Featured Scholar Explains Why So Many Reject Genesis

Thats funny....I visited with an apostate UMC in my community yesterday & in speaking to the pastor there he admitted two things: they build there church off of wayward Roman Catholics & 2) they don't stress doctrine. He made it sound like its a dirty word.

So my origional premise that these modern churches are cultivating RC 's and dumming down everything down to accomidate them is sound. How long until it penetrates into the southern Bible belt? Lets see, I have seen the PCUSA succumb, the Episcopals are completely apostate, the United Methodists are a mess, the Baptists (around here anyway have thrown in with the Charismatic movement, Pentecostal Churches are on the rise, the RCC is flourishing. & being renewed by the Latins, the PCA is not teaching doctrine (again in a push to attract Catholics) & that's pretty much the landscape.

 

Originally posted by Augustine [~400 AD]:

 

Sounds exactly like Adam Hamilton, who famously -- or, perhaps, I should say "infamously" -- wrote the book Seeing Grey in a World of Black and White in 2006.

http://mrrives.com/Gezer/?p=984

 

If either John Wesley or George Whitefield saw the condition of the present day Methodist church they would be dishearten :tear:

Many will have to put on sackcloth and give up their evil ways...then and only then will there be revival. If not I fear this community, indeed this country will meet the same disasterious fate as Sodom.

 

Exactly right. My wife went to COTR before I met her and introduced her to my SBC church. She instantly felt as though she had entered into a river of truth. The adult Bible study we attend has been a fountain of solid teaching for her -- we have an excellent lay teacher whose lessons are constantly a strong parallel reinforcement of the pastor's sermon. She also loves the people there and we've developed several strong friendships with couples from that class, and neither of us had those kind of friendships before, even me who attended the church. It is, I think, difficult for singles in any church to develop mentoring or accountability relationships with even one side of a married couple.

My wife has commented on Hamilton's constant harping on this theme of his regarding how "humanity grew a deeper and clearer understanding of God" and that's why we can now embrace spiritual acceptance of homosexuality, gay marriage, etc. It really bothered her, she knew it wasn't true, but she was also afraid to step out and try other churches, particularly Baptist churches in the area. She was deeply hurt by an IFB church after her divorce and assumed all Baptists were like that, and didn't want to risk that nonsense again. She's glad to be where she is, and people she knew at COTR keep asking, "When are you coming back?" She says, "I'm not. Why don't you come to church with my husband and me and see why?" So far, no one has taken us up on that invitation. That's truly sad.

 

http://www.qideas.org/essays/science-and-faith-at-odds.aspx

 

BTW the line, which you so pompously highlighted is nothing more than specious bloviating.

 

The early church believed a LOT of things that were dead wrong.

Some things that were absolutely heretical.

A person is not the most intelligent when he is a baby. It is when he is an adult.

The infant church was wrong about a LOT of things.

I love how people want to get back to the way the EARLY CHURCH was. Meeting in homes instead of cathedrals, very simple worship services, blah, blah, blah...

The early church was a MESS. Now we thank God for them. But look at the Corinthians: people sleeping with their step moms and being praised for it, polygamy, infighting, suing one another before secular authorities, and the list goes on and on...

Or the Galatians...

Or five of the seven churches in Revelation.

The church in its infancy was a mess and very ignorant. Not saying that its not today- it still has a long way to go, but we have a graps on the Trinity now, no one held in repute in evangelical Christianity is a polygamist and no one is sleeping with their step moms and being praised for it and no one in evangelicalism is saying you can't be saved unless you become a Jew first, etc...

The Church is maturing- slowly, painfully, but certainly.

The early church is not the MEASURE for anything. The BIBLE is.

 

Neither is the current church. It has ALWAYS been a mess.

But yet you don't take it at face value, for what it says. Interesting.

 

Face value is not taking figurative language and forcing it to be literal.

face value is not taking Genesis 2:4 and saying SEE!!! IT HAS TO BE THAt GOD MADE THE WHOLE UNIVERSE IS 24 HOURS!!!!!

