To put the difficulty another way, you do not seem to be considering the possibility that anyone else’s understanding of Scripture might come from God. Plenty of people claim to have divinely inspired understanding of Scripture. Many of them advocate nonsense or evil. We must be assessing whether our understanding of Scripture is consistent with the resto of Scripture. Likewise, our task is do do the best that we can to understand the original intent and meaning. As John Walton put it in his talk at the BioLogos meeting, Scripture must be our tether, not our springboard. If no one else thinks we have a good interpretation, they’re probably right, even though their interpretation is not perfect, either.
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That was a good illustration. And the question about how Jesus used it as a springboard- Well, he is Jesus and we are not. While he did not mix his analogy with his cultural stream analogy, it would go well to say we must keep ourselves tethered to avoid being swept away by the cultural current.
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I do not read Biblical Hebrew so I went to Meta AI:
“ Ha-Aretz (הָאָרֶץ) is a Hebrew phrase that means “the earth” or “the land”. It is a common phrase used in the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) to refer to the earth or a specific land or territory.
In Hebrew, the word “Aretz” (אֶרֶץ) means “earth” or “land”, and the definite article “Ha-” (הָ) is prefixed to it to make it “the earth” or “the land”.
Ha-Aretz is often used to refer to:
- The earth as a whole (Genesis 1:1)
- The land of Israel or Canaan (Genesis 12:1)
- A specific territory or region (Exodus 3:8)”
So it agrees with my view that in Genesis 1:1 that it refers to the planet Earth as a whole.
I showed in a much earlier post that when God stated let there be light at the creation that command has its spiritual reality here:
2 Corinthians 4:6 For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
Even so, one could go through each stage of the natural creation and with spiritual illumination from the Holy Spirit he/she can perceive the various spiritual stages of God’s salvation. For the whole Bible is crafted to teach spiritual things by employing the created things that are written in the Bible:
1 Corinthians 2:13 Which things also we speak, not in the words which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual.
1 Corinthians 2:14 But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.
Hi David. It’s good that you are taking time out of your busy class schedule to post. I have never stated that anyone else’s understanding of Scripture might not come from God. I am here to discuss God’s gap which began with the start of the seventh day of the creation and ended when Adam sinned for the first time. I believe God gave me that understanding. All I am asking is for persons on this forum to do is to show using the Bible only that there is no gap and that I have been deceived of God just like Jeremiah was deceived by God:
Jeremiah 20:7 O LORD, thou hast deceived me, and I was deceived: thou art stronger than I, and hast prevailed: I am in derision daily, every one mocketh me.
By the way David, I have written several posts above to answer your hard questions about the Biblical Calendar. Do you have any more hard questions that I may answer for you?
Thanks,
Paul Aarons
That is such a great way to put it!
I’ve met a few where that could have been an understatement.
Similarly to how Paul interprets chunks of the OT as allegory – but he was Paul, and we are not. It’s really easy to twist things when going allegorically.
No, it doesn’t – you’re reading that into the definitions. It can be rendered “the earth” in the same way that a farmer might talk of “the good earth” – the farmer isn’t talking about the planet, he’s talking about the ground in his area and its fertility.
There is no word in ancient Hebrew that can be rendered as “planet”. When it refers to the “earth as a whole” it means the Earth-disk under the solid dome that keeps the “waters above” from falling down.
Paul’s use of a reference to the origin of light does not give that light a spiritual quality; that is reading backwards, which is a really good way to go astray. And the fact that you can dig out verses that you think fit with the ‘days’ of creation doesn’t mean there are any “spiritual stages”.
“Stages”? There are none – there is Christ, period.
Please read:
Genesis 1:1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
Genesis 1:14 And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:
Genesis 1:15 And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.
Genesis 1:16 And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.
Genesis 1:17 And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth,
Genesis 1:18 And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good.
Genesis 1:19 And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.
Earth in the context above is the planet in contradistinction to the sun, moon and stars, the celestial bodies which were all created on day fourth. That’s God’s Word:
Proverbs 30:5 Every word of God is pure: he is a shield unto them that put their trust in him.
Proverbs 30:6 Add thou not unto his words, lest he reprove thee, and thou be found a liar.
My trust is in Him via His Word. Therefore I do not adjust God’s Word, any at all. I will reveal its spiritual connotations however as my understanding is opened in this manner:
Luke 24:44 And he said unto them, These are the words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning me.
