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Appendix III

Creation and the PC in America

 

SECTION A

See also

The Pride of Life, the Prince of Life and the Destiny of Man Ch. 1 and concerning Churches involved in various ways, see News 97 at this point.

For a broad overview of relevant issues, propositional and personal for the servant of the Lord, see THY WORD IS WONDERFUL Ch. 6, in conjunction with Let God be God Ch. 12.

 

THE QUESTION OF DAYS AND DAZE - DICTUM NOT DREAM
DID GOD MAKE DAYS IN DAYS OR IN DREAM-TIME ?

Is the thought unpleasant ? Yes, but the answer is more to the point.

(Note that all excerpts from our own works,
may be adapted or expanded as seems best for this use).

THE REPORT OF THE CREATION STUDY COMMITTEE
of the Presbyterian Church in America

allows magnificent but intrusive liberty for the human spirit;
and moves with flamboyant ebullience into the realm of special permission,
even concerning the word of God.
It is time to pause and ponder, to revert to what is written.

It is not philosophy reading the word of God, and appreciating it,
in its own light,
that is wanted,
but the eyes of understanding
giving to Him the honour that is His due,
and leaving philosophy with other vain things.
 
 

1. Let us hear how the thing has progressed, quoting near its end
    (a 90 page report, presented to Assembly):

Presently, we can admit that as recent creationists we are defending a very natural biblical account, at the cost of abandoning a very plausible scientific picture of an "old" cosmos.  But over the long term, this is not a tenable position.  In our opinion, old earth creationism combines a less natural textual reading with a much more plausible scientific version.  They have fewer "problems of science."  At the moment, this would seem to be the more rational position to adopt.

Recent creationism must develop better scientific accounts if it is to remain viable against old earth creationism.  On the other hand, the reading of Scripture (e.g., a real Flood, meaningful genealogies, and actual dividing of languages) is so natural that it seems worth saving.  Since we believe recent creation cosmologies are improving, we are encouraged to continue the effort.

Here is the old Presbyterian unwillingness to be clear, which has ruined its history in various places for almost a century. Its scholarship, once a dream of endeavour, now turns to philosophic options, as though the word of God were not in itself as clear as it says it is (Proverbs 8:8). If Paul could produce deep things to challenge, there is nothing of creation which is put as astonishing; and it is NEVER the Bible which is unclear. Instability in the expositors it is which is a chief thrust of the forces for divorces of the word from itself (II Peter 3:16).

Actually, as shown in such sites as

That Magnificent Rock Chs. 1,    7    esp. 7 E,  8,

in SMR Chs. 1,  2,  3,

in A Spiritual Potpourri Chs. 1-9,

in Stepping Out for Christ Chs.  2,  7,  8,  9, 10,

and Wake Up World! Your Creator is Coming Chs.  4,  5,  6,

Spiritual Refreshings for the Digital Millenium  Ch. 13,

Joyful Jottings   3  -

the due use of scientific method leaves nothing to be desired in the way of clarity concerning creation. Indeed, logic positively shouts with joy in the presence of the word of God, not only as demonstrably so, but as impregnable in stability, and coherent in concept in the presence of the myths of the 20th century which developed into the mental manacles of the 21st.,  with their insoluble logical problems, born of their fallacious model  (cf. Celestial Harmony for the Terrestrial Host, The gods of naturalism have no go!).

The due approach to the text, as the justly famed author and Professor E.J. Young used to say, is to take it as it stands without regard for the special pleading of 'wisdom' from this world. That changes like a baby's nappy; the word of God never changes. Moreover, the more it is imposed on, whether by conservative philosophers or radical punters with thoughts, the less glory is done to Him who SAID IT, because it was RIGHT; and He who sent it because IT IS TRUE,  speaks it with CLARITY as He declares (Proverbs 8:8), He being the source of the very brightness of light. If sometimes a thing must be searched out, this is a test and a challenge, by no means insoluble; and does one not do this with one's own students at times, in order that they may the better understand and more deeply construe! Yet one does not leave in doubt, what one is about...

As to His word: some of it is harder than other parts; but there is never any excuse for delinquency with what is written, as though a wise supplement from current society were necessary. At present, the ludicrous character of the wisdom of society in the special area of creation is so vast as to make mockery its very name (cf. Aviary of Idolatry and Laughing Stock, with Wake Up World! ... Ch. 6); while the sobriety and scientific rigour, logical coherence and vigour found in what the Bible says, both in principle and in practice, makes any thought of a problem, hard to distinguish from cultural captivity, or mere lassitude (cf. TMR Ch. 1).
 
 

2. Now let us taste another point made in this special committee's
REPORT for the PC in America.
(See also in this topic, Spiritual Refreshings for the Digitial Millenium Ch. 2)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 

There have been various attempts to resolve the dilemma of "solar days" without the sun.  One suggestion is that perhaps the light bearers were actually created on the first day and only "appointed" to their respective roles on the fourth day.  Those who pursue this line of argument usually propose that these heavenly bodies were hidden (from whom?) by some sort of cloud cover until the fourth day.  Except for the fact that this assumption contradicts the clear statement in verses 14-19, such a scenario would pose no difficulty*1 to the Calendar-Day view, as it clearly does to those who posit "days" of eons in length.  An alternative view (dating back at least as far as Basil), that is much more consistent with that proposed above, is that the light of the first three days was light emanating from God Himself, just as the description of the final state indicates that God will be the light, not the sun or moon.  "And the city hath no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine upon it: for the glory of God did lighten it, and the lamp thereof is the Lamb." (Rev 21:22)  Thus the Bible opens with God shedding His light upon the creation and closes with the same.


COMMENT: There are various errors in this. In part but with considerable amplification, we shall quote from SMR.

The chief point is simply that it is NOT a matter of the Lord having presented these luminaries and then appointed them to their roles on day 4, as if there is some DIFFICULTY. It is a FASHIONING or MAKING that is in the text, not a CREATING in verse 16. There is a PURPOSIVE creation, or a moulding of FUNCTIONALITY for the purpose, and it is this which is emphatically in view.

In verse 14, they are to BE in the firmament

with the purpose of dividing night from day,
for being signs and for seasons,
covering days and years.
 

They are also to give light on the earth (v. 15).

It is not our present purpose again in depth to review the length of days 1, 2 and 3 on the consideration, noted by Professor Gleason Archer in his A Survey of Old Testament Introduction, that the text may signify the sun disclosed, rather than created in the fourth day (op.cit. pp. 177-178): the results we found were, practically, not diverse in kind from the normal day conception we experience seven times per week.
 

The days might be different mechanically, if the mechanics were different; but their character and kind, we have reasoned (cf. SMR pp. 168-179, 190-197), is clear, even if they are to be treated with care and precision, where the motions of these bodies (sun and moon, conceivably, on one interpretation), might not then have operated. Days however without their mechanics, indeed without proto-mechanics designed but not yet fully operational would be like papier maché substitutes for furniture, mere verbal machinations deployed for effect, not in this eminently practical account, for meaning where words do not change like the seasons of the year, or the works of French fashion designers.

Biblical days are correlated, then, quite explicitly with our world and its inhabitants, and in the divine action, there is a certainty of sequence that relates closely to the condensed coverage in Genesis 2:4. Present is no sense of arresting process. On the contrary: there is a sense of immediacy, there is a sublime monergistic or sole-worker emphasis, staccato commands coming like light into darkness, plenary power dictating and action happening to match with despatch. There is the utmost correlation between the divine power, mind and result in a manner which intimately associates with the use of the verb 'bara', indicating as its basic position, what we call creation, as distinct from mere forming. Thus Colossians 1 uses a most emphatic Greek term, in indicating that Jesus Christ created all things. Interspersed in Genesis are the formative actions, with the different verb we have in verse 14,16, which may mean making, forming.

When one refers to the Creator, in such a function, one is in the vein of what His power performs, as it is deployed in executing what He has in mind. We ourselves use such terms similarly, such that in our 'creations', process is not to the point: the idea and its outcome are closely related, and the more powerful the mind that has the idea, and the more profound, the more intense and intimate is its correlation, in general, with the outcome; and the more entirely irrelevant to the contribution in what is depicted, is anything else. Creation is a derivation of the one who creates; and where it is to God that we refer, it is to infinitude of creative power. Forming or moulding is then in another domain, less intense, not in the least presupposing anything such as what 'creating' constitutes.

We have earlier reasoned that the days of Genesis 1 are of a kind which correlates not with ages but with our rotational days. In the case of days 2-3, where there is not necessarily the same rotational mechanisms at work, this is nevertheless the basic situation. We are speaking of the prima facie requirements of the text at this point. Day one, we reasoned, while not divorced from such a conception, held somewhat more richness of meaning, because of the institutional element, as distinct from the constitutional processes coming later; yet it also, in its monergistic irruption (Genesis 1:3), is not to be divorced from the character of the declaration.

The days of Genesis 1 are in line with the days we now have, once instituted, in their character. This fact correlates intensely with the monergism of method, the infinity of power of the Creator, and the terminology, so that anything further from patient, inventive process would be extraordinarily difficult to express. The presentation was first the institution of the platform, and then of the different parts upon it, all in the area of creation; this to be followed in each case by performance of the thing created. There is crisp, sovereign, undeterrable fluency combined with the eloquent dynamism of speech.

To deny such things is merely to distort the words provided, which are as radical in terms of utter power performing, without restraint from anything or anyone, of utter resolve at work with exalted and majestic specifications fully fulfilled, as one could wish. It is nothing to do with vague nugatory thoughts, elements of distilled possibility, structural analyses abstracted, or even logical constructions outside the camp of actuality*1A. To imagine such sublimations would be like subliminal advertisements: ludicrous intrusions. Here there is neither money for it, nor good from it.

To continue: Archer, as noted,  states that the Hebrew in Genesis 1:14 may be rendered,


Then verse 15 signifies their basic function as giving light (apart from being seasonal and signalising), once again, a verse on fire with purpose relative to BEING, verse 16 following with the performance, also stipulating purpose with specifics. IN verse 17, we find that

"God appointed them in the firmament of the heaven
to give light on the earth,
and to rule over the day and over the night,
and to divide the light from the darkness..."


WHY ? What is the point in so amazingly, so impactively precise and so strenuously brief a piece of writing, a very celebrity of terseness, in what could appear repetition ?

It is necessary for any view of the Bible which proceeds FROM plenary and immediate inspiration from God, as author to face this matter. If it were a mere matter of making and setting, while giving purpose, why not at least condense vv.15-18 ?

What however if the EMPHASIS and extensive specification coverage, be designed systematically to CLARIFY the situation, so that the DAY-DARKNESS alternation is now

 
bullet a) given a multiple CALLING (verse 14), in terms of purpose and celestial specifications;
 
bullet b) sequential with, but separated from the concept of the basic LIGHT GIVING function,
 
bullet c) made distinct from the IMPLEMENTATION ('and it was so') of the matter (verse 15), yet
 
bullet d)  embedded in context with verses 16-18!
 

These  last verses bear the responsibility of focussing interest on the precise WORK DONE IN FASHIONING THEM in the context of THESE 6 STATED PURPOSES, v. 16: while this with vv. 17-18 shows their being set in the framework of RULING, as the overall purpose. That, in turn,  in the amplitude of the constellation of stars as likewise formed, remains relevant to the point of decisive direction  knit with inimitable sovereignty! It is coded in majesty, styled in thrust,  incisive in imprint, flowing in thought, developmental in dynamic.

We move from vast but simple illuminative fluctuation to multi-purpose rule in the domain of light, nothing wasted all meaningful. Thus,  there is correlation with 1:1-3, differentiation, purposive definition and reflective oversight at the end, as of a work sought, wrought and now taught, clear, concise, particular, not to be confused with anything else, sui generis in the domain of forming and purpose for what is there.    

   

THEN there is comprehensibility. One can understand the addition of all in verses 16-18 if this be so. We are seeing the work done to implement the purposes, to get transition from the verse 1 situation with the 'create' verb, to this with the 'make or form' verb. It is not a mere parallel in this precise and brief account, to the "it was so", but has an explicative force, otherwise not present.
 

 

Equally, it could read, He fashioned them. Thus Harris, Archer and Waltke, in their Theological Word Book of the Old Testament, note that relative to the alternations of the Hebrew term transliterated bara,  specialising as 'create' and the one we now are considering,  asah - 'to do' with all the similar options, this point concerning the latter, that it "may simply connote the act of fashioning the objects involved in the whole creative process."  On the other hand, they point out, the other term, arb, alternating in Genesis 1 with this one,  "carries the thought of the initiation of the object" The heaven and the earth are initially brought to our eyes, in terms of arb and we observe the forms, fashionings, formulations and insertions that are required.

 

In the vast tapestry of meaning available for hc[, we must choose what best fits the total and specific, the overall and the intimate context, with due regard for any contrasts and alternations, as just noted. Hence this translation of v . 16, as will appear yet more obviously in terms of the stress on purposes, in vv. 14-18, fits delicately and deftly.

