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Post by galen on Oct 4, 2017 3:53:18 GMT -6
All sites that I have seen pointing out last days and coming judgement are also absolute on the truth of creation. I do wonder if accepting the truth of the early chapters of Genesis is a pre-requisite for God to open your eyes about current last days truth. It helps show how blind the world and much of the church are Theistic evolutionists clearly refuse to take Genesis literally and twist clear meanings so why should we expect them to have sensible interpretations of Revelation? When I first started taking God seriously I believed in evolution. I started searching what God might have in store for me and the idea of going against something that "everyone knew" was not a path I was willing to explore. Then God gave me a sense that it was wrong. I fought it, wanting to be an "intellectually respectable" Christian but the sense persisted. Then I started reading creation arguments, still hoping I could dismiss them but God opened my eyes. That was my first sense of how deeply delusional the world as a whole is. And I think that was a necessary barrier for God to remove to allow spiritual growth and later realise how wrong much of the current church is on so many levels. I think there are certain truths God doesn't reveal to people who want to meet the world halfway rather than compromise. Although I think there are unsaved creationists, legalists tend to be creationists and on the other end of the spectrum I think Rick Warren doesn't believe in evolution but otherwise he's into all the emergent, new age trappings of the mainstream church. But looking for plain literal meaning in Genesis definitely helps you see truth in other parts of the Bible through a similar mode of interpretation. There are two poles in terms of the Christian creation/evolution debate, those who see a 6000 year old world and those who believe everything the atheists in terms of events (denying any truth to the events of Genesis 1-11 except they see it as God's mode of creation). There are in between positions that doe things like make animals all part of one evolutionary chain and have humanity as a separate creation that started at Eden and was cursed to die through the fall while animals were dying for millions of years beforehand. Or they go for gap theory (look it up if unfamiliar) or suggest that Eden was much longer ago. Anyway I did see one book while browsing a Christian book shop that looked like it was predicting the events of Revelation and believed in Adam and Eve and the fall but also an old earth. Otherwise our understanding seems to be almost exclusive to young earth creationists. It seems incompatible with evolution. But if you believe in evolution and coming rapture I will say I believe you're wrong about the first but overall you probably have more in common with me than someone would who believes the world is 6000 years old, but could persist for thousands more years.
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Post by mike on Oct 4, 2017 6:28:45 GMT -6
Galen, I do think there are elements to earth being older than 6000 years. As some may be aware, there is proof that time is tied to "gravity" and the further one gets from earth time is slower. "The higher the gravitational potential (the farther the clock is from the source of gravitation), the faster time passes. Albert Einstein originally predicted this effect in his theory of relativity and it has since been confirmed by tests of general relativity." Dear brother @stephan introduced me to the creationism.org website which has a lot of good information on the subject of creation. (EDIT-Artice here www.creationism.org/patten/PattenRecOrgSolSys/PattenRootssCh00aTitle.html) I havent had a chance to read all of the information but in one article the possibility of earth being 'brought' to the current location by another body is fascinating and could possibly further support the 'older earth' scenario. But not having read enough yet, I am not sure. Our creator has certainly set up the universe in a way that we cannot fully understand. But He has made enough evident so we are without excuse. (Rom 1:20 For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood from His workmanship, so that men are without excuse) |
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Post by MissusMack08 on Oct 4, 2017 10:24:34 GMT -6
I think evolution and the earth being billions of years old is a trap that is intended to make a person not believe in God. It's one of Satan's lies against the foundations that God gave us. He's been systematically attacking each fundamental belief one by one over the last few hundred years (at least). 1) Attack against God being creator with Darwin's theory of evolution and subsequent billions of years findings for age of the earth. 2) Attack marriage allowing sex outside of marriage 3) Attack marriage as between one man and one woman 3) Attack God's image of what is male and what is female. You could go further back and say Satan's been attacking the idea that there is only One God since the beginning, but it seems he really moved to these others once man entered "the intellectual enlightenment" era. The first thing he ever attacked though, was God's Word itself and THAT is really the underlying problem with all of these attacks.
Evolution is a trap if you think about it philosophically:
If man is evolved from other species and eventually from brainless goo, at what point did man become "fallen?" If from the beginning, from single celled organism, could man have been saved then? At what point did man become "savable?"
If God inspired the writing of the Old Testament to Moses and He says that there was no death prior to the 7 days of creation, how did species "evolve" overtime without dying? This attacks the very basis of God's word. If this is not true, how can we know any other part of God's word is true? Once you accept creation as myth, you might as well throw out the rest of the Bible because obviously God can't make sure His own word is infallible. Satan's lie: "Did God really say that He created the earth in 6 days and rested on the seventh? Surely man cannot believe this because his own infallible intellect and experimentation prove that the earth is actually billions of years older and all life has evolved from a random mutation. For God knows that in the day you understand that evolution is real, you will become like Him, knowing all things and can become a creator like Him. (And God doesn't want you to succeed or be intelligent because He's jealous of His Greatness and doesn't want man to compete with him, but you can.)"
If mankind has evolved, how exactly are we the "image of God?" Will we keep evolving? How could God say after He created man on the 6th day that it was good and then He rested on the 7th day from "all His work", if man was still supposed to evolve further? Is God not in charge of the evolution process anymore because He's resting? If not, then when we evolve will we still be "the image of God?"
Again, it all comes down to "Did God not say...?"
I used to believe that somehow God used evolution to create man. I was a saved Christian at the time too. I just ignored the controversy. If I read a research study using evolution to come to a new conclusion (and they all do!), I just paid attention to the results, not the implications. So it's possible to "believe" in both but like you said, when you finally come to the conclusion that God's Word is true and what literally happened, all of a sudden He opens up His Word to you. He blesses you for believing His Word and suddenly other things begin to make a whole lot more sense!
