Introduction

[docphin]

Peter,
I am going to challenge you and others in the Christian faith about our origins just as you have challenged others to consider a new understanding of scriptures regarding end times.  For I believe that nature is declaring the Universe is ancient and nature is declaring that the origins of man are ancient as well.  If the church continues to deny these facts then the church is essentially denying God himself.  I had a brother tell me if God wanted to correct the church's interpretation of Genesis then he would send a prophet because that is what prophets do, correct the faithful.  But if the heavens declare the glory of God then the heavens are a prophet in a sense declaring what God has made.  And the heavens are declaring our universe is ancient, 14 billion years old in fact.  The heavens are declaring that man's origins began before this earth was even made back when elemements were forming at the beginning of our universe.    Atheists are trying to interpret evolution and the age of our universe to mean there is no God but I want to refute that.  So I will be adding a few posts on this subject to begin to challenge the Christians who hold on to traditional doctrines of the church on original sin and Adam's beginning.  I feel like the lone person saying these things (although there are others for sure) but I am guessing you will empathize and at least reason with me.  On another forum the moderator bumped my post to the atheist section after I had placed it in the evolution/youngearth section.  It stung me a bit being dismissed to the atheist section but I feel compelled to keep sharing what I suspect is true.  Despite that, I will place my posts here in the atheist section so as not to offend any Christians.

[docphin]

I have stated in other posts that I believe the theory of evolution and the knowledge of our ancient, developing universe are a positive to the Christian Faith and I fully expect in time that the scholarly faithful will expound the scriptures and harmonize the doctrines of the Christian Faith with the knowledge of our material world. Until then, I would like to, in my limited, unscholarly, ability step up to the plate and take my best swing at why Christians have nothing to fear from evolution and a 14 billion year old universe.

If anything, the theory of evolution and study of the cosmos should make us realize how really small and insignificant we are as humans. In the grand scheme of things we are but specks of dust in the universe, specks of star dust in a sense, because our bodies are made from the elements of our universe that traveled billions of light-years across space to get where they are on this earth in this solar system. But that fact alone actually brings more glory to God the creator rather than if the world had been made young and perfect as some religious hold on to. For if the glory of God is his work in man then what brings him more glory than to take a speck of meaningless dust in the universe and elevate it to be an adopted son or daughter of the creator who made everything. Is not that the message of the Bible that God has been trying to teach man from the very beginning starting from Adam through the rest of the scriptures?

For the first lesson God taught the first man, Adam, in the scriptures is that he could not get to God from where he was at. He offered Adam eternal life if he would obey just one simple command but Adam failed. God knew he was going to fail but that was the point of it, to show Adam that he was unable to reach God through his efforts. Henceforth, Adam was looking for his salvation to come down from God. When the Israelites camped at the base of Mount Sinai they boasted to Moses that they would obey every command God would give them not understanding how meaningless their efforts could be. So he gave them over six hundred commands to follow in order to teach them that they would fail and subsequently learn that they could not reach God through their efforts. Then when Jesus comes he goes to the sinners and the tax gatherers rather than the religious because it is those who know they have failed who are also those he can heal. And of course the Apostle Paul understood it and wrote about the radical Gospel of Grace where man needs not perform any works or any effort to reach God because it is impossible for us to reach him but rather that God reaches down in mercy and offers grace to us freely, unmerited, to those who trust their lives in Him. This is the glory of God to take a meaningless speck of dust and elevate to be his sons and daughters. We have nothing to fear from evolution and the universe being ancient. It shows he is almighty and sovereign to be able and reach down to save us from a meaningless existence.

[docphin]

I think it is important for modern man and the church to understand that original sin is a state of decay observable in all nature resulting in death or transformation from one form to the next.  The Apostle Paul alludes to it (Romans eight) but I guess few if any of the apostles grasped its significance in relation to the ancient past of our universe.  I submit the following explanation of original sin for your consideration.

