Debunking Adventist MYTHS About Creation!

Well, hey there and welcome. Welcome, welcome. Whether you are a former Adventist or not a former Adventist, a current Adventist, and never been an Adventist, etc. Welcome, welcome, welcome. We are equipping Christians as uh as many as possible to reach as many Seventh Day Adventists as possible. Uh this platform is called Answering Adventism and that is what we are doing. I’m in a great mood because I’m very excited for tonight because my guest is a good friend of mine. But also today was book delivery day. You know, one of our members a couple weeks ago or

Rather no last week, sorry, asked me about fundamental books that a new Christian must get. Well, friend, this is one. I’ve been reading it online primarily and now I have a physical copy of it because it was on sale. The marorrow of modern divinity alongside Sinclair Ferguson’s the whole Christ. Highly, highly, highly recommend both of those books. I know that I gave that individual uh a decent list of books when they asked, but those came today and I was reminded, oh yeah, the Marorrow of Modern Divinity. um that is indicative of where the content on the

Platform is about to go. Uh law gospel distinction, we’re going to start hammering that even harder because boy oh boy has the law gospel distinction content just sent so many Adventists into a tizzy which is exactly what we like in the words of Paul the Apostle who wanted to provoke his brethren to jealousy. Um similar sort of thing over here. We want to provoke Adventists to action, to engaging because this week as well, the other reason I’m in a very good mood is because we received a number of testimonies of now former 7th Day Adventist. Praise God, who through

The efforts of this platform have come to know and embrace the true Christ and his gospel. So, thank you to all of you, the viewers who uh in part make that possible. Tonight, we’re going to be circling back around to a topic that we haven’t talked much about as of recent, and that is young earth creationism versus alternative views or alternate views. Last time that we talked about this, it’s been almost a year actually, it was August um of last year, Michael Jones from Inspiring Philosophy was here to explain his theory um what’s known as process structuralism. Tonight I am

Joined by a friend of mine and brother from my church, Aaron Anderson, who I heard give a presentation uh on his position recently at a friendly back and forth that was held on this subject at the house of one of our elders. He and Mr. Thomas Purifo Jr., the director of uh Answers in Genesis’s documentary is Genesis History. They had a friendly in-house emphasis there on in-house back and forth uh over the subject of whether the Bible supports the belief in an old earth over and against a young earth. Afterward, he and I talked a little bit about answering Adventism as well as the

Somewhat unsuspecting influence that the 7th Adventist movement played in the revitalization of young earth creationism. which is why I thought he would be the perfect guest to join us and present yet another alternate theory to young earth creationism and let him explain how he arrives at his position from scripture. But before we get into it, folks, if you like what we are doing here and you want to support us, consider becoming a channel member. You will gain access to our growing library of membersonly content. the newest piece coming next week. Next Saturday, we’re

Going to be looking at um well, Kim Iverson, she is a YouTube personality and media analyst. She mentioned Seventh Day Adventist, and sure enough, they came out in droves, and boy oh boy, did it create a dumpster fire. So, we are going to be examining that next week. If you want to become a member, simply click the join button down below this video or use the link in the description box or you can visit our channel homepage as you see on the screen where you will find the join button in two places. It is because of the generous support from our members and those who

Partner with us through the website that allows us to fulfill our mission to equip as many Christians as possible with this very important task of reaching 7th Adventists with the truth. So, thank you to all of you. Now, for those that might be new here, that might be wondering why tonight’s subject is receiving this type of attention, a little bit of a foundation laying, and then we will bring our guest in for the evening. So, in the words of the 7th Adventist Church’s alleged inspired interpreter of scripture, remember that folks, infallible and inspired interpreter.

We’ve looked at the sources on this. Here’s what she had to say about what she was supposedly shown by God. Spirit of Prophecy, Volume 1, page 80 uh 85 through 87. Little bit of a reading here. Quote, I was then carried back to the creation and was shown that the first week in which God performed the work of creation in six days and rested on the seventh day was just like every other week. The great God in his days of creation and day of rest measured off the first cycle as a sample for successive weeks till the close of time. These are the generations of the heavens and the earth

When they were created. God gives us the productions of his work at the close of each literal day. Each day was accounted of him a generation because every day he generated or produced some new portion of his work. On the seventh day of the first week, God rested from his work and then blessed the day of his rest and set it apart for the use of man. The weekly cycle of seven literal days, six for labor and the seventh for rest, which has been preserved and brought down through Bible history, originated in the great facts of the first seven days.

But the infidel supposition that the events of the first week required seven vast indefinite periods for their accomplishment strikes directly at the foundation of the Sabbath of the fourth commandment. It makes indefinite and obscure that which God has made very plain. It is the worst kind of infidelity. For with many who profess to believe the record of creation, it is infidelity in disguise. It charges God with commanding men to observe the week of seven literal days in commemoration of seven indefinite periods, which is unlike his dealings with mortals and is an impeachment of

His wisdom. Infidel geologists claim that the world is very much older than the Bible record makes it. They reject the Bible record because of those things which are to them evidences from the earth itself that the world has existed tens of thousands of years. And many who profess to believe the Bible record are at a loss to account for wonderful things which are found in the earth with the view that creation week was only seven literal days and that the world is now only about 6,000 years old. These to free themselves from difficulties thrown in their way by

Infidel geologists adopt the view that the six days of creation were six vast indefinite periods and the day of God’s rest was another indefinite period making senseless the fourth commandment of God’s holy law. Some eagerly receive this position for it destroys the force of the fourth commandment and they feel a freedom from its claims upon them. They have limited ideas of the size of men, animals, and trees before the flood and of the great changes which then took place in the earth. Close quote. So, Ellen White claimed to be shown the creation account in vision,

And from this vision, she saw that the six days in creation were literal 24-hour days. And it is infidel geologists and individuals that engage in the worst kind of infidelity in disguise claiming to believe the Bible, but they obscure this fact by professing to believe the creation account, but not that it was seven literal days, that they were longer than seven days, whatever that amount may be. It is then asserted by her that if you disagree on the subject, you reject the Bible record. She then adds that these types seek to do this and adopt a different

View because they think it alleviates them from having to observe the 7th day Sabbath because that command becomes senseless if the days in Genesis are not literal 24-hour periods. Now, she also had this to say. Quote, I have been shown that without Bible history, geology can prove nothing. Relics found in the earth do give evidence of a state of things differing in many respects from the present. But the time of their existence and how long a period these things have been in the earth are only to be understood by Bible history. It may be innocent to conjecture beyond

Bible history if our suppositions do not contradict the facts found in the sacred scriptures. But when men leave the word of God in regard to the history of creation and seek to account for God’s creative works upon natural principles, they are upon a boundless ocean of uncertainty. Just how God accomplished the work of creation in six literal days, he has never revealed to mortals. His creative works are just as incomprehensible as his existence. Close quote. So this is to say that it is assumed by her as well as many other young earth creationists for that matter

That if you disagree with young earth creation, it’s because you’re not starting with scripture, but you’re seeking to utilize natural principles alone which lands one upon boundless oceans of uncertainty. She continues, “It has been the special work of Satan to lead fallen man to rebel against God’s government, and he has succeeded too well in his efforts. He has tried to obscure the law of God, which in itself is very plain. He has manifested a special hate against the fourth precept of the decalogue because it defines the living God, the maker of the heavens and the earth. The

Plainest precepts of Jehovah are turned from to receive infidel fables. Man will be left without excuse. God is given sufficient evidence upon which to base faith if he wishes to believe. In the last days, the earth will be almost destitute of true faith. Upon the mere pretense or meest pretense, the word of God will be considered unreliable, while human reasoning will be received, though it be in opposition to plain scripture facts. Men will endeavor to explain from natural causes the work of creation, which God has never revealed. But human science cannot

Search out the secrets of the God of heaven and explain the stupendous works of creation, which were a miracle of almighty power any sooner than it can show how God came into existence. Close quote. So once again, she ties this back to the fourth commandment and the great controversy. Shocker, which highlights something else that must be noted. The SDA church does not teach a young universe, but a young earth. Many people do not realize this component of the SDA claim. Unlike most nonSDA young creationists, the SDA church does not teach that Genesis 1 is the beginning of the

Creation of everything. And they plainly state this in their fundamental beliefs book. You didn’t think I was just going to make this claim without the sources, did you? From the exposition of their own beliefs on the chapter of creation under the heading, “What are the heavens? talking about Genesis 1, they say, quote, “Some people are puzzled and understandably so by the verses that say God created the heavens and the earth, Genesis 1:1, 2:1, and Exodus 20:11. And that he made the sun, moon, and stars on the 4th day of creation week 6,000 years

Ago.” Genesis 1:14-19. Were all heavenly bodies brought into existence at that time? Creation week did not involve the heaven that God has dwelt in from eternity. The heavens in Genesis 1 and2 probably refer to our son and its system of planets. Indeed, the earth instead of being Christ’s first creation was most likely his last one. The Bible pictures the sons of God probably the atoms of all the unfallen worlds meeting with God. Job 1 6-12. So there are so far space probes have discovered no other inhabited planets. They apparently are situated in the

Vastness of space well beyond the reach of our sin polluted solar system quarantined against the infection of sin. Close quote. So despite that seemingly bizarre statement there at the end, we will save that for another day. They teach that there was a vast expanse of time prior to the earth being created. Now, I have brought this up before and lots of former Adventists have or or current Adventists have said, “You don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re clueless.” Okay. What have we focused on on this platform for a long time, folks? The Great

Controversy World View. The Great Controversy Worldview. This is where the great controversy allegedly started. And then the earth was created as a testing ground in that controversy for God to vindicate his character against Satan’s accusations. So man was created on probation to see if they would remain loyal to God and the Ten Commandments. If they did, they would have been rendered secure and vindicated God from Satan’s accusations. Because what were Satan’s accusations? The law of God can’t be kept. It’s not fair. attacking God’s government and his

Character, etc. Well, Adam and Eve didn’t. They fell. So, Jesus had to come and do what they failed to do and do what? Vindicate the law, God’s character. And he gave man what? We’ve talked about this a second probation. all things that we’ve talked about elsewhere in detail. But Ellen claims in this chapter that it is the work of Satan to cause people to not believe young earth creationism. And it’s ultimately to get people to rebel against the Ten Commandments, more specifically the Sabbath, which is ultimately what the great controversy narrative revolves around.