Luke 24:45 Then opened he their understanding, that they might understand the scriptures,
Yes, the Old Testament was spiritually concerning Jesus Christ. Moses wrote Genesis where God said on day one, let there be light! My namesake wrote the spiritual understanding connecting that statement spiritually to Jesus Christ and the gospel of Light:
2 Corinthians 4:6 For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our (elect’s) hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
For previous to the above happening this was the spiritual situation with even the elect:
2 Corinthians 4:3 But if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost:
2 Corinthians 4:4 In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.
Anyway, I don’t wish to go off my topic of God’s gap and go teach the spiritual truths of the phases of the creation. I am here for folks on this forum with the smartest IQs in mankind to show me from the Bible that God’s gap starting on the seventh day of creation and lasting until Adam sinned and commenced living his 930 years lifespan subjected to physical death due to sin is not validated by the Scripture. For God shows by the phrase ‘and he died’ that Adam’s entire 930 years was lived to die:
Genesis 5:5 And all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years: and he died.
Just the same as all the later descendants of Adam listed with their chronogenealogies in Genesis 5 that physically died, it states ‘and he died’ for every one of them, without exception:
Romans 6:23 For the wages of sin is death;
Thanks very much for your interaction. But please help me with God’s gap.
I’m sorry, but I read it this way:
בְּרֵאשִׁ֖ית בָּרָ֣א אֱלֹהִ֑ים אֵ֥ת הַשָּׁמַ֖יִם וְאֵ֥ת הָאָֽרֶץ׃
and so forth.
And the word אֶרֶץ, here with the definite article, thus הָאָֽרֶץ, does not mean “planet”, it means “land” or “ground”. In the opening Creation story, or for that matter in the entire set of Old Testment writings, it meant the earth disk over which YHWH-Elohim had put a solid dome to keep the waters above from falling down.
No, it’s the result of insisting that the opening of Genesis has to be read in a modern worldview and not the one it was written in. There is no Hebrew word for “planet”; they did not know the difference between any of the lights in the sky except that some of them “walked around” instead of moving along with the other stars. A word in an ancient language means what its writer understood it to mean, not what someone later on wants it to mean. Earth in the context of Genesis is a flat disk with the firmament covering it.
That’s exactly what you do when you push modern science onto the word that has been written. What Genesis tells us is that there were tiny dots in the sky that were seen at night, and some of those dots walked their own paths instead of moving with the rest.
Some of the greatest errors in church history came from people making the exact same mistake you’re making: forcing their worldview onto the text of the scriptures.
Other than the fact that you’re mixing two stories together? It’s an invented gap, not something the text actually says based on your assumption that the years it says that Adam lived don’t count the ones in the Garden. I noted before that the actual gaps in the story are between the different days since they are not stated as consecutive.
It isn’t, because there’s no hint in the scripture that there is any gap – it’s pure invention. A tolerable case might be mounted for it, but something can only be “validated by scripture” if scripture actually points to it, and nothing in the text points to such a gap. The grammar in chapter one points to likely gaps between the says, but nothing points to any gap where you’re trying to put it.
Thanks, St. Roymond, for your responses.
We read, however:
Isaiah 65:17 For, behold, I create new heavens and a new earth: and the former shall not be remembered, nor come into mind.
Isaiah 66:22 For as the new heavens and the new earth, which I will make, shall remain before me, saith the LORD, so shall your seed and your name remain.
And a new Earth is required because of this event:
2 Peter 3:10 But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up.
2 Peter 3:11 Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness,
2 Peter 3:12 Looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God, wherein the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat?
2 Peter 3:13 Nevertheless we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.
And we see the new Earth here:
Revelation 21:1 And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea.
Thanks for your input.
It’s very sad that I am not allowed to post my detailed studies where I give all the explanations with matching Scriptures. Now just today’s daily Bible study here is a little of what I wrote to my fellowship group and my email to some YEC who started out disputing but now are just reading to gain understanding of where they went wrong by not seeing God’s gap:
Well, I did write in this series recently enough that God is the perfect mathematician and that men simply follow God’s mathematics because they are uniquely created in the image of God. Well, you know, in the field of mathematics there are cardinal numbers as opposed to ordinal numbers. And where did men get this knowledge? Yes, God gave them this capacity when God created Adam in God’s image. For in God’s counting of each of His six days of the creation, each day being 24 hours in duration, God employs both cardinal and ordinal numbers. Well, let’s look at Meta AI’s definition of Ordinal vs Cardinal numbers:
“Ordinal numbers and cardinal numbers are two types of numbers that serve different purposes in mathematics and language.
Cardinal numbers are used to count and express the quantity or amount of something. They answer the question “How many?” and are usually represented by integers (whole numbers). Examples of cardinal numbers include:
- 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, …
On the other hand, ordinal numbers are used to describe the position or rank of something in a sequence or order. They answer the question “What is the position?” and are usually represented by words or symbols that indicate the order, such as:
- 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, …
The main difference between ordinal and cardinal numbers is their function:
- Cardinal numbers tell us how many items there are.
