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This thread doesn't focus upon one singular topic. It's a collection of various items from the Bible that just about everybody ponders now and again; for example:
The Difference Between The Old Testament And The New
This major division in the Bible is primarily editorial; viz: it's man-made instead of God-made; but the division is pretty harmless and actually quite useful.
In a nutshell:
1• The primary difference between the two testaments is their respective atonement systems. The Old Testament's atonement system is based upon animal sacrifices; while the New Testament's atonement system is based upon a human sacrifice.
2• The Old Testament's priesthood is captained by men subject to death; while the New Testament's priesthood is captained by a man impervious to death.
3• The Old Testament reveals curses for people who disobey the Ten Commandments; while the New Testament reveals an escape from those curses.
4• The Old Testament is where we learn of the origin of the human race as we know it; while the New Testament is where we learn of the termination of the human race as we know it; along with the introduction of a new human race about which we know comparatively little.
In the April 2014 edition of Discover magazine, astrophysicist/cosmologist Avi Loeb stated that the Bible attributes the appearance of stars and galaxies to the divine proclamation "Let there be light". Is Mr. Loeb's statement correct? No; of course not. God created light on the very first day of creation; while luminous celestial objects weren't created until the fourth.
The Bible is notoriously concise in some places; especially in it's story of the creation of light. Well; the creation of light was a very, very intricate process. First God had to create particulate matter, and along with those particles their specific properties, including mass. Then He had to invent laws to govern how matter behaves in combination with and/or in the presence of, other kinds of matter in order to generate electromagnetic radiation.
NOTE: Light's properties are a bit of a mystery. It exists as waves in a variety of frequencies, and also as particles called photons. And though light has no mass; it's influenced by gravity. Light is also quite invisible. For example: you can see the Sun and you can see the Moon when the Sun's light is shining on it. But none of the Sun's light is visible in the space between them and that's because light isn't matter; it's energy.
The same laws that make it possible for matter to generate electromagnetic radiation also make other conditions possible too; e.g. fire, wind, water, ice, soil, rain, life, centrifugal force, thermodynamics, fusion, dark energy, gravity, atoms, organic molecules, magnetism, radiation, refraction, reflection, high energy X-rays and gamma rays, temperature, pressure, force, inertia, sound, friction, and electricity; et al. So the creation of light was a pretty big deal; yet Genesis scarcely gives its origin passing mention.
†. Gen 1:1-2 . .The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep
That statement reveals the cosmos' condition prior to the creation of light; and no mystery there because sans the natural laws that make light possible, the cosmos' particulate matter would never have coalesced into something coherent.
2Cor 4:6 verifies that light wasn't introduced into the cosmos from outside in order to dispel the darkness and brighten things up a bit; but rather, it radiated out of the cosmos from inside-- from itself --indicating that the cosmos was created to be self-illuminating by means of the various interactions of the matter that God made for it; including, but not limited to, the Higgs Boson.
Actually God`s plan for salvation in the Old Testament can for a few who were in covenant with God with rules of ethics with the promise of a messiah lamb of God to come ....................And in the New testament came the actual promise , where some people from the Old testament who had passed on were finally saved by the coming of the messiah lamb of God , and people now from the new testament onward had the promise were they could be saved through a new creation of God spirit abiding on the believer by the judgment of the cross of Christ ....................where the devil and people who sided with this devil who killed Jesus on the cross would have to turn away from this devil to be saved to Jesus ,.................. where all gifts of grace and salvation and provision will come after people turn away from the devil .............................See the animal sacrifice of the old testament was a shadow of the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross , as God blames the devil and his followers as they pass on without redemption from God
†. Gen 1:5b . . And there was evening and there was morning, a first Day.
According to Gen 1:24-31, God created humans and all land animals on the sixth day; which has to include dinosaurs because on no other day did God create land animals but the sixth.
Hard-core Bible thumpers insist the days of creation were 24-hour calendar days in length; but scientific dating methods have easily proven that dinosaurs preceded human life by several million years. So then, in my estimation, the days of creation should be taken to represent epochs of indeterminable length rather than 24-hour calendar days.
