Comment on If the Creation Account Isn’t True… by Charles.
I think this week’s Sabbath School lesson is awesome and right on target. This quarter’s lessons are mostly contributed by “Jo Ann Davidson”, Professor of Theology at Andrews University.
For those here who do not study the Sabbath School lessons, I’d like to share a couple of paragraphs from The Heart of the Creator (Monday, Jan 9 lesson)
“Think of how mother birds lovingly prepare the nest for their babies. Then, picture them hovering over their babies, bringing them food, and teaching them how to fly. Moses, who had taken care of sheep for 40 years, must have seen this natural phenomenon happen each spring, and it must have made him think of God’s tender care. Under inspiration, he pictured the same emotions in the Holy Spirit’s heart as our human “nest” was being constructed.”
Everything in the Creation account, then, in contrast to the various evolutionary models–which depict our Creation as the work of forces violently competing with each other–reveals a God who loves His creation, who cares about it, and who purposely and carefully designed it. There’s nothing impersonal about the creation, nothing emotionless, nothin purposeless. Love was there at the start of the Creation week. What a contrast to evolution, which teaches that love somehow emerged only after billions of years of selfish violence. Love motivated the Creation, and love will be there when this damaged version of Creation is createded anew.”
Thank-you Jo Ann, for clearly stating the true Adventist position so simply and understandably.
Table of Contents
Charles Also Commented
If the Creation Account Isn’t True…
P>So, the teacher asked, “If your parents were morons, what would that make you?””I’d be a evolutionist.”
Yes, I smiled as well.
In reality, evolutionists are not morons. Just brilliant misguided brothers and sisters who need to listen to the “still small voice.”
If the Creation Account Isn’t True…
“Thou shalt not steal”
“Remember the Sabbath to keep it holy.”
“Thou shalt not make… any graven image..”
What is to interpret?
When you were a kid and your mother told you to “take the trash out…”, what did you do? “Interpret” that as setting it outside the door or just throwing it into the back yard? I guess you could have made that argument?
For me, scripture is clear in most of what it says and there is little room for variance in “interpretation”.
If the Creation Account Isn’t True…
@Ken:
I am being honest, Ken, my friend.
How does “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy…” become “Remember the day of the sun, to keep it holy…”? There is no real or credible dispute as to the definition of which day is which.
How does Genesis 1 & 2 which lays out six “evening and morning” days followed by the seventh “sanctified” day, become long eons of time? (Consider that today, the whole world – including YOU – DOES observe the same seven day weekly cycle – a phenomenon which is powerful testimony to the literal scriptural creation week.)
How does “He spake, and it was done. He commanded, and it stood fast…” become “He did some amazing things in his natural laboratory”… “He put the evolutionary process into motion…”? (Or whatever.)
Is this interpretation?
Either you believe the scriptural account or not. No need to “interpret” most of scripture.* It is there for the simplest of us humans to read and understand. But if I choose NOT to believe, I should just make that choice and not attempt to re-mold the scripture into saying something that it does not say.
*True, much of scripture does include prophecy in cryptic language. But that can be clearly understood as well, through deep and prayerful study. The keys that unlock the symbolisms are also clearly found in scripture.
Recent Comments by Charles
La Sierra Univeristy Fires Dr. Lee Greer; Signs anti-Creation Bond
I read something today that seems relevant to these discussions. I am incredulous that we should be having a discussion within the SDA movment about evolution as having a role in our origions.
But teaching evolution as truth is not the only inroad that Satan has made into our church. In fact, there is little area to our core beliefs that has not been compromised.
Read what Ellen White wrote in GC 509: “Conformity to worldly customs converts the church to the world; it never converts the world to Christ. Familiarity with sin will inevitably cause it to appear less repulsive.”
Jesus is coming soon. Not only is there a great work to be done in taking the 3 angels messages to the world; there is a great preparation to be worked within each of our hearts individually.
La Sierra Univeristy Fires Dr. Lee Greer; Signs anti-Creation Bond
To love the historic truths embraced by the SDA church and to defend them is not “hate”.
The End of “Junk DNA”?
I have studied only elementary courses in science and thus much of what I read in the discussions on this thread are a bit over my head.
Still, I think I have come common sense and that is the tool that I have for drawing the conclusions that I hold.
