i.e. the post I was answering.
It’s not the first time i have heard it either.
Richard
The OT talks about chattel slavery and indentured servitude. While the chattel slavery may not be an exact match for the modern version, it was close. Exodus 21:2-6, “the wife and her children shall belong to her master”, certainly sounds like chattel slavery.
Except you are trying to force evolution onto a certain track and ignore natural selection. That would be selective breeding, like we do for dogs.
But Adam and Eve don’t count as Hebrews – the Hebrews start with Abraham & Co.
Selective breeding isn’t really evolution, and “forc[ing] evolution onto a certain track and ignor[ng] natural selection” would be contrary to evolution – that’s an ideology, not action consonant with science.
Dear Roymond,
Who mentioned the Hebrews?
`
Is not this yet another attempt at putting words into my mouth that I didn’t say, because my worldview is very different to yours?
What I did say, and say loud and clear is:
“WE ARE ALL ONE HUMAN FAMILY, EVERYONE ON EARTH IS FAMILY IN TRUTH AS WE ARE ALL DESCENDED FROM ADAM AND EVE.”
God bless,
jon
Dear Roymond,
this what is called using our God given ‘logic’ to deduce what is plainly obvious.
Your monotonous repetition of “the text doesn’t say that” does not add anything useful to the discussion at hand.
I would expect that most on this site would be well versed in the Scriptures and all know as I do that the text does not say that anywhere; it is a logical deduction from the information we are given in the Bible that Noah and his family built the ark.
The point I was hoping to make is that the ark would have taken an ENORMOUS amount of effort and time to build, as there were no power tools, electric motors, chainsaws, bulldozers, log snigging machinery, electrically or internal combustion engine powered sawmills, etc… as they would only have had hand tools to use.
Your continual interjection of “the text doesn’t say that” and your interpretation of scripture, that is refined to suit your worldview is utilsed to provide a method to explain away what is clearly inconvenient to how you wish to interpret the Bible; i.e., the clearly obvious literal history of creation and the flood, that covered ALL the LAND under Heaven, (i.e., it was a GLOBAL flood), as we are clearly told in Genesis and referred to elsewhere in the Bible.
Jesus Himself accepted the scriptures as authoritative and true, after all HE IS THE CREATOR, He was there, there is no-one else under Heaven who saw the creation except the only Living God.
God bless,
jon
Dear Roymond,
unfortunately, you are avoiding the issue, using the obviously well tested tactic of claiming that others are making the ‘scriptures talk science’ when they clearly aren’t.
Accusing people of doing things that they aren’t doing, is not a good look for anyone.
The question here is WHY do you think God asked Noah to build an ark as God desired to kill every human on Earth because of the rampant evil inherent in mankind at that time, except those onboard the ark, IF, the flood was only a local flood in an area somewhere in the Middle East.
It just makes NON SENSE. That belief is obviously in serious error.
I don’t think you fully comprehend the enormous effort required to construct a sea going vessel the size of the ark from scratch.
No the Bible doesn’t say this, but it is OBVIOUS that Noah couldn’t go down to the lumber yard or hardware store to purchase the materials required!
Noah had to first, obtain the raw building materials, and tools and then work exceedingly hard to build the ark, that is a logical given!
But you still haven’t answered the straightforward question, why do you think God had Noah build an enormous ark if all He had to do was tell Noah to move to higher ground if the flood was only a ‘local flood’?
The whole ‘local flood’ belief system is clearly false teaching that is misleading many from the truth of the Scriptures.
I know you disagree, that is your right, but it is also my right to believe as Jesus does that the Scriptures are authoritative and true.
The flood covered ALL the land under Heaven, that means it was GLOBAL, because the only other part of the Earth, (that we now know is a planet of the solar system), is the ocean, that is ALL water, thus the flood was GLOBAL! Period!
There is no room for the local flood myth anywhere in the text.
God bless,
jon
Yes I am of the growing view that time, creation and Christ are all the start of the universe , time emanates from the incarnation, life and death of Christ.
For example In the death of Christ is the self negation of God . This negation is a philosophical necessity as God is a actuality. We must conclude that God must Create a nothing in Christ (empty set) from which to create all things. Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. This empty set in the death of christ allows for the creator Creature distinction (AKA god’s Holiness)
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Where, Book, Chapter, verses?
