Hi Gerald - this comment made me wonder if you’re a Seventh-day Adventist (since they have a particular emphasis on Sabbath-keeping that is nearly unique to them as a denomination). YEC and emphasis on sabbath almost always equals SDA in my experience.
I had a student this last year who was SDA. It was not an easy year for him. Young-earth creation and antievolutionism are major parts of SDA theology - and he could see clearly that the scientific evidence supported neither position.
I’ve often wondered what causes intelligent people to reject evidence that’s, as the old saying goes, “As plain as the nose on your face.” (Mine’s pretty plain, too!) Here’s my suggestion – it’s called “Presuppositionalism.” This is a quote from my book:
Presuppositionalism is a branch of Christian apologetics which claims that the Christian faith is the only basis for rational thought. It attempts to expose flaws in other worldviews. Presuppositionalism originated with Cornelius Van Til, (1895-1987) Christian philosopher and Reformed theologian.
Hugh Ross explains this point of view by saying: “According to some of its advocates, presuppositionalism says all human reasoning and interpretation of scientific evidence must be subordinate to a Biblical interpretation of reality. Some young earth creationists adopt an extreme form of presuppositionalism, asserting that any scientific interpretation of the record of nature can be discounted in light of their young earth interpretation of the words of the Bible."
In an article titled “Evidentialism vs. Presuppositionalism,”[patheos.com, 9/23/11] author Libby Anne says,
Answers in Genesis, a young earth creationist group that runs the creationist museum in Kentucky and has recently embraced presuppositionalism apologetics wholeheartedly, is actually completely open about the fact that it simply rejects evidence that contradicts their interpretation of the Biblical account of creation. It is not about the evidence. It is about the presupposition. And no matter what you say, you are not going to change their minds.
One more thing… my mind was changed, and that’s true of many others. Gerald is absolutely correct in knowing, and arguing his case passionately, that there’s a lot at stake here. The One who changes minds, according to my understanding of the Christian faith, is the Holy Spirit. When it comes to an issue as important as this, it’s crucial that all of the evidence, scriptural and scientific, is laid out for all to see. The rest, as I say, is up to the one who, as Jesus says, “… will lead you into all truth.” (John 16:13)
Fair enough. Are they conservative or liberal in Theology? My next question is how they see and treat scripture - inerrant and infallible? If they hold those conservative views, my next question would be - how do they treat Genesis - prose - poetry - literal or hyperliteral?
Either way, Biologos presents former YEC clergy with a challenge on Paul’s teaching, the fall, death and original sin which is the foundation of the gospel - atonement etc expiation etc.
Thanks for your kind response fmiddel
The folks I deal with as a pastor are primarily conservative in their theology. For most liberals, this bus left the station a long time ago. The folks I know who have changed their minds generally hold to the inerrancy of scripture, along the lines of The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, which proposes that “when all the facts are known, the bible (in its autographs, that is the original documents) properly interpreted in light of the culture and the means of communication that had developed by the time of its composition, is completely true in all that it affirms, to the degree of precision intended by the author’s purpose, in all matters related to God and his creation.” Much thought by evangelical scholars and others has already gone into the theological implications of an old earth, pro-evolutionary view. Scholars such as Alister McGrath, Peter Enns, John Walton, Denis Lamoureux, Ian Barbour and John Polkinghorne have grappled with these issues and have offered updated proposals. It’s an interesting time in the church.
Phew. There’s a lot of wiggle room in that statement and an easy out- since science is never done we will never know all the facts!
Thanks for sharing some of your story, Tim. Probably this was only one of many steps in your journey, but I think it’s a common one. I’ve wondered about Jesus’ use of Noah too. Here is how I make sense of it.
First, what Jesus said about Noah follows directly on his clearest statement that he doesn’t know everything:
“But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. For as the days of Noah were, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark, and they knew nothing until the flood came and swept them all away, so too will be the coming of the Son of Man.” (Matthew 24:36–39)
If the problem is that Jesus doesn’t know everything, that’s admitted before Jesus brings up Noah. From other parts of the New Testament, it seems that God the Son took on a project that required the shedding of many divine possessions, including complete knowledge. Jesus was still God without these possessions, just as a child remains human even when asleep and lacking consciousness.
