The Age of the Earth is unknown from the Bible

[T_aquaticus]

@PaulAndrew

This is what the Holy Scripture states of its own origination:

Those scriptures came from the minds of men after sin entered the world, so by the criteria you have set out they are not trustworthy.

@PaulAndrew

Hence, I never quote fallible men when writing God’s truths but always only quote Scripture.

By your own criteria, you just did quote untrustworthy men.

[RichardG (Richard Gillett)]

@PaulAndrew

I do not find the above to be pitting Scripture against Scripture as is claimed.

Then you are ignoring the prophecies of Jeremiah and Ezekiel.

They are claiming that God will not judge children by the action of their parents but will be judged by their own actions alone.

I am not saying that there is no sin. i am just saying that it cannot be transmitted,.or be the result of someone else, be it Adam or the immediate parent

We are judged by our own actions or saved by the grace of Gpd through the death of his son. That is Scripture.

The Doctrine of Original sin is a misunderstanding of Paul. The death quoted in Genesis is a spiritual one not a physical one and has no bearing on the existence of death in the wide world.

Richard

[Terry_Sampson]

• Can someone explain to Richard that the Old Testament was not written by Paul, much less Non-Conformist Lay Hirelings. The Old Testament was, more or less, written by the ancestors of Jews who, today, aren’t Christians and either don’t believe Jesus was anything more than a vagrant bastard son of a Roman soldier and a Jewish maiden, OR care that Christians do think Jesus was “their” Messiah.
• And just because post-Exile Jews said, not to Christians, but to other post-Exile Jews that the Sinai revelation cleansed all Israel of ancestral sin, doesn’t mean that Judaism opened its door to any Tom, Dick, or Harry, and declared Judaism, much less Israel, a non-exclusive club.

[RichardG (Richard Gillett)]

I would respond but it would be ignored by the one person who needs to read it.

Richard

[pevaquark (Matthew Pevarnik)]

@PaulAndrew

What are your thoughts after reading the above?

Well just a few comments, but I think that when you say this:

@PaulAndrew

The reason I am writing is that for over three decades I have researched and written my own detailed Biblical Calendar.

I think that it is probably pointless to have a conversation. Sure I get it that you say:

@PaulAndrew

If they prove my gap wrong from the Bible only, then I will readily bow to the Bible and recant my gap position.

but I don’t think I believe you. I hope you’ll forgive me if I’m wrong about this but some concerns I have are:

• you’ve spent 30 years working on this particular topic. Many people are reluctant to change their minds, but imagine trying to change someone’s mind who has spent 30 years working on their own pet theory AND someone who claims their pet theory comes directly from God himself.
• you claim that you will take information from the Bible only, and reject all the information we can get from his creation about how the age of the earth is factually measurable. This is a bit concerning that you would so easily dismiss plenty of empirical evidence that suggests you are wrong.
• you make stuff up that the Bible doesn’t actually say and have lots of assumptions about the text that I don’t think are historically and culturally justifiable. A few things of note would be:

1. you assume the text of Genesis is meant to be read in a literal scientific chronological account sort of fashion. While that assumption was reasonable up until about the 18th or 19th century, I don’t think it is a reasonable position to hold anymore. Without this assumption, your whole premise falls apart and this requires you to admit you’ve spent three decades working on a wrong theory and mistakenly thought God himself was giving you these ideas.
2. you assume there was no “decay and age anywhere in the that pristine universe until sin occurred.” I think this is also an unwarranted assumption for several reasons, including a misconception of what the text of Genesis means by creation being “good.” You also just assume that this first man, which you assume is Adam (also unwarranted) “was not aging or decaying” and “was then ageless just like his Creator.” You somehow assume that Genesis 5:1-2 says something in support of this when it says nothing about Adam being a timeless creature.
3. you make some stuff up about how Genesis 5:3 infers that Adam lived 130 human years after sinning and make a switcheroo about how now his children are no longer made in God’s likeness. Your doctrine here essentially puts all humans alive today as not having the image and likeness of God unless they are born again which is antithetical to a lot of Christian thinking in ethics. I think this verse in particular does a lot of heavy lifting for your pet theory in your own mind and it requires a particular interpretation about it and lots of other assumptions about the text. I would suggest reading some more modern theologians that have a diversity of thought about Genesis including its ancient near eastern context.