No argument from me, there have been many more and there still are at present.
History is replete with examples, you need look no further than WWII and Adolf Hitler who was a devout and fully obsessed evolutionist who wanted to create ‘the master race’ of Ayrian Germans through the extermination of the Jews and the murder or sterilisation (eugenics) of millions upon millions of innocent people (who didn’t fit the mistaken evolutionary belief of what a superior human should look like), by the madman evolutionist Hitler and his evil cronies!
But you misrepresent me here, I do fully understand evolution, perhaps in far more scientific detail than you do!
Firstly ‘Natural Selection’ is NOT evolution, it is natural selection that is a selective mechanism that can ONLY EVER select from information ‘already present’ in a genome, if that information is even visible to it at the whole organism level in terms of survival and reproduction.
For evolution to be even the most remote possibility there needs to be a proven real mechanism, where simple single celled organisms can increase in the quantity and quantity of complex specified genetic information that is heritable.
Belief in evolution as a real mechanism in nature has led many a faithful evolution believer to the consistent and inevitable conclusion that preventing the reproductive propagation of people who comprise, the chronically sick, the physically and mentally handicapped, the people groups considered to be inferior is ultimately beneficial to humanity as a whole.
That belief has directly led to mass murder in China - Chairman Mao (See: Genocide, evolution, and the Bible),
Russia - Stalin, Germany - Hitler, Vietnam - Pol Pot, and many other locations elsewhere throughout recent history of the past 100 years.
From the article at the above hyperlink:
Evolutionary genocide
Bible critics usually overlook the clear link between Hitler’s genocidal atrocities and the evolutionary (and definitely antibiblical) fervour that drove them, as well as his clear intent to exterminate Christianity. Not to mention the fact that the millions of people killed last century by anti-God régimes are so vast in number as to cause to pale into comparative insignificance the relative handful killed in things like Crusades, Inquisition, etc. (see also Christianity’s Real Record (off-site)).
The simple fact of history is that the greatest evil has always resulted from denial of God, not pursuit of Him. The 1991 Guinness Book of Records, category ‘Judicial’, sub-heading ‘Crime’, p. 216, reported that 26.3 million Chinese were killed during the regime of Mao Zedong between 1949 and May 1965. This accusation was further extended by the Walker Report published by the U.S. Senate Committee of the Judiciary in July 1971 which ‘placed the parameters of the total death toll within China since 1949 between 32.25 and 61.7 million’.
In the USSR, according to Guinness, ‘Nobel Prize winner Alexander Solzhenitsyn estimated the loss of life from state repression and terrorism from October 1917 to December 1959 under Lenin, Stalin and Khrushchev at 66,700,000.’
The worst genocide as a percentage of a nation’s total population happened in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge. According to Guinness, ‘More than one third of the 8 million Khmers were killed between 17 Apr 1975 and January 1979.’
The greatest evil does not result from people zealous for God. It results when people are convinced there is no God to whom they must answer.
END OF EXCERPT FROM ARTICLE AT LINK
And thus, the above article applies to most evolutionists that believe in evolution and its accompanying atheist corollary, that is abiogenesis, i.e., a chemical origin of life and then evolution from then on to account for the origin of all species.
Though I appreciate that theistic evolutionists differ a tad here, that doesn’t change the fact that many, many evil people believe that evolution is a fact and have then acted in a manner entirely consistent with their beliefs and committed mass murder!
Bill, if you deny that belief in evolution has caused the deaths of countless millions of people you are deluding yourself from well accepted history by secular and Christian historians; a fact that is beyond dispute and very clear.
God bless,
jon
I am undecided about the totality of the flood, but one must think about who wrote Genesis (moses) and for what purpose (religious ideology). For example the clean animals in the ark, are clean according to deuteronomy ? or was the understanding of clean unclean sacrificial system in place before Duet. Also the flood rain came in second month… what calender? the one established for Israel after the exodus or was the Jewish calendar established much earlier? First month was moses after leaving egypt according to the bible.
There are also all the technical aspects like, number of animals in the world, plus food for a year in X cubic meters of ark space…
If one holds to biblical literalism it would be best to stick with complete supernaturalism regarding this event.
