Jesus on the age of the earth
Jesus believed in a young world, but leading theistic evolutionists say He is wrong
The standard secular timeline, from an alleged ‘big bang’ some 15 billion years ago to now, is accepted by most people in the evangelical Christian world, even though many would deny evolution. Some would even say that to dispute billions of years is to place an unnecessary stumbling block in the way of any scientifically-minded potential converts.
This is in contrast to the teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Creator made flesh,1 as well as several of the biblical authors,2 which makes it plain that this is wrong—people were there from the beginning of creation. But in the evolutionary timeline, people have only been around for one or two million years—this puts them toward the end of the timeline. This means that He is most definitely claiming that the world cannot be billions of years old.
For example, dealing with the doctrine of marriage, Jesus says in Mark 10:6 (bold emphases added):
“But from the beginning of the creation, God made them male and female.”3
In Luke 11:50–51, Jesus also says: “That the blood of all the prophets, which was shed from the foundation of the world, may be required of this generation; From the blood of Abel to the blood of Zacharias … ”. And in Romans 1:20, the Apostle Paul says of God: “For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.”.
Paul is plainly saying that people have been able to perceive these attributes of God in His creation ever since the creation of the world. Not ever since people were created.
Comparing the appearance of people on the timelines below, which are both to scale, is instructive. Jesus, speaking around 4,000 years after creation,4 was correct to say that Day 6, when humans were created, was effectively ‘the beginning of creation’ as seen from thousands of years later. By contrast, a creation fifteen billion years ago on the secular timescale would put humans at the end of the time scale. It shows clearly how the acceptance of the secular timeline starkly contrasts with the statements of Jesus.
Today, the vast majority of Christians in not only secular academia, but also theological institutions, Bible colleges, etc. believe—and many teach—that the secular ‘billions of years’ is fact. When one tries to find out how they deal with these repeated references, responses vary. But the ‘explaining away’ that takes place (whenever the problem is not simply ignored) invariably makes it plain that the authority being deferred to is not the Word of God, but rather current secular opinion.
The most striking (and sad) example of this switch in authority source I know of comes from a personal experience. In Melbourne, Australia, many years ago, I had arranged to sit down over a hot drink with a distinguished university professor, a Christian who was well-known for his active opposition to a straightforward view of Genesis.5 At that time, he was actually the head of a grouping of Christian academics which had been openly set up to provide opposition to the inroads our ministry was making.6 Over the years, this group has unfortunately been very effective in persuading most Christian training institutions that compromising on biblical creation in favour of secular thinking (evolution, long ages) is the only ‘respectable’ position.
This professor himself, in addition to his secular science qualifications, was well regarded in the theological arena as well as being very biblically literate. He had at that time already been a frequent guest lecturer at several leading Australian evangelical training institutions.
During our courteous exchange, I asked him about the above comments by Jesus in relation to the age of the world. I asked, “Isn’t it clear that Jesus taught and believed that the world was young?”
A stunning response
I expected him to do as other Christian evolutionists have done—to try to find ways to torture the text to escape these obvious implications. Instead, he said that he totally agreed that Jesus believed in a recent creation of all things.
Somewhat taken by surprise, I said, “Well, how do you deal with that, then?” (He would of course have assumed, correctly, that I knew of the long-age position of this prominent organisation of theistic evolutionists.) His answer simply stunned me, to put it mildly. He said:
“Jesus didn’t know as much science as we do today.”
His words burned themselves indelibly on my memory, while the recollection of my response has faded somewhat. But I recall saying something about Jesus being the Creator, God made flesh; He was there at creation, He does not lie, that sort of thing. To which his reply was once again unforgettable:
“Ah, but that’s where it gets very complex—it has to do with the theology of the Incarnation, where Jesus deliberately laid aside many of the things that had to do with His pre-incarnate divinity.”
Our conversation was nearing the end of its allotted period in any case, but I recall being so stunned by this that it took me till well afterwards to fully process the implications.
What it all means
Firstly, and very importantly, the professor’s comments were a clear admission that the words of the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, as recorded in the Bible, confirm that He believed that things were recently created.
Remember that this professor was at the time the most prominent of all the professing evangelical academics that were being enthusiastically welcomed into Bible colleges and seminaries—to tell them why it was OK to believe in evolution and long ages. He obviously saw it as hopeless to try to claim other than what the Lord is clearly saying in this Bible text. And this is despite many attempts by others to ‘explain away’ this huge stumbling block for long-agers.
His way of being able to hold onto his theistic evolutionary view was to claim that Jesus was not lying, it was just that He was poorly informed. This was because when He as God the Son became flesh, laying aside aspects of His divinity included divesting Himself of all knowledge about what really happened when He had created all things.
