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One of the problems is that the word 'myth' is misunderstood in our modern culture. People think that a myth is inferior to a fact. Or that nonfactual information disqualifies something from being 'true.' So they cling to the literal--forcing them to deny God's revelation that comes through scientific discovery. But imagine if the primary way we had of communicating spiritual truth was just the facts? It would be so limited. But an ancient person saw the world more mythically, so it makes sense that Genesis was intended as myth to teach spiritual truth. One also has to ask, would an ancient person have even conceptualized the literal formation of the cosmos the way we do--with science as a separate discipline apart from religion for the purpose of apprehending physical phenomena? I don't believe so. And how did an ancient person think of history--as an objective collection of recorded events or as stories designed to communicate many things--what happened, why it happened, what it meant, all in one...? I think the latter.
I don’t believe The scriptures are about the physical creation in the past though, or a recording of man’s thoughts (even though that is what we are being led to believe) .... the Old Testament and the New Testament is a commitment to writing of Revelatory and symbolised things
1Pe 1:1 Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to the elect sojourners of the dispersion of Pontus, of Galatia, of Cappadocia, of Asia, and of Bithynia,
1Pe 1:2 according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in sanctification of the Spirit to obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ: Grace and peace be multiplied to you.
1Pe 1:10 About which salvation the prophets sought out and searched out, prophesying concerning the grace for you,
1Pe 1:11 searching for what, or what sort of time the Spirit of Christ made clear within them; testifying beforehand of the sufferings belonging to Christ, and the glories after these.
1Pe 1:12 To whom it was revealed that not to themselves, but to us they ministered the same things, which now were announced to you by those having preached the gospel to you in the Holy Spirit sent from Heaven; into which things angels long to look into.
The early church scribes, elders, priests, disciples, apostles, fathers, etc understood that the “time” indicated in the writings of the seers, prophets of the Egyptians, Romans, Greeks and Hebrews had arrived and they had the duty to assimilate, amalgamate, and commit to writing all the information and write the New Testament - which is a spiritual DIVINE book
The Genesis account is literal, and there's more than enough information out there, easily accessible on the internet from various creation ministries, to corroborate this.
So when did the dinosaurs live, or were they just pretend?
So when did the dinosaurs live, or were they just pretend?
With man, as demonstrated by the various dragon legends that exist in cultures around the world (e.g., the Chinese zodiac calendar has 11 "real" animals and one "imaginary" one - the dragon), and as recorded by sources such as Marco Polo, Herodotus, and Alexander the Great. (https://nwcreation.net/dinosdragons.html) They have even found T-Rex collagen and red blood cells, which would not have lasted 65 million years.
With man, as demonstrated by the various dragon legends that exist in cultures around the world (e.g., the Chinese zodiac calendar has 11 "real" animals and one "imaginary" one - the dragon), and as recorded by sources such as Marco Polo, Herodotus, and Alexander the Great. (https://nwcreation.net/dinosdragons.html) They have even found T-Rex collagen and red blood cells, which would not have lasted 65 million years.
Should we take the creation stories in Genesis literally? Yes, I believe that we should.
The biblical account of creation, as recorded by the chosen earthly scribes, who were under the control of the ever evolving spirit in man, [THE SON OF MAN] who, when born is able to mentally descended into his dead past and communicate with those who are in tune with their inner-being, was recorded in such a way that it was acceptable to all the ages of man, and is capable of adapting with the changing=evolving concepts of man according to the ever growing accumulation of incoming data.
For the Word of God can be likened to a star that’s being ever brightened
By the mind of man reaching ever higher, but those who deviate they’re liars
In God’s words man’s mind can grow, but those outside are like the snow
That settles on the desert sand and will melt away before “I AM.”...…...The Anointed.
This is the condensed account of creation as recorded in Genesis’.....…”In the beginning God created the universe, and the (heavens, and the earth) were formless and void and darkness was upon the face of the deep and God’s active force was moving on the face of the waters. Then God said let there be light.”
Here is the scientific theory of creation........In the beginning, there was the “BIG BANG” which is said to have spatially separated the supposed infinitely dense, infinitely hot, infinitesimally small singularity, (which in my opinion was the White Hole at the end of the Great Abyss into which the previous universe had descended,) this event spewed out a liquid like soup of electromagnetic energy in the trillions upon trillions of degrees,(The Waters of Creation) it was from the quantum of that plasma liquid-like electromagnetic energy that the earth and all the heavenly bodies would be created, and although, all that the earth was created from, was already there in the beginning, the earth at that time had neither shape or mass, which meant it was formless and void, and no suns had yet come into existence to light up the darkness of the expanding space. But there was momentum (The active force of God) within that ever-cooling cosmic cloud of wave particles, which wave particles are the quantum of that liquid like electromagnetic energy, and are not really particles at all as they have zero mass and no electric charge, yet they carry angular and linear momentum.
One would expect, that those wave particles which are the quantum of the liquid like electromagnetic energy, would have continued to expand further and further away from each other in the expansion of the universal building material.