What is death or mortality other than the transformation of matter from one body to another?  For the matter of our body does not disappear at death but dissolves into the earth into the elements from which it is made to be utilized by bacteria, insects, and plants.  The Bible teaches that death is the result of sin but then what is sin?  We can reason there are at least two categories of sin, one being the willful disobedience of God's commands clearly described in the Bible and another category of sin that is inherited because all life on earth suffers from death even the animals who do not disobey God.  What is this inherited sin that results in death? The Bible suggests and orthodox Christianity accepts this inherited (original) sin began with Adam's willful disobedience of God which was passed down to all humans and animals (Romans 5). But I suggest to you that inherited sin began before Adam, that it began at the beginning of our universe when all matter was made in a state of decay transforming over time from one form to the next from one body to the next. 

We now know from studying the cosmos that the matter in our universe from the beginning has been going through many forms developing into what we now experience here on earth. Eventually, what we now experience will be transformed into something else over another 14 billion years.  Our sun like other bodies in our universe is mortal in a sense because it has a life cycle of a few billion years when it will eventually run out of hydrogen fuel causing its outer shell to expand and its inner core to collapse and explode wiping out what we know of our solar system. That debris will shoot out to form other planets, so on and so forth, as all matter has been doing from its ancient beginning. We observe bodies in our universe are born and "die" seeding future planets just as mankind does today for we are born and die yet we propagate our species in the world through our own seed we leave behind.  Likewise, man's transformation from one form to another is complete after starting as a drop of moisture, then growing muscles, tendons, and bones, then after death, dissolving back into the earth.  Thus all bodies in the universe are temporary or in a state of decay whether it takes seventy years as in the case of man or 3 billion years like our sun.

This state of decay or inherited sin is what I believe the Apostle Paul was describing when he said, "the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God." It is not that I believe Paul understood the ancient history of our universe but I believe Paul being inspired by the Holy Spirit realized all observable life was in a state of decay.  It is now only after we gained the knowledge of our material world and its ancient past and the science of evolution that we must realize this decay has been around from the beginning when in Genesis the universe was described as "formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep."  It is for us to realize that inherited sin is to death on earth what decay is to transformation of matter in our universe.  But there is no reason to exclude God from this universe because of its ancient "dark, formless" past because we know that not only has God remained sovereign "hovering over the waters" brooding over it like a hen over her eggs, managing it to ensure His plan is accomplished but also that God plans to liberate those who honor and worship him from the cycle of birth and death so that we may be brought into the "glory of the children of God."

[docphin]

The best explanation of Genesis creation account that I found is the most simple one written by Gordon Glover, called "Beyond the Firmament".  The mistake we all make when we read the Bible is to assume that the author was writing the narrative for us. Remember English 101, what is the first question an author has to ask before he writes anything, it is "Who is your intended audience?" It makes a big difference what you say if your audience is a five year old or an eighteen year old. If you have not taken English 101 then anyone with kids knows what I am talking about.  Think how different your explanation to your child would be regarding the origins of babies depending on whether your child was five or was eighteen years old.

The point is this, Moses was not writing to us when he wrote Genesis. He was writing to a bunch of illiterate slaves just recently departed from an oppressive government with a false system of religion. Moses intent in Genesis was to educate God's "children" away from false beliefs taught in Egypt and begin to educate them about the true nature of God. The material origin of our world was way beyond what anyone at that time and for another three thousand years could understand. It was enough they understood there was one God and he made the world as opposed to Egyptian polytheism and mythology. The bottom line is that Moses accomplished what he intended, which was for his audience at that time to know, that there is one God who made everything; this message he gave to them is still true today. However, he was wrong about the material age of the world because how could he not be wrong? Modern humans only figured out the age of the universe in the last few hundred years. No disrespect to the devoutly religious who stand on a young earth theory or a literal interpretation of Genesis but it is absurd to continue believing that in light of reality and what we know about our universe. Those interpretations of the Bible will go the way of other outdated interpretations from the Bible like the sun circling the earth and others like it.