If I had had the presence of mind, an appropriate response might have been to ask something like the following:
“OK, let’s assume for the sake of the argument that firstly, creation was by evolution, over millions of years of death and suffering—and that Jesus did perform some sort of lobotomy7 on Himself, so that He could no longer recall what really took place. So He just understood Genesis in the most natural straightforward way, not realizing what the real truth was. What you’re claiming in that case amounts to this: That God the Father, knowing the real truth, permitted not just the Apostles, but His beloved Son, while on Earth, to believe and teach things that were utter falsehoods. Furthermore, it means that the Father permitted these false teachings to appear—repeatedly—in His revealed Word. With the result that for some 2,000 years, the vast majority of Christians were seriously misled about such things as not just the time and manner of creation, but gospel-crucial matters such as the origin of sin, and of death and suffering.”
[Added by author Nov 2014: The Lord Jesus repeatedly made it clear that His words and actions were on the Father’s authority, in all respects. Some examples are firstly John 8:28: So Jesus said to them, “When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am he, and that I do nothing on my own authority, but speak just as the Father taught me”. And John 12:49–50: “For I have not spoken on my own authority, but the Father who sent me has himself given me a commandment—what to say and what to speak. And I know that his commandment is eternal life. What I say, therefore, I say as the Father has told me.”]
One thing is very clear from all this. Namely, that the erroneous belief that ‘science’ insists that evolution and long ages are ‘fact’ is the most serious challenge to biblical authority, and thus to the faith in general, that Christendom has ever faced. If even Jesus’ words in Scripture can’t be trusted on some issues, how are we supposed to trust anything in the Bible at all? See also the box about the ‘kenotic heresy’.
Other leading theistic evolutionists have similarly made plain their belief that Jesus was mistaken. For example, on the American theistic evolutionary site BioLogos, led by Francis Collins, there appeared the following:
“If Jesus as a finite human being erred from time to time, there is no reason at all to suppose that Moses, Paul, John wrote Scripture without error. Rather, we are wise to assume that the biblical authors expressed themselves as human beings writing from the perspectives of their own finite, broken horizons.”8
This is all the more serious because Jesus and the apostles used the history they taught to back up the theology that they taught. The Resurrection (1 Corinthians 15), marriage (Mark 10:1–12), atonement (Romans 5:12–21), and Heaven (Revelation 21–22:5) are only a few of the areas in which compromising Christians are theologically crippled, because they don’t have the same strong stand on Genesis that Jesus and the apostles did when they taught about these areas.
What a tragedy that so many Christian leaders have been bluffed and intimidated into assuming that secular interpretations of the evidence should dictate their understanding of God’s Word. And right at a point in history when there are more scientific reasons than ever to confirm the utter rationality of trusting the Bible, not evolutionary conclusions.
Theistic Evolution and the Kenotic Heresy
This error from many leading theistic evolutionists is not a new idea. It was rejected by the Church in general as the kenotic heresy in the 4th Century already, but has been revived in modern times, and for reasons as shown in the main text.
This asserts that in the Incarnation, Jesus emptied Himself of divine attributes, which is a misunderstanding of Philippians 2:6–7:
“[Jesus] Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God a thing to be grasped; rather, he emptied Himself by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.”
This does indeed talk about ‘emptying’ (kenosis1), but what does it actually say? “He emptied Himself by taking … ”. That is, He didn’t empty anything out of Himself, such as divine attributes; rather, His emptying of Himself was by taking. That is, it was a subtraction by means of adding—adding human nature to His divine nature, not taking away anything divine.2
This is what makes our salvation possible: he “shares our humanity” (Hebrews 2:14–17), and is our “kinsman–redeemer” (Isaiah 59:20); but He is also fully divine so He can be our Saviour (Isaiah 43:11) and can bear the infinite wrath of God for our sins (Isaiah 53:10), which no mere creature could withstand.
But on Earth, Jesus voluntarily surrendered the independent exercise of divine powers like omniscience without His Father’s authority. But Jesus never surrendered such absolute divine attributes as His perfect goodness, mercy, and (for our purposes), truth, so He would never teach something false. Furthermore, Jesus preached with the authority of God the Father (John 5:30, 8:28), who is always omniscient. So these theistic evolutionists really must charge God the Father with error as well.3
Notes
- From the Greek in this passage, ἐκένωσεν ekenōsen.
- For more on the incarnation, see creation.com/incarnation.
- See The authority of Scripture.
Related Articles
Further Reading
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References and notes
- See Sarfati, J., The Incarnation: Why did God become Man?, December 2010; creation.com/incarnation. Return to text.
- See Sarfati, J., Why Bible history matters, Creation 33(4):18–21, 2011, as well as creation.com/nt and creation.com/gen-hist. Return to text.
- The extended passage cites Genesis 1:27 and 2:24 as real history, and about the same man and woman. In the parallel passage in Matthew 19:4–5, Jesus attributes Genesis 2:24 to the One who created them, i.e. to God himself. Return to text.
- See Sarfati, J., Biblical chronogenealogies, J. Creation 17(3):14–18, December 2003; creation.com/chronogenealogy. Return to text.
