How do you decide what is True in the Bible?

well, see, you're under a bit of a mistaken impression here.

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Mat 5:17 Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.

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none of the law was done away with. tonight, i had a ham and cheese sandwich, on leavened bread. that's pretty sinful, isn't it?what jesus came to do was to excuse us for breaking those laws, and to teach us why they were there. if we're going to take jesus's word that it's not what goes into our mouths that makes us impure, we must aslo take the bit that says it's what comes out. jesus didn't say "do not judge" so that we could ignore him and judge others. no, ej. you don't get it. i'm arguing your position. you came on here and said we have to take all of the bible, including the old testament. i'm not arguing that we should get rid of ANY of the law. i'm showing that you're completely ignoring your own words, and picking and choosing what you like and dislike from the bible. you're ruling out half of exodus, and all of leviticus and deuteronomy. i'm not. so, we're part of the tree......but we're not part of the tree? make up your mind. either we've been grafted into the family, and thus have to obey its rules, or we have not. paul doesn't like gays. we know this. even if the word does seem to only mean adult/child homosexuality in greek, paul's still very disapproving of all kinds of sexual practices. paul himself says that he thinks that people should avoid sex altogether, but realizes that this is an unreasonable idea. but you've done just that! you've said that you ignore the dietary LAWS. the WORDS OF GOD. and you're basing it on a vague understanding of pauline theology. jesus christ died for our sins. יְהוָה is immortal. the two are not compatible. they cannot be the same for this very reason. how could god sacrifice himself to himself to rid us of his rules? kind of silly if we start investigating the logical outcomes of this. why does god talk to himself, and beg himself to make his suffering go away in the garden of gethsemane? why does god refer to himself as the way to get to himself? why do we call god his own son?more importantly, since jesus was in some part human (being mortal) he was made in the image of god. worship of an image of god is called idolatry.what you're arguing -- the trinity -- is pure dogma. it was started before the bible was translated into various vulgates for the masses. it's not in the bible. tell me, ej, you've studied the bible for some 30 years now. can you point out the two typos to me? because some scribe more than 2000 years ago apparently had bad handwriting, and wrote a consonant a little short in two places. so it got copied as a different letter.the idea that the bible is one solid book, front to back, total and complete, and without even the most human error in its keeping, copying, editting, or translation is a sure sign of a severe lack of understanding of even the basic construction of the book.am i just finding faults? no. because i'm sure you think i just get my kicks out of pointing out flaws to fundamentalists like some kind of militant athiest. but that's not what i'm about. i'd rather love the book for what it really is than some childishly simplistic and idolatrous view of it. i am not a bibolator. my god is above being confined to a book. nor can i. open your eyes and look, ej. it's a really interesting book if you keep digging and looking harder. i can't promise the journey won't be scary and faith testing. but it's sure a lot more interesting of a read.This message has been edited by arachnophilia, 08-11-2005 10:12 PM

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אָרַח

Examine the opening chapters in J. B. Rotherhams' "The Emphasized Bible" and then read the first chapter in Genesis and you may get a better understanding. This statement is somewhat confusing. Are you claiming here that "the evidence provided by modern geology and astrophysics" supports a six day creation?

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"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed." Albert Einstein

Perhaps you could give me a quote instead of a title. I apologize if my wording was confusing to you. I meant to say that "modern astrophysics and geology directly and explicitly contradict both Young Earth belief as well as six day creation. From the evidence we have gathered in both fields, neither YEC or 6-day Creation was even remotely possible unless God did the biggest coverup of all time to purposely mislead us."Is that more clear?

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Every time a fundy breaks the laws of thermodynamics, Schroedinger probably kills his cat.

yes, show us. because i have a pretty decent knowledge of what the hebrew says, and it would have to totally bend the meaning of the word "day" or translate the whole passage metaphorically somehow for it to mean something else.there is a reason it's "day" and not "some arbitrary length of time" btw. the first chapter of genesis is the etiology of the sabbath. 6 days of work, 1 day off. it was written to explain why the hebrews have that custom, and why it's important. it needs to be directly analogous, not just symbolic, for it to make sense. the days in genesis 1 have to be literal for it to be a literal week, for it to be OUR literal week.