[Peter]

Peter,
I am going to challenge you and others in the Christian faith about our origins.....

Since I've been called over the last several years, to the 1.5 billion Muslims that must deny the Son of God and reject His crucifixion and His shed blood as articles of their faith in the false prophet Muhammad - that the "church" left largely hanging out to dry over the last century - I haven't really been able to afford the time for, nor had much interest in, nor have as yet been called to, this subject. Perhaps another forum member will take an interest in becoming so engaged. It is really outside the emphasis of this Islam-Christian forum as it would only provide a distraction for Muslims seeking truth, so this isn't a bad place for it to reside. As you review the pages of this forum, or the Islam section of the other forum we attend, you will likely notice that they are constantly seeking escape from the most important points. For example when we preach Christ crucified, Muhammad's followers will do everything in their power to divert the conversation into something that heretics claim are in dispute like the deity of Christ, in efforts to run and hide from the foot of the cross.

1Cr 1:23 But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness;

That's what I have been called to do. You can also see that in the examples of the two Muslims that I pressed to confirm that "shirk" - that is, confessing that Jesus is the Son of God or even praying in Jesus name - is a greater sin than even raping a little girl or cold-blooded mass murder. It is very a convicting convicting thing for them to admit to, and on each of the several times the most recent poster returned to the forum and was again pressed to answer, he left for several days. I believe this is because he was being convicted by recognizing what an unjust "god" (Muhammad's alter-ego) he follows. Unfortunately someone came along and put yet another thread titled "shirk" just a half dozen thread places away from mine, that offered him an escape from the thread I had entered. I think if administration were on their toes in that forum, they would consolidate related threads rather than having a massive repetitious revolving door. I am also inclined to consolidate these four posts of yours into a single thread as they are mostly related. OK with you?

I preach Christ crucified to Muslims, and had given up on "Christian" forums some years ago, after using them to drive me deeper into the scriptures, to answer questions of others that had not occurred to me. It's a good hostile environment in which to try and test what a person believes. Only some months ago I entered CARM to reply to a thread in the Islam section, that introduced me to the forum, in an online search on an unrelated subject. I decided to post a little in the eschatology section, and now months later can hardly believe I have spent over 1,000 posts in there. I am likely not going to continue in there too much longer as it is a bit too time consuming and I have neglected a lot in the meantime. It was valuable in the several concepts that I was able to discover and hone in there. Like perhaps a better way to present historicism as being traditional. Indeed it inspired yet another site, so I registered http://christianeschatology.com/ yesterday. Please don't be shocked by the misspelling and disjointedness of the pages at this state because there won't be a half dozen people that will likely see it for the first few weeks. I wanted to get it up and cataloged by the search engines in the meantime.

[docphin]

You can delete my posts.  I am not here to distract you from your mission.  I just thought someone who asks others to consider novel interpretations of the scriptures (regarding end times) would himself do the same.  You should consider that not only Muslims but members from all faiths may have an interest why their respective beliefs about man's origins are confounded by what science has discovered to be true.  Eventually all faiths have to deal with this novel information about our universe.  If Christianity were to harmonize our faith with these facts of our material world then we end up proving a more pure faith that stands the test of time.

[Peter]

You can delete my posts.

We don't delete posts.

I am not here to distract you from your mission.

How could you have known before I pointed it out? I would have thought you would have come here to explore the eschatology I have been advancing in the other forum, and perhaps explore Islam a little more from a Christian perspective. Did you know that Mecca - the alleged epicenter of Muhammadanism since Adam - did not exist before the 4th century AD?

I just thought someone who asks others to consider novel interpretations of the scriptures (regarding end times) would himself do the same.

Approaching New Testament prophecy through the traditional historicist approach that all Jews and Christians understand Old Testament prophecy was fulfilled, and up until the last couple of centuries the church and reformers understood New Testament prophecy was being fulfilled, could hardly be considered novel.