- In Australia, as in most British systems, ‘professor’ means head of a department. In the US, professor simply means someone who teaches at tertiary level, which could apply to someone, for example, who would be called a ‘junior lecturer’ in a British system. Return to text.
- ISCAST (Institute for the Study of Christianity in an Age of Science and Technology); see Sarfati, J., The Skeptics and their ‘Churchian’ Allies, November 1998; creation.com/iscast. Return to text.
- From Greek λοβός lobos = lobe (of the brain), and τομή tomē = slice/cut. A serious and irreversible operation that cuts certain connections to the cerebral cortex, the ‘thinking’ part of the brain. Return to text.
- Sparks, K., “After Inerrancy, Evangelicals and the Bible in the Postmodern Age, part 4” Biologos Forum, 26 June 2010. See also Cosner, L., Evolutionary syncretism: a critique of Biologos, 7 September 2010; creation.com/biologos. Return to text.
Readers’ comments
--Saint Augustine
However, see particularly the article by theologican Prof. Benno Zuiddam, Augustine--young earth creationist: theistic evolutonists take Church Father out of context.
it has always staggered me how anyone, regardless of cultural, linguistic or educational background, could misinterpret Gods Genesis words of creation over 6 LITERAL DAYS... God has given us the measure of each LITERAL DAY in the form of "And the evening and the morning were the 1st -2nd-3rd... DAY." Now please tell me, I do not profess learned intelect, but how do WE, TODAY measure A DAY??? In 6ooo odd years (since CREATION) has this method of determinating of "A DAY" changed??? HELLOOOOO! Praise God for His written Word, so that we CAN and DO know the truth. Keep up the great mission CMI, I love your mag and await it eagerly each issue =D
Anyway, it matters not how many scientists and theologians believed hundreds (or thousands) of years ago that the earth was only a few thousand (or million) years old, not everyone believed that. Many theologians and scientists also believed that the earth was the centre of the solar system, maybe even the universe, and some went as far as thinking the earth was a flat disc. Your pleading to authority has no bearing on the unscriptural heresy in your article. Regardless of your insistant despising of science, it has uncovered a lot of information since then.
Again you twist the Scriptures with Rom 1:20, by slipping in your own version of the verses. No, they did NOT “perceive certain things” and therefore “had to be there”. It reads, “For the invisible things of him [itself] from the creation of the world [cosmos] are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made,”.
Was the blood of the prophets literally shed from [at] the beginning of creation? If you're using “from the foundation of the world” to show that day 6 was effectively ‘the beginning of creation’, then this is still no proof whatsover that man and woman were created at the actual beginning of the creation (or even 6,000 years ago), and so is nonsense. This is also no proof for your assumption that Jesus believed in a young world (by which you imply 6,000 years), therefore stop using it as such!
Humans were still created at the end of creation, and that's a Scriptural fact. I guess 4.5 billion years in God's eternal plan could still be considered as a young world to Him, but it still wouldn't prove that the earth is about 4.5 billion years old.
You would do well to hold the age of the earth at 6,000 years very loosely and focus your efforts of disproving macro-evolution. You have nothing to fear from a ~15 billion old universe, macro-evolution requires way more time than that to even have the slimmest hope.
Regards,
Andre.
Nevertheless, I think there is more that needs to be done to address this old earth question. I see the challenge coming from Climate Skeptic science because one of the keys for refuting the alarmism has it's basis in the historical records of CO2 and the supposed climate over millions of years. In the end the skeptics will win their argument and would have done so already if it was not for a biased media that wants scary stories.
If our creationist view of the age of the earth is correct, there should be a christian explanation for the state of the climate. I know there are some creationist videos out there, but I never see any arguments from creationists in any of the main skeptic blogs.
When the climate skeptics win, and the inquiry starts into the whole scam, then a majority of people will have their old earth view consolidated, and it will be hard for any of us to refute.
Regarding “Jesus on the age of the earth”, when will CMI give it up with their heresy? Humans were most certainly not created at the beginning of creation, but at the end of creation, day 6, not day 1. Furthermore Jesus is speaking about the two sexes, from when they were made, they were made as two sexes, male and female.
Once again you blatantly distort the Scriptures to support your unscientific preaching to sincere and trusting readers. Jesus did NOT say that “people were there from the beginning of creation”. From their beginning, their creation, they were made as male and female (referring to Gen 1:27).
Then you try and worm your way out of your predicament by trying to assert that day 6 is very much still “the beginning”, what nonsense!
Humans were created at the end of the creation, whether is was six 24-hour days later or 15 billion years later.
No wonder most thinking people don't take CMI seriously.
Regards,
Andre.
Thus, we see in the NT not only the Mark 10:6 passage, but the parallel passage in Matthew 19:4, which says that they were made male and female "at the beginning" or "from the beginning"; we also have Jesus' words in Luke 11:50, where he indicates that the blood of the prophets was shed "from the foundation of the world". And Romans 1:20, where Paul indicates that "ever since the creation of the world" people have been able to perceive certain things (which means that in order to perceive these things, people had to be there "ever since the creation of the world". Neither Jesus nor Paul had to flesh things out, but rather assumed that Genesis was correct. One would have to explain away each of those in a slightly different way to evade the force of it. The professor was at least being consistent with the obvious meaning of Scripture by making his concession.
