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Christianity Explained Information Find Christian Unity in Biblical Explanations of the Doctrines That Count! |
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You
have a choice to make: You can either believe the opinions of
theologians, atheists, or agnostics, or you can determine for yourself
what the Bible says by studying it. |
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Topics What Is Christianity Explained Information?What Is Religion and Where Did It Originate? What Is the Bible, and How Relative Is It to My Life? What Are Messianic Prophecies? Who Was Jesus of Nazareth, Really? Why Are There So Many World Religions? Why Are There So Many Christian Denominations? What Is the Law and How Does It Apply to Me? What's All This About the End of the World and End-time Prophecies? Isn't the Book of Daniel a Closed Book? Revelation: How can anyone understand all that symbolism? Who or What Was Jesus' Mother, Mary? Didn't Darwin Disprove Creation? What's the Truth About Faith and Works? Christian E-mails: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly Complete Directory of Articles/Studies
Title Abbreviations for Books of the Bible Genesis - Ge |
Creation or Evolution: You Choose Your HeritageThe Holy Scriptures were given to improve and maintain natural religion, to repair where it had decayed and become defective. The religion of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Israel) had been marred in their descendants by their captivity in Egypt. The soothsayers and astrologers and finally scientists put forth theories that they then "proved" to their own satisfaction using "theories" and "discoveries" that they felt disproved the Bible's explanation of how the earth came into existence. Of course discovery after discovery has disproved past theories and discoveries, although only those who care to follow the field know about this. For instance, with his short-sighted vision, man thought the earth was flat. Through arduous journeying, he discovered it was round. From his vantage point in the heavens, God knew it was round all the time. Man thought water fell from heaven and filled the oceans and rivers. He later discovered that water flows from beneath the earth as well as from heaven. God knew it all the time, and described it in scripture so any man who cared to study in the right places could know it too. At one point it was proclaimed by Science that there were 5000+/- stars in the sky, which tended to cast dispersion upon God's assurance that Abraham's descendants would be as the stars in the sky or the sands of the seashore, which implied that the stars of the sky were as numerous as the sands on the seashore. The five-thousand figure, however, was disproven by today's massive telescopes that have revealed that the "stars" those scientists had counted were in fact galaxies of stars. Today it is postulated that there are billions of stars. While God says it's not possible for man to count the stars, he himself knows them all and their names.
We won't even go into meteorology--the only "profession" in the world where workers are paid to be wrong as often as or more often than they are right! The point is that humans think they know and humans think they can discover, but God alone is omnicient. Since the fall of mankind, the precepts of the laws of nature and the laws of God needed to be revived in the hearts of men by unclouded light: that this world was, in the beginning of time as we know it, created by a being of infinite wisdom and power, who existed before all time and all worlds. Studying God’s word gives this light.
The first verse of the Bible gives us a surer and better, a more satisfying and useful, knowledge of the origin of the universe, than all the volumes of the philosophers and theories of the evolutionists. Whereas evolution supposes that over billions of years single celled creatures developed into humans--one has to wonder how something as intricate as a lung or a liver spontaneously develops--the Biblical explanation is just so logical.
Now, don't get me wrong. The evolutionists aren't dreaming up all the things that have persuaded them that the Biblical account isn't true. It's simply that the evidences they give for evolution--strange fossils that appear to bridge species--are more likely to be evidences of Satan's interfering powers. But, of course, since they have eliminated God from the picture, they have also conveniently eliminated Satan--playing right into Satan's hand. Look at it this way. Humans have the power to produce "hybrids" by crosspollination, to crossbreed animals for stamina or size, to engage in genetic meddling, and now even DNA restructuring, etc. Just because we think we're only beginning to discover how to do this doesn't mean that's so. Maybe from the hands of God, and having been created a little lower than the angels (Psalm 8:4-5), mankind was so smart he could do all that way back when and somehow lost the knowledge! On the other hand, what makes you think that Satan--the most intelligent and powerful of all the angels, but having become evil--has not from eternity had the power to cause birth defects and genetic muddying? I have heard it said that the reason he "has it in for the human race" is jealousy over our ability to procreate, to reproduce ourselves, to "create" life. He has no such ability, but he certainly has all the other abilities we have--and with his superior intelligence from ages past, it wouldn't have taken him as long as it appears to have taken us to figure out how to meddle with reproduction! We have only "discovered" that certain things cause birth defects. He has known how to cause birth defects all along. The living faith of humble Christians understands this matter better than the elevated fancies of those who don't want to acknowledge a creator God whom they would have to also acknowledge is superior to them--simply by virtue of a creator being greater than the created--to whom all mankind must answer.