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Dear Troy,
thanks for you thoughts!
Personally, I believe that the extent of the flood covered all the land, that is, it was a completely global event that destroyed all land animals in whose nostrils was the breath of life and all mankind, (except for those animals and people on the ark).
From my perspective, as far as the validity of the catastrophic flood of Noah goes, whether some of the animals were classified as clean or unclean is not important, nor does it matter whatsoever as to what particular calendar the second month was recorded in when the flood came.
The clear historical account in the Bible of the catastrophic flood of Noah’s day states that it lasted upon the Earth for a year, that is twelve calendar months.
The Biblical ‘kind’ that is referred to in the Bible, does not equate to present day meaning of the word ‘specie’.
A Biblical ‘kind’ is much broader than the present day subjective taxonomic term specie,i.e., for example one pair of wolves (Canis lupus), on the ark that gave rise to the over 400 breeds of Domestic Dogs, Coyotes, Dingoes, Foxes and Jackals. For more about dogs, see: https://creation.com/dog-origins
And, Horses, Zebras, Zorses and Donkeys are probably descended from an equine (horse-like) kind. For more about horses, see: https://creation.com/zebra-or-horse-a-zorse-of-course
And I expect for all the other animals, the same principal would have applied.
I believe it is very likely the genetic variation in the genomes of the animals on the ark was absolutely immense and has given rise to the massive diversity we see today on Earth as those animals were from the preflood world, that is the genetic bottleneck of the flood.
If you want to know more about, “How could Noah get all the animals on the Ark?” then an excellent short article that addresses this question is at:
And also:
God bless,
jon
Why not? Noah preceded Abraham by quite some time and the laws about clean or unclean come in Moses time, Why should the author even mention this? If the author is in fact Moses, he is superimposing the laws of his day onto Noah.
ignoring any apparent pysiological reasons for the food not covering the whole earth, why does it have to? If you are in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean all you can see is water. It doesn’t matter how far away the coast is, if you were stranded in a boat without power it would be months away. The ark does not appear to have power. it floats, and that is it. There is no way anyone on the ark would know how far the water stretched beyond the horizon, and, as the earth was considered flat, the horizon would be the end of the earth.
It is not so much a lie or falsehood, only perception and understanding.
Richard
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But how do you know what God communicated to Noah, or anyone in the preflood world for that matter?
The confirmation of the validity of the flood that I was describing SHOULD be abundantly clear to you!
To be more specific, I was describing the validity of the catastrophic GLOBAL FLOOD that destroyed ALL life under Heaven i.e., all animals ‘in whose nostrils was the breath of life’, including all of mankind, except for those animals and people on the ark.
Any other considerations such as clean animals or which calendar are irrelevant and unimportant with respect to that specific question about the validity of the Global Flood!
They may be important for other reasons, but in respect of whether the Global Flood occurred or not, I do not see the relevance.
I apologise but what you are stating makes little sense to me in the context of what was being dicussed.
To arrive at the TRUTH, you need to consider precisely WHY an ark of the IMMENSE SIZE specified in the Bible was required that logically necessitated all the decades, upon decades, upon decades, upon decades, upon decades, upon more decades of extremely HARD PHYSICAL MANUAL WORK in the acquiring of the vast quantities of raw materials and then actually constructing the huge seagoing ship that was the ark!
If you think the flood was only a local flood, where do you think it was located, i.e., what geographic extent do you believe the flood covered? From where to where North to South and East to West?
The belief of some on this site that claim the catastrophic flood of Noah’s day was merely a local flood is plainly a false teaching held in error by those that believe it.
The evidence of the GLOBAL FLOOD is all over the Earth, i.e., the vast deposits of sedimentary rock full of rapidly buried fossils declare for all with eyes to see that the great flood, (the deluge) was real, it was global, and is affirmed by Jesus and the Bible.
To be absolutely clear, the sedimentary strata and the fossils were laid down in that one year Global event!
God bless,
jon
Exodus 21 for example.
A common myth, but untrue.