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אָרַח

I do not subscribe to the idea that the "days" in the verses of Genesis below mean anything other than literal 24 hour periods. While one can correctly argue that "day", (yowm-3117 Strongs' concordance), does not always mean a 24 hour period, they would be hard pressed to explain away the definition of "day" God Himself has given us in the opening chapter of Genesis when describing the process of creation. One thing that science has not been able to wrap its' mind around is the fact that in the above verses God tells us that light is almost immediately present in the process of creation but the creation of the luminary bodies are not mentioned until later in this process. Here we are given the idea that first God made the luminaries and then spread them throughout the expanse of the heavens, which can serve to eliminate the argument that light from stars a billion light-years away could not have reached the earth if the earth is only 6000 to 10,000 years old. Now remember that I am not a YEC, but my holding to the OEC theory (can I call it that?) does not make me correct and someone holding to the YEC wrong.Now here is where those who hold to the TOE may begin to ask, "and just where were all of these billions of stars located before God spread them throughout the expanse of the heavens?", to which I would have to answer "I don't know! Perhaps God held them in the palm of His hand and then spread them throughout the expanse even as a sower spreads his seeds.I am not one who insists that the Bible answers every question that man may choose to conceive, but I believe that it does answer every question that man needs to understand the plan of salvation that God has provided for us as believers in His Word. God is God and His Word is eternal. I have all eternity to ponder the answers to those things that I do not yet understand.

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"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed." Albert Einstein

Yup. The description in Genesis has the Earth being created before the sun.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

It does only if one accepts the widespread view that there is no noticable span of time between Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2I contend that verse 2 and onwards is a description of God re-creating after a previous and cataclysmic overthrow of the earth, most likely a result of satans' original fall. I have continuous discussions with my colleagues regarding this, many of whom cannot accept this idea and that is fine as it has no bearing on salvation.

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"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed." Albert Einstein

Please show the sections in Genesis 1 that support your contention.In fact, show the section in Genesis 1 that shows Satans Fall.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

good. it depends on the usage. there's a few different distinctive usages of the word for day:1. a 24hr period
2. the ~12hrs the sun is in the sky (like in english)
3. "in the day that" meaning "when"
4. days of someone's life, meaning "year."the only one of those that does not have a set length is the "when" one. and that's causal. one thing happens, the other happens. everything else is a defined period of time, so the word "day" cannot mean a geologic era or long period of time. right, the context tells us (especially with the definition in the chapter) that it has to mean 24hrs. the bible does support some form of yec. it says the earth was created in a week.also. i don't like that translation. it's hard to read. and that's the wrong tense. the sense of a lot of translations is that the earth existed prior to the heavens and the seven days of creation, but in some kind of null state (like water without a glass). depending on the grammar of the sentance, this could be read other ways, but the earth BECOMING formless and void is not one of them to my knowledge. i see no indication anywhere of prior existance of anything on the earth anywhere in the text, but this verse implies it.now, this prior existance of the earth doesn't seem to really mean much. it's raw material, sort of. much of the creation act is division and collection. sorting, so to speak. this is like god creating light out of darkness. your earth is like the light compared to the old earth's darkness. no, light is not immediately present. it's the first step, but it's not there to start with. darkness is. but you're right. the originators of the story didn't seem to connect daylight with the sun . to other cultures, the sun would be a god who rules over the day, and moon a god who rules over the night. the hebrew story is the same, minus the other gods.remember, this is not a science textbook. they're not concerned with why the world is the way it is, but why THEY are the way they are. the story is more about the origin of the sabbath than anything else. it's observations of natural world are incident, and incorrect i might add.for instance, read closely. it's describing very accurately the ancient middle eastern view of the world. a flat earth (not directly implied) with a solid dome about it called "heaven" that keeps out the water above. the water above and below is the second division god makes. this water is called "the deep." flip forward to noah. the flood waters come through windows god makes in heaven. he lets the water above come down, and the water below come up, returning creation to its original liquid state.now, we've been out of our atmosphere. there's nothing solid to stop us, and there's no water outside of it. to believe the bible absolutely literally, we have to disregard galileo and magellan, let alone nasa and the photographic evidence. if you think the story accurately fits modern science, you're just not reading closely enough. no, they're placed in the heaven. heaven is a thin material object that separates the deep, and provides the air pocket of our atmosphere. look up the root of the word. it comes from the word describing hammering, as with a forge, meaning "to spread out" or "make flat."all of the stars in this flattened thing that surrounds the earth. they're all the same distance from us. this is consistent with every culture everywhere at the time. they didn't exist. god created them there. god spread the heaven, not the objects in it. in your opinion, is the age of the universe one of those things?