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| In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. | |
| The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. |
First, God created all that was necessary to form the earth and the stars and galaxies. Apparently, as we have since "discovered", water is a basic necessity of life, and the Bible account of creation indicates that.
Then, God went on to create in a way that each step built upon or was a logical progression of the one(s) before it.
Then God
said, "Let there be light"; and there was light.
And God
saw the light, that it was good; and God divided the light from the
darkness.
God
called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. So the evening
and the morning were the first day.
Then God
said, "Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it
divide the waters from the waters."
Thus God
made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the
firmament from the waters which were above the firmament; and it was so.
And God
called the firmament Heaven. So the evening and the morning were the
second day.
Then God
said, "Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one
place, and let the dry land appear"; and it was so.
And God
called the dry land Earth, and the gathering together of the waters He
called Seas. And God saw that it was good.
Then God
said, "Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb that yields seed, and
the fruit tree that yields fruit according to its kind, whose seed is
in itself, on the earth"; and it was so.
And the
earth brought forth grass, the herb that yields seed according to its
kind, and the tree that yields fruit, whose seed is in itself according
to its kind. And God saw that it was good.
So the
evening and the morning were the third day.
Then God
said, "Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens to divide
the day from the night; and let them be for signs and seasons, and for
days and years;
"and let
them be for lights in the firmament of the heavens to give light on the
earth"; and it was so.
Then God
made two great lights: the greater light to rule the day, and the
lesser light to rule the night. He made the stars also.
God set
them in the firmament of the heavens to give light on the earth,
and to
rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the
darkness. And God saw that it was good.
So the
evening and the morning were the fourth day.
Then God
said, "Let the waters abound with an abundance of living creatures, and
let birds fly above the earth across the face of the firmament of the
heavens."
So God
created great sea creatures and every living thing that moves, with
which the waters abounded, according to their kind, and every winged
bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.
And God
blessed them, saying, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters in
the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth."
So the
evening and the morning were the fifth day.
Then God
said, "Let the earth bring forth the living creature according to its
kind: cattle and creeping thing and beast of the earth, each according
to its kind"; and it was so.
And God
made the beast of the earth according to its kind, cattle according to
its kind, and everything that creeps on the earth according to its
kind. And God saw that it was good.
Then God
said, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let
them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air,
and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing
that creeps on the earth."
So God
created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male
and female He created them.
Then God
blessed them, and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply; fill the
earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the
birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth."
And God
said, "See, I have given you every herb that yields seed which is on
the face of all the earth, and every tree whose fruit yields seed; to
you it shall be for food.
"Also,
to every beast of the earth, to every bird of the air, and to
everything that creeps on the earth, in which there is life, I have
given every green herb for food"; and it was so.
Then God
saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good. So the
evening and the morning were the sixth day.
In verses 1-5, God created light and separated it from darkness "and evening (the darkness that had existed over the watery void from which he created) and morning (the light he created) were the first day". This is why the Jewish day runs from sunset to sunset.
The wisdom of God was that it would be easy for mankind all over the world to "see" when the days of the week changed. The "wisdom" of man decided midnight should be the time that the days changed. The one time frame from creation, however, that man has never changed is the 7-day week. Coincidentally, it is also the only time frame that is not based on any natural celestial rhythm, as are months and days . . . Maybe I'll have time one day to study the times and the seasons and where the 7-day week came from by man's reckoning. For now, I'm just recording things I've come across "accidentally".
More important, however, is the controversy between creationism and evolutionism.
The first thing I'd like to say is that Evolution is a theory. Just like the existence of God, it cannot be proven. Just as it takes faith to believe in God, it takes faith to believe in evolution. No one living today has seen God and no one living today was there when evolution, as it is theorized today, began. There are apparent holes in scripture and in our understanding of scripture, just as there are in evolution.
All we can do is look at the "evidence" presented by both sides. And that's exactly what I will be doing as the material presents itself to me.
Related Links
Written in the HeartThe Truth About Mary Magdalene
Scriptures:
Within Text:
Genesis 15:5
Psalm 147:4-5
Psalm 119:130
Hebrews 11:3
John 1:1-5
Genesis 1:1-31
More Study:
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