Plus the Bible seems to be written in a reverse mirror in many instances. Genesis and Revelation are directly relational (creation in 7 days; earth destruction in 7 years etc), so understanding Genesis helps you understand Revelation and vice versa.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 4, 2017 11:16:40 GMT -6
Besides the theological argumentation (thank you MissusMack08 ) there are some more highly interesting arguments for a young earth and maybe even a young universe. Maybe my dear brother mike may find this also interesting.... :-) Barry Setterfield did some very intriguing research on the speed of light and he (and also some other open minded scientists) came to the conclusion, that the alleged constant speed of light isn't constant at all! On the contrary, it was several million times higher in the past and decreased exponentially until around 1970. Of course this would turn several socalled "scientific" dogmas upside down.... You can find his papers here: setterfield.org/GSRsetterfieldsimplified.htmlA good start for laymen would be here: setterfield.org/basic_summary.htmlBecause the conclusions out of his research do not fit the evolutionary/gradualistic and atheistic world view, he was severly attacked in the past. Barry is a brother in Christ and has lots of interesting articles on his website, even regarding biblical prophecy and endtimes. |
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Post by mike on Oct 4, 2017 11:45:24 GMT -6
MissusMack08 evolution flat out denies itself on several levels but here's my best lead in: 1. Violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics - Entropy - (from Wikipedia) " For example, gas in a container with known volume, pressure, and energy could have an enormous number of possible configurations of the collection of individual gas molecules. At equilibrium, each instantaneous configuration of the gas may be regarded as random. Entropy may be understood as a measure of disorder within a macroscopic system. The second law of thermodynamics states that an isolated system's entropy never decreases."The second law of thermodynamics states that the total entropy can only increase over time for an isolated system, meaning a system which neither energy nor matter can enter or leave. The total entropy can remain constant in ideal cases where the system is in a steady state (equilibrium) or undergoing a reversible process. The increase in entropy accounts for the irreversibility of natural processes, and the asymmetry between future and past.I explain this to my 12 year old like this - Everything is heading from order to disorder, organized to disorganized. We observe this everyday! Cars wear out, trees, plants all living things start out fresh and decay over time. Think about the bananas or other fruit/vegetables you have in your kitchen right now. Are they improving or decaying? So how can evolution teach exactly opposite of their own scientific law? Evolution says we came from disorder and are heading to order. Doesnt it make sense that God had to destroy the world the first time? They were at the level of complete disorder and needed a reset, which only He can do! I like this analysis because without "preaching" we can lead people away from error and into truth without mentioning the bible. Just in case you wonder what is the first law - The First Law of Thermodynamics states that heat is a form of energy, and thermodynamic processes are therefore subject to the principle of conservation of energy. This means that heat energy cannot be created or destroyed
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Post by MissusMack08 on Oct 4, 2017 12:13:09 GMT -6
MissusMack08 evolution flat out denies itself on several levels but here's my best lead in: 1. Violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics - Entropy - (from Wikipedia) " For example, gas in a container with known volume, pressure, and energy could have an enormous number of possible configurations of the collection of individual gas molecules. At equilibrium, each instantaneous configuration of the gas may be regarded as random. Entropy may be understood as a measure of disorder within a macroscopic system. The second law of thermodynamics states that an isolated system's entropy never decreases."The second law of thermodynamics states that the total entropy can only increase over time for an isolated system, meaning a system which neither energy nor matter can enter or leave. The total entropy can remain constant in ideal cases where the system is in a steady state (equilibrium) or undergoing a reversible process. The increase in entropy accounts for the irreversibility of natural processes, and the asymmetry between future and past.I explain this to my 12 year old like this - Everything is heading from order to disorder, organized to disorganized. We observe this everyday! Cars wear out, trees, plants all living things start our fresh and decay over time. Think about the bananas or other fruit/vegetables you have in your kitchen right now. Are they improving or decaying? So how can evolution teach exactly opposite of their own scientific law? Evolution says we came from disorder and are heading to order. Doesnt it make sense that God had to destroy the world the first time? They were at the level of complete disorder and needed a reset, which only He can do! I like this analysis because without "preaching" we can lead people away from error and into truth without mentioning the bible. Just in case you wonder what is the first law - The First Law of Thermodynamics states that heat is a form of energy, and thermodynamic processes are therefore subject to the principle of conservation of energy. This means that heat energy cannot be created or destroyed Yes and pretty much we don't observe it in practice. Every mutation that I've heard about, ends up being bad for the organism, not advantageous. How does something evolve if the mutations it undergoes cause it not to survive as efficiently or at all? Then, think about all the steps involved in evolving something like a pair of wings... every step in the process until the product that could actually get the species off the ground would actually be a hindrance to the survival of that species. Every step up to that point would NOT be advantageous. The species would have these two limbs sticking out that are useless and may actually slow the animal down from running from a predator. Plus, what is the mechanism of randomness behind two perfectly designed, efficient, aerodynamic pair of wings? How does that occur randomly? It just doesn't make sense. But you can discuss all the science and logic in the world that evolution doesn't make sense, but usually it comes down to a heart matter. People don't want to believe that God created the universe and earth because that makes them accountable to Him. As long as they only want to be accountable to themselves, they will choose to believe a strong delusion, such as evolution. That's why it's practically impossible for a creation scientist or anybody just questioning some of the premises of evolution to get published in any "reputable" scientific publication. Who determines if it's reputable? All the scientists who believe in evolution wholesale. (This is the same thing happening with "global warming/climate change" but that's a different conversation.) They don't even realize they have created into a religion. It's just accepted as truth that no one dare question. Then the science that comes out to support it is circular. They assume evolution is true to come to a conclusion that supports the theory of evolution. It just doesn't ma,e sense. |
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