Many have become agnostics; some have
digressed to a state of atheism because of the supposed conflict between the
Bible and science. When Christians are asked the question, “Do Science and the Bible disagree”, the resounding and the
overwhelming answer is, “YES”. This
answer creates a conflict between science and the bible, and it is the believability
in the Word of God that suffers. This
conflict is usually hidden within a person’s heart and outward expressions are
also hidden. Yet, there should not be a
conflict between a correct translation of the scriptures and proven
science. When we speak of science we
are not speaking of babblings or unproved theories. A theory is an unproven assessment and not a
fact. The theory of evolution is just that, it is a
theory.
The questionable suppositions that have
been articulated by those who do not have a full knowledge of God’s word are
the works of the arch-deceiver. If we
studied and restudied the Word of God we would learn that the knowledge of the
Word of God is an evolving knowledge of God and his works. We cannot limit God by our limited
knowledge. We must be careful not to
place limitations on the Word of God based upon our limited knowledge. When NASA began streaming pictures of a round
earth back to our television sets, many bible readers had problems abandoning
the flat-earth concept. The bible does
not say the earth is flat, yet there were those who said the bible said the
earth was flat.
The Devil is a shrewd tactician, doubt,
confusion and conflict top the list of his tools used today against Christianity. One of these supposed conflicts is between
the facts that some say science knows that human beings have lived on the earth
far longer than the few thousand years covered by the Bible. This is not altogether a true or accurate
statement. Science searches for a human
presence because it cannot acknowledge the thing it cannot prove. The Bible defines that presence as angelic or
spiritual and that is outside the realm of science. Spiritual beings inhabited the earth from,
“in the beginning” of time. There is
another common but untrue belief that the Bible says that Adam was the first
man. But the truth is that the Bible does not say Adam was the first man
created. Most of our pious prelates say that, but the Bible doesn't. In Genesis 3:20 And Adam called his wife's name Eve; because
she was the mother of all living. Mother of all living must be translated as
mankind and not animals.
In the King James Version of the bible
there are twenty nine references to the man named Adam and the only verse that
might come close to backing up the first man assessment is 1st Corinthians
15:45 says,” And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul;
the last Adam was made a quickening spirit.”
If we overlook the context and symbology of the entire chapter, then we
can say Adam was the first man. A
literal interpretation would imply that after Adam no more men existed until
Jesus because he is referred to as the second man.
The Bible tells us of the creation of men
(in the plural). In Genesis 1:26-28 is says "Male and female created He
THEM" and God told these people "Be fruitful and multiply and
replenish the earth" (1:28). "Plenish" is an obsolete English word
meaning "to fill" and you cannot RE-plenish what was never plenished,
or filled before. In the next chapter,
Genesis 2 we find Adam (In the singular) was formed from the dust of the
ground. There seems to be a difference
between the events portrayed in Genesis 1:26-28 and the events in Geneses
2. It seems that the creation of Adam
was a special event, a special man and the forming of his mate was just as
special.
If
we bundle the above two events together we have created a quagmire that the bible,
man nor science cannot fully explain or agree upon. Theories and speculations abound as to the
beginning of the races, and who was
Cain’s wife. The answer to these two
questions would be easy if we did not try to merge the events of Genesis 1: 26-28
and Geneses 2.
The translations in the King James Version
of the bible sometimes can obscure much of the truth. For example Genesis 1:1-2
"In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was
without form and void and darkness was upon the face of the deep." The reading of these two verses is combined
as one thought and for that reason much knowledge is lost. Now re-read those verses one at a time, stop
at the period and reflect.
Genesis 1:1,
states, “In the beginning God Created the Heavens and the Earth.” There is a period place at the end of this
sentence to indicate a complete thought.
Read the verse again then draw your own conclusion. If you ask God to open up your understanding,
and read this verse without any preconceived idea or notion, you might be surprised
at what God reveals to you. In the
beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth. (Period)
You can debate the placement of the period as nothing of value, and it
is nothing more than a tool of the translator or you can accept it for what it
is.
