A Matter of Days - Framework Hypothesis

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Well, I want to invite you to take out your Bibles and turn with me to Genesis chapter 1.
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And we're going to read in just a moment verses 1 to 5.
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But before we read, I want to simply bring us up to speed as to where we are and where we've come from over the last several weeks.
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We are in an apparently very long study of the book of Genesis, which we started about eight weeks ago.
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I've been encouraged by many of you who have come to me and who have said, Pastor, we need this, we're thankful for this, we want to hear this.
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And many of you have said, don't rush.
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And it is often my inclination to rush because I feel like I want to get through so much.
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And I have so much to say that I feel like sometimes I shove too much in and there is not really the opportunity to digest.
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So, if you look at this sheet, this is on the back of your bulletin.
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You'll notice there are four theories we're looking at in regard to the subject of creation and the days of creation.
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And my original plan was to preach all that in one Sunday.
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And then I thought, one, that's not fair because I'd keep you here for several hours.
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But it also would be too much to take in.
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And then I said, well, I'll divide it in half and I'll do two one and two the other.
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And that didn't work out either because last week I ended up on the gap theory and I did the whole sermon.
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I looked down and I'd been preaching for almost an hour and I said, you know what, I'll stop.
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Well, today, in my mind I was trying to decide and I said, you know what, I'm just going to take these one at a time.
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And I'm just going to go slow.
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And if the sermon is shorter today, praise God.
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It might just be a little shorter today because it just be the way it is.
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But rather than shoving two in and making one long sermon that you might not remember or be able to be really encouraged by, I'd rather do a shorter sermon but fill it with good information.
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So that's sort of my process in trying to prepare for these things and just giving you a little hint into that.
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I want to remind you what we talked about last week before we start this week.
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Last week we began looking at the subject of the creation days.
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That's the title of the sermon, A Matter of Days.
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Because as you know, the biggest debate among those who believe in creation, not creation versus non-creation, but those who believe in creation, the biggest debate is whether or not the days of Genesis 1 are to be understood as literal 24-hour periods of time, or whether they are to be understood as long epics of time, or whether they are to be understood in some other way.
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And so that's what this is all about.
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And last week, if you remember, we talked about the Gap Theory.
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And we said the Gap Theory, if you look in your bulletin, I'll just go ahead and remind you what we talked about.
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The Gap Theory is also known as the Ruin and Reconstruction Theory.
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And it basically says this, between Genesis 1-1 and Genesis 1-2, there is an elapsed period of time, the length of which we do not know.
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And the reason why in verse 2 it says the earth was formless and void, is because the earth had undergone the judgment of God, because of the fall of Lucifer, who would become Satan, and the angels who followed Lucifer, which would become the demons.
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And this seeks to provide an outlet for why the earth would have the appearance of an older age, and yet the Bible only gives us a few thousand years of time.
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And they say, well, the reason why the earth looks so old is because it is so old.
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There was just an elapsed period of time, which they called the Gap.
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And in that Gap, an amazing thing took place.
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A whole earth was created, a whole society was birthed, an entire group of people called the angels were living.
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Satan fell, took a third of the angels with him, and that's where angels and demons come from.
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So as we said last week about the Gap Theory, and if you want to hear more about it, go back and listen to the message.
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But as we said last week, the danger of the Gap Theory is the danger of reading into the text something that is not there, because it is argument from silence.
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Those of you who have studied with me and you've learned from me, you understand the difference between exegesis and eisegesis.
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Exegesis means to read out of the text what is there, and eisegesis means to read into the text something that is not there.
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Exegesis is the right way to study.
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We go to the text, we pull out of the text.
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Eisegesis is the wrong way to study.
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We introduce into the text something that's not there.
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And I can't tell you of a better example of eisegesis than the Gap Theory, because it's not there.
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It has to be introduced.
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It has to be read into the text.
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And therefore I would say I would not accept it as a legitimate answer as to the origins that it tries to maintain.
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So that's a rehashing of last week.
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Let's go now to this week, and we're going to go Genesis 1, 1-5.
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We're going to read it.
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We're going to stand to read it, because we stand to give honor and reverence to God's Word.
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It also allows us to prepare our hearts to hear the Word preached.