In the next sequence, in verse  20, to follow this episode, the waters, already present, are in parallel to this, given a purpose: to abound with living creatures. In vv. 14-16, light and expanse already being noted as present, the former with the normal pulsation denotable, of darkness and light, the new purposes are presented with new action to that point.

Each of these three verses is saturated with purpose, forged with the verb to make,  form, fashion, or ordain, relating to that purpose, and the series is consecutive to this end. In translation, not only is each word, but each phrase, clause, intent, purpose and background to be considered. Collision of concepts or accretion of means unmentioned needs explanation; and where this is provided only by the translator, we are looking at something scarcely distinguishable from eisegesis.

When the translation is made without supplementary or contrary assumption, there is no apparent option. Day and night being terms used, and normalised, light being present in this domain, purpose being signified in this complex now past, the forging or forming must be seen relative to the purpose provided.

Fitting to consider too is the amazing majesty of it all: in v. 16, stars are added simply to the notation of the two significant heavenly bodies, sun and moon, "for ruling the night". The stars are merely part of the same sentence that has just been referring to the moon being formed. Each of the three has the same accusative prefix. Their parallel is intensive in the sentence.

The purpose of the moon being to rule the night, the sentence being one, it appears that the stars are here arraigned for the same purpose: ruling the night. Thus purpose embraces all three domains, sun, moon and stars, forming is the verb and ruling is the result: day and night. God does things, at His good pleasure, in scale, whether in the Exodus, the creation of space, or that of man!

This then in v, 16  is the simple narration of the fulfilment of purpose. This is the correlative of the movement from existence to purpose as the chief ingredient. For existence, it is so; for purpose, it is cited as fulfilled. That is all. Verses 17-18 further intensify the purpose and the setting in the expanse combination, as if to make it not only implausible but virtually incomprehensible if anyone should miss the transition of notation!

Here accordingly,  in v. 16, the PURPOSIVE element is strikingly presented, repeated in the sense of ruling, amplifying in the domain of stars. Without doubt this must be one of the most purposive, multiply purposeful three verses in the Bible: 14-16. 17-18 makes it a quintet!  Indeed, vv. 17-18 are quite explicit in showing this as a development from verses 3-5, there now being a RULING function, correlative to the new fashioning and formative work. Thus fashioning and the multiple purposes are jointly  proclaimed, then the action of establishing them is exhibited, and then their effective dominion in their purposed function is shown. That is the voice of the quintet choir.

Five verses are insisting, persisting, decisively, incisively and concisely, in the most minimal of coverages, rich in grandeur, on PURPOSE to the point that it is amazing. It states it in intention, in multiple performance accordingly, in retrospect. This disjunction and conjunction - diversity from what preceded and combination with its own formula and format - is as apparent as a cat beside an elephant. It is impossible to miss, or to negate; and what is never here present in Genesis 1, it is mere verbosity. This is the PURPOSE section.

Purpose and the fabrication of the means, the appointment, the performance, the setting in functional place, all are dominant. The point is merely amplified by the consideration that verse 15, in terms which do not stress the purpose, unlike the context, already has, "and it was so", before verse 16 comes to the light, with its focus on fashioning! Having met the basic alternation, we now find the precise configuration and removal of obscuration, the casting forth of the light in designated fields of operation, with the functional precision for the purpose, amplified and re-stated.

This is the purposive arena, and what is being constructed is the fulfilment of purpose, in the already existing domain of distinguishable night and light, day and night so-called, in an arena of terminological clarity. If the light had been relatively diffuse, there is no call to attempt to make the terminology appear similar. That, it would be presumption itself!

Thus,  the basic point is rampantly clear. DAY and NIGHT had already been ANNOUNCED in the ONE CONTEXT as OCCURRING BEFORE THIS ACTION OF VERSE 14, so that while the MEANS prima facie may have been missing and the thing direct and supernatural (i.e. light modulation without natural means), even though this whole account  is the expression of things natural derived from the Supernatural One, in their created form and formulation: yet the terminology is coherent with the normal usage of 'day' which flows onto our present system, as the account proceeds.

Accordingly, it would be a flat contradiction of  genre, meaning, deposition and descriptive procedure, if there were verbal mutation, terminological truancy: there is the phraseology used, and it does not alter in KIND, any more than the living creations later on. We are dealing with specifics as appointed and found, and their commencement. What it is that commences is the thing in view, in each case: KIND of day or KIND of animal, or image bearer.

Thus Poole in his biblical commentary of such just and due fame, notes of v. 14, the "lights", that these appear condensations of the first light, more effective and functional. This is precisely the testimony of the text: the processive, the progressive, here in verse 14, shown in precise, multiple and multiplied functions.

In view of this, and the ordinal nomenclature of each, with its bipartite, morning and evening character, definitive of the meaning of the term, not only is assault on this development erratic; indeed, the very concept is contrary to the entire nature of the divine declaration.

The Lord is not suggesting scenarios, nor is He giving new meaning to the terms of everyday use, emphasised by the WAY they are used, and that repetitively. On the contrary, He is simply, decisively and sequentially declaring in understandable terms what is what and how what is, came to be at His instance. He shows how, why and in what order it came, with what contiguous developments, as if it were a manual for scholars on the one hand, and a statement for the layman on the other.

Into early history, it therefore progresses without interruption, but rather with situation cementing links, so that precisely that same sense of development from what is at the outset instituted, continues into human history: in each case, whether matter or man, the thing in view being exhibited in its nature, and with the repercussions of it, under divine control.

The Lord is not teaching us how to become spiritual entrepreneurs, using the raw material of His word, but students of grace, preferring the divine original to the traditions, so suppressive, autonomous, obscure and varied, of men. It is as in Mark 7:7ff.. What is needed is to take what is given; not to fashion it like mini-creators, into something else!

The word of God is clear to the one who understands (Proverbs 8:8); and the way to understand, sublime and functional, because wholly dependent on the speech of God, is this: Take it as it comes. Don't try to marry it, but rather receive it. Don't make it a basis for having a parade of the children of your own brain, but allow it to TELL you. It is then that its own intrinsic light, attested, unmolested by vagrant imagination, makes it so clear. It is then that on all sides it resounds with other scriptures, displaying one unchanging perspective, at peace with itself, as so many theologians are not with the text!

Let us then return to the point of terminology in Genesis 1.

If the purpose is to be clear (as in Proverbs 8:8) and not contrived, wreathed and so forth, as there indicated of the wisdom of God, then the result is this: there is no slide in the usage of these terms.

Real darkness such as we know in KIND at least was the nature of the case before the lights were fashioned to be for the purposes as outlined in verses 15-16: aims which are multiple and permanent in type.

That darkness and light could have been separated enough, at least to be in the pattern and mould of day and night, is obvious, their modes penetrating in the successive ordering of things. Even if there were a vaporous tumult or movement in the newly made heaven above the earth, the heavens distinct above the earth, the light pulsing, the waters divided successively, until the relevant movement in vv. 14-18 completed the fashion and fashioning of it, indeed an ensemble being formulated and now formed into full operative efficiency:  this merely explains the better, the force of the purposes found in 14-18.

Genesis 1:1 starts the creation with the heavens and the earth, 1:2ff. proceeds with the better formation of the RELATIVELY inchoate in more precise shape and serviceability, and the population of life into the unbound resources thus formed, while Genesis 1:!4ff. proceeds with the heavenly side of things, the terrestrial by this time having been greatly advanced in form. In this, similarly to the case with the earth, the time has come for more express moulding with precision for the purposes here stated in such amazing detail, and so we come to the light of common day, its purposes clarified, its means refined.

Nor is it some species of effort to make it easier, in didactic or metaphorical steps: the purpose is at the outset clear. There is statedly to be light with alternation from evening to the day it produces. Then when the other matters are set rapidly in place, there is to be an abundance of purposive intensity regarding the light, and a work of vigour ensues in meeting purposes now in order for the light, so that the environment is shocked into recipiency.

All is now endued with eminent practicality, sequence is sated and the environment is functionally constructed, not waiting for absurd periods which do not allow the synthesis of living activities, or manipulation by some intrusive prating about imaginary purposes.

The divine purposes are stated with the utmost clarity, and in form, severity. The actions are sober and direct. It is no more a new form of literary expression than is any other chronology; it is merely in the grandeur of the scope that it surveys. This contrasts with a stylistic majesty of its own, with the simplicity and imperial character of the orders, and the notation of results and pruposes.

The actions read precisely like those of a Josiah; but this time it is not a nation, but the universe which is in view. All that is needed is faith to receive it; and humility not to reconstruct it. It is enough to construct the universe and say how; it is too much to do it again in verbal form, on the part of one of the creations, as in turning precise, monergistic, sequential prose in a stated program into some kind of abstracted innovation, set in a class by itself, to allow manipulation, and divided into what is there and what is not, but is added. So do traditions arise to defy what is written, whether in 2000 AD or 100 BC!

Further, it is profitable to note more on verse 16. The action here is a MOULDING one which would lead on to a PURPOSIVE specification: rather like making a car that moves in structure, but then later,  as a concentrated and applied act,  completing all the specifications so that the whole gamut of its operations is possible.

Indeed, the  stage is set for the heavens, not only verbally, but in parallel intimation with the earth.

Just as, following the creation of the heavens and the earth in Genesis 1:1, there was some kind of earth, an entity requiring action, so we are in simple parallel from the one set of directions, to expect some kind of heavens, also and likewise requiring action. Verses 14-16 supply this, when the rest is ready.

When therefore their turn comes for attention, at Genesis 1:14-18,  the inchoate state of the heavens is in its own turn, given moulding, and subjected to due forming to enable its full working order, just as was the earth, quite definitely present and  ready as recipient for fabrication, was wrought on in verses 6ff..

Just what purposes were in view for the earth were in part duly spelled out and executed in 1:1-13; and so now at 1:14, is it the parallel case for the heavens, they too operative but only in a rudimentary way.

As the earth has its rudiments and so was a base for action (1:2),  including light and its divine deployment (1:3-5); so is it with the heavens, already seen in operation in the specified light variation of 1:5, and now to be subjected to vigorous, sequential action as was the earth in 1:6ff..

The functional purposes clear, in both the domains stated in 1:1, namely the heavens and the earth. First there is the basic institution, with light, and its humanly normative fluctuation, set in the normal terminology for the same. Then each domain is focussed with detail and dynamic, in which the divine does not pause to dabble in needless detail, but in ample proportions, sets forth the immediate history of these foundlings, heaven and earth.

In the case of the earth, the movements of the divine on the creation are specified and collated. Then starting in verse 14, the divine attention is given to the astronomical aspect. Now we have the parallel in the processive, progressive work labelled, done and considered in review.

The simple fact is that Genesis 1:2 specifies that the earth WAS existence following verse 1, just as verse 14 takes up the celestial parallel. Forming in each case then proceeds. The text excludes any other option.

God created heaven  and earth, done: we proceed to the earth case, as a topic, and are shown the divine actions and reasons, and then to the heavens case, as a focus, and are shown the actions and reasons. In each case, what is said to have been created, was; in each case, what was done about what was there, follows.

Hence the heavens were there at verse 2's inception, like the earth;  and thus there is no excuse any plausible, even conceivable, for pretending they were not, and that the evening and morning were a divine exercise in rambling exegesis, a flit of thought or a fit of forgetfulness. Being there, their exercise in whatever initial state, as paralleled in that of the earth, morning and evening can flow readily enough, for God knows what He is doing, and those who wish to indicate He could not have put them in a state which could in His view indicate light and darkness are clearly more knowledgeable than God. Such is the way of entrance for those who, entranced with the sophisticated follies of unbelief, set their hats and direct their thoughts to the horror of combining man's ever evanescent thought with the clear depictions of the divine.

This is then the clear intimation of the text regarding the reality of day and night, and its ready formulation in those terms, without difficulty of any kind. There is no excuse or ground for departing from the text, whether one conceives of the light and darkness this way or that. It is the permission for departure as if some problem warranted it, which is wrong, awry, amiss and perilous. To actually sanction (splitting the infinitive reminds one of splitting from the doctrine of the Bible) things underivable from the text, is merely to add tradition to the text, and make a neo-Protestant Romanesque lunge. Let us be clear, the word of God is in authority and NOTHING else in doctrine. NO church has power to sanction may not be gained by good and necessary inference from the text; and in this, the stress of the Westminster Confession is just (Ch.  1, VI).

Setting out such things in the name of the church for church comfort, connivance or acceptance is a breach not merely of agreement, alien to the word and spirit of the Confession's teaching, but of condition of membership. Worse, it is to use a church as an pseudo-autonomous entity, and bring in offence, on the one hand, and decline on the other. Against such things, exhortation must be made, and if not accepted, it becomes necessary to leave.