Was it Satan (who then tempted adam and eve)or Adam?
Did Adam and Eve sin first and bring sin into the world?, OR did satan sin first to God and cause rebellion and then tempt eve to sin, so therefore adam is not the blame but satan is?
After having read the article from David W., Australia, 23 May 2012
However I appreciate your hard and often ungrateful work.
30 Now we can see that you know all things and that you do not even need to have anyone ask you questions. This makes us believe that you came from God.”
And John 21:17?
17 The third time he said to him, “Simon son of John, do you love me?”
Peter was hurt because Jesus asked him the third time, “Do you love me?” He said, “Lord, you know all things; you know that I love you.”
Jesus said, “Feed my sheep.
Both of these verses say that Jesus knew all things, even when He was here on Earth.
"There is a reason why even a non-believer in Genesis as history, Oxford Professor of Hebrew and OT James Barr, was able to say that the top profs in Hebrew language at ‘world-class universities’ like his own were unanimous that Genesis could only have been written to mean what it so clearly says." In other words, my point was that Genesis so clearly says it (even a child 'gets it', that these are Earth-rotation days, and it is the reason why the biblically derived age of the Earth, for both Jews and Christians, was for thousands of years around the 6k year mark) that EVEN an unbeliever (and not only that unbeliever, but all the Hebrew profs at worldclass unis, despite not believing Genesis as history, are unanimous on the meaning. I.e. the primary appeal as to why you should believe it was that it is overwhelmingly clear. God could hardly have made it plainer. And to explain why it is so plain in the Hebrew, I then referred the reader to the relevant articles on our site, so it looks as if you may not have read those. Re your question about Peter, of course that part of the Bible (and the second part which you don't quote, which says that to God a thousands years is 'as a day' i.e. 'like' a day, not 'equal to' a day or vice versa. If it were a formula, then it would have cancelled itself out. There are good reasons why virtually no Bible scholars of note, whether modern or ancient, see the Peter passage as having anything to do with the days of creation (just as it has nothing to do with Jonah being 3,000 years in the great fish, for example). The above hints at them; the clear meaning is that God is outside of time. Check the context--to God a (real) day is no different to a (real) 1,000 years. Note that Psalm 90:4 reinforces the point; "For a thousand years in your sight are but as yesterday when it is past, or as a watch in the night." Here God uses a different simile; a thousand years in God's 'sight', i.e His perception of time, is now 'as' (again, note not 'equal to')a watch in the night. But a watch in the night is only a few hours, not a full day. So once again the 'formula' idea is gone. Not to mention Exodus 20:11 in all of this. But, had you taken the advice, you would have likely come across articles like http://creation.com/2-peter-38-one-day-is-like-a-thousand-years which explain this in detail.
Just consider the follwing Joh 3:12 If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe, if I tell you of heavenly things?
How can I ever doubt what the Creator Himself said with specific reference to Joh 14:23 Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.
What else can I do?
Greetings in Jesus Christ
Johann Meiring
Following the 6-day creation, God saw everything was good. But as when the Lord Jesus hung on the Cross and the Father had to turn his face from the Beloved because the sins of the world was on Him, I see that God had to look away from the created of Day 2 when the Abode of the father of lies appeared and it could not be pronounced "good" as was the creation of Day-1, Day-3, Day-4, Day-5 and Day-6. Day-2 was obviously different, Yours respectfully, Philip
Job 38:4-7
The Lord Answers Job
4 "Where e were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?
Tell Me, if you have understanding. 5 Who determined its measurements?
Surely you know!
Or who stretched the 1 line upon it? 6 To what were its foundations fastened?
Or who laid its cornerstone, 7 When the morning stars sang together,
And all the sons of God shouted for joy? If Angels are shouting for joy, when the earth's foundation is laid, then they were already made? GOD can do anything, make all things in an instant..But I do not think he did...I will find more scripture over the next few weeks and see what The LORD will reveal to me and get back to you if you don't mind...
In Christ
David
I said to my friends that I viewed the first eleven chapters of Genesis through the filter of the Gospels rather than the filter of Satan deceived, scientists. I write as someone who has had a lot of experience in the rehabilitation of people with brain injury through Cognitive Rehabilitation and I have some idea of how the brain works. I pointed out that when Jesus healed a person born blind, he not only created functioning eyes and brain circuits instantly, he instantly created the special sight neurons and programmed the brain with a dictionary of words and associated connections creating a history for him. He did this in two separate steps on one occasion. When he healed someone who was born deaf, and consequently could not speak, he instantly healed the mechanisms of speech, created the specialized neurons for hearing and speaking and created the neuronal connections that taught the person instantly Greek and Aramaic with a history attached to the words and connections to the brain areas for all the senses, instantly! When he turned water into wine he ripped apart the atomic particles of oxygen and hydrogen and reassembled them into molecules of carbon, phosphorus, iron, sulphur, etc - the elements required for wine. So here you have instantly, both atomic fission and atomic fusion taking place inside clay bottles without blowing up the whole wedding party!! That's the miracle! Not too many of his contemporaries could do this. He also taught that the new heavens and earth would be created instantly. On the last day of history perhaps as many as 20 billion people would be instantly raised from the dead.
