Revelation 1: 10 I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s Day, and I heard behind me a loud voice, as of a trumpet, 11 saying, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last,” and, “What you see, write in a book and send it to the seven churches which are in Asia: to Ephesus, to Smyrna, to Pergamos, to Thyatira, to Sardis, to Philadelphia, and to Laodicea.” - was this a suggestion or a command? and in another verse of Revelation God tells St John via the Angel NOT to write a part of what he had been allowed to see.
If you think that the Bible is not the Words of God but that of men then tell me how can you make a clear distinction between what is written in it, and the gathered wealth of great sermons made under the guidance of the Holy Spirit through the ages that we hear or read till today and will to the end of time.
Whether you have digested the logic or not dear, the Scriptures (and I mean all of the Holy Bible) IS undeniably the Sacred Words of God. When we understand this truth, His Words being spoken or written are the same, and we hereby waste our time in an obsolete debate.
Now for the how?....... Scripture Book writers are those humans who fully agreed and complied with their own free will to the Lord's Will, followed His Choice and accepted His Righteous Ways, albeit some had to undergo some sort of encouragement. They are all the Lord's Ambassadors, we often see they pray the Lord for help, they cannot do it all by themself, they cannot reach the depth contained within the Words all alone. You see how it is? And does an honest ambassador alter the message that he must carry to others?
An outstanding example: the Book of Genesis (i.e. the first Scripture) was written by Moses, do you think he could do that project from A to Z by himself, without God? obviously in this case the Holy Spirit does not just guide, He is the Energy and the Power enabling a man to do all actions for God's Glory.
I strongly suggest you carefully read the Book of Jonah.
[quote author=John_S2000 link=topic=4953.msg68754#msg68754 date=1174134820] Revelation 1: 10 I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s Day, and I heard behind me a loud voice, as of a trumpet, 11 saying, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last,” and, “What you see, write in a book and send it to the seven churches which are in Asia: to Ephesus, to Smyrna, to Pergamos, to Thyatira, to Sardis, to Philadelphia, and to Laodicea.” - was this a suggestion or a command? and in another verse of Revelation God tells St John via the Angel NOT to write a part of what he had been allowed to see.
Revelation would have to be the most unique of all the books in the Bible. It is entirely symbolic, and took the longest of any of the others to be accepted into the Canon. That being said, to answer your question, John was commanded to write down the things he saw in the book of Revelation. Note the wording. God did not say, "The things I say, write in a book and send...". John's point of view was incorporated into what he saw. Likewise, the way he described certain things, he did so with words that he had available to him at the time. Thus, seeing as how he was able to take a glimpse into the future (as is one interpretation of Revelation), he was unable to describe things the way we would have been able to today (i.e. if he saw a television, he couldn't use that word because it did not exist at the time of his writing the book).
If you think that the Bible is not the Words of God but that of men then tell me how can you make a clear distinction between what is written in it, and the gathered wealth of great sermons made under the guidance of the Holy Spirit through the ages that we hear or read till today and will to the end of time.
To put it simply: Ecumenical Councils. It was at these councils (I believe) where the Canon was selected, and certain books were called 'inspired' or not (regarding the NT). As for the OT, that had been established by the Jews, and I have no clue how they were selected.
Whether you have digested the logic or not dear, the Scriptures (and I mean all of the Holy Bible) IS undeniably the Sacred Words of God. When we understand this truth, His Words being spoken or written are the same, and we hereby waste our time in an obsolete debate.
Allow me to rephrase what you've just said to match my point of view: Whether you have digested the logic (I have presented) or not dear, the Scriptures (and I mean all of the Holy Bible) undeniably contains the sacred words of God. When we understand this truth, His Words being spoken or written are the same etc, etc.
And does an honest ambassador alter the message that he must carry to others?
It is 'altered' in the sense that it may not be word for word the same message that was given to him (orally, I'm assuming) when he left his country, but the gist of the message is there.
An outstanding example: the Book of Genesis (i.e. the first Scripture) was written by Moses, do you think he could do that project from A to Z by himself, without God? obviously in this case the Holy Spirit does not just guide, He is the Energy and the Power enabling a man to do all actions for God's Glory.
