05-13-2008, 03:37 PM
A Christian, standing for the Federal parliament in Australia, recently lamented that he found it very difficult to get overt support from others in the churches. When pressed, the reluctant often respond, âYou donât mix politics and religionâ. These people seem to have a misguided notion of what âseparation of church and stateâ means (and itâs not in the constitution of Australia, or the USA for that matter). It originally meant that no one Christian denomination should have favoured status as a ânational churchâ, not that Christians should have no input or influence in government.
Jesus taught that we should be âsaltâ and âlightâ to the communities in which we live (Matthew 5:13 ff.). Surely this includes every legitimate avenue of human endeavour, including government, which God ordained (Romans 13). Certainly, the Reformers, such as Luther and Calvin, did not regard withdrawal from public life as a pious thing to do.
But the isolation of âfaithâ does not stop at politics; it advertises a wider problemâa separation of faith from everything real. A student from a supposedly conservative evangelical Bible college (seminary) told me recently that their lecturer (professor) taught that Genesis was not about science; it was a theological statement. I asked him what that meant and he was not sure, so I asked what theology Genesis teaches. The student suggested that Genesis teaches us that God created everything. I agreed, but pointed out that âscienceâ, as now taught in our once-Christian schools and universities, says that everything made itself. It all just happened by purely natural processes and we are a cosmic accident; God has nothing to do with it. So (evolutionary) science and theology here make claims about the same thing: matters of history. And both cannot be true; either things made themselves or they were created. Theology and such âscienceâ cannot be neatly separated. Indeed, a Scottish theologian said, âThe separation of the religious and the scientific means in the end the separation of the religious and the true; and this means that relig*ion dies among true men.â1
In much of Western society Christianity has all but died, because faith has been relegated to the realms of the mind, the emotions, the ethereal, the other-worldly. All this started in the once-Christian âWestâ, when scholars began abandoning the early history of the Bible. This did not begin with Darwin, but with Hutton (see pp. 50â55) in the late 1700s. The âscienceâ of Hutton and his disciples, including Darwin, provided a counterfeit history opposing the Bibleâs. And if the history of the Bible fails, how can its theology stand?
As Dr Martyn Lloyd-Jones said, âOur Christian faith is based entirely upon history. ⦠It is quite unique because it is teaching which is based upon history.
[INDENT]⦠our Christian faith is entirely different [to Buddhism, Hinduism, etc.]. It calls attention to facts. ⦠the garden of Eden ⦠. ⦠Do you remember the history of the flood? That is fact. That is history. ⦠Then God gave a new start ⦠Tower of Babel ⦠Abram ⦠the facts about our Lord.â2[/INDENT]
Of course no respectable evangelical professor would deny the âfacts about our Lordâ, but many do deny the history of Genesis 1â11. But without that history, the relevance of Jesus evaporatesâif there was no real Fall where death entered the world because of Adamâs sin, causing all Adamâs descendants to die, what need is there for someone to die for us? As Dr Dudley Eirich says (pp. 46â49), âEvolution destroys your faith in the Bible, because once you go down that slippery slope, you start questioning the Bible in other areas.â And restoring the real history of the world, according to the Bible, transforms the lives of Christians who once thought they could not believe it, as microscopist Mark Armitage relates (pp. 14â17).
I pray that as this issue of Creation goes out all who read it will be encouraged to believe the real history of the Bible and to trust the One who made everything and died âto reconcile all things to Himselfâ (Colossians 1:15â23).
http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation...torial.asp
Jesus taught that we should be âsaltâ and âlightâ to the communities in which we live (Matthew 5:13 ff.). Surely this includes every legitimate avenue of human endeavour, including government, which God ordained (Romans 13). Certainly, the Reformers, such as Luther and Calvin, did not regard withdrawal from public life as a pious thing to do.
But the isolation of âfaithâ does not stop at politics; it advertises a wider problemâa separation of faith from everything real. A student from a supposedly conservative evangelical Bible college (seminary) told me recently that their lecturer (professor) taught that Genesis was not about science; it was a theological statement. I asked him what that meant and he was not sure, so I asked what theology Genesis teaches. The student suggested that Genesis teaches us that God created everything. I agreed, but pointed out that âscienceâ, as now taught in our once-Christian schools and universities, says that everything made itself. It all just happened by purely natural processes and we are a cosmic accident; God has nothing to do with it. So (evolutionary) science and theology here make claims about the same thing: matters of history. And both cannot be true; either things made themselves or they were created. Theology and such âscienceâ cannot be neatly separated. Indeed, a Scottish theologian said, âThe separation of the religious and the scientific means in the end the separation of the religious and the true; and this means that relig*ion dies among true men.â1
In much of Western society Christianity has all but died, because faith has been relegated to the realms of the mind, the emotions, the ethereal, the other-worldly. All this started in the once-Christian âWestâ, when scholars began abandoning the early history of the Bible. This did not begin with Darwin, but with Hutton (see pp. 50â55) in the late 1700s. The âscienceâ of Hutton and his disciples, including Darwin, provided a counterfeit history opposing the Bibleâs. And if the history of the Bible fails, how can its theology stand?
As Dr Martyn Lloyd-Jones said, âOur Christian faith is based entirely upon history. ⦠It is quite unique because it is teaching which is based upon history.
[INDENT]⦠our Christian faith is entirely different [to Buddhism, Hinduism, etc.]. It calls attention to facts. ⦠the garden of Eden ⦠. ⦠Do you remember the history of the flood? That is fact. That is history. ⦠Then God gave a new start ⦠Tower of Babel ⦠Abram ⦠the facts about our Lord.â2[/INDENT]
Of course no respectable evangelical professor would deny the âfacts about our Lordâ, but many do deny the history of Genesis 1â11. But without that history, the relevance of Jesus evaporatesâif there was no real Fall where death entered the world because of Adamâs sin, causing all Adamâs descendants to die, what need is there for someone to die for us? As Dr Dudley Eirich says (pp. 46â49), âEvolution destroys your faith in the Bible, because once you go down that slippery slope, you start questioning the Bible in other areas.â And restoring the real history of the world, according to the Bible, transforms the lives of Christians who once thought they could not believe it, as microscopist Mark Armitage relates (pp. 14â17).
I pray that as this issue of Creation goes out all who read it will be encouraged to believe the real history of the Bible and to trust the One who made everything and died âto reconcile all things to Himselfâ (Colossians 1:15â23).
http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation...torial.asp
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05-20-2008, 04:11 AM
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Posting false or incorrect information will not be tolerated. If you are unaware of something such as a score or any information regarding a certain topic, then do not post it until sure. False threads and posts will be deleted and you will be warned.
Post padding will not be tolerated. Topics are there for your view pleasure but you are not required to post something in every one that you open. If you have no real opinion or knowledge on a subject, please move on to another one.
This thread is also being closed for “spamming.” Here is why:
When you create these threads and put the links to the other sites in them, you are essentially promoting these other sites. Since you have posted the links they are now searchable through Google and in essence you are using the server space of this site to promote these other sites, which we will no longer tolerate. This is BluegrassRivals, not answersingenesis.com and we are not paying for server space to promote any of the sites that you are consistently linking to.
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