[PaulAndrew (Paul Andrew Aarons)]

Thanks for the contrast between the elect (Those who God saves in His election and predestination plan established in his foreknowledge prior to the creation of the universe) and the unsaved of mankind (Those who God reprobated just as He hated Esau, a profane person).

Romans 9:11 (For the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth;)
Romans 9:12 It was said unto her, The elder shall serve the younger.
Romans 9:13 As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated.

Hebrews 12:16 Lest there be any fornicator, or profane person, as Esau, who for one morsel of meat sold his birthright.

But let’s get back on topic and not stray away from anyone trying to disprove my gap, Biblically.

Thanks for sharing your comments.

[PaulAndrew (Paul Andrew Aarons)]

Just some clarifications for what you wrote. I worked from 1988 to 2009 on the detailed Biblical Calendar. The earlier version of my calendar did show a year of creation until 2006. I did not even know this until a Christian buddy showed up suddenly after two decades of not being in contact asking me to send him my most updated version of my calendar. So I asked him to send me the version that he had so I could see what he had and then if different send him my latest version dated in 2009. He sent me a 2006 dated version and that one showed that I had a year for the creation and with no gap whatsoever😂. So I sent him the new one with the gap. So the gap came about after 2006 when my Heavenly Father corrected me and opened my understanding to His gap just as Jesus opened the understanding of His disciples on the Road to Emmaus. There is a season and time to God’s opening of His sheep’s understanding.

Now God’s gap was never discussed openly until last year. When I found online some groups of Christians using a calendar that purported the year of creation. And they were using their calendar which was very well prepared overall to predict the end of the world in 2033. So I went on their program about six to seven months ago and brought up my gap to show that it God did not give us the year of the beginning in Scripture then most definitely He did not give us the year of the end. But I was thrown out of their midst after they asked me some very challenging questions deceptively by email on my gap. And those questions were hard ones and they only wanted answers from the Bible because they claim to use only the Bible. Well, whilst reading their hard questions I was trembling in my boots but by the time I was done reading, the answers were already populated (downloaded) in my mind so that when it was convenient I simply wrote them down in studies and sent them by email to the group and to my own fellowship group. Well that’s exactly what that internet group was hoping for that I would supply them the answers upfront so they could deceptively have them before to counter me when I called in live on their program some weeks later. Then when I called in I went as a sheep not suspecting what they had in store for me. For they asked me the same hard questions on the live aired program and as I began to answer with the same answers I had sent them then they muted my response and allowed their moderator to shoot down the little portion that I had to started to share and then they shut my call off. So after that I started to try to find other Christians to show my gap and ask them to disprove it so that I know that it’s wrong and I can be corrected and move on.

That why I am here. Not intentionally but accidentally to me for I never intended to be on this forum. But a little misunderstanding with an organization with a similar name that I had contacted and I researched and posted here. Now it was a mistake on my part, but not on my Heavenly Father’s part for:

Psalms 37:23 The steps of a good man are ordered by the LORD: and he delighteth in his way.

But thanks so very much for your sharing and I have to now start driving several hours so I must be off. Have a great day in the Lord, Biologos.

[paleomalacologist (David Campbell)]

The age of the earth is unknown from the Bible for several reasons.

1. The Bible does not give duration of several time intervals. Perhaps most obviously, the Bible does not tell us how long it’s been since the end of the Bible; we depend on other evidence. But also the New Testament generally does not identify many specific years; there are a few mentioned but not enough information to tell just when the other events fit in relative to them, and even those dates that are given require extrabiblical knowledge of the history of the Roman Empire to correlate with other things. The New Testament also does not tell how many years it was since the last of the Old Testament writings. Much uncertainty has been expressed about how long might fall under “the earth was formless and void” in Genesis 1. Various other times are not specified.
2. Textual uncertainties in the dates that are given. The Masoretic, Septuagint, and Samaritan versions of Genesis give different numbers for ages of the early generations. Something has gone wrong with the dates for Saul’s reign in I Samuel.
3. Interpretation of the dates. Kings had a bad habit of not dying precisely at dusk of the last day of the year. Thus, reigns started during a calendar year. Is that year counted towards the previous king’s reign, the new king, both, or neither? What if a specific heir was designated crown prince - does the co-regency get counted for both? In the chaotic times of the Judges, how many overlapped in time? Reign explain is not always plain, as Eliza Doolittle might say. Why are the ages for the ancient genealogies in Genesis weird? Significant astronomical numbers and other symbolic numbers are prominent, and the end digits are not randomly spread across the possibilities.