And if you reject young earth creationism, you in turn are rejecting the faith, she says, and receive infidel fables. What are those? Well, she already told us in this context, theories that disagree with young earth creation, the infidel geologists, they’re the ones that are that are going to be used to to trick people in the last days because this is a part of that light, as we’re going to see, that you have to believe to be prepared for the return of Christ. And if not, you’re not going to be prepared. You have a false god, as we’re about to see.

Because rejecting young earth creation, she says, will eventually lead to you rejecting the 7th day Sabbath. And now you’re not keeping the law and not fit to be saved because you’re not vindicating the character of God, which is what the great controversy is ultimately about. She says, “You don’t believe the Bible and you don’t worship the true God. You worship an idol and that will lead to your damnation.” Now, some Adventists in the audience just internally said, “The SDA church doesn’t teach this. Even if Ellen White says that, I don’t believe that.” It’s

Something along those lines. But again, y’all didn’t think I was going to say this without the receipts, did you? From the Adventist belief, fundamental beliefs book. Again, same chapter under the heading, the main heading, the significance of creation. And then the subheadings as you see, the antidote to idolatry and the foundation of true worship. Quote, “God’s creatorship distinguishes him from all other gods. We should worship the God who made us and not the gods we have made. By virtue of his creatorship, he deserves total allegiance. Any relationship that interferes with this

Allegiance is idolatry and subject to divine judgment. Thus, faithfulness to the creator is a life ordeath matter. Our worship of God is based on the fact that he is our creator and we are his creatures. The importance of this theme is indicated by its inclusion in the call extended to earth’s inhabitants just before Christ’s return to worship the one who made heaven and earth the seas and springs of water. Revelation 14:7. Ah, now we aren’t going to be able to exhaust this for those of you that are new. We have done so elsewhere. But those of you that have been here for a

While, you picked up on what’s being said here because it’s important that you notice the tie of young earth creationism to Revelation 14:7. This is where the SDA church points for what? They’re one of a kind only they have it special end times present truth three angels gospel message which is what a life or death message as we have seen many times here you see this same language. Remember that part of their mission statement is that their special gospel message is what will have people prepared for the soon return of Christ. And their mission

Is to herald this. They’re supposed to be the angels in Revelation 14 representing the three angels that are heralding these final warning cries to the earth. You’re going to be you’re not going to be prepared. You’re not going to be prepared. You got to come join us. That’s what’s going on. This is a part of that. Part of that includes young earth creationism. That’s part of the gospel, the Adventist gospel. If you don’t believe it, you’ll be lost just like any other alleged truth that they claim is a truth that you hear. And if you reject, you’ll be damned. You

Aren’t actually being faithful to the creator, but you have an idol. And as Ellen White said earlier, you’re committing infidelity. So making the connections, this is why we are discussing this tonight, and I will continue to discuss this subject. I don’t necessarily agree with my guest tonight, by the way. That’s not the point. This is why we’re going to keep talking about the subject. Young Earth creation isn’t the gospel. It’s not the gospel. Adventists, if you if you think that believing this somehow, Paul says the gospel is the power of God to salvation

For all that believe it. Believing young earth creation has nothing to do with you having peace with God. If you are trusting in believing young earth creation in any way, some Adventists out there, I know there’s going to be Adventists that say, “I don’t believe that.” Great. Wonderful. Understand there are those in your ranks that do and that’s not good. Young earth creation is not some special truth that needed to be restored at the end of time as a part of the fullness of the gospel restored. And rejecting such does not mean that you’re worshiping an

Idol. Nor does it mean a person does not believe the Bible as we’re about to see. which is why I’m excited for my guest to be here tonight. And I’m going to be quiet uh here shortly so that he can showcase yet another alternate scriptural hypothesis to showcase once again it’s not only young earth creation or Darwinism. Understand that Ellen White put that false dilemma forward. We’ve talked about the false dilemma I don’t know how many times. It’s one of their favorite fallacies. It’s either this or you believe this over here when it’s like well now there’s like a plethora of

Other options. So, there are many other options, which is why the goal of tonight is to showcase such and hopefully widen your horizons regardless of where you may fall on the spectrum. So, with that said, brother Aaron, thank you for being here. Good evening, and I’m so excited for your presentation tonight. Well, thanks, Miles. I am excited to be here and appreciate I’m getting an education just listening to you because I’m Well, that’s part of our mission. Absolutely. So, a lot to be said and so much of what you just said, there was so much truth in so many of those quotes

Intermixed with things that oh wait a minute and so it uh I was almost saying yay to certain points and then having to know well wait a minute so well and that’s part of the issue that’s part of the issue too is that you have to understand the SDA dictionary because they’re using a lot of the same lingo but there are many instances where yes there’s there’s things you need to remain loyal to God of Well, I’m not we’re not advocating for idolatry. The point is though is that it’s not an idol to reject young earth creationism. That’s the issue. We’re not

Uh that that’s for sure. And we’re not I’m not going to present a lot of science. Uh I deal with science a lot, but but to your point and hers, we need to stick with the word of God. Let’s see what it’s saying and maybe what we think it says, but it doesn’t say and just go through that. So, well, to break the ice here, I guess you kind of already have given some of your thoughts to some degree as a Christian, what are your thoughts when you hear something like what we just read from Ellen White and the SDA church? Uh, their exposition of their own beliefs

That the position you’re presenting tonight is apparently um will lead people into idolatry. Well, I certainly hope not. I hope when everyone leaves tonight, they will have uh learned something about scripture perhaps they didn’t know or they will at least uh their interest will be peaked enough to go investigate and read further. Uh because I certainly want to come not as someone who knows it all or has it all right. Matter of fact, I can be sure I don’t have it all right. So, uh I’m a learner here with you and everyone else. And our our rule is the

Word of God. And we want to see tonight how that God’s word integrates with his world. And I’m gonna talk a good bit about that because uh his world and his word are not in opposition. They’re not in conflict. Uh they can’t be. Uh but certainly our interpretations of either certainly can be and and mine may be. So uh I look forward to hearing more from either uh folks who write in questions or questions from yourself or whatnot. So we can uh I can walk away having learned something and and drive me back to the word as well. Amen. Yeah. The book of scripture and

The book of nature are not in conflict. Um well before we get into your presentation, one other question just because I think it’ll be beneficial for people to know. Let them know a little bit about yourself, whatever you’d like to share and what got you interested in this particular subject. Cuz I wouldn’t have known that this is something that you present on or talk about. Maybe it’s not something you were regularly doing until uh at the Barnes House you gave your presentation. So maybe you can share a little bit with people what uh got you peaked on this specific subject.

Sure. Well, the interest came well an interest in science and God’s world came long long ago of course even from high school and so on. But in particular about the the uh the problem of is it young? uh if it’s not young then uh evolution must be true or the philosophy of naturalism must be true. I was presented that as many people were and when when you don’t have enough knowledge of what the alternatives are or what maybe the full record of scripture speaks to. Uh then you’re in a real bind as you study God’s world and it doesn’t match up with

The perhaps the creation model you were given and you were told that it had to be this way. And so I entered a lot of struggles, but not just I, but at the time what drove me to this study was having youth come and with their own faith struggles and and not being able to resolve what they’re learning in school with uh the word of God. Now, that’s not to say they need to resolve naturalism that they’re taught in school or that they need to resolve uh anything that’s unbiblical, but in terms of the scientific evidence and the data that’s coming in, uh they didn’t know how to

Integrate that uh with their faith or what God’s word was saying. And since they were only given one model and one choice when they conflicted, uh they were had a crisis of faith. And so, I had had young people coming to me. So, I thought, I need to get up to speed better on that. uh and that was over 30 years ago and I’ve been studying this uh diligently all aspects of it uh since that time. So that’s what got me into it. But as far as who I am, I’m a telecommunications engineer and I am a father of five and grandfather of seven, husband of a wonderful wife and u just

Delighted to serve. I’m a deacon at our church as you know. Uh, so love serving in that way and I love the word of God and I love seeing how God reveals himself in his creation and I hope we can can uh highlight some of that tonight. Well, perfect, brother. Amen to all of that. I will say that the floor is now yours for however long you need. Folks in the audience, um, if you have questions, make sure to jot those down. I will prompt you when it is time to send those through. As always, you will want to put a little Q before your question to help it stick out in the

Comments. Again, please do not send those through now. They will end up getting lost. Um, but have those uh handy for when you are prompted if you have any. Uh, he’s going to give his presentation. I’ll have a couple questions after that or maybe along the way and then we will get to, if it’s not too late, some audience Q&A. With that said, brother, the floor is yours. Okay. Well, well, thank you, Miles. And uh I hope this comes across clearly to everyone and if there’s any uh misrepresentation or confusion certainly we can clear that up in the Q&A time be

Happy to do that. So the first thing I’m going to mention is here we have on the screen an analogical days view which is an old earth creation view possibly. Uh and then my name’s under it but it sounds like it’s my view. Well, it it’s my view and we’re having this talk, but but this is not by any stretch a new view at all and you’ll you’ll see that in this discussion. It’s it’s not something I invented. Uh but it does seem to be as I’ve wrestled with many views. Uh it’s the one I’ve arrived at as being the most biblically faithful and the one that does the best job of

Integrating what we see in God’s world with what we see in God’s word. So, why don’t we why don’t we start with that? uh that is let’s let’s start with God’s word because um that that’s where we need to start right and we see here in Psalm 191 what does it say it says the heavens declare the glory of God and the sky above proclaims his handiwork probably a familiar verse uh to many listeners so what we have here we have God’s word Psalm 191 declaring that God’s world declares something and that the sky I proclaim something. So that’s interesting. The word of God which we

Want to start with hands it over in a sense to his world saying look at his world. It declares the glory of God and the sky itself proclaims his handiwork. So that right there tells you God’s world and his um word should be in agreement. It’s coming from the same source. Right? Romans 1:20. God’s invisible attributes namely his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of world and what the things that have been made. So here we again we have what God has created reveals something to us and what does it reveal?

