Is Young Earth Creationism Optional?

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Welcome to Conversations with a Calvinist.
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This podcast is dedicated to helping believers better understand scripture, defend truth, and engage culture.
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Get your Bible ready and prepare to engage today's topic.
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Here's your host Pastor Keith Foskey.
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Welcome back to Conversations with a Calvinist.
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My name is Keith Foskey and I am a Calvinist.
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Today we're going to be answering a listener question based on a recent video that I did when I took my trip to the Ark Encounter in Kentucky.
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I received a question regarding the Ark Encounter and I actually received this question before I left for my trip because this person had themselves gone to the Ark Encounter and wanted to ask a question about the necessity of believing in a six-day creation model, six literal 24-hour periods of time, the idea that this is necessary for a Christian believer.
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Is this necessary for a Christian belief? And is this something that we should even hold to as a standard for the faith? And so today we're going to use that question as the beginning of our conversation.
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And I actually want to read from a portion of the email that he sent.
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He's a regular listener.
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I wanted to say you know who you are, Brother James, you sent this in and I appreciate it.
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You've sent in questions before and they are always helpful for the program, and I do appreciate anybody who has questions.
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If anyone would like to send questions into the program, you can send those in at Calvinistpodcast at gmail.com.
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We do get them, we do respond to them as best as possible, and I appreciate them because it allows me to know what it is that is on your mind and allows me to help as best as I can.
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So today we're going to be going with his question.
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I want to just read to you as it is written in the email, and I'm not going to read the whole email.
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It gets a little personal at certain points talking about some of the issues that he has.
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This is with a family member, so I just want to put out there the gist of his question.
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He says, my family member believes in local flooding and an older earth model, older than say 6,000 years or so, and Genesis creation stories, and that the flood is just a polemic response to other ancient Near East cosmologies, and we shouldn't take it as a literal six 24-hour days of God creating the heavens and earth.
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He and others who listen to guys from the Bible Project, I've mentioned the Bible Project before on the program, he and other guys who listen to guys from the Bible Project and such think it's just allegorical.
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I admit we both get offended when we discuss issues like that and wrestled with whether or not you can still be a Christian and hold to non-traditional views.
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Well, before I even begin to answer the question, I want to just talk about sort of the heart of this issue.
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I can tell by the heart of or by what's being written that the heart of this person is not just being concerned about being right, it's concerned about maintaining a relationship with this family member.
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This is something that is a very serious question, and a question that does divide believers, it does divide churches, it does divide those who hold to the Bible as the final authority on the Word of God.
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I think in my mind about two men that I have heard debate before who both take vastly different views on this subject, Dr.
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Jason Lyle, who takes the young earth creationist position and is a brilliant man, a brilliant scientist, and then of course on the other side is Dr.
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Hugh Ross, both of them doctors, right? So it's Dr.
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Jason Lyle, Dr.
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Hugh Ross, who takes the old earth perspective, and I've actually heard the two of them engage together in debate, which I'm thankful that men who know so much more than I do about science and about cosmology and about these things are willing to discuss these things in public forums so that Christians are able to hear the very best and to be able to decide what it is that they are going to believe based upon those types of interactions.
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So if you've never heard those things and you still don't know where you stand on this issue, then I would encourage you to seek those things out.
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Listen to Dr.
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Lyle.
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Listen to Dr.
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Ross.
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You know, I've read some of Dr.
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Ross's books, I've read some of Dr.
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Lyle's books, certainly not all of them because they both have libraries that they have written, but these are things that many people have questions about, and these are things that have been answered.
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As far as the subject matter of whether or not you are an old earth or young earth, whether you're going to hold to six days of creation or whether you're going to hold to perhaps the framework hypothesis or another model which puts the idea out that these six days are not meant to be interpreted as six literal 24-hour periods, but rather that you're going to hold to longer periods of time.
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However it is you come to that conclusion.
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But what I want to...
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I want to use this as sort of a springboard today to talk about the subject of adiaphora.
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And adiaphora is a word that is not used often, but it is a word which should be in our vocabulary as believers, and adiaphora literally means things that are indifferent or things that are outside of the moral standards or moral laws, things that can be disagreed upon.