But the most important reason is that the age of the earth is not the point. The Bible tells us what we are to believe about God and what duties He has given us. The point of recording history in the Bible is not to give us a chronology of ancient Israel, but to provide examples of God’s interactions with humanity. The account of creation brings up numerous theological themes that reappear through the rest of the Bible, emphasizing God’s sovereignty and wisdom, giving everything its proper role and place. If you want to find out answers to scientific questions, God has enabled us to do science. But those are not the focus of the biblical text.

[St.Roymond]

That’s not the only place there can be a gap:

“…and the Spirit of Elohim was meditating over the face of the waters”. How long? A fellow grad student once joked that the Father finally said, “Look, enough meditating; if we’re going to do this, let’s do it!” and commanded light to be.

Then there’s the matter of the days: given the grammar, they are portrayed as sequential, but not necessarily consecutive; the rendition “the Xth day” isn’t supported by the text; it should read “a second day”, “a third day”, etc. up until day six when it is “the sixth day”. So there may be gaps between the days.

Of course these assume that it’s meant literally; since it isn’t, this is just a matter of pondering the text. What the lack of the definite article with days two through five really tells us is that the length of time that it took God to do anything just doesn’t matter, which is why various theologians down the centuries have considered the account to be poetic and maintained that God really did it all at once, or that the days are “divine days” that can’t even be measured on human scales, or that it took just one day but the writer used six to organize the ideas, or that it all took more time than humans can comprehend (or that the universe is eternal because God is eternally Himself and part of being Himself is being Creator).

So what the gap possibilities point to is that the account isn’t really about physical creation at all, it’s about the relationship between God and His Creation! It’s kind of like when cosmologists come up against singularities in the math – it tells them they’re getting something wrong, so they look further.

And that’s a good thing! Thinking we have it down pat because it “clearly” says X generally means we’re getting something wrong.

[St.Roymond]

@T_aquaticus

But you can’t trust that it came from the Holy Spirit because man’s mind is no longer trustworthy (according to your thesis). In fact, you can’t even trust scripture because that came from the minds of men after sin entered the world.

This is one of the root theological problems that the majority of seminaries try to keep their students from encountering.

@PaulAndrew

This is what the Holy Scripture states of its own origination:

2 Peter 1:20 Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private (PERSONAL) interpretation.
2 Peter 1:21 For the prophecy came not in old time by the will (DESIRE) of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.

Okay, but it was fallible men who decided on the canon. This is a conundrum with no resolution except faith that the Holy Spirit is sufficient to overcome it.

@PaulAndrew

Exodus 34:7 Keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children’s children, unto the third and to the fourth generation.

Since as Jesus said “the scripture cannot be broken”, and this stands in contrast to what Richard pointed out, the phrase “visiting the iniquity” is almost certainly talking about consequences and about learned behavior.

[St.Roymond]

@pevaquark

you’ve spent 30 years working on this particular topic. Many people are reluctant to change their minds, but imagine trying to change someone’s mind who has spent 30 years working on their own pet theory

I think his meaning was that after thirty years of his own theory God corrected him.

@pevaquark

you assume the text of Genesis is meant to be read in a literal scientific chronological account sort of fashion. While that assumption was reasonable up until about the 18th or 19th century, I don’t think it is a reasonable position to hold anymore. Without this assumption, your whole premise falls apart and this requires you to admit you’ve spent three decades working on a wrong theory and mistakenly thought God himself was giving you these ideas.

My take would be that by pointing out the possibility of a gap – assuming the Father actually did send this insight – the idea was to show that trying to read the text as history doesn’t work. After all, if you pay attention to the Hebrew grammar, there are seven different gaps that can be found!

