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Bible Questions and Spiritual Discussion
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Joshua's long day
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I find these stories of amazing miraculous things in the Bible amazing and I hope to one day in heaven learn how God did it all -- Joshua's long day, the time the sun went backwards, the floating axe head, etc. Very cool.
I stumbled across an article regarding the long day. It still leaves much of it a mystery, but proposes some ideas and I thought it was very interesting!
http://creation.com/joshuas-long-day
Enjoy!
John
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John T 02/26/2011 11:24 |
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Lanny Carlson
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02/26/2011 14:24 |
Yes, it's an interesting article.
But the writer's bias is clearly indicated
by the writer's closing sentence:
"Those who balk at this account are almost invariably those who have already rejected 6-day creation through compromise with evolution’s fictitious long ages, and have thus rejected the authority of the Bible."
In his suggestion that rejecting a literal 6-day creation
is a rejection of "the authority of the Bible"
or that evolution's long ages are "fictitious,"
the writer has over played his hand,
and shows that his real motive is to "prove,"
or suggest some possible proof
for the conclusions he has already reached!
There are many of us who aren't creationists,
certainly not young-earth creationists,
and who don't take everything in the Bible literally
who are nonetheless devout Christians
who love the Bible not as a book of science but as the book of faith it is.
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John T
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02/26/2011 14:29 |
Very good catch, I didn't notice that. But you do believe that there was a long day then, do you? Or do you claim this to be too-literal a translation?
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John T
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02/26/2011 14:30 |
My question was of the miraculous stories in the Bible which include many things like this, Jericho's falling down, turning to a pillar of salt, etc. Not of creation. There are plenty of things to believe and not believe in the Bible outside of the 6 days.
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Lanny Carlson
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02/26/2011 14:42 |
John,
I would have to give more thought to that
than I have available right now -
I'm running a little late.
But frankly it's one of those things I haven't seriously considered -
I guess I have seen it more as a matter of epic legend than literal history.
But I don't make that a tenet of faith,
and I have no quarrel with anyone however they wish to interpret it.
(At least the writer doesn't give any credence to the NASA urban legend,
which in fact was around before there was a NASA or even modern computers.
Urban legends are even better at evolutionary adaptation than living species!)
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John T
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02/26/2011 14:49 |
You could take the miraculous even further and I could ask if you believe that people can be raised from the dead? What about Lazerous? What about the man who fell on Elisha's bones? Again, where do you draw the line between believing what the Bible says and claiming it to be a legend.
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Lanny Carlson
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02/27/2011 09:07 |
I don't want to be late for church, but I want to address your questions as succinctly as I can. We know from the New Testament, especially the Gospel of John, that "miracles" were never ends in themselves but were "signs" pointing to a deeper truth. That's part of the reason Jesus refused to respond positively to those who were demanding signs. He knew that those who followed him after the feeding of the 5000 weren't doing so because of a hunger for truth, but because they had their bellies filled and were looking for a meal ticket!
As for the nature of miracles, many of the miracles , e.g. the plagues in Exodus, have possible natural explanations; and many of the illnesses in the New Testament, attributed to "demons," can be explained by other causes (noone knew anything about psychosomatic illness or germs or microbes, etc. in those days). While I don't deny that many of the miracles in Scripture are not so easily explained, neither do I believe the Creator typically goes around defying the God-ordained laws of creation. My life verse is "In all things God works for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purposes."
And I would suggest that the real miracles I have experienced have been when something terrible has led to something good, which would never have happened if I hadn't gone through the negative experience.
I realize in my haste this morning I may seem to be evading your question.
As for Lazarus, I DO believe something incredible took place, in part because the Lazarus encounter seems to lie at the very heart of the John's Gospel. I am convinced that Lazarus was in fact "the disciple whom Jesus loved" and was the source of much of the Gospel attributed to John. (Jesus wept, people said "see how much he loved him," and only after this event do we find any reference to "the disciple Jesus loved." I thought this was an original insight, until I saw books by Jewett and others espousing the same theory, and discovered that it was in fact a theory among some religious leaders in the early centuries!) But rather than worrying about what is literal and what is legend, I again have to say that what are called miracles are ultimately meant as signs, pointing to deeper truth. A sign points to something beyond itself. If I see a sign pointing to New York,I could sit on the sign forever and argue about the nature of the sign - how exactly it got there, what it's composition is, etc. But the discussion would be purely academic and I would never get to New York unless I left the sign behind and followed it where it pointed! And I believe that, whether legend or literal fact, the miracles of the Bible only have meaning if we see them as signs and follow them where they are leading us!
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John T
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02/28/2011 09:02 |
I'm sure many miracles have natural explanations, but I'm also sure that there are some that would defy our natural explanations. How did the water turn to wine? If it was tested before and after by our scientists, would they have been able to say how it was done? What about today's stories of one medical scan showing a problem, then prayer, and then a second scan shows no evidence that the problem ever existed -- this still happens today.
And as far as demons go, there are plenty of stories that confirm their existance. Just the same as angels, in fact they are likely the angels that fell out of heaven with Satan in the beginning. That 1/3 that is talked about. There are stories of Jesus healing demon-possessed people, there is the story of him asking what the name was a finding out it was "Legion" for there were many. There is the story of the pigs running over the cliff. There really are spiritual forces that are unseen - Angels and Demons are real. Do you deny that these forces are not at work in today's world? We are even told by Paul that we fight not against flesh and blood but powers and principalities! In today's world we try to completely explain away the spiritual forces by trying to come up with natural explanations for everything, which is a result of being blind to what is really out there.
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Lanny Carlson
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02/28/2011 10:06 |
I'm not denying the possibility, even the reality, of miracles. There are things which - at least for now - defy any other explanation. I was only suggesting that becoming obsessed with the mechanics often misses the meaning. My main point is that miracles, whatever the "explanation," were meant to be SIGNS, and signs always point to something beyond themselves. In all of Jesus' miracles, however we "explain" them, his motivation was divine love and compassion. And the fact that people were following him because their stomachs were filled and not because of the greater sustenance he was offering was one of the reasons he often refused to perform signs on demand. They were missing the point - and so, quite often, do we.
As for the reality of angels and demons, I don't want to get into an ontological argument.
My point is that too often we use these concepts - or these entities - to pass the buck.
In the story of the Garden of Eden, was the serpent to blame? That's what Adam and Eve tried to claim. Or was it their own free will and their own decision to disobey which is the real evil? And our decision to follow their example which is the real evil today? (Medically, we also know that much of the illness and disease which were once ascribed to demon possession, in a time when people knew nothing about microbes, germs, viruses, etc, were attributed to "demons," and this is true of many of the subjects of Jesus' miracles. The real miracle was that he would give them any attention at all, even *gasp* touching lepers!) Yes, of course, there is much evil in the world today.
But my point is that we are often - like our primordial ancestors - too quick to pass the buck and too slow to accept our own responsibility, as individuals or as a species.
P.S. As for the water and wine,
don't miss the point that the jars used weren't empty wine jars, but jars used for ceremonial washing. The deeper meaning would seem to be that Jesus was replacing the old water of legalism with the new wine of the gospel of love. However we explain the mechanics, the real miracle - or the reality to which the sign was pointing - wasn't about chemistry but about the spirit.
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