Very good points!

Dee, here’s a thought for you — remember thr “time dilation” devices that the Asgards (and the Ancients) made use of in the Stargate series? What if God created everything in 6 literal days about 6000 yerars ago in some sort of time dilation pocket? All problems solved! 🙂

Dee, et al

I had a thought this morning that I think helps put some of this in a context that might, if both sides can adopt it, at least help soften the rhetoric.

As we all know from scripture, Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. We also know that ‘without faith, it is impossible to please him’.

Although it does seem the YEC side is far more willing to condemn those outside their camp as ‘not having faith’ consider the following. Let us first suppose that there are 3 Christians each of whom hold a high view of scripture. Each of whom Believes by Faith in the bodily resurrection of Christ, and in the truth and authority of God’s word, the Bible.

Now let us add to that the 1 of these is a YE fellow. The other an OE fellow, and the 3rd a TE/CE (form of Christian that accepts evolution). Based on my first statement of their underlying faith, I would say that each is practicing a good bit of faith, and each has chosen a place in which to place a certain amount of trust in his reasoning capacity.

Here is how. Let’s start with the YE guy. Where has he chosen to place a certain amount of trust in his reasoning capacity? In his ability to understand what the Bible says. The YE Christian knows of only one way or group of ways that the scriptures can be true, and so he trusts that reasoning capacity to be correct, and believes that reading of scripture is necessarily correct. Where is he practicing a good bit of Faith? By looking out into the world and realizing the data just does not line up with what he sees, he exercises faith in believing that there really, somewhere, somehow is a way to look at this data that actually does line up with what he believes must be the correct reading of scripture. In trusting that God really hasn’t mislead us or deceived is on one end or the other.

Now let is, (for reasons of efficiency in expanation) take the TE/CE next. Where has She chosen to place a certain amount of trust in her reasoning skills? Well, in looking about and seeing the world as it is and seeing so much that points to an old cosmos, a long history of life, and some pretty string evidence this life has changed over time from one form to another arriving at the current state. And where has this person exercised faith? By believing that in spite of the fact the really aren’t sure how to map the text of scripture back to that physical history, there really is somewhere, somehow, a way to understand scripture that maps truthfully and authoritatively to what we see in nature.

Note that both sides make efforts the other side criticizes harshly to put wings on the faith side of their origins conundrum, and each thinks the other side is ignoring some really difficult issues.

Finally, I left our OE guy/gal till last because effectively what happens for the OE guy is that they essentially sort of mix the two areas, exercising a good bit of faith in each with the aspects that don’t quite fits, but also resting a good bit on what they can understand of each area.

Each side is in actuality being faithful to their Lord. Each side is holding a high standard for faith, and a high standard of the Bible, and Each side really doesn’t understand how the other side can just ignore the problems staring them in the face.

But I propose the scripture already tells us how to resolve this conundrum in terms of fellowship. Paul in the letter to the Corinthians spoke of those for whom eating meat offered to idols was a problem for their conscience. And he told each side of that debate to respect the conscience of the other, and to let each one follow their conscience in these matters.

I believe that each side of this debate has its ‘eating meat offered to idols’ conscience problem. And each side has its ‘faith to eat all things’ side. Let us each then in love respect the conscience of the other in this matter, and also respect the faith of the other in this matter. We are not talking about folks on any side of this debate that have dropped faith from the equation and said the Bible is just a work of man where we can just pick what we want to believe and throw out the rest. Or that say we really can’t trust what the Bible says or how is was put together. We all proclaim he Gospel, in faith. We all hold high standards for what it means to follow Christ and the message the Bible brings us.

Zeta

Zeat/OB

I have asked the “guy behind the curtain”about it. He is looking into it (edit).

I love what you wrote. I always do. You are so good at expressing your thoughts in a non-threatening and kind manner.

Here is my problem and perhaps you have some way for me to resolve this. Until a few years ago, I had no problem with any of the positions-YE included. There are some people at Pete Briscoe’s church who could testify to that. All sides got along and we even had fun, lighthearted debates about the issue. I thought that this was how all the churches approached this matter.