We therefore must cleave to the days as they go, so when they come, in basic notion. In this way, the author is not induced, if it were possible, to retract or to add or to differentiate without saying so, in his use of terms. It is true some  thought does need to be given to the direct, miraculous, operations in days 1-3, including the institution at the first, as with regard to light; but it is also true that any real movement imported into that frame merely invents a novel feature, makes the account which is of ACTION AND RESULT to be divorced from its whole context, and passing by the specification of nature, becomes an incursive doctrine. "ADD NOT to His words lest He rebuke you and you become a liar," says Proverbs 30:6.

Sensitivity of conscience in any such domain is not merely permissible, but to be desired! From lack of the same, many churches have fallen into the mud, the thud scarcely noted as the delusive cultural approval of compromise resounds in the socially sated ear.

Indeed, in that way, the record would become not really an account but a combination of what it purports to be, a creation account, and what it neither purports to be nor presents at any demonstrable point: a series of partly explicated and partly submerged operations not noted, but operative nonetheless in the most basic of levels.

Such a diffuse concept contradicts the entire formulation and formula used throughout. Yet unfortunate as that appears, it is as nothing compared with the next step, where imagination gains no rein. It is then that we find, with these or such unwarranted preliminaries, the next and fateful step:  the clear, well-known and normal usage of day and night which in verse 15 is EXPRESSLY designated in terms of the WORK of the formation and fashioning of the luminaries, is to be set against some entirely different sort of thing, not merely miraculously brought about by intrusive supervention in the laid out scenario, not only without announcement of that fact, but with total transformation of type from what follows*1B

Day becomes daze.

This begets a conception in which the same terminology in the same mini-context is to be attributed to NON-day and NON-night: the same vocabulary becoming stupefyingly mutant, and within a few words of each other. Day and night in the context of sun and moon AFTER day four, which is a virtual DEFINITION of the meaning, are now to be revised into an erratic concept, which junks these indications, before. Terminology becomes like an evolutionary dream, and clarity becomes an oddity at the will or taunt of the 'scholarship' which ignores the testimony continually made, in the text.

Who could pass such a paper at the most elementary of levels! Its slides are a slither and a wandering. Worse, to imagine that because God is great, He is not great on clarity in giving HISTORY, is merely a contradiction in terms, an evacuation of meaning, a nullification of phraseology, and of Proverbs 8:8. Moreover it comes close to lending insult to our Maker, as gratuitous as unguarded. It has, then,  nothing whatever to do with interpretation of the biblical text either in its immediate or in its overall aspects.

Clearly therefore it is necessary to see genuine light and darkness gradings diurnal in portion, before day four; and while it is not a priori  necessary to have these performed by the luminaries in precisely the present way: yet it is sufficient that they should loom and contribute something after this kind, although doubtless lacking in decisiveness just as the purpose of verse 14 had not yet been propounded and met. It could be argued that God could have turned OFF the light to create darkness, but this is to add to the text. The darkness-light progression is INSTITUTED, and proceeds as a specifically created thing, entity, duality, process following divine procedure antecedent to it, without alteration in kind, but with alternation of progress, as a thing in place, and working.

Darkness was. Day was. Day and darkness are both definable in terms at least in kind, of what we know as we find in the overall context. Though naturally the importation of more divine action than stated is unfortunate, its main danger is that it leads on as a precedent in principle. Like tripping on the sidewalk, it can lead to death by impact from a car when you are where you do not belong. It is, then,  what follows that is fatal in this arena. It is the discordant divisiveness of double dealing with 'day'.

Thus, if we are to invent, then as soon as terms are arbitrarily defined to mean what they do not mean in the context, because of some desire, we are merely inventing the word of God, and may as well make a new gospel, in principle while at it. It is NOT WISE so to abuse the text. However, to reduce the term 'day' to a pair of discordant twins, this leaves the rest as mere fibrillation by comparison!

Let us then differentiate yet more completely. Thus, even if  it were to be imagined that the darkness and light were supernaturally made to vary without the means in the first 3 days, it still remains that they were there. They happened. That is not in itself a DIFFICULTY initially. It is only difficult to the point that  the Report INSISTS that the luminaries be not said to be there; and even then, it is so only to the point that this involves a completely gratuitous, stylistically obfuscatory intrusion into what is required by the text, and an alienation from the tenor of cause and effect duly following from supernatural invention, being outlined before our watching eyes. Only to that point!

Perhaps the extreme error of the situation makes one take enormity as almost pleasantry, by COMPARISON with what must and does follow.

Even though, accordingly, it is not at the critical outset,  a FLAT contradiction of the dayspring indications, merely a truculent seeming metamorphosis into imagination without human exhibit, flat contradiction however is what it becomes in the light of the subsequent indications of day and night in their commencement specifications and functional code, as is the case with other commencements: plants, fish, flying things, cattle, man.

Therefore, by this time, the austere majesty of the text is humbled to the vision of the variable; its account of origins, which it claims to be, is made something else. The scaffolding of man is added to the word of God, and the imaginations of flesh become the focus. The word of God, nevertheless, remains. Humiliation brings no alteration, and all, in the end, all that is humbled, is the hapless and puny panzers of man.

The blitzkrieg brings fury, but no light.
 

 Energy for the Erratic is Not Parallel with Grounds for such Liberties

Let us survey the scene, then. The Hebrew, Let luminaries be in the heavens  for the purpose of separating … (Archer's rendering, op.cit.) is purposively introduced, and completely harmonisable with the concept that the creation of the heavens and the earth included the cosmologically requisite elements, which in verse 14 are given a fashioning towards their precise specifications, one and all, as multiply announced in v. 15. The progressive institution mode is thus continued.

Their formation for the purpose stated in verse 16, is then merely summarising. Created at the point of stating creation in v. 1, they are formed for a purpose in vv. 14-16; nor is there is the slightest contradiction of the text in so saying, but in fact this provides the simplest of readings of it in conjunction with what went before; while it equally provides grounds for the special features of the text as noted above. It thus reads coherently and in an integrity of fluency:

Hence this PCA excuse for delving with considerable approval, at a formal teaching level, into various figurative and imaginative substitutes for the clear account of things in terms of terminology which is expressly set in the astronomical realm, with stated purpose such as we see, is without ground or verification. It is mere textual intrusion. It is regrettably a case of setting at nought, or making vain, or making of no account the word of God through your traditions, as Christ put it (Mark 7:7).

Indeed, one has the advantage that rarely before has the sheer effrontery of the matter of tradition (outside Roman Catholicism) appeared as much as in this case. Here the creation lab book  is stated in practical and simple terms, and yet it seems they have such trouble that all the worlds of philosophy have to be entreated into it, lest it should be clear, lest they should understand and proceed with wisdom!
 

The facts ...

The facts are these: heaven and earth created; formations and formulations added; light and darkness from day one, so named, and purpose-making functionalities made apparent with their specifications stated and fully operative, in day four. The Hebrew admits of either view at this point - making in toto or forming for the purpose on day four; but the emphasis is without doubt on specialised purpose, which is the entire framework of this day and on any formation relative to it, letting the heavenly aspect now receive attention, after its initial specification, just as earlier in the Chapter, the earthly formings were noted. This is the happy order of progression, both for each, and from the one to the other in one of the most orderly discourses one could find.

This together with the fact that verbally, this is a matter of formation and the original is creation as noted, and the terminological ‘problem’ for those who want a darkness and light in the context of day and night to mean something radically different from what it means when it is used some words later - an eisegesis extraordinaire, an inventive attention, a mutilation obstructive and invasive, what does it imply ? It means that there is in the end no liberty at all. Specifications for light and darkness, day and night are provided. Imagined by some, to have been different though the same terms were used, they are nevertheless developed formed as is the continual mode in the chapter after the expression of creation:  and the purposive emphasis which directs and indeed alone explains the otherwise repetitive character of the text in verses 14-16, matches the text in its clarity and pith.

Thus, the earth is not taken as requiring a new statement in v. 2, but is there for action after v. 1; and so with the heavens, after v. 1, when their turn comes, they too are there for action, the forming as specified, with the vastly directive purposive content provided, almost in case anyone should forget so soon, the duality and the complementarity of proceedings, heaven and earth created, then earth's modes, then those of the heavens, till all is fully formed and ready.

Problems invented mean text dissented, terms made mutant mean text disputed, structure ignored means stricture implied. It is a hideous assault.

That is, as far as day is concerned,
uniformity of basic concept remains,
and pad of performance origination
institutes such known items from the first in an account via creation,
like the rocket pad before it takes off;
and difficulty is as unclear as the cloudy heavens in the beginning when the waters were gathered.

They are not other in kind, in capacity, in coherence, in meaning, in time, in chronological notation, in system, in stuttering, in staggering, in revision minor or major. In the end, it seems the liberals have made some latter-day captives after all, with some afraid to adhere to the text, apparently lest someone be offended: but with scribes, Pharisees, Sadducees in modern garb, and social Herodians, what does it matter ? Some will bring up straw men; it is only a matter of a match and they are gone.

What however has no match is the clarity and force, the power and the endurance, the indefeasibility and the joyous factuality of the word of God.  Snivelling sleight of hand is irrelevant to its majesty; clarity comes with reverence for its integrity. This is a reward: adhere to it, and it sings with harmony and grandeur, accuracy and adequacy. Leave it one joy, and as with a medical prescription, you are quickly displaying nothing so much as your own ignorance, in daring to dabble in the divine (for the mouth of God is … divine, its utterance clad with divine competence), and inherit a host of evils.

There is one great and flaring exception to that direct simplicity. This, however, is not an exegetical option but an energetic work of the flesh, thrust into the text like a tornado into a community.

This, it is to move from what is written to some construction at odds with the stated fact that this is the history of the creation of the heavens and the earth (Genesis 2:1-4). It is presented as history; it is stated that THUS it was done. On the other view, it is NOT done thus, the terms do NOT mean what they are used to mean in the very context without intermission, so that they are charged with mutation, and the purposive thrust in v.14-15, being bypassed in thrust,  is turned in effect, into initial creation without warrant. Some would even go further and junk the whole precisely defined 'day' in verses 4ff., altogether, allegorise them, or accord to their definitive repetitiveness, a systematic hiatus.  It almost seems that anything is acceptable so long as it is not deducible from the text.

If you can do such things, you can do anything. We can turn parables into literal works, literal works into parables, either into anything at the liberty and command of the reader: if such can be done, then writers are left mere midgets in the hungry maw of the concepts promoted for the readership in such approaches as that of the Report. Definitions depart. It is in such cases, that one readily finds allegories enter with Origen. Originality becomes man's; longsuffering comes to the Author. If this be the case for authors, why write at all !

Indeed, when God is back of the writing, it is more than unwise: it is invasive and cumbrous, to say no more, so to intrude into His word, who is perfection, and to manufacture structural imaginations without textual warrant of any kind, to alter definitions, to invent grounds other than those given, with enormous emphasis and total explicatory power. To do this in the face of clarity and cohesion, in stated purposive precincts is an enormity which to suffer, makes the gigantesque the minuscule.


If it were possible to turn from such parameters, in innocence, as if they were mere figments and the imagination of man was paramount, then no text could be ‘safe’ from the ‘inventions’ which alas Israel was all too prone to make in dealing with things divine, in its own time likewise (Psalm 99:8). Of this, we find it written: HE the Lord, took vengeance on their inventions. In fact this sort of instability leads on to whatever downfall may be in view, unless revival comes; it is like eating too much fat.

It is, alas,  presumptuous and it can lead to pride and parody in short time. It is not that those who say some of these things are of necessity heretics and so outside the faith; it is that they are departing from the text and such PRINCIPLES of departure as these, allow heresy in short order. No longer does the word of God RULE. It is a basis for thought, no more. It is moreover a departure from Biblical truth, which, however much one seeks to allay its significance, since it requires thought, yet is here not a case of intrinsic difficulty, but one of CREATING difficulty by justifying an additive framework (and once you start, there is no end).

It blatantly contradicts the divine specifications about His speech in Proverbs 8:8. It takes things into its own hands. It is as if it were intrinsically a hard thing to understand; whereas hard only if anything at all, it is to understand the various confusing, or confused, variable and attenuated concepts, now meaning this, now that, now moving further now not so far, that are adduced, induced and produced, propounded and compounded in this PC in America Committee Report on Creation.

If it were a philosophical treatise, or liberal excursion FROM the text, it could contain interest for those who follow those modes; but as an option viewed for formal teaching in the church, it is appalling. It invites evil; it does not do what a Presbytery well might, provide pastoral delicacy for each according as there is need and it is able, in seeking to bring fidelity to the Bible. Then private views gradually forming might be understood and quietly proceed. Instead, it formally OPENS the DOOR to vague erraticism, while making erroneous criticism of what the text does teach in one of the most  emphatically directive, systematic and chronologically precise depictions imaginable! Such action is principial error, not pastoral grace; and the thing is a great grief.

It is really rather ludicrous so that to keep, as it were, a straight face is a work of  self-discipline. Indeed, from a slightly different aspect, this is to reject categorically, as unacceptable because of imaginary difficulties, what is the only solution in kind, to the meaning of the Bible in this arena. It alone requires no attenuation, addition or departure either from biblical usage in ordinal numbers, or consistency of terminology.

Ignoring this culturally disdained but factually accurate position, oddities are sanctioned by the church, or by the one in question here. What is it that this is, or how might it be characterised ?

It is to make novel ideas not in the least deducible from the text, to be acceptable teaching, and not to be content with what is either directly stated or is demonstrable by good and necessary inference (the Westminster Confession's just and apt depiction of interpretation). Thirdly, it is to bring disrepute on the word of God by having a body called a 'church', exhibit either uncertain ambivalence on uncertain ideas relative to the word of God, as if it were itself a creation of some diffidence, or else to adduce ideas not deducible from the text, as if these were the meaning of the text, imaginations for the word of God. It is not a good exchange.

To take the last: In the analogy of a day the actual world was created, but it was not actually created in this way, for it was the analogy of a system, and it was not actually systematised in the way stated! How much more vain could be made, the word of God, in this new creation, alas not of a new heavens and a new earth, of a new tradition of man, culturally manufactured and thrust in with all the old disregard for reverence where the mouth of God has spoken.

What more nonsensical than this patronising pomp of inert phraseology! If a name could be manufactured to meet it, could it be neo-liberalism, that liberal attitude to the word of God which suppressing what is there, introduces what is not, to the applause of various cultural pundits or principles! The addition: you do not SAY what you are doing; you just do it.

Could one endure in fellowship with such things ? Not organically, for the PRINCIPLE of departure inventively from the word of God is an intrinsic defect too profound for safety. If such things are to be TAUGHT, then one would need to depart (Romans 16:17*2). One could not consider that Biblical discipline was being kept when such things are allowed as FORMAL POSSIBILITIES FOR THE ELDERSHIP OF THE CHURCH, and FORMAL PRESENTATIONS BY THE CHURCH.

They can by no means being shown by good and necessary inference to be what the scripture declares, and their formal authorisation represents a breach of covenant, an outlandish innovation, a movement on the part of the PCA into a realm wholly diverse from that envisaged in the system of doctrine in the Westminster Confession, to its very heart. Continuance in it could be gained only by sacrificing the elemental provision that one adheres ONLY in official mode and authority, to what is declared in or deducible from the Bible. Proverbs 30:6 arises like thunder. Whatever the thunder of covenant-breaking man, one prefers this to the displeasure of disregarding the fear of God, whose holiness is felicity and whose word, without admixture or addition, subtraction or qualification, is truth.
 

A case of putting off the day ...  or procrastination ? and the personal discipline of departure

For years now the PC in America has allowed the sad statement, first rejected by a Presbytery but favourably over-ruled by the Assembly,  not differentiating clearly between Genesis and poetry. This was virtually inconceivable laxity.

Not for one hour, says Paul! (Galatians 2:5).

For years, said this Church!

Now its Committee appointed for the purpose has presented its appeal on vacuous grounds for variety, such as is now being formalised into acceptance. In such a milieu one would not dare to tread. In this, the word no longer rules, and when this occurs, where shall the righteous flee ?  Assuredly, one must regretfully reflect, not wisely into such doors as these. If it does not rule in one place, what is the rule of the Ruler ?

It is adding to the word of God to add these interpretations which, in the laity, might be allowed with all the liberty in the world, while they ponder; but in those called to teach and to impart, not at all should such things be, lest those who should be encouraged, be subverted, and subversion moving on the waters of such principles, strike reefs without limit or cease. Instead, for years, the folly concerning Genesis as poetic was permitted! (Cf. A Spiritual Potpourri Ch. 9, The Biblical Workman Ch. 7, TMR Appendix.)

When the Biblical  doctrine of separation is similarly contravened, however (as attested of the PC in America, in Spiritual Refreshings for the Digital Millenium, Ch. 3, p. 44), it is clear that a church which takes the commands and the concepts of the Bible, at least in its teaching arena, more strictly, is needed. This is the case, for liberty FROM the word and BEYOND the word is not the one which is to be sought; but rather LIBERTY WITHIN the word! In Australia, we do not need such additions as these.

It is not wise to have fellowship where this proceeds unabated; for even if a church body is simply departing from the basics of the faith, in such a case as this, it is still the teaching that the word of God is to be honoured and received or the believer is to depart. Re-invention of  Genesis 1 in man's terms of addition to the statements, definitions and structure of the text, is not an option; and where some poetical Genesis 1 is in view, after years, the defilement precludes persistence.

Where the foundations are destroyed, where shall the righteous flee! (Psalm 11). It is to the Lord and His word, and to continue in them, that one flees. That is where one has begun, there by His grace, where one continues*2. Thus into God's hands, one commits one spirit, and in total reliance on the precious promises by which one escapes the corruption of this world (I Peter 1:1-12, II Peter 1:2-4), accepts the biblical definition of Isaiah 8:20 and all its many correlates, including Romans 16:17, and having severed from what is prohibited rejoices in that eternal life which is promised, and Him, the resurrected Christ and Lord who guarantees it. One's departure is also a warning to which if any give heed for their own souls, it is well..

Watchmen must warn, but must also heed their own warning! (Ezekiel 33). Failure to observe this has caused untold failure, as if continuing in a corrupt firm were an option for the sake of the partners, when the very continuation is a toleration which the law, to take the parallel, might not appreciate in an honest man! What you are bound to is God or man; and where man departs, you have no option to become a rebellious watchman yourself!

We need the discipline of the word, in the word,  from the word, and nothing added. In this, the realm of 'science' merely catches up, and has been doing quite a job of it in the last 50 years, as more and more of the simplistic substitutes for scientific method of many of its exponents, wrought by the philosophically passionate majority, are unveiled. The mechanism phase, the chance and wandering phase, the irrationalist phase come and go, and nothing changes except their popularity over time, and as to this, it not only happens but has to happen as first the one, and then the next, and so on, is shown ludicrous (cf. SMR Chs. 1, 2, 3, Little Things Ch. 5, Earth Spasm, Ch. 1, Secular Myths and  Sacred Truth  Ch. 7, Spiritual Refreshings ... Ch. 13, News 100, Stepping Out ... Ch. 9, Ancient Words ... Chs.  9,  13).

In high contrast, the biblical statement is constantly verified in ways which would be amazing were it not for the fact of God, which such pseudo-science, yielding now here, now there to philosophy's vagrancies, ignores. That, it is like ignoring the ground on which you stand, which in word at least, is airy, but not apt.

In this way,  religious, agnostic and irrational propositions come like insurgents into science, and these invaders have become terminally ill, while confusion in the most explicit terms has resulted in some of the disciplines concerned.  It has its comic side indeed (cf. A Spiritual Potpourri Chs. 1-3, 8, 9 ), and its feeling of intrigue (cf. Spiritual Refreshings for the Digital Millenium Ch. 13).

With such we do not wish to walk or work, and indeed dare not (Romans 16:17, Isaiah 8:20, Jeremiah 44:17, Proverbs 30:6), nor to be conjoined there in the comradeship of pilgrimage, though it is not for us to condemn such institutions, but merely the teaching (II Timothy 4:2, Proverbs 24:11), and to keep the commandments: for the fear of God is clean and enduring, not craven but delighted. It is as when one contemplates a warming, blazing and energised fire, embraced by the wonder with which it is imbued. Reverential adoration in practical dress is to Him whose it is, and majesty, purity seven times sure, is the character of His word.

Before such immutability of truth, the concept that SCIENCE itself presents some difficulty is as ludicrous as blind. It is SCIENCE in its philosophic clothes which is in perplexity amid comic muddles, and  mutations in virtual multitudes. It is the Bible which does not move. Not any one of the multitudes of its own words moves.

The difficulty of the Report being an invented oddity from roving imagination or confusion, itself an invasive source of difficulties, contrary to the text and its structure, has one all but humorous feature. Its own words indicate that the result would be easy (interpretation) if the text were read with straightforward simplicity. This at least are verified. Unfortunately they add contra-textual fallacies to invent difficulty; but their initial acknowledgement, when these are subtracted, being obtuse, and invented, leaves their initial thought correct. It IS easy.

Harmony of the biblical verses is immense, intense and cohesive in structure, definition and detail, succinctly clear, decisive in presentation, abhorring addition as is fit for the word of God (cf. Proverbs 30:6). Read as it is, it gives reality as it is, with sublime and sovereign directness, without the webs of complexity woven only by the human mind.

There are then no difficulties, but those of disfaith (q.v.), proudly sporting the manacles of philosophic invasion, or 'faith' fidgeting in confusion. Even this might be difficult to explain, were it not both so common over the ages, and so clear from prophecy that it would come to be (Deuteronomy 32, II Timothy 3:5 with I Timothy 6:16, II Peter 2:1).

As to the concern with time,  we shall consider this further, but at the more prosaic level of dating, an extensive review of this topic*3 in TMR Ch. 7 E and associated references there found, reveals that there is no problem with the young earth concept, the bulk of simple, straightforward attestations of relevance being crisp, clear and remarkable; that the radiometric assumptions which have sometimes seemed other, are in fact grossly presumptuous in kind, unreliable in performance, being merely proof by assuming what is to be proved, in the forms of antecedent and processive criteria, and then applying this. The assessment of the movements of the velocity of light in particular has now moved to new dimensions of enquiry, and underlying assumptions of uniformity here are merely erratic.

In sum, what is direct, is for a young earth; while what is radiometric for large ages, is falsified by begging the question in a point now revealed as not even susceptible to that*4. One has found upon multi-partite review, that one COULD NOT rationally believe otherwise except by forsaking reason. A time of thousands of years sits like a crown on the undenuded mountains of the earth, the contents of the oceans, the supernovas of the heavens, the cooling of the globe, the magnetic manifestations of its past, as also the surface of the moon and the quaint self-contradictions of geology on any other basis. It is just a matter of examining what is there, in terms of scientific method, and following it, allowing cohesion, consensus and NO rule by assumption.

While this is merely peripheral to questions of interpreting the text of Genesis 1, it is best to remove illicit and delusive concepts and presuppositions from the arena, while we are at it, since so few seem able or willing or both, to consider what is written, rather than what is smitten by the invasive pre-conceptions of marauding man (cf. Mark 7:7ff.).

 

3.  A FURTHER ASPECT OF THE DIVERGENCE
FROM THE TEXT AND THE ISSUE

 
Now before we turn to point 3, the historical aspect as noted in the PC in America Report, let us add here some further aspects of the presentation, as found above. We find some peripheral material that in thoroughness it might be well to expose.

Thus it is in the PC of America report, indicated "that the light of the first three days was light emanating from God Himself, just as the description of the final state indicates that God will be the light, not the sun or moon.  'And the city hath no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine upon it: for the glory of God did lighten it, and the lamp thereof is the Lamb.' (Rev 21:22)  Thus the Bible opens with God shedding His light upon the creation and closes with the same."

Such a view, whoever may or may not have held it, in no way is tantamount to turning the day notation kept throughout Genesis, into something undefined and different. Let us however look at the concept, which taken by itself is wholly different in divergence from the aeon concept.

As presented in the Report, however, this "light emanating from God Himself" is ambiguous. If it is meant to suggest non-created light, we note merely that this is a record of creation, using the terminology of norm, to inform. In the book of Revelation, this creation is past as a process, even the new heavens and the new earth having been created (cf. Isaiah 65). Here, moreover, the emphasis is "face to face" with God, not on the topic of created media.

Thus instead of this unity of uncreated light and uncreated light (on such an interpretation of Genesis with Revelation), from first to last, we come in fact to a diversity:
 
bullet 1) uncreated light being brought into being (a strange concept for the 'uncreated' indeed
to inhere in what is expressly said to have been in the realm of the 'created' in Genesis 1:1;
but let us say, being brought into application where it was not so before - Let there be light!).

Quite simply, since this is CREATION, it is not fitting for an inventory including uncreated light.
 
bullet 2) uncreated light BEING, which is far more fitting! but still contrary, since creation is not akin to what is uncreated, whether by irrational contradiction, or irrelevant insertion. 

If on the other hand, the concept is created light without using a luminary or light resource from the newly invented 'heavens' adequate for the day and night variation,  something material in its nature, then we are being told to add to the word of God and to postulate a light source not stated, when we are shortly acquainted with light sources which ARE available. What makes such a postulate far more amazing is this, that on such a basis, LIGHT is pronounced, DAY AND NIGHT (opposite in order) are announced, and then light sources are announced, whereas this philosophy of man would have us insert into the text a light source of some other kind, kept secret in the very midst of what is proclaimed, named and specified, while vast operations on water and cloud proceed, which, being done, in fact allow light to assume its normal purposive functions. Such is the beautiful logic of the text.

To say no more, this is scarcely an adornment to any theory! It tends to allegorise, or spiritualise a record of what God did in bringing to pass that specific entity called creation, to add, to dispense, to proceed with a certain knowledgeable, insertive  assertion.

Further, if it is meant, this light, in the earlier verses of Genesis 1, to be a created light, then the unannounced method of correlating  with 'day' and 'night' in a manner of presentation, a style which is emphasising the sequence from creation throughout the record, would be misleading. Terms and settings indicative of one thing, would be used to be indicative of another. Before such an insertion could be tolerated for one moment, in terms of competence in communication, one would have to annul the stylistic portent, predominance and procedure, and to bring in a mystic strangeness, and a collision of concepts.

This can be done, often is done, one fears, for example in political speeches; however to import it into the word of God is intractably contrary to the perfection of diction implied. In any case, to butcher and push, both  for expository purposes, is actually to introduce an addition from one's own mind; and when the text requires nothing added, then this is what should be added! This then is what is to be done, and the terms are to be interpreted consistently, the explanations consistently with the terms, and the purposes consistently with the actions, whether CREATION or FORMATION relative to purpose, or even OPERATION according to purpose.

In must be stressed in this case, that since the waters under the heaven were first in need of a spacious expanse (1:7-8), and then of a distancing from land, nothing could be more obvious than the degree of obscuration at first total of course in the watery complex, and then vastly affected by enormous water movements. In verse 14, this question of degree is clarified and the instruments appear, in literary as in astronomical sequence, with their purpose to match their appearance, while its modulation is stringently, multiply and emphatically announced to cover the need in function, as formerly in formation. Things are cleared up, both atmospherically, hence enabling luminary and illumination purposes to proceed, and structurally, the grounds of the afore-stated alternation and action, brought to light with the light itself.

Thus created light potentiated for its purposes comes into full primal force at the commencement of creation, just as uncreated light comes in Revelation, into full functional force in the new creation, relative to man, where means give way to immediacy, so making the DEVELOPMENT from the creation to its consummation.

Thus the parallel made, by the PC in America document, falls in its own terms, and in the nature of movement from creation back to immediate presence before the Creator, which otherwise is merely dimmed and damaged with a spiritual obscuration.

The contrast, not the parallel, is both important and imperative. It is the essence of the culmination to have it so!

The comedy, which is another feature in this aspect of the report just noted, and linked above, comes in the little aside - 'hidden from whom'. The idea is to be satirical against those who consider that the manifestation of what had been hidden by water, of necessity, is now announced together with the purposes which such manifestation of light, in its orderly procedure and stated means, implies.

This sort of comedy, when as here it is a red herring, is most revealing about the nature of the presentation. It has with propaganda this in common, that it is irrelevant, that it is ad hominem (that is, it tries to bring an assault on the presenter which would disqualify or embarrass), and that it is absurd.

It is, in this arbitrary seeming Church report to bolster this new philosophical deviation from the orderly development and presentation of the text, here is a case of ignoratio elench, a bypassing of the point at issue without seeming to do so, a commendable form of propaganda for those who approve such things.

The fact that the light sources, till announced,  are unavailable for all the purposes structurally and functionally assigned to them, and that is so of necessity in the interim after "Let there be light", even though they be present continually in primordial operation (e.g. in verses 4-5), is to be seen in the context. Thus, this is so when at first there was literally no terrestrial space which would enable visibility FROM the earth,  to provide for the growing awareness of how our earth and its human functionality and astral features came to be:  this is the point. It is not to some non-present human viewer that the report is given, but to human viewers caused to see how their own situation developed, so that what was obscure is now clear, and what could not at first operate in the assigned features, did then in form as it does now operate. Thus is the text light and the perspective it imparts visibility.

Such irrelevances as this in the Report, which mocks the idea of anything being hidden (‘from whom’) are an excellent testimony to the devious character of such gross distortion of the text as this programme pursued, wittingly or otherwise, and hopefully the latter. It misses the ENTIRE point of the program. God did, and now reveals to the eye of faith what the act divine wrought.

The space having been created, as noted in Genesis 1, the stretched out expanse between the waters of sea and cloud, and the earth doubly detached, first from mere liquidity, with clearing skies, and then from overall liquidity, with clearing land, these solar and astral bodies with their roles in space and for earth, and the nature of these roles, the formation and the information, are dually and intimately disclosed.

In this way you see an excellent example of neo-evangelicalism, which tends always to depart from what is written, and with the special feature of strong affirmation of it, constitute the modern day traditionalism with affirmation, that is so rife in Romanism, was so rife in Pharisaism, and is always a buttress for those who want to have FORM of godliness, whatever may happen to the text itself! In so doing, of course, there is a fulfilment, a verification of the prophetic stipulation of II Timothy 3:1-5.

What else is indicative of such a trend, even where some measure of orthodoxy, is at times
maintained ?

It is in this way that female elders become increasingly tolerated in such settings, for fellowship, ordination or both; that separation as a divine directive concerning false teaching,  is separated from (as occurred in the PC in America when one of those DIRECTED to withdraw the denomination from what in the Assembly's opinion was a polluted ecumenical organisation,  DID NOT DO IT, and was afterwards not disciplined, but rather commended); or that the love of God is encased in a narrower scope than Colossians 1:19ff. could ever tolerate or accept, as in severe Calvinism, so that oddities of theology are stressed and before you can well realise it, you have a confessional church, not a biblical one, a formal religion and not a dynamic one. Tradition being satisfied, there is far more tolerance of mere divergence from the text of the word of God.

This is the trend with many, and it is a stop-gap only on the broad way to amalgamation through misinformation and disinformation, confusion and psychological mechanisms.

Often it is a question, as apparently in this case, with whatever confusion and combinations of conscious purposes,  of suppressing what is written to achieve a prepared policy and polity, contrary to scripture and in accord with secular thought, which for its part changes almost like the movement of a bees' wings, with its fashions. This, in turn, is precisely similar to the situation laceratingly exposed by Christ, like a surgeon showing students a cancer just dissected, as in the record of Mark 7:7ff.. Small wonder such became perhaps Christ's most bitter enemies, for their cover-up was a specious dissemblance, a combination of man and God, philosophy and scripture, for all the world like taking someone to 'Niagara Falls' (word perfect), but changing the definition, by various devices. Where one then would arrive is anybody's guess.

 Let us however revert to the Genesis reality.

Day and night, heaven and earth, features an life, their origin from God, to adorn the light of common day and form our habitable globe, these things are the sure and orderly passage of events. Its components, the aqueous, the geological, the biological, the spirit of man, and so forth, are the topic, and the terms are used with a precise, factual formulation in total parallel to the actual events, that coming, made what is here a form fit for and embodying life; and the explication is in the terms in use for our universe, hence meaningful and instructive.

The idea that terms change meaning, are mutable, exotic, is simply a dictator in exegetical clothing, an intrusion of secular hope into spiritual account, and a defilement of sound communication. God however, in His word, is clear (Proverbs 8:8, John 8:43), if you follow carefully by His grace WHAT HE SAYS.

Thus, in this derivation for the purpose of understanding, carefully gained from the divine account, the terms relate to what is known, not only to introduce us to what was NOT known, but to the derivation. Terms do not wander like lost stars, slipping, sliding into philosophical permutations and combinations, but those used with explicatory fore are bound from first to last, following each phase of creation, the thing intrinsically explaining itself, not asking for supplementary answers to compete with those given in the text. DO NOT ADD! is the word continually to be held in mind with the word of the Almighty; and the other is this, DO NOT SUBTRACT. With these two sign posts followed, straight indeed is the way, and narrow (cf.  Matthew 7:15).

To assume sloppy writing is both unwise and unnecessary, and does not constitute exegesis, but criticism, one which however not merely assaults the text, but renders it so self-contradictory in usage, as to make it meaningless.

It is one procedure of neo-evangelicalism in practice, to do such things. Whatever the purpose, the result is obvious, since what is made meaningless can have any desired meaning inserted, and what is the word of God, thus becomes the word of man, marvellously affirmed and meaninglessly held. Small wonder does it appear that the wrath of Christ was against such actions to the extent it was, as seen with such divine energy of condemnation in scriptures such as Matthew 23, 22:41ff - or that they sought to drill Him (Luke 11:52), and later to kill Him (John 8:40), and were not satisfied till, doing this, they had unwittingly activated the divine plan of salvation which had millenia before surveyed the scene in prophecy and foretold their hatred (Isaiah 49:7, 52-53), their killing, its mode and His resurrection of body! (cf. Joyful Jottings 22 -25).


4.  Now let us turn to the historical aspect
as noted in the PC in America Report, for a little,
in order to see those particular things more clearly.

First let us cite it once again:

Out of all of this literature it is possible to distinguish two general schools of thought on the nature of the six days. One class of interpreters tends to interpret the days figuratively or allegorically (e.g., Origen and Augustine), while another class interprets the days as normal calendar days (e.g., Basil, Ambrose, Bede and Calvin). From the early church, however, the views of Origen, Basil, Augustine and Bede seem to have had the greatest influence on later thinking.  While they vary in their interpretation of the days, all recognize the difficulty presented by the creation of the sun on the fourth day.

 Puzzled as to when God created time, with the sun (by which our normal days are measured) created only on the fourth day, Augustine opted for instantaneous creation, with the "days" of Genesis 1 being treated as six repetitions of a single day or days of angelic knowledge or some other symbolic representation.  Augustine’s view, with its emphasis on instantaneous creation, would have an influence through the Middle Ages and still be held by some, such as Sir Thomas Browne, at the time of the Westminster Assembly.
 

In noting these things we shall look at some expanded and adapted excerpts from other works on our site. The first, being short, is indented.
 

1) From News 51

As shown in the above reference to Cosmology, there was a whole school of theology, in the early centuries of the Christian Church: the Alexandrian. It was strongly emphasising that God needed no more than an instant to institute and complete creation. Clement affirmed that the world did not come into creation IN time, since time was something created with the world. The time may be whatever it was, is the emphasis of Augustine, and at ANY time, man might ask,


Why not sooner ?

But in the infinitude of God's being, not limited, any time is insignificant compared with all of ours: this is Augustine's stress. Always, in his City of God, we find him quite assured about the exact creation coming to be. It is never anything processive, but rather, always magnificently and utterly deposited. It is to him a more academic, or if you like, non-creation aspect of time which fascinates him. HOW does time arrive for man in relation to the existence of God ? NONE is needed, and time is invented with man! This however is NOT to say that none is used; merely that it is a virtual irrelevance when one is in the domain of the foreknowledge, total conceptual completion and action of one so great as God.

When it comes to the text however as on p. 364,  we learn that God "knows all times with a knowledge that time cannot measure" , which is true, but NOT that time therefore was not relevant to the creation. Rather  Augustine is removing misunderstandings about what it was that was being done, since it was God who did it! We learn this, he says, that GOD MADE LIGHT and that He made it by HIS WORD, and found it good, and this, says Augustine, was nothing new to Him, but such is the perfection of His work, that this did not add to His knowledge but - in effect - implemented it.

Anything further from long ages or for that matter, evolution, it would be hard to imagine.

Fully formed thought, independent in its own form of all processive time, acts with consummate maturity, and needs nothing as it does it. Non-processive time is a good description of the time that scholar envisages. Augustine himself could perhaps have spared himself some trouble if he had realised more clearly, that time is being brought into existence with the other creation, so that the initial processes of creation, as now known, before they are designated in our terms, are conceivably far removed from those aroused during the institution of time, that is, of serial, progressive time, where you wait one moment for the next to arrive, a wonderful novelty from eternity's all-embracive knowledge of the Almighty (Acts 15, Isaiah 42:9, 46:9-10).

Time was being manufactured with all else; and its processes were successively evoked, by which its passage is often measured! Humpheys touches on this matter in a practical manner, but it is there in necessary essence at all times! In Augustine's City of God, we find numerous expressions of this fait accompli character of creation, as far as conception, knowledge and prior standards and certainties are concerned (e.g. see op.cit. pp. 373, 378, 364, 381, 393, 395, 397, 409).

In reality, there is dominion and there is actuality which needs neither subject nor situation. God can make, like an artist, ever so many pictures of times; and possibilities actualise as and how He will. There is simply no limit.

Our type of time is to be understood as to its institution in only one way: the way which the only One who knows, being there at the inception of this sort of time, describes. The Biblical description is meticulously clear and decisive. There is however nothing even approaching a problem; merely a delight to the imagination to consider the other things that might have been. In science, however, our concern is with what is, something systematically 'forgotten' in the whole ludicrous episode of Darwinianism.

Yet let us not attack science properly so-called, which follows scientific method (cf. That Magnificent Rock Ch.1) .

