Creation days 5 and 6

[Talishi]

Creation Thursday was when God populated the Earth with all the creatures which were not confined to the land. This included every creature swimming in the rivers and seas, as well as all the birds and bats and winged insects.

God performed his fourth quality self-check. Clearly God is working to an orderly and precise plan, with creation ordered by categories of habitat.

On Friday God made a hybrid creature which is like an animal, but also made to resemble God in some way: So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

Both male and female humanity reflects the image of God. As a spirit, God is not a “he� but an “it� with no physical gender. And since humans resemble animals in body, the image of God is reflected in mankind’s interior life. Man’s mind was made in the image of God’s mind. Our body may be either male or female after the fashion of animals, but our interior temperament, male or female, also reflects the image of the temperament of God, which has elements of both.

However, the text of chapter 2 says the first living thing God created was man, and so we are presented with an inescapable dilemma. If we accept Genesis 1 as true that man was created on the first Friday, then the plants of Creation Tuesday and the birds and fish of Creation Thursday could not have been created on the days they were said to have been.

If we accept Genesis 2 as true, then man was created on Monday before any other living thing, contrary to what it clearly says in Chapter 1.

[theStudent]

[Replying to post 9 by Talishi]

Right. I already worked out how you arrived at such a view, which isn't scriptural by the way.
I realized you were Using manmade calendar and man's faulty thinking to the creative days of the initial creation of the world.

It would be unreasonable to think that we can apply the secular days of the week to God, for a number of reasons.

1. God's actions were not performed after man's secular calendar was invented.
2. No one in the Bible used those days to apply to the creative days.
3. The creative days were clearly not 24 hours.

[theStudent]

[Replying to post 4 by Delphi]

A Biblical day (yom in hebrew) can mean 'day' but it can also mean an 'era' or an 'epoch'. This leaves the door wide open to interpret the story however one wishes.

And it happens all the time. The Bible can be interpreted however one wants.

This is not true Delphi.
If we interpreted the Bible, any way we wanted, then there would be many problem in it's overall harmony.
The Bible is a complete book, so we should realize that we cannot just pull one or two scriptures and apply them to what we think. We have to take it as a whole, and allow it to explain itself.

If there are clear contradictions, we should be humble enough to recognize that we didn't write it, and therefore it is possible that we could misunderstand it.
For example,
Six people can listen to one statement made by someone, and go away with six different interpretations. However, if they took time to listen to other statements the person makes, and try to understand them, and taking them as a whole, they may realize that they misunderstood the first sentence.

Rather than make the mistake of stubbornly sticking to what they think the person said, they would let the person explain themselves, and make an adjustment.

I believe it all has to do with our attitude, something which Jesus pointed out in Matthew 13.

[tam]

Peace to you Talishi!

I am not one who thinks the bible is inerrant, but could you cites the verse in Gen 2 that states the first living thing that God created was man? I don't recall that verse at all.

Thank you!

[Talishi]

[Replying to post 9 by Talishi]
It would be unreasonable to think that we can apply the secular days of the week to God, for a number of reasons.

1. God's actions were not performed after man's secular calendar was invented.
2. No one in the Bible used those days to apply to the creative days.
3. The creative days were clearly not 24 hours.

Why would you call a Jewish calendar, based on a cycle that runs from Sabbath to Sabbath, a secular calendar?

Why do you say the creative days are clearly not 24 hours when it says the sun rules the day and the moon rules the night, as they do every 24 hours?

[Talishi]

Peace to you Talishi!

I am not one who thinks the bible is inerrant, but could you cites the verse in Gen 2 that states the first living thing that God created was man? I don't recall that verse at all.

Thank you!

Hello Tam.

Genesis 2 (NIV):

5 Now no shrub had yet appeared on the earth and no plant had yet sprung up, for the Lord God had not sent rain on the earth and there was no one to work the ground,

6 but streams came up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground.

7 Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.

8 Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed.