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And this particular phrase is used in philosophy, adiaphora is a philosophical term, but there is a biblical idea that shares the same concepts.
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Not the same word, but the same concept is found in Romans chapter 14.
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In Romans chapter 14 we have the passage which refers to the things that are disputable, that we are not to argue over the disputable matters.
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In the ESV Bible it calls them opinions, that we ought not argue over opinions.
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And the question that we have to address and really is going to be the meat of today's podcast is, what is it that falls into the category of adiaphora? What things fall into that category? And it reminds me of a historical statement, a historical quote from St.
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Augustine.
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St.
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Augustine was known for the quote, in essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty, and in all things charity.
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Now I like the way that flows, especially in English, you know, in essentials unity and non-essentials liberty and all things charity.
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A lot of people change that now to in all things love, and that does work, but I just like the alliteration of unity, liberty, charity.
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I think that sounds really good.
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But a few years ago I preached a sermon on that quote.
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Now that wasn't the passage I was preaching, but the title of my sermon was in essentials unity, and I began with this question.
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If we are going to hold to Augustine's maxim, which is in essentials unity and non-essentials liberty and all things charity, if we're going to hold to that maxim, then we have to ask the question, what are the essentials? What are the essentials of the faith? And what are the non-essentials? What are the things that are the the disputable things? What are the the adiaphora? What are the the opinions? What are they? What are they? Where do we draw the line? And I have done podcasts on this subject before, never specifically using these terms, but I did talk about...
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I had a church member ask me a while back actually about what, you know, what are the things that are essential and what are the things are not essential.
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So I want to be consistent with what I have said in the past, and if you do want to look that older podcast up, you're welcome to look it up.
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In fact, I think it was the very first Conversations with a Calvinist.
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I have to go back and check that, but when I switched from Coffee with a Calvinist, which was a daily program, to the weekly Conversations with a Calvinist, I believe that that was the discussion was on that subject of what constitutes the essentials.
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And again, I want to maintain a consistency in what I'm saying, because I do believe that there are certain things that are essential.
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I do believe there are certain things that are not essential.
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And one of the things I was going to do is, as I did, I have a whiteboard, and I'm not sure...
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white is one of the the worst for recording when you're doing recording, because the camera picks up the white and oftentimes changes the color.
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So this may mess up my video just a little, but I want to show you this on a whiteboard.
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I think this would be helpful.
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If you imagine a concentric circle.
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So we'll say we start here with a center circle, and then we go out from that center circle, and we create another circle, and then we go...
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and I understand this is terrible circles...
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and then you just sort of get bigger as you go as you go out.
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And if we were to make a sort of like a bullseye pattern that looks like this, we could say everything in the middle would be things that are absolutely essential to be a Christian.
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So you can't be a Christian unless you believe these things.
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And then we may go to the next thing and say, okay, well this section here would represent that which is necessary to be a member of a particular church.
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Like for instance, if you're going to join our church, there are certain views that you would hold that aren't necessarily essential to being Christian, but that are things that we covenant together to believe.
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And so this would be...
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that's where I would make the distinction here, and maybe the second tier would be things that are things that we hold to that aren't necessarily essential for Christianity, but are certainly essential within the fellowship of our church.
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And then there are the things out here that we would argue are just unknown and not dogmatic.
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And when we say unknown, it doesn't mean we don't have an opinion, but it just means they would be things that are...
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we would say we don't believe that if a person believed this that it would matter if they were in our...
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if they come to our church and they have a difference of opinion on this.
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This is really where we would say really is the true adiaphora, the true things that we would not dispute about.
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So here's an example, okay, so here's the three things.
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If you say, okay, so what's an example? Okay, so right in the center we would say the deity of Christ.
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Okay, deity of Christ not up for debate in our church, or anywhere.
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It's not up for debate for Christians.
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If you are a person who says, I believe in Jesus, but I don't believe in the divinity of Christ, then you don't believe in the Jesus of the Bible.
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You are not a Christian.
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And so this center circle would certainly include the deity, the full deity of Christ.
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On the second level, if you wanted to start saying, okay, well what would fall into this church category that you refer to? Well, I mean, we hold to a specific doctrine of predestination.
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We believe in...
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we are Calvinists, as obviously the program Conversations with a Calvinist, we are Calvinist.
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So we would say that if a person is not a Calvinist, that doesn't mean they can't necessarily join our church.
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But understand, this is what you're going to be taught, this is what is going to be taught from the pulpit, from the Sunday school rooms, and if you don't hold to these views, you're probably not ever going to be able to teach, because these are the things that we hold, these are the things that we teach.
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So this would be, you know, essential for membership in the church, but not necessarily essential to being a believer.
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And if a person didn't hold them, that didn't mean they couldn't join, but certainly would affect their position, being able to teach, things like that.
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And if they began to disagree openly about these things, then that may cause an even bigger problem.
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And then we have this third outside view here, and that's something that I would say that would fall into that, would be something like eschatology.
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Within our church, there are differing views on the end times, as many of you have maybe listened to some of the programs that I have taught.
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I teach a partial preterist view of the book of Revelation, and I do believe in what is called an amillennial view of the thousand years of Revelation chapter 20.
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But if somebody came to our church and they held to a premillennial view, that wouldn't affect their membership in our church.
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In fact, there was a time when I served with one of my fellow elders, and he was a premillennialist, and I was an amillennialist, and we were able to hold those positions as adiaphora, as things that we would say are opinions, things that we don't know.
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And I would say that we don't know for certain, don't mean we don't have an opinion, don't mean we don't hold to our opinion because we believe that it's true, but the level of certainty and the demand of dogmatism that goes along with something like the deity of Christ or the Trinity is not the same when you deal with eschatology.
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One of the elders I used to serve with, he said he was an aha millennialist, and you probably heard that joke before, it means he says when it happens he'll say aha, now we know who's right.
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And so as you know, the idea was he wasn't certain and he didn't even really take a specific position, even though he had his opinions, and so that's an example of, you know, those things which we would say are adiaphora, those things which are disputable, those things which are opinion, and those things which are essential.
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And so the real issue we have to deal with is what has the Church always held to as essential doctrine? What has the Church always held to as essential doctrine? And things like the Trinity, you know, I remember if you go and read some of the confessions, such as the Athanasian Creed, it says, you know, to be a part of the Church, you have to believe this.
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This isn't opinion, this is the position of the Church universal, the body of Christ, the bride of Christ universal holds to this, and if you don't hold to this then you believe a false gospel.
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And that's really the big issue, is what we are believing causing our gospel to be wrong.
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As Paul says, if a person preaches a gospel that is not the gospel that he proclaimed, let him be what? Let him be accursed.
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And so we have to consider that, and you know, there's a thought that I want us to, as we're thinking through this on the program today and going through this, when we think about the subject of creation, getting back to the original question, are there parts of the creation narrative that we could debate and discuss and conversate about regarding whether or not they are necessary to believe? I think the answer to that is yes.
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However, I think that there comes the time where we have to ask the question, do we have a good reason not to believe in the straightforward reading of something? And when I say the straightforward reading, I know that that's a dangerous term, and I know I'm sure I'm gonna get some, if anybody listens to this who disagrees, they may run right to the comment section and say, well that's your straightforward reading, and I know that's a dangerous term.
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So let me maybe clarify.
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When the Bible says that God created the world in six days, it certainly is presented as days.
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It was evening, it was morning.
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It's presented to us as days.
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When I taught through Genesis, I'm right now in Genesis 17, and I believe it was in 2019 that I began teaching through Genesis, I taught for several months through Genesis 1 and 2 on the creation account.
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And I went through the various views of the creation narrative, all the while saying, I believe in the young earth position.
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But I did teach the other perspective so that I could show the Church not only what others believe, but why we as a Church hold to, and all of our elders do, hold to a younger earth position, and we believe and teach this.
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And so I went through the gap theory, which is the idea that there is a gap between Genesis 1-1 and Genesis 1-2, where there was an entire world of beings that were judged and destroyed, and God rebuilt or recreated the earth out of the mass of the the watery mass which was created by their destruction.
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And so that is the, and there's a lot more to the gap theory, but the idea is that this is where the appearance of age of the world comes from, is because there was an entire world that existed prior to our understanding of the created world.
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And then we have the the framework hypothesis, which is the idea that what we have in Genesis is not just a outline of days, but what we have in Genesis is we have a framework, a literary framework.
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And there is some, I think there is some wisdom here, because there is an interesting literary construction when you read through Genesis 1, and you see how everything is constructed in the creation.
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We see the first three days are the forming, and the second three days are the filling.
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You know, God forms the light and the darkness, God forms the sky and the sea, God forms the earth, the dry land and the waters, separates the dry land and the waters, and then on days four through six he fills those things.
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You know, on day four corresponds to day one, because day one there was light and darkness, while on day four there's sun, moon, and stars, which give form, or rather fill that light and darkness with beings that are intended to encapsulate that light.
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And then on day four we get the birds of the sky and the fish of the sea, which corresponds of course to the air which was created, and the sea which was created, the atmosphere in the sea.
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And then we of course have day six where the land animals and man are created, which corresponds to day three where the land was separated from the water and dry land appeared.
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So there certainly is a constructive literary framework there, and that's the argument from the framework hypothesis that this is not literal, this is literary.
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And I have said before that I do believe that the Bible has to be read not only literally but literarily, that we read it according to its literary genre.
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And so the question becomes, is Genesis 1 meant to be understood literally or literarily? And those who hold the framework hypothesis would say, well this is a literary construction, not a literal construction.
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So that is, that's just a couple of positions that differ from the six-day creation.
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And then of course there are the the older earth view, the older earth view, which would which also called the day-age theory.
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And the day-age theory is that there that each one of these days was literal in the sense that it was, it was, this is the order in which things literally happened generally, but in this order there was longer periods of time.
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It wasn't 24-hour days.
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In fact, one of the arguments is that prior to the fourth day when you have sun, moon, and stars that are visible, you don't even have markers for 24 hours in a day.
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I disagree with that perspective, but I understand it, I get it, and I appreciate the fact that there are those who would hold a difference on that.
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And again, having read Dr.
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Ross and some others, I understand why some folks would hold to that position.
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But I have, in my own conscience, in my own life and study, I have come to the point where I have still yet to find any reason not to believe that the earth was created in six literal days.
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Even with these other options that are available, such as the gap theory, or the framework hypothesis, or the age, the day-age theory, none of them have been particularly moving to me in regard to my view.
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And I have remained a young earth creationist.
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Wasn't always that, because I didn't understand when I was an early Christian that that was even an issue.
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I didn't understand that there was a name for it.
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I didn't know that that was even a thing that was part of the debate.
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So you have to understand, this is going back to the thing, is this essential for somebody to be a Christian? Well, a lot of people, when they first become a Christian, they don't even know this is the issue.
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They don't even know these issues are out there.
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They don't even know that it's part of the debate until the debate comes up, until they begin having these conversations.
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And so, is it essential to be a Christian that you believe in a young earth? I would say, right off the bat, I would say no, not necessarily.
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But there are many things which are given up when a person holds to a different perspective that I do think begin to lay the groundwork for abandoning a natural and literal understanding of the Bible.
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And that's where I think this can be very serious, because you'll notice one of the things that is almost always the case is that when someone takes an old-earth position, they abandon the global flood.
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They abandon the Noahic as a global event, and they almost always turn it into a localized event.
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And so we begin to ask the question, okay, so if that is true, are we or are we not all sons and daughters of Noah? Are we not all sons and daughters of the three sons of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth? And someone would say, well, the flood...
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I have heard this position.
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They will say, well, the flood killed every man because every man was still in the Mesopotamian area.
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They were still there where the local flood would kill them.
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They had not ventured out away from where the Ark was, and so because they were still there in that area and the Ark was...
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it flooded their area, then every man did die, and the only the only human beings that survived were the the sons of Noah and Noah and his wife and their wives.
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So, and again, okay, if that's a position that a person wants to take, we're having to step back and we're having to say, okay, is that really what the Bible presents to us when we read Genesis 6, 7, 8, and 9? Is this what the Bible seems to be saying? And someone says, well, but we can't do it that way because the Bible, you know, it's using epic language and and we have to read it according to its time period and all these things.
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So I, again, I understand the arguments, but you see what automatically you start giving up some of the things that seem like such natural readings.
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But the big thing, and this is the nail in the coffin, if you will, or the straw that breaks the camel's back for me, is oftentimes when you listen to Old Earth perspective and you hear that position expounded, one of the things that is clear is their position on Adam as a special creation of God is often tenuous.
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Not always, and again, depending on who it is, depending on the position, depending on who you're talking to.
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But if Adam is not a special creation of God and if Adam did not have the opportunity to sin against God in the garden, and Adam did not in fact sin against God in the garden as our federal head, then we have something that will in fact affect our understanding of the gospel.
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Because the gospel begins with, you know, the gospel means good news, but the bad news of the gospel, which is the part that precedes the good news, the bad news is that every man is born into sin, and we are sinners by nature because of our relationship to our first ancestor Adam, who has passed on to us a sin nature.
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And so if a person says, well I don't believe that Adam existed, I believe he was representative of sort of a first race of humans, but that he was in himself a true human being, I would say personally I think that now you have stepped out of the area of the essential, or rather into the area of the essential, because I do believe that Adam's existence is essential, and the historic Adam is a necessary figure in the biblical narrative, because without the historic Adam, then where do we get the foundation for Christ, who is called the second Adam, or rather the last Adam? You see, the first Adam brought death.
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The Bible tells us that.
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And the last Adam brings justification and life.
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And so if we have a view which causes us to abandon the For instance, the view of biblical, or rather theistic evolution, there's biologos, holds to the position of theistic evolution, and that is the idea that Darwinism, essentially Darwinian evolution, is true, and the Bible is simply giving us the ancient explanation of the unscientific explanation of what actually happened, but what actually happened was Darwinian evolution.
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The problem with that view is, again, man is not a special creation of God, but rather God takes some animal of creation, some kind of Neanderthal humanoid-type animal, and he endows that animal into a person and makes him an image-bearer.
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And that is not what the Bible teaches, and that begins, I believe, a very dangerous road of how to understand who we are and how to understand the world around us.
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So are there things that are essential to being a believer in Jesus Christ, to being a Christian? You know, because some people say, well, all you got to do is believe in Jesus.
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The problem with that is, the very first question should be, well, which Jesus? If all I got to do is believe in Jesus, which one? The Mormon Jesus? The Jesus of the Jehovah Witnesses? The Jesus of some of these Jesus movements out there that have a false view of Christ, that do not have a biblical view? That's dangerous.
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Well, just believe in Jesus.
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What does that even mean? It doesn't have a and it's a dangerous idea.
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But when we begin to deal with the question of what are the essential things, are there things about creation that are essential? Yes.
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The things that are essential are, one, God created the world, and he did it by his own power and might.
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He did not do it through another agency.
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He did it by himself, through himself, and for himself.
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And so when we talk about creation as a doctrine, we first have to consider the sovereignty of God, the power of God, the omnipotence of God that is able to do these things.
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And then you have the next question, well, how long did it take him? And people say, well, it took him billions of years to create the universe.
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And again, my question has always been, why? If God can create something out of nothing in an instant, why do we have to have billions of years? Why do we have to have these long periods of time? Why is this necessary, other than the fact that we have some scientific evidence that seems to point to a longer, older, longer years in an older universe? And I do like one of the things that Ken Ham has to say about this when we talk about, you know, the six days of creation.
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He often says, well, I don't know why God took so long, because when God could do it all in an instance, why did he take six days? That seems like a long time when he could do it all immediately.
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And I always thought that was kind of a funny jab at those who say six days is too short.
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Six days is certainly not too short for him who can do all things.
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And six days seems like a long time, but when God has a plan and a purpose in teaching us something in that six days, and actually the seventh day being the day of rest, and that seven-day week still is with us today.
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We still, as human beings, live in a seven-day week.
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There's no other reason for that.
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You know, the turning of the Sun, or the turning of the world around the Sun, gives us our year, and the phase of the moon gives us our months, but there's no reason for a seven-day week other than the fact that God gave it to us in creation.
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And that's what we look at every time we celebrate the the Lord's Day, which is the first day of the week.
