The gospel and the New Testament narrative unravel when these things aren't literal.
- The geologies are meaningless. (or in serious error)
- Who wrote the Books of Moses? (and when)
- If Adam wasn't a literal human then he didn't literally sin.
- If Adam didn't literally sin, then there is no original sin.
- If there is no original sin then being born in Adam's race does not make you a sinner.
- If we are not redeemed from original sin by Christ's payment of the death penalty...
- Then the Atonement was of none effect.
- If the Atonement was of none effect, we are lost in our sin and awaiting judgment of our works.
- We all fall short of the perceived standard (the glory of God) and stand condemned.
- Faith in Christ can't help us, the Atonement is null and void. (as outlined above)
- Where does that leave us?
I always took the Creation narrative as anecdotal, which means you can pick up being redeemed by Christ's payment.
Last week I went to the Ark Encounter and Creation Museum in Kentucky. I now have doubts about the Creation narrative being anecdotal.
The founder, Ken Ham, has a 5 part book series called New Answers that I know you’ll be fascinated to know about.
I haven’t read your other email yet. Thumbing through the contents of Book 1 is the problem of distant star light. A Christian expert in the field writes the chapter. There is so much good stuff! It’s hard to succinctly state it. However, it is written in easy to understand terms. Addressing 2 parts …
1st, Einsteins Theory of Relativity shows that time is not a constant. While on Earth light from a star appears instantaneous, the photon would experience a different passage of time. This time is called “universal time.”
The author uses a concept laymen are familiar with, “local time.” If we flew to Colorado, we would land at the same time we took off - using Colorado local time. It would appear that the flight was instantaneous. To the passengers on the plane, the experience of time passing would be 2 hours.
He surmises that the Bible is written in Earth local time and not universal time.
2nd, The Big Bang has a time problem of its own called Horizon. They invent “inflation” with no evidence. Funny how only Christians need evidence to believe what the Bible says is true while nonbelievers conjecture is to be accepted at face value, by default.
Ken Ham asserts that if the first verse of the Bible is wrong, the rest of it is wrong. His life’s work powerfully shows how the Creation story, including the flood, has overwhelming evidence. In fact, it is not the evidence but the anti-Biblical paradigms, that go out of their way to adopt models contrary to the Bible and disregard evidence that are shown lacking!
One great example is the assumption that ice core samples have layers conjectured to correspond to years. A plane crashed in 1948 was discovered 50 years later under 250 feet of ice with thousands of ice core layers.
Another powerful example is Mt. Saint Helens eruption in 1980. In minutes, the volcano deposited many layers of sediment, proving the secular LONG TIME model wrong.
Secular scientists DO NOT FOLLOW THE EVIDENCE. What a great time to be a believer!