9 The Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

18 The Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.�

19 Now the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name.

[theStudent]

[Replying to post 14 by Talishi]

Why would you call a Jewish calendar, based on a cycle that runs from Sabbath to Sabbath, a secular calendar?

I am basically saying that the creative days cannot be compared to the days used by man to measure time, because the creative days were measured by God, who was doing the creating, and is not bounded by time.
The Bible says that a day in God's eyes is not limited to 24 hours. (Psalm 90:4; 2 Peter 3:8)
So the oldest man to have lived, that is mentioned in the Bible, has not even lived a day, and none of us today have lived more than a few seconds in God's eyes.

Since the Bible however, is not a to be taken as a literal word for word script, we can understand those text to be simply saying, since God is eternal, and not bounded by time, then it does not mean we should limit God's view of a day to a thousand years.
This can be seen by using other texts, such as the one in Hebrews, which shows that the seventh day - God's rest day, has been going on now for thousands of years.

This highlights a valid point, on how one is to understand the Bible - by taking it as a whole, not picking out portions and being critical of it, but putting portions together, in order to get its meaning/understanding.

God is boundless, and therefore time is not limited to him.

Why do you say the creative days are clearly not 24 hours when it says the sun rules the day and the moon rules the night, as they do every 24 hours?

Building on the above understanding... the six creative days were not literally 24 hours. They were days viewed from God's viewpoint.
Genesis 2 makes that clear.
In verse 4, the entire creation period of the heavens and earth, are confined into a day. Or in other words a period of time.
So again in the eyes of a boundless God, those six creative periods were all but done in a day, which could even have been millions of years.

Something to consider - How could we know exactly what went down during creation? The Bible doesn't give details. It does not say whether the earth made its complete orbit around the sun in a longer time than now. It simply reveals to us important things, which I believe God knew would be necessary for his servants.

The best we can do, where the Bible is concerned, is try to understand it.
I believe we are not left on our own to do so, but God aids the humble ones by means of the most powerful force in the universe - his holy spirit.

Jesus said this on a number of occasions. Matthew 13, is just one of those places.

[Kenisaw]

[Replying to post 14 by Talishi]

Why would you call a Jewish calendar, based on a cycle that runs from Sabbath to Sabbath, a secular calendar?

I am basically saying that the creative days cannot be compared to the days used by man to measure time, because the creative days were measured by God, who was doing the creating, and is not bounded by time.
The Bible says that a day in God's eyes is not limited to 24 hours. (Psalm 90:4; 2 Peter 3:8)
So the oldest man to have lived, that is mentioned in the Bible, has not even lived a day, and none of us today have lived more than a few seconds in God's eyes.

So then plants existed for, what, tens of thousands of years before the Sun and stars were created?

It doesn't matter how you rationalize it, Student. No matter how you interpret the meaning of the inerrant word of your god, you have ridiculous logical problems crop up every step of the way.

In the mean time, you claim below that the Bible is not to be taken as a literal word, but yet you use in the literal sense Psalm 90:4 and 2 Peter 3:8 in order to change the literal meaning in Genesis 1 into something figurative. Hilarious.

Since the Bible however, is not a to be taken as a literal word for word script, we can understand those text to be simply saying, since God is eternal, and not bounded by time, then it does not mean we should limit God's view of a day to a thousand years.
This can be seen by using other texts, such as the one in Hebrews, which shows that the seventh day - God's rest day, has been going on now for thousands of years.

What makes you right and the Christians who say differently than you wrong?

This highlights a valid point, on how one is to understand the Bible - by taking it as a whole, not picking out portions and being critical of it, but putting portions together, in order to get its meaning/understanding.

Where does the Bible direct you to take something from a text of unknown authorship from 100 AD to clarify the meaning of something written several hundred years earlier? What makes your claim of how to understand the Bible right and Ken Hamm's direction on how to understand the Bible wrong?

God is boundless, and therefore time is not limited to him.

Unproven speculation. I believe the forum requires evidence for claims. Got any?

Why do you say the creative days are clearly not 24 hours when it says the sun rules the day and the moon rules the night, as they do every 24 hours?