Genesis 2:4 "...in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens." Here, Moses uses Yom to indicate the entire creative week.

OBVIOUSLY....

I mean OBVIOUSLY the word DAY (yom) there does not mean 24 hours!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Holy COW!!

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

OBVIOUSLY it is figurative... the way people USUALLY use the word day. Back in Noah's day, Moses' day, Jesus day and still in our own day we USUALLY use the word DAY NOT AS A 24 HOUR PERIOD OF TIME!!

HAHAHAHHA!!

If you want to believe the universe is six to ten thousand years old- fine.

Good people believe that. Intelligent people believe that.

But don't PRETEND that those who see the word "DAY" as not literal are against the word of God compromisers with evil god-hating scientists.

That just makes you look ignorant.

Disagree with me- fine.

But don't tell me that I don't take the word of God at face value just because it seems quite obvious that DAY in Genesis 1-2 does not always mean a literal period of 24 hours.

SHEESH!!!

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

 

This negates your entire argument. Because whether you like it or not, whether you will accept it or not, Hebrew scholars throughout the ages have confirmed the truth, that the language in Genesis 1 and 2 is literal in nature. It is not figurative. You can't force it to be, because it isn't. But your stubborn refusal to accept it, choosing instead to act like a theological Don Quixote tilting at rock-solid windmills, blinds you. Nothing I nor anyone else can do about that. It's statements like this ...

... that are most frustrating because you blatantly lie about the passage, despite the evidence that refutes your claim. This use of yowm is made singular by the conjunction "the." It's singular, not plural, therefore it becomes the equivalent of a cardinal number, which requires the word yowm to be read as a literal 24-hour day. It can't be any other way, despite the fact you desperately want it to be, to the extent you deny 5,000 years of Hebrew language usage.

And by the way, Genesis 1:9 indicates that the heavens and the Earth were created in one day, which is what Genesis 2:4 refers back to in its content.

This whole effort is not worth trying to overcome your arrogance anymore. Why should anyone waste their time trying to discuss something with someone when they won't bother to be intellectually honest in the discussion?

 

The cardinal number rule is bogus. I proved that in a previous post.

 

In your own mind, perhaps. Not in anyone else's. How would you explain that the use of yowm anywhere in the Old Testament, when accompanied by a number, always means a literal 24-hour day? Or that the use of the phrase "evening and morning" ('erb and boqer) always mean a literal 24-hour day? You can't, or you won't try. I'm really not sure what to expect.

Your precious "scientific evidence" was considered proof not of evolution, but of the Genesis account until the 1800s when a paradigm shift occurred within the scientific community, and the earth's sedimentary strata layers were reinterpreted. Whereas previously the rock layers were interpreted as evidence of Noah's flood, the flood was thrown out by the scientific community and the rock layers were reinterpreted as evidence for an excessively old earth. Some well-meaning but terribly mistaken Christians then sought to reconcile this new anti-flood, anti-biblical interpretation with the Genesis account by reinterpreting yowm to mean vast, unspecified periods of time. The truth is that many of the old-earth interpretations are known to rely upon faulty assumptions like this one, despite the fact none of their assumptions can be reconciled to the biblical evidence. And you have bought into them. Along with many others. For no valid reason.

 

I grew up in a PCA church, and they used to teach sound doctrine, especially books like Genesis. Sorry to see that. The PCUSA has always been off in left field. To tell the truth, Genesis is no problem for me. I read it and take it literally. The Creation implies a young earth, the flood did occur, Adam down to Abraham did live 100's of years. and yes (in Exodus) the Red Sea was parted. Why not, if they can part a bowl of tomato soup in "Bruce Almighty" I am sure the Lord is quite capable of making everything happen exactly as it is written in His Word.

I have a lot harder time with the book of Revelation deciding if it is literal or symbolic.

 

It is both