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Right on! It's when we stop learning or think we have it all figured out that we're in trouble. Spurgeon said, Knowledge is not wisdom. He is wisest who does not wish to know what God has not revealed.
I think with this, God has revealed. However as we know, Jesus told us to keep asking/seeking/knocking. If we don't know something, we keep at it until God reveals it. That's why He's a rewarder of those who seek Him. I just don't want to say there is something we can't know, and even worse, something we can never know about God. Which I think with a lot of things, most christians will leave it at you can't know.
I believe that the foundation could also mean, the creation of all things, including the ages of time. If God had a plan before the creation, and it included the "fall" of man, then there was something to know before the creation and He would know that they would disobey Him, and this for a purpose. Hebrews 4:3 is a scripture that reveals that His works were finished from the foundation of the world.(kosmos) Kosmos meaning beauty, arrangement, world (Young's Analytical Concordance) God bless and peace.
The thing is if those words don't mean what they say, we can't know. Ultimately you're telling me as well that we can't know what God is doing. I mean does God have free will? It wasn't like He was obligated to create Satan or us. We assume He loves us all, even the wicked. He gets no joy seeing the wicked perish, that's what the Bible tells us. Yet He decides to create us anyway when He doesn't have to? This is my take. I would say based on all the things I've read in the Bible, comparing scripture to scripture and there's a lot to compare, if God knew what Adam and Eve would do, the Bible tells us a contradicting story.
No, I did not tell you that we can't know anything about what God is doing. We can know what God has revealed that He is going to do.
Heavenese, if you want to understand what Genesis 6:6 is saying then take the time to learn what anthropopathisms are as I suggested. Here are some studies on it.
I think with this, God has revealed. However as we know, Jesus told us to keep asking/seeking/knocking. If we don't know something, we keep at it until God reveals it. That's why He's a rewarder of those who seek Him. I just don't want to say there is something we can't know, and even worse, something we can never know about God. Which I think with a lot of things, most christians will leave it at you can't know.
Our physicality is not important to our spiritual development and never has been. It is our physical animal nature that acts as an adversary to our spiritual inclinations. However, thanks to the schoolmaster stage our species had developed significant self-control by the time of Christ. Jesus said the "fields were ripe for the harvest" . . . meaning they were ready to apply that self-control motivated by agape love . . . instead of fear. (Fear was only the beginning of the wisdom of self-control). So they were a little more evolved by the NT than they were during the OT. That is why Christ came to lift the veil of ignorance over the OT and correct the misunderstandings about God and His motives toward us. The fields may have been ripe . . . but the barbarians were clearly still in control! God would NOT have required us to become Bible scholars to understand Him. That would be silly. We are capable of knowing God directly. As the scripture says: " Everyone who loves is born of God and knows God." If we simply follow Christ's instructions to His disciples to "love God and each other" daily and repent when we don't . . . we will know God and be just fine.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Heavenese
So I'm saying ultimately we could throw away the Bible. I would argue that sense Jesus wasn't directly involved in writing the NT, we could throw away those teachings because surely they weren't perfect either. By the way, your feelings on this are similar to that of the teachings of the gnostics. That Jesus brought us hidden wisdom. There being no such thing as sin and sin nature, only that this knowledge will ultimately free us. I guess you could say spiritual knowledge. Again ultimately, my interpretation is different then yours. The world makes more sense if the things in the Bible literally happened, and not everyone here agrees in the literal reading of the Bible.
No we cannot throw away the Bible. That is preposterous. The idea that if everything in it is NOT the 100% literal inerrant word of God we can't believe ANY of it . . . is a childish, tantrum-filled refusal to accept reality as it is. There is NOTHING touched by human hands that is or ever can be 100% inerrant or infallible . . . regardless what its original source was. If your world makes more sense believing the obvious fables and stories in the Bible as History and reality . . . we have a very different understanding of what makes sense. They make far more sense to me as lessons involved in the evolution of our understanding of God . . . than as literal history. Christ is a different matter . . . as I am convinced He is real and was crucified for His Gospel message as an unambiguous demonstration of God's agape love for us all . . . including His torturers and murderers because they knew not what they did.
Preston Eby has an excellent discussion on what the "foundation" means, from his perspective, and I tend to agree with this, although I don't necessarily agree with everything he writes. But this is a good study for anyone interested. I am not sharing this to change the subject of this thread but because He discusses the meaning of the foundation.
"All things were created in the Christ. "For IN HIM were all things created. IN HIM all things were created and set in order in the beauty and unity and perfection and harmony of the Spirit of God.
And then something awesome happened! The creation was thrust OUT OF Christ, lowered into this gross material realm. This we have verified in the following scriptures: "But with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot: who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you" (I Pet. 1:19-20). Again, "And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the lamb slain from the foundation of the world” (Rev. 13:8). I do not wish to appear to be "splitting hairs" nor do I wish to invent doctrines, but to me it is infinitely important to pay special attention to the word "foundation" in the passages just quoted. Foundation is from the Greek word KATABOLE, derived from KATABALLO, which is a compound of two words, KATA, meaning "down", and BALLO, meaning "to throw". The precise meaning of the word is "to throw down" and bespeaks, moreover, a rupture, breach, breaking or tearing asunder, schism, scission, fission - a disruption. It does not mean, as our Authorized Version has it, the establishing of the foundation of the world, but, conversely, the breaking up or disruption of the world! The Concordant Version of the New Testament correctly renders it thus: "Christ ... a flawless and unspotted Lamb, foreknown, indeed, before the disruption of the world." Again, "...the Lambkin which has been slain from the disruption of the world."
