Changing an Article of Faith
I hate changing articles of faith, because then it appears that I’m indecisive. As a manager, I know that the last thing I want to appear to the folks under my command is indecisive. People notice that right away, and then they make you sorry you ever said, “Maybe we should drop a basket of fries” instead of issuing a direct command, “Drop a basket of fries, please.” It isn’t a pretty sight. The fallout has happened to me, and I’ve witnessed it happen to a few trainees. I’ve also walked had to run the shift after the fallout, which is never fun.
But I think that it is different in ministry. In ministry, I preach that humans are fallible creatures, and that we are fallen. Fallen, meaning that we are under a curse. As such, I cannot claim to be perfect, even in what I believe about God and the universe. So when I’m convicted by God of being wrong, I have to confess my sin and then move forward with a renewed sense of purpose. I’ve already done this once with the Buddy Christ, I just never thought that I’d have to admit to being wrong so soon.
I subscribed to the Day-Age Creationism theory. I linked to two sites, Geocreationism.com and GodAndScience.org, that taught forms of Old Earth Creationism. I even tried to volunteer at the latter site. God, though the ministry of Ken Ham, has shown me the error of Old Earth Creationism. By compromising with secular science, Old Earth Creationism destroys the foundation of the Atonement and the eternal penalty of sin. These foundations are only clearly understood by a literal reading of Genesis chapters 1-11. This is a subtle attack, and there are probably many readers who will disagree that this is even an attack.
That doesn’t change the fact that it is an attack. A millions of years model means that, prior to the Fall, there was animal death, disease, and at least three great waves of extinction. Three great waves of extinction means that God’s creation wasn’t “good,” as He Himself stated, that means it was “kinda OK, but I can do better, so here’s a meteor!” This indicates that plants and animals can screw things up enough to warrant a judgment from God, which makes the great Flood nothing particularly unique (since mass extinctions had already happened at that point). It further means that a curse never entered the world through Adam’s rebellion, but that curse was already present when Adam was created. Again, this means that God’s work wasn’t “good,” it was “mediocre.”
If the curse was here anyway, then why do we need an Atonement?
So I am now a convinced Young Earth Creationist. As with the renouncement of the Buddy Christ icon, this new renouncement means searching my links and my pages to remove links to sites that have an Old Earth Creation thesis. I’m not sure that I will edit or change articles, since YEC vs. OEC didn’t color much of my writing, just some of my reading and surfing.
I expect that this announcement will trigger two things. First, an outpouring of congratulations from family and friends (in comment sections and in person) who were praying or hoping that I would come around to this. That happened with the Buddy Christ icon removal. Second, this could trigger a new debate with the webmaster of Geocreationism.com, assuming he still reads my blog. Unfortunately, his website was one of the links I had to remove since I no longer view OEC as glorifying to God.
I enjoyed our previous debate, so I look forward to sparring with him again if he reads this and wants another go around.
Yes, I do read your blog still on occasion
I think you’re heart is for God, which is a pleasure to see with all the negativity that’s out there.
I will take some time to thoughtfully respond to your post above.
>> By compromising with secular science, Old Earth
>> Creationism destroys the foundation of the Atonement
>> and the eternal penalty of sin.
>> A millions of years model means that, prior to the
>> Fall, there was animal death, disease, and at least
>> three great waves of extinction. Three great waves
>> of extinction means that God’s creation wasn’t “good,”
>> as He Himself stated, that means it was “kinda OK, but
>> I can do better, so here’s a meteor!”
Day 1, God said the light was good. Day 3, God said the dry land was good, and that the seeded plants were good. Day 4, God said that having the celestial bodies visible in the sky was good. Days 5 and 6, God said that the living creatures were good. When He was done, only then did God declare the creation to be good… He even called it “very” good.
In other words, the creation as a whole was not declared “good” until after Day 6 ended. And this makes sense, because the creation was incomplete before Day 6 was over. It wasn’t entirely “good”, and certainly not “very good”, at least not yet. So if even standard creationism cannot claim the umbrella of “good” for the entire creation until the end of Day 6, then it is not a flaw of theories either.
Now, notice that even Day Age theory doesn’t have Day 6 ending until 250,000 years ago. This makes your meteor example a poor example in my opinion, as the last cataclismic one struck long before creation Day 6 completed.
The next implication of your argument is that perhaps God only created, but didn’t destroy. On the contrary, death is nothing more than separation, and every day constituted a separation of sorts. Day 1: Light separated from Dark. Day 2: The seas separated from the clouds. Day 3: Land separated from seas. Day 4: Separated night from Day. Day 5: No explicit separation… a separation without separation (like Jesus being separated from the Father on the cross: read http://geocreationism.com/2006/11/05/separation-in-creation-confirms-trinity/ for more) Day 6: Separated mankind from the animals (by placing man over them)
But the word you used to describe the world of a Day Age Theorist before the fall of man is “cursed”. Well, isn’t a curse nothing more than separation? Then it would seem the creation was created through a series of curses by God! Or is a curse more, specifically, separation from God? In my opinion that is exactly what it is, meaning the introduction of sin was in fact the introduction of separation from God, and that separation is not physical, but spiritual.
It is therefore spiritual death that entered the world through the fall, and it is spiritual death that Christ will conquer for us. Animals and plants do not experience this. Therefore, there was no spiritual death before the fall of man, even while there was physical death already.
I found your site through the Tektonics forum on Theology Web. Just thought I’d welcome you to the dark side… a literal view of Genesis