The stories in the book of Genesis were almost certainly preserved orally among the Hebrews, so Moses was definitely very familiar with them. On top of that, if I recall correctly, much of Genesis is written in verse (i.e. poetry) because it was much easier to remember poetry than prose. The preservation of the oral tradition would have been done by the Holy Spirit (almost certainly) so that when Moses wrote it down, he would have an accurate history to document (along with the aid of the Holy Spirit as well).
I strongly suggest you carefully read the Book of Jonah.
I wanted to post my last reply to the topic about the Holy Bible being the Word of God.
"All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work" (2 Tim 3:16-17).
"Blessed is he who reads and those who hear the words of this prophecy (Old & New Testament), and keep those things which are written in it; for the time is near" (Rev 1:3).
"For I testify to everyone who hears the words of the prophecy (the Entire Bible) of this book: If anyone adds to these things, God will add to him the plagues that are written in this book; and if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part from the Book of Life, from the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book" (Rev. 22:18-19).
"It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life" (St. John 6:63).
"For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart" (Heb 4:12).
"He who rejects Me, and does not receive My words, has that which judges him—the word that I have spoken will judge him in the last day" (St. John 12:48).
*(These are not my words but Someone who knows better.....)
If I may, I'd like to share what the Orthodox Study Bible has to say about some of these verses.
[quote author=minagir link=topic=4953.msg68808#msg68808 date=1174252550] "All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work" (2 Tim 3:16-17).
3:14-17 Having exhorted Timothy with the example of his own steadfastness (vv. 10-13), Paul now issues a reminder of the depth of Timothy's training, which combined both oral and written instruction (see Matt. 28:16-20; 1 Cor. 11:2; 2 Thess. 2:15; 3:6). A part of this tradition is Scripture. Paul, of course, speaks of the OT since the NT did not yet exist.
"Blessed is he who reads and those who hear the words of this prophecy (Old & New Testament), and keep those things which are written in it; for the time is near" (Rev 1:3).
You are mistaken here. When John writes about 'this prophecy' he is referring only to what is written in Revelation. From the Orthodox Study Bible: 1:3 A blessing is promised to those who read and here this prophecy (see Luke 11:28). This is the first of the seven beatitudes of the Revelation; the others are found in 14:16; 16:15; 19:9; 20:6 22:7, 14. Blessed here are both the reader and the hearers (the assembled faithful), provided that they heed what is read-for faith and works are inseperable. Time (Gr. kairos) here means an eschatological "decisive moment," a time of judgment, the time when all is fulfilled.
"For I testify to everyone who hears the words of the prophecy (the Entire Bible) of this book: If anyone adds to these things, God will add to him the plagues that are written in this book; and if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part from the Book of Life, from the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book" (Rev. 22:18-19).
Once again, you are mistaken. If you finish the sentence, it says 'the prophecy of this book,' again referring only to Revelation. From the Orthodox Study Bible: 22:18, 19 This severe warning refers to the Book of Revelation, not to the Bible as a whole, and admonishes those in the communities addressed not to distort its message. To do so is to threaten one's very salvation (see Deut. 4:2; 12:32; Gal. 1:8, 9).
"It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life" (St. John 6:63).
This is a reference to the teachings of Christ to the Apostles, which He taught orally ('The words that I speak to you are spirit...').
"For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart" (Heb 4:12).
From the Orthodox Study Bible: 4:12, 13The word of God and the sword here are living and powerful. The phrase His sight (v. 13) tells us this reference is not to the written word, Holy Scripture, but to the Word of God Himself, our Lord Jesus Christ (see John 1:1-18). Nothing is able to escape the discernment of Christ, the Word of God.
"He who rejects Me, and does not receive My words, has that which judges him—the word that I have spoken will judge him in the last day" (St. John 12:48).
Once again, Christ is talking about the teachings He has given the Apostles, which they have passed unto us.
To make it clearer (I hope) there exists this beautiful partnership between the Holy Spirit and His messengers, this is God's Will and His Wisdom. When we think about God's perspective versus ours: God Almighty has control.