Building on the above understanding... the six creative days were not literally 24 hours. They were days viewed from God's viewpoint.
Genesis 2 makes that clear.
In verse 4, the entire creation period of the heavens and earth, are confined into a day. Or in other words a period of time.
So again in the eyes of a boundless God, those six creative periods were all but done in a day, which could even have been millions of years.

So there were winged creatures for possibly millions of years before land animals....uh huh, sure. So why are you right and the Christians that say the Earth is 6,000 years old wrong?

Something to consider - How could we know exactly what went down during creation? The Bible doesn't give details. It does not say whether the earth made its complete orbit around the sun in a longer time than now. It simply reveals to us important things, which I believe God knew would be necessary for his servants.

Something to consider - It came from the mouth of your god. Your god inspired their writing, remember. And your god does not lie, at least not according to the divinely inspired texts from that god. Proverbs 30:5-6 "5 Every word of God proves true. He defends all who come to him for protection. 6 Do not add to his words, or he may rebuke you, and you will be found a liar."

The best we can do, where the Bible is concerned, is try to understand it.
I believe we are not left on our own to do so, but God aids the humble ones by means of the most powerful force in the universe - his holy spirit.

Jesus said this on a number of occasions. Matthew 13, is just one of those places.

The god also said do not add to his words, yet you claim that which is not written anywhere. Fascinating dichotomy.

[theStudent]

[Replying to post 17 by Kenisaw]

So then plants existed for, what, tens of thousands of years before the Sun and stars were created?

It doesn't matter how you rationalize it, Student. No matter how you interpret the meaning of the inerrant word of your god, you have ridiculous logical problems crop up every step of the way.

In the mean time, you claim below that the Bible is not to be taken as a literal word, but yet you use in the literal sense Psalm 90:4 and 2 Peter 3:8 in order to change the literal meaning in Genesis 1 into something figurative. Hilarious.

Am I correct in saying, you did not read this post - Post 4?
Please do so, as it clearly explains why the plants did not come before the sun and stars were created.

What makes you right and the Christians who say differently than you wrong?

Do you believe the person whom you know as your mother to be really your mother?
How would you know for sure, if you did not personally investigate the facts?
In the same way, anyone who wants to know if their understand in in harmony with the Bible's teachings/truth, must do a thorough investigation.
The Bible is harmonious, and does not contradict itself. So if our understanding contradicts the Bible, then we need to consider that there may be a need to adjust our understanding - which Jehovah's Witnesses have done, and will continue to do, if it becomes clear that they need to.

Something to consider - It came from the mouth of your god. Your god inspired their writing, remember. And your god does not lie, at least not according to the divinely inspired texts from that god. Proverbs 30:5-6 "5 Every word of God proves true. He defends all who come to him for protection. 6 Do not add to his words, or he may rebuke you, and you will be found a liar."

Very Good. I agree. I wish you did too.

The god also said do not add to his words, yet you claim that which is not written anywhere. Fascinating dichotomy.

The best we can do, where the Bible is concerned, is try to understand it.
I believe we are not left on our own to do so, but God aids the humble ones by means of the most powerful force in the universe - his holy spirit.

To understand something doesn't mean adding.
If I understand you, it does not mean I added anything to what you said.

[Talishi]

This can be seen by using other texts, such as the one in Hebrews, which shows that the seventh day - God's rest day, has been going on now for thousands of years.

At that rate I will not live long enough to get to Sunday (the first day) and start going back to church again. But interesting tactic. The Bible says the rabbit chews the cud. We now know the rabbit does not chew the cud. A Bible believer can always say the rabbit still chews the cud in God's eyes.

[theStudent]

[Replying to post 19 by Talishi]

At that rate I will not live long enough to get to Sunday (the first day) and start going back to church again.

No. Sorry. That's not the correct perspective.
Look at it in this way...
The days of the week as we know them continue - Sunday to Saturday - which by the way is based on man's modern day calendar. Persons of earlier times had a different system of identifying their days... which really doesn't matter one way or another.