@pevaquark

assume is Adam (also unwarranted) “was not aging or decaying” and “was then ageless just like his Creator.”

Yeah, that’s commonly assumed but it comes actually from putting Greek ideas into scripture, effectively imposing fallible human definitions on Hebrew terms. Assuming the text is meant as history (it isn’t, but that’s another subject) the most that can be said is that humans had “provisional immortality”, which they understood because they could see Creation working with some creatures eating others and thus understood that they, too, could be taken by death.

@pevaquark

and make a switcheroo about how now his children are no longer made in God’s likeness. Your doctrine here essentially puts all humans alive today as not having the image and likeness of God

I wasn’t sure if he was doing that or not. Even in Second Temple Judaism “image” and “likeness” were understood differently; the usual distinction was that the image was the core and likeness was how we behaved, or as later thinkers might put it, image is the substance and likeness is the accidents.

@pevaquark

I would suggest reading some more modern theologians that have a diversity of thought about Genesis including its ancient near eastern context.

I recommend Dr. Michael Heiser, though at the moment I can’t recall if he did a special series on Genesis as he did with Exodus – probably, but I’m not certain. He’ll tell not just more than you ever wanted to know, but more than you ever imagined was possible to know about the ancient near east context.

@PaulAndrew

Thanks for the contrast between the elect (Those who God saves in His election and predestination plan established in his foreknowledge prior to the creation of the universe) and the unsaved of mankind (Those who God reprobated just as He hated Esau, a profane person).

Double predestination? That’s totally contrary to God’s character.

@paleomalacologist

The New Testament also does not tell how many years it was since the last of the Old Testament writings.

That’s a superb point!

It’s also worth noting that a substantial part of figuring out dates in the Old Testament relies on Egyptian chronology – and Egyptian chronology has always had severe issues.

@paleomalacologist

But the most important reason is that the age of the earth is not the point.

Yep – if God cared He would have given us more to go on. That there are possible gaps in the first Creation account points to God not caring to satisfy our curiosity.

@paleomalacologist

The point of recording history in the Bible is not to give us a chronology of ancient Israel, but to provide examples of God’s interactions with humanity.

And to give intermittent updates on the status of the war that started with that “shining one” serpent back whenever it was.

It makes me wonder that I never saw it long ago, but everything from Genesis 3 on is about a spiritual war. That includes the Flood story and the Babel story; Abraham is the start of a new chapter/book/scroll in the war, the part where God starts to show us bit by bit just Who is going to “take point” and take down the Enemy.

[PaulAndrew (Paul Andrew Aarons)]

Hello David. Thanks for sharing your comments on my postings on God’s gap in His Biblical Calendar. You are well studied based on your comprehensive response. Congratulations. I would like to address for this occasion this point of yours:

“But the most important reason is that the age of the earth is not the point. The Bible tells us what we are to believe about God and what duties He has given us. The point of recording history in the Bible is not to give us a chronology of ancient Israel, but to provide examples of God’s interactions with humanity.”

I am about falling off to sleep from driving for 8 hours, so I will be brief in my response using as a basis this Passage:

1 Peter 1:10 (NIV) Concerning this salvation, the prophets, who spoke of the grace that was to come to you, searched intently and with the greatest care,
1 Peter 1:11 (NIV) trying to find out the time and circumstances to which the Spirit of Christ in them was pointing when he predicted the sufferings of the Messiah and the glories that would follow.

Yes, David, the Old Testament Prophets had their own Biblical Calendar and used it to search intently and with the greatest care trying to find out the time to which the Spirit of Christ (the Holy Spirit) who was in them was pointing pertaining to Jesus’ first coming to due upon the cross (His sufferings as the Messiah) and also to the second coming of Jesus when He will be glorified in His Saints. Yes, it is so and Daniel 70 weeks is one such declaration that the Holy Spirit gave to Daniel who himself was a Biblical Calendar Prophet. For in one of the understandings of the 70 weeks, its counting in sabbath years. And we find that 29 AD was the 69th Sabbath year (seven years and then sixty two years) and then Messiah is cut off (crucified) in the midst of the next week of years which would be three and a half years:

Daniel 9:26 And after threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off,….
Daniel 9:27 And he shall confirm the covenant with many for one week: and in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease,…

And, David, it is true that Messiah was indeed crucified and caused to cease sacrifice and oblation on Friday, April 1, 33 AD (Gregorian), which was three and a half years after the 69th Sabbath Year in 29 AD, the midst of the 70th week of years. This is just a very condensed summary of many daily Bible Studies I wrote for the benefit of my fellowship group in the last two years. So I believe that Daniel was one of the Old Testament Prophets who searched intently and with due care to find the time time that His Messiah should come to suffer for his sins and he knew the time.

Now David, what else could be greater in the Bible than salvation which Messiah came to procure via His sufferings? God operated by His Biblical Calendar in all matters:

Ecclesiastes 3:1 To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:

And God gives us in the Bible the information whereby we can calculate with the assistant of astronomical science the exact day of Jesus’ conception on a Sunday, the exact day Jesus was born on a Sunday and in a given year. But we must first know His Biblical Calendar in detail and then by His Grace and by His will He reveals to us His specific timing such as this specific time:

Galatians 4:4 But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law,
Galatians 4:5 To redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons.

Now that’s what Daniel’s knew, the fullness of the time for Messiah to be born and Daniel was made to prophesy it for our benefit as I continue to quote from my first Passage:

1 Peter 1:12 (NIV) It was revealed to them (the Old Testament Prophets) that they were not serving themselves but you, when they spoke of the things that have now been told you by those who have preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven. Even angels long to look into these things.

So David, Daniel ministered forwards to us!

Thanks, I am very tired and will not bother to even proof what I just wrote. But I love your comments and hope to honor them with responses from Scripture soon. So watch out David. Thanks,

Paul Aarons

[PaulAndrew (Paul Andrew Aarons)]

Hi David. I am back to address your point #1 which is essentially asserting that there are gaps in Biblical Chronology all over, including how long it’s been since the Bible was the completed and that the New Testament generally does not identify many specific years and so forth.

Well, I have set forth in my detailed Biblical Calendar every historical time statement in Scripture including the New Testament (the four Gospels and the Book of Acts). I will clue you in on how God made sure there were no gaps that you wrongly assumed are present. Well, God established a bridge in Scripture to overlay His Biblical Calendar with our modern day Gregorian Calendar or its antecedent, the Julian Calendar. This bridge was a period of time was in the reigns of the last kings of Judah which length of reigns He superimposed upon the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon who warred against Israel from his first year of reign until his nineteen year of reign:

Daniel 1:1 In the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim king of Judah came Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon unto Jerusalem, and besieged it.
2 Kings 25:1 And it came to pass in the ninth year of his reign, in the tenth month, in the tenth day of the month, that Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came, he, and all his host, against Jerusalem, and pitched against it; and they built forts against it round about.
2 Kings 25:2 And the city was besieged unto the eleventh year of king Zedekiah.
2 Kings 25:8 And in the fifth month, on the seventh day of the month, which is the nineteenth year of king Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, came Nebuzaradan, captain of the guard, a servant of the king of Babylon, unto Jerusalem:

Now this period of time (606 BC to 587 BC, the first 19 years of Nebuchadnezzar’s reign) is the very first occasion during which God starts to give His Biblical chronology using a secular monarch and God aligns Nebuchadnezzar’s reign in detail to the reigns of the last kings of Judah purposely indicating that His chronology was now being shifted over to man’s secular calendar for by Nebuchadnezzar’s reign, man’s calendar was accurate for man’s calendar was by then being astronomically calculated by eclipses around the time of notable secular historical events and there also was now corroborating historical documentation across global cultures.

I have very detailed numbered notes to my detailed Biblical Calendar from when I was caused to understand the bridge and where I iron out all of this complex information in Scripture with Biblical and true secular evidence but now I am writing from memory as I don’t have my computer available and those matters were written in the early 1990’s even before there was the Internet and my research was in public libraries and through a lot of NASA published moon and sun records.

Interestingly David, after God reconciled His calendar to the secular calendar, he then showed that we should now go by the secular calendar in this manner:

Daniel 8:1 In the third year of the reign of king Belshazzar a vision appeared unto me, even unto me Daniel, after that which appeared unto me at the first.

Ezra 1:1 Now in the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, that the word of the LORD by the mouth of Jeremiah might be fulfilled, the LORD stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia, that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom, and put it also in writing, saying,

So David the only way forward in time after the bridge that anyone can claim there are gaps is if they can prove gaps in the Gregorian Calendar.

But the wisdom of God is evident as He, after the bridge, caused man to date the Gregorian Calendar around the supposed birth of His Son so that there are BC years and AD years. Thereby illustrating that Jesus Christ’s is the center of time which is part and parcel of His salvation.

Perhaps on another occasion I will show God’s accounting of time in the Book of Acts that is integrated in His calendar without gap. The only gap in God’s calendar is my gap. Thanks, David.

Paul Aarons

[T_aquaticus]

@St.Roymond

This is one of the root theological problems that the majority of seminaries try to keep their students from encountering.

In the case of the views being expressed in this thread, the solution seems rather straightforward. While we may be sinful, we are at least capable of using reason and logic.

The problem for YEC is that reason and logic leads to conclusions they don’t like, so they have to cast doubt on reason and logic itself. In doing so, they also destroy the very things we would need to understand or even trust Scripture. It’s the famous case of being hoisted by your own petard. The very thing they are trying to use to destroy scientific conclusions they don’t like ends up exploding on their own ideas. (For those who are unfamiliar with what a petard is and where the phrase comes from, I suggest a quick google. It’s a great mental picture for many situations.)

I also enjoy quotes from Galileo:

“I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.”

“The Bible shows the way to go to heaven, not the way the heavens go.”

–Galileo Galilei

[PaulAndrew (Paul Andrew Aarons)]

Hi St.Roymond,

Thanks for your comments here. It was just this week that my Heavenly Father downloaded brand new understandings for His first seven days of the creation. But I have been traveling all week and responding on this forum as well as writing daily Bible Studies for my fellowship group plus answering concerns on my gap from the YEC community. Because of all that I just have not yet written down in a study form the understandings downloaded but they are still fresh in my mind very much linked to my Heavenly Father’s Biblical Calendar. Please be patient. Thanks

[adamjedgar (adam james edgar)]

@PaulAndrew

But all the remaining chronogenealogies of Genesis 5 were lived subject to sin and its consequence of physical death, just as Adam’s 930 years. Anyone who claims that Adam’s 930 years started at the sixth day of creation is also claiming, unknowingly (I hope), that God created Adam a sinner with his own likeness such that Adam sinned from the moment he came from the hands of God. And thus Adam’s lifespan of 930 years started on the sixth day of the creation. Plus, making such a claim means that because God created Adam in God’s likeness then God’s likeness is the very same in essence with Adam’s own likeness with sin. What an abominable thought!

firstly…i challenge your claim to God revealing this historical narrative to you…that is delusion.

Second, you have ignored Cain and Abel and the biblical statement made immediately after creation…“be fruitful and multiply”.

Your assumption is that whilst in the garden of Eden, no babies of anykind including in the animal kingdom were or could be born for millions of years…that is fancifal nonsense!

The reason why YEC are certain that the time period for the garden of Eden was short was because of exactly the above reason…Eve had not yet borne any children!

One day TEists will get it into their heads…God has told us through the Bible that his writers have already revealed all of this to us.

I will put this all by itself so hopefully it sticks…

THE BIBLE DOES NOT NEED INTERPRETING, IT INTERPRETS ITESELF!!!

Read the book of 2 Peter

Peter tells us

1. God revealed himself to Peter through the prophets, Christs ministry, and direct revelation, which we know from the Old Testament included VISIONS (images speak 1000 words do they not?)

2. Peter narrates the salvation of Noah in a global flood that killed all life on earth

3. Peter narrates the salvation of Lot and destruction of Sodom and Gomorah through fire from heaven

4. Peter narrates Lucifers rebellion and fall from heaven being cast down to this earth.

It is very clear that the apostle Peter believed the above were literal historical events! Peter was the first bishop of the Christian church…it was founded on his leadership and guidance.