Well some invisible attributes his eternal power and his divine nature. So just from what has been made, a matter of fact that is so clear and it uses the word clearly there that uh the passage goes on to say that we’re without excuse. It’s that clear. Um so that should should call our attention. Um we have then in John we uh John 1 3-5 in the beginning was the word and all things were made through him. So I’ I’ve reduced that down. That’s not the full passage of course, but we see that Christ was involved. All things were made through the word and and Jesus is

The word of God uh in this context. And so we know what about God? Well, he’s not man. We know that and and he doesn’t lie. And in Hebrews, we see it’s impossible for God to lie. So if you put all this scripture, if we start from scripture and you put it all together, you see that scripture itself tells us that God is revealing himself through what he has made and he’s not lying. He’s not deceptive. Um, if it turns out that the uh the actual reality of the world is that it is a older age than we might interpret from scripture, then we’re going to have to to deal with

That. Either we’ve misinterpreted the world or we’ve misinterpreted scripture. And and I certainly am possible likely to do either one. Um, but I’m looking for the goal is to integrate the two because if they have the same author, they’ve got to uh be coming, you know, toward the same thing. So, we we’ve got to discover here in this talk, I want to discover which view best integrates God’s revelation. Is it is it the young model that’s traditionally put out by today’s uh parurch organizations, answers and genesis uh uh institute of creation research and and so on. Is that

Model that they use their interpretation of scripture uh does that integrate God’s world as it should better than an old earth or an analogical uh view that I present? And so that’s that’s where I want to go with this. So my claim for tonight is that an analogical day’s view is the most biblically faithful and it’s also the most constructive integration of God’s infallible revelations. And that’s because I believe scripture says that these days of Genesis are analogically related, right? And just to be clear, the word analog, right? Something is analogical means it’s not

Identical to it. It’s like it in some ways. It has characteristics similar to it, but it’s not identical to it. It’s not the same thing. And I would also say that creation shows that these dates should be analogical. So, I want to walk through um the the biblical reasons that I believe it’s analogical that the uh contra Ellen White, these are not um the I can say these are literal days and that they’re God’s literal work days. I don’t want to dicker over the Hebrew word yom or or the word day. This is about the analogy of God’s work week with our work week as we see not only in

Genesis but then references in Exodus. So, uh let’s let’s work through that. But I’m going to back up from today to Augustine of Hippo in the city of God. He wrote so just to further prove this this isn’t my idea for sure. He says, “What kind of days these were, it is extremely difficult or perhaps impossible for us to conceive.” So he’s referring of course to the days in Genesis. So um that’s obviously in opposition to some of the quotes you gave on the front end there of how it was obvious and definitely had to be uh such and such a literal 24-hour solar calendar day. Um

Certainly Augustine did not seem to interpret it that way. Now I’m not presenting an Augustinian model or one. I think he was more in line with the idea of an instant creation. But uh he toyed with that idea. But uh actually I’ve got a book here and I’m not I’m not going to endorse something like I get paid for it, but I was reviewing I’ve got Gavin Ortland’s um Retrieving Augustine’s Doctrine of Creation. So if Augustine is something that you want to pursue, uh Gavin Ortland’s retrieving Augustine’s Doctrine of Creation is definitely worth the read.

It’s funny you mentioned Gavin. I actually ran into him a couple weeks ago out at the park. It was pretty uh it was pretty cerebral. I I listened to him a lot and I was I’ve listened to him a lot out at that park and I I was walking and lo and behold I was actually w because he just recently moved to Nashville. Um so just a little fun fact there but I I appreciate and like Gavin’s work particularly in that area. Absolutely. And he’s just recently done a video on Adam and Eve. Uh not that he proposed something he necessarily believes, but he laid out and surveyed

Various options for those trying to reconcile some things. So I I agree with you completely. And uh so I I actually ran into him at Five Points here in town only about three weeks ago. Same same kind of crazy thing. So kind of funny. So another quote not quite as old as Augustine. Herman Bavik from 1901 said regarding the days in which the earth was formed and made into an abode for humans. At all times people have entertained different opinions on that matter. And Thomas rightly affirms that in things not belonging to the necessity of faith, various opinions are

Permitted. So again, that I’m I’m not making something up here that’s brand new. The view that these days are analogical or they’re not at least identical. And if they’re not identical, they pretty much have to be analogical in some fashion doesn’t mean it uh is a particular time frame. You you could have an analogical relationship and the world be young. young young earth scientific models, scientific creations could all be true and you still interpret analogically. So it’s it’s uh the the point is that the the dates aren’t stated. So you’ve got to go into

The world, do your homework and and see. And so you’re going to see that here. So um nature of Genesis uh Genesis 1 days, they are man’s work week. The fact that man’s work week is patterned after God’s work week. And let’s look at this already. Exodus 2011 has been mentioned here on this program. Well, that’s there is a connection. Obviously, man’s work week was a 6 plus one pattern of days and it’s patterned by God’s work week. We saw that in Exodus. And in Genesis, we see that man is made in God’s image. But note that we are not identical to

God. We’re made in his image. We’re in more like an analog to God than we’re not identical. Man works. This is from Isaiah. Man works and God works, but nothing about God or the way he works is identical to man or his ways. They are analogous. So, I picked up on something when you were were doing the intro quotes uh that uh Ellen White said. She said it something like, “It’s just like every other week.” Maybe you could pull a quote or you remember, but she said, “I I was shown that they’re just like every other week.” And and I’m asking myself when I hear that, well, wait a

Minute. Is there anything about that week that’s like any week we’ve ever known? I mean, you’re we’re talking about the creation of the world. We’re talking about things coming into existence that didn’t exist before. We’re talking about God working and he’s working prior to even the sun, moon, and stars being appointed to their purpose as timekeepers. So, what’s time mean? So, um and and do are we saying that God works the same way we work? So, it seems to me that if there’s anything about that first week, it’s that it’s nothing like any week we’ve ever

Experienced nor ever will. Um, and and it’s not it’s just the idea that well, it has to be just like our weeks. I would think just the opposite. It it surely is special in almost every way uh and including the time frame. Yeah, the the quote on that was the quote on that was the spirit of prophecy volume 1 page uh 80 starting on 85 and it’s the tail end there folks for those that are wondering the weekly cycle of seven literal days six for labor and the seventh for rest which has been preserved and brought down through Bible history originated in the great facts of

The first seven days and there at the beginning she says I was then carried back to the creation talking about in vision and was shown the first week in which God performed the work of creation in six days and rested on the seventh day just like every other week. Um, and then there’s some other times in there where she mentions um, well, people that make it what you’re saying, right? Well, you know, the fact that she did not mention, interestingly, I caught that. She didn’t talk about it being a solar day, which Young Earth creationist organizations referred to it being a

Normal calendar day and a solar day. She actually stuck with the idea of a pattern and a pattern of man’s work and God’s work and you have six days of work and a Sabbath. the there’s a lot to be commended there. Right now, I realize when she uses the word literal, she is talking about her own solar calendar day, but in in the strict sense of the word she spoke, um it’s not that different than what I’m talking about. So, you have to understand that these individuals that systematized this theology, it wasn’t uh primarily Ellen White. Ellen White functioned as the

Stamp of approval from God. other people were theorizing about things and she would hear about this and she functioned like a memeist almost who was then given the correct understanding. Uh this person is correct. God showed it to me in vision. Oh, okay. Um they were just studying the Bible but then they had this infallible guide that’s giving them these divine stamps of approval. And so they were borrowing a lot of them from our tradition, the reformed tradition. So they love the Puritans, the the reformers, uh the the and by reformers, I mean the the Presbyterian reformers,

Um who were had a had a Sabbath theology. And so a lot of these things she’s getting from over there, but then they filter it all through their extra biblical worldview, the great controversy theme. And what you get out of that is not just the pattern. That’s what you’d find with the Puritans, the reformers, etc. This the six in one model. They go so far as to because of their physicalist worldview infusing a sort of divine-like characteristic into the seventh day itself. There’s something intrinsically holy about that specifically that 24-hour rotation around the sun.

So, it’s not just a pattern. She does mention that in passing, but really all of this is built around their sort of deification of the seventh day Sabbath such that it is this sort of that well that’s that’s what their whole end times theology is built around. There’s going to be this huge dividing line over the seventh day Sabbath and that it has to be the what we call the seventh day. There’s something actually holy and intrinsically divine about that. It’s not just a pattern of 6 and1 which the Christian church still follows but we follow it based off of the new creation

Memorial not the old creation memorial. Now I don’t want to sidetrack us here but uh just interesting uh a little bit of the the language barrier there or some of the things that might be being said that you just may not be aware of. But those are good pickups on your part. Absolutely. Thank you for that. And I I uh I do hope you’ll continue to tie what I’m saying, which is really intended to discuss what the normal young earth creationist view today is, not so much the Seventh Day Adventist view. So, I appreciate you pulling that back together.