It does not make any difference whether Revelation is entirely symbolic or not: Bible books are not history books (although used by historians as reference), the Lord is giving His message to His beloved disciple St John, to be written then to be known by all the faithful.
Reading Jonah gives a lot of insight on God-prophet/messenger relationship.
The freedom God has given us should not by any means distract us from recognizing His Supremacy.
[quote author=John_S2000 link=topic=4953.msg68857#msg68857 date=1174381799] To make it clearer (I hope) there exists this beautiful partnership between the Holy Spirit and His messengers, this is God's Will and His Wisdom.
You have worded it beautifully, and I couldn't agree more. At no point have I ever argued that this is not the case.
When we think about God's perspective versus ours: God Almighty has control.
Only in so far as we allow God to control our lives. God has given us free will and that is something none of us should ever forget. That being said, God does not control if we do not allow Him to. Do you see how much love and respect God has given us, that we can control our own lives if we so choose, without any interference from Him. If we choose to submit to His will, then and only then will He take control.
It does not make any difference whether Revelation is entirely symbolic or not: Bible books are not history books (although used by historians as reference), the Lord is giving His message to His beloved disciple St John, to be written then to be known by all the faithful.
Actually, I do feel it does make a difference whether Revelation is entirely symbolic or not, but that is another issue. Now the statement that Bible books are not history books is false. There are recognized divisions within the Bible in classifying the books and here is an example of it:
q Law o Genesis – Deuteronomy o Five (5) books q History (Old Testament) o Joshua – Esther o Twelve (12) books
q Poetry o Job – Song of Solomon o Five (5) books
q Prophecy (Old Testament) o Isaiah – Malachi o Seventeen (17) books o Sometimes divided into Major Prophets (5 books) and Minor Prophets (12 books)
q History (New Testament) o Matthew – Acts o Five (5) books o Sometimes divided into Gospels and Acts
q Epistles o Romans – Jude o Twenty-one (21) books o Sometimes divided into Gentile Epistles (13 books) and Jewish Epistles (8 books)
q Prophecy (New Testament) o Book of Revelation o One (1) book
Reading Jonah gives a lot of insight on God-prophet/messenger relationship.
The freedom God has given us should not by any means distract us from recognizing His Supremacy.
GBU
I agree again. God is supreme, but He is not a dictator. He is our Heavenly Father, and thus allows us to make our own choices and does not control our every actions.
My Beloved in Christ, Frist, pay attention to the following. Below are the sources of teachings and references of our church. The Sources of Teachings in the Coptic Orthodox Church of God: a. The Holy Bible: 1) The Old Testament: Contains 46 books 2) The New Testament: Contains 27 books
b. The Teachings of the Apostles: 1. Cannons of the Apostles: contains 157 canon 2. The Didaskalia and the Didache: Also known as the Books of the Teachings of the Apostles.
c. The Liturgical Books: 1. The Katamarous: a. Which contains the daily readings used during the liturgies. b. Daily Katamarous. c. Sunday Katamarous. d. The Holy Lent Katamarous. e. The Holy Week Katamarous. f. The Holy Fifty Days Katamarous. 2. The Synaxarium: a. Which contains the historical account of the lives of saints 3. The Agpya: a. Also known as the Book of Hours. 4. The Book of Holy Psalmody: a. Which contains the midnight praises. 5. The Book of the Holy Liturgy: a. Which contains the Three Liturgies used by the Coptic Orthodox Church of Christ. b. St. Basil the Great. c. St. Cyril the Pillar of faith. d. St. Gregory the Theologian. 6. The Book of the Sacraments of Holy Baptism and Holy Myron. 7. The Book of the ceremony of Engagement and the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony. 8. The Book of Ordinations and the Sacrament of Holy Priesthood. 9. The Book of the Holy Lakani, and the Prayer of Prostration. 10. The Book of the Hymns and Praises to the Mother of God and the saints.