Evolution in all its forms is nothing but an absurd pagan fantasy. The links between living creatures are so many and so precise that they all have to be there at the same time for life to exist. The planet had to be created fully formed for life to exist at all. The way the patterns for the sub-routines of the genetic code are coded means that for evolution to occur the whole genome would have to be instantly reprogrammed to add any kind of information. The vegetable kingdom, which exhales oxygen, would have to be created at the same time (within a day or so,)as the CO2 exhaling creatures because the percentage of O2 in the atmosphere must be maintained at precisely 21%. For every percent it rises above this the risk of fire increases 70%! Even a few days wait would result in terrible world wide fires which would wipe out everything.
I don't have the space here to elaborate on many other things like this such as the pseudo Big Bang, but Eric Lerner does a pretty good job of it in "The Big Bang Never Happened," and he is an agnostic! (I don't go along with his solution either.)
The very first lesson I learned as a new born 16 year old Christian (converted through YFC,) was not to deny the words of Jesus. To do that is to deny the veracity of the words of the great Father Creator and such apostates who do this will be left outside, forever forsaken and denied by the Lord Jesus and finish up on the eternal garbage dump where the maggots never die and the fires burn forever!!!
I though that I was more or less alone until I came across your site a few years ago. What joy was mine. Kindred spirits! God will bless you for your faithfulness.
1) Satan's fall has to occur before the temptation of Eve
2) It could not be during the Creation (not recreation) Week, as God declared that everything He had made was 'all very good'. But I would go further and say that this means that Satan could not have fallen yet when God made this statement at the end of Creation Week, because even fallen angels are part of what God made, and if they were fallen He could not declare that everything He had made was in fact 'all very good'. This still leaves ample time for Satan's rebellion between Creation and the Fall (in human experience, at least, it only takes moments for thoughts of rebellion to arise, and only days to persuade a rabble to follow your leadership.
Now clearly this misconception (as I could gently and respectfully claim your communication reveals) has not altered your testimony, but it is important to have biblically consistent answers when dealing with an unbelieving world, as one seeks to 'give an answer' as per 1 Peter 3:15.
25 He said to them, “How foolish you are, and how slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken! 26 Did not the Messiah have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?” 27 And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.
This not only highlights that Jesus believed the literal account written by God, via Moses, but that the need for His incarnation, death and resurrection goes right back to Adam (as later outlined by Paul).
God: You didn’t believe everything I told you.
Me: Well, the scientists told me that the Bible couldn’t be right because they have all this evidence about evolution and so on.
God: What difference would it have made to your everyday life if you had believed My Word on this and not theirs?
Me: Not much probably, but I would have been ridiculed by my friends.
God: Would you rather be ridiculed by them, or by Me?
Me: guilty silence
God: If the account in Genesis was in fact just a made up story, but you believed it anyway, how do you think I would react?
Me: You’d probably think me naïve.
God: If the account in Genesis is accurate, but you did not believe it, how do think I should react?
Me: more guilty silence.
God: Would you rather have Me think you naïve but faithful, or wise and unfaithful?
Me: silence … by now, reduced to humble obedience
God: Don’t you believe that I could have done what I said I did?
Me: Yes, but the physical evidence said that You didn’t, and lots of other people, including Christian theologians, said so, and anyway, they also said that the Bible wasn’t really Your Word.
God: What do you think now?
Me: (plaintively) Could I go back and try again?
In short, and with no disrespect intended to what may be a wellmeaning commenter, it is as flat wrong as the claim that in the sentence “ It took me six days to travel across Australia by train” the word ‘day’ could legitimately be understood as ‘an indefinite period of time’, just because that is what the word ‘day’ can mean in English.
For the bulk of church history since Jesus rose from the dead, the vast majority of the church and its leadership have believed in a cosmos around 6ky old –obviously requiring straightforward Genesis days, certainly not any sort of ages, not even a thousand years each. For much more, see the classic by Dr Jonathan Sarfati Refuting Comromise.
The perceived need to find wiggle room came with Enlightenment approaches to the world, with the supremacy of human reasoning, and particularly the explicit denial of the Flood in Lyellian slow-and-gradualism in geology. There is again a wealth of material available, see in particular Dr Terry Mortenson’s The Great Turning Point.
I would like to end with a point of agreement, that the Bible is always correct while man is often (not always) wrong.
1) everything created in six days
2) death came through sin
3) sin entered through Adam.