Totally. I’m going to pull up that Isaiah verse because it’s it’s just so good. God says, you know, for my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts. Um, and that just to me speaks to why would I think this week works like the way I work or anything like the way I do things because God I’m not God and he’s not like me and I need to be very careful. Um, so I want to note also that there’s no uh biblical

Warrant to assume that God measured his work by the sun or the rotation of the earth on my reading. Again, you may have some Seventh Day Adventist extra things that would cause that warrant, but just in the text of scripture, there’s not a biblical warrant to think that God was measuring his first three days, especially since the sun wasn’t even appointed as the timekeeper until the fourth day. Um, so I’m saying that man’s weekly Sabbath is analogous to God’s unending Sabbath. So that’s that’s a key aspect here. Of course, that’s from Hebrews where we learn that God’s uh

Sabbath is ongoing. Um, and is it was not definitely not a normal Sabbath 24-hour day. And I’m going to I’ll draw that out a little bit more here. um in that the night as as you may have discussed with your previous guest uh on the discussion of creation it’s it’s very clear that there is no evening and morning refrain for God’s sabbath uh that can be interpreted uh I think reasonably that there a night has not come or god’s sabbath day has not ended because that refrain that ends all the other six days is not there u that’s that’s not a new discovery by me for

Sure that’s as old as it gets um God’s rest from creation continues uh New Testament believers even we today can enter God’s rest and should strive to do that. So that’s coming from this passage in Hebrews where it says this is Hebrews 4:9 through11 from the ESV. So then there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God. For whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God rested from his. Let us therefore strive to enter that rest present tense here. So, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience. So, we want to enter God’s

Sabbath rest that is ongoing. Excuse me. Which means, of course, God’s Sabbath rest, even if you believe the the earth is only 6,000 years old, that means God’s Sabbath is essentially 6,000 plus years. It’s been ongoing, right? That’s a lot longer Sabbath than a 24h hour that we have. But I think most interestingly is what we see in Leviticus about this pattern. Uh in that his the 6 plus one or 7-day pattern is used uh we have for years in managing crop land. We have you know seven years referred to we have years uh referred to in slave labor and rest we have periods

Of seven weeks, seven months, seven years from the timing of feasts and even seven weeks of years uh for the year jubilee. So all of those cannot be identical relationships. So we don’t say because God worked seven days um you know then we don’t draw an identity to all these other uses of this same pattern or these same sevens. They’re all analogies and that goes for for our week as well. Um, so what I’d like to do now, uh, Miles, is to really do an event byevent creation chronology with the goal being just to demonstrate that God’s word, his special revelation, and his creation,

His general revelation can integrate successfully. Um, but you have to obviously you have to interpret the scriptures um, a certain way and I believe correctly to for these to align. And I believe the fact that they do align in this interpretation speaks to uh the validity of the interpretation because again God’s revelation in his word and his world he doesn’t lie and and and they should be the same thing ultimately. Uh I’m sure there’s a lot of imperfections, a lot of refinements need to be made. Um, I can tell you that the analogical day view, if you do a survey

Of modern views of of Genesis or the creation days, um, I’ve got here, uh, you may be familiar with this. This is the, uh, the Presbyterian Church in America, uh, the PCA position paper. It was from the year 2000, the creation study committee they did. It can be found online. Folks can can Google that, pceistory.org, I think. But you can get the position paper which outlines all the different views that they would accept as biblically orthodox. Um but they are different and they give some guidance and they relate it to the Westminster dwines and so on. But the analogical

Debut is explained in there as is in this great little booklet. I think you can pick it up for a dollar. I even have a PDF file I think of I think it’s maybe it’s out of print. P&R Publishing did it. But Vern Pythus put together this little booklet um called Christian interpretations of Genesis 1. And both he uh and uh Jack Collins of Covenant Cemeter Seminary um uh often um talk about the analogical day view. Uh and so that’s kind of what I’m going on here is is view he he discusses in that little booklet and uh Jack Collins John C. John Collins it’s

Often called uh he’s got a commentary Genesis 1-4. Uh he’s also got several other books related to science and faith and and you can see the analogical day view coming through there as he um writes commentary on on Genesis. So um anyway all all that to say let’s go through a chronology that integrates these things uh in accordance with an analogical uh viewpoint. And and so interestingly, as you did these quotes on the front end, uh there’s going to be a little bit of agreement here with uh Miss White. I don’t know if it’s Miss White or Mrs. White or I just say Ellen G. White. I’m

Not sure what the proper I want I want to be good on protocol there. But um there there is a parallel here. If you said that they teach not a young universe, well, that’s good because you’re going to see right off the bat here, I’m going to teach not a young universe. Um for sure. So, let’s go through the scriptures. I’m going to draw a timeline what what we’re going to start with Genesis 1:1 on the left and I’m going to go all the way through the days and we’ll end up with uh the end of Genesis 1 on the far right. And again, I’m going to build a timeline here from

Special and general revelation and tie them together and we’ll just work through that uh as we go. So, let’s start where we should. Genesis 1:1. What does that say? In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Uh and the earth was without form and void and darkness was over the face of the deep and the spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. That’s one one and one two. So we we’ve got uh special revelation declaring a creation xnilo uh creation out of nothing. So what is general revelation? What do we see today? Well, lo and behold, big bang

Cosmology unfortunately which young earth organizations today shy away from and impugn. Um in fact that is a theistic uh view of cosmology. That is a a um gives a a time for the universe that is not eternal as was the prevailing view of steadystate theory or or other views uh from back in the Greeks right of an eternal universe. No, the big bang cosmological view is a theistic view. It is friendly and consistent with scripture. The idea that there was a beginning. As a matter of fact, the name Big Bang came from Sir Fred Hy trying to impugn the idea,

Right? It was a derogatory thing as he at the time being an atheist did not like uh the idea of a beginning being discovered in science and so he just called it the big bang and it kind of stuck. But point being that scripture speaks to a definite beginning. Well, so does God’s world. Matter, energy, space, and time all began at some point. it is not eternally existed. Um, interestingly enough, I mentioned I’m a telecommunication engineer. I work for AT&T. Don’t mind telling you that. Uh, because two AT&T engineers back, this is, uh, be about 19, I want to say 65.

This is Robert Wilson, Arnold Pensas, Nobel Prize winners, uh, and the great horn horn antenna you see in the background there in Homedale, New Jersey. It’s it’s a microwave receiving antenna uh that was placed on the ground rather than the normal upright position uh in in the days of microwave communications. Those used to be mounted on towers, but they wanted to communicate with satellites. So, this one was mounted such that they could turn and rotate it any direction of the sky to uh communicate with satellites. Except they kept getting this

Strange noise, this signal, and it didn’t matter where they aimed their antenna, they just kept getting it. uh and and certainly folks can read about the discovery of the cosmic microwave background radiation and they may have even seen this image uh drawn from that showing the uh extremely tiny variations in the radiation. So the different colors represent the the difference but believe me the difference is so slight to detect it is extremely difficult. uh you know you look in the sky and it it all looks the same in at these frequencies but there are tiny

Variations and that matters uh for cosmology. But all my my point here is just to say that these guys discovered what was predicted by the big bang theory that this microwave background radiation is exactly what the theory would have predicted that it at very very very early in the history of our universe uh as it was starting to cool down from the initial creation event when God spoke it initially into ex existence at some point this radiation uh is the leftovers of uh a certain point in time beyond that it cooling. Now, so to just buters why I say this is

A theistic view, um I’ve got just a few quotes here. Astrophysicist George Smoot said, you know, if you’re religious, seeing this picture is like seeing God. He just didn’t mince words there. Alan Sandage similar. He says, “What’s happened in the last 50 years is a remarkable event within astronomy and astrophysics. By looking up at the sky, some astronomers have come to to the belief that there is evidence for a creation event.” And that picture I just showed you was one one illustration of it or one one image of it. Um so again God’s world God’s universe is agreeing

And showing itself his eternal power and divine nature is showing itself. Robert Jastro uh also said for the scientist who has lived by his faith and the power of reason the story ends like a bad dream. He scaled the mountains of ignorance. He’s about to conquer the highest peak as he pulls himself over the final rock. He is greeted by a band of theologians who’ve been sitting there for centuries. So this discovery that the universe had a beginning was not something that an atheist scientist or someone who didn’t want a atheistic worldview. Uh this is not a welcome

Thing uh at all. Not at all. But yet it is what Genesis 1 said. Now we know it’s what the world says as well. So, u I I have to show my own picture there because I had such a ball about five years ago going up there. It’s now a historic site. They’ve got plaques everywhere and anyone can go there and and see this device that truly truly made history and is ve very um theism affirming and and very uh Bible affirming very much so. All right, so that’s enough for Genesis 1:1 and I read Genesis 1:2 to you as well. So, I’m going to continue down the line here.

Uh, and I’ll try to move along a little more quickly. I I hope I’m not belaboring the point too much. Uh, but we’re going I’m going to draw the timeline of special revelation on the top, general revelation on the bottom. And we’re going to move now to verse two to see what agreements we have there. And we have it says, “The earth was without form and void. Darkness was over the face of the deep, and the spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.” So this verse is extremely important for any older few uh the view espoused by the reasons to believe

Organization uh headed by Hugh Ross. Uh that may be an organization folks are familiar with. I’ll pull a little bit from um this book called Navigating Genesis by Hugh Ross. Uh it does take a day by day uh look and verse by verse um uh on the using the RTB creation model. they actually have a scientific model in that organization. Uh they’re not just uh speaking to scripture only. They’re integrating constructively the science. Uh but anyway, uh as Dr. Ross, who I would give credit to for for informing me of this, you’ve got to realize what’s happening in verse two and how important

It is. And that is the frame of reference for the six days, which haven’t started yet, by the way. Right? We’re not to day one yet. We’re this is all prior. I I’ll give credit to uh maybe some Seventh Day Adventist teaching there. We’re not to day one yet. The the universe is just being made. Um but uh the frame of reference is what’s being established. And what is that frame of reference? Well, as I’ve just highlighted on the top, the re the six days are told from the perspective of the earth’s surface or the hovering over the surface of the waters. Why do I

Say that? Because the scripture just said so, right? We just established where God is as he’s narrating this unfolding. It says, “And the spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.” It doesn’t give any other descriptions of God being somewhere else. This is the setup for what he’s about to tell us, of where he is. Uh, and the word hovering, well, we’ll talk about that in a minute. So, he uh is right over the face of the water. So, graphically to help maybe you picture this right now in the history of the world, what do we have? We have nothing