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Genesis 1, beginning at verse 1.
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In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
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The earth was without form, and void and darkness was over the face of the deep.
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And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.
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And God said, Let there be light.
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And there was light.
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And God saw that the light was good.
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And God separated the light from the darkness.
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God called the light day, and the darkness He called night.
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And there was evening, and there was morning, the first day.
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May God add His blessing to the reading and to the hearing of His Word as we continue to study together.
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And may He write its eternal truths upon our heart.
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Amen.
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You may be seated.
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So last week we looked at the gap theory.
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And I want to again remind you, I'm not just trying to give you theological lectures for the simple point of trying to fill your minds with useless information.
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The reason why I'm telling you these things is, one, they are taught other places.
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And therefore, if you were to ever go to another church, or go to a seminar, or some kind of event that was teaching creation, you might hear these things.
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And it's good that you be taught these things here.
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Because I feel like it is incumbent upon us as the elders to teach you the truth.
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And that sometimes is part of teaching the truth is exposing error.
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And it's also important that you know these things, because theology matters, as we've said so many times.
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You need to know the truth and you need to be able to proclaim the truth.
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And you need to be able to distinguish right from wrong.
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And so that's my job.
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It's to try to teach you what the Bible says and what it doesn't say.
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That's the job of our elders.
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We are very serious and we take our role in this church very serious in the teaching of the Word.
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So today we're going to look at something called the framework hypothesis.
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And in your notes you can read sort of what it says.
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But I'm not going to use that.
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I'm going to use my notes.
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But later you can go back to those notes in the bulletin and you can use that as a refresher and a reminder.
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The framework hypothesis is based on the idea that the opening chapter of Genesis is not intended to communicate time or sequence of events, but rather it is a literary construction intended to communicate the idea that God created the world, but not really how and especially not when He created the world.
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Much of the system is based on a theologian by the name of Dr.
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Meredith Klein.
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You say, well, why even bring him up? Dr.
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Meredith Klein was one of the leading professors and teachers at Westminster Seminary, meaning he had influence over an entire generation of theologians in the Presbyterian denomination and other denominations that would send their pastors to Westminster for training.
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Even though Westminster trains primarily Presbyterian theologically, there were many others who were going to him for this training.
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And so if I tell you that Meredith Klein had influence over a generation, I am not exaggerating.
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I'll tell you how far and wide his influence.
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I once heard Dr.
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R.C.
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Sproul, one of my favorite teachers and mentors in the faith, say that he once considered the framework hypothesis as a viable option for understanding Genesis.
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This is one of the greatest teachers I've ever heard.
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But that shows you the level of influence that the framework hypothesis has had.
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So you say, well, what is it? You've already told us that he says that the first chapter of Genesis is not intended to communicate time and sequence.
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Well, how does he understand it? Well, I don't know if you remember this, but a few weeks ago I showed you how in Genesis there is a structure in days one through six that is easily recognizable if you just understand as you read that things go together.
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So I want to give you this structure again.
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You'll remember there are how many creation days? Six.
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If you say seven, seven is the Sabbath.
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Well, seven doesn't count.
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We'll talk about that in a minute.
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And I know over here you probably can't see as well.
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It's also in red, which makes it hard to see.
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Where's the blue one? I don't see it.
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Okay.
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This is important, so I'm hoping you'll be able to see it, but I don't see a blue one.
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So I'm just going to keep going.
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So we have days one, two, and three that correspond to days four, five, and six.
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What happened on day one? God created light and He separated light from darkness, right? So on day one you have the separation of light and darkness.
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What happens on day two? There is an expanse of separation of the heavens and the waters below.
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The waters in the heavens become the air and atmosphere and the clouds.
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We agree? And the waters below become the seas and the deeps.
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Are you with me? So we have air above, water below.
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So we have separation first, light, dark.
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Separation second, air above, water below.
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JJ, hush.
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He's mine.
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I can do that.
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You need to be quiet.
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Okay.
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So we got light and darkness separated.
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Air and water separated.
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What's day three? Day three we have land is separated from the water.
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So there is a separation, a boundary.
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But on the land is what? Vegetation.
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I'm just going to put veggies because it's easier to write.
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Thank you.
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All right.
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So now I've got a blue marker.
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We'll separate it from the red.
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Thank you, brother.
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I appreciate your help.
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Okay.
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When it's all over, I'll find the one that we were looking for.
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Okay.
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So we have one, two, three.
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We understand that's what happens on days one, two, and three.
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Now we get to day four.
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What is created on day four? The sun, the moon, and the stars are created on day four.
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Now can you see a connection here? You have to.
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Light and darkness are created on day one.
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Sun, moon, and stars created on day four.
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Dr.
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Klein makes a very big deal about this.
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Because he would say, can't have light without a light source.
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And actually a direct quote of his.
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I cannot conceive of light without a luminary.
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Or rather, he says, I can't conceive of light apart from luminaries.
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What are luminaries? Luminaries are the things that bear the light.
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So his argument begins here.
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In fact, I would say 90% of his argument is here.
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That day one and day four are concurrent.
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Therefore, it's not six days of succession.
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But it is a literary, poetic description of what has happened.
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Moving on.
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Air and water.
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What happens on day five? Birds.
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Birds live where? In the air.
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What else on day five? Fishes.
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I'll just write fish.
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I always heard of five loaves and two fishes.
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I can't be that wrong.
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So we have air, birds, water, fish.
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Okay.
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Now what happens on day six? Beasts of the land.
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Right there.
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And man, who is also in a sense a land-dwelling creature.
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And the food for both are provided on day six.
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So Dr.
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Klein established the idea that what you have here is not a succession of six days of creation.
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But rather what you have is a literary description of creation based on kingdom realms and kingdom rulers.
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Alright.
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So we would say the realms are light and darkness.
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The realms are sky above, water below.
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The realms are the sea and the land.
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And then you have the rulers.
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The rulers of the light and dark are the sun, the moon, and the stars.
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And remember, what does Genesis say? He made the greater light to rule the day.
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And the lesser light to rule the night.
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Right? So he's saying there's a poetry here.
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And what it is, is it's not trying to describe a succession of events.
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But what it's trying to describe is the providence of God in creation.
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And what God has given us, you can see how people can accept this, right? Because it makes perfect sense from a literary construction.
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He's saying it's not about time and succession.
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It's about two triads.
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This and this.
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A triad of realms who need rulers.
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And a triad of rulers to rule the realms.
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And the ultimate ruler, of course, is man who's set over it all.
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Right? So that's his argument.
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That's his position.
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That is the framework hypothesis.
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Has nothing to do with days.
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24 hours, who cares? Millions of years, doesn't matter.
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It's not about time.
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It's not about logical sequence.
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It has nothing to do with chronology.
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It's a literary, poetic structure designed to remind you that God created everything.
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What are some of the other arguments that he makes? Another argument that he makes is that when you get to day 7, day 7 is not given a marking point.
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You know that days 1 through 6 are given a marking point.
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Do you know what it is? There was evening, and there was morning.
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First day, there was evening, there was morning.
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Second day, evening, morning.
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Every day is given a marking post, except one.
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You know what one that is? Seventh day.
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Never says there was evening and morning the seventh day.
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And so Dr.
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Klein hypothesizes that what that means is the seventh day is not intended to be understood as a day, but is understood to be intended as a state.
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God is at rest.
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So it's not about the day.
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It's about God's state.
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After creating, He's at rest.
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There's no evening and morning, and it's not literal day.
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So if the seventh day is not literal, we shouldn't take any of the rest of the days as literal.
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Again, I'm not saying I believe this.
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I'm giving you the argument.
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You understand? His argument so far is we've got a literary construction that provides a framework.
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This is not intended to give time nor sequence.
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It's simply to give a framework of understanding of the providence of God in creation.
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The Sabbath day wasn't literal.
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And this is his argument, not mine.
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Since the Sabbath day isn't literal, we shouldn't take any of the other days as literal.
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But then there's the grand argument.
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And this is found in Genesis 2.
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So I invite you to turn there.
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In Genesis chapter 2, after he talks about blessing the seventh day and making it holy, that's verse 3, God resting from the work that he had done.
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We get to verse 4, and he says this.
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These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens.
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And right here he would say, see, there's the word day, and we don't think that's literal day.
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That's referring to like if I said in my father's day.
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You know, that's talking about a period of time.
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That's not a literal day.
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So you'd say, well, right there it shows you the word day is all kinds of different.
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But there's another key here.
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He says, notice it says, notice he says, these are the generations of the heavens and the earth.
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And he would ask this question to his students.
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Is the generations of the heavens and the earth what came before or what came after? Notice it says, these are the generations.
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Is that referring to the six days that came before, the seven days that came before? Or is it referring to what's about to come? Now, if you have an ESV Bible, you'll notice that the ESV Bible has a paragraph marker there, indicating that it would seem to tie in to what's coming next.
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But you remember that your Bible was not written with paragraphs.
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Neither was it written with paragraph markers or verses or even any numbers at all.
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Right? Your Bible was written when it was written, one line at a time.
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There was no paragraphs.
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There wasn't even really any exclamation points or anything like that.
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No punctuation.
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It was just lines of words.
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So we have to make a determination.
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Is this about what was just said or is this about what's about to be said? And here's, again, I'm making the argument because I at least want to be fair.
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He says this.
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Notice what comes next.
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It says in verse 5, There was no bush of the field, yet the land had no small plant of the field, had sprung up, for the Lord God had not yet caused it to rain on the earth, and there was no man to work the ground.
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So right there he says, See, if you get to this part, there's no vegetation.
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That takes you back to what? Day three.
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So are we going back in time? This is, again, Dr.
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Klein's argument.
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Are we going back in time to day three now where there's no vegetation? And he wrote a book.
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The title of his book was Because It Had Not Rained.
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Sounds like an odd book.
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But if you read right here, this is where he got that from.
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Because it says there was no rain on the land.
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And this is Barrett Klein's argument.
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It's a fairly simple argument.
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God uses natural means to create the world.
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This is his argument.
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This is not my argument.
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Again, listen.
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God uses natural means to create the world, such as rain, which is necessary for vegetation.
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And since those natural means are necessary, then we cannot accept this as an absolute chronology of creation, because this is unnatural.
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You see? The argument is simple.
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God doesn't have to, but he chooses.
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Again, I don't want to misquote or misrepresent Dr.
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Klein, but his point is simply this.
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God uses natural means, and because he's using natural means, this is unnatural.
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Therefore, this cannot be understood literally.
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This has to be understood parabolically.
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Now, that's a big word, but you should all know it, because you're all Christians.
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What is a parable? A parable is a story intended to teach some kind of spiritual principle.
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Remember the parable of the Good Samaritan, right? What's the point of the parable of the Good Samaritan? The man asks, who is my neighbor? Jesus tells a story about the Levi going by on the other side and the priest going by on the other side.
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And he said, but one man, the Samaritan, picked up the man, helped him.
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And then he asked the question, who was a neighbor to him? He said, the man who helped him.
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Well, you go and do likewise, right? So there's a point to the parable.
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You could go into all kinds of breaking down the parable and tearing apart who the Pharisee was and who the Levi was.
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You could do all that, but that's not how you treat parables.
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Parables are usually intended to have a main focal point, right? And the main focal point of the parable is the point that you ought not miss.
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And so when Dr.
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Klein looks at creation, he says, this is a parable.
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What's the point of the parable? God created the world by His power and providence.
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And we should trust God because He created the world.
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Doesn't matter how He did it.
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Doesn't matter how long ago it was.
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Doesn't matter the direction or cause of all of the events.
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Genesis 1 is only intended to teach us that God providentially created the world.
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Now, again, that sounds great, right? I mean, get on board with that.
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And you know what? It eliminates all the problems because now we don't have to worry about how old the earth is because Genesis 1 doesn't care.
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We don't have to worry about all them fossils and dinosaurs.
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Genesis 1 doesn't care.
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It really solves a lot of problems.
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But let me tell you, sometimes when you fill a hole, it's because you're digging another one.
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I mean, I don't know if that illustration makes sense.
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But he's trying to fill a hole and he's getting it from dirt from somewhere else.
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And the problem is the hole he's filling is making a hole elsewhere.
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So now that I feel like I've been fair in describing his position, I think I can maybe even, if I tried hard enough, maybe even convince one or two of you that he was right.
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That's how I know I've done my job, if I've shown you the position in such a way that it at least sounds like it could be understood and accepted.
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Because that's what he's done.
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He's got many thousands of people that believe his position is correct and are teaching it in churches.
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In fact, I want to give you...
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How many of you have ever heard of Biologos? Biologos is a...
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When I say Christian, I have to put the air quotes up, so forgive me.
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It is a Christian evolution ministry.
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Meaning, and you can look it up, it's biologos.com.
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And Biologos teaches that Darwin was right.
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That the earth and you as a human being were brought about by the process of evolution.
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And that evolution took you from a single cell to the glorious, grandiose person you are today.
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And it was that process that God used.
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Now notice they're going to interject God, and they say God used the process of evolution to bring about your current state.
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That is a major issue, wouldn't you say? That's a major problem with Scripture, wouldn't you say? Many of the people at Biologos use the framework hypothesis as their understanding of Genesis.
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You see the hole that happens? When you start to say that really all you have here is a literary framework, you really don't have a sequence of events, you really don't have a structure of time and causation, but what you have rather is simply a literary...
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And even some would say an apologetic understanding of creation because remember how I talked about a few weeks ago how the Egyptians had their own view of creation and the Babylonians had their own view of creation? A lot of framework hypothesis people will say that what it is is Moses isn't really writing about how creation happened, but he's responding to the Egyptians and the Babylonians and the others who have their views of creation, and he's just creating a narrative that says God did it.
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So his narrative is simple.
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You guys believe that Ra, the sun god, did it and you guys believe that this god over here did it or Baal did it or another god.
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We believe Jehovah did it and this is how he did it.
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But it's not anymore true as to how it happened.
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See how dangerous that is? See the serious problem with that? I want to read to you...
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I've talked enough about Dr.
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Klein.
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I want to read to you from Professor Ted Davis.
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This is...
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He is a professor at Messiah College, obviously a Christian school, or at least, again, Christian school.
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I want to read to you what he considers the core tenets of the framework hypothesis.
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These are the core tenets of this belief.
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Number one.
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The days in Genesis have nothing to do with historical time.
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They are literary devices employed by God in order to communicate the story of creation in understandable terms.
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So right away, it has nothing to do with time.
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Number two.
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When seen against the cultural and literary context of the ancient Near East, it is clear that Genesis was written to combat the polytheism and pantheism of other creation stories.
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It was not written to provide a scientifically accurate account of creation.
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So what he's saying is, it wasn't written to give an accurate account of creation.
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It was just written to respond to the Egyptians and to the other ancient Near East cultures who had their creation stories.
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Number three.
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Now, this is the third...
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There's only three of them.
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This one is, I think, the most profound.
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If you really listen.
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It is not possible to find a close match between what is proclaimed in Genesis and the details of natural history.
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We should not approach this text with inappropriate expectations.
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End quote.
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Do you hear what he's saying? Listen again.
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It is not possible to find a close match between what is proclaimed in Genesis and the details of natural history.
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Basically, what he's saying is this.
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If you read Genesis and you read it literally, like I would, there's no way to match that with what we know is true.
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Because that's the way he defines natural history.
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Natural history is scientific investigation which has led to the understanding of things like billions of years and all of the different theories about uniformitarianism and time and change and all these things.
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He's basically saying you can't have both.
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They cannot ever exist together.
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You just have to take one or the other.
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And here's the point.
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They've made their choice.
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They have said science must trump Scripture.
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I mean, ultimately, I'm not trying to be unfair here.
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Ultimately, and let me just read this.
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I'll read a quote from Ted Davis, the guy I'm describing.
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We emphasize that the framework view is simply about the Bible, not about science.
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The earth and the universe can be as young or old as anyone wishes they be because the literary form of early Genesis leaves this an open question.
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The days were probably meant to be understood literally as ordinary days but only in the context of a literary form that was not meant to be understood literally when taken as a whole.
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So again, what's the point? Genesis 1 is not literal.
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In fact, it's not even really even figurative in the sense that we might think of as figurative.
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It's really parabolic.
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It's a story.
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It's a moral story.
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You should believe God created the world.
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Why? Because we got a story that says He did it.
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It doesn't really tell us how He did it.
