Yes, especially since that is what the Latter Day Saints religion (Mormons) teaches! They claim that they was a total apostasy in the early days of Christianity and that Joseph Smith was chose to preach the restored Gospel. (Such chutzpah)
They (and we) are like the kids in the back seat.
Are we there yet? Are we there yet? When will we get there?
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Mervin, its funny but I had not viewed myself in this light until you pointed it out: I am like an impatient kid on humanity’s journey towards superior creature-hood. 2,000 years ago Jesus instructed how we could truly become Children of the Father. Why has it taken so long? Then I realize I am not using the same time frame that I am comfortable with when fossil hunting in the Nevada mountains. There, in the lower formations, I find crinoids and corals from the Mississippian that are 350 million years old. Driving northward along the tilted formations, I reach the Triassic, where I find 250 million year old ammonoids. Driving even further I reach the Cretaceous where 150 million year old brachiopods are abundant. So, on display is life evolving over a span of 200 million years. But in my own lifetime, I am impatient that Homo sapiens is making such slow progress in developing the potential that God sees in us.
Al Leo
The timelines you mention also remind me of another irony …maybe I’ve brought it up in these forums before.
The early church folks would have no doubt have been stunned and dismayed if they could have known that Jesus’ return (which they thought so imminent) would still not yet have happened – even in the next two thousand years! – because that would have been such a large chunk of time to their historical outlook. But today, looking at billions of years, enables one to remember that Jesus in the flesh was walking our streets just a couple days ago. And so it falls more to those who commit themselves to young-earth histories to be vulnerable to the skeptic’s stinging question … so where is He?
It’s swings and roundabouts of course, Merv. Us old earthers have to deal with the skeptics’ old chestnut “Are not the events of human history entirely insignificant compared to all those of the last 13+ billion in all those galaxies?”
Neither position is prefereable from that point of view - but I guess both benefit from remembering that to the Lord a day is as a thousand years and vice versa. In other words, salvation history only really makes sense when God is above space and time: he is “immense”, which means not huge, but non-measurable.
Good point, Jon! There really is no such thing as invulnerability in our human condition.
Correct me if I’m wrong, Al, but I seem to remember you saying you were 94 or thereabouts? You and I have different interpretations of patience! I hope to have your sharpness of mind when I am 20 years younger than that. God bless you for your patient persistence in hope!
I agree. And, at the risk of offending any dispensationalists among us, I would add that the past 50 years of end-times fever sparked by The Late Great Planet Earth have done nothing but add fuel to the skeptic’s fire. Interestingly, both dispensationalists and young-earth creationists share the same literal hermeneutic. (The Left Behind authors were at one time predicting the rise of the literal city of Babylon as the center of world trade.) In fact, I would venture a guess that there is almost perfect overlap between the groups, so your insight may be more on target than you first thought, Mervin. Between these two faulty and vociferous theological errors, if we haven’t already reached the point that Peter predicted in 2 Pet. 3:4, imagine what the scoffers will be saying in another 50 years.
This is an example of the negative impact that poor theology can have.
What a great definition! Thanks for that. It is funny, but that same third chapter of 2 Peter that refers to the scoffers also alludes to Gen. 1 and the flood, as well as the oft-repeated verse that a thousand years are like a day to the Lord. Interesting chapter to interpret, that one!
Coming back to God’s sovereignty, I am thinking about the billions of years the universe has existed in comparison to man’s existence, and for some reason it impressed upon me the short duration of humanity’s rebellion against God. We truly are “like grass”…
I’m also struck by Al’s mention of patience, and about the fact that our spiritual maturity is in imitation of Christ, who is the likeness of the invisible God. The Psalms and the prophets constantly cry out, “How long, O Lord?!” And the Lord’s answer is almost always for us to have patience. Now, if part of our spiritual maturity, in imitating the Lord, is to learn and grow in patience, then I conclude that the Lord is patient, so we should never be surprised that he “takes his time” to achieve his desired results.
Then again, maybe I’m just rambling while I wait for the coffee to take effect. God bless you all for your faithful witness!
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Jay, Teilhard’s philosophy has had a lasting impression on me, because it uses scientific knowledge about the Universe to give the proper perspective to humanity’s place in it. Following his thinking, the first 10 billion years after the Big Bang was dominated by the Cosmosphere. Four billion yeas ago the Cosmosphere gave birth to the Biosphere (here on earth, at least). Just about 40 thousand years ago, the Biosphere produced Consciousness and the sphere of ideas that Teilhard dubbed the Noosphere was born. (Again, 40K yrs. here on earth; it may have begun earlier elsewhere). Although it is only 0.00029% as old, the Noosphere may be what the Cosmosphere was “aiming toward” from the beginning. So it is of equal importance. And, until Sagan’s SETI is successful. we humans appear to be the Noosphere’s only inhabitants. So we are NOT just like grass. It is NOT just chutzpah to think we matter to God. And in regard to Adam’s rebellion, almost every parent knows that when their “little bundle of joy” reaches the age of two, the word they use most often is: NO!!
Al Leo
P.S. Thanks for the complement. I will be 91 this month, and the gears in this old mind move mightly slowly, when they mesh at all.
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