Agreed.
GENESIS - The Seedbed Of All Bible Doctrines
- Thread starter Major
- Start date
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CREATION.
As we all can see, someone wanted to get ahead of the plan so I went ahead and did it.
The doctrine of creation states that God, who alone is uncreated and eternal, has formed and given existence to everything outside of himself. He did this from nothing by the word of his power, and all of it was very good.
When the Bible says that God “created the heavens and the earth” in Gen. 1:1, it does not mean to suggest that he only created those two things and nothing else. The Bible is here employing a figure of speech called merism, in which two contrasting terms are used to express totality.
So in the 1st verse of the 1st Chapter we have GOD and the fact that He was the Creator of all things.
Now, God spoke the Word and out of "nothing" came everything. He is NOT the Great Architect of the Universe in that He arranged what was already here. He made what was made.
Even though God has created all things, he has not created them all alike in significance or value. The Bible is clear that humankind is the apex of God’s creative work. Human beings were the final creative act of God on the final “day” of creation, created in the image of God and charged with exercising dominion over everything else.
It is this aspect of the doctrine of creation that paves the way for the gospel. No doubt this is why Herman Bavinck, Francis Schaeffer, and many others emphasized the importance of the doctrine of creation as, what Bavinck called, the “starting point of true religion.” Without accountability, the need for grace and forgiveness evaporates. No doubt this is also why so many non-Christians seek to undercut or disprove the doctrine of creation.
CREATION.
As we all can see, someone wanted to get ahead of the plan so I went ahead and did it.
The doctrine of creation states that God, who alone is uncreated and eternal, has formed and given existence to everything outside of himself. He did this from nothing by the word of his power, and all of it was very good.
When the Bible says that God “created the heavens and the earth” in Gen. 1:1, it does not mean to suggest that he only created those two things and nothing else. The Bible is here employing a figure of speech called merism, in which two contrasting terms are used to express totality.
So in the 1st verse of the 1st Chapter we have GOD and the fact that He was the Creator of all things.
Now, God spoke the Word and out of "nothing" came everything. He is NOT the Great Architect of the Universe in that He arranged what was already here. He made what was made.
Even though God has created all things, he has not created them all alike in significance or value. The Bible is clear that humankind is the apex of God’s creative work. Human beings were the final creative act of God on the final “day” of creation, created in the image of God and charged with exercising dominion over everything else.
It is this aspect of the doctrine of creation that paves the way for the gospel. No doubt this is why Herman Bavinck, Francis Schaeffer, and many others emphasized the importance of the doctrine of creation as, what Bavinck called, the “starting point of true religion.” Without accountability, the need for grace and forgiveness evaporates. No doubt this is also why so many non-Christians seek to undercut or disprove the doctrine of creation.
You don’t agree that the bible doesn’t have geocentric outlook. Than you disagree with the word of God . The bible certainly teaches the geocentric model and it’s what the church taught up until the 19th century. And Genesis 1:1 says what is says heaven and not heavens. There is a clear difference of what came first.And there be good reason why the geocentric viewpoint was replaced by heliocentricity simply because it reeks too much of God the geocentric model puts the earth in a very place with the sun moving around the earth. The heliocentric model does the opposite it diminishes that very special place given unto the earth and shuttles the earth off to the ass end of the galaxy to be classified as just another mere speck of dust in the universe. Seems that heliocentricity and evolution arrived at the same time. A mere coincidence? Or a two pronged planned attack to overthrow our established Christian order and rid our Universities of God as the Divine Creator and to replace it with the new god. The god of the scientific mafia that now dictates what shall be truth. Just not God the bible according to them. Major here are some bible verses and quotes as to why the church viewed the bible as a very geocentric book.
Tery I find no mention of God spoke and there was light in your post 11 . My apologies if you think I have misunderstood you. So just that what are trying to say.
What I was saying, is that in the end, no matter what theories there are about how creation was done, all we need is God's Word. God would not have left out that part if it had bearing on our faith or salvation. Human curiosity will always ask how, but God doesn't need us to know.
Well I guess it’s how you view the word of God. Some things are open to various interpretation in scripture other things are very direct and to the point. As to the opinions of mens science more so when they contradict the word of God. We must always evaluate their background and their beliefs and not only their science
I would agree with that concerning evolution but heliocentrism? Now, that's a bit of a stretch.
Now YOU said............
"Major here are some bible verses and quotes as to why the church viewed the bible as a very geocentric book."
What the men of the early church THOUGHT and what the Bible teaches is two very different things!!!!
I said in post #18.........
"I do not agree! Does the Bible teach Geocentricity? NO!
The short answer to this question is “no.” Nowhere in the Bible are we told that the earth is at the center of the universe."