That's not an unreasonable estimation; for example:
"These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that Jehovah God made earth and heaven." (Gen 2:4)
The Hebrew word for "day" in that verse is yowm (yome) which is the very same word for each of the six days of God's creation labors. Since yowm in Gen 2:4 refers to a period of time obviously much longer than a 24-hour calendar day; it justifies suggesting that each of the six days of creation were longer than 24 hours apiece too. In other words: yowm is ambiguous and not all that easy to interpret sometimes.
Another useful hint as to the length of the days of creation is located in the sixth chapter of Genesis where Noah is instructed to coat the interior and exterior of his ark with a substance the Bible calls "pitch". The Hebrew word is kopher (ko'-fer) which indicates a material called bitumen: a naturally occurring kind of asphalt formed from the remains of ancient, microscopic algae (diatoms) and other once-living things. In order for bitumen to be available in Noah's day, the organisms from whence it was formed had to have existed on the earth several thousands of years before him.
The discovery of fossilized sea lilies near the summit of Mt Everest proves that the Himalayan land mass has not always been mountainous; but at one time was the floor of an ancient sea bed. This is confirmed by the "yellow band" below Everest's summit consisting of limestone: a type of rock made from calcite sediments containing the skeletal remains of countless trillions of organisms who lived, not on dry land, but in an ocean. The tectonic forces that pushed the Himalayans up from below sea level to their current height work very slowly and require untold eons to accomplish their task.
So then, why can't Bible thumpers accept a six-epoch explanation? Because they're hung up on the expression "evening and morning"
The interesting thing is: there were no physical evenings and mornings till the fourth day when the Sun was created and brought on line. So I suggest that the expression "evening and morning" is simply a convenient way to indicate the simultaneous wrap of one epoch and the beginning of another.
Anyway; this "day" thing has been a chronic problem for just about everybody who takes Genesis seriously. It's typically assumed that the days of creation consisted of twenty-four hours apiece; so we end up stumped when trying to figure out how to cope with the estimated 4.5 billion-year age of the earth, and factor in the various eras, e.g. Triassic, Jurassic, Mesozoic, Cenozoic, Cretaceous, etc, plus the ice ages and the mass extinction events.
It just never seems to occur to us that it might be okay in some cases to go ahead and think outside the box. When we do that-- when we allow ourselves to think outside the box --that's when we begin to really appreciate the contributions science has made towards providing modern men a window into the Earth's amazing past.
Galileo believed that science and religion are allies rather than enemies-- two different languages telling the same story. In other words: science and religion compliment each other-- science answers questions that religion doesn't answer, and religion answers questions that science cannot answer; viz: science and religion are not enemies; no, to the contrary, science and religion assist each other in their respective quests to get to the bottom of some of the cosmos' greatest mysteries.
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This thread doesn't focus upon one singular topic. It's a collection of various items from the Bible that just about everybody ponders now and again; for example:
The Difference Between The Old Testament And The New
This major division in the Bible is primarily editorial; viz: it's man-made instead of God-made; but the division is pretty harmless and actually quite useful.
In a nutshell:
1• The primary difference between the two testaments is their respective atonement systems. The Old Testament's atonement system is based upon animal sacrifices; while the New Testament's atonement system is based upon a human sacrifice.
2• The Old Testament's priesthood is captained by men subject to death; while the New Testament's priesthood is captained by a man impervious to death.
3• The Old Testament reveals curses for people who disobey the Ten Commandments; while the New Testament reveals an escape from those curses.
4• The Old Testament is where we learn of the origin of the human race as we know it; while the New Testament is where we learn of the termination of the human race as we know it; along with the introduction of a new human race about which we know comparatively little.
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Just a side note.
The first Passover lamb was killed and it redeemed and saved all the first born sons. Then Moses went to the mountain and came down with a design by which the Passover lamb now became the priest.
Numbers 3
Now the priest would have to stand as a Passover lamb instead of the firstborn sons just as the first Passover lamb had done.
