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For I know the plans I have for you,declares the LORD, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Jer 29:11 |
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| Archived Manna: | |
Dear
Friend,
If you do not already have a habit of gathering daily manna the first thing in the morning (we can look at the example given to us in Exodus 16 and find the pattern for make it a habit. Establish your life and your schedule to allow you the necessary time to do your daily collection first thing every morning to give you the strength to make it through the day. And remember that today’s manna will not be sufficient for tomorrow; tomorrow’s manna must be collected tomorrow morning. Sunday, March 3, 2019
Today's Passage : Today's Passage:Noah and the Flood [Part 2] Bible Verse:Genesis 6:9-22 "These are the records of the generations of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his time; Noah walked with God. Noah became the father of three sons: Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Now the earth was corrupt in the sight of God, and the earth was filled with violence. God looked on the earth, and behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted their way upon the earth. Then God said to Noah, “The end of all flesh has come before Me; for the earth is filled with violence because of them; and behold, I am about to destroy them with the earth. Make for yourself an ark of gopher wood; you shall make the ark with rooms, and shall cover it inside and out with pitch. This is how you shall make it: the length of the ark three hundred cubits, its breadth fifty cubits, and its height thirty cubits. You shall make a window for the ark, and finish it to a cubit from the top; and set the door of the ark in the side of it; you shall make it with lower, second, and third decks. Behold, I, even I am bringing the flood of water upon the earth, to destroy all flesh in which is the breath of life, from under heaven; everything that is on the earth shall perish. But I will establish My covenant with you; and you shall enter the ark—you and your sons and your wife, and your sons’ wives with you. And of every living thing of all flesh, you shall bring two of every kind into the ark, to keep them alive with you; they shall be male and female. Of the birds after their kind, and of the animals after their kind, of every creeping thing of the ground after its kind, two of every kind will come to you to keep them alive. As for you, take for yourself some of all food which is edible, and gather it to yourself; and it shall be for food for you and for them.” Thus Noah did; according to all that God had commanded him, so he did. " Message:
In the 1980s, Joseph Campbell became very popular with his theories of myth, and many Christian scholars jumped on the bandwagon. Clerics who were embarrassed about discrepancies between the Bible and science heaved a sigh of relief. Here was a way they could explain the first six chapters of Genesis and without discrediting scientists, who said that their facts showed the Biblical claims were preposterous.
But Campbell’s approach had a fundamental problem. Deeply buried in his theories is an assumption: the Bible was written by men, who made up stories to explain a universe they did not understand. It is, ultimately, incompatible with the belief that the Bible was given to us by God.
This is not to say that every word of Genesis, as we read it in an English language Bible, is literally true. We are not sure what half the words mean! The ancient Hebrew version is itself a translation of an earlier, unknown proto-Hebrew language, and even translating the ancient Hebrew translation is half guesswork. Then as now, God’s Word was limited, not by God’s knowledge, but by the listeners’ ability to understand. He might not, for example, have said “the [word translated today as ‘earth’]” to some ancient Middle Eastern prophet and meant what we understand “the earth” to mean, because someone 3,000 or 6,000 or 20,000 years ago could not fathom the concept of a globe spinning in space.
Jacob Wrestling Angel|Rembrandt
The Bible does not speak scientific truth; it speaks truth that science is incapable of discovering (or even understanding). It gives us knowledge that we cannot discover for ourselves.
A good scientist will admit that science does not, and never will, understand the universe, much less what is beyond it. Science attempts to model reality using mathematics and data perceptible to a human being. But it is limited both by the limits of our minds Logic is not truth. If you studied algebra, for example, you will remember the axiom “if a=b, then b=a.” It is a very intuitive concept that most people react to by saying, “Well of course!” But this is an axiom, which means, an assumption. It is not proven and, actually, is not always true! I realize how conceptually difficult this becomes, so if you are scratching your head, don’t worry. and the limits of our ability to perceive.
The great truth of science was stated, tersely, by statistician George Box in the 1970s: “all models are wrong; some models are useful.” In other words, science can help us out enormously in limited circumstances, but all scientific understanding is, ultimately, incomplete. Science can save the lives of people who would otherwise have died of polio (and God bless Jonas Salk), but it cannot explain why they were alive in the first place.
The story of Noah is a way of understanding reality that science cannot comprehend. Did the events described in Genesis 6 really happen? Yes, they did. The story of Noah is history, not myth. Was the ark made of gopher wood? The question is meaningless, because we have no clue what substance the Hebrew word translated “gopher wood” refers to. Did the waters cover the earth, as we understand the word? I’d guess not—my little brain conceives it more likely that the Hebrew word translated “earth” meant something different thousands of years ago—but I could be wrong.
We are meant to read and understand the first six chapters of Genesis as truth. We can study and even credit the theory of evolution, but it casts no shadow on the history of Adam and Eve. Evolution and other scientific theories give us a partial understanding of reality—a model—that God meant us to have. He gave us brains for a reason. Genesis gives us understanding of something that our minds are incapable of knowing otherwise.
Meditation : Prayer : Lord, pour your love into my heart, that I may love you above all things, and my neighbors as myself. Through Christ our Lord......Amen |
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