The point is, man recognized of the days are based on the orbit of the earth around the sun.
God is not limited to that.
One day, to him, can be a thousand years, and a thousand years one day.

The Bible says the rabbit chews the cud. We now know the rabbit does not chew the cud. A Bible believer can always say the rabbit still chews the cud in God's eyes.

You are a smart person.
However, not only in God's eyes.

The Natural History of Mammals, 1964, p. 41

The habit of ‘refection,’ or passing the food twice through the intestine instead of only once, seems to be a common phenomenon in the rabbits and hares. Domestic rabbits usually eat and swallow without chewing their night droppings, which form in the morning as much as half the total contents of the stomach. In the wild rabbit refection takes place twice daily, and the same habit is reported for the European hare. . . . It is believed that this habit provides the animals with large amounts of B vitamins produced by bacteria in the food within the large intestine.

Mammals of the World (by E. P. Walker, 1964, Vol. II, p. 647) On that same point

This may be similar to ‘chewing the cud’ in ruminant mammals.

The Scriptural reference to the hare as a cud chewer has frequently been doubted by some critics of the Bible. (Le 11:4, 6; De 14:7) It should not be overlooked, however, that the modern, scientific classification of what constitutes chewing of the cud provides no basis for judging what the Bible says, as such classification did not exist in the time of Moses.
Even in the 18th century, English poet William Cowper, who had at length observed his domestic hares, commented that they “chewed the cud all day till evening.�

Linnaeus, famed naturalist of the same century, believed that rabbits chewed the cud. But it remained for others to supply more scientific data.

Frenchman Morot discovered in 1882 that rabbits reingest up to 90 percent of their daily intake.

Concerning the hare, Ivan T. Sanderson in a recent publication remarks: “One of the most extraordinary [habits], to our way of thinking, is their method of digestion. This is not unique to Leporids [hares, rabbits] and is now known to occur in many Rodents. When fresh green food, as opposed to desiccated [dried] winter forage, is available, the animals gobble it up voraciously and then excrete it around their home lairs in a semi-digested form. After some time this is then re-eaten, and the process may be repeated more than once. In the Common Rabbit, it appears that only the fully grown adults indulge this practice.� — Living Mammals of the World, 1955, p. 114.

Certain British scientists made close observations of the rabbits’ habits under careful controls, and the results they obtained were published in the Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London, 1940, Vol. 110, pp. 159-163. Briefly this is the way the hare reingests its food:

• If a rabbit eats a breakfast of fresh food, it passes through the stomach into the small intestine, leaving behind in the cardiac end of the stomach some 40 or 50 grams of pellets that were already present when the fresh food was eaten. From the small intestine the morning meal enters the caecum or blind end of the large intestine and there remains for a period of time. During the day the pellets descend, and in the intestines the bacterial protein in them is digested. When they reach the large intestine they bypass the material in the caecum and go on into the colon where the excess moisture is absorbed to produce the familiar dry beans or droppings that are cast away. This phase of the cycle completed, the material stored in the dead end of the caecum next enters the colon, but instead of having all the moisture absorbed it reaches the anus in a rather soft condition. It is in pellet form with each coated with a tough layer of mucus to prevent them from sticking together. Now when these pellets reach the anus, instead of being cast away, the rabbit doubles up and takes them into the mouth and stores them away in the cardiac end of the stomach until another meal has been eaten. In this way the special rhythmic cycle is completed and most of the food has passed a second time through the digestive tract.
  
  Dr. Waldo L. Schmitt, Head Curator, Department of Zoology of the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., in commenting on these findings, wrote: “There seems to be no reason to doubt the authenticity of the reports of various workers that rabbits customarily store semi-digested food in the caecum and that this is later reingested and passes a second time through the digestive tract.� He also observed that here is an explanation for “the phenomenally large caecum of rabbits as compared with most other mammals.� — Awake!, April 22, 1951, pp. 27, 28.