The literal 6 day creation in Genesis.

[Reverend Keith]

Originally Posted by theophilus

It is also a historical point. Either it happened or it didn't. If it didn't happen then the spiritual implications are irrelevant.

I disagree. It's obvious that there is a sinful tendency in humanity. This would be true regardless of how accurate Genesis is.

That isn't surprising in light of the fact that they refused to believe that Jesus was the Messiah God had promised to send them. When anyone rejects any part of the truth his mind becomes blinded so that he is unable to understand any of the truth. If they have rejected God's remedy for sin it follows logically that they would refuse to believe the cause of sin.

I think that interpretation is less charitable than it might be. You most likely believe that Genesis is about the origin of sin because your spiritual tradition says so, and it says so because PAUL interprets it that way. Frankly, the passages all by themselves are pretty ambiguous about "sin". The word doesn't even occur in the garden story. The Gnostics read the same scripture and came away with a VERY different interpretation.

[Reverend Keith]

Originally Posted by Morpheus

AU:



? Wait. Are either of you saying here that everything is not ultimately connected..?

Or, that the prophecies are not applicable for today, including Christ's words in Mathew 24, wherein He includes the ecological/environmental situations we are seeing?
Because if you are, that is what is unfortunate.
The prophecis are sure, their predictions manifested in human affairs, such as the return of the Jews to Israel... the global community in which we now reside... as well as the cosmic and ecological environment in which we find ourselves, today.

Or, do you disagree?

I disagree

With only a very few exceptions, I think that the primary audience for prophecy is always the group to which it is addressed. I don't think prophets go around prophesying about things that are going to happen thousands of years in the future.

Now many prophecies incorporate archetypal themes which recur again and again in history. It this way prophecy can have second and third applications. But it's primary application is always to the people who first heard it.

I don't believe, for example, that we are waiting around for prophecies in Revelations to be fulfilled. The book was addressing concerns in the time of it's writing.

Originally Posted by Reverend Keith

I disagree

With only a very few exceptions, I think that the primary audience for prophecy is always the group to which it is addressed. I don't think prophets go around prophesying about things that are going to happen thousands of years in the future.

Now many prophecies incorporate archetypal themes which recur again and again in history. It this way prophecy can have second and third applications. But it's primary application is always to the people who first heard it.

I don't believe, for example, that we are waiting around for prophecies in Revelations to be fulfilled. The book was addressing concerns in the time of it's writing.

So you don't believe that there is to be a first resurrection of the dead? Those who were the righteous ancestral spirits in the body of Jesus, whose graves were opened in the moment that Jesus gave up his spirit, and who, three days later, went into the city and showed themselves to many?

You don't believe that when those spirits, who now, in their spiritual existence live as God lives, gathering to themselves the required number of the spirits of the righteous, who are true to their indwelling ancestral spirit, whose righteous blood will be the ransom for the host body that each of the body of Christ, chooses in which to be reborn on this earth, as the risen multi-celled androgynous body of Christ, who will take the thrones that have been prepared for them and rule the Sabbath of one thousand years, after which, fire will descend from heaven and destroy all physical life forms that are left on this planet?

[theophilus]

Originally Posted by Reverend Keith

Frankly, the passages all by themselves are pretty ambiguous about "sin". The word doesn't even occur in the garden story.

The word might not be there but the concept clearly is.

[Morpheus]

You don't believe that when those spirits, who now, in their spiritual existence live as God lives, gathering to themselves the required number of the spirits of the righteous, who are true to their indwelling ancestral spirit, whose righteous blood will be the ransom for the host body that each of the body of Christ, chooses in which to be reborn on this earth, as the risen multi-celled androgynous body of Christ, who will take the thrones that have been prepared for them and rule the Sabbath of one thousand years, after which, fire will descend from heaven and destroy all physical life forms that are left on this planet?

The nerve of you, Theophilus! The very gall...
?
S-Word, do you want to start citing your sources, regarding the information you are posting?

Now again, as example, the Kabbalah states that the word "days" used in Genesis refers to "ages", and why would the Eternal Almighty be limited to the planet's rotation, or orbit around the Sun?