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אָרַח

noticable span? i can't even get the two stories to line up at all! i find no indication of satan's fall anywhere in the old testament, and one rather ambiguous reference in the new. and some prophesy about how he WILL fall.i see nothing in the text that indicates a re-creation. it's be a cool story if it was there though.

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אָרַח

I believe you are actually referring to another book, perhaps to the book of Ezekiel. or perhaps you are referring to the book of Isaiah... We are getting into some serious study here and I doubt that there are many here at EVC who are interested in the "milk of the Word", let alone the real "meat of the Word of God." Perhaps there is a better forum to have a Bible study as we are bound to get way off topic continuing this discussion. Just a thought.

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"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed." Albert Einstein

you're a pastor. you should know better, > KING OF TYRE. <they are comparing his gaurdianship of tyre -- metaphorically -- to this:

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Gen 3:24 So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.

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which is not only post "fall of man" but NOT satan. keep reading. > MAN <conquerer of nations. let me think, who could that be. well, considering the hebrew were a conquered nation at the time, and were in babylon under nebuchadnezzar, i wonder. look at the intro:

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Isa 14:4 That thou shalt take up this proverb against the king of Babylon, and say, How hath the oppressor ceased! the golden city ceased!

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> KING OF BABYLON <what's the fall referencing?

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Gen 11:9 Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the LORD did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the LORD scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.

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it's good to know, btw, that neduchadnezzar signed the plaque at bab-el's ziggurat in 623bc upon it's completion. isaiah 14 is a taunt against him, saying his tower that elevates him to the level of the gods would be shaken, and he'd fall and be punished as a captive in the nation he conquered.there is no reasonable way to read EITHER chapters as about satan.This message has been edited by arachnophilia, 08-13-2005 02:59 AM

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אָרַח

No we are talking about Genesis 1 and the creation account. You made the statement that there is some long time period between Gen 1.1 and Gen 1.2 and that gen 1.2 is some recreation after the fall of Satan.I'm simply pointing out to you that there is not even a hint in Gen 1 that either is correct.No, I'm not refering to either of those because neither has anything to do with Satan. There is a great description of the Fall of Satan in The First Book of Adam & Eve which was popular at around after the time after of Christ and which pretty much became incorporated into the Koran.This message has been edited by jar, 08-13-2005 10:30 AM

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

it's also quite popular christian lore, relating to azazel in the book enoch, satan in revelation (even though that's prophesy) and a few other bits. it seems to be really solidified by the time of milton's "paradise lost" but i don't think he originated the idea.personally, i don't know exactly where it came from. i certainly can't find it in the old testament, and it's only marginally there in the new.(also, i think ej is avoiding my replies)

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אָרַח

Well, the First & Second Books of Adam & Eve were written fairly late and were definitely designed to build the Jesus story. They go into lots of detail on the Fall of Satan. It is also classic Max Sennett.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion