I am not conflating anything. We will have to agree to disagree here.
I am certainly not portraying the LORD God as cruel and unjust.
If my memory serves me well, isn’t it the position of many here that billions of years of death and suffering occurred. Now that in my humble opinion would be cruel and unjust if it were true, but thankfully it is a shameful myth that is infecting the minds of many searching here.
Once again, all we can do is agree to disagree.
I do not accept your commentary as valid.
If there was death prior to Adam’s fall, then you are saying that the LORD God thinks that death is good and very good, why is that?
I know that what God creates IS perfect. The LORD God is perfectly Holy, perfectly Honest, perfectly Righteous, and perfectly Just, yet you here, have a problem with Him creating a perfect creation, why is that?
I would have thought that it was rather self evident. Or perhaps you own an immortal dog? What we see all around us makes it abundantly evident that all Biblical life, and indeed all modern organisms that we refer to as being alive, will die at some point in time.
There was no death in the creation when the LORD God first made everything that has been made. Death entered the creation for the very first time when Adam sinned, as the wages of sin is death.
Adam was given dominion over all of the creation was he not?
Adam sinned and brought death into the creation that was not there before he sinned, as the LORD God informs us that surveying all that He had created, He said that it was ‘very good’.
I do not accept your accusation.
We will have to agree to disagree.
Dear Roy,
you believe whatever you will, and I will believe what has been revealed to me. It seems to me that the best we can do is agree that we disagree.
I see no need to interpret the Holy Bible in any way other than by reading the Holy Scriptures with humility and an earnest desire for wisdom. I believe what I believe. The LORD God knows my heart and He knows yours also. I believe what I believe with a clear conscience, I hope that you can do the same.
Jesus was in a human body that could enter a locked room with no one noticing. Said body still bearing the wounds that lead to his death but not apparently the wounds from the scourging, which would be pretty severe.
He could walk with two of his followers on the road to Emmau and not be recognized. Hard to believe they wouldn’t see the wounds on his hands and feet. And even eat a meal.
So all in all I would say He was in a more than human body and hopefully didn’t need to eat, (unless there are going to be cheeseburgers in Heaven). I will ignore Paul who talks of a spiritual resurrection.
I notice you tend to take everything you read literally, even when it wasn’t meant to be. Marshall was making a slightly humorous remark as I often do and which people don’t pick up on.
Yes, it is just as Jesus said, as much as it applies to the casting out of demons, it also applies to appearing in a locked room. Do not forget the fact that Jesus is the Son, part of the Holy Trinity, He IS God, He is the great I AM, He is the Creator. Appearing in a locked room is a small thing for the One Who made the universe.
20 And Jesus said unto them, Because of your unbelief: for verily I say unto you, If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you.Matthew 17:20
Jesus saw fit to ask for a piece of fish to eat, what is that to you?
Bill, why do you doubt?
The Holy Bible is the faithful and true.
Perhaps Jesus was wearing clothes that covered His wounds and His head, or perhaps Jesus prevented them from recognising Him, or perhaps there is another reason, I don’t see that as important whatsoever.
What is important is that He is risen, and that fact was witnessed by many people; I do not know any of the details surrounding any differences, if any, between His resurrected body and His crucified body. Perhaps we will know that in the coming age, perhaps it is not important.
Well please accept my sincere apologies if I missed interpreting what Marshall had written as merely some tongue in cheek humour.
I was responding directly to what did appear to be a strange statement, but as so many of the beliefs I am finding here are so very different to what I understand from reading the Holy Bible in all honesty and sincerity, I missed it. So that it is perfectly clear as to what this is about, I have quoted the matter to which I was responding again below to put this matter in its proper context:
Dear Roy,
all of the points you have raised in the Post160 above are false.
We will just have to agree to disagree. That’s it!
As I have stated previously, you are free to believe what you wish, but don’t expect me to accept the strange and quite clearly false worldview that you adhere to.
I will continue to believe the Holy Bible as written.
Where the text is clearly an account of REAL HISTORY, I will read it as REAL HISTORY, where it is written as poetry I will read it as poetry etc…
Sure you are – you’re saying that animals suffer due to Adam’s sin.
That’s the question. If Jesus killed fish, then killing fish must be good, by definition. If God supplies prey to the lion, then providing prey must be good, by definition.
The problem is that you are establishing a definition of good and imposing it on God rather than asking what the text actually says.
Because I am not ruled by your views, I am ruled by the text – and the text does not use the term “perfect”. You can throw that adjective in front of any attribute you like, but it can’t be justified from the text.