But a water world. The crust and the core of the earth is represented in black here, but you can’t see that because it’s covered by ocean. We’re way back in the primordial earth, right? It’s covered in water just as the scripture says. Science says the same thing. At one point, the earth was completely covered uh by water. Um and then there’s a boundary to that, of course, where the ocean meets the atmosphere. And what I’m saying is the frame of reference if the spirit is hovering over the surface of the waters the frame of reference is that junction

Of where the water and the air meet. What would today we would say is we’re standing on the earth and in this case the spirit being just above the water. So the you’ve got to picture this interpretation coming from someone standing in that place as this story is being told. Now I don’t know the degree to which uh your listeners may enjoy CS Lewis or the Chronicles of Narnia. Uh, have have you read The Magician’s Nephew, Miles? Most certainly. Most certainly. Well, you probably remember Digory and Paulie and Andrew and the cabbie and Queen Jadis and

They’ve they’ve they’ve I think done the green rings and they’ve landed in Yeah. They’ve landed in what? Pitch black. Yep. That’s That’s what you would see if this was the case. Just like it says in Job about uh the gods surrounding the earth and thick bands of clouds at this stage of history, Genesis 2, from the frame of reference above the water, it’s pitch black. And so just as all those Narnia visitors watched as land unfold the creation, that’s you’ve got to think in those terms and not the traditional I’m looking down on the earth from outer

Space, right? Don’t we moderns? think of the creation, we’re watching the earth being formed and God shaping and doing what he does from a a perspective up high. Well, that’s not the perspective scripture gives us. And therefore, it leads to bad interpretation or I believe mistaken interpretation. And so what I’m going to share now, you’ve got to keep that in mind. You know, you’re Polly, you’re Diggery, you’re you’re you’re Strawberry the horse. You’re don’t be Queen Jadis, though. But that’s that’s the perspective and you’re going to watch Alan unfold this thing in front of

You horizontally, not looking down. Okay, I hope that helps. All right, let’s let’s go from there. We now have the frame of reference established in verse two. And as I said, science general revelation says the same thing. And I just brought this up on the screen. In general revelation, we have a lifeless watercovered earth blanketed by darkness. I think uh the verse in Job that is great that goes along with this is Job 38 where God is, you know, letting Job have it um out of the whirlwind and telling him, you know, who who darkens counsel, you know, without knowledge. And he goes

On, he says, “When I made clouds its garment and thick darkness, its swaddling band and prescribed limit uh limits for it and set bars and doors uh and said, thus far you shall come no farther, and here shall your proud ways be stayed.” uh referring to the sea, you know. So, so um that description that God’s talking about is fitting with this idea that just as general revelation tells us, the earth was covered in water and it was covered in thick clouds kind of like Venus would be. Uh this would be before the uh uh the idea of the of the moon hitting the earth caused excuse me

Another planet hitting the earth. That’s a theory of how the moon was formed. Um, and prior to that event, the Earth’s uh, atmosphere based on the physics we know would have been much, much thicker and heavier than Venus, Venus’s uh, atmosphere. So anyway, verse two, special revelation, general revelation, they agree. Well, let’s move on to verses 3 through 5. And God said, “Let there be light.” And there was light. And God saw that the light was good. And God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light day, and the darkness he called night. And there

Was evening and there was morning the first day. So we have let there be light. Well, what’s the next event? Remember this chronology I’m drawing here is an event bye-bye event chronology. I’m not giving dates. I’m not giving time frames. It that’s not really material. The point is event bye event. The next thing that happens in special revelation is there’s light. Well, the next thing that happens in re a general revelation is there’s light. Okay, this will be the time as the atmosphere of our earth as geoysics tells us it begins to be transformed

From this opaque cloud total darkness on the surface of the waters to being at least translucent. So light is coming through. You’re not seeing any heavenly bodies. It’s more like a very dark overcast day, but it’s enough that photosynthesis uh and photosynthetic bacteria like cyanobacteria, you know, could could take place. And we see that in science. uh you know and if you want to talk time frames you know we’re talking three and a half billion years ago so this is very shortly interesting fact I mean just as soon as the earth in in normal geoysics chronology just as

Soon as the earth is cool enough to have any life on it there’s life it’s not like there’s some long amount of time or some gradual evolution to it it’s just boom evidence you know gets cool and now we’ve got bacterial life so that kind of ties in with the idea I won’t go to it of of God hovering over of the face through water waters because that word hovering is also shown in Deuteronomy Deuteronomy um to be uh a brooding like like a eagle brooding over her nest you know um ministering to the the young lives under it. So you kind of it’s kind of the idea

Of you know maybe the waters are full of bacteria right and God’s brooding over the waters the very first life he creates that that’s some speculation I wouldn’t wouldn’t die on a hill for it but it’s it is interesting the way that word hovering is uh is used there and then what we’re seeing in the in the geological record but let’s move on to uh uh what would be day two right um God said let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters and let it separate the waters from the waters and God made the expanse separated the waters that were under the expanse from the waters

That were above the expanse. And it was so. And God called the expanse heaven. Then there was evening and there was morning, the second day. So the scriptures tell us there’s a separation of waters in the sky. Well, what’s the next event? The general revelation tells us we get a water cycle. That’s that’s the next event. The two agree. Okay. How about the next verses 9 through13? This is where God says, “Let the waters under the heaven be gathered into one place, and let dry land appear.” And it was so. God called the dry land earth, and the waters that were gathered together, he

Called seas. And God saw that it was good. And then he goes on another aspect to this day. God says, “Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind on the earth.” And it was so. The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed according to their own kinds, and trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind. And God saw that it was good, and there was evening, and there was morning, the third day. So special revelation shows appearance of land,

Sprouting, growth, and maturation of plants and trees. What do we see in general revelation? Same thing. We start to see plate tectonic activity. We see the surge of silicut land ma uh land mass growth. we see the continents start to appear. We start to see land plants, the oxygen levels. We’re starting to see the greening of the planet. So, same thing, special and general revelation are aligned. They integrate. They uh they go together. You know, I I’ll pause real quick to point out something because now we we’ve talked about three days. And you’ll note, Miles, what

Starts each day? What phrase? Uh and God said or Yeah. Yeah. Sorry, I was thinking at the beginning of the chapter. Yeah. Trick trick question, right? No. And God said begins each day. And how does each day end? And there was evening and there was morning, the third day. Yeah. And so that that’s very important to see that even within that we have this chronology. Okay. Because often it’s misunderstood. Often in young earth literature today, they will use the King James uh translation. Yeah. which unfortunately puts it says more like the evening and the morning

Were the first day and you will often hear uh proponents of the view saying that defines the day. The evening and the morning there, see it’s a regular day. It’s a normal day. Evening and morning, that’s a day. It says so right there in the scripture. Unfortunately, it’s not that the King James got it wrong. But when you press the King James and press the original text to say that it’s a sum, you get it wrong because what the the text actually says and and virtually all other translations say it this way. It says, and I’ve already said it three times now, it says, “And there

Was evening event and there was morning.” That’s two different events. They bracket what? The nighttime, right? It’s evening right now here where we’re sitting and I’m going to go to bed. I’m going to sleep and I’m going to get up in the morning. Same thing again. This is analogous to our work week. And God said starts the day in the morning. God goes to work. Analogous to us getting up and going to work. And then after you’re done with work, after God gets done with work, there’s an evening. He says so. And then after that, there’s a morning after a pause.

So, so this is a this is a timeline and it’s even on a daily basis. Okay. But it doesn’t define the day. We just had uh Yeah, we just had somebody in chat that was arguing that. That is a common argument that you’ll hear not just from SDAs, but just young earth creationists in general is well, evening and morning clearly indicates it’s a 24-hour day that’s in focus, right? Well, you just pointed out that um there are what that really highlights is that um we need to analyze our presuppositions. Oh, indeed. and and and know that I’m not seeing the chat window. So, I I’m

Glad that that worked out anyway. But that that is true. And certainly anything anything I’m espousing in this view. Uh as I said, I’m a learner and you can go to Young Earth literature and you can go and and you can find the rebuttals and I encourage you to do that. But I encourage all listeners, all of us to read broadly. If you go to a Young Earth website and all you read are those articles, you’ll come away with that’s all you get. But when you read or you um uh debates wonder um well facilitated debates are very healthy when when both parties are charitable

And congenial and they really wrestle with the text. You’re going to have to wrestle with the text. If you think some of these things I’m saying are wrong. That’s fine. But go wrestle with the text. Take what I’m saying, bounce it off some other people. Uh read broadly with u people of different views. And I think you will come to the I’d like to think you would come to the same conclusions I have after doing this for 30 years. Believe me, this analogical view is far and away I think uh the best way to interpret these passages. So anyway, so that was a little aside on

This refrain of and there was evening and there was morning uh as two events bracketing the nighttime. Okay. So from that and again of course we don’t have to rehash this but the the the the timekeepers were just now going to a point here on the fourth day. So you certainly don’t want to say that God is trying to measure his work by the sun or by calendar days or anything else that didn’t even exist. Um so that that’s enough on that. But verses 14 through 19 where are we? We are looking at God said and God said let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to

Separate the day from the night and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years and let them be lights in the expanse of the heaven to give light upon the earth. And it was so. And God made two great lights, the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night and the stars. And God set them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth to rule over the day and over the night and to separate light from darkness. God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day. So we have the

Appointment of lightbearers for days and seasons and years in this passage. Well, what about general revelation would integrate with that? Well, as it turns out, as the greening of the earth and the increasing oxygen levels and the proportions of carbon dioxide, carbon dioxide going down, oxygen going up, in this same era, in the same time frame, our atmosphere goes from this translucent overcast kind of situation to being transparent. Voila, you can see the lightbearers that completely agree with that. Now, anything that works off of uh the idea