Now again I
ask you proceed without a preconceived idea or notion, in some instances I will
not quote the book, chapter and verse, I will use the Bible and the Book name
as pointers only. I will ask you to
search the scripture yourself. Now let
us begin by ascertaining a few simple and hopeful agreeable assertions. According to the Bible, a spiritual presence
existed on earth before the creation of man.
It should be safe to assert that at some unspecified time, after that
(period), a war took place in heaven, and the Devil, once one of God’s beloved
angels was cast out of heaven upon the Earth.
Jesus alluded to this when he stated in the book of Luke, “I saw the
devil cast out upon the earth It should
be safe to say all of this took place between (that period) at the end of, In
the beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth (Period) and that point
where God said let us make man. I say
this because the Devil came to Eve not as an Angel of light, but as the old
Devil himself. Can we agree on this?
Now read Genesis 1:2, “And the earth was
without form, and void; and darkness were upon the face of the deep. And the
Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” In the Hebrew, it says, "Now the earth HAD
BECOME chaotic and empty That is, some early catastrophe had wrecked the earth,
which was not "without form and void" before that. This was a
judgment of God on earlier civilizations for their wickedness. Jeremiah 4:23-27
gives a vision of it: "I beheld the earth, and lo, it was without form and
void, and the heavens, and they had no light. I beheld the mountains, and lo,
they trembled, and all the hills moved lightly. I beheld, and lo, there was no
man, and all the birds of the heavens were fled. I beheld, and lo, the fruitful
place was a wilderness, and all the cities thereof were broken down at the
presence of the Lord, and by His fierce anger. For thus hath the Lord said,
"The whole land shall be desolate; yet will I not make a full end."
The Devil and a third of Gods children
(Stars) was cast or hurled down to the Earth like a bolt of lightning, a
meteor, a comet and struck the Earth with such force that it knocked the earth off
its axis. God could have killed a third
of his children. However, what parent
would want to do that. God gave his
children another chance, and to do this he set up a testing ground. He created a physical body to interact with
the physical things of this world. He
put the spiritual body within the physical body so man could interact with
Him. The physical body and the spiritual
body, both must exist together, and man must choose which one to serve. I have set before you both good and evil,
choose. Why, because when God re-establish
his kingdom, God does not want his children coming before him acting like the
Devil. Your being here is your test, and
you were put here to do a job. I hope I
just ‘blew your mind’.
Did the Devil appear to Eve as a
serpent? Most students of the bible will
accept a literal translation of the scripture an answer, “Yes” to the question
and proceed to read the 3rd chapter of Geneses to affirm their answer with
conviction. As we read the scripture we
see Eve talking to a snake about eating fruit of a forbidden tree. The mental interpretation becomes so
transfixing, that it is easy to overlook the subtle implications of verse five,
six and seven. Verse five implies that
Eve’s eyes were closed and verse six speaks to her eyes being open. Now Genesis 3:7 states, “And the eyes of
them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig
leaves together, and made themselves aprons.”
They could see the trees in the garden and the woman could see the
serpent but they could not see themselves as being naked. Did we miss something here? Maybe we should ask the author to enlighten
us.
Most of us studying the Bible will find its
symbology obscure; we are simply not used to this type of language. But when we
come to "a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain" (Rev 5:6), we
ought to be able to figure out that this is Jesus. Based on "Behold, the
Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world" (John 1:29) and
"like a lamb that is led to the slaughter" (Isa 53:7). This should be
quite familiar to us, so we know that the Lamb refers to Jesus (30 times in
Revelation). There is always the temptation to take the bible literally rather
than symbolically, but this gets us into trouble, if we impose modern imagery
for the biblical symbolism. Maybe we
should see the Devil as the snake rather than the Snake as the Devil. When the Bible reference a tree what is it
speaking off?
Using the
symbology of the bible the formation of the United States could be described
as, a beast rising up out of the ground that began to grow many heads as it fed
upon the fat of the land.
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