Genesis Flood Local Or Global ?

[Baron1710]

Originally Posted by Aquila

O Lord my God, When I in awesome wonder,
Consider all the worlds Thy Hands have made;
I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder,
Thy power throughout the universe displayed.

Then sings my soul, My Saviour God, to Thee,
How great Thou art, How great Thou art.
Then sings my soul, My Saviour God, to Thee,
How great Thou art, How great Thou art!

When through the woods, and forest glades I wander,
And hear the birds sing sweetly in the trees.
When I look down, from lofty mountain grandeur
And see the brook, and feel the gentle breeze.

Then sings my soul, My Saviour God, to Thee,
How great Thou art, How great Thou art.
Then sings my soul, My Saviour God, to Thee,
How great Thou art, How great Thou art!

And when I think, that God, His Son not sparing;
Sent Him to die, I scarce can take it in;
That on the Cross, my burden gladly bearing,
He bled and died to take away my sin.

Then sings my soul, My Saviour God, to Thee,
How great Thou art, How great Thou art.
Then sings my soul, My Saviour God, to Thee,
How great Thou art, How great Thou art!

When Christ shall come, with shout of acclamation,
And take me home, what joy shall fill my heart.
Then I shall bow, in humble adoration,
And then proclaim: "My God, how great Thou art!"

Then sings my soul, My Saviour God, to Thee,
How great Thou art, How great Thou art.
Then sings my soul, My Saviour God, to Thee,
How great Thou art, How great Thou art!

Oh how he must love us. His love is truly an everlasting love.

Is that as sung by Elvis? The best version ever.

[Baron1710]

Originally Posted by RandyWayne

Sometime during one of their podcasts, they spoke at length about the Earth having somewhere from 50 to perhaps a few hundred thousand years in it's ENTIRE lifespan (4.5 billion now -10-12 when the sun goes 'boom') that mankind can survive and prosper. We are living in the middle of that time period. Many tectonic, solar, and other factors go into this calculation -from tectonic activity, meteoric bombardment, the state of the suns solar output, the position of our solar system in the Milky Way, and even more precise measurements like the state of our oil reserves and their sulpher content (a few tens of thousands of years ago, the oil would not be in a state where it could be easily refined -and in an equal amount of time in the future, will not be again).
It is truly amazing.

It really is amazing, to think that the whole universe was aged just for us.

[Aquila]

Originally Posted by Baron1710

What is a day? Is it 24 hours? Or is it the daylight between evening and morning? Or is it a figure of speach when combined with evening and morning simply indicating the begining and end of an age?

I think they are the words of Moses, therefore they are to be interpreted as Moses would have understood them. Here's an example of the writing style that I believe is present in the passage:

"One day Bro. John was working hard in his backyard planting apple seed saying, “I’m going to grow an apple tree.”, and it was so. And the earth brought forth an apple tree in Bro. John’s backyard; and Bro. John took pride in his apple tree saying, “It is good.” Then evening fell and Bro. John went in from his yard work to wash up before dinner; this was the third day that Bro. John spent working in his backyard.”

The narrative is clearly describing the work of an actual day, however it's subsequent results are readily recognized in context. I believe that Moses was writing not as an observer, but in reflection of a divine truth from his perspective in his present. With that in mind, read the words of Moses out loud:

Genesis 1:24-25
11And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.
12And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
13And the evening and the morning were the third day.

If it is read in this fashion we have no idea how long it actually took for the grass, and herb yielding seed, and the tree to appear. Also it would allow for overlapping or simultaneous processes. Day Age theory doesn't facilitate this. What we do know is that it is the result of God's spoken word on a specific day in the dateless past.

Hope that helps.

[RandyWayne]

Originally Posted by Baron1710

It really is amazing, to think that the whole universe was aged just for us.

It is such an incredible miracle that it seems to almost cheapen it when someone espouses the "young earth" view that everything is 6-7 thousand years old and the Universe created exactly how it looks today -the whole "created to look old" / "Appearance of age" arguments.

[Baron1710]

Originally Posted by RandyWayne

It is such an incredible miracle that it seems to almost cheapen it when someone espouses the "young earth" view that everything is 6-7 thousand years old and the Universe created exactly how it looks today -the whole "created to look old" / "Appearance of age" arguments.

I agree. It is amazing to think God spent millions of years preparing the earth for us.


Young earth also doesn't account for the speed of light.

[mizpeh]

Originally Posted by pelathais

The literary genre of the parable really comes a bit later in history. To understand Genesis through 2 Kings you need to pick up on the narrative of The Sopherim, or The Scribe (most likely Ezra the scribe, but it may have been something like "the school of Ezra").

Throughout this work there are many references such as "unto this day..." that shows the writer was set in a particular time period and was looking back on events of the past.

There are also many apparent "anachronisms" like in Genesis 14 when Abraham pursues the kings from Sodom to "Dan." Dan was a city named for Abraham's great grandson who hadn't even been born yet; moreover, the city of Dan was never named that until the last chapter of Judges - long after Moses's death.

