Faithpoint

God and evil

This post on behalf of David Stevenson:

Ian,you appear allied to the Israeli position in current affairs.Do Deuteronomy 7;1,2 and Deuteronomy 20;16 bring you to that stance viz. To make room for Israel in the promised land God orders the total destruction of the 7 nations already occupying it. The Genocide was to be absolute encompassing both people and animals "-- "Do not leave alive anything that breathes "!

Once Israel had conquered the promised land - God ordered Israel to initiate numerous wars of aggression - killing all captive men and non virgin women and bringing virgin women into sexual slavery. (Numbers 31;7 17,18.) God even ordered the suckling infants of the enemy to be massacred . (! Samuel 15;3 ) UNQUOTE

Age of the Earth

Jason Fox asked me this question:

"Ian, are you a Theistic Evolutionist? If so, what do you base the age of the earth on? If not, how old do you say the age of the earth is?

"The reason I ask is you make references to an old earth."

To which I said:

No...not a theistic evolutionist...and I hold the Bible to be literally true in all that it teaches, affirms and records.

However..I'm not convinced that the Young Earth interpretation of the Hebrew in Genesis is the only way those passages can be read, and so I throw the whole question into the "Ultimately, we don't know" category.

There are gaps in the genealogies recorded in the Bible, and no knowing for certain how much time intervened.

The Earth could be around 10,000 years old if, in fact, God had to set the universe up with 13 billion years "on the clock" so to speak, so that the ideal conditions for life existed immediately upon creation.

But equally, if yom indeed can refer to an indefinite period of time, as it does in some passages, then a day to God may be 800 million years to us..

Gleason Archer and Norman Geisler have both authored some important essays on this question in order to reconcile it to Biblical inerrancy.

The Problem of Cain

hi ian,

I've been a christian all my life and i'm trying to pull down God and make stupid silly questions for you to answer.

But there has been this one thing which has been puzzling me.

When Kane killed his brother he decided (or god told him to) to leave. Then kane told god that he was afraid that someone might try to hurt him, then god put a mark on his head and told that whoever hurts him, god will revenge for him.

Since back then there was only Adam's family, who else was there for kane to be afraid of?

thank you