Then, I bumped up against people who would imply the heresy word, break fellowship by asking people to leave a Sunday school class,etc. Then, on a national level, Ken Ham uses the heresy word, or his “denial of the doctrine of the atonement” schtick which means the same thing. When I saw him go after Hugh Ross, who is a gentleman in every sense of the word, I realized that it was the YE crowd who were now alluding that their brothers and sisters were not even Christians in the orthodox sense of the word. That these faithful brothers and sisters had gone the way of compromise and, in so doing, rejected the faith.

That is where I draw the line. How does one talk to those who would deny our very faith? I have decided to take a hard line stance on this issue, not in regards to YE beliefs on the age of the earth, but in regards to their un-Biblical attitude of judging the faith of another person. That has gone too far.

Al Mohler, once again, is contributing to a new orthodox position that all Christians must subscribe to and I believe there is a high probability that his newest crusade will be successful within the rapidly declining SBC. Look at what happened the last time he went bear hunting.

So, I agree with you on the faith thing. No problem. But it is a big problem for the YE ideologues who are willing to break unity over this issue. It is my perception that, within the Christian faith side of things, the only ones I see who are going this route are the YE crowd.

They are planning to redefine the faith by adding a literal 6 day creation, and, in so doing, will just add one more reason that the faith is looked at with disdain by those on the outside and I believe that the YE crowd couldn’t care less.

Hi Karl

I am finally getting back to you on the evidence for the captivity in Egypt. I am well aware of the controversy which is based on the lack of extraBiblical evidence for such an event and sojourn. Since this is an important account which figures prominently into the narrative and has implications for the view of the coming of God’s salvation via Jesus, this could be potentially troubling.

As always, I know that there are far more intelligent people than me who accept this story, who have researched the evidence and believe the Biblical account stands. As always, I read the detractors in order to see if their questions have answers. I believe that these answers do exist.

Here is a simple outline that i found which expands on one of my points-there sure seem to be a large number of Egyptian names for members of he chosen people within the Biblical narrative. Since the Egyptians were looked at as heathens it would be unlikely that such names were given out of admiration or the fact that they are just “cute” names. It would be akin to evangelicals today deliberately naming their kids Mohammed or Ghandi.

Here is link
http://www.theology.edu/egypt2.htm

Here is a further discussion from a well-respected Christian historian, Paul Maier
http://www.equip.org/articles/biblical-history-the-faulty-criticism-of-biblical-historicity

This is an excerpt
“No Israelite Sojourn in Egypt or Exodus Therefrom? Critics make much of the supposed “fact” that there is no mention of the Hebrews in hieroglyphic inscriptions, no mention of Moses, and no records of such a mass population movement as claimed in the biblical account of the Exodus from Egypt. This “fact” is questionable. The famous Israel Stele (an inscribed stone or slab) of Pharaoh Merneptah (described more fully below) states, “Israel — his seed is not.” Furthermore, even if there were no mention whatever of the Hebrews in Egyptian records, this also would prove nothing, especially in view of the well-known Egyptian proclivity never to record reverses or defeats or anything that would embarrass the majesty of the ruling monarch. Would any pharaoh have the following words chiseled onto his monument: “Under my administration, a great horde of Hebrew slaves successfully escaped into the Sinai Desert when we tried to prevent them”?
The ancient Egyptians, in fact, transformed some of their reverses into “victories.” One of the most imposing monuments in Egypt consists of four-seated colossi of Rameses II overlooking the Nile (now Lake Nasser) at Abu-Simbel. Rameses erected the colossi to intimidate the Ethiopians to the south who had heard correctly that he had barely escaped with his life at the battle of Kadesh against the Hittites, and so they thought Egypt was ripe for invasion. The story told on the walls inside this monument, however, was that of a marvelous Egyptian victory!
No Moses? The very name Moses is Egyptian, as witness pharaonic names such as Thut-mose and Ra-meses. The ambient life as described in Genesis and Exodus is entirely consonant with what we know of ancient Egypt in the Hyksos and Empire periods: the food, the feasts, everyday life, customs, the names of locations, the local deities, and the like are familiar in both Hebrew and Egyptian literature.5
No Exodus? It is true that few remains of encampments or artifacts from the Exodus era have been discovered archaeologically in the Sinai, but a nomadic, tribal migration would hardly leave behind permanent stone foundations of imposing buildings en route. Hardly any archaeology is taking place in the Sinai, and if this changes, evidence of migration may very well be uncovered. Again, beware of the argument from silence.”