Saying something is self-evident is a great path to misinterpret any kind of literature; it is especially dangerous with ancient literature. The only thing that is evident at all is what the text says.
So you make God out to be cruel again, inflicting wages that were not earned.
The trouble is that this is not what you are actually doing, and you can’t see that. You are reading through a MSWV lens, indeed a materialistic lens.
Nope – you can reject it if you like, but everything there is correct.
But you don’t – you read it through a scientific, materialistic lens – that’s the only reason to expect it to talk science as YEC does. You refuse to admit that it was written as ancient literature to ancient people and not to us.
so let me get this straight…your criticism of the God breathed statement that animals are to eat vegetation is that what about fish…what do they eat? You are joking in that you are straw plucking there right?
show me the text where that is stated? As far as im am aware, what your are claiming isnt biblical…the first specific mention of eating meat is AFTER the Flood, not before. So in trying to make that claim, again, you are adding to the text what isnt there (unless you can provide a reference where God states that before the flood.)
Unlimited women? You know that the actual birthrate from the time of Abraham to the Exodus is only 6-8 children per women right? To you that might seem absurd, however to ancient families it is anything but outrageous…most families were that large and many considerably larger.
Jacob had 12 sons…and that doesnt even count the female children he fathered! He also took about 70 people into Egypt who would have reasonably had relationships with Egyptians…so i dont see any dilemma there.
BTW, the average Roman family had between 4 and 6 children around the time of Christ, Cornelia had 12!
The Romans married their girls off very early. The earliest legal age was 12. That seems to have unusually early, but more girls married from 13 or 14. Perhaps up to 50% of girls were married by aged 15. Marriage seems to have almost universal for women and nearly all women were married or had been married before their early twenties.
In theory, such early marriages should have maximised female fertility. In some cultures, women did not remarry after widowhood or divorce, but in Rome, they did. One might expect that fertility among women would head close to what is called ‘natural fertility levels’, which means on average 8-10 live births per woman. https://ancientromanhistory31-14.com/
You are so used to restricting yourself to Uniformitarian methodology, nothing else makes sense to you outside of that window…and yet here we clearly have loads of notable historical evidence that is demonstrably similar to the Bible claims and you are oblivious to it.
Note the following texts…
8 Then a new king, to whom Joseph meant nothing, came to power in Egypt. 9 “Look,” he said to his people, “the Israelites have become far too numerous for us. 10 Come, we must deal shrewdly with them or they will become even more numerous and, if war breaks out, will join our enemies, fight against us and leave the country.”
Dear Roy,
what you appear to be oblivious to, is the reality that the whole of the creation is directly affected not only by Adams sin and the entry of death into the creation, but also the corrosive effect of that knowledge of good and evil upon the whole of creation.
That knowledge of good and evil was expressed unfortunately to the point that the LORD God was intending to utterly destroy the whole of creation, and if it wasn’t for the presence of one righteous man (Noah), upon the face of the Earth, the LORD God would have destroyed all life on Earth.
But I know that the LORD God is HOLY, RIGHTEOUS, JUST, HONEST, KIND AND LOVING, therefore, to destroy all life because of the corruption brought about by all of mankind does not make the LORD God “cruel and unjust”, because He was going to do the only thing that was HOLY, RIGHTEOUS, JUST, HONEST, KIND and LOVING, and if it wasn’t for Noah, that is exactly what would have occurred.
The seriously grave error in your unbiblical worldview is plain to see.
5 And GOD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. {every…: or, the whole imagination: the Hebrew word signifieth not only the imagination, but also the purposes and desires} {continually: Heb. every day} 6 And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart. 7 And the LORD said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them. {both…: Heb. from man unto beast} 8 But Noah found grace in the eyes of the LORD. Genesis 6:5-7
Once again, utterly deceived nonsense.
As with Marshall, it unfortunately appears that you too are unfortunately not capable of comprehending that the creation when first made was ‘good’ and ‘very good’ as described by God Himself and unfortunately have no idea whatsoever what that actually means, for the ONE and ONLY, HOLY, RIGHTEOUS, JUST, HONEST, KIND and LOVING LORD GOD.
The Holy Bible is far, far too Holy and Sacred and absolutely vital to every Christians walk with God, for this deception to remain hidden; dressed up as honest when they’re bald fabrications, supported by claims of superior knowledge of mastery over 5 languages and Biblical analysis, that if were true, would reveal the Truth that the LORD God is HOLY, RIGHTEOUS, JUST, HONEST, KIND and LOVING, and as a consequence when He said that the creation was ‘good’ and ‘very good’, He was NOT referring to a creation with Death in it, let alone billions of years of suffering and death, ‘red in tooth and claw’.