Given the fact that the Bible clearly gives us this narrative we must be willing to accept it - the Bible is the final authority here. So then we look closer and find that within this narrative several documents have clearly been placed. Some, like the Song of Deborah in Judges 5 are written in a style of Hebrew that almost goes beyond ancient and stand out in stark contrast with the surrounding narrative.

What we have with this collection of books appears to be the work of Ezra in collecting the books of the law and many other documents and compiling them together with an explanatory narrative.

Ezra obviously wasn't present at the time of the creation or the flood and his real mission wasn't to go back and teach Israel a bunch of Sunday School lessons. He had an entire nation with a rich cultural history and a God given mandate that was all standing on the edge of a knife.

His mission was not natural history but to re-establish the nation. He obviously wanted to frame everything and provide a rich context for future prophets and seers and thus his inspired words on creation and his repeated accounts of God's judgment upon those who strayed too far and for too long.

We don't "explain away" miracles. We accept the accounts and descriptions found within the Bible unless there's some sort of jaw dropping contradiction that makes you go - "What!?!"

That's what happened when people began to understand the geologic column and the fossil record. There were too many things that didn't line up. ... I gotta get ready to leave here. brb, as it were, on a different system from home.

Pel, I'm going to bow out of this discussion. To be able to understand the Genesis accounts of creation or the flood any differently than they are written I would need to be shown from the Bible not science why I should not take them literally.

I became an atheist because of science and returned to God because of a real experience with Him. Science has its place but, in my opinion, it is not as trustworthy as the Bible.

[RandyWayne]

Originally Posted by mizpeh

Pel, I'm going to bow out of this discussion. To be able to understand the Genesis accounts of creation or the flood any differently than they are written I would need to be shown from the Bible not science why I should not take them literally.

I became an atheist because of science and returned to God because of a real experience with Him. Science has its place but, in my opinion, it is not as trustworthy as the Bible.

Funny, but I was flirting with atheism (or at least just a lot of confusion), yet science proved to me that there WAS a God. Science ALWAYS agrees with the written Word.... but rarely with mans interpretation of it.

[Aquila]

Originally Posted by mizpeh

Pel, I'm going to bow out of this discussion. To be able to understand the Genesis accounts of creation or the flood any differently than they are written I would need to be shown from the Bible not science why I should not take them literally.

I became an atheist because of science and returned to God because of a real experience with Him. Science has its place but, in my opinion, it is not as trustworthy as the Bible.

I agree. However, I think the point is that the Bible might be describing eternal spiritual truths and might not be meant to be read as a literal scientific document. It's truths would then stand regardless of the findings of science.

For example, if they PROVED beyond a reasonable doubt that man evolved tomorrow it would devastate faith in the Bible if we are to read it literally like a literal historical or scientific document. However, if we see the Bible as God's letter to man expressing truths in stories that are not necessarily required to be taken literally, those truths still stand. Consider the story of The Little Boy Who Cried Wolf. Was there a literal little boy? No. A literal wolf? No? Is the story a literal fact? No. But does it teach a truth? Yes. If understood like this, Genesis is God's "anointed story", written to man to teach us not about a literal Adam and Eve with coats of skins... but about ourselves and our need for a blood covering. While The Little Boy Who Cried Wolf is merely a story written by men... Genesis would be a story given directly from God. An eternal truth.

[Aquila]

Here's an interesting thought I just had...

Let's assume that Genesis IS literal truth to be taken literally with a literal creation week, garden of Eden, literal Adam & Eve, literal serpent, etc, and that the earth is only between 6,000 to 10,000 years old.

If a scientist traveled back in time and landed in the garden of Eden while Adam and & Eve were living there what would be his findings based on his observations? He'd first see a full grown man and woman. Judging by their maturity and development he'd assume that they had at least lived there for about 20-25 years (assuming that's how old they appeared to be). Our scientist would see the trees of the garden and assume that they had been growing for perhaps many decades. Our scientist might also evaluate the river flowing through the garden (it's flow rates, the rate of erosion, it's depth, etc.) and conclude that the river may have started as a small stream some 2,000 years ago. Based on all of his "observations" the world would "appear" very old. However, none of this would have existed just 8 days prior.

That's one weakness I see in completely trusting scientific observation over the biblical narrative.

[pelathais]

Originally Posted by mizpeh

Pel, I'm going to bow out of this discussion. To be able to understand the Genesis accounts of creation or the flood any differently than they are written I would need to be shown from the Bible not science why I should not take them literally.

I became an atheist because of science and returned to God because of a real experience with Him. Science has its place but, in my opinion, it is not as trustworthy as the Bible.

I understand. But nothing I said about the Genesis account is really "science." It's just reading it for what it says and integrating that message into the world around us.

My own faith reached an ebb at one point that I seriously investigated atheism philosophically. It just wasn't a satisfying path for me and I still had a plethora of unanswered questions.