Firstborn Sons Redeemed
40And the LORD said unto Moses, Number all the firstborn of the males of the children of Israel from a month old and upward, and take the number of their names. 41And thou shalt take the Levites for me (I am the LORD) instead of all the firstborn among the children of Israel; and the cattle of the Levites instead of all the firstlings among the cattle of the children of Israel. 42And Moses numbered, as the LORD commanded him, all the firstborn among the children of Israel. 43And all the firstborn males by the number of names, from a month old and upward, of those that were numbered of them, were twenty and two thousand two hundred and threescore and thirteen.
From then on, a priest could speak as a lamb saying,'' Eat of my flesh.''
Celestial objects require some special consideration because of their apparent distances and the apparent time it takes for their light to reach the Earth.
For example: last decade, an analysis of the light that Hubble telescope detected coming from a distant galaxy named A1689-zD1 suggested it's apparent distance at approximately 12.8 billion light years.
Chronologically; the cosmos' creator began constructing the Earth before He began constructing the stars; which indicates that as a physical structure, the Earth should be older than A1689-zD1. But geologists have pretty good reason to believe the Earth to be only something like 4.5 billion years old; while A1689-zD1 appears to be a minimum 12.8 billion years old.
So then, it seems reasonable to conclude that A1689-zD1 is Earth's senior by at least 8.3 billion years. But there's a rub.
Light's journey through space is complicated by some curious mysteries.
1• The available data suggests that the universe is expanding in all directions. And not only is it expanding; but the velocity of its expansion isn't steady, nor is it slowing down as might be expected; but rather, contrary to common sense and Newton's standard laws of gravity; the velocity of the cosmos' expansion is accelerating due to a mysterious force which, for convenience sake, has been labeled dark energy.
Plus, the expansion isn't uniform. Galaxies farthest from our own appear to be moving away faster than those closer in; which means of course that viewed from those farthest galaxies; our own would appear to be moving away faster than those closer in because the expansion is moving us too.
Ergo: many of the galaxies seen by powerful telescopes are quite a bit more spread out now than when they were born. How much more I don't know; but if the age of the Earth is really and truly 4.5 billion years, then it's my guess the difference is significant.
2• Light has no detectable mass, yet is effected by gravity; so that light's path through the cosmos is not always the shortest distance between two points; which suggests to me that A1689-zD1 is further away than its estimated 12.8 billion light years.
3• Although the speed of light is constant in a vacuum, the void is a bit more complicated due to the fact that it's state isn't steady. There are forces in space influencing not only light's path, but also its velocity. There was a time when scientists sincerely believed that although light could be slowed down, it could not be sped up; now they're not so sure.
4• Light doesn't decay. In other words: there is no detectable difference in age between the cosmos' first light, and the light emitted by the screen of an iPhone.
5• The more that scientists study the cosmos, the more things they discover about it that cause them to question what they believed in the past. Today's scientific truth is only valid until another truth comes along to cancel it.
All the above suggests to me that A1689-zD1's apparent distance has no bearing upon its age; viz: the estimated age of the cosmos is only loosely theoretical rather than actual. In other words: current dating methods are unreliable and subject to revision. It's very possibly true that the Earth really did precede the stars just as the Bible says.
Now; a consideration that shouldn't be overlooked is that Gen 1:16 refers only to stars visible to the author's naked eye, which would limit the category to those of the Milky Way. In point of fact, as recent as the beginning of the last century, most astronomers sincerely believed that the Milky Way contained the sum total of all the stars in the universe; up until Edwin Hubble showed that the Milky Way is just one of many galaxies-- now estimated to number as many as 200 billion in the observable universe.
God challenged Abraham to count the stars (Gen 15:5). But of course without optical assistance, Abraham was limited to the stars of the Milky Way; whose apparent diameter is estimated to be a mere 100-150,000 light years.
The final say of course is the Bible. According to Gen 1:15, stars illuminated the earth on the day that God made them, which was prior to His creation of humanity. In other words: it's not unreasonable to believe that God didn't wait till starlight reached the earth on its own, but punched it straight through in order to begin illuminating the earth immediately.