Second, nothing in Jesus’ words require a global flood. In fact, in the other account of this saying (Luke 17:26–30), he follows the flood that “destroyed them all” with Sodom’s apocalypse that “destroyed all of them.” Both illustrate what the day of his coming will be like. Because Jesus places his coming within a generation in other places, some think he was predicting the sack of Jerusalem and destruction of the temple in 70 AD. If so, that event was earth-shattering for the Jewish people, but not global. Regardless of whether Jesus is referring to this coming in judgement or a final coming at the end of time, it was something that could be illustrated by local events.
Third, the source for Jesus’ words about Noah isn’t just Genesis, since it has no record of the details about eating and marrying. Other Jewish writings contain details like that, and either those writings or similar traditions may have been common in Jesus’ day. This provided a shared story Jesus could draw on to make his point. But note that his point is about his coming, not Noah’s days. The stuff about Noah’s days is assumed common ground. An entirely fictional story would work just as well as Noah, so long as he and his audience both knew that story.
Just as Jesus compares those who will experience his coming to those in Noah’s day, elsewhere in Matthew he compares his own generation with children chanting a rhyme:
‘But to what will I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the market-places and calling to one another, “We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not mourn.” (Matthew 11:16–17)
Again, the historical existence of these children and whether they actually played the flute is immaterial. The point is not them, but the generation hearing Jesus speak. The children simply provide an illustration drawn from their shared culture.
All that to say I don’t see Jesus’ use of Noah as good reason to write him off. He didn’t claim to know everything, he made no claims about a global flood, and he was using common knowledge rather than revealing historical details.
That inerrancy statement is trying hard to capture the legitimate challenges of the interpretive task. I agree that there’s a lot of wiggle room built into it – too much in fact. The issue of inerrancy is, in my opinion, at the heart of evangelical unease with science generally and biological science specifically and that’s why the authors of that statement bend over backwards to remind Christians that there are lots of moving parts involved. On the one hand we don’t want to lose the God-given authority of the scriptures. On the other hand, we don’t want to force the scriptures to be something they are not or to say what the authors never intended to say.
I’m sorry some specifics would help about the student.
But the part about your wondering, has me wondering also. Just what did I say about the Sabbath that caused you to wonder?
As long as we take the Scriptures for what they say, we won’t have to worry. God said it, I believe it.
Please remember the prophecies about the end days. Men would not endure sound doctrine. There will be a falling away. Note, the world is not with God. So it can’t fall away from where it is not. So the question is, who is doing the falling away from God. Of course that would be the church. And the church’s only way of falling away from God is by disobedience to God’s Word. Not believing in what He has said. Which is not enduring sound doctrine.
Many Christian churches are claiming that homosexuality is not sinful. Some deny that God did not created the Universe in just six days. That God’s Sabbath is not His Sabbath anymore. That the dead are not asleep, and that God will cause the wicked to suffer for all eternity. This one is the worse, because satan’s deception is to cause us to believe a lie about God. Even though the Bible says that God is love, we think otherwise.
We need to go back to the “thus sayeth the Lord” and hang on to this. Not upon what I say, or anyone else. Verify all from God’s Word.
My, my, my. Did you get your fingers all tied up in knot, while wresting the Scriptures from the truth?
Christ specifically stated what He did not know. He didn’t give a day,for His return, and then say, but “I really don’t know. Only my Father knows”. No, He came out and said that He didn’t know.
But He knew of Noah. He knew of what happened. If by nothing other than what He, (that’s right), He had told Moses to write about the flood.
Plus there are plenty of other non biblical proofs that support the flood. And about the Exodus. Stop listening to what the atheists say. Satan is using them to deceive. There is proof. All we have to do is stop rejecting that proof.
God will not stop the deceptions from being told. We have to decide to believe or reject the truth.
Again, we would invite you to share something that you think is proof on a new thread and lets discuss it from a scientific perspective.
