Archive for the 'Bible Commentary' Category

Update: Noah’s Flood started on April 20, 2807 BC

Tuesday, January 3rd, 2012

I have been working on a group of articles for http://geocreationism.com that attempts to organize the research documented on this blog for when the flood occurred. I have been attempting to verify my facts against additional sources, and when I got to the computation for the date written in Genesis 7:11, I found that the website I was using was incorrect. The date should be April 21, not May 2. This affects at least the following posts on this blog:

Honing in on the Date of the Flood — May 2, 2807 BC

What is Reconciliation?

Saturday, November 26th, 2011

 Reconciliation is an act of restoration. It assumes a separation between parties that needs due to differences that must be resolved. It can refer to a balance sheet with entries that have not been double-checked for accuracy, and the act of ensuring that when you add the credits to the debits, they add up to zero. In scripture, reconciliation is somewhere between the two.
Hosea 3:1
[ Hosea’s Reconciliation With His Wife ] The LORD said to me, “Go, show your love to your wife again, though she is loved by another man and is an adulteress. Love her as the LORD loves the Israelites, though they turn to other gods and love the sacred raisin cakes.”
In …

Death and Original Sin

Friday, November 18th, 2011

I have just finished writing several articles for http://GeoCreationism.com discussing death and Original Sin. For reference, here are the articles:

Our Death in Adam
Genesis 3:6-7
1 Corinthians 15:21-22
Romans 5:12

The common message is that death entered the world through the sin of Adam. However, there appears to be more than one meaning for the word death. This is commonly overlooked in discussions on original sin, regardless of one’s perspective. For example, when it comes to Original Sin, many YECs (Young Earth Creationists) always interpret “death” as physical, while many OECs (Old Earth Creationists) always interpret “death” as spiritual. Either extreme leaves any interpretation of scripture wanting.

There are three kinds of death in scripture, when it comes to sin. They …

New article on Genesis 3:16 - God punishes Eve

Wednesday, October 5th, 2011

http://www.geocreationism.com/scripture/genesis3-16-childbirth-god-punishes-eve.html – Address the problems of child birth before the fall.

An Honest Challenge to Catholics on Confession

Tuesday, June 28th, 2011

I respect Catholics. The more religious ones are fine witnesses of what an emissary of Christ should be. Well, I have several protestant friends who used to be Catholics. Their religion was keeping them away from God when God was calling them to come closer.

I was at one friend’s house the other day, and we were discussing Catholicism and his realization as a youth that he did not need an intermediary to speak with God. Eventually, that realization would change His walk with God, and his life.

To my Catholic readers, I invite you to consider the following scripture, taken from Mark 2:5-12…
5 When Jesus saw their faith, He said to the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven you.”…

Genesis 11:9 - The Tower of Babel - Young Earth Interpretation Supports an Old Earth (Part 1)

Saturday, May 28th, 2011

 9 That is why it was called Babel—because there the LORD confused the language of the whole world. From there the LORD scattered them over the face of the whole earth.
Genesis 11:9 has one of those oddities in it that I had always dismissed as just Moses’ writing style. It’s the double use of the word erets (world, earth). The two usages sound like subtly different meanings to me, but I always dismissed it because I assumed that either the earth was young, or Moses thought it was. At the very least, I didn’t think it mattered because the verses wasn’t really worth trying to reflect history, science, and such anyway. But now, in the context of this blog, I have come …

Genesis 11:5-8 - The Tower Babel - And the LORD Came Down… Twice

Thursday, May 19th, 2011

 5 But the LORD came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. 6 The LORD said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. 7 Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”

 8 So the LORD scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city.
Jubilees 10 records it as follows…
22 - And the Lord our God said unto us: Behold, they are one people, and (this) they begin to do, and now nothing …

Genesis 11:3 - The Tower of Babel - The Science and History

Friday, May 6th, 2011

 3 They said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar.
This verse has always been interesting to me. It suggests that under normal circumstances, stone would have been the common choice for their city and tower. Instead, they chose bricks, which they baked thoroughly. Verse 3 also suggests that not everyone used tar for mortar in their times, but they did. Apparently, they were being innovative.

When you think about the fact that building a tower and city from baked bricks and tar was sufficient in their mind to “make a name” for themselves, it suggests a level of innovation, that perhaps they were making history, or at least thought they were.

As I discuss …

Genesis 11:1-2 - The Tower of Babel - Yes, one language

Friday, April 22nd, 2011

 In Genesis 11:1-2 - The Tower of Babel - One Language?, I wrote the following…
Let us assume that science is correct, that Noah’s descendants were not the only people in the world, and that Noah’s descendants spoke some Semitic dialect (eventually giving way to Hebrew). Let us also assume that scripture is correct, but was written from the perspective of someone experiencing it, as opposed to watching it. In that case, what is the likely scenario for Noah’s people as they migrate east, likely following the Euphrates and/or the Tigris River(s) to the plains of Shinar? Well, based on archaeology and other sciences, they would have encountered city after city of people. Furthermore, the primary language spoken in these cities would have been Sumerian. There may have …

A Tale of Two Timelines

Sunday, March 6th, 2011

So, now I have two timelines that work out exactly. This is weird, and creates an unfortunate argument against my research, but I will live with it. Someone who wants to tear my theories down will say, “How do we know which one is right?” And to that, I fall back to my old standby: we do not have to know. My only goal is to show that with a reasonable set of arguments, I can demonstrate that my dating is reasonable. The fact that I have now done it with two sets of assumptions, neither of which was guaranteed to work, bolsters my bottom line, that it is reasonable to accept my date for the flood. But, for the record, here …