Of timing themselves, whether it be for hibernation or feeding or reproduction or whatever, any kind of things that need to know the position of the lightbearers, you know, now God has set up his creation to create those creatures. Uh we didn’t have those prior to this day, but so again, remember we’re viewing this is from the earth’s surface. This is why I gave that frame of reference at the beginning because people want to say, “Oh, no. This is when the sun, moon, and stars were created. They were created on day four.” Now, we’ll have to notice that day four,

It doesn’t use the Hebrew word barra. Uh day four is not talking about the creation of the lights. They were created in Genesis 1:1, the heavens and the earth. However, from the standpoint of the surface of the earth, they did become visible and become lightbearers and all that they were to be for man’s use and creatures use on the fourth day. And and and and the Hebrew speaks to that. And so, it’s a very faithful interpretation of day four to say that the uh lightbearers became visible from the surface of the earth at that time. Again, that that integrates with what we

Would expect or what we see in the data. So that’s pretty cool. All right, verses 20 through 23. God and God said, “Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures, and that birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the heavens.” So God created the great sea creatures and every living creature that moves with which the waters swarm according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. And God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the

Earth.” And there was evening and then there was morning, the fifth day. So we have the extensive filling of the seas and skies and soish life and special revelation. Well, what do we have in general revelation? The biggest I want to say the biggest bang of them all. Not the big bang, but uh the explosion known as the Cambrian explosion, the Avalon explosion in in the traditional in the geological time frame. These are from I think 500 to 600 million years in that span. uh the these happen very quickly. All of these diverse sea creatures uh we find um and it’s just an an amazing

Explosion of this kind of teeming of life exactly what scripture is saying is happening on this uh on this day. So pretty cool. And that the C explosion is something every Christian should study for the fun of it and the joy of how exciting it is. But it’s just so fascinating too uh to see the creatures that came about with no precursors. um they just are there all of a sudden. So, sort of sounds like God spoke them into existence to me. Uh that seems to be what the data indicates. So, I see a lot of agreement there. So, where are we? We’re now to verse 20 uh 4 and 25 where

It says, “And God said, let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds, livestock, and creeping things, and beasts of the earth according to their kinds.” And it was so. And God made the beasts of the earth according to their kinds and the livestock according to their kinds and everything that creeps on the ground according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. So you have this general category of special land mammals and livestock and all this coming about. Well, what do we see in the general revelation in the fossil record exactly

That after the Cameron explosion and all these creatures uh in the oceans? Now we’re seeing land creatures and and fossils and all kinds of things. And this is all prior to mankind. So in this same span of time, the same era, uh that I would say is a long time, but the order of these things, this event bye-vent chronology continues to be consistent, the word of God and the uh and the world of God. And of course, verse 26 and 27, the climax here. And God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and

Over the birds of the heavens, and over the livestock, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created man in his own image. He hasn’t said that about anything else. In the image of God, he created him. Male and female, he created them. Finally, we have a a uh spiritual creature. And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and every living thing that moves on the earth. And behold, I’ve

Given you every green plant.” And I’m not going to continue reading, but obviously the point is that the last thing to be made was humanity. And sure enough, in the fossil record and any records we have, the last thing to be created uh were people made in the image of God. So we we we’ve now got to the uh the end here of you know the scriptures and of course he says and and God saw that everything that he had made and behold this is verse 31 and behold it was very good. So his works of creation are finished they are very good and we from start to finish what we see in

Special revelation event by event is mirrored in God’s general revelation. I hope that is uh hope I put that point home. All right. So, I’m just going to quickly bring up here. So, the days then um I’m just highlighting those. Hopefully, they’re appearing on your screen as they are on mine. And we see God’s work week, day one, day two, day three, day four, day five in his word and in his world. They align and they integrate. And that is u a beautiful thing. Uh beautiful thing for sure. So u we don’t have to blavorver this point point I had this

Slide but um as we’ve already said there any time period is possible of verses one and two because the first day hasn’t even begun. So whether you’re young earth old earth or anything else the universe and the earth by special revelation and general revelation both were finished uh well not finished excuse me both were in existence and present the world being covered in water before the first day uh even began. So another quote from Herman Herman Bob on this um again from 1901. It will not do as has already been stated to pack the first creation and the unformed state of

The earth into the first day. For the first evening which does not coincide with the darkness of Genesis 1:2 began and could only begin after the light was created and had shown for a time. Hence the first day began with the creation of light. After it had shown for a time evening fell and morning came. At that point, the first day was over. Genesis calculates the day from morning to morning.

All right, let me summarize real quick here. Scripture and creation are infallible historical records. I believe that they are infallible historical records of God’s supernatural and progressive works of creation carried out over his six day work week followed by his Sabbath. the age of the universe and the earth are not given in scripture. They’re actually irrelevant to any doctrine of the church. And regardless of how old, they don’t offer any support to Darwin’s theory of evolution. We’re not gonna go on that tangent probably too far time. But but

The naturalistic unguided theory of evolution, this lends no support to because um for lots and lots of reasons, more all the time. It doesn’t matter how old the universe is unless you want to give it infinity time, which many try to do. Uh you you can’t make that um the theory of natural selection um uh following random mutations. Uh you can’t make that work no matter how much time you’ve got. So that’s not really in view here at all. Um on this um continuing the summary, Genesis 1:1 reveals creation x nilo of the heavens and the earth prior to the first workday.

Genesis 1:2 establishes the frame of reference from for viewing the six days. So it helps us understand the perspective. Uh Genesis 1 3-2 is a pattern of God’s daily work and rest which is analogous to man’s daily work and rest. God’s work is incomprehensibly finetuned. It demonstrates precision, ingenuity, and personal care over a vast but finite length of time. By the absence of the evening and morning refrain for the seventh day and the references to our ability even today to enter God’s rest from creation by the blood of Christ uh from Hebrews 4, we

Know that God’s Sabbath relates to ours by analogy and not identity. So the Sabbath is really key here uh because that by itself tells us these days and that Sabbath are not the same as ours because that Sabbath is ongoing. So it’s clearly an analogy to our uh weekly day of rest or our Sabbath. It’s not in an identity relationship. So just to conclude to restate my assertion belief is that an analogical day’s view of scripture is the most biblically faithful and the most constructive integration of God’s infallible revelations together. End of presentation.

Thank you for that. That was excellent. Um, that’s again the second time you specifically I’ve heard give that presentation and I feel like just like is typical with a second listen through different things stand out to you. Um, there were some some things in there that I have to noodle on and think about because you made some very good points. Some people in chat also recognize the same thing. Folks, if you are in chat and you have a question for Aaron, you can begin sending those through. Now, make sure to please put a little Q before your question to help it stand

Out and not get lost in the mix. Before we uh receive some of those, I’m going to ask you a few questions and let’s see how your position would respond to some of these. Sound good? Sure. So, you kind of already talked about this a little bit, but for those who may have just joined now, or just to reiterate, what would you say to the claim, like we saw from Ellen White earlier, that our 7-day week, which is seven literal 24-hour days, proves that’s what God used in creation. She’s saying that her vision proves, is that what you’re saying? She’s saying

She did. She claimed to be shown in vision that the seven days as we know like the 7-day week as we know that’s the exact that proves that it was the fact that we follow that proves that that’s also what God used in the creation account. It was seven literal 24-hour days just like ours. my susp uh I would suspect that your whole entire premise is based on different presuppositions that you’re essentially saying it’s what we read there is analogous to our work week. Yeah, that’s right. I I mean, how could I how could I verify a vision of hers and want to say, “Well, okay, I’ve got

Scripture here, and now you’ve added something on top of it that’s your vision of interpret.” I I could just say that’s an interpretation, whether it’s a vision or not. I could just say it’s an interpretation. Um, and that’s fine. Okay, let’s wrestle then with the text, but don’t give me um don’t tell me by authority. What what she’s doing is saying is by my authority is higher than your interpretation or excuse me my interpretation is higher because I’ve had a vision therefore my interpretation is better than yours. That that’s very very similar to some of

The Young Earth today organizations which hold their interpretation at least in my estimation they hold it as the word of God. And I say that because if you disagree with them, they would say, “You’re undermining the word of God because you don’t believe you believe in evolution and millions of years.” They always tie those together. Well, I I don’t believe in evolution anyway. Um, but the millions of years part, um, if I disagree with that, I’m disagreeing with their interpretation. I’m not disagreeing with scripture at all and wouldn’t want to do that. So, I would

Say the same to her. I bring that up a lot um because that’s kind of how it is because again, that’s what their organization claims. as their organization claims and those in the audience will know who have seen um you know have been here for any length of time um that’s exactly correct. They claim that she was the infallible interpreter because God essentially gave her um visions to confirm what the correct interpretation is. So that is then equated with well if you go against this you just don’t believe the Bible. Yeah. Yeah. We we got to be really

Careful with I mean I am fallible. I’m everything I said may be wrong. I I don’t think it is. I wouldn’t want to teach it if if it were, but I got to be really careful of holding my interpretation as the word of God. Is that not bordering on idolatry itself? My interpretation now is what I’m actually worshiping and holding to my pride rather than just the text. Interesting observation. So my second question, this is another common one and we didn’t really get into this too much, so I’ll be curious to hear your answer. According to your view, death would have

Had to have been around before Adam and Eve. Correct. That’s correct. But doesn’t Romans 5 say that death entered the world by Adam’s sin? How could death have been around before that? Sure. Well, I’m very very glad you pointed to scripture and not your vision. Sorry. Because now I can go look it up, right? Well, let’s see. What does Romans 5, I believe it’s going to be verse 12. What does this say? Okay. Therefore, just as sin came into the world, this is from the ESV, Romans 5:12, starting. Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man and death through

Sin, and so death spread to all men because all sin. For sin indeed was in the world before the law was given. But sin is not counted where there is no law. Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one to come. So, um, has death come in, uh, by one man’s trespass? Yes. Context is king, right? What’s the context? People, man, the image of God. This says nothing about the life, other life forms, what we might just say, animal death. Scripture doesn’t speak to