Edit to add:
Given some of the evils quoted happened before Darwin and there is no evidence that evolution was the cause after you have failed to prove your point. Yes I know many anti-evolution folk like to blame Darwin for all the worlds ills, but I don’t agree. The problem is a lack of morals (or a twisted moral sense) and actually “Darwin, in more traditional fashion, constructed nature with a moral spine and provided it with a goal: man as a moral creature.”
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Thanks Jon
The suggestion that Noah is Torah observant can not be overlooked. Also the preservation of ancestral lineage is of utmost importance, Adam… Abraham…Christ… ect. There is much value in reading these texts as religious truths which establish true religion about Jesus. All OT is about Jesus, yes… even genesis? Adam is told to eat Grass and Vine…which is Bread and Wine! Adam side is injured to create eve… Jesus side is pierced to make the church… so much more…
YEC seems to suggest genesis was written to the scientific enlightened westerner? and finds its truth by reconciling these worldviews? Undermine a scientific understanding of Genesis and the whole bible falls apart. That is not Christianity.
Can science prove my Jesus true or Jesus is the truth ? So if science suggests something different than lit interpretation of genesis then Jesus is false? This is not Christianity. Christ is the epicenter of everything. And the resurrection is the supernatural event which everything hangs on. No science can ever prove the supernatural resurrection.
If I held to a complete supernaturalism about genesis creation and the flood what would YEC say about this view? would I be considered a uneducated person ?
If we want to end this argument we all need to look to the supernatural Christ not rocks and fossils. Just my current thoughts.
That is the crunch. it covered the known world. The bit before you fell of the edge.
Local could be several hundred square miles. As far as the eye can see.
As for the time spent on the Ark/ Noah thought it was the whole world. It was the whole of his world. It was everything he knew. There was no question. That world would be submerged and he had nowhere else to go. The timescale is immaterial. It would happen, it happened.
Richard
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Thank you Troy,
you are absolutely correct from my understanding of the Old Testament,
Yes, ultimately it is ALL about Jesus and pointing to His coming in the prophetic Scriptures.
However, I do find it puzzling that it appears some are somehow hanging a whole belief that the flood was only a localised flood and not a “flood that covered all the land under heaven”,
What is it about Genesis 6:17 that you believe is unclear?
“I am going to bring floodwaters on the earth to destroy all life under the heavens, every creature that has the breath of life in it. Everything on earth will perish.”
What is it about Genesis 7:19 that you believe is unclear?
“They rose greatly on the earth, and all the high mountains under the entire heavens were covered.”
If the author is in fact Moses, why is it that some here on this website presuppose that God did not inform Noah directly about clean and unclean animals, after all, as the writer of Genesis reliably informs us, God commanded Noah to bring on board two of every ‘kind’, a male and a female, and by sevens of every kind of clean animal.
I accept Genesis 7:2 as accurate, where it clearly states:
2 Take with you seven pairs of every kind of clean animal, a male and its mate, and one pair of every kind of unclean animal, a male and its mate,
The Writer of Genesis is faithfully recording what happened, just as he recorded everything else, and I would expect very likely directly guided by God. Why do some on this site doubt the Holy Scriptures and replace what is trustworthy and true with what can only be described as a conjecture of man.
Who caused you to doubt the Scriptures and question the validity of what God has guided to be so reliably written?
But Troy, that is such a misrepresentation of the reality.
No-one is suggesting that “genesis was written to the scientific enlightened westerner”, that is false and misleading in the extreme, though I hear it repeated on this site far too many times!
As faithfully written above, it is THE BIBLE itself that informs us that the flood covered the whole Earth, that is ALL the land under Heaven. That only leaves the oceans if all the land is covered.
Thus whether you think the Earth is a flat disk with a dome over it or as Isaiah knew 40:22, “It is He who sits above the circle of the earth.”
(For more clarification see: Isaiah 40-22 circle sphere
it makes no difference, as the Bible clearly states that ALL the land was covered by the flood, therefore it is a logical deduction that the flood was GLOBAL.
To deduce that the flood was indeed GLOBAL is not putting any spin on the text whatsoever, that it was written for a scientific enlightened westerner, it is merely stating what the Bible so clearly teaches us all!
Yes, I absolutely agree, PRAISE THE LORD! HALLELUJAH!!! HE’S MY LORD. JESUS IS THE LORD, OUR REDEEMER, OUR SAVIOUR!