Time, (and space), has no real signficance regarding Eternity, and again, modern physics confirms a greater and truer reality which exists.

[Reverend Keith]

Originally Posted by S-word

So you don't believe that there is to be a first resurrection of the dead? Those who were the righteous ancestral spirits in the body of Jesus, whose graves were opened in the moment that Jesus gave up his spirit, and who, three days later, went into the city and showed themselves to many?

You don't believe that when those spirits, who now, in their spiritual existence live as God lives, gathering to themselves the required number of the spirits of the righteous, who are true to their indwelling ancestral spirit, whose righteous blood will be the ransom for the host body that each of the body of Christ, chooses in which to be reborn on this earth, as the risen multi-celled androgynous body of Christ, who will take the thrones that have been prepared for them and rule the Sabbath of one thousand years, after which, fire will descend from heaven and destroy all physical life forms that are left on this planet?

Sorry, I missed responding to this one. Fortunately, the response is brief.

NO.

[Arcturus]

one notion is that it means six cosmic days...which number in the millions, billions of years etc...

i've heard it said before but don't remember where...here's one page that speaks of similar....whether it's correct in this instance i couldn't say

http://www.colorado.edu/philosophy/v...s/genesis.html

Originally Posted by Reverend Keith

Sorry, I missed responding to this one. Fortunately, the response is brief.

NO.

Considering that we are still awaiting the first resurrection as recorded in the book of Revelation 20: 4-6, when they who will sit upon the thrones that have been prepared for them will be raised to life and rule with Christ (who is their heavenly compilation) for the Sabbath of one thousand years. The question that I must ask you here "Keith" is, who, on the day that Jesus was crucified and gave up the spirit, were they who came out of their Graves that were opened and who entered the city, Three Days later and showed themselves to many people?

Matthew 27: 52, And the graves were opened: and many bodies of the saints that slept arose. Verse 53, And came out of the graves and three days later after the resurrection, they went into the Holy city and appeared to many.

One would expect the risen body to appear to the family of Jesus first, and this is exactly what we see.

The first to see one of they, who were of body of the risen Christ, (the 365 day old unblemished Lamb of God, reborn on earth as Jesus who was offered up for our sake,) were his Mother, Mary the wife of Cleophas and her “Adelphe” Mary Magdalene, who, although looking straight at him, thought that he was the gardener, until he spoke her name.

The next to who one of the risen body of Christ appeared, were the two men who were walking to Emmaus, Cleophas who is also called Alpheas, who is the biological father of James the youngest of Mary's three biological sons, who Paul declares is the Brother of Jesus: and James the brother of Jesus, was the first to sit on the Episcopal throne of the church of the circumcision, and Cleophas (Who is also called Alpheaus) was the husband of Mary, who, with his son Simon, "the step brother to Jesus," who was to inherit the Episcopal throne of the church of the circumcision after his half brother, 'James the righteous,' was killed at the instigation of the same Sadducee sect that had his brother Jesus killed.

Although Cleophas and Simon on the road to Emmaus, walked and talked with one of the risen body of Christ for some kilometres, they did not recognise him for who he was, until Simon saw the manner in which he broke the bread.

Cleophas then returned to Jerusalem, where eleven of the disciples, which included Simon Peter and Simon the Patriot, who were cowering in a darkened room, the only one absent that evening when Jesus appeared in that dimly lit room in the form that they recognised as Jesus, was Thomas Jude another half brother of Jesus, who was called the Twin, although nowhere does the bible say that he was an actual twin or whether he just held a striking resemblance to someone else. But back to Cleophas, who said to the eleven, "He has risen, he appeared to Simon," who was of course Simon the step brother to Jesus who succeeded ‘James the younger’ as the head of the church founded by Jesus.

Then there were the seven disciples who were fishing on Lake Galilee having no success at all, when someone on the bank told them to throw their net on the right side of the boat in which they caught 153 fishes, sitting down to eat with that person, who had a fire prepared with fish on it and some bread, not one of the seven disciples of Jesus, who had walked and talked with him, dared to ask who he was, but they understood that he was of the risen body of Christ. Even when he ascended up into heaven as a cloud, some of the 11 disciples doubted that it was he. So I ask you again Keith, "Who were they?"