Animal death. Um, animals are not made in moave. They are not in the image of God. Um, it does not impugn the atonement. Doesn’t have anything to do with Christ. It doesn’t in any way negate uh redemption or the gospel or anything for uh roaches and ants and dogs and trees and whatever else to die uh before the fall of man. It’s just not relevant. Yeah, that was something I had to wrestle with because contextually um Paul Paul’s point there is in the context of like headship and like representation and original sin and these sorts of things. And uh it’s a

Little bit broad I think to try and import into there that it’s necessarily referring to death period um anything what whatsoever. Um though the typical response you’re going to hear to piggyback off of that is but God said after the creation account all everything was good. So are you saying that God thinks it’s good that animals are dying for example? Well the first thing we want to note if God says something it’s good. Yeah. So I mean that’s just kind of axiomatic here right? So if he does say it, it is good. No matter what it is, I’m going to trust him that it is good. So

Now we got to figure out, well, what is he saying, right, in these things, right? So, so this is going to tie in with your theology and understanding of the Garden of Eden. Yep. And and and we’re going to note in scripture, where was Adam formed? Outside the garden. Yep. That God took him and placed him in the garden. the garden meaning a special place, a unique place, a place uh apparently of a really light workload. Yeah. Because because when it gets kicked out, that’s the main thing is man, you’re going to earn your bread by the sweat of your brow and things are

Going to be really hard and and the ground it’s there’s going to be thorns and thistles growing. Note, they weren’t created at that point. He was cast out into this world. So my point of all this is to say that what’s happening outside the garden just like what’s happening in the garden is good because the God declared it good. But what’s going on outside the garden and if if it’s what general revelation is telling us meaning things were killing each other and there’s dead things in the ground and all that is that good? Uh yeah as a matter of fact

It is. Wait a minute. Am I saying that God, you know, would, you know, death is good, is a good thing, that carnivory is a good thing? And and and of course, there’s quite a debate out there, uh, that you can find online, people back and forth, but I’ll just read the text that’s, uh, quick to go to. Let’s see. Let me get to Psalms. Psalm 104.

The study Bible’s too big to even hold on to. All right. Psalm 104 tells us, of course, this is referencing creation, so on, but you got this this note in here. Um, uh, this is start, I’ll just start in verse 19. He made the moon to mark the seasons. The sun knows it’s time for setting. You make darkness, and it is night. When all the beasts of the forest creep about, the young lions roar for their prey, seeking their food from God. When the sun rises, they steal away and they lie down their dens. man goes out to his work and to his labor um until evening. And then it it goes on

Down uh it talks about these all look to you uh to give them their food and do season. That’s verse 27. Then 28. When you give it to them, that being God, they gather it up and when you open your hand, they are filled with good things. I I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that the text is saying when God feeds the young lions their prey. Uh this is meat eating lions eating meat eating other animals. U they are being filled with good things. So again what God says is good. Who am I to argue? Uh if the lion is tearing apart the will of the beast I might be squeamish about it. I

Might not like it in my modern uh PETA influenced world. Right? I’m not an animal I’m not an I’m a conservationist. I’m a biblical uh theist hopefully but I’m not an animal rights activist. Uh but I’m to be a steward by God’s command of his creation, right? But which you know if I go out and hunt a rabbit as I used to do and have it for dinner, I am not committing sin and nor is the lion committing a sin when he tears apart the will the beast and has it for dinner. God’s word says it’s good. God doesn’t change. So just because this passage in Psalms is

Written Psalm is written about things happening probably after the fall, right? I would assume that God didn’t change if if God’s given good things then it would have been good before the fall too. Um so he’s declaring it good. Anyway, that that would be my answer to that. Um scripture does not speak about animal death uh before the fall. There’s there’s great debates about this, but um anyway, yeah, that’s a big one with SDAs because a big part of their whole paradigm is that heaven is a return to Eden. And you have to adhere to the SDA health

Message, which is a lifestyle of vegetarianism, preferably veganism, if you want to be fitted for translation to heaven, because if it’s a return to Eden and Adam and Eve were only permitted to eat plants, nuts, berries, etc., um well, you have to demonstrate now while you’re on your your probation that you can be trusted to adhere to the edenic diet um in heaven. And so this is a big one for them that well there was no animal death prior to uh the the fall of of man. And that only came later on with Ellen White claimed again to be shown in vision that God permitted meat

Eating after the flood as an emergency because all of the the plant life had died. So there was nothing, you know, for all those herbivorous creatures to eat for who knows how long. They just sustained off of, you know, what’s on the ark. Um, yeah. Well, but now notice notice we we do have some points of agreement here because you’ve been talking about this this aspect of Eden, Garden of Eden. Note, I differentiated the Garden of Eden from animal planet that’s outside garden. So, uh, I don’t have an I don’t have a problem accepting that Adam and Eve were vegetarian and

Maybe there was no animal death in the garden. I don’t know. You know, that’s kind of a supernatural place anyway and special. So, I’m not going to die on a hill of saying they weren’t vegetarian or saying that Eden wasn’t a special place where there were no was no animal death. May maybe not. I don’t know. But yeah, you you highlight an important aspect to understand too. And there’s uh El Michael Morales has a really good book on this. I’ve referenced it a couple times, namely with regards to um the scapegoat in Leviticus 16 and and the temple work. His his book, Who Will

Ascend the Mountain, which is a biblical theology of the book of Leviticus, but he talks about in there in passing uh he mentions how Genesis is giving us a picture of a a temple cultus. And by cultist, we mean like a a worship pattern. Um, not a cult like people might might think. Um, but how Eden was a specific and special place amidst everything else, which is something you’ve kind of alluded to tonight. So, um, interesting topic maybe for another time. Just again one of those things that shows it’s important to understand broadly um some of the peripheral

Details because those sorts of things can also inform um our conclusions on certain interpretations. Now do you know who Dr. Terry Mortison is? I do. He is a longtime uh speaker uh for Answers in Genesis. Uh I don’t know if he’s still with him. I assume so. Um he’s he’s very consistent um and he has been for decades. So, congratulations to him. So, that I know you said you don’t want to to to dance around with the word yum, but I wanted to ask you, he says uh that yum in the Old Testament is a literal day. And the context of Genesis 1 confirms this. And he says that Yam is

Defined in its two literal senses in verse 5 and is repeatedly used as a number. So, one day, second day, etc. and with evening and morning, which elsewhere in the Old Testament always means a literal day. Does that not prove that day in Genesis is clearly referring to a a literal 24-hour day? Well, no. I would say it’s not. and and and again I’ve referenced or I’ve mentioned that for those listeners who want to pursue these kind of discussions you need to hear this kind of dialogue between I would say experts in debate well facilitated to wrestle through

These thing and there are some out there uh I’m trying to I can’t call them off the top of my head that I’ve listened to because I’m not a Hebraist or anything like that or scholar um but I can quickly note you know any any references to saying these days must be uh and then they talk about the days we have today. I I just don’t see how I could accept that when God himself hasn’t even appointed the timekeepers for the first three days. And I do know there are people who say that the first three don’t have to be calendar solar days and and the last three do for that reason.

Um and that’s an argument again hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years old back and forth. But um boy I yeah I I yeah I guess I don’t want to have that argument because it’s been had and has been had and and these things and and much better expositors than me can explain why it is not required uh to be again a solar day or a counter day. And that’s the issue. It’s not that it’s not a day. You’ll notice I’m accepting I’m accepting the word day yom as a um what would be the right way to put it? an interactive an interactive basis not a timekeeper basis. Now what I’m referring

To I’m going to show another book here. Um Vern Pris Westminster U seminary uh he has written a book called redeeming science and he he lays this out very well but he makes the case about how we moderns we’re we’re looking at our Apple Watch right and we’re timing things. We set alarms and and it’s just the way we think. But but the listeners and and the receivers of Genesis and Exodus and so on, they’re in an interaction mode of existence. Events mark the days and and things happen, you know, by events, not by a strict chronology. So the point

Wasn’t, I don’t think, of of the scripture to say this was a calendar day or a solar day or a a the way we think about it, it’s God’s again, it’s God’s interaction. What is God doing? He’s working. He speaks. He works. there’s an evening of some type. There’s no sun appointed yet. So, I don’t really, you know, there’s an evening and there’s a morning. Um, and then you start another day. Uh, but I don’t have any reason to accept that it’s a solar day or a calendar day. Um, so yeah, that argument’s been uh there’s just so much there’s just so much out there. I mean, uh, it’s been

Even before this, but like, you know, back with Gleon Archer and just, uh, Walter Kaiser and just Hugh Ross and just all sorts of people have for years and years and years and years and years and years have argued that. Um, and I think the key thing here yet again is um, presuppositions because you’re not saying that it’s not a day, you’re simply saying it’s not a solar day. Yeah. It’s it’s the Ross and Kaiser debate with Ham and Lyall on the John Ankerberg show that anyone can find on YouTube or anything that I’m recalling, but it’s like three hours and after

About an hour of talking about Yom I want to turn it off like you know it’s just been beat so much and and the case is just not established just not compelling uh on on the younger view that you have to interpret it as a solar day. But again, in my view, analogical days aren’t rejecting the word yom as a reference to a day. Yeah. You’re saying it’s analogical solar day or counter day. It’s God’s word day. And they’re real days. I I really think those are days, but I don’t have a reason to think they’re our days or they’re like our days um in in

Identity. They’re an analog to them, right? And the Sabbath day is key to that because we know our Sabbath day is a normal day and we have a seven-day work week and a Sabbath. But we know from scripture the Sabbath day for God is ongoing. That right there tells you it must be by analogy. If the seventh day is not an ident in an identity relationship with my seventh day, then why did the first six days have to be? especially when God’s testimony in creation is that they weren’t they were long periods of time, finite periods for sure, not indefinite, but uh the Sabbath