But what's the point of putting all those objects out there in space? Well, for one thing, they're not only brain teasers; but they're actually quite pretty. Celestial objects decorate the night sky like the ornamentation people put up during holidays. The night sky would sure be a bore if it was totally black. Decorated with stars; the night sky is like a beautiful tapestry, or a celestial Sistine Chapel.
"The heavens declare the glory of God, the sky proclaims His handiwork." (Ps 19:2)
Stars makes better sense that way than to try and find some other meaning for them. I believe the universe is simply a magnificent work of art-- just as intriguing, if not more so, than the works of Picasso, Rembrandt, Michelangelo, Monet, Vermeer, and da Vinci --testifying to the genius of an engineer-artist without peer.
"For what can be known about God is evident to them, because God made it evident to them. Ever since the creation of the world, His invisible attributes of eternal power and divinity have been able to be understood and perceived in what He has made." (Rom 1:19-20)
†. Gen 1:4b-5a . . God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night.
Day and Night simply label two distinct, and opposite, conditions-- the absence of light, and/or the absence of darkness. Labeling those conditions may seem like a superfluous detail, but when analyzing the chronology of Christ's crucifixion and resurrection, it's essential to keep day and night separate.
†. Gen 1:14 . . God said: Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to distinguish Day from Night
On the first day; God defined Day as a condition of light; and defined Night as a condition of darkness. Here, it's further defined that Day, as pertains to life on Earth, is when the sun is up; and Night is when the sun is down.
These definitions occur so early in the Bible that they easily escape the memories of Bible students as they slip into the reflexive habit of always thinking of Days as 24-hour events. That's okay for calendars but can lead to gross misunderstandings when interpreting biblical schedules, predictions, and/or chronologies.
†. Gen 1:15-18a . . God made the two great lights, the greater light to dominate the day and the lesser light to dominate the night, and the stars. And God set them in the expanse of the sky to shine upon the earth, to dominate the day and the night, and to distinguish light from darkness.
That passage not only defines "day" as when the sun is up, and "night" as when the sun is down; but it furthur defines night as when the stars are out; and yet people still don't think God means it.
Christ clarified Day and Night in the New Testament.
†. John 11:9 . . Jesus answered: are there not twelve hours in the day? A man who walks by day will not stumble, for he sees by this world's light.
"this world's light" is the Sun; which Christ defined as "by day"
NOTE: Daytimes divided into twelve divisions were regulated by what's known as temporal hours; which vary in length in accordance with the time of year. There are times of the year at Jerusalem's latitude when daytime consists of less than 12 normal hours of sunlight, and sometimes more; but when Christ was here; the official number of daytime hours was always 12 regardless.
I don't know exactly why the Jews of that era divided their daytimes into twelve divisions regardless of the seasons, but I suspect it was just a convenient way to operate the government and conduct civil affairs; including the Temple's activities (e.g. the daily morning and evening sacrifices)
†. Gen 1:26-27 . . Then God said: Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground. So God created man in His own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.
Genesis 9:5-6 outlaws murder: not on the basis that its morally wrong, but because humanity was created in the image of God.
James 3:9 frowns upon cursing people: not on the basis that it's morally wrong; but because humanity was created in the image of God.
I take it from those passages that were it not for the fact that mankind was created in the image of God, human life would be very cheap, and have no more value than a gerbil or a garden slug.
The image and likeness of God is what lends human life a measure of dignity over and above the animal kingdom. Were it not for their image and likeness of God, people could go on safari and hunt each other for sport, like human wildlife, and mount their heads on walls and mantles.
Gen 5:3 indicates that at least one of the meanings of "image and likeness" is reproduction. However, if God were to reproduce, He would reproduce more of himself just as when humans reproduce, they produce more of themselves; viz: humans beget humanity, and were God to reproduce, He would beget divinity. But humans most certainly are not divine.