4) NO death prior to Adam's sin
5) evolution-- even theistic-- God used evolution to create is A LIE.
Proverbs 1:7 "The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction."
Isaiah 32:6 "
For fools speak folly, their hearts are bent on evil: They practice ungodliness and spread error concerning the LORD; the hungry they leave empty and from the thirsty they withhold water."
That right there is all you need to know about religion.
“Jesus didn’t know as much science as we do today.”
- to make this assertion - this man's ultimate authority is himself
- Since his ultimate authority is himself Jesus could never be God
(because even if he decided Jesus was God
this would be subject to his mind so his mind would still be ultimate)
- Now if one trust in himself they often do not profess this (because they know it is silly and arrogant) rather they will attempt to say they trust in science
- Is this possible?
- trusting in absolute, immaterial, universal laws in order to discover truth?
- does it not necessarily follow that these laws must be accounted for?
-does it also not necessarily follow that his mind correctly interprets reality? (unlike Jesus)
- so really to trust science one must first trust in himself
- how can he know that is reason is reasonable apart from Christ?
- This man must be a great man - able to know absolute truth. unlike Jesus, Paul, Moses etc.
If all are deceived how can anyone know what deception is?
(how can you navigate without an external reference point?)
Jesus spoke about impossibility of neutrality (Matt 12:30) and the inability of humans to serve two different ultimate authorities (Luke 16:13) The professor is quite clearly
demonstrating that Jesus was correct.
And i suppose that water-wine, control of weather, restoration of sick people, food multiplication etc. have nothing to do with the physical world - thus science.
thanks again - keep up exposing anything opposed to the truth
murk
In Psalm 41:9 we read: “Even my close friend, whom I trusted, he who shared my bread, has lifted up his heel against me”. Would this prophesy not indicate that Jesus trusted Judas Iscariot – the man who would betray our Lord?
I would very much appreciate your view on this angle.
Best regards, Basil B.
When David wrote Psalm 41, he was talking about a time when he was betrayed by a close friend--no one thinks David is omniscient, so it's no problem for him to be surprised by that. But David like several other figures in the Bible is a sort of foreshadowing of the Messiah in certain aspects. So when some things from the life of David were 'repeated' or 'recapitulated' in Christ, it's appropriate to speak of Christ as the fulfillment of the Psalms, etc.
Perhaps another example will help to illustrate. Matthew refers to "Out of Egypt I called my son" and says that Jesus fulfilled that. But in Hosea it's obviously referring to the nation of Israel. Some people say that this is just proof that the NT authors ripped the OT out of context whenever possible to add whatever they could, but this isn't the case. Jesus is seen as the Israelite par excellence, the only one who could ever fulfill the covenantal obligations from Sinai.
So basically, the NT authors are reading their Scriptures in the light of Jesus's life--so there's Adam, but Jesus is the Last Adam, there's the institution of the Sabbath, and then our rest in Christ. And on and on and on. The fundamental assumption was that everything pointed to and foreshadowed and promised about Christ and Christ was the fulfillment of all of Scripture.
Jesus knew that Judas was going to betray Him and made statements along those lines, so He predicted it; He wasn't surprised by it.
But I think these sorts of problems stem from a fundamentally incorrect view of what happened during the Incarnation. A lot of people assume that Jesus is simply God in a human suit, and that He could have gotten out of all sorts of things by simply pressing the 'God' button. And He could have--the temptation to turn stones into bread wouldn't be a temptation for you or me because it's impossible--so Jesus clearly could have. But why was it wrong? If someone invented a machine that could alter the molecular structure of stones so that they became edible bread, that would be hailed as the solution to world hunger!
I think the answer is that while Jesus retained His divine power, He voluntarily gave up the use of it. The importance of the Incarnation is not only the death and Resurrection, but also crucially the righteous human life that Jesus lived. He was tempted and tested in every way that we are, but unlike us, He passed the test. If Jesus hadn't done that, His righteousness couldn't be credited to our account. So during His life, He did what the Father commanded Him and empowered Him to do, and He was inspired by the Spirit. Now in His glorified state, He retains complete humanity with complete divine power.
I am not a professor in anything and my math’s in school was disheartening too.
But I know this much, when reading the incident in Mathew 17.
Jesus was fully God and fully man on earth.
1. He knew (and still knows) the future like it already happened, because He kept telling the disciples what was going to be done to Him in Jerusalem and why.
2. He is aware of even the most insignificant thing that happens on earth, like when a fish swallows a coin or a coin gets lost.
3. He knew that Peter would be the one to catch that fish and that Peter needed to catch only one fish that day for this purpose.
4. I am sure He was aware of when both the coin and the fish came into existence and their purposes.
And I could go on....
Therefore I can not understand how anyone can say that God was less then God when He came as a human on earth. He was Omnipotent, Omniscient and Omnipresent here on earth too.
It looks like our own education drags us away from the truths of God.
“Jesus didn’t know as much science as we do today.""