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It doesn't really tell us when He did it.
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It doesn't really tell us how long it took.
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It doesn't really tell us the direction or order of the way things went.
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It's not chronological.
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It's not cosmological.
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It doesn't provide a true history, but it should give you hope.
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I take great issue with this, I have to tell you.
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I want to quote another man.
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This is Dr.
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Conrad Heyers.
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He's from Gustavus Adolphus College, another school.
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And he says this.
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Speaking of Genesis 1, he says, The verses, he said, They have the appearance of narrative accounts whose purpose is to convey information concerning natural history and the life and times of the first humans.
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Yet the narrative form can be used for a variety of types of literature, from strictly historical narrative to the, quote, Once upon a time there lived, end quote, of the fable and the fairy tale.
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So basically he's saying that Genesis, yeah, it's narrative.
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Because what have I said since the first day I preached on Genesis? I said, I believe Genesis is narrative.
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Because from a literary standpoint, there is no argument.
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It is not poetry.
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It is not wisdom literature.
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It is narrative.
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It begins with a prepositional phrase.
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In the beginning God.
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So you have the where and the who and the why and the what.
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All there at the beginning.
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It's telling who did what.
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God created the heavens and the earth.
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It's narrative.
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Now does it have a poetic structure? I do think.
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I think there was poetic structure in the way God made the world.
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I think there is structure.
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And so I don't have any problem with this.
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Except if you say this means it didn't happen the way it said it happened.
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That's the issue.
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But again, going back.
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Basically what he's saying is it's all parable.
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You know the danger that is? A few years ago, I was listening to a debate.
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It was between Dr.
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James White and another man.
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Who is a part of the Jesus Seminar.
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His name is John Dominic Crossan.
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If you never heard of John Dominic Crossan.
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He is a very articulate.
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Very soft spoken.
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Very kindly old man.
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But he's one of the most dangerous heretics in the world.
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Because underneath that veneer of kindness.
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Is a man who will tell you that Jesus didn't rise from the graves.
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He died on the cross.
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And he was buried in a shallow tomb.
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And his bones were dug up and eaten by dogs.
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And John Dominic Crossan still teaches in churches.
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I've gotten invitations to come hear him speak here in Jacksonville.
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At churches.
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But I remember when John Dominic Crossan was talking about the miracles of Jesus.
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And he talked about the feeding of the 5000.
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And I remember this.
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I'll never forget this.
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What he said.
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He said when I see Jesus feeding 5000.
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I don't believe Jesus created fish.
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And I don't believe Jesus created bread.
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I don't believe he multiplied fish.
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And I don't believe he multiplied bread.
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What I believe.
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Is that Jesus saw that there were people who had.
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And people who didn't have.
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And Jesus convinced those who had.
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To share with those who didn't have.
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And what we see.
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Is the miracle of sharing.
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Now doesn't that sound great? Boy they can.
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Boy they can put lipstick on a pig.
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Can't they? I mean really that's all it is.
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It is.
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It's a great socialist miracle.
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If we can just get this one to share with that one by force.
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I don't talk about that.
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But the great miracle of socialism.
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Get them to share.
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But here's what John Dominic Crossan said in that debate.
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This is what I'll never forget.
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He said when I read that.
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My mind says to me.
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That's a parable dummy.
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I'll never forget that phrase.
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That's a parable dummy.
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And he said when I realized that it was a parable.
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I went to other stories.
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And I saw in those stories.
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The story of John and the whale.
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That's not true.
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That's a parable dummy.
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And then I went over to the story of Jesus on the cross.
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And rising from the grave.
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And I said that's not true.
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That's a parable dummy.
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You see where this idea.
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Of not taking the Bible as the true word of God.
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But simply as parable can lead.
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Because I got to tell you.
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When you give up Genesis.
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Especially Genesis 1, 2 and 3.
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When you give that up.
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Over to the idea of the parable.
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Or the fairy tale.
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Or the moral story.
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Let me tell you something.
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You've given up too much ground.
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You've given up the kingdom.
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So much of the New Testament.
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Is absolutely dependent.
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On what we see in Genesis 1, 2 and 3.
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Because I got to tell you.
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A lot of the framework people.