He was referring to a Creation that was perfect, without suffering, sadness or death, without evil expression of any sort.
In fact precisely as the New Heavens and New Earth will beagain when the LORD God makes all things new, and there will be no more sorrow, no more pain, no more suffering and NO MORE DEATH; just as it was in the beginning.
I pray that you get your head around the reality, in Jesus Holy name.
More obfuscation, when I look around at the world and at the animals and at the stars and galaxies, even now, after the fall of Adam and with evil in the world, the perfection, the beauty still shines through.
Yes it is all heading downhill, genetic diseases are ever increasing, the biosphere is losing order, as errors accumulate, but still the absolute genius of the LORD God and beauty of brilliant design shines through.
More obfuscation. What is self evident is what the text says.
No Roy, it is only you making a false accusation against me, I make no such accusation whatsoever.
I really struggle to believe that you have true Biblical knowledge at all; it appears that you set yourself up to be the devils advocate here. Doesn’t the text of the Holy Bible inform us ever so clearly that ‘the wages of sin is death’?
17 But God be thanked, that ye were the servants of sin, but ye have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine which was delivered you. {which…: Gr. whereto ye were delivered} 18 Being then made free from sin, ye became the servants of righteousness. 19 I speak after the manner of men because of the infirmity of your flesh: for as ye have yielded your members servants to uncleanness and to iniquity unto iniquity; even so now yield your members servants to righteousness unto holiness. 20 For when ye were the servants of sin, ye were free from righteousness. {from…: Gr. to righteousness} 21 What fruit had ye then in those things whereof ye are now ashamed? for the end of those things is death. 22 But now being made free from sin, and become servants to God, ye have your fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life. 23 For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.Romans 6:17-23
Actually, once again Roy, No, this whole smokescreen of your MSWV slant, avoids the reality of the literary genius of the Holy Bible, that means that straightforward honest accounts of real historical events can be clearly understood.
I expect it likely, that reality and profound truth doesn’t suit your purpose here to be a gatekeeper on what the Bible says and means, but the plain fact of the matter is that the LORD God made the Holy Bible to be profoundly understandable to all earnest, contrite and repentant people with a heart for Him.
No Roy, it isn’t, it’s obfuscation and false interpretation based upon a false worldview.
Roy, you make this claim over and over, it appears as if you think that repetition will eventually work.
This claim that I read it through a scientific, materialistic lens" appears to be your mantra, that you pull out continually, without any justification whatsoever. And you throw in ‘materialistic’ which is probably the precise opposite of the truth here, as I am most definitely NOT in any way whatsoever ‘materialistic’.
I believe in the living LORD God, Who made Heaven and Earth, Whose name is King of Kings and Lord of Lords, Jesus Christ my Lord and Saviour, the Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End.
Furthermore, I don’t “refuse to admit that it was written as ancient literature to ancient people” because I truly believe that the HOLY Bible was written to ALL peoples of ALL times, past present and future, thus your claim is both false and narrow; that doesn’t realise the profound brilliance of the text of the Holy Scriptures
Importantly and most unfortunately, what you seem to completely fail to comprehend is that even the languages spoken on Earth throughout history were designed by the LORD God Himself.
Every syllable, every word, indeed every part of the Holy Bible is far more brilliant than I think you understand.
Every atom in the universe, is known to Him. I really don’t think that you appreciate the supreme Majesty and Glory of the LORD God.
Your oft repeated denials and accusations about what sincere people understand and have honestly expressed here, of the wonderfully clearly written message of profound truth expounded in many different translations, once again exposes further flaws in a false worldview underpinning those denials and accusations.
Again, I wish you well, but I cannot stand idly by and allow the very many misrepresentations to go unchallenged and not be exposed for what they really are…
Adam, I would have expected you of all people to not lump animals together as one thing but rather see the importance of the biblical creation kinds. On day six of creation, note how God doesn’t just give “animals” to humanity’s care, but rather specific kinds of animals. It’s even repeated twice (with the last three kinds combined into a superkind the second time):
“have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over the cattle and over all the wild animals of the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth” (Genesis 1:26).
“have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth” (Genesis 1:28).
But then note which kinds are given food a couple verses later:
“And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the air and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food” (Genesis 1:30).
See what’s missing? It’s not straw-plucking, but rather paying attention to the details the inspired author gives us. Fish are not given green plants for food. And the reason is obvious, since the creation of plants on day 3 takes pains to specify that all the created plants are on dry land – earth. Those plants aren’t much use to fish, and no other plants are mentioned.