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Given your unease around this comment, I am wondering on your views around mental/physical health issues and the likelihood that the ancient way for interpreting these was through a demonic lens.
* Did Jesus only encounter demons?
* Did mental illness not occur in Jesus' day?
* Is mental illness always linked to demonic activity?
* Did Jesus share the scientific/medical understanding of his day; an understanding that has developed over time?
These may be age-old questions for you, but I appreciate the space to be able to ask them here.
So here goes--and btw, I have in the past thought on such issues a bit, also because of having been a Christian medical doctor with a great interest in mental health issues- plus someone who has seen the reality of the demonic, as my book Beyond the Shadows documents in detail. You wrote:
* Did Jesus only encounter demons?
CW: We have no way of knowing the totality of what Jesus encountered, we can only make comments on what the Bible describes Him as having encountered. I think it likely that He encountered mental illness as such, but I have no way of knowing that. The encounters with demon possession are clearly described as such and so the presupposition of biblical inerrancy (without which we have no epistemological basis for knowing anything from Scripture) forbids us from making the leap that this is merely a way of describing mental illness (which incidentally would have to in one case have involved mental illness in a whole herd of swine causing them to have the same suicidal impulse at the same time as each other).
* Did mental illness not occur in Jesus' day?
CW: As indicated, I think it likely did, but that still has little to do with the issue here, because doubtless so did acne, and so did cancer, but there is no indication that Jesus encountered and dealt with either of these. He may have; we simply don't know. Had the Bible merely recorded the opinions of others that these were demonic possession, it would be a different story. But it clearly states the cause.
* Is mental illness always linked to demonic activity?
CW: I don't believe that for a minute, except in the most general sense of the effects of the Fall and the resultant Curse. I do believe that in today's world, much mental illness is misinterpreted as demonic. But the demonic variety (which is real, as i can testify, but extremely rare) can be clearly overcome by the Christian wielding the sword of the Spirit and the blood of Jesus, without any long incantations/rituals, etc. - and responds to it dramatically and not just by way of some shorterm improvement. Importantly, it does not respond to psychotropic medication, which true mental illness does, even if not as a total healing.
But there is a further important point to make, namely that the types of mental illness today that are most likely to be confused with demonic activity are psychoses, in particular schizophrenia. I read an important paper a few decades ago in which a secular Melbourne Prof of Psychiatry argued that one can identify schizophrenia fairly well from descriptions in early documents and from this it is reasonable to conclude that whatever the causes of this disease, it seems as if it was unknown prior to a few hundred years ago, at which time there was a virtual epidemic. And those psychoses known to be caused by genetic mutation would be subject to the accumulation of such mutations in time - all of which suggests that the types of mental illness most likely to be confused with demonic possession (because they involve hearing voices, etc.) were likely either unknown or exceedingly rare in Jesus' day.
* Did Jesus share the scientific/medical understanding of his day; an understanding that has developed over time?
CW: There is no evidence of this, and thus no reason to assume that He was merely misinterpreting things due to His limited understanding. The accounts of his demonic encounters make sense in their own right, without the 'mental illness' understanding.
I appreciate the opportunity to comment.
Yes, Jesus did say exactly that. But there may be more to it even.
I have sometimes put it this way; Jesus could have said 'Before Abraham was, I (already) was. But by putting it in the present tense, he was firstly making it clear that he was in fact YHWH, the great "I am that I am" of Exodus, and also that as such He was outside of time. God/Jesus is the eternal present tense, in effect - as the Creator of time itself, He sees the end from the beginning,unlike us.
RESPONSE TO ARGUMENT
Adam and Eve were the last creatures created by God–they came at the end of the creation process. There is a parallel passage in Matthew 19:4: “Have you not read that the Creator from the beginning ‘made them male and female’?” There is no parallel to this passage in Luke or John. So what does Jesus mean in Mark 10:6? By comparing Mark with Matthew, the first thing to note is “from the beginning of
creation” is equivalent to the simple phrase “from the beginning.” What “beginning” is Jesus speaking of? The immediate context indicates he was speaking of the beginning of human history, when marriage was first instituted at the creation, not necessarily of the beginning of the creation process. This interpretation is confirmed by a study of the phrase in Mark. In the Greek New Testament the words “of creation” are a single word, ktise-os, from the noun ktisis, meaning “creation.” This word is in the genitive case in Greek (Greek has five cases in which nouns may be found, determined by the ending on the noun and
each case is used in particular ways in the syntax of a sentence).