Indeed, many are the great scientists, and even ones great in the history of science, who have been decisive in their insistence on the fixity of the created kinds, with no concession to imagination and myth. Kepler, Robert Boyle, Sir Isaac Newton, Jule, Lord Kelvin, Clerk Maxwell, Michael Faraday, all appear as maintainers of God's own divine action in creation.

 

2) FROM SMR SUPPLEMENT Ch. 2

Naturally, there were some early church impacts. However even in those quoted by Ross, there is a tendency for the 'thousand years is as a day' approach to the days of Genesis 1, on the part of some; while the early church Bishop Ambrose from the same quotations, is clear in his Genesis 1 24-hour reference, simply and properly allowing the usage of 'day' in appropriate settings, for other purposes, as it is with us.


In the thousand year approach, moreover, the time in view is co-ordinate with the life-spans of the first men Biblically addressed, and not of a disproportion wholly alien. Whatever philosophic or fanciful inputs may have affected some here, they did not in such cases wholly violate the sense of the record.


This is so, even if at this point, some disregarded with the blinking of momentary little faith, or
inadequate application, the clear evidence of the text. The issues, though of real interest, were less pointed than is now the case, the bundle less compiled, with philosophic naturalism.

This is despite the fact that some had as they have,  a reputed tendency towards the allegorical! The discursive though, indeed, is far different from ecclesiastical formulation and acceptance. Thinking is not teaching.

In fact, the case, as the Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia points out (vol. 3, p. 302), is that the Alexandrian school, influenced by Philo, tended to disregard time, emphasising that God needed "no more than an instant for the creation of the world". Clement, it is noted, denies that "the world was created in time, since time came into existence with created things", a view closely followed by Augustine at this point, he notably emphasising the conception that "the world was made, not in time, but with time", in his City of God (p. 350, Ch. 11).

This he deems to follow from his (very limited) definition of time, though at that, himself strangely ignoring his own definition's clear fulfilment during the processes of the days as they brought the paraphernalia of process into being. Such is the impact of philosophy, which had a major and notorious invasion in the case of Origen. A large insistence on the part of those so influenced is noted in Schaff, such that there was for this school, a conception of a "practically instantaneous" Creation.

This is rather different from the concept of vast ages... as is the "literal interpretation of six days as six periods of twenty-four hours, generally given in orthodox dogmatics from Luther on" (Schaff, loc.cit.) in much post-Reformation work. Indeed, to turn now to J.D. Davis of Princeton, in his famed 4th. Edition (rev.) Bible Dictionary, pp. 157-158, we find this statement relative to the historical emphasis following the Reformation: "During the next 300 years the narrative was understood to mean that God created the universe in one week of seven consecutive days of twenty-four hours each. At any rate, the works of the six days were more than six acts; God spake, to use a significant Biblical term, eight times (verses 3, 6, 9, 1, 14, 20, 24, 26)."

Accordingly, we find in the most scholarly 24 vol. work of Keil and Delitzsch, Commentaries on the Old Testament (1864-1868) p. 51, on Genesis:

bullet But if the days of creation are regulated by the recurring interchange of light and darkness, they must be regarded not as periods of time of incalculable duration, or years of thousands of years,   but as simple earthly days.

Matthew Henry in his notable Commentary (1710) states of the first day:

This was not only the first day of the world but the first day of the week. I observe it to the    honour of that day, because the new world began on the first day of the week likewise, in the    resurrection of Christ, as the light of the world, early in the morning.

Schaff-Herzog (op.cit., p. 301) also notes of "Judaism Proper" that:

Here not only is the creation of heaven and earth out of nothing strongly emphasized, but special  stress is laid on the relative nothingness of weakness of the creature in comparison with God... In harmony with the unconditional supernaturalism... it is not surprising to find the six creative days of Genesis taken in the strict literal sense...

Such matters scarcely affect the current issue of 'time' being used in utter severance from the Genesis explication; for a fresh young earth is still in view, even after 7000 years, for the more 'adventurous' of those noted!

Certainly the merely allegorical case departs from the scripture, though some like to use a complex of allegory and actuality; and the emphasis is on the immediate, in the most wholesome departure from the modern stretch-socks desire, not the naturalistically annexed. In the case of many, there is this vast trend to take the days as modern in style, OR LESS! In the case of Ambrose, we look at rotational days for the fiats.

Thus much of the variation is not so apparently constrained by  consideration of time needed for evolution in general, but of time NOT needed for divinity in particular! The former constraint is merely an abutting adjunct to the word of God, suitable for those who do not know the scope of the divine mind, which invented our own, and who imagine that Moses wrote to primitives, or unenlightened minds, whereas the scope of human knowledge, mathematics, law and culture at Ebla, long before Abraham, is such as befits laws such as Moses wrote, obviously to a people of capacity to comprehend.

No, neither is God, nor was man incapable; and all that is incapable appears to be the mind of modern man, via his culture, to realise the power of God, the strength of His never pitted word, and the weakness of the ever erratic mutabilities of science, made far worse as it seeks to find from the present the abyss of the past, let alone creation, so that endless naturalistic theories pile themselves, layer on layer, as if there were nothing better to do than to dream.

Without reason, they misuse reason, and hence never agree either with each other or with the truth. How could they ? They are born in rebellion, and raised in unreason! This is so well attested elsewhere in this site, that merely the index references will be given at this point, to naturalism, evolution. Nevertheless, one could note TMR, Wake Up World! Chs.  4-6, Earth Spasms ... Secular Myths ..., and for dating, see Models and Marvels Ch. 7 E and related references there given.

At that, with Aristotle behind them, it would scarcely be surprising if some older scholars stooped so far as to be naturalistically enchanted. (Aristotle was clear on the fixity of species now, less so on their origination, with the tendency of Plato towards some 'stuff' on which action could occur.)

Indeed, It is to be noted that the 'thousand year' clan moreover are using one scripture on another, rather than obviously alien premises to depart from what is written. At that, the irrelevance of the TIME WE FEEL as the Lord delays His return till He is ready, which must be constrained by His purposes, and relates to our perception of waiting, to the TIME HE TOOK when He specifies the mechanics, which relates to His power as He depicts it, is gross. In purpose and style, these are in contrast, the one to show our need of patience, the other to show His irresistible and divine power to create.

When David calls on the name of the Lord, when the Psalmist indicates that he is heard on the day he cries, we are not to be assuming thousand year days! When the Lord indicates morning and evening in a structured setting leading on to normal history, we are not to assume dissident days. What the Lord does in His overview of history in terms of our expectation, topic one, is not what the Lord does in His institution of days, topic two. In the former case, we may expect thousands of years, and have had two (but little more seems indicated - see Answers to Questions Ch. 5). In the latter, we are TOLD in terms of evening and morning days, associated with the astronomical instrumentalities used for the purpose; and our expectation accordingly is in terms of what the text says.

It is precisely the enormity of such transference of topic and purpose which evokes astonishment; but for all that, it is only when it is linked to making peace with the secular mechanics, which philosophy not science has invented, that one sees not only indifferent exegesis, but direction invasion of the text.
 

Augustine far from contemporary idiosyncrasies

Finally, it is important to realise from the references given, that Augustine is not in the least looking to the processive, as in some of these pseudo-creative fantasies wrought and brought into Genesis. It is the opposite. Everything is already worked out in God, nothing changes in his conception of heaven, and earth is the mere recipient. It is NOT the case either that he is saying that creation was instantaneous, though it is a word-result case, as creation fiats come. He merely asserts that it is nothing whether it was or not, in terms of power and majesty, planning and perfection prior to the event. He is keenly aware of the passage of process in the days, but never even begins to assert that the days are to be extended, or dismissed; merely that it is difficult to find a formula that fits them all.

He allegorises a little, yet not as an interpretation of the creative process, but in seeking underlying understanding of any message inherent in the text. Augustine and his school cannot be accurately used to assemble resemblance to any of the current options being proposed. He seems a little obscure at times in his treatment of time, as if change is impossible in heaven, even as a preferred or entertained mode: for in the end, God is the Lord and heaven is a vast conglomerate of souls, indeed one in which war is stated to have occurred in Revelation 12. Again, Augustine tends to bog down in treating time’s institution, for after all, what is involved is merely the institution of created, serial time where waiting is endemic, process normative and normally not optional. He even begins to transgress into eternity for created beings, though he tries to curb the process, as if angels cannot be treated as made in time, and hence are beyond time.

However, they CAN be treated as invented in any creative formula or format for the time mode or component which God proposed and was pleased to make operative. They must be regarded as subject to demand, command and hence to execution of intent, or failure, in some sort of capacity for sequence. This requires FOR THEM, some kind of time.  Their institution is to a realm in which time has constraints and commands take effect, including their own effecting of commands.

All that is under command by nature, is not God, is created, and is subjectible to time constraints of a variety of possible modes, and doubtless more of these, also, than may be thought. Their institution in such modes is creation, and what is not so subjectible by its own nature is God. What He subjects in whatever mode, being created, is however subjectible at His will, and by His word, both written and effectual, as in the word of God and by the word of God. So the chasm is complete, creature and creator, command and sequence, knowledge and totality.

Indeed, if there can be war in heaven, there can be forms of time at the divine good pleasure, though of course never as an intrusion or necessity, merely as an invention for any good purpose of creative kind. WE are not the only creation; it is nonetheless the creation  of the heavens and the earth which Genesis indicates. There ARE angels, which are not there mentioned.

The universe is one domain. Angelic powers are another. In Genesis, it is not indicated that angels were not made, but rather how the universe of heavens and earth, cosmological, astronomical, terrestrial, were made. There is CREATOR and CREATION, and Christ, Himself increate, made all in the made category, whether in the realm of visible or invisible (Colossians 1:16). That is the nature of the position. Of Creator there is but ONE as Isaiah indicates. Of the subjectible to His declared mode of existence, and to His command, there are many. These, the rest are what He made. FROM HIM are all things, says Romans 11:33. ALL THINGS were created for Him (says Revelation 4:11). HOW He created is the current question, and the time frame is the current mode of enquiry.

Hence there is much made; and time is made as in Romans 8:29ff., and all that is not God is created. In and WITH time is the universe made. It is having episodes from day one, as in the creation of light, its division from darkness (indicated in the form of institution, not some mere intrusion), and the summary, evening and morning, day one.

This in series with the rest, thus is making the days an ensemble of kind, being even serially numbered and listed as a temporary entity. THIS is the mode of time which the divine mind has construed, and construing, constructed. It is not at all possible to make them a divergent kind, in listing them. GOD has listed them as one. It is assuredly not for our imaginations to list them as diverse, far less in invasive disregard of precise definition that duly comes.  What! And shall we make new modes for angels as well, and more thoroughly intrude human thoughts into the Creator’s mind!

Augustine, himself most true about the completion of the matters beforehand in the divine mind, about the invention of time, about time being created, the world with it, about the instantaneity which is quite easy for God, nevertheless neither affirms no process, nor distances process in the least, but if anything, he constricts it. Yet for all that,  he is rather pedantic seeming in his insistences on time as being so odd, so that its institution makes for verbal play and at times obscurity in his writing, where he becomes ambivalent in appearance, between divine knowledge and human knowledge, seeking some kind of cognisance as the criterion: but this only in that there is something to know! And that, it is the step in view, to which he tends to look with a virtual, if not actual, instantaneity. He is, nevertheless, emphasising the irrelevance of time to the power and majesty of God, prepared and all powerful, rather than dismissing its occurrence.

Hence the view of Augustine and that school is not so far from that of Basil and Ambrose and Bede, who move on the basic actual day approach, with whatever frills and flounces. Indeed, we must realise quite categorically, that modes of approach to the 4th day are of interest, but they are not in the same domain at all, as modes of approach to the days per se! This is diversification within a common basis of straightforward days, with whatever adornment; or ditching of the definition in the context of creation of kinds of things to the present array; or both!

TIME FOR PROCESS of a natural kind to manifest itself is a characteristically modern demand, based on modern appetite. It is opposite both in terminology and thrust, to the text, which allows nothing to impede, delay, a command, but only for further steps, as in the clearing of obscuration of water relative to the enumerated purposes of light, which are to be sought as wrought, from the text.
 

Let us then revert to time.
 

5. A DAY of Darkness and Not Light (Amos 5:18)

Modes and Methods

There can be a phase in the divine apportionment in the mind of the Lord which, while not our time, is a time related or sequence-conceived thing, or a sequentially oriented mode for some purpose conceived. This He may implement at will, in any time-domain. There is no slightest difficulty about that. There can be a sequence of events in which serial time is instituted, processively, progressively if the divine will is to that effect. The instruments of natural measurement do not need to be complete at first, if the desire is to indicate divine lessons about structure and function, or purpose and preliminary.

But THEY DO need to be as stated, a formal, basically homogeneous thing for the series called ‘day’ to be anything other than a slide, a contortion and an obscurantist medley of thought, barren of clarity.
 