- Ordinal numbers tell us the position of an item in a sequence.
For example, if you have 5 books on a shelf, the cardinal number is 5 (there are 5 books). If you want to describe the position of a particular book, you would use an ordinal number, such as “This is the 3rd book on the shelf”.
For the entire Forum. A page from my detailed Biblical Calendar:
You are all invited to take a look. But really I wish to focus on trying to disprove God’s gap using the Scriptures only. So please help me out. That’s the sole purpose for my being here. For the world leading YEC’s, you name them and their organizations, have tried but only succeeded in tightening the screws and hence so many more daily Bible Studies written to answer their every question. The world’s most stellar OEC organization said they don’t have time to be involved. Well, they have many gaps already so what is another gap to them. But honestly, I don’t wish to be on this Forum or contacting any other group of renowned Christians. I just want to get God’s gap to be disproved and I will gladly disappear back under my shell.
Thanks very much.
You didn’t actually respond. Quoting verses with a word that you’re misdefining doesn’t constitute an argument, so there is no “however”. Piling up verses is a common tactic that is actually a way to avoid actually addressing the substance of a point.
The fact remains that you are reading a modern scientific worldview into Genesis, trying to force it to mean things the Hebrew didn’t even have words for. הָאָֽרֶץ (ha-ar-etz) does not mean planet, it means “land” i.e. “solid ground”, or “country” or “known world”, thus the earth-disk over which God put the solid dome.
But this does not apply to the opening Creation story. There, the grammar for your example would be that there are hundreds of books on the shelf but you are only interested in three of them, so going in order the last of those is a third book even though there are a few hundred books between it and the second one you are interested in. So we have, “A first day”, and then aren’t told how many days happened – it could be millions or more – before we are told “a second day”, and the same holds for “a third day”, etc.
So even if all the days are taken as 24-hour ones, that doesn’t tell us how many days from day one through the sixth day.
It’s not “God’s gap”, it’s one you’ve invented by disputing the counting of the years in Adam’s life. You can’t assert it as a gap unless you can provide evidence from the text that your proposed counting of the years that Adam lived is correct.
Sorry to say, but no you don’t actually appear to want to be disproved. There have been plenty of scriptural reasons given for why your idea is wrong and you just can not accept them. I understand given how much time and effort you have invested in this.
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That’s fairly evident from his label “God’s gap” since it is nothing of the sort.
You stated:
“You didn’t actually respond. Quoting verses with a word that you’re misdefining doesn’t constitute an argument, so there is no “however”. Piling up verses is a common tactic that is actually a way to avoid actually addressing the substance of a point.
The fact remains that you are reading a modern scientific worldview into Genesis, trying to force it to mean things the Hebrew didn’t even have words for. הָאָֽרֶץ (ha-ar-etz) does not mean planet, it means “land” i.e. “solid ground”, or “country” or “known world”, thus the earth-disk over which God put the solid dome.”
Dear St.Roymond, you are quite a persistent individual😂. But so am I😂. We are too peas in a pod😂. This will be my last response on the silliness of your supposed reasonings for I must be about God’s gap and not be distracted by you, as you seem to be attempting to do. Here, again, is the Scripture with the sun and moon giving light upon the planet Earth from day fourth:
Genesis 1:15 And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.
Genesis 1:16 And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.
Genesis 1:17 And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth,
Genesis 1:18 And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good.
Genesis 1:19 And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.
Now, based on your reasoning that the word ‘earth’ above in the Hebrew means ‘land’, then it means that passengers on cruise ships that are leaving out to the ocean during the daytime would have no light from the sun upon them as soon as the ships move from land out to sea. For by your reasoning the light of the sun does not shine on the seas or oceans of the Planet Earth, but only upon the dry land (earth).
Thanks very much, I am officially off this topic of the Planet Earth. For I must obey my Heavenly Father:
Proverbs 26:4 Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest thou also be like unto him.
Proverbs 26:5 Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own conceit.
I have answered you with my Heavenly Father’s wisdom; not from the same source of wisdom that your fallacious reasonings emanate.
No, you have answered by isolating odd verses of Scripture and quoting the as if they are stand alone wisdom. Scripture is not a collection of individual verses. Those verses were established in the late 13th century to make the bible easier to read and reference.
By breaking down Scripture you corrupt its meaning.
Richard
Hi Richard,
Thanks so very much for stopping to express your opinion. However, I am looking for God’s opinion on God’s gap that I have shown and which the YEC and many other huge Christian groups thus far, have no answer. For every Scripture they write to me to try to inflict damage to God’s gap, my Heavenly Father by His understandings that He gives me to answer, uses those very same scriptures to further solidify His gap. It’s like kicking against the pricks!