The genitive case often is translated in English Bibles with the word “of” in front of the noun. It is used in a number of different syntactical ways. Grammarians have developed names for these different syntactical uses. For example, in each following phrase the second noun would be in the genitive case:
“son of Zebedee” (genitive of relationship or origin–tells where the son came from)
“boats of Simon” (genitive of possession–tells who owns the boats)
“wealth of the world” (genitive of description–tells what kind of wealth)
“temple of his body” (genitive of apposition; also called epexegetic genitive–identifies what the temple is)
“one of the boats” (partitive genitive–shows the group the “one” came from)
“gospel of Paul” (subjective genitive–the gospel Paul preached–shows Paul as the subject of the action)
“zeal of God” (objective genitive–zeal directed to God–shows God as the object of the action)
When we look at this list of common uses of the genitive case, we can see that the phrase “the beginning of creation” can be interpreted in several ways. In order to select the proper interpretation, one must examine the context and then compare the result with the general teaching of the Scripture.5
In Mark 10:6 the most likely use of the genitive is the genitive of apposition (or epexegetic genitive), such as the phrase “the temple of his body” (John 2:21).6 The second word refers to the same object as the first word, only identifying it with a different noun. This usage employs a second noun, in the genitive case, to
further identify a more general or ambiguous noun. In Mark 10:6, the word “beginning” could be understood in a number of ways: for example, the beginning of humanity with Adam, the beginning of
the Hebrew people with Abraham, or the beginning of Israel as a nation with Moses. Jesus clarifies the word “beginning” by identifying it as the creation of humanity, the time of the very first humans, Adam and Eve. In Mark 10:6 Jesus would be saying, “In the beginning, that is, at the creation, God made them male and female.” The use of the genitive in this place makes perfect sense, agrees with Matthew
19:4, and follows standard grammatical forms. By using the words “beginning” and “creation,” Jesus is contrasting the original creation ordinance of marriage from the much later legislation of
Moses, with its incorporation of divorce laws. He is emphasizing the ancient origin of marriage and its vow to lifelong faithfulness,as opposed to the relatively recent legislation of Moses permitting divorce.7
To claim Jesus is referring to the first part of the creation process itself (a kind of partitive use of the genitive) introduces unnecessary confusion. Jesus and his Jewish audience knew Adam and Eve appeared at the end of the creation process. The “beginning” he is speaking of is not the beginning of the history of the universe, the stars and galaxies; it is the beginning of human history with Adam and Eve. Therefore, this passage is not talking about the beginning of the universe and provides no evidence for a
recent creation.
by John Battle, Th [full article at Hugh Ross's Reasons to Believe long-age website]
There is not one single example in the NT where Jesus or the apostles understood things to be different from this overall framework. It is so clear from the OT that they had no reason to expound it. But there are many instances which make it plain that this picture was *assumed* by the writers – see http://creation.com/genesis-new-testament. So longagers have no choice but to try to excruciatingly tease a possible alternative meaning from each such instance, as here, but seen as a whole it comes across more like desperation to avoid the obvious.
And further, to talk of ‘stars and galaxies’ seems to somehow fudge the issue, diverting attention from a bigger picture—because even if we only talk about familiar things like the earth and its creatures, we are talking in this long-age-creation scheme of things of a creation process (a la Hugh Ross – see Sarfati’s classic Refuting Compromise) that is interminably long, such that people really do appear at the *end* of creation in such Rossist ideas. The professor described in the article here was at least being biblically consistent. The real problem seems to be an unwillingness to want to accept things that are so obvious. Sometimes this is well-intentioned – sort of a nagging belief that if the Bible is pitted against the long-age framework, they would have to abandon the faith, such is their faith in the conclusions of the modern paradigm. But it is tragic, nonetheless, because while individuals can live with all sorts of inconsistencies, cultures, institutions and even the next generation of individuals will be deeply affected by such obvious inconsistencies, and we are already paying that price in Christendom today.
Jesus, as God in the flesh, had unlimited access to all information, except for one piece; when He was to return.
That implies and requires that He knew every language, dialect, and tongue.
To Him, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle had no meaning.
To Him, Quantum Chromodynamics would be as child's play.
If we were to hypothetically, and I stress hypothetically, as by all theoretical and known mechanisms this would be impossible, but if we were to travel back in time to meet Him as the the incarnated God, and He were to consent, this knowledge would hurl the progress of technology and knowledge unfathomable eons into the future.
Truly, None can comprehend His worth.
THANK YOU, JESUS!!
Actually, after I wrote the article, I realized from a comment someone made that perhaps I should have added the following point: Jesus says in John 12 49-50: "For I have not spoken on my own authority, but the Father who sent me has himself given me a commandment—what to say and what to speak.
And I know that his commandment is eternal life. What I say, therefore, I say as the Father has told me." Here and in other places, Jesus makes clear that He has the Father's authority to say things. As He says in John 10:30: "I and the Father are one". So the idea that Jesus teaching a false belief about history is OK because He as the son has limited knowledge is strongly refuted once more.
For a true, sincere believer, this should be THE knockdown argument against evolutionism. Yet, there are sincere theistic evolutionists who have been so indoctrinated with it that they can't even view the world another way, and that's where your ministry and books like "The Creation Answers Book" are so useful ^^ .
Colossians 2 verses 8-10, especially vers 9 : For in Him all the fulness of Deity dwells in BODILY form.
This is the power of the Word with which we can know truth from error. We are always dependent on it. We are to take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ
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