WHO, after all,  is TELLING this history ? Is it man, or God! The actual use of the SAME pattern of words, and not merely a numerical enclosure, for the continuing days past one to the end, makes it abundantly clear that if the thing could be called day once, it has a substantial reality so akin to the rest as to belong to that family of events. This in itself does not require that the sun as an object minus precise and consummate function, came before the day four; but it moves greatly in that direction.

It is the fact that the darkness is specified on the one hand, as an interval between successive and succeeding light, and as a thing instituted, and formally divided from light, and that this is continued after the purposive indications about the moulding of the luminaries for their multiple purpose function, in conjunction with the stars, that makes the interpretation that the sun was earlier created but not in its full effectuality for chronological purpose, so important. By this time, no loop-hole is left. The continuity, which incidentally goes right on to normal history after creation, is simply there, as we are told that this is the work God did in creation, and the vocabulary continues.
 

Difficulties !  Excuses ?

The main point is this: there is no ‘difficulty’ about the days, as what they become in the account, indicating how we got what we have, which of course includes the thing called ‘days’. That is merely the transition from origin to actualities so originated, with terms in common.

Even if you want to have some supernatural, miraculous, anti-natural, non-processive action making the curtains of light to be swung back, for darkness, which erupts into the context like a hidden volcano: even this is no excuse for imagining that the days are some unearthly thing, some strange event, which we really must scratch our heads about and tinker with ... It is not as if the Lord had not spoken, as if He had no series, were not accounting for the creation of the heavens and the earth, and were in some kind of clutch of verbal desire, to use common terms, commonly and clearly designated, in strange esoteric senses, even in the midst of a series, interrupting with supernatural invasion not mentioned, and natural means not stated.

Therefore, whatever one’s preference, to intrude or not, to obscure the clear concept of sequence and basic homogeneity or not, to utilise the supernatural itself as means in a common setting of creation in some irresolvable way, in the days after one, there is no vestige of excuse for compressing the days, or expanding them into some alien thing, with some hidden means, when the point of the account is to make clear the history of the thing (Genesis 2:1-4): the commencement exercises of God in erecting that College called earth, so that we understand how what is, came to be. Unhistorical historians may be so if they wish, and they form a genre, a fantasy arena of co-creators in any discipline, romancers with reality, producing not figures but fantasies as if fact.

There can be such; but the Lord is not one of them. If He indicates history, history it is. If He were using an account of how it all came to be, to use His terms, carefully integrated, in the clearest POSSIBLE manner into the present, to mean something wholly diverse, what would it resemble ? it would be like someone being married, who, when signing the register, declares: But of course this signature does not relate to that marriage. I suppose that could be done; anything could be done; but not with reason.

In fact, there are times when it begins to appear that the Lord’s word is taken under tutelage, as if HE could not or was not disposed to do what Proverbs 8:8 says of WISDOM. However HE has said the way we are to follow His word. It is clear, not twisted, contrived; it is all clear to him who understands. It COULD NOT POSSIBLY be clear when romancing enters without the textual discipline. In that way, the sky is the limit, the earth its orphan.

How do we follow His word ? ONE way in which that happens is this: it is followed as it comes, not invaded as it goes. The way to keep it so, therefore,  is not to so patronise the Almighty’s expression that it is mere butt for our exploration of our own thoughts, but to regard it as a decisive, assured and certain deposition of what He wants us to understand. True it is, to be sure, that some may at times try to press OUT of His word, what He did not plan to put into it, and hence there are numerous quarrels as some try to insert this, or that, or talk of lack of clarity, when there is lack of conformity to what He HAS stated, and no more. It is like brigands: if you do not keep the law, originality is free!

However, in this case, it is the HISTORY which He is telling, and the COMMANDS and the DAY, like the MAN, are the thing created with which we have to do, the items which He is explaining as to its commencement, placing in their genre. Therefore, to assume He is not using the term indicating the genre, when He proceeds to employ it in the most categorical of terms to indicate, as with man, the present situation, and when in this chronological case, He even compresses it all into an event- labelled and logically cohesive series: this is to create.

Yes man then becomes a creator too. He is a creator of meanings contrary to the word of God; and all his efforts to be ‘nice’ and tolerant of this and that, become an intolerance of what is written, and the clarity in which it is statedly written, and the purpose for which it is statedly written.

What however of the nature of a church in its stand, posture, doctrine,
and that of a single member ?

 

Distinctions

A discursive thrust in some church member is one thing; however a failure to deal with the domain of poetry once invoked by a licentiate, relative to Genesis, in the biblical arena of an historical declaration on creation commencement exercises, and a mere verbal slap followed by theoretical inclinations, dignified into codification: this is another. That is the thing, in principle, which happened in the PC in America, and its defilement was merely a beginning.

What is laxity for a young ordinand, in permitting such violation of the textual integrity and development, becomes outrage and dissidence from the divine when the church which overruled the rightly concerned Presbytery in that case, makes its own notions a clarification, a code or an acceptable consensus.

It becomes a luke warm ‘handling’ of the word of God from which one does well to distance oneself, keeping rather to what is written. As to day, it is not a question of 24 hours, but of the TYPE of day we now have, with the SIGNIFICANCE we now have, whether the earth rotated more or less slowly, and whether the signals went out in this or that way. It is the genre, the movement in kind with our own, which is in view. From that one can vary only with danger to wisdom and weakening to others.

To teach such things is an inconceivable step from ecclesiastical purity and fidelity towards that incremental traditionalism which reflects with complacency on its own and its adopted scribes, who in the former days were such that not only did they not enter into the kingdom, but they hindered those who would do so. Indeed, said Christ in that highly matured case:
 
bullet "Woe to you lawyers! For you have taken away the key of knowledge.
You did not enter in yourselves, and those who were entering in you hindered" - Luke 11:53.

Again in Mark 7:7, we find the other perilous precipice to which this additive and authorising phenomenon leads, has lead and will lead till He come:
 
bullet "... in vain do they worship Me,
Teaching as doctrines the commandments of men."

Alas the contemporary trends of weakening, in the reformed faith areas, are but one more illustration of the falling away. Special to them - though they are not alone, are various special areas of weakness. For this see  The Biblical Workman Ch. 8, End-note *2. These include creation, women elders in violation of the Biblical mandate (cf. A Spiritual Potpourri Chs. 10-11), and separation. The failure to separate from a body indulging in one or more of these Biblically forbidden areas (cf. The Kingdom of Heaven Ch. 7) of course is a large part of the reason for the cultural dominion which begins to be seen in the conformity to the form of this world, despite its irrationality. Churches concerned for culture pills, themselves arid and acid, are already in the grip of folly: for the wisdom of this world, as Paul precisely declares, is vain and void.

Evil company does not promote good customs, as Paul declaims! Here a little, there a little, it is downgraded. Where it WILL not depart, then that action is left to the believer him/herself!

One can understand the sorrow of Jeremiah (9:1), both before and after the destruction of Jerusalem, which was marvellously proficient at hearing the word of God like a lovely song (as noted in Ezekiel 33:31-33); and then disregarding it with glorious aplomb. Glory however does not remain in that mode of address... Isaiah's challenge of 8:20 remains as true today as it was then. It is not for churches to authorise as 'acceptable' what the word of God does not present; or to ignore what it does. They are not divine adjusters, but divine executives, bound by the word of the Master. Their song must be as He directs it, whether the people hear or not.

This is a spiritual and not a psychological engagement. One may think in many ways, but when it comes to teaching, authority resides ONLY in what is incorrigibly written, and is not found in imagination... even less so, if it were possible, when one is ecclesiastically cautioned about the absurdities of scientific philosophies of paganism, as if they had any logical standing of a "more plausible scientific version."

Here one sees both an erroneous motivation, and an uninformed susceptibility to the current impasses of science falsely-so-called, which are in crisis and confusion, whereas creation is clearly attested by all major scientific law, observation of process, and application of scientific method (cf. TMR Chs.  1,   7,  8).

Alas the implausibility of the philosophy of our times, already in mutually colliding parties, never satisfying the facts, always ignoring much so that the other parties can correct them: this is revered despite its patent irrationality, and  cleaving to this idol is too well here seen as one motivation, and its propaganda style détente as worse; while the invasion of the scripture to match it to these already ageing errors of philosophy in science, merely makes a fracture from friction, that between naturalism and text, to become one more lifeless concession to the erratic and anti-verified thoughts of those who start without God, and seem too easily to appeal, to those who know better.

Theories of patent absurdity are enthroned like Dagons. Such submissions of the force of what is written in the word of God, to the dimness of what is the passing shadow of the fraudulent form of this world, erratic, inconstant and blatant, are amongst the Babylonian captivities of many, who might have been freed. It would be improper not to warn. It would be unscriptural to join them*1 when that Jerusalem which is above, is yet free, nor shall the gates of hell prevail against it!

This, then, is one illustration of the trend which has much earlier been noted (The Biblical Workman Ch. 8, End-note 2), and indeed set in the Index under Theological Ism-itis, with special reference to "the Reformed Faith", in its contemporary movements of head and style.
See these references for further on this aspect.

It is not at all that this IS the Reformed Faith (an undesirable term in that it tends to congeal with some ambiguity, about this or that - it is always better to refer to the Biblical faith, or entirely subordinately to the system in the Westminster Confession, to the compilation of this with the Declaratory Statement as FORMALLY if not functionally, in the Presbyterian Church of Australia, since 1991 or some other clear construction). It is however a contemporary trend amongst many who, making much of the phrase, make less of its portent and import, by the appearance of relative indifferentism on basic Biblical issues such as
 
bullet creation,
 
bullet female authority in the church (A Spiritual Potpourri Chs. 10-11),
 
bullet the endemic and traditional danger of many to act as if to summarily short-circuit the love of God for the ultimately lost (cf. Repent or Perish Ch. 1, End-note 1, Tender Times for Timely Truths Ch. 11),
 
bullet and a conception at times seeming almost implicit, that the errors of former times alone are worthy of debunking at the systematic level, and that organic growth in doing the same now is not needed.

That of course is traditionalism; and it was fatal to the Pharisees (Mark 7:7). You stylise some philosophic additive to the scripture, to help, then make it rule, then officially or actually, simply feel content if this is kept, the word of God in the interim losing its OWN SUFFICIENCY and domain, to your own thoughts, as a church or other body, or a person.

The word of God however has not lost its ancient power. It is not powerful because it is ancient, but ancient because it is God's. As such, the millenia fail to mutilate it, only the friends within seeming to succeed, and this not by reason, but often by a treason as irrational as it is intrusive.

A living church is to be constantly aligning; not idolatrising some who did some things, and sharing in their errors; or adding to their errors in a listless obliterative focus on good things, as if other good things could by no means be found. Thus the Lutheran testimony on justification by faith was excellent, following Paul; but a failure to be ample enough in continuing application of the word on all sides has now led to this infamous declaration with the Roman Catholics, 1999, in which, with all but grim humour - say gaunt - this VERY THING, this Lutheran emphasis,  is now in recession through accommodation to what condemns it, has condemned it and continues to condemn it at Trent. (Cf. SMR pp. 1045ff., 1059ff..)

If that is not irony, if that is not the very ground of exhortation, what then would be!

This preoccupation without adequate fidelity on all sides, as if one element were a substitute for all, or some for all, or some system for all the word, this complacency which can so readily arise and which needs constant watchfulness from all to avoid, is now leading, it would seem, a large and 'conservative' Presbyterian Church, my own former denomination, one of the last sizeable bastions of obvious populous power in this field, into a slack attitude to the word of God. Far from their own standards and further from the Bible. So does the 'ism-itis' infect. Its ravages do not cease out of courtesy: it is not a courteous infection, but a grave infraction.

This IS ONE ILLUSTRATION of that trend in some Reformed circles, then, noted long ago as detailed above, which we would be happy to live without!

Nevertheless it is a WARNING! The Lutherans (Stepping Out for Christ Ch. 4) had something similar in peril from undue specialisation (though the emphasis was excellent); and  they have gone ... even further! they make intimate postulations with dogmatically unrepentant Rome. It is NOT at all the case in many of these affairs, that there is ERROR in the original emphasis, as in the Lutheran stress on justification by faith; but rather it comes in the undue lack of other emphasis. Indeed, even this can proceed to the point of some ambivalence on the infallibility of the word of God which has been exhibited relative to the PC of Australia (cf. The Biblical Workman, Ch. 8, pp. 125ff.), even in its most reformed and renovative mode!
 

 There are other arms with which, and into which, the church of the living God must go.

The pathology and its ways, of these trends to omissions and commissions,  are all too apparent. It is time to heed and not time to follow such things! The word of God must not lie fallow while fellows philosophise. Indeed, it is by no means trendy, shallowly to follow trends; and if it were, it would by no means make it better. In fact, the ways of this world need antidote constantly from the pure word of God, not from quotable traditions, let alone such out of context or inadequately expounded, as men receive honour from one another (John 5:44-45).