The Bible describes a 2000 year old event in which the God/human man we know as “Jesus” raised Lazarus from the dead. The event, as described, set a scenario in which Lazarus clearly was dead and his body decomposing. Jesus, in a miraculous way, put “LIFE” back into that decomposing body.
Now either that account is a true event, or it is not. What do you choose to believe? Where is the empirical evidence that this could happen? If you believe the account is true, how do your scientific ideas reconcile to the story?
You can study the building blocks of living creatures / plants and observe much of how life is operating. But without that operational essence that is “LIFE”, those building blocks do not exist.
So Mr “Scientist”, please show me first how to take the elements in their raw forms and put LIFE into them. Then I can believe that you have an understanding of our origins. You are looking at living forms (dead or alive) and drawing conclusions about your observations without explaining the most fundamental cause of it all: How did it get started?
Please don’t make a claim: Demonstrate it. If you understand how it was done, show me. I will make the question even more simple: “What is life?”
“I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.” John 10:10
“…should not perish, but have everlasting life.” John 3:16
Now if you want to tell me that “God” was some brilliant scientist from another planet who created our beginnings in a laboratory, I will point back to the demonstration by Jesus of the raising of a dead man (Lazarus) after three days of decomposition. Jesus simply called him back to life. There was a reason that Jesus did this and the account of it in scripture makes that reason clear.
I choose to believe that most of our “reality” (including “life”) is beyond our comprehension. There is much about reality that God has reserved to Himself. If you think you can explain it, then you are buying into the lie told by the serpent, “you will become as God…”
Use the intelligence that God has given you to acknowledge your limitations and His role in our existence. Accept by FAITH those things that you cannot understand.
We have been given a few decades of life to live in the world we know and understand today. Empirical evidence available to us would suggest that when we die, that is the sum total and end of it. Of the billions of humans on earth, where is a person among us who has been risen from the dead?
If you have a hope that there is something beyond your death, then you must shed the notion that you can explain our origins as anything besides an unexplainable mystery that God does not share; except for the account of it that He left to us by His servant, Moses.
I choose to accept my limitations and I place my trust and faith in the word that God has left to us, to help us understand how we got here, why we are here, and how it all ends.
“Even so, come Lord Jesus.”
The End of “Junk DNA”?
@pauluc:
So do I understand correctly that your “faith” is subject to your scientific provabilities?
You have not yet addressed what I asked about demonstrating from whence comes “life”? Do you believe that life could exist apart from a miracle working God? Do you believe in miracles? Or do you believe that God is just a very brilliant scientist or magician? OR… is it all just a hoax to persuade us to (whatever)…
At what point do we acknowledge our limitations and that our observations can deceive us?
For what reason was the SDA church founded? Is that reason relative to the reason for its continued existence today?
The name of the church was carefully chosen to reflect the reason for its existence. The “Seventh-Day” refers to the holiness of the the seventh day of the week – in memorial of the literal seven day creation week. The “Adventist” part of the name proclaims that we believe that Jesus is coming again very soon in a very miraculous, splendid, and un-scientific way. BUT, the reason for the existence of this church is the proclamation of these things we believe to be true. It’s not just a club of folks who hold these “beliefs” – although it could sometime seem that way.
No, the seven days of creation were not vast periods of evolutionary development and the clouds of Heaven are not going to be space ships. But in all honesty, from viewing what you write, I would not know what to expect that you believe, relative to our existence and the advent of Jesus in the near future.
I speak in respect to you, with honesty.
I see truth, not as progressive, but absolute. Our perceptions about truth can be progressive or regressive.
Prov 16:25 There is a way that seemeth right unto a man, but…..
Do you believe what you observe? Or do you believe the record that was provided by the Creator?
You claim to be a Seventh-Day Adventist, it seems. I wonder, just what is it about the SDA faith (it seems inapproprate to me to label it as a “tradition”) that, for you, distinguishes it from other “religions”? What is the compelling doctrine or belief that drives you to choose this faith over the abundance of others that are in the world?
Again, with all due respect, I honestly wonder.
An apology to PUC
So far the only substantive responses by PUC defenders have been empty sarcasm and ridicule. Unfortunately, 18-year-old students eat that sort of thing up and follow anyone who has mastered tactics that mirror their favorite media characters. Educate Truth isn’t going after anyone. It is simply laying out the evidence and presentations for all to see and assess for themselves. Educate Truth doesn’t have to point out the dishonesty and the underlying problem that balanced views in science are not being respectfully presented on Adventist college campuses.