I’m not even sure where the first explicit mention of eating meat is. There’s the permission to eat all meats that we were discussing, which comes right after the flood, but even that text doesn’t mention anyone actually eating meat. And this is a real problem for the vegetarian reading. Eating the wrong thing plays a major role in the first part of Genesis, but it’s never meat that is the problem. Noah gets into trouble from grapes, bringing a curse upon his family. Cain, the vegetarian grain farmer, becomes murderous when God prefers the offering of his brother who raises, kills and presumably eats animals (otherwise he wouldn’t just sacrifice the fat portions of the firstlings). And the first couple ate the forbidden fruit!
Note how a vegetarian reading completely upturns that first story of sin. The way I read the story, only the fruit of one tree was off-limits. But in the reading you and @Burrawang advocate, eating all sorts of foods would have disobeyed God. If they baked some bread with yeast, that would transgress God’s law to only eat plants. If they took a page from their future deliverer and cooked up some fish, that too would bring sin into the world. In fact, you could even see the connection better in these cases, since by baking the bread they would kill the yeast, or by preparing and gutting the fish they would kill this creature. They would be bringing death into the world by killing, and as punishment, God spreads that death to them as well.
But of course that’s not how the story goes. The death they bring into the world seems entirely disconnected from the death of yeast or fish or goats. It’s the death of people. God’s only dietary restriction on the first humans isn’t vegetarianism, but one specific fruit tree. As the story is written, killing and eating animals would not bring sin into the world.
There is only one forbidden food before the fall, and it’s not meat.
Well it isn’t an explicit mention, but why would Abel raise and slaughter sheep/goats/whatever if not to eat them? Why did God have regard for his offering?
So? Get out your calculator and do the math. Assuming twelve wives per man and eight children surviving to reproduce, you’re still almost two orders of magnitude short of the number given.
Irrelevant – they’re not part of Moses’ line.
You’re changing the subject to avoid the issue: three generation that went from one man to hundreds of thousands.
The only way to get close is to have twelve wives each of whom had twelve children survive to reproduce – but then you have the problem that this one family comprised a quarter of all the people of Israel.
An interesting inference, but also not in the text.
Switching the subject or moving the goalposts or whatever you want to call it; this is fallacious.
So in your view, sticking to the actual text of the scriptures is unbiblical.
I see you skipped the critical verses there. Why did you leave out the part that explains what was happening?
Okay – so Jesus can do evil and it’s okay. Got it.
Exactly – but those are what you’re defining to suit yourself. Nowhere in the scripture is there any indication that animal death before the Fall was evil, and you’re still avoiding the fact that Jesus killed fish, which makes killing animals – or at least fish – good, by definition, or to use your list, it makes killing animals “HOLY, RIGHTEOUS, JUST, HONEST, KIND and LOVING”.
Moving the goalposts fallacy.
No, what you think it says – what you need it to say – is self-evident to you. But you’re adding to the text and pretending that’s what it says, rather than just looking at the text and not adding to it.
How do animals sin? Wages only get paid to the ones who do the work, so for your position to hold, animals have to be sinners.
In context, “the wages of sin” talks about humans, yet you apply it to animals!
There you go again imposing a materialistic worldview onto the scriptures!
The opening chapters of Genesis only look like “accounts of real historical events” if you assume that the text is meant to be objective reporting, and that assumes that they are materialist and scientific – but nothing in the Bible says that its text intends to conveyr any such thing.
He made what it teaches to be understandable, i.e. that all are sinners in need of a Savior. But it does not teach science no matter how strenuously argue that it does, what it teaches is theology. In essence, YEC denies that the Holy Spirit and His chosen writers cared about theology and demands that the speak in twentieth-century reporting mode.
But YEC throws that onto a side table and blathers on about science. Thus YEC is teaching contrary to the Great Commission.
It’s based on the text of the scriptures and on sound reasoning.
The justification is in almost every one of your posts: the moment you say that Genesis 1 is talking about 24-hour days, you’ve imposed a scientific, materialist worldview. Instead of asking what God’s message about His relationship with humans is, you instead demand that the text be read as a science text. You insist that the opening Creation account is about material things – that’s materialistic. You insist that it is scientifically accurate – that is scientific. You insist that it is objective reporting – that is scientific-materialistic.
Then you believe contrary to the scriptures. If that had been the case, Paul would have written, “To the church of God in Corinth and to all peoples of all times”, but he didn’t. Again, you’re adding to the text – at best; at worst you’re saying Paul didn’t even know what he was doing.
Sorry, but you throw away the brilliance of the opening Creation story by refusing to admit that it is ancient literature. If Genesis was written as what you claim, there;s no genius to it, it becomes a plodding simplistic story. If it was written as what it is – two different types of literature at once with (at least) three different theological messages, it is of such genius as a lifetime of study might not unravel.