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Every time we gather together on the Lord's Day, we're reminded that the Lord used these days to create the world.
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And he rested, of course, on the seventh day.
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So those are my thoughts about this issue and what constitutes adiaphora, but I do I want to finish with a sort of a personal story.
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I have a friend who very much disagrees with me on this issue, and it's been a while since we've talked, but some of our conversations about this issue were very deep, very meaningful, and I appreciated him being willing to ask me questions, tell me what he thought, even tell me areas that he thought I was wrong.
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Obviously he disagreed on some things with me, and he holds to the Old Earth view.
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He was really impressed by the arguments of Dr.
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Hugh Ross, really impressed by the arguments that that are in his books, encouraged me to read some of them, and I did.
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I was not as impressed by the arguments, but I would still admit that Dr.
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Ross's, of course, is a brilliant man.
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He's certainly no fool, but the point of the matter in this whole conversation is there were times where our conversations got heated.
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There were times where it seemed like we were at an impasse, and I remember specifically once sort of being in the midst of it, the idea that, well, if you teach this, people will just, you know, you're giving up all credibility because you're teaching something that doesn't comport with what we know about the world and the age of the universe.
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And I remember I really thought about that.
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I kind of took that to heart.
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You know, well, is this going to mean that people will just not listen to what I have to say because I'm holding to the Young Earth view? And the more I thought about it, the more I said, you know what, the same people who would probably take that position and not listen to me because I hold to this view would probably not listen to me anyway, because I believe a man rose from the dead, and all the science in the world points against that.
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I believe that 2,000 years ago there was a man on this earth who was able to walk on water, who was able to take six jars of water and turn those six jars of water into wine.
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By the way, I think that's an analogy of creation as well, because Jesus essentially makes something out of nothing.
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He takes that, which is, there is no elements of wine except for the water itself, and he creates those elements out of nothing, and he creates wine out of that water.
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And it's six water pots.
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And when I've taught on that text before, I've said if you think about the six days of creation, it's an analogous to Jesus who's showing himself to be divine in creating something out of nothing.
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As God spoke the world into existence, ex nihilo, created the world out of nothing, Jesus creates this water out of wine, creating elements of wine out of nothing.
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And so, but again, I believe 2,000 years ago there was a man who made water into wine.
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I believe there's a man who walked on water.
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I believe there's a man who was nailed to a cross for my sins, and I believe that three days later that man walked out of the tomb, and that he ever lives to make intercession for my sins and for the sins of all who believe on him.
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So if somebody says to me, well, you know, if you believe in a young earth, then you're not believing in the scientific consensus.
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You're not believing that which comports to modern science.
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I would say nothing I believe about Jesus, nothing I believe about the gospel is going to comport with modern science, and that's okay with me.
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So if I get to heaven, and I get an opportunity to speak to the Lord and ask any questions, and it just so happens that my question is, Lord, is earth older than I thought it was? And he says, yes, the earth was actually older than you thought it was.
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I don't think that that in any way, shape, or form is going to affect my destiny, is going to affect my position, is going to affect my my understanding of who God is.
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And I would say the other side can also be true.
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If somebody holds to an older earth view, as long as they are not denying those things which are necessary, the historic Adam, the historic Eden, which I do think is a necessity, the historic nature of our relationship to our first parent, who in his sin brought sin to every man, these are things that are essential.
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And if we can agree on these, then maybe it's okay that we disagree on some of the other things that aren't necessarily essential.
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I hope that this has been a helpful podcast for you today, and again I encourage you, if you have questions, if you'd like me to expand on anything I've said today, or if you'd like me to talk about another subject from the Bible, I encourage you to send me a message at calvinistpodcast at gmail.com.
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Thank you for listening to Conversations with a Calvinist.
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My name is Keith Foskey, and I've been your Calvinist.
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May God bless you.
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Thank you for listening to Conversations with a Calvinist.
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If you enjoyed the program, please take a moment to subscribe, and if you have a question you would like us to discuss on a future program, please email us at calvinistpodcast at gmail.com.
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As you go about your day, remember this, Jesus Christ came to save sinners.
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All who come to him in repentance and faith will find him to be a perfect Savior.
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He is the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the Father except through him.
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May God be with you.