Dr Albert Mohler, President of the Southern Baptist Seminary, Kentucky, supports the historicity of Genesis.
Posted on 08/07/2014 9:00:46 AM PDT by fishtank
Christian leaders who uphold Genesis
Modern-era theologians and prominent church leaders from around the world affirm biblical creation (historical Genesis)
by Don Batten
The modern creation movement is mostly driven by those with primarily scientific qualifications. Some of a theological bent argue that we scientists don’t understand the ‘genre’ of Genesis (i.e. we are theological ignoramuses) and that Genesis is not meant to be understood as history. In part answer to this, I have listed here just some of those with theological qualifications who have taken a public stand for understanding Genesis as straightforward history, just as we scientists do. Those listed represent a wide spectrum, from pastors and evangelists to professors of church history, theology, and Hebrew, and from various church affiliations.
(Note: this list is not meant to be exhaustive. So, the absence of names of staff from a given theological institution should not be read as meaning that there are none at that institution. Also, we will update this article periodically with additional names.)
(In alphabetical order)
Randy Alcorn, MA in Biblical Studies, author of Heaven, and president of Eternal Perspective Ministries. He became a biblical creationist because “the straightforward reading of the text seemed to me to say it’s a young earth.” He also believes that the problem of evil “cannot be properly understood without accepting Creation, the Fall, and Redemption as real history.”
(Excerpt) Read more at creation.com ...
Dr Albert Mohler, President of the Southern Baptist Seminary, Kentucky, supports the historicity of Genesis.
From the article:
“Conclusion
All those mentioned above are ‘evangelical’ scholars; those who believe that the Bible is the inerrant Word of God. To them we might add the testimony of non-evangelical experts in Hebrew, such as Oxford University’s Professor James Barr, who clearly stated that the intention of the author(s) of Genesis 1–11 meant what was written to be understood as history (six literal days of creation, global Flood of Noah, a chronology of the world from the beginning). Other professors at leading secular universities agree with Professor Barr.
It is clear how Genesis is meant to be understood; as history (a record of events that really happened in time and space). It is also clear that it has been understood that way almost universally until modern times.”
I believe you would have to include Jesus himself in that list as he pointed to the first two chapters of Genesis as authority for his teaching on marriage.
You got that right!
THanks much!
The God who says one thing so plainly, but meant something else, something that could only be found out much later than its writing, is a cruel god. For Him to say “evening and morning were the second day” and really mean something else, and we wouldn’t know what it meant until atheist scientists discovered carbon dating, would make Him a lying god. No better than Zeus, Athene, Apollo, Moloch, and Ashtaroth.
In addition to that. If that god used death and suffering as a means for perfecting his creation, I would want nothing to do with him. That’s not my God. He made all things, and made them good. He did it in 6 days with only His speech.
Like to know the Christian leaders who don’t.
Amen.
Insisting that the world was created in 6 days shows an unwillingness to think for oneself.
“Insisting that the world was created in 6 days shows an unwillingness to think for oneself.”
Because of course a human would know more than the God who created it...
Insisting that the world was created in 6 days shows an unwillingness to think for oneself.
But what they do is quote some one who has wrote a book and lives in a pint house from its proceedings, or others who have became wealthy from preaching what they call the word of God.
And they will say that if it is not the way they believe that it would make God a liar.
I am a long way from knowing all about it but if I am wrong
about anything I would not even think about calling God a liar.
Please get back with me when you figure out how to create eternal life.
The real clincher to me is that the 6 days has to be literal, but the “this is my body” is only meant as a figure of speech.
If I were a betting man, I would wager that the words given to a roving band of illiterate tribesmen to be written later would be the ones most likely to not be completely literal. The ones spoken by the Good Lord Himself directly to His followers who were fixing to write it all down would be most likely to be literal.
But then again, I can’t make any money on reasonable reckoning.
The question is, do we have faith that God told the truth in His Word, or do we call Him a liar and believe fallen men and their interpretation of the evidence?
There’s really zero doubt about what God says in His Word about creation. “Evening and the morning” is only used with “yom” when it means a solar day. Difficult for long ages to have an evening and a morning. And when “yom” is used with ordinal numbers it is always referring to a solar day. In this case, God used both. Yet people refuse to believe. .