I like Paul Maier because he confronts the difficulties head on. In that same article he says:

“This is not to claim that there are no problems in the Old Testament record; even traditionalists will admit that there certainly are. We can all fondly wish that the author of Genesis had given us the names of more contemporary associates of Abraham so that the whole patriarchal era could be dated with more precision; and why, oh, why, don’t we have the actual names of the Egyptian kings involved in the Oppression and the Exodus rather than only their generic title, “pharaoh”? Later on, the Old Testament readily gives us the proper names of pharaohs such as Shishak (fl. 920 BC, 1 Kings 14:25 f.) and Necho (fl. 600 BC, 2 Kings 23:29 ff.). Had such individual names appeared in Exodus, we would have been spared hundreds of tomes and thousands of articles debating their identity. We all crave, moreover, far more specific detail about the Hebrews in the period pre-1000 BC and would likely sacrifice several chapters of Jewish ceremonial law in Leviticus and Deuteronomy in exchange for this description.
Perhaps, though, we are asking too much of early sacred records. No religion or culture on earth has, in fact, more specificity in its earliest historical records than the Torah, and it is always the case that the earliest records of any peoples will be more spotty and compressed than the later ones. We certainly see in the Old and New Testaments, not a progressive historicity in the sense that the earlier records are not historical and the later records are — as the radical revisionists claim — but rather a progressive historical specificity.”

Anyhoo, this is a beginning to the discussion. I apologize this answer took me so long. The older I get, the more I find my best intentions are thwarted by the vicissitudes of age.

Karl, it is possible the numbers are exaggerated. Such an exaggeration can come from copy error or cultural convention in terms of reporting. The real issue here is that there is evidence – some of it given by you in your own post – that a people who later became the jews indeed created a good bit of trouble for the Eqyptians and were ‘expelled’. In light of what Dee had to say about how the Eqyptians painted failure, I doubt their ‘expulsion’ was quite what it is made out to be.

Now I do need to be careful here – this is NOT an area I have researched well. So I am making no authoritative claims. I recognize that in secular archaeology there are issues with the Biblical account. Nevertheless, to claim there is ‘no evidence’ is no less an exaggeration that to claim ‘we can prove the exodus.’

I really, really do wish these arguments could be framed a bit more honestly from both sides, but it does seem that we all have a gold piece to lose if we give an inch, even if it is obvious we can’t prove our case conclusively. Do you think it would be possible on this blog for the sake of this discussion for all of us to just talk about what is and is not without trying to ‘prove’ we are right in terms of the ultimate conclusion? Seems to me that would be the best way of laying out the data so that each of us can gain the most in terms of understanding what is out there, pro and con.

Just an idea.

Zeta

If Ken Ham is making money off of his efforts, then I wouldn’t worry about him calling anyone a ‘heretic’ that doesn’t buy into his version of YE.

There comes a point where people have to get real about who is making money hawking what idea and how that mongering affects credibility.

Here’s an article by Al Mohler entitled “Who’s Afraid of Noah’s Ark?” that relates to this post.

http://www.albertmohler.com/2010/12/07/who-is-afraid-of-noahs-ark/

I’d be interested in your comments.

Seriously, I have to ask, who is it that calls Mohler the smartest man in Christianity? Seems a bit foolish to give anyone that title, just as it is laughable to call anyone “the smartest”. People can say, “This person scored the highest of anyone else who has ever taken an IQ test” but that isn’t the world so making statements like that seem ridiculous. I’ve always suspected that the smartest person in the world is some goat herder in Outter Mongolia that is never going to come near a written IQ test. Heck, for all we know, she’s also the smart person in Christianity.

