Bible says about God as CREATOR, and man as a sinless CREATED being and the FALL of man-- then you destroy the foundation of the gospel!

No one has attempted, in this thread, to counter the argument that Gods is Creator, that humans were created beings, that humans were sinless and fell. Read closely. No one.

#2. IF Adam is simply one of millions of hominids sitting in caves eating their daily ration of monkey brains in a death-starvation-carnage-predation world and it is "from THAT paradise" that "mankind FALLS and is condemned to hell" THEN IT DOES matter because it changes the Bible picture of a perfect, loving, just God -- to an arbitrary, vindictive "non-god" made more in the image of the enemy of God than the God we find in the Bible.

What?

It would also be "nonsense" to suppose that God sends his Son to die for a hominid that "had the wrong thought" while eating his monkey-brain breakfast one day.

Again, huh?

 

[dan e.]

#1. The Bible is a house of cards - IF you destroy what the Bible says about God as CREATOR, and man as a sinless CREATED being and the FALL of man-- then you destroy the foundation of the gospel!

#2. IF Adam is simply one of millions of hominids sitting in caves eating their daily ration of monkey brains in a death-starvation-carnage-predation world and it is "from THAT paradise" that "mankind FALLS and is condemned to hell" THEN IT DOES matter because it changes the Bible picture of a perfect, loving, just God -- to an arbitrary, vindictive "non-god" made more in the image of the enemy of God than the God we find in the Bible.

It would also be "nonsense" to suppose that God sends his Son to die for a hominid that "had the wrong thought" while eating his monkey-brain breakfast one day.

In Christ,

Bob

your post makes no sense. I never questioned God as creator, neither has anyone else. THIS IS MY POINT THAT NOBODY SEEMS TO QUITE GET. NOBODY HAS DENIED THIS ESSENTIAL.

 

[J. Jump]

Don't put words in my mouth and accuse me of saying something I never said. Lets go through it again.
1. There are poetical books.
2. There are historical books.
3. There are books of doctrine (like the epistles)
4. There are also apocalyptic books like Revelation.

Again your breakdown is meaningless. It adds no value to the discussion. It doesn't make a hill of beans difference whether books of the Bible can be categorized together or not. That's not the point.

I never said that you couldn't find doctrine in any book of Scripture. So don't lie.

To my knowledge I didn't say that about you. And I notice that you left out a quote of where I did say that about you, so I'm not sure why you would accuse me of lying. Well I have my thoughts on the matter

In fact I gave you an example where doctrine was found in an historical book--the Book of Exodus, in which God revealed the Ten Commandments to Moses. Do you remember, or are you still going to falsely accuse me.

Falsely accuse you of what. Let’s revisit your statements:

Genesis is a historical book; not a theological treatise.

It is primarily a historical book.

You contradict yourself from one post to another. First it is only a historical book and then it is primarily a historical book.

You cannot take theology from history unless that portion within the history is specificallly teaching theological concepts,

Then we get this statement.

So this leaves us with the question of who gets to pick and choose what is just pure history with no value other than history and who gets to say well this has some theological significance? Leaves a whole lot of room for error if you ask me.

What I have said is that historical books are written primarily for that purpose--to reveal history.

Well in one statement you did and in another you wrote as if that is the ONLY thing they are good for.

When one tries to pull doctrine out of historical events when it is history that is being discussed they are apt to run into doctrinal error, just as the Oneness Pentecostals do.

Well that may be a true statement. However, that doesn’t mean that one can not pull doctrine out of historical events. ALL Scripture is profitable for doctrine. Now we can either believe that or not. Again the argument that something can’t be done, because some other group abuses the text is just plain silly.

You can't pull one historical event out of history and make it teach obscure doctrine which is not taught elsewhere in the Bible.

Here we agree 100%. What will be taught in one spot will be taught in some shape or form in another spot.

"Thou shalt not surely die." It is an inspired statement, inspired by the Holy Spirit, and it is profitable. At the same time it is a lie of the devil. That is why it is history and not doctrine.

Sure it is. It’s doctrine of the character of Satan. He is a liar.

By the way I look forward to you showing some evidence that I falsely accused you of something and that I lied about you. The only thing I remember saying to you is that Scripture disagreed with your statements. So an apology of falsely accusing me will be in short order correct?