Is not 24 hours for God. So I don’t see a reason to think the others were. Now another common objection also brought up by Dr. Mortonson um is that when Jesus comments about and I hear this one a lot when Jesus comments about Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, knowing the flood, Sodom, Gomorrah, etc. He clearly took the events recorded in Genesis as literal history. And he says several passages show that Jesus believed that man was created at the beginning of creation, not billions of years after the beginning, as an old earth view implies, which confirms the young earth

Creationist view. How would you respond to that? Yeah, you we definitely would have to tease out the the text there um to to see that, but I I certainly have read that these references to man being created in the beginning that that’s a general reference. Not that he was created at the beginning, verse one, you know, uh clearly, a matter of fact, clearly God, he wasn’t created at the beginning. He was created on day six. So uh you know we could we could parse this as far as you want to but uh the beginning was verse one. In the beginning God created the heavens and

The earth. So Adam wasn’t created in the very very beginning. So what are we really talking about here? The difference is just the amount of time and and and the idea that it’s after billions of years to a god who a day is like a thousand years and a thousand years is like a day. What I don’t even know why we’re having that conversation. It doesn’t matter to God the distance of time from the beginning until his uh final creation in man. I I just don’t see that as as relevant to much of anything. All right, let’s move to some comments from the audience. Kenny asks, “What are

Your thoughts on the Genesis creation narrative being a palemic against the Enuma isish?” There you go. That’s right. Um I I referenced Jack Collins a little earlier. Uh see John Collins in his commentary Genesis uh 1-4 which you can get. He’s also got a book called Science and Faith which I could pull down and also one called Reading Genesis. Well, um so the only comment I’ve heard a lot of people say, “Oh, Genesis is a pymic against uh the Babylonian account or some other things.” And you know his comment and he’s he’s an expert on these things is you know maybe it’s a

Pyic a little bit but you know if it is it’s a pretty mild one as pymics go. So I mean my I don’t have the expertise to comment further than what he said that certainly when you when you have God especially on day four you know emphasizing that it’s God who made the sun and moon and stars you you’ve clearly got a distinction there from those um beliefs of the time that would be worshiping those things. So yeah I mean it’s certainly against those things whether it’s a pyic or not how strong I’ll leave that to the experts. Oh, you’re muted, Miles. Sorry, I’m not

Hearing you. Sorry about that rookie mistake. Next comment here is from Cindy, and you got an upgrade from her, brother. She called you Dr. Aaron Anderson. Maybe there’s something I’m not I was about to say, maybe there’s something I’m not aware of here, but her question is, “Is there a timeline in years or whatever that is an overlay, so to speak, of your slide displayed now, please?” I’m not sure what slide exactly she was talking about. Um, but uh maybe you can make sense of that question. Well, I’m going to put the timeline back up and then I’m going to switch back

Here in case you’re showing it at all. Um, so I’ll read the question again. And yes, no, I’m I do not have a PhD and I would not uh claim to have one when I don’t. Um, so read the question’s gone. So read me the question again, please. Oh, there it is. She she asks, “Go ahead.” Oh. Oh, in years. that the key is not that I do I have a timeline but about in years. Uh yes, as a matter of fact, I I can do that. Let me go back over here. It’s going to be too small to see. I’m going to tell you on this screen, but I do have a slide at the end of this deck.

Um and I’ll just run it super fast here. Uh some other things I had to show. I think it’s at the very very end. Yep, there it is. All right. You can go pull this uh off the internet from the Reasons to Believe um site. Uh, this is a little bit dated and again I’m sure it’s too hard to read, but if you do pull it and and you can read it on your screen, it does give a timeline of general revelation uh and how it correlates to the days of Genesis. So, I I’m just going to refer you to that. Uh, it’s called the Genesis 1 creation days. I I think if you just

Search on that with reasons to believe, uh, it it will come up. It’s been a long time since I pulled that up. Um, so sorry I, you know, we can, uh, Miles, if you want, I can certainly get a link for you to put in the show notes if you like. Sure. Yeah, we can put it in the uh, description box. Sure. So, we’ll, we’ll try to do that. Sure. Cool. All right, brother. This will be the last question. You touched on this a little bit earlier, and it kind of piggybacks off of that. Couldn’t Romans 5 be referring only to spiritual death? Well, let’s look again. I I I believe it

Was pretty pretty clear about, you know, death coming um to a man. So, Romans 5:12. There we go. Back to there. Just as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned, for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin not counted where there’s no law. So, I I won’t go on from there. Uh it’s certainly um perhaps we need to bring into this um you know the fall of man and when we’re talking about death physically versus spiritually. U so and and not being a theologian I want to be

Careful I want to be real careful on some of these verses of what refers to what. But I I think it’s um the rest of the context of that passage in Romans uh seems to me to be referring to um people physically dying. That may include, you know, um spiritual death as well and condemnation, but um anyway, that’s maybe both would be the best way to say it. Oh, you’re muted again. Interesting observation on Kenny’s part there. Um, that final question there. I was like, you know, that’s actually kind of a good question. I’m gonna study that further. Yeah, you’re right. You’re driving me

Back to the word. Maybe I need I’ll go back now and I’ll look say, all right, I’ve always thought of that as physical because people dying and Jesus raises to life, but certainly there’s the spiritual. Sure. Yep. Well, brother, again, thank you so much for being here. Uh, you can share any final thoughts that you have. I don’t know if you have any sort of platform out there whatsoever anywhere that you would like people to check information out. Maybe you don’t. Maybe you don’t have any final words, but if you do, now is the time for those and then I’m going to let you go and I’m

Going to do my closing remarks. Sure. Well, no, my final word would be uh a little bit of a reiteration, but that is to read broadly, study the word, and read those read the best of everyone. Sure. Read Terry Mortis. Read Ken Ham. Read Read the best. Actually, actually, I’m probably should point you to Marcus Ross. I should point you to Kurt Weise. Some of these guys, read the best Young Earth has to offer, but then read them in the context of the best another view has to offer. And those those guys engaging. You know, there’s a lot of very thoughtful people on the

Young Earth community today that are not quite as um let’s just say abrasive as many have been in the years. Um certainly read uh go to the reasons to believe. I think it’s reasons.org site if you want to see what a day age view is like from from Hugh Ross. That’s very close to an analogical uh view, but analogical doesn’t have to be old. it it turns out it probably is because the earth seems to be saying that. Um, so reading broadly, I would say be encouraged. I hope nothing I’ve said would discourage anyone. If you’re struggling in your faith, um, happy to

Engage personally with anyone. I don’t have a platform. uh you know myself I I just love this because I want the word to be pre-minent in people’s lives and anyone who’s doubting or struggling in their faith for whatever reason because if they feel like general revelation is causing doubts because it’s in conflict with the word I want to resolve that conflict there shouldn’t be a conflict in my interpretation there’s not a conflict so I hope that’s a help to those who are struggling with what they’ve been told there is no dichotomy here there are many views uh and I may

Change my view in the future right as I study the word more I think what I understand’s right but uh maybe it needs to be tweaked some more we’ll see amen bro well again thank you so much for being here I’m going to let you go and I’m going to do my closing remarks thank you see you miles all right folks hopefully that was beneficial to you always nice to get a little bit of a break not just for myself to not be doing all the talking but also for you to not always just have to hear me uh go on my well whatever you want to call them uh presentations um

Etc. So thank you for being here. Like I said hopefully it was beneficial. I want to remind you if you are not a member please consider becoming a member. We are getting into some really fun content on that side of things. were a little bit more interactive on that side as well because I don’t have to be as um formalized and kind of following a a schedule and a a cadence if you will. I can be a little bit more relaxed interact with you all and so if that is something that is of your fancy please consider doing that. There’s a comment here from one of our members share who

Says the great controversy worldview has always confused me. When God knows everything, controls everything, omnisient, omnipotent, omnipresent, he does not need to find out what mankind might do. Yes, Sher. This is a very good observation. I’ve been talking recently about this aspect of the great controversy worldview here um quite a bit in the last few weeks or so and I’ve mentioned an individual by the name of Richard Rice. Richard Rice is an SDA theologian who is uh credited with helping influence the titling of open theism for the open theist position. Um

And it makes perfect sense in the great controversy worldview um to affirm open theism. Now for those that do not know um a lot of times they will try to use the language dynamic omniscience. Um, it’s basically the idea that God does not know the future because it has not happened yet. And that there are this large number of possibilities that are out there, but God doesn’t ultimately know because it hasn’t happened yet. And that’s an interesting observation, Sher. It’s a very interesting observation because that is the consistent position. Now, the SDA church is not going to

Officially recognize, at least not that I have seen, um, to affirm open theism. However, that is the consistent ends of the Adventist God. He is a reactionary or they are reactionaries. Um, they do not know things exhaustively in such capacity. And sure, if you pour into that, what you’re going to find is that well, you are going to have to come to a fork in the road. That is if you want to be consistent. Now, there are some that try to saddle the fork and as the fork starts to go and get wider and wider and wider, it becomes harder and harder to

Saddle the fork. But the point being, you’re going to have to come to a point of uh wrestling with that. And how does God know the future? Is God working out a decree um such that he exhaustively will know what will come to pass because he has decreed it to come to pass? You will often hear the claim, well, if you believe that, then you believe God is the author of evil, which is not true because then you get into some of the finer mechanics of what is being said, that God has decreed all things to come to pass or working all things out after the council of his will, etc. Or you’re

Going to have to go down the road of the open theist route that well, God doesn’t really know. He knew a number of possibilities. Uh what’s called mullanism is kind of trying to be the middle ground, saddling the the fork in the road there. So you can study those subjects at your own leisure if that is a topic of interest to you and you can kind of see some of the different theories that are out there. But you rightly recognize that yes, the great controversy worldview requires a god who is a reactionary who does not know things exhaustively and uh is basically

Responding to and having to well vindicate his character etc. these types of things. So thought that was an interesting question and I just wanted to end on that tonight. May Christ richly bless you in the grace and peace won by him and his vicarious death on the cross for sinners. Thank God for the gospel. Amen. And Marinatha