Most protestant denominations don’t place a large emphasis on “sabbath keeping” in the Jewish sense because it’s specifically called out in the New Testament as optional, and a matter of conscience for individual believers. One man considers one day sacred; another considers every day alike; Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath; that kind of thing. SDAs are one denomination that doesn’t agree with this overall trend; hence, when sabbath keeping is held up as one of the major things of the faith, my experience has usually been that the person advancing that idea is SDA. Not universally, but often. SDAs also hold Ellen White in high regard, and she claimed to have visions that creation happened pretty much as a literal read of Genesis. So, most SDAs are YECs as well, though there is a subcurrent of academic SDAs who are not.
“Specifically called out as optional where” in the New Testament.
First you would have to prove that any of God’s commandments are “optional”.
Then you would have to provide a “Thus sayeth the Lord” where God says, “You know that day I created and called my own, in the Old Testament? Well, I changed my mind.”
Then, you would need to provide an answer as to why God tells us that in the Earth made new, God tell us that we were going to come to worship Him from one Sabbath to another" Isaiah 6:23
Where in any of the verses mentioned in your post, has God telling us His people, grafted into the family of God, that His Sabbath can be profaned?
Remember that God’s Word can not be used to contradict His Word. If there is a discrepancy found, it is because of our understanding, which must be changed.
So if you believe that God tells us to keep His Sabbath in one place, a commandment for which those who broke it could have been put to death, (the wages of sin), and then someone says "God didn’t mean that. He changed His Law. Setting one of His commandments aside, even though He said (heaven and earth would pass, before my Word changes.), Even though He says that (if you break one, you break all), (Even though, we don’t find any direct commands that would counter a direct command),
Where would you be getting this understanding from?
How does God telling us, “that He is Lord of what He created, the Sabbath”, telling us that we can now break His Law? My understanding is that God was telling those who were trying to tell Him how to keep His own law, that He knew how to keep His own law.
And if what you are suggesting is true, would it not have been in effect from the time the Sabbath was created? If God making the Sabbath for man, way back then, meant that man can do as they please with His Sabbath, then why did God bother to include “keeping the Sabbath holy” as one of His commandments?
When you go to a brother or sister, fallen in a particular sin, are you going to quote the whole of God’s commandments to explain that their particular sin is causing them to be lost?
No. You present that sin.
So today, there are many who do not know that they are in danger of being lost. If they know of God’s commandment and yet refuse to honor Him by keeping it, Isaiah 58:13-14; Exodus 3:clock5:
Christ did not break His Sabbath. He demonstrated how it was meant to be kept. He demonstrated that the Sabbath was meant to do good on. No work, yes. No finding our own pleasure, yes. But to not do good on, No.
But Christ did break the interpretation of the Sabbath held at that time. It does get sticky when we start looking at what keeping the Sabbath means.
The group I was with stayed at a hotel catering to the ultra Orthodox while in Israel the past week over the Sabbath, and it was interesting. We had to pay our bills before sundown as no transactions could be done the next morning when we left, and it was interesting seeing the families together.
It gave me a new appreciation for Sabbath keeping. We will see if that leads to a change in my behavior.
We have a collection of resources and articles for pastors, I hope you can find them some comfort and assistance.
Jewish boundary markers like sabbath, circumcision and kosher food laws are a big deal in the New Testament church - will Gentiles who come in have to keep these boundary markers to be “real Christians”? The answer is no, they do not.
One man considers one day scared, another considers every day alike.
Buy and eat anything sold in the marketplace without raising an issue of conscience for “the earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it.”
Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision mean anything; what counts is allegiance (pistis) to Jesus.
What goes into a man cannot defile him, for it passes out of him. By this Jesus declared all foods clean.
Are we reading the same New Testament? 
And yes, I’ve read all the SDA interpretations of these verses, and they are, in my opinion, eisegetical.
Or try reading Galatians if you want to see what Paul thinks about communities of Gentile Christians binding themselves to Jewish boundary markers.
This is what keeping the Sabbath was when God told them about the Sabbath in the beginning. But keeping the Sabbath does not change our behavior. Keeping the Sabbath is a result of our behavior being changed after we have allowed Christ to change our nature from the old or natural worldly one, to that of the one given to us when Christ changes our hearts from stone to flesh.
But you are right to participate in the worship of God on the Sabbath, is an experience that will only be surpassed when we worship God that first time in the earth made new.
“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” -Colossians 4:6
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