Particularly since the exegesis detailed in here through the day-year language of prophecy, is exactly the way those great men of the reformation would have approached it, if they were here today.

Quoting from "The False Prophet": "In 1569, the great Anabaptist theologian, Thieleman van Braght, wrote the following in Martyrs Mirror, pages 21-24: 'a thousand two hundred and threescore days, which reckoned according to prophetic language means as many years… let it be reckoned as it may, say we, as a very long period of time.' 

Two hundred years later, Matthew Henry, in his 'Commentary of the Whole Bible', came to the same conclusion (Vol VI, page 1157 column 1, para. 2):  "….if the beginning of that interval could be ascertained, this number of prophetic days, taking a day for a year, would give us a prospect of when the end might be."

Also

Isaac Newton - "She is nourished by the merchants of the earth, three times or years and an half, or 42 months, or 1260 days: and in these Prophecies days are put for years." - Observations Upon the Prophecies of Daniel, and the Apocalypse of St.a John - Chapter 3

Also Jamison, Faucett & Brown commentary - "..... in the wilderness 'a thousand two hundred and threescore days.' In the wider sense, we may either adopt the year-day theory of 1260 years..."

As well as:

Augustine (AD 430)
Nahawendi (Jewish) (AD 8-9th century)
Jehoram (AD 10th century)
Abraham bar Hiyya (Jewish) (AD 1136)
Arnold of Villanova AD (1292)
Tichonius (AD 380)
Joachim of Floris (AD 1202)
John Wycliffe (AD c.1379)
Nicholas of Cusa (AD c.1452)
Martin Luther (AD 1522)
Phillip Melanchthon (AD 1543)
Johan Funck (AD 1558)
James I of England (AD 1600)

It is the pop-eschatologies of the last couple of centuries of futurism and preterism that can fairly be characterized as "novel interpretations of the scriptures (regarding end times)"
For example

You should consider that not only Muslims but members from all faiths may have an interest why their respective beliefs about man's origins are confounded by what science has discovered to be true.

If I am called there I surely will obey. But I preach Christ crucified to 1.5 billion people that must deny it as articles of their faith.

Eventually all faiths have to deal with this novel information about our universe.

The difficulty is that "novel information" keeps changing.

If Christianity were to harmonize our faith with these facts of our material world then we end up proving a more pure faith that stands the test of time.

It would still be theory. Yet this eschatology is proven mathematically. Look at the "times" problems in Daniel again:
http://www.beholdthebeast.com/mathematical_precision_of_prophecy.htm

It sounds to me like you feel called to your interest and I would encourage you to follow that calling. How do you grapple with things like a chart of the historical population of the human race and the absence of a transitional form fossil record?

[PeteWaldo]

I just thought someone who asks others to consider novel interpretations of the scriptures (regarding end times) would himself do the same.

Approaching New Testament prophecy through the traditional historicist approach that all Jews and Christians understand Old Testament prophecy was fulfilled, and up until the last couple of centuries the church and reformers understood New Testament prophecy was being fulfilled, could hardly be considered novel.

Particularly since the exegesis detailed in here through the day-year language of prophecy, is exactly the way those great men of the reformation would have approached it, if they were here today.

Quoting from "The False Prophet": "In 1569, the great Anabaptist theologian, Thieleman van Braght, wrote the following in Martyrs Mirror, pages 21-24: 'a thousand two hundred and threescore days, which reckoned according to prophetic language means as many years… let it be reckoned as it may, say we, as a very long period of time.' 

Two hundred years later, Matthew Henry, in his 'Commentary of the Whole Bible', came to the same conclusion (Vol VI, page 1157 column 1, para. 2):  "….if the beginning of that interval could be ascertained, this number of prophetic days, taking a day for a year, would give us a prospect of when the end might be."