 
6. SUMMARY AND TRANSITION

This then is the first example, taken while the mutation was occurring, seen in the failure of men to accept the witness of Christ in His word, who of course in Matthew 19 made it clear that God was speaking and speaking truth in the account of creation, as indeed likewise in Matthew 5:17ff..

Here is creation being re-cast in a way so ludicrous, in the misuse of terminology and irrelevant argument including propaganda technique, and the use of example illicitly to extend beyond its actual contribution, that one sees the necessity of getting to the WITNESS which is Christ, and taking the word of God without dilution or false imputation or tradition or philosophy (I Corinthians 1), just as it comes.

As to such ecclesiastical mutation: Not thus is one dutifully and for the glory of the Lord to fulfil one’s ordination vows to seek the purity of the church, and to safeguard it. Not thus is one to beware of the LEAVEN of the Pharisees, or to avoid the neo-missionary revisionism of the Sadducees. The word of God by itself, of itself, from Himself, this is the core; and quietness in Him and in it is the only quietus. It is the written revelation of His mind, the sole authorised communication of God to man in written form. It needs no help. Its integrity is its own. Its reward is spectacular, for in this way, the thing goes, nothing loose, nothing missing, all explained; the oak paneling is now not painted white, and the natural grain of His speech being conserved, its full force and beauty is experienced, its logic stability, its law truth.

Next, in Chapter 13,  we turn to the United Nations case, to which one writer directed this author, and here it is not a church, but something with much of the sound of one that is talking, and talking so suavely and subtly that one is at once reminded of the nature of that socio-political power, and of its devious dabblings in religion, predicted for the Devil's Antichrist, the Devil's Messiah, to come. He is of course all talk, and this is not he; but it is reminiscent in style, and a good advance opportunity to test the waters.

Can such things really be ? One might wish not, but the fact is that until all this is done, this final blare of evil, then the wonder of being with the Witness Himself, and not only His word (cf. II Peter 1:19), with Christ at the coming resurrection of which His is the guarantee, portent and preliminary (cf. Isaiah 26:19, I Corinthians 15), must wait. Let all this therefore come, and let us lift up our hearts as instructed, and as we are moved by the light within (Colossians 1:27, Luke 21:28) and the word of God written, without.
 
 

 


 


 NOTES

*1
As the following presentation, in the text above, demonstrates at length, there is no such contradiction, but rather the most intimate correlation of concepts in terms of revolutionary days.

It is therefore ironic and rather prophetic to find in the formulation of this disastrous document of the PCA, this categorical admission. SINCE there is no such trouble as is vacuously affirmed, therefore the reality remains even in this document, that "such a scenario would pose no difficulty to the Calendar-Day view, as it clearly does to those who posit 'days' of eons in length"!

It is quite true, it does not. This is in substance indeed the ONLY understanding that is not eisegetical intrusion. It lacks all problems for that simple reason.


UPDATE: The error of the PCA Report of the Creation Study Committee, we find from  the issue of CREATION, Sept-.Nov. 2000, p. 6, has been compounded by the decision of the June General Assembly of that body, instead of remitting the Report to lower courts in the Church for 2 years of study, to do something quite different. It "voted instead to immediately accept ‘diversity of views’ on the days of Creation."

This seals this erratic departure from the teaching of scripture, found in some of the more exotic presentations of the Report, into formalised coverage, hence subverting the scripture by tradition, a performance which, whatever they 'find' of the days of creation, was indeed in this case at Assembly level, for its own part, of the ‘instant’ variety. How we hasten to that great day of the Lord when He shall cry no more delay, and return AS the LIVING word, unmolested, ineluctable and righteous! How do the apostasies rise like the great swellings of vanity which rage towards the nether shore (II Peter 2:18). It is not mere personal error here, on the part of some individual, but consolidated ecclesiastical ruling.

 

*1A

See http://www.presbyteriannews.org/volumes/v9/1/pr35.pdf

where some of the types of errors noted here and elsewhere in this Chapter may be found.

It is good to note that there is seen to be history in the creation, the fall and the redemption, but that the creation is re-made or re-modelled beyond the text, which is invaded by imagination, in the end becomes perilous as well as a distancing of the divine from the human. When dealing with God, one must always realise that one must be DEALT WITH, in instruction, discipline, formation, information. While this in no way limits the fellowship, it does remove autonomy.

Sometimes, as in this case, it is less gross than in many; but the results of this sort of chronology conversion into logical concepts instead, a sort of architecture of the mind instead of that  of history, has not only the principial error of adding to the word of God (Proverbs 30:6). It has procedural consequences.

If God should have liked to waft thoughts of the type invented in the PCA, to us in words of a different type and clear presentation, then if in this, why not in more ? When the principal of the land of Nod is found, that of wandering, as in stealing a cent, why not more ? If it is not directive, who then IS ? If it be a man or church, this is the beginning of the end. It is necessary to let God be God, and when He or His word is subdued to mortal imagination, confrontation, be it never so smooth, then His majesty is offended, and His purity is polluted in the practice of such a body, which, as in bodily health, has its results in due time.

The word of God is so pure that one prefers, as in this author's own case, to divest oneself of any denomination which finds this sort of practice acceptable, rather than enjoy the fruits of belonging where fellowship can no longer be without one's becoming an accessory (see Separation 1997). It is sad, and the solution is so simple: Remove this unfortunate document, the Creation Report, so that it is not a document favoured by Assembly, repent of the overturning of the Assembly's overturning of the Presbytery's ruling, which excluded from the ministry a young person who saw Genesis in terms of poetry, and make that repentance public. Make the biblical text the direct Church rule and let the Presbyteries resolve on a case by case basis what to do with variations.

After all, some may be confused, some unscholarly, some unable on examination to defend their ideas, and these may repent; again, others may in the refining milieu of discussion, break from inventions thrust IN God's word. While it is indeed true that an Assembly can resolve matters which do not resolve themselves, yet when it does, there is no need for a construction of available heresies. It is a matter of allowing the free roving of sincere thought on the one hand, and disallowing any formulation which is not point by point REQUIRED by the Bible. If people have private thoughts, and they discuss them that is their affair; but if they are going to publicise them as truth, let alone ecclesiastical formulations, this has to stop. It is the word of God which is truth. There is no other basis for belief.

 

 *1B

Let it be a day of miracle in a structure of method and structure, let it be a day of imaginative marvel, digesting the statements as if they were food and the mind of man a digestive apparatus, making the pabulum palatable to the taste, it is all one. Fiasco imparts its presence to faith, and God is co-author. This in no way presupposes the intent of anyone; it merely looks at the results of adding human light to the divine one, and making a medley. Alas, it is always odious and often dangerous, never to be suffered. Again, it is one thing if someone has loose or vague or intemperate views on some feature in himself; it is another when it is actively taught, presented at the formal level, or even issued with some measure of incitement!

 

*2
For the Biblical teaching on separation, in detail and categories, see The Kingdom of Heaven Ch.7.  Ch.7. Not only  Romans 16:17, Isaiah 8:20, but many commands bear on this. II Thessalonians 2:15 advises us to stand fast in what has been taught, whether by Paul or the things received, and 3:6 proceeds to ask people to withdraw where there is disorder and failure to keep to this standard.

The fact that there is a particular exemplification of this does not alter the principle in view at all; indeed it reinforces it.

Thus

It is not a matter of the simple roving thought of the individual saint. Where the church adopts a position, takes a stand and the stand is a fall from the word of God, it is time to warn, as one has done in the case of the PC in America in many things over decades, and if necessary as the position grips and does not depart, to depart oneself to cleave to those where the word of God is not abased, nor the thought of man exalted.

In that day, of judgment, the Lord ALONE will be exalted. It is well to begin... now!

Isaiah 2:12-17 teaches with a beautiful aptness, agility and intensity:
 

"For the day of the Lord of hosts
Shall come upon everything proud and lofty,
Upon everything lifted up -
And it shall be brought low -
Upon all the cedars of Lebanon that are high and lifted up,
And upon all the oaks of Bashan;
Upon all the high mountains,
And upon all the hills that are lifted up;
Upon every high tower, and upon every fortified wall;
Upon the ships of Tarshish and upon all the beautiful sloops.


"The loftiness of man shall be bowed down,
And the haughtiness of man shall be brought low:
The LORD alone shall be exalted in that day,
But the idols He shall surely abolish."

It is hard to cease quoting from this passionate purity and fiery beauty of truth; but it is well to read on!
 


 

One can warn and depart as one has had in all faith and conscience to do, and continue where it is not so defiled; but rather where the word of God rules without compromise in its warm intensity and immensity of conspectus, beauty of scope and certainty of utterance. It HAS STOOD and will stand, for it is of the LORD!

 

*3

Let us note from TMR Ch. 7, part of the conclusions there found to be attested, below.

 

From a strictly scientific point of view, the writer would have to say:

1. The date is not at all known.

2. The preponderance of evidence favours a young earth.

3. The difficulties of dealing with the divergence on dates, among evidences, are not great for a young earth, but seem insurmountable for an older one.

4. Much more would need to be known before any idea could be given.

From a Biblical viewpoint, the read-out might be this:

5. The Biblical date for life is certainly in thousands of years only.

6. The absolute initiation date is unsure, but almost certainly the same.

7. The huge agreement of the great mass of evidence with these propositions is what is to be expected; and the lack of concurrence on all sides is equally what is to be expected when knowledge is making such sciences outdated in a few years.

However:

There is no systematic problem whatever on a Biblical perspective, whereas the other option has insuperable difficulties at the outset with its cosmology leaving total ignorance in many spheres. Failure to recognise this, and nothing else, is making the scientific problem. No problem in this field exists for the Bible believer. Where science keeps within its competence, its accord with the Bible is notable. As shown in The Shadow of a Mighty Rock, 3 MAJOR PHYSICAL LAWS are IMPLIED! (pp.330ff. in that work).

As to the First, The Law of Conservation of Mass and Energy, Scriptures fundamental to this include: Isaiah 45:12, 48:12-13, Colossians 1:15-17, Hebrews 1:3, 11:3.As to the Second, The Second Law of Thermodynamics (see the above cited work, pp. 330ff., and Index), Scriptures to the point include: Isaiah 51:6, Psalm 102:25-27, Hebrews12:25-27 with II Peter 3:10. As to the Third, the Law of Biogenesis, consult Genesis 1:11,21,25,28. Also relevant here are Matthew 24:35, 19:4ff., Colossians 3:10, Ephesians 4:24.

For a production dating back well over three millenia, its irrefutable statements to this effect show prodigious performance characteristics, not merely unparalleled, in their total prophetic setting, but in sharp contrast to any production of any science. Contemporary Science, in comparison with this BASIC LAW SIGNIFYING BIBLE, is an infant in arms as to constancy and consistency.

The Bible does not change, goes deep, and stays there. It gave knowledge from thousands of years ago, duly confirming this in the New Testament: knowledge of what ? Of the basic character of the 3 crucial laws of physical science taught to it through the scientific methodology: information, observation, data based laws.

The Bible spoke, science echoes. Science is after all the ordered thought of man in such areas; and where it keeps to its mandate of method, such agreement is not surprising.

It is of course fascinating as a commentary on recent generations of philosophically gyrating thought (contemporary models in vogue), that evolutionism, organic naturalism is neither confirmed by categorical evidence, sustained by correlative laws, implemented to the eyes of observation nor available for test, as it cringes in the twilights of time, wanting, always wanting something to redeem it from its lost estate. What has not got it, will not produce it! ... is far to simple! The Bible however does not however alter. There is never a reason why it should.

It may be noticed that one used the term 'Science'. The actual science, however, not as a philosophic substitute for thought, but as a disciplined procedure in observation, inference, creation of hypotheses, verification, refinement, validation and rejection or confirmation: this continues (*4)  as it has for so long, quite a useful pursuit. It has the wit not to play God, or to tell Him it doesn't want to play with Him any more, because of aspirations of its own. That is for the quasi-respectable pseudo-'Science'.

As to that, and consequences of not taking God to heart: notice that the Bible declares that man as he is, is blighted both by sin and the curse on the earth, and needs redemption. Re-creation (not mere recreation) is declared as a fundamental necessity for the inhabitants of the earth to so much as continue in their order and their function here. Further, it is stated that this fact is to appear with increasing obviousness over time... our time! The creation and what was done in this sphere subsequently in the curse (SMR Ch.2, S1-S33, pp. 179-190, 472-498), require a further act of creation for which the parameters are clear, were long stated, and without which the climax will duly arrive (like a medical prognosis, but this one is certain). Then, said Christ: "Except those days were shortened, there should no flesh be saved" - Matthew 24:22.

These laws of denying the dominion of Jesus Christ and their results ("the law of sin and death" - Romans 8:1), they with the others, they progress and continue as stated... in the Bible. The mouth of Jesus Christ is the mouth of a truth which is invariably verified under due test.