But with the angular momentum of those waves, they collided with each other in nuclear fusion in the creation of the first basic sub-atomic particles. As the universal temperature dropped to some billions of degrees, the dark energy which was the expansion’s acceleration force, began to form into dark matter, hydrogen and helium, with trace quantities of lithium, beryllium, and boron.
As the universe expanded and cooled, more hydrogen molecules were formed, and from these, after some thirty million years of attraction, came the formation of the first gigantic stars, [Massive atomic reactors] from which the galaxies would later be created.
And God said, “Let there be light.” Which was not the light from the sun of this minor solar system within our Milky Way galaxy, which solar system would not be created for some nine billion years after the creation of those first massive stars that lit up the darkness of the bottomless pit.
Bursting into life and light throughout the primitive universe over an unknown period of time, those first generation stars would have been thousands upon thousands of times as massive as our Sun and millions of times as bright, but each one burned for only a few million years before meeting a violent end, when they exploded out in a brilliant flash before collapsing in upon themselves creating the massive centrally condensed systems called ‘Black Holes.’
Was the earth created before our minor sun, as is revealed in the Bible? And did life begin to evolve on earth before our sun burst into life? And could the complexity of life as seen on the earth today, have evolved over the comparatively short period of a mere 4.6 billion years from the day when the earth was created?
Extract from the book that I am in the process of writing.
Being born again is not necessary if there is no sin nature. But Jesus said it is. If there is no sin nature, then what Paul talked about all sinning in Adam and all being saved through the 2nd Adam is of no value to us.
That's a good point. But, my issue (above) is not about declaring isolated Bible stories/incidents to be non-literal (even, creation, etc.). It is about where Bible teachers and leaders should draw-the-line in suggesting that the Bible itself should not be taken literally. As stated, I absolutely do not believe that is Mike's intent in this thread.
However, a valid question could (should?) be, "Could God have created the Earth and mankind exactly as described in Genesis; and is it possible that the varying creation conditions in Scripture are true, but, simply exceed our understanding?'"
In this respect, there are many here who firmly declare anything they do not immediately understand in Scripture, to be a 'contradiction' (thus, "proving" the Bible is not God's inspired Word).
I think the issue is more 'did' God create in a certain way, rather than 'could' He have. You simply cannot ignore (or shouldn't) what science has shown to be true. We know for instance that the earth didn't exist before the sun and the stars which according to the creation story were made on the fourth creation day.
We also know that the sky (the firmament) is not a hard dome covering a flat earth. But that's what the Bible says, and it's what the ancient Hebrews believed. In the Jewish apocalypse 3rd Baruch the men who built the towel of Babel wanted to see what the sky was made of.
3 Baruch
3. . .And they took a gimlet, and sought to pierce the heaven, saying, Let us see (whether) the heaven is made of clay, or of 8 brass, or of iron. When God saw this He did not permit them, but smote them with blindness and confusion of speech, and rendered them as thou seest. [Bolding mine]
Now you may point out that 3 Baruch is not canonical. And it's not. But it reflects an ancient view of the sky as a hard dome covering the earth. And that belief found its way into the Bible.
Job 37:18 "Can you, with Him, spread out the skies, Strong (or hard) as a molten mirror?
When the Jewish historian Josephus wrote his interpretation of the Genesis creation story here's what he wrote.
After this, on the second day, he placed the heaven over the whole world, and separated it from the other parts; and he determined it should stand by itself. He also placed a crystalline [firmament] round it, and put together in a manner agreeable to the earth, and fitted it for giving moisture and rain, and for affording the advantage of dews. [Bolding mine]
Antiquities of the Jews, book I, chapter 1, section 1
The fact of the matter is that the Bible reflects the errant cosmological views of the ancient Hebrews, and God was okay with it. It didn't matter to Him. It wasn't important in communicating to the Biblical writers what was important.
So many people are afraid of their own common sense. They seem to think that to see Genesis as a creation myth is to show a lack of faith in God. They think that any interpretation of scripture except for a literal one is perhaps risking loss of favor with God. There's also the flawed concept that if God took billions of years to create the earth, He must be less great than if He took only six days. It's sad what fear of offending God by using one's brain can do.
I think the unfolding of the formation of the earth in billions of years is far more wondrous and awe-inspiring than the six-day God-just-snaps-his-fingers-and-it's-THERE approach. Humanity likes the idea of a Merlin the Magician making things appear in an instant.
With man, as demonstrated by the various dragon legends that exist in cultures around the world (e.g., the Chinese zodiac calendar has 11 "real" animals and one "imaginary" one - the dragon), and as recorded by sources such as Marco Polo, Herodotus, and Alexander the Great. (https://nwcreation.net/dinosdragons.html) They have even found T-Rex collagen and red blood cells, which would not have lasted 65 million years.
No, no, no, no, NO!!! Good grief, dinosaurs are separated from man in the geological record by 65 million years. If by chance some dinosaur fossils were found during biblical times the natural thought would be that they were the remains of dragons which ancient man believed in. That in no way implies that man and dinosaurs existed at the same time. Keep your day job and don't even think of becoming a paleontologist.
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