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They accept evolution.
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Guess what you get when you get evolution.
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You no longer have a historic Adam.
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Now.
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On the defense of Dr.
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Klein.
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Dr.
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Klein did believe in a historic Adam.
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So I don't want anybody to think.
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That I'm besmirching him in that way.
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He maintained orthodoxy in the belief of a historic Adam.
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But his theories.
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Have allowed for the dangerous interjection.
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Of people who would say Adam.
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Was not a historic figure.
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And let me tell you why it matters.
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Whether or not Adam was a historic figure.
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Because in the New Testament.
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The Bible says.
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Jesus came to undo what Adam did.
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Adam sinned against God.
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And he was our representative.
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As the first man who was ever created.
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And the Bible calls Jesus.
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The last Adam.
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Why? Because we had the first Adam.
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Who came and brought destruction.
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And the last Adam.
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Came and brought redemption.
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From that destruction.
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That's the point.
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And the danger.
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Of an idea like this.
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Is that it can lead to you believing.
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That Adam was not a real figure.
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And that can take you down.
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A dangerous road.
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Of heresy.
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I want to begin to close.
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I'll tell you a quick.
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Very quick note.
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You all know.
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I teach.
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Personal protection classes.
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And one of the things that I teach.
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In those classes.
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Is something called situational awareness.
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Situational awareness.
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Simply stated.
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Means that you, when you are out.
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You need to keep your eye on your surroundings.
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And watch for possible dangers.
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Because they're all around you.
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And you need to have your mind focused.
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When you're out.
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That you're keeping an eye.
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You're aware of your situation.
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The framework hypothesis.
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Opens the door.
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For all kinds of dangers to creep in.
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So my spiritual situational awareness.
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Would tell me immediately.
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I have to be careful.
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And not go down that road.
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I don't go into.
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People ask me sometimes.
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What would you do if you were in a dark alley.
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And some guys attacked you.
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In the self-defense class.
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I say well first.
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I don't go down dark alleys.
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I mean that's the first.
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I just don't go down dark alleys.
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And that eliminates that whole problem.
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Framework hypothesis is a dark alley.
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You go down that road.
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It's going to take you somewhere you don't want to be.
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Beloved we have the truth of the word of God.
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Let me quote John MacArthur.
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I'll begin to draw.
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I'll draw to a close with this.
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John MacArthur said this.
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Proponents of the framework hypothesis.
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Argue the language and details of Genesis 1.
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Are unimportant.
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And they are only meant to show the divine providence.
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Guided the evolutionary process.
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Think about that.
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Genesis 1 is unimportant.
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Nothing could be further from the truth.
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Nothing could be further from the orthodox belief.
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In the church has had about creation.
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Creation is very important.
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What we believe about creation is important.
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And we need to seek to know the truth.
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And I believe framework hypothesis.
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Takes us in a dangerous direction.
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So what would I call you to today? I would call you to a higher level of understanding.
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The word of God.
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Don't be willing to relegate the miracles of scripture.
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To mere parables.
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Understand that the Bible.
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Itself is a supernatural book.
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Given by the mouth of God.
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And it tells of supernatural things.
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That truly happened in this world.
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Because God is a supernatural God.
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If we try to fit everything into the natural.
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We will fall into a pit.
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That we might not ever be able to get out of.
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Stand firm.
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Believe in the supernatural.
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Because your salvation.
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Is a supernatural act.
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Let's pray.
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Father I thank you for this.
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Opportunity to preach again.
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I'm so thankful Lord for every time you give me to preach your word.
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I'm grateful to get to talk about this subject.
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Even though I know it's not an easy one Lord.
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I pray oh God that.
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The folks here would understand why.
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It was necessary to talk about it.
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I pray that we would take the word of God seriously.
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I pray that we would understand that there is.
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A literal heaven.
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A literal hell.
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A literal God.
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A literal Jesus Christ.
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A literal resurrection.
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And a literal devil.
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Who would rob us of the truth.
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Given the opportunity.
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Who seeks to blind men's eyes.
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And keep them from the truth.
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Lord may it be.
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That we not be blinded.
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But that we might maintain fidelity to the truth.
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And I pray all this.
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In Jesus name and for his sake.
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Amen.