Now if those words are in the Bible and the Bible teaches that, then now is the time to post it my dear!
With all due respect to you, it seems to me that you like to argue just to have something to do!
You posted several Scriptures however The Scriptural passages quoted do not address cosmology/geocentrism.
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Genesis 1:3.......
"“And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.”
Remember, correlation does not mean causation.
Ok, but most Biblical references to the natural world are observational meaning it is what one could observe by man’s senses. Sometimes it states the intentions of God behind it, but often not. But we commonly infer God’s actions and intentions from natural phenomena.
For example, we are told of the darkness that occurred at the crucifixion (e.g. Mark 15:33) and are not told explicitly how God caused it (or even that that darkness was at God’s command). Should we discount this because it does not explicitly say that this was at the command of God?
I do not discount today’s weather report because it failed to state the role God plays in the weather. So why discount the observation and calculation (scientific) based account because it does not specify God’s role?
It is almost an after thought, but I hope that thse reading this thread realizes that God comes first. It is such an elementary point, but it needs to be said.
Before anything else was, before there was a universe in the beginning: God. He comes first. And that is teased out in other Scriptures to show that God in eternity past was not dependent upon us. It is not that God needed the universe so he wouldn’t be lonely. Eventually, the Bible fleshes out the notion of God in all kinds of ways to show that in the past the Father loved the Son and the Son loved the Father. So there was a perfection of love in the past.
That’s very different from, for example, the vision of Islam where Islam is slow to speak of God being a God of love, because that assumes the importance of another. And in their insistence on God’s uniqueness and sovereignty and separateness, then they can stress God’s big and greatness. It is hard for them to stress God’s love. The Qur’an rarely speaks in those terms. But the Bible as a whole insists that God is love, because in the one God, miraculously, strangely, God is also other. In the oneness of God there is a complexity such that God loves the Son, the Sons loves God, even in eternity past, and he doesn’t need the universe.
Then we saw that God speaks. He is a talking God. The first thing he does is speaks and by his powerful word calls the universe into existence. Now that becomes paradigmatic of God disclosing himself in word. Right through the whole Bible God is a talking God, and he dares to speak in words that human beings can understand.
Now we come to God made everything. That is against pantheism, in which everything in the universe is God. That is against panentheism, in which everything in the universe is God, but God is not everything in the universe. That is, there is a little bit of God left over besides everything that is made that is in the universe. But here there is a distinction between God, who exists before everything in the universe, and the created order. It is against any sort of ontological dualism, that is, a kind of dualism in which there is a good force and a bad force, or one force with a good side and the bad side. It is not Star Wars.
Before anything else was, before there was a universe in the beginning: God. He comes first. And that is teased out in other Scriptures to show that God in eternity past was not dependent upon us. It is not that God needed the universe so he wouldn’t be lonely. Eventually, the Bible fleshes out the notion of God in all kinds of ways to show that in the past the Father loved the Son and the Son loved the Father. So there was a perfection of love in the past.
That’s very different from, for example, the vision of Islam where Islam is slow to speak of God being a God of love, because that assumes the importance of another. And in their insistence on God’s uniqueness and sovereignty and separateness, then they can stress God’s big and greatness. It is hard for them to stress God’s love. The Qur’an rarely speaks in those terms. But the Bible as a whole insists that God is love, because in the one God, miraculously, strangely, God is also other. In the oneness of God there is a complexity such that God loves the Son, the Sons loves God, even in eternity past, and he doesn’t need the universe.
Then we saw that God speaks. He is a talking God. The first thing he does is speaks and by his powerful word calls the universe into existence. Now that becomes paradigmatic of God disclosing himself in word. Right through the whole Bible God is a talking God, and he dares to speak in words that human beings can understand.
Now we come to God made everything. That is against pantheism, in which everything in the universe is God. That is against panentheism, in which everything in the universe is God, but God is not everything in the universe. That is, there is a little bit of God left over besides everything that is made that is in the universe. But here there is a distinction between God, who exists before everything in the universe, and the created order. It is against any sort of ontological dualism, that is, a kind of dualism in which there is a good force and a bad force, or one force with a good side and the bad side. It is not Star Wars.
Well said!
Agreed. It was in 1859 that Darwin publishes On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, the first detailed explanation of natural selection. The book becomes a sensation and sparks a contentious debate in Britain.
Really you don’t believe that we be in a very special place . We be in a very special place alright considering we be the only place so far detected that be a liveable planet that contains life as we have here upon earth. The only other place would be wherever God and the angels choose to dwell.