[adamjedgar (adam james edgar)]

@T_aquaticus

But you can’t trust that it came from the Holy Spirit because man’s mind is no longer trustworthy (according to your thesis). In fact, you can’t even trust scripture because that came from the minds of men after sin entered the world.

The fundamental belief of Christianity is that God protects His Word from corruption.

The bible has gone through an exhaustive process of checks throughout its history and these have clearly shown it hasnt been corrupted.

For example, if you would like to study about the two main autographs for the complete Bible (Majority vs Critical Text), you will note that they were completely disconnected for hundreds and hundreds of years. Yet when they are compared, they are essentially identical. The debate has raged for a long time about whether the Alexandrian or the Byzantine is best, however, what is interesting is that both are almost identical (the differences are irrelevant to bible theology and doctrine). This is just one example of where its clear the bible isnt corrupted.

[T_aquaticus]

@adamjedgar

The fundamental belief of Christianity is that God protects His Word from corruption.

That’s a belief held by untrustworthy minds, according to @PaulAndrew.

@adamjedgar

The bible has gone through an exhaustive process of checks throughout its history and these have clearly shown it hasnt been corrupted.

Checks made by people with untrustworthy reasoning skills, again according to @PaulAndrew.

@adamjedgar

For example, if you would like to study the two main autographs for the complete Bible (Majority vs Critical Text), you will note that they were completely disconnected for hundreds and hundreds of years. Yet when they are compared, they are essentially identical. The debate has raged for a long time about whether the Alexandrian or the Byzantine is best, however, what is interesting is that both are almost identical (the differences are irrelevant to bible theology and doctrine). This is just one example of where its clear the bible isnt corrupted.

You are using untrustworthy reason, according to @PaulAndrew.

[adamjedgar (adam james edgar)]

@T_aquaticus

That’s a belief held by untrustworthy minds, according to @PaulAndrew.

@adamjedgar

The bible has gone through an exhaustive process of checks throughout its history and these have clearly shown it hasnt been corrupted.

Checks made by people with untrustworthy reasoning skills, again according to @PaulAndrew.

@adamjedgar

For example, if you would like to study the two main autographs for the complete Bible (Majority vs Critical Text), you will note that they were completely disconnected for hundreds and hundreds of years. Yet when they are compared, they are essentially identical. The debate has raged for a long time about whether the Alexandrian or the Byzantine is best, however, what is interesting is that both are almost identical (the differences are irrelevant to bible theology and doctrine). This is just one example of where its clear the bible isnt corrupted.

You are using untrustworthy reason, according to @PaulAndrew.

you didnt read my initial response to @PaulAndrew…i called his claim that God revealed his dating calender “a delusion”…

and then…

I have explained using appropriate suggestion that the claim the bible is corrupted is wrong. If you want to argue this point, your only means of doing so is to actually go and study the two main variants of the Bible and compare them. Then using that research, go back and compare them with older Old Testament writings used by the Jews (Pentateuch).

Unless you do that, your comments are ignorant and useless conjecture because the rule of Chinese whispers (if you like) would immediatgely falsify divine inspiration…however, given they are largely identical, Chinese whispers proves my point that the Bible is not corrupted!

oh btw

CHINESE WHISPERS

Meaning: A game in which a message is passed along in whispers, often distorted between the start and finish. Origin: The notion of “Chinese whispers” stems from a racist idea in the 1800s that Chinese people spoke in a way that was deliberately unintelligible

now where does that definition sound so familiar here? Oh yes thats right…the bible needs the modern mind to interpret unintelligable nonsense! (that would be a claim of St Roymonds would it not?)

[T_aquaticus]

@adamjedgar

I have explained using appropriate suggestion that the claim the bible is corrupted is wrong. If you want to argue this point, your only means of doing so is to actually go and study the two main variants of the Bible and compare them. Then using that research, go back and compare them with older Old Testament writings used by the Jews (Pentateuch).

I am following the line of thought to its consequences. @PaulAndrew stated:

“The last time I checked man’s mind was no longer trustworthy from sin came into the universe.”

All of the Bible was written by men after sin came into the universe. That means it’s not trustworthy according to the criteria that have been set out.