Also

Isaac Newton - "She is nourished by the merchants of the earth, three times or years and an half, or 42 months, or 1260 days: and in these Prophecies days are put for years." - Observations Upon the Prophecies of Daniel, and the Apocalypse of St.a John - Chapter 3

Also Jamison, Faucett & Brown commentary - "..... in the wilderness 'a thousand two hundred and threescore days.' In the wider sense, we may either adopt the year-day theory of 1260 years..."

As well as:

Augustine (AD 430)
Nahawendi (Jewish) (AD 8-9th century)
Jehoram (AD 10th century)
Abraham bar Hiyya (Jewish) (AD 1136)
Arnold of Villanova AD (1292)
Tichonius (AD 380)
Joachim of Floris (AD 1202)
John Wycliffe (AD c.1379)
Nicholas of Cusa (AD c.1452)
Martin Luther (AD 1522)
Phillip Melanchthon (AD 1543)
Johan Funck (AD 1558)
James I of England (AD 1600)

It is the pop-eschatologies of the last couple of centuries of futurism and preterism that can fairly be characterized as "novel interpretations of the scriptures (regarding end times)"
For example

Certainly not novel methods.
I've uploaded a new website since I wrote the above reply:
http://www.christianeschatology.com/index.htm

[ExMilitary]

If anything, the theory of evolution and study of the cosmos should make us realize how really small and insignificant we are as humans. In the grand scheme of things we are but specks of dust in the universe, specks of star dust in a sense, because our bodies are made from the elements of our universe that traveled billions of light-years across space to get where they are on this earth in this solar system. But that fact alone actually brings more glory to God the creator rather than if the world had been made young and perfect as some religious hold on to. For if the glory of God is his work in man then what brings him more glory than to take a speck of meaningless dust in the universe and elevate it to be an adopted son or daughter of the creator who made everything. Is not that the message of the Bible that God has been trying to teach man from the very beginning starting from Adam through the rest of the scriptures?

I might point out here that you are drawing a conclusion from a premise you offered to prove (ancient origins) by stating the premise you offered to prove as if it were already factual (as yet unproven in your posts), and then immediately drawing a conclusion.  Unfortunately, when you ask the question about an 'overall message' of scripture in rhetorical fashion (the question is answered in the way it is asked), and found it on an unproven premise, then you aren't offering anything of substance.  If you haven't proven that your foundational premise is sound, then any conclusion that you draw from a potentially unsound foundation is suspect as well... including how you interpret or see God's purposes.

For instance, you offer to show us [paraphrasing] why we as Christians have nothing to fear from an old-earth/old-universe approach to things.  Then you flatly state that "billions of light years" and "evolution" are both fact.  Where was the proof?

[ExMilitary]

I think it is important for modern man and the church to understand that original sin is a state of decay observable in all nature resulting in death or transformation from one form to the next.  The Apostle Paul alludes to it (Romans eight) but I guess few if any of the apostles grasped its significance in relation to the ancient past of our universe.  I submit the following explanation of original sin for your consideration.

What is death or mortality other than the transformation of matter from one body to another?

Death is the opposite of life.  Death is not a process, it is a fixed state of non-life.

The Bible teaches that death is the result of sin but then what is sin?  We can reason there are at least two categories of sin, one being the willful disobedience of God's commands clearly described in the Bible and another category of sin that is inherited because all life on earth suffers from death even the animals who do not disobey God.

Scripture, please?  I can reason that there is one category of sin... transgression of the law (1 John 3:4)  Original sin isn't the idea that sin is inherited... but that mankind is under the penalty of that original sin committed by Adam.

I know you warned that your discussion would be unscholarly, which is fine, but if you want to convince true Christians of anything, then you will need to back up everything with scripture.  The way you are approaching this whole discussion sounds alot like Gnosticism (1 Timothy 6:20).

Scripture.  You need to bring scripture to bear (very heavily) on this discussion.