Josheb
Reformed Non-denominational
- Joined
- May 19, 2023
- Messages
- 3,248
- Reaction score
- 1,392
- Points
- 113
- Location
- VA, south of DC
- Faith
- Yes
- Marital status
- Married with adult children
- Politics
- Conservative
Thanks for pointing that out because as he explained it by changing out "In the beginning" with "When", I took it to mean differently as the following verses was how God did it, thereby the earth was not there at all, and neither the heavens yet in verse 1.
Let me clarify because Heiser's teaching is easily reconciled with whole scripture. God made the earth, and then He formed it. The earth He originally made was formless and void. A lot is being said there, especially once it's realized the Hebrew "bohu" eventually becomes connotative with loss, fallen, desolation and wilderness. One of the larger themes of the creation account it not simply God creating, or "making" a bunch of stuff, but His ordering it. He brought things into existence and ordered the existence's existence, not just for a "moment" but in time and space.Thanks to Josheb, I had thought I had understood the whole video but I reckon not because when he explained it by changing out "In the beginning" with "When", I took it to mean differently as the following verses was how God did it, thereby the earth was not there at all, and neither were the heavens yet.
There's no time, no before or after in eternity. There is only the infinite now.
Have you ever seen those three-dimensional graphics showing how the earth and the other planets move around the moving sun, all of which move in a spiral, not a plane, around the center of our galaxy, the Milky Way, which in turn moves in a huge, gigantic cluster of intergalactic phenomena..... all created and ordered by God. That's just the physical stuff. The "heavens" literally means the sky, but as scripture unfolds, we find there is a pile of stuff in the heavens (like the heavenly host) God also made which is not explained in the opening verse of the Bible. If we applied our still very limited knowledge of physics and cosmology, we might argue God made the singularity and then ordered its "explosion." The earth was formless and void, and God gave it form and substance and He did so in 10 or 11 dimensions, of which we currently grasp only four. Of course, the Bible is not a physics textbook so there are real limits to my speculation. My point is simply that there is a lot being said in the Genesis creation account and a linguistic breakdown is helpful but not all-informing, especially when the rest of scripture is neglected. Ultimately, Genesis, nor the rest of the Bible is about what existed when and how in the physical sense.
The Bible is the story of God's work through Christ. It's about Jesus, not us.