He replied, “Because the knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them.
Matthew 13:12
Whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them.
Matthew 13:13
This is why I speak to them in parables:
“Though seeing, they do not see;
though hearing, they do not hear or understand.
Matthew 13:14
In them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah:
“‘You will be ever hearing but never understanding;
you will be ever seeing but never perceiving.
Matthew 13:15
For this people’s heart has become calloused;
they hardly hear with their ears,
and they have closed their eyes.
Otherwise they might see with their eyes,
hear with their ears,
understand with their hearts
and turn, and I would heal them.’
Matthew 13:16
But blessed are your eyes because they see, and your ears because they hear.
Actually the Lord gave understanding and meaning to His disciples Kelli and those who agree with her and not to the multitude Mitchell and just about everyone else. He who has ears let him hear what the spirit Kelli is saying to the churches BioLogos.
God said nothing about a global flood. You have added to the text with this word “global.”
Indeed. And how shall we know who are His disciples and who are false prophets lying about the Spirit communicating any truth to them? What the false prophet says does not come to pass and does not agree with what we see in God’s creation.
It is funny how what “the spirit is saying to the churches,” as you call it, blows with the wind with every false doctrine and evil desire of people whether to support slavery, genocide of the American natives, extort money from too innocent members, entice women to be the toys of so called evangelists, or to serve political power plays. But the truth comes out and these church people are revealed as liars and false prophets. Those abusing people in this way really really hate science because it frequently reveals the falsity of their teachings.
Yes, not given to the false prophets whose teachings disagree with everything God sends us from the earth and sky.
And so they repeat the words but the meaning they teach from the words do not agree with what we find in the earth and sky.
They will not listen or see what God sends them from the earth and sky but close eyes, ears, and mind to what God shows them in order to cling to dead nonsensical meanings in scriptures which tickle their fancy.
To see you have to open your eyes to see what God is telling us in earth, sky, and the behavior of people all around us. To hear you have listen.
Thank you, Kelli, for posting the Genesis and Matthew verses.
Scripture is clear it is the Lord God who opens the eyes and ears of understanding based on the heart condition.
The Genesis verses say “the earth”. Nowhere do those words imply a local flood only
The word used can be translated as “region” or “land” – it doesn’t mean “globe.” It’s the same word used in the story of the famine in Egypt during the life of Joseph. Do you think people from the entire globe came to Egypt to buy grain?
@Shannon & @Kelli – Please understand, or begin to, anyway:
Truth comes from reality – that truth comes from both the reality of the data that God has revealed in the Bible and the truth that comes from the reality of data that God has revealed in creation. They do not and cannot conflict.If they appear to, then our interpretation of one or the other or both is flawed.
Laura,
Are you taking the verses posted in Genesis regarding the whole earth and equating them to the famine during the time of Joseph? One has nothing to do with the other.
Happy New Year
But in Genesis 41, it states, using the same word and by the same hand, 56 And the famine was over all the face of the earth: and Joseph opened all the storehouses, and sold unto the Egyptians; and the famine waxed sore in the land of Egypt.
57 And all countries came into Egypt to Joseph for to buy corn; because that the famine was so sore in all lands.
4 Likes
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
38
It can rain ammonia. or fire, or sulphuric acid, or cats and dogs, (or stair rods, or fish); just prefix rainbow before any of them.
I’m not saying the events have anything to do with each other – but the same Hebrew words used for “the earth” in the flood story are also used in the famine story. If you’re saying that they must mean that the entire globe was flooded, then why don’t they also mean that people came from the entire globe to get grain in Egypt?
Naturalis Historia has a neat article about this where he takes a passage from an Answers in Genesis book about the flood and simply replaces the flood references with famine references:
Hi again Laura
Just looking at Joseph and the famine was localized in the region.
Joseph’s wisdom bore fruit, for the seven good years of severe famine, and the Egyptians and people in other countries as well went to buy grain from the storehouses throughout Egypt. At last Joseph was in power in Egypt. God’s revelation to him by dreams was being fulfilled.
The following narrative show that God used the famine to bring Israel into Egypt under the ruler ship of Joseph. The nation would remain there some 400 years, as God prophesied to Abram (15:13) Israel could take comfort that in spite of her bondage God would someday enable her to triumph over Egypt.
Bible Knowledge Commentary
Jamieson-Fausett -Brown Bible Commentary
57. The famine was sore in all lands–that is, the lands contiguous to Egypt–Canaan, Syria, and Arabia.
Then maybe the flood was also in all lands – the lands contiguous to the part of Mesopotamia that Noah lived in. I still don’t see why one must be global and the other must be local when they use the same word for the earth. If you want to interpret the flood as being global, that’s fine – it’s your choice – but that doesn’t mean that those of us who interpret the word for “earth” as meaning the same thing in both the flood and the famine stories are somehow going against scripture or God.
In Genesis 6-9, one of the key issues is how we understand the Hebrew word kol (all). USTO concludes that the Hebrew word kol in the Flood story is used rhetorically – it simply means that a large area was inundated and large numbers of people were affected. Kol can be used rhetorically – no one questions that. However, Scripture must interpret Scripture. USTO ignores the key section in Genesis 6. In Genesis 6:5-7, God observes the wickedness of human beings “in the earth.” USTO would translate that as “in the land,” and yes, the Hebrew word for ‘earth’ can also be translated ‘land.’ But verse 6 militates against that, because it speaks of God’s creation of human beings “on the earth.” God did not create human beings “in the land,” i.e. in some region now under his scrutiny. This is universal language. That becomes further evident when Genesis 6:7 refers to the animals. God plans not only to destroy humanity, but also the “animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens” which he created at the beginning (cf. Gen. 7:4). This too favours a global understanding. Later in chapter 6, God speaks of “all flesh” having corrupted its way on the earth. Are we to imagine that there were pockets of humanity which were immune to this trend? Genesis 6:17 says, “For behold, I will bring a flood of waters upon the earth to destroy all flesh in which is the breath of life under heaven. Everything that is on the earth shall die.” Notice the mention of “under heaven.” All flesh “under heaven” is slated for destruction. Again, that distinctly favours a global understanding of this event.