You say if those words geocentric are in the bible now is the time to show . Major that be self evident by all the passages of scripture I sent you in post 23 Geocentrism meaning that the earth does not revolve around the sun. And that is what the Bible clearly speaks of when in Joshua ( Sun stand thou still ) And with Psalms of the Sun doing it’s daily circuit and returning to do again. There be many other verses . The reality is that the bible is a very geocentric book. You than go on inform us that what men thought in the earlier church eras and what the bible teaches are two different things. Well on the point of the earth being in a very special place and that it was the sun rotating around the earth and not the earth rotating around. Well the whole of Christendom was firmly agreed upon that for 1800 yrs. Maybe they just took God at his word. And what of the Jewish people themselves you could add another 2000yrs there as well. Or were they so dumb for simply taking God at his word as well ? And finally you think I’m rather argumentative. and have nothing better to do. Not really but I do think and question a lot about all things. As to having nothing better to do. Well with that comment I do leave you in peace to continue your journeySilom Maybe because all the scientific experiments to finally prove that earth was moving at the speed required to be rotating around the sun ended in failure. The George Sagnac & Henry Gale experiment the George Airy experiment, the Michelson - Morley experiment. Einstein just simply discarded the eather effect and used his law of relativity to change everything in favour of the heliocentric model. Some say the Eather came back under the guise of black or dark matter simply because you need that unseen substance to hold galaxy’s together. You can look up Malcom Bowden on U Tube for further information if your interested to know more. That’s all I’ll say and that we must evaluate things with scripture in all things
The Michelson/Morley experiment was an attempt to measure "eather wind". It consisted of a light speed measurement setup mounted on a table that could be turned in any direction. If eather ,and an associated wind existed the measured speed should change as light was directed "upwind" vs "downwind". Since the appearant speed of light is the same regardless of the motion of the referance apparatus, it failed to detect any difference in the speed of light.
I remember asking my high school science teacher "what happened to the concept of aether after Michelson/Morely?" Aether was originally proposed to answer the question of what is waving if light is a wave? But scientists (and my texts) seemed to just stop talking about aether after the experiment.
His reply was that since they had no way of detecting aether except that light behaved in wavelike a manner, it was/is natural to wish to know what is doing the waving - still a nifty question. If they can figure out a way of observing the effects of aether, scientists can then re-open the study, but it the meantime anything that cannot be detected, even by indirect means, it cannot be studied and is superfluous to the theory of light.
So the experiment was not really a 'failure' because it confirmed one of the basic properties of light, it just did not iluminate what was doing the waving.
Scientists do not throw away or disregard experimental results. They analyze both the experiment and the result and modify theories when necessary. Dark matter is proposed to explain observed phenomena and still has unanswered quetions and research continues.
Well yes your statement is mostly correct. But Eather had been well established as scientific fact and proved by those other experiments and accepted by scientists . It only became a problem when the results of the Eather kept coming back well under speed for the earth to be moving at the required speed to prove that the earth is rotating around the sun. The reality is they either had to accept that the earth wasn’t moving all throw the Eather out to get their desired result. As I said Einstein finished the job with his law of relativity which was never really a true experiment. Look into the telescope experiment that clearly proves that there is Eather. Malcolm Bowden explains clearly along nearly all those experiments. The hearsay about what your teacher told you is incorrect and is well known to cover up the reality of the truth that the earth is not moving.
This is the kind of stuff that interests me, providing it can be verified.
It has been a while since either my high school or college courses, and my difficulties with calculus ended my formal coursework in physics. Theory and experimentation can have advanced a great deal in years since 1974, so there can be a lot of which I am unaware, but a cursory search on the Sagnac effect, or the other experiments you mentioned has not revealed a good match. The closest info I found could not be cross verified, nor provided with a clearly stated result.
Can you provide references?
It has been a while since either my high school or college courses, and my difficulties with calculus ended my formal coursework in physics. Theory and experimentation can have advanced a great deal in years since 1974, so there can be a lot of which I am unaware, but a cursory search on the Sagnac effect, or the other experiments you mentioned has not revealed a good match. The closest info I found could not be cross verified, nor provided with a clearly stated result.
Can you provide references?
Before I became a Christian I thought there was a God because Someone Awesome definitely Created this universe. It’s just so obvious… but I just gathered through experience He just wasn’t active in our lives. I mean, yeh he pumps our blood round our bodies and keeps the world going round and feeds us,creates in us morality and ethics etc… but as for actually being involved as being actually concerned about us, and our welfare personally, I just thought He was an absent father. He just created us and then stepped out of His creation to leave us all alone. I wanted to see real amazing flashy miracles and mental communications like with the prophets.like what a Real God would do! I pretty much got the wrong idea of who God was and how He works today and I’m still learning now!