For one thing; according to Ex 3:14 God is imperishable, while according to Matt 10:28, humanity is perishable: body and soul.
†. Ps 82:6 . . I said: You are gods; you are all sons of the Most High.
NOTE: According to Deut 6:4, John 17:3, and 1Cor 8:4-6, there is only one true god. Seeing as how that's the case, then the "gods" of Ps 82:6 are, by default, false gods; in other words: they aren't really divine.
Now, obviously humanity's status as sons of the Most High isn't a biological status because according to Gen 2:7 human life was constructed from the dust of the earth; in other words: humanity wasn't born a son of the Most High by means of the Most High multiplying. Were that the case, humans would be spirits. (John 4:24)
So then; I think it safe to conclude that humanity's status as a son isn't a natural-born status; but rather, an honorary status; viz: the image and likeness of God is conferred rather than inherited. And a pretty amazing status it is too seeing as how it's about as close to divine as a creature can get without actually biologically descending from God.
†. Ps 8:5 . .You have made man a little lower than the angels; and You have crowned him with glory and honor.
The "glory and honor" spoken of in that Psalm pertains to the image and likeness of God; which puts humanity pretty high up on the food chain-- not because they are brighter and smarter then the other creatures; but because the image and likeness of God lends mankind an amount of value that no other species on Earth can match.
Q: If mankind was created in the image and likeness of God, then why is mankind so prone to evil?
A: Because mankind isn't biologically related to God, nor is mankind a chip off the olde block, so to speak. The term "image and likeness" is merely a status. It has no bearing whatsoever upon either the qualities, or the character, or the personality of mankind's creator. Were mankind biologically related to God, it would be 110% sinless in thought, word, and deed.
†. John 3:9 . .Whoever has been born of God does not sin, for His seed remains in him; and he cannot sin, because he has been born of God.
Q: But doesn't Acts 17:28-29 say that mankind is God's biological kin?
A: According to Acts 22:3, Paul the apostle was accomplished in Judaism; so he knew very well from the schooling he underwent with Gamaliel that according to Gen 2:7 human beings were definitely not made of God, rather, made of dust.
No; Paul simply appealed to the Greek's own poetry to point out to the Athenians that if human beings were truly God's biological offspring, then the father of human beings surely would be made of something other than metal and/or stone. I think maybe the Greeks took their religious art just a mite too seriously.
The Phylogenetic Tree Of Life is an interesting scientific diagram that traces all forms of life back to a singular genetic heritage regardless of species. In other words; if you started with a raccoon, and followed it's branch down the tree far enough, you'd eventually intersect with another branch that you could then trace to mushrooms. The tree is sort of the equivalent of a Big Bang of living things.
The branch on that tree that interests me the most is the one that traces human life. According to the diagram; any two people you might select-- no matter what their age, race, or gender --if traced back far enough, can eventually be linked to a common ancestor; which of course is no surprise to Bible students.
†. Gen 2:21-23 . .Yhvh God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept; then He took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh at that place. And the God fashioned into a woman the rib which He had taken from the man, and brought her to the man. And the man said: This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.
The Hebrew for "rib" in that passage is is tsela' (tsay-law') and Gen 2:21-23 contains the only two places in the entire Old Testament where it's translated with an English word representing a skeletal bone. In the other twenty-nine places, it's translated "side"
In other words: Eve wasn't constructed directly from the dust of the earth as was Adam. She was constructed from a human tissue sample amputated from Adam's body; ergo: Eve got her flesh and her life from Adam; consequently any and all human life produced by Eve's flesh is Adam's flesh.
†. Gen 3:20 . . Adam named his wife Eve, because she would be the mother of all people everywhere.
†. Acts 17:26 . . He made from one man every variety of mankind to live on all the face of the earth
It was apparently the creator's deliberate design that all human life be biologically related to a sole source of human life-- the one and only human life that God created directly from the earth's dust; viz: Adam.
So then; it is not quite accurate to say that Christ didn't have a human father because if Christ is biologically related to his mother, and if his mother is biologically related to Eve, then Christ is biologically related to Adam.
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