Moreover, the building of the ark itself witnesses to a global flood. The ark was built by Noah, not only to save him and seven others of his family, but also to save the animals. USTO has no explanation as to why the animals had to enter the ark if the Flood was something less than global.
In a sidebar, USTO interacts briefly with the New Testament mentions of the Flood. They claim that none of the New Testament passages “make a statement about its geographical scope” (243). Luke 17:26-27 is mentioned:
Just as it was in the days of Noah, so will it be in the days of the Son of Man. They were eating and drinking and marrying and being given in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all.
USTO claims that this is just speaking about “how people were living their lives day by day and were caught by surprise when judgment came” (243). But what is the nature of the judgment to come? It’s universal. Just as the Flood destroyed all the ungodly in the days of Noah, “so will it be in the days of the Son of Man.” In case you miss the point, in the next three verses, Christ speaks about the days of Lot and the wholesale destruction of Sodom: “fire and sulfur rained from heaven and destroyed them all.” No one escaped, except Lot. Clearly, Christ understood the Flood to be an event which destroyed all human beings except Noah and his family.
According to USTO, 2 Peter 2:5 “references God sparing Noah” (243). 2 Peter 2:5 says, “…if he did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a herald of righteousness, with seven others, when he brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly…” It beggars belief to argue that Peter believed the flood to be anything less than global. It was the “ancient world” which was not spared and the flood came upon “the world of the ungodly.” The natural reading is to understand these terms globally and universally.
USTO also adopts an unnatural reading of 2 Peter 3:5-6. They argue that it just speaks about the world being deluged and destroyed and the Greek word for ‘world’ (kosmos) is being used in its broadest sense, and therefore it’s not referring to the extent of the Flood. However, when you look at these verses in context, beginning with verse 4, it becomes evident how implausible that interpretation is:
They will say, ‘Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation. For they deliberately overlook this fact, that the heavens existed long ago, and the earth was formed out of water and through water by the word of God, and that by means of these the world that then existed was deluged with water and perished.
Notice how Peter writes about the creation of the earth – he is quite evidently not speaking about the creation of some portion of the planet. The same entire planet that was created was deluged with water.
If God is revealing through the scientific evidence that a global flood never happened, then we need to revisit our interpretation of Genesis and somehow bring it into alignment with this newer divine revelation. That is what USTO is doing. However, it is a revisionist approach to the Bible. It simply does not honour the Bible as God’s Word. We honour God’s Word when we take it on its own terms and then evaluate what we observe in the world around us in the light of what God has said. As the Psalmist says, “….in your light do we see light” (Ps. 36:9).
Conclusion
There are a fair number of other concerns I could mention, but having covered the most important, I’ll bring this lengthy review to a close here. I began by saying that USTO could be described as the theistic evolution “Bible.” I said that intentionally because USTO not only contains content from the written Bible as we know it, but it also presents scientific evidence as a second “book” with additional revelation from God (albeit with a “provisional authority”). Whether this is a legitimate method of approaching origins is really the key issue. Because I am a Reformed Christian, I emphatically deny that it is.
I believe the Bible alone is our inspired, infallible, inerrant source for doctrine and life. The Bible teaches that about itself. Therefore, God’s Word always has to be our starting point. It is not that the Bible is a “textbook” for science, as USTO and others allege creationists to believe. Rather, science can only honour God when it takes its starting point from what God has said in the Bible.
I tried, but I could not read this book dispassionately. In this book, I heard the whispers of Satan in the Garden of Eden: did God really say? If someone is questioning my Father or twisting his words, even if it’s done with the greatest sophistication, I cannot remain dispassionate. I also think of the sad fact that this book comprises course material at Wheaton College. Scores of impressionable youth have been and are being fed this content. Because it is happening at a Christian institution, they could be led to believe that this is an acceptable Christian approach. It is not. It is unbelief. I pray for students at Wheaton College that God will help them with his Spirit and Word to discern the truth regarding origins.
Dismantled: A Scientific Deconstruction of the Theory of Evolution
We’ve been told that modern science and the theory of evolution have disproved the Genesis account of creation. Furthermore, the fossil record proves that humans evolved from ape-like creatures over millions of years through a series of mutations and natural selection. However, evidence from biology, paleoanthropology, and modern genetics is telling us a different story.
(With my moderator hat on – I combined your posts just because it should be clear when you are copying and pasting someone else’s words vs. writing your own, so the source of any quote should be clear in any post that contains quotes from it.)
Anyway… I could just as easily copy and paste from a different author who comes to different conclusions, but I’m not sure that would be productive. Even “universal language” can be difficult to parse, since the word “all” usually has some kind of limitations that are not always explicit. Even though God is universal, the Old Testament is ultimately the story of Israel (even before Abraham) – not the rest of the globe – and the ancient peoples didn’t even have a concept of “the globe” anyway. Assuming that terms like “all” have regional limitations is not doubting God or listening to “the whispers of Satan” – it’s trying not to ascribe to God things that he did not inspire by keeping the original authors’ limitations in mind.
You make a good argument for a global flood. And since a global flood never happened but rather a very different history of the earth is ievident, it becomes a very strong argument against a literal interpretation.
