From: Josh Bembenek (jbembe@hotmail.com)
Date: Sun Sep 21 2003 - 15:21:41 EDT
>The God of the Bible (Genesis 1:11,20,24) ordered the LAND to bring forth
>living creatures. According to the Hebrew, it was the LAND (eretz) which
>brought forth the animals. He also ordered the water to bring forth life.
>That is exactly what evolution and the scientific evidence says happened.
>The water and the land did bring forth life, a confirmation of the Biblical
>account. The problem with antievolutionism is that it leads to people not
>reading the Scriptural account very carefully.
-I was reminded of something along these lines during the worship service
this morning. Our pastor mentioned that the Word of God, the bible, was
written by 40 authors, over several continents, in several languages, over
several millenia. Yet, despite the development of the times, cultures, etc.
despite the fact that sheep herders and scholars all wrote parts of the
bible, it remains a text seemless in character conveying the same message
from begginning to end. The reason is that God's spirit moved all the
people, of all different sorts and of all kinds of infallible nature, to
record and write His truths. The nature of the bible, then, even lends
itself to a kind of evolutionary development as God used the resources in
His hand to leave an accurate and precise witness of His character for all
to understand. God didn't just magically cause the sky to rain bibles one
day.
>"...whosoever believeth in him AND NOT EVOLUTION shall not perish but have
>eternal life."
-This doesn't seem exactly accurate or fair. They believe that you cannot
compromise the integrity of the bible, therefore NOT EVOLUTION. You simply
believe that evolution does not compromise the integrity of the bible. If
they are right, somehow, and the earth is young and the bible clearly
demonstrates this fact, then they have the right to express NOT Evolution-
and since they believe this, then they express that belief. If they are
wrong, they are mistaken, but I don't believe they are adding to the gospel-
they are misinterpreting it. How do you approach someone who clearly
misrepresents the bible in your mind? I think your email demonstrates that
you take the same aggressive approach to those who distort what you view the
bible to say. The real issue is whether we can accomodate for legitimate,
honest differences of opinion on what the authority of scripture reveals to
us. If the authority of scripture justifies OUR interpretation on issues
that are unclear or debatable, then obviously we can not tolerate the views
of our opposition. Disagreements between Mormons and Fundamentalists are
different than disagreements amongst fundamentalist christians with
different views of origins. However, once you decide that your view is the
fully sanctioned view, all disagreements are the same: heresy verses the
truth. In my opinion, Christians should be able to categorize their
disagreements, assigning particular areas of truth degrees of confidence.
Our confidence in Christ is unwavering, our confidence in the act of
creation which no human ever witnessed might be somewhat less.
Josh
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