I am unclear Troy about what it is you are asking. i don’t think anyone I know, nor myself, would be judging you about anything. There but by the grace of God go I.
Yes, you are absolutely correct!
It is Jesus that matters, ALL things were made by Him for Him.
The evidence that is clearly present in the rocks and fossils is useful for the unbelievers, those whom God has His hand upon, whom He is drawing near to Him, that He uses us here on Earth to give our testimony and proclaim the Salvation of the Gospel of our Lord.
The sedimentary rocks and fossils are merely useful at times in opening up those conversations with the many lost of this present world.
God bless,
jon
Dear Richard,
thank you for your reply.
i find it very difficult to comprehend why you insist that the flood was a localised event when the Holy Scriptures are so clear and unambiguous that the flood covered the Earth. I’m sure that our Merciful, Loving God knowing the future in His omniscience, ensured the Holy Scriptures are recorded correctly.
Read for yourself the unambiguous Holy Scriptures at:
Genesis 6:17
“I am going to bring floodwaters on the earth to destroy all life under the heavens, every creature that has the breath of life in it. Everything on earth will perish.”
AND
Genesis 7:19
“They rose greatly on the earth, and all the high mountains under the entire heavens were covered.”
The Holy Scriptures are CLEAR and TRUSTWORTHY and ACCURATE.
PLEASE, ask yourself how could a localised flood drown ALL life on Earth???
There is no justifiable reason to twist and change what God made so abundantly clear in order to make the Holy Scriptures fit into Theistic Evolution Compromiser’s (TEC’s) philosophical dogma of a ‘local flood,’ ‘deep time’ and ‘evolution’.
There is simply no need and no justification whatsoever to support TEC’s beliefs.
The claims that the original texts support the TEC’s beliefs just does not hold water, it has hairs all over it, it is a false teaching, plain and simple.
You can trust God and His Word to mean what He says and to say what He means.
Again, I disagree here, the time is absolutely important, the Bible informs us that Noah and his fellow passengers and the animals were on the ark for about one year.
Thus from that we can deduce that the flood was indeed a supernaturally driven physical event that God used to change the face of the Earth from one landmass surrounded by sea to close to the world as we see it today.
There would have been some differences if the sea levels were a bit less initially as many have suggested, plus over the past four and a half thousand years, which is a very long time, there would have been considerable erosion that would have changed some coastlines to varying degrees, but essentially the post flood world would have been very similar to the present configuration of continents and islands.
Regarding the passage of time since creation, the whole concept of ‘deep time’ is based upon uniformitarian philosophy that overtook Biblical creation in the middle of the nineteenth century when James Hutton, Thomas Huxley and Charles Lyell with their anti-Christian agenda pushed the nonsense of deep time into the minds of people of that time and despite the protests of Christians at that time, it stuck.
The saddest thing is that we now have Christians supporting this false teaching as a range of belief structures that basically deny the Holy integrity of the Scriptures and insist on their particular dogma of which TEC’s are but one group.
God bless,
jon
Thank you for your response.
Let us all reflect on James words.
" But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere. And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace."
Many places in the bible " entire world" hebrew “Kol erets”, doesn’t mean entire globe or all people ( gen 41:57, 1 kings 10:24, deut 2:55 NT example romans 1:8)
" Moreover, all the earth (Kol Erets) came to Egypt to Joseph to buy grain, because the famine was severe over all the earth." Was there a famine in brazil during this time, and the Aztecs sailed to Egypt for grain?
" And the whole earth (Kol erets) sought the presence of Solomon to hear his wisdom, which God had put into his mind." Did aboriginals sail up to meet Solomon in Jerusalem at this time?
" This day I will begin to put the dread and fear of you on the peoples who are under the whole heaven, who shall hear the report of you and shall tremble and be in anguish because of you" Are the inuit in northern canada afraid of moses at this time?