It would appear that you reject the idea that they were the dead in Christ, the one anoint by God, who were released with the death of the body of Jesus, the dead of who Peter says, "Now in their spiritual existence live as God lives etc.

[Reverend Keith]

Originally Posted by S-word

So I ask you again Keith, "Who were they?"

It would appear that you reject the idea that they were the dead in Christ, the one anoint by God, who were released with the death of the body of Jesus, the dead of who Peter says, "Now in their spiritual existence live as God lives etc.

So who were these dead saints who arose and appeared to many, but who's amazing resurrection and astonishing appearance was an event that no other writer in the New Testament managed to remember or write about except Matthew? Who are these amazing beings who seem inserted as a very odd parenthesis in the wrong place in the gospel that seemed to demand a parenthetical commentary ("AFTER Jesus resurrection")?

Answer: They were an imaginative and entirely imaginary addition by a very early editor of the gospel of Matthew.

P.S. The book of Revelation is not inspired scripture.

Originally Posted by necta3

one notion is that it means six cosmic days...which number in the millions, billions of years etc...

i've heard it said before but don't remember where...here's one page that speaks of similar....whether it's correct in this instance i couldn't say

http://www.colorado.edu/philosophy/vstenger/Briefs/genesis.html

I submitted this in posts #78 and#79 in the thread, "CONTRADICTIONS IN THE BIBLE" which seem to be applicable here also.

Many scholars today believe that we live in an eternal oscillating universe, that expands outward and contracts back to it's beginning in space-time, a body that eternally oscillates between the two states of visible matter and invisible energy.

Universe after universe is like an interminable succession of wheels forever coming into view, forever rolling onwards, disappearing and reappearing; forever passing from being to non being, and again from non being to being. In short, the constant revolving of the wheel of life in one eternal cycle, according to fixed and immutable laws, is perhaps after all the sum and substance of the philosophy of Buddhism. And this eternal wheel has so to speak, six spokes representing six forms of existence.” ---- Mon. Williams, Buddhism, pp. 229, 122.

The days and nights of Brahma are called Manvantara or the cycle of manifestation, ‘The Great Day,’ which is a period of universal activity, that is preceded, and also followed by ‘Pralaya,’ a dark period, which to our finite minds seems as an eternity. ‘Manvantara,’ is a creative day as seen in the six days of creation in Genesis, ‘Pralaya,’ is the evening that proceeds the next creative day. The six periods of Creation and the seventh day of rest in which we now exist are referred to in the book of Genesis as the generations of the universe.

The English word “Generation,” is translated from the Hebrew “toledoth” which is used in the Old Testament in every instance as ‘births,’ or ‘descendants,’ such as “These are the generations of Adam,” or “these are the generations of Abraham, and Genesis 2: 4; These are the generations of the Universe or the heavens and earth, etc. And the ‘Great Day’ in which the seven generations of the universe are eternally repeated, is the eternal cosmic period, or the eighth eternal day in which those who attain to perfection are allowed to enter, where they shall be surrounded by great light and they shall experience eternal peace, while those who do not attain to perfection are cast back into the refining fires of the seven physical cycles that perpetually revolve within the eighth eternal cosmic cycle.

A series of worlds following one upon the other,-- each world rising a step higher than the previous world, so that every later world brings to ripeness the seeds that were imbedded in the former, and itself then prepares the seed for the universe that will follow it. Every universe from the first to the last, from the smallest to the greatest, which have been created throughout the eons of eternity, still exist in their independent Space-Time positions within the eternal and boundless cosmos.

The New international Version, the Scofield Referrence Bible, and the Companion Bible, all note that the phase in Genesis 1: 2; The earth was formless and void (Having neither shape or mass) should be correctly translated, “The earth became without form and void.” The Hebrew word “Hayah” translated “was,” means “To become, occur, come to pass, Be.” (Vines Complete Expository of Old and New Testament Words, 1985. “To Be.”)

I am sure that one day our scientific community will prove that the wise religious men of old, had been correct in their belief.

http://www.world-science.net/otherne..._bouncefrm.htm

Edited by SF Staff