BWWwahaa ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

That is like the science nerd guy calling the debate captain the coolest guy on earth! Methinks neither of them would recognize cool if it hit them with a pole. Or one blind person calling another blind person the most sighted person on earth.

I’m sorry, but I had actually thought that the title of smartest man was somehow bestowed by at least a somewhat reputable source so when I read who said it I just burst out laughing. No wonder the title of “Smartest Man in Christianity” was such an illogical phrase considering the source. (As it is both untestable and a bit embarrassingly smarmy or kiss-uppey.)

Stunned

Actually, the word that describes us best, on occasion, and some would say routinely, is snarky. Is there anything in the Bible that deals with the issue of snarky? I think I may need to work on it, whatever it is.

I had assumed that it was some kiss up article written by Time Mag or something.

How embarrassing.

An 18 wheeler in the back yard. Yes evidence of it would be there the next day. Maybe the next month. Maybe the next year. But 100, 1000, or 4000 years later? Maybe not so much. Ground penetrating radar on some past shuttle missions discovered a lot of buried geography in the Sahara that opened up new areas to research. Old river beds, lakes, and I think some cities buried deep under the sand. And we’ve been digging around the Sphinx for a long time and not seen these things.

And even when we know something “is there” we often don’t know what. All those mounds in England. And there was an area in Turkey to be flooded by a new dam where they dug up where they knew was an old city buried under many feet of dirt and discovered all kinds of things in pristine condition. The one I remember was a home bath mural made with 1/2″ or so tiles that would cost you $30,000 or more to put into a house today. Maybe double or triple that.

My point is that most of ancient history is lost to us. While we have figured out a lot of the history of ancient Egypt, it is hardly a daily, monthly, or even annual narrative that we can use. There are many large gaps. As Dee said they tended to avoid monuments to non glorious events.

I think in the last year there was a PBS/Discover/Similar channel thing on how an archeologist put forward a strong argument against the Exodus. Of course he didn’t mention any evidence against his points. And a few years ago there was another such show for the Exodus. They managed to track down evidence in various museums including a multi-part stone mural dating back to about the right time that showed the story of the pharaoh’s defeat at the Red/Reed/??? sea.

Still more unknowns than known in terms of hard facts on this issue.

Lynn

Great stuff. Thanks for your insightful input.

Case in point: ‘sight’ for ‘site’.

Zeta

Zeta,

Did you type “but if happens” or “but it happens”? Where are my magnifiers?!!!

I can so identify with your comment…

typically the edit time is short – like 45 minutes. Just long enough to let folks like myself who can’t see their errors in a proof read go back in and correct them, but not long enough to let something said that has stood for a while and been read by a bunch of folks be ‘amended’ so some wily fox can later claim he never said it 😉

Deb – if the letters are close together on the keyboard like ‘f’ and ‘t’ and close enough in appearance that these old eyes didn’t notice the subtle difference, then it’s likely the kind of mistake I don’t catch till later. Sometimes it’s just the shift in font, font size, background, or even layout that makes the difference.

Zeta

Wise used to teach at Southern Seminary. He was laid off with the budget cuts a couple years ago. I don’t know of another professor there who took such a personal interest in the spiritual well being of his students. He is a good man. It would be mistaken to believe he’s tight with Mohler, though obviously they’re on the same page theologically.

Russell Moore, if not Mohler, believed in old earth creationism until fairly recently– perhaps as recently as five years. On the old Henry Institute blog he talked about how the necessity of sin before the fall in OEC is what changed his mind.

Lynn

I have had monovision for 12 years and love it. No reading glasses needed.

R

I am glad he was nice with the students who shared his faith and viewpoint. However, he is on the same page as Mohler on YE and this page has caused much pain and conflict with those outside of the faith as well as those inside the faith who go a different path.

Wise, along with Mohler, is also friends with Ken Ham who has called his brothers and sisters heretics. By default, unless he publicly disavows this sort of tactic, he is complicit in this approach. I know someone like him. he appears to be the nicest man in the world yet he supports this terrible man, Ham, who treats his Christian brothers poorly. I think the niceness is a shield for their deep feelings of hostility.