Bash my messages all you want, but I am simply telling you what the scriptures are and what the text says – and you’re not going to budge me from that. When I took Hebrew, the professor emphasized that we were taking on a serious, even holy obligation to uphold the text, the whole text, and nothing but the text, and I am not going to shrink from that duty.
It is notable that his family was not the average, but rather was exceptionable and that is probably why it is noted. Most estimates are that 50% of all babies died during childhood in ancient times. Maternal mortality was also quite high. Getting 12 kids required multiple wives most of the time, I imagine.
That’s a good point – the entire sacrificial system rests on something the YECers here are saying is evil, as though new wrongs can make a right.
I’m thinking of the verse that says the life is in the blood, which is what makes Abel’s sacrifice worthy; there is life there being offered (not to predators but) to God.
Indeed there is no passage about death coming into the world where the context doesn’t indicate it’s about human death. And that difference tells us that it isn’t just death of the body, which can happen to animals, it’s something more, something that kills what connects us to God.
It certainly did in Jacob’s case - he effectively had 4 wives. Which meant 3 other men had none, and Jacob’s offspring have to be divided by four for population growth calculations.
Counting male lineages is pointless. It’s the female line that has the limitations.
It’s truly bizarre to discuss anything with you. I attempted to discuss scripture on your terms, and you reply with hand waving and a calculation on population growth prior to the Exodus that has nothing to do with how many grandchildren Kohath had in Moses’ lifetime. Let’s try a simpler calculation. If a man has 16 grandchildren, we can take the square root of 16 and say he had four children who each had four children. If he has 64 grandchildren, we can say he had eight children who each had eight children.
Now, let’s try that with 8600. The square root is about 93. So Kohath had 93 children who each had 93 children. All of them male. (Otherwise, Kohath had 186 children of both sexes, and his children did too.) If Kohath had 10 wives who averaged 9.3 male births, he hit the target. Abraham had eight sons with three women. Not enough. Isaac had two sons. Woefully short. Jacob had 12 sons by four different women. Not bad, but he still trails Kohath by 81. And it just gets worse. Each of Kohath’s sons also need 10 wives who average 9.3 male births. The maths don’t add up, as they say. It’s a genealogical pyramid scheme.
Then where are the historical narratives that you claim “fill in the gaps” between the single lineage given in Genesis 5 or 11? I’ll make it simple for you. Show me the narrative that fills in the gap between Seth and Enosh, or Shelah and Eber. I’ll wait.
“It’s more complicated than that” isn’t a scholarly principle. W.H. Green was a noteworthy 19th century theologian and scholar. Maybe you should read the article yourself and reply in your own words instead of cutting and pasting whatever YEC apologist you can find on the internet.
What the heck are you on about? This is not some gap theory, and it has nothing to do with alternative spelling of names. If you’d bothered to read W.H. Green’s essay, you’d know that he mentioned a bunch of cases where names had alternate spellings. It doesn’t affect his argument in the slightest.
I only noted it because it’s about as sound as your cut-and-pasted arguments.
True. Like all societies prior to the 20th century discovery of antibiotics and vaccines, ancient Israel suffered high rates of infant mortality and childhood disease. Statistically, the average woman who gave birth to six children would see one die in infancy, another die before the age of 14, and a third die before turning 19. When barely half of live births survived to maturity, ancient society was understandably less sentimental about its children than modern society.
Note: I should also add that having 12 sons in a row is like flipping heads 12 times in a row. That’s 1 in 4096. No shade against Jacob. It’s possible. But add on top the 50-50 likelihood that all 12 sons also lived to adulthood in the ancient world. That’s flipping another 12 heads in a row. The odds against flipping 144 (12x12) heads in a row?
All of this forgets three big factors: infant mortality rates, maternal mortality rates and actual fecundity rates, and that extrapolating a maximum to a population doesn’t work.
The highest birth rates in any countries today are about 6 births per woman, but that rate is unusable as-in for population growth in the ancient world–factoring in typical infant mortality rates of 40-50% reduces that to about 3-3.5 surviving children per woman. For very small populations (low enough to not be regressing to the mean, so dozens at the most) or ones with a lot of additions to the adult population (i.e., lots of marrying outsiders), this can be higher.
Not all were boys… Dinah was in the mix, and she’s just one who was mentioned, as part of a story about the boys. Maybe there were other girls too that either didn’t survive to adulthood or were beneath mention since women weren’t important. None of which defeats your main point, of course. That still stands.