And it’s not as if this teaching only appears in Genesis. It’s literally throughout Scripture, including several references in Revelation:
Rev 4:11 Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created.
Rev 10:6 And sware by him that liveth for ever and ever, who created heaven, and the things that therein are, and the earth, and the things that therein are, and the sea, and the things which are therein, that there should be time no longer:
Rev 14:7 Saying with a loud voice, Fear God, and give glory to him; for the hour of his judgment is come: and worship him that made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and the fountains of waters.
Faith is the key, and calling God a liar is not being faithful:
Heb 11:3 Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.
1Ti 6:20 O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called:
1Ti 6:21 Which some professing have erred concerning the faith. Grace be with thee. Amen. The first to Timothy was written from Laodicea, which is the chiefest city of Phrygia Pacatiana.
Evolution, when the onion is peeled all the way back, is just repackaged paganism, a belief in spontaneous generation that Pasteur refuted a long time ago with the Law of Biogenesis, that life begets life. Life is simply too complex to have sprung at random from lifeless chemicals. I know they’ve tried to do so for quite a while now, and haven’t even come close to producing a single protein from random processes, much less the stupendous complexity of the most “simple” single-celled organism.
Seems you have a problem with what you say some men write, but do you have a problem with what God writes, Himself?
Would you believe it if God wrote that He created all in 6 days if He wrote that statement with his own finger?
Exodus 31:17-18 New International Version (NIV)
"17 It will be a sign between me and the Israelites forever, for in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, and on the seventh day he rested and was refreshed.’”
"18 When the Lord finished speaking to Moses on Mount Sinai, he gave him the two tablets of the covenant law, the tablets of stone inscribed by the finger of God."
Reread the 4th Commandment again of the 10 Commandments described here and in Exodus 20:8-11
Exodus 20:8-11 “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns. 11 For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy."
So I'll ask you again: Do you take God at His Word -- particularly when He makes the effort to write it, Himself?
FReegards!
Interesting you say a solar day. When was the "sol" created again? Day 4?
All of you, be very very careful assuming you got this deeply mysterious text buttoned down and sewn up in a nice neat package.
The rabbis forbade Torah students to even study this part of Genesis until they got to a certain level. And when St. Augustine--one of the greatest theologians Christianity has ever produced--wrote his "On the Literal Interpretation of Genesis" in the 400s he had to apologize that he was going to ask more questions than he answered. You see him wrestle with different interpretations and, sometimes, honestly admit he wasn't sure which was correct.
And speaking of Augustine, anyone who is convinced that an allegorical or other reading of the Genesis day is simply not possible ought to go back and read his work, which was written more than a thousand years before evolution was even on the radar.
Don't go offering your personal interpretations as "God's Word" and thereby bring the whole of Sacred Scriptures into disrepute when your interpretation is subsequently proven wrong (and that's something else I learned from Augustine).
If one accepts relativity, which to deny would require the denial of the atom bomb, then it is possible to view ~15 billion years as 6000.
However, in all that I understand about geology, math and physics, the longer time frame is more consistent with observation.
Even the most traditional reading of Genesis 1 implies that abiogenesis happened at least twice. Read it again.
Verse 11: "Let the earth bring forth the green herb"
verse 20 "Let the waters bring forth the creeping creature having life".
From earth comes living plants. From water comes the animals.
If abiogenesis were always impossible, then the logical consequence would be that life always existed. Which we know Scripturally and scientifically to be false. Life came from non-living matter at some point.
What Pasteur (and Redi and Spallanzani) refuted is the notion that organisms like flies and bacteria continue to be generated the same way today.
But now that you brought spontaneous generation into the discussion, Augustine has a particularly intriguing digression on this subject. I'll see if I can dig it up and post it later.
So I’ll ask you again: Do you take God at His Word — particularly when He makes the effort to write it, Himself?
Did you read where he said these are the generations?
Genesis 2
4 These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens,
Also do you believe the Sabbath day is the 7th day or the first day like most Christians claim.
Yet Genesis is a myth.
A team of 20 physicists from four institutions has literally made something from nothing, creating particles of matter from ordinary light for the first time.
"literally something from nothing".
Uhh....
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