The question readily follows: When did this disruption of the world occur? It will be helpful to turn to Gen. 1:1-2 wherein we read, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” The first verse contents itself with a simple statement of a consummated act. Not a word about the method, manner, means or procedure of creation, and nothing of its result. The second verse carries a tremendous suggestion of collapse in its touching picture of the Spirit of God brooding over the watery face of the formless void! Let us see what a careful word study of this second verse will reveal.
In the Authorized Version the text begins: "And the earth was..." This word in the Hebrew text is also translated "but", or "moreover". Thus in the Septuagint version of the scripture the text begins: "But the earth had become..." and this is the sense of the Vulgate as well. The second word to be noted is the one translated in the English Bible “was". The Hebrew language lacks a word for "became", so the word "was" is always used to carry out the sense of "became". This phrase then literally reads, "But the earth had become..." Tohu v'bohu! This phrase, "tohu v'bohu", is translated in the American Revision “waste and void". In the Authorized Version it reads, "without form and void", but the sense of this phrase is even stronger than that. The Septuagint says, "But the earth had become unfurnished and empty," the Vulgate says, "dreary and empty," and the Aramaic makes the strongest and clearest statement of all: "And the earth had become ruined and uninhabited!" Hebrew scholars have said that this is the clearest statement of all, as the term "tohu v'bohu" literally means "desolation succeeding previous life.” The second verse of Genesis, then, literally should read, "But the earth had become desolate, ruined, unfurnished, disrupted, fragmented and chaotic, covered with water and shrouded in darkness. And the Spirit of God brooded over the face of the waters.” Let us clearly keep in mind that all this is prior to the six days of creation, or re-creation. Isaiah states that God created the earth not a waste (Isa. 45:18) and Moses states that the earth nevertheless had become a waste.
When God lowered the creation from the realm of pure spirit existence in Christ, to the gross material realm, there occurred a mighty disruption, breaking up, or fragmentation. The creation was "made subject to vanity" and the whole downward process of disintegration and dissolution was begun. Just as our ascent back into the image and fullness of God is ever "from glory to glory," "from faith to faith," and "from experience to experience," so the process downward into fragmentation and dissolution continued through various stages and vast ages of time until the lowest depths of frustration were reached. Kindgdom Bible Studies Savior of the World Series Part 1
No, I did not tell you that we can't know anything about what God is doing. We can know what God has revealed that He is going to do.
Heavenese, if you want to understand what Genesis 6:6 is saying then take the time to learn what anthropopathisms are as I suggested. Here are some studies on it.
Heavenese, I think you make some pretty strong reasonings. I've skimmed most of these replies and a few things came to mind.
At the end of the first chapter of Genesis, God says of creation, "it was very good". If he had known Adam and Eve's choices, would he say it was very good?
Ecclesiates 9:11 says that time and chance happens to all. If everything was planned, my diseases, my accidents, etc...why wear a seatbelt, why take vitamins and eat healthy, why exercise? Some may say that God plans for me to make those choices. Would a loving God create me and program me to choose unhealthy lifestyle choices that may cause cancer, I die, which brings sorrow to my friends and family? I think not.
Whether or not God KNEW is different than some say God planned it. The scriptures show that God created them perfectly and Adam and Eve made a choice. Because of their choice, sin and death entered the world and was passed on to all of us.
Heavenese, I think you make some pretty strong reasonings. I've skimmed most of these replies and a few things came to mind.
At the end of the first chapter of Genesis, God says of creation, "it was very good". If he had known Adam and Eve's choices, would he say it was very good?
Ecclesiates 9:11 says that time and chance happens to all. If everything was planned, my diseases, my accidents, etc...why wear a seatbelt, why take vitamins and eat healthy, why exercise? Some may say that God plans for me to make those choices. Would a loving God create me and program me to choose unhealthy lifestyle choices that may cause cancer, I die, which brings sorrow to my friends and family? I think not.
Whether or not God KNEW is different than some say God planned it. The scriptures show that God created them perfectly and Adam and Eve made a choice. Because of their choice, sin and death entered the world and was passed on to all of us.
Yep. I can understand why people don't readily accept my reasonings. Even atheists would reject what I'm saying. It's not the traditional teaching, even though I'm not stripping God of His knowledge. Yet what I want people to realize is the problems of God knowing before Adam and Eve's creation. We are too quick to say He knew, and reject all the problems that brings. We will quote things like God knowing us before we were in our mother's womb and the days He planned for us. Do we fully understand what is being said there? Surely all of that is meant in a positive context. Can a girl who is raped and murdered say the same about her days being numbered by God? We would have to assume God planned for that girl to die on the day she did, but no one here would agree with that understanding. We would say she died before her time, but that doesn't jive well with some of the quotes being thrown around. So I agree with you beeveenh.
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It's when we stop learning or think we have it all figured out that we're in trouble. Spurgeon said, Knowledge is not wisdom. He is wisest who does not wish to know what God has not revealed.