Jesus says the smallest seed It is like a grain of mustard seed , which, when sown on the ground, is the smallest of all the seed on earth. Did Jesus in his humanity know about orchid’s (smaller seed?) in tropical rainforests. No he did not. Was he lying about the smallest seed, no. But it is irrelevant as His teaching regarding the small seed is of eternal value. Remember Jesus was fully Human! He knew the world as we do, He learned what the torah said and his local environment taught him. Should we lose faith because we discovered orchid seeds? If someone measures an orchid seed and says it is smaller than a mustard seed, then concludes Jesus and the Bible is all lies, let him be anathema! As he has denied the humanity of Christ.
Not many doubt a flood entirely and many cultures have a similar narrative, but the true meaning of the story is what unites Christians. Just as in the mustard seed, what is the deeper truth of the narrative?
The holy Scriptures tell of the truth, Jesus Christ. It uses all literary styles including parables, nationalistic histories, visions, dreams, songs and poems to tell us about Christ.
If the text is read primarily Christological and faith inspiring then there is benefit for all believers. It is fine for believers to view the flood as local as long as it remains pointing to Christ.
YEC in my opinion places a heavy burden on people by suggesting a literal interpretation of Genesis is foundational to be a christian. I don’t think that is true.
The focus of the bible is religious in its aim, to build faith in Christ.
blessings
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Thank you Troy,
for your well considered reply, it is truly much appreciated!
And for the most part I am entirely in agreeance with you, but I am having some difficulty accepting that the verses I quoted can be interpreted in any other way than a wholly global flood event that destroyed all life on Earth, except for those in the ark.
How can anyone read a limited localised flood into:
Genesis 6:17
I am going to bring floodwaters on the earth to destroy all life under the heavens, every creature that has the breath of life in it. Everything on earth will perish.
AND
Genesis 7:19
They rose greatly on the earth, and all the high mountains under the entire heavens were covered
The text in Genesis clearly does NOT allow for the interpretation you are at pains to prove. It is straightforward, it is concise, it is accurate, it is the Holy Scripture of the creation event recorded as historical narrative. That is a fact. Yet I expect there will be TEC’s that dispute this clear teaching from Scripture.
The practice of hinging the justification for TEC’s dogma on this through a variable meaning for the translation of “Kol erets”, from the Hebrew that is usually translated as ALL the EARTH, under Heaven, which to my way of thinking, is ALL the EARTH, and therefore means to me, there is nowhere on Earth that this doesn’t apply to. Jesus is the Creator and the Logos, thus it is appropriate to use logic here, and when doing so, it is as clear as crystal that the flood was an event that covered ALL the dry land, and wiped out ALL life on the Earth as the Holy Scripture painstakingly informs us. For TEC’s to believe anything other than the plain truth of the Scripture is worrying.
Jesus was absolutely fully human, of that I have no doubt, which is why He is the Last Adam, and is able to be our Kinsman Redeemer, for ALL of humanity as we are ALL related, i.e., we are ALL human too, of the same family line as the first Adam. Thus the saving Gospel of Jesus makes sense!
I may be wrong, but it has been my long term understanding that, if we were not ALL related to Adam, then Jesus work on the cross as a Kinsman Redeemer for us would not apply. That fact alone illuminates the damage done to the Gospel by the false TEC belief that there were other humans alive before Adam and Eve.
The other problem with TEC’s beliefs is that they put DEATH before SIN, that is also in contradiction of the historical narrative of the creation account whereby God saw what He had created and that it was 'good’ and ‘very good’. If DEATH was already on the scene for untold millions of years it makes a mockery of what God saw as 'good’ and very good’.
Thus, there is no way I can conceive that makes any sense in having DEATH before Adam sinned, thus the TEC’s worldview is false teaching.
Regarding the Mustard seed, who knows, there may be a simple explanation such as, the Mustard seed was the smallest seed 2,000 years ago, but has been increased in size since then either naturally or through selective breeding, or people with an anti-God agenda have purposely selectively bred smaller and smaller seeds to discredit Jesus, or perhaps there is some other explanation, but I don’t accept that Jesus spoke in error. Although He was fully human and related by blood to all of us, our Kinsman Redeemer, He was and is The Creator, The Son, The Lamb, The Saviour of mankind.
Didn’t the unborn baby, John the Baptist leap in the womb of Elizabeth when Mary entered the room they were in. Jesus is the Living God and part of the Holy Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
To Him be the praise, the Glory and Worship forever and ever, Amen.
God bless,
jon