As for Russell Moore, there was a necessity for him to change his viewpoint. Just like there was a necessity for Sproul to change. It is called knowing what side your bread is buttered on. And let me hasten to add that the death before the fall has plenty of alternate explanation by conservative theologians. I think this has far more to do with job longevity and monetary matters.

“Russell Moore, if not Mohler, believed in old earth creationism until fairly recently– perhaps as recently as five years. On the old Henry Institute blog he talked about how the necessity of sin before the fall in OEC is what changed his mind.”

Oh, so Moore “changed” his mind. And we have heard that Mohler changed his mind about women having equality in the Body. (Seems these guys are good at seeing which way the wind blows for career reasons)

Moore is quite the character. He once worked for a democrat congressman. He also wrote an article on his blog about the need to stop drilling oil in the Gulf which infuriated some people such as well heeled businessmen. He also wrote an article years ago that Christians should not be cremated. (?..now there is an interesting legalism). my pastor told me about that article which he thought was very odd.

And he claims that complimentarians are wimps and we need more patriarchy. I get a kick out of the last one because Moore probably weighs 90 lbs soaking wet.

Word on the street is that Moore is being groomed to take over from Mohler. Heaven help us.

I think the Bayly Brothers might top Moore with about an inch or two. I read the Moore article about comp/pat on the Henry Institute site years ago. IN the article he claims egals are winning. And he makes the case that comps are wimps and men are not being the leaders in comp marriages. Too many women are making decisions. it must stop so the men can feel like men. Ironically, according to Moore’s logic, it takes the women to make a man a man. Such power. Poor Paul. No woman to make him a real man.

Lydia,

It seems you and I have been reading the same websites and articles about Russell Moore.

For those who would be interested in reading Moore’s article entitled: “After Patriarchy, Then What? Why Egalitarians are Winning the Evangelical Gender Debate” that Lydia referenced in her Jan. 18 (5:10 pm) comment, here’s the link:

http://www.thedivineconspiracy.org/Z5209O.pdf

On page 6 Russell Moore lauds the “charismatic Calvinists of C.J. Mahaney’s “sovereign grace” network” as a wonderful example of complementarianism (actually, patriarchy). He also praises the PCA and “sectors of the Southern Baptist Convention.”

Moore presented this paper at the 2005 Evangelical Theological Society’s annual meeting.

I tried to link to this article on Russell Moore’s website; however, it has been removed. How do I know it was once on Moore’s site? Because the Wikipedia article on Al Mohler mentions Moore’s patriarchy article. The footnote for the article links to Moore’s website, and the article has vanished. Hmmm…….

Is not adding to the requirements to be saved a heresy?
If this is true… and I think there is good reason to believe it is true, then Ken Hamm is a heretic.

Jesus, come save us!

TWW, I want to challenge you that your above statement

As previously stated, it seems to us that the accusations of HERESY are coming from only one side.

is not playing out as true on this blog. While it is a good work to challenge unbiblical additions to Scripture’s words, we ought to do it in a gracious manner and expect others to do the same.

Watcher,

Would you please provide your insights to this quote from Reasons to Believe that we included in the post:

“Ken Ham is an ardent young-earth creationist. As president of Answers in Genesis, he generates a steady stream of articles critiquing the old-earth view. Although I disagree with most of his assertions, I respect his right to express them. However, Ham’s article “The god of an old earth” crosses the line of amicable debate. By declaring “the god of an old earth cannot be the God of the Bible, and “the god of an old earth destroys the Gospel,” he is accusing old-earth creationists of heresy.

Disagreements in the body of Christ are inevitable. And history has shown debate in the church can be edifying and unifying when it is conducted properly. This requires focusing on the things that unite us and avoid passing judgment on nonessential matters (Romans 14:1). But that is not the spirit of Ham’s paper. By claiming old-earth creationism violates orthodox Christian teachings, he seeks to denigrate and marginalize it. That only serves to divide faithful Christians and prevent them from having fellowship together.”

Thank you.