d. The Teachings and Writings of the Fathers of the Church: 1. The Apostolic Fathers: A) St. Clement of Rome. B) St. Ignatius. C) St. Polycarp. D) The Letter of Barnabas and The Book of Hermas
2. The Fathers of the Ecumenical Councils: I) Eastern Fathers: (wrote in Greek) 1) St. Athanasius the Great (20th Pope of Alexandria) 2) St. Basil the Great (Arch bishop of Caesarea) 3) St. Gregory the Theologian (Bishop of Sazema) 4) St. John Chrysostom (Patriarch of Constantinople) 5) St, Cyril the Great (24th Pope of Alexandria) 6) St. Dioscorus (25th Pope of Alexandria) 7) St. Severus the Antioch (Patriarch of Antioch)
II) Western Fathers: (wrote in Latin) 1) St. Cyprian (Bishop of Carthage, Northern Africa) 2) St. Ambrose (Bishop of Milan, Italy) 3) St. Jerome (Palestian ascetic)
So, if we need to use refercnes or any teahings it must be out of these only. Not any other source.
[quote author=Κηφᾶς link=topic=4953.msg68828#msg68828 date=1174276831] [coptic]+ Iryny nem `hmot>[/coptic]
If I may, I'd like to share what the Orthodox Study Bible has to say about some of these verses...
the Orthodox Study Bible is not of the sources listed below by ilabib.
[quote author=ilabib link=topic=4953.msg68885#msg68885 date=1174439217] My Beloved in Christ, Frist, pay attention to the following. Below are the sources of teachings and references of our church. The Sources of Teachings in the Coptic Orthodox Church of God...
wherefore the commentaries u brought qouting the verses that i posted are not approved by our Copric Church, which me and you are part of.
My Beloved in Christ, In response to "There are discrepancies that can be found in the Bible and whenever topics such as geology, astronomy, anatomy" Below are Passages from the Book Creation Versus Evolution by Fr. Markos Hanna, second Edition. Please, remember you little brother in your prayers. Forgive me, I will have to send it in few messages since it exceeds the max. allowed length. Creation versus Evolution
The creation-evolution question is certainly the most important area of apparent conflict between the Bible and science. It is a great mistake for Christians to compromise on this issue, or may-be even worse, to ignore it. Although almost all nations were founded on creationist principles and all the early schools taught creation, evolution has now become the dominant philosophy and for several generations has been taught as fact in practically all schools. Evolutionary assumptions also dominate the news media and all other public institutions. Evolution is only a THEORY! And the definition of theory is; "an explanation based on thought". Evolution then is not really a science at all. It is a philosophy or an attitude of mind. Chance constitutes the very essence of evolution. Charles Darwin, in his "Descent of Man", used the phrase, "We may well suppose", 800 times! Eight hundred times in two volumes. Can you imagine that 4- Evolution is nothing but a guess. Evolutionists admit that no one has ever seen any real evolution (from one kind of creature to a more complex kind of creature) take place. Many animals have become extinct within the few thousand years of written records that we have, but no new kinds of animals have evolved during that period. No man was present to observe and record them, so such ideas are entirely outside the scope of real science. The sun and moon, according to Genesis, were not made until the fourth day, halfway through the creation period. Not only is that contrary to evolutionary geology, but such an order would be completely lethal to the vegetation created on the third day, if the days were longer than twenty-four hours. There are many other contradictions between the order of creation in Genesis and the order of evolution in historical geology.
The Bible teaches that the work of creation was all accomplished and completed in six days of the creation week, as outlined in Genesis 1, whereas evolutionists contend that the process of evolution has been going on for billions of years and is still going on now in the present. The Bible could hardly be more definite on this point: "Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them ... And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it He rested from all His work which He had done" (Genesis 2:1,3). In the New Testament, whenever God's work of creating the universe and all its creatures is mentioned, it is always in the past tense, example, Colossians 1:16, "For by Him were all things created". Also Hebrews 4:3, "God's works were finished from the foundation of the world"". This is of course in accord with the basic laws of science. By the "Conservation Principle", nothing is now being created, just as The Book of Genesis says. By the "Entropy Principle", there must have been a creation in the past, just as The Book of Genesis says. I pray that this book may be a blessing to many for their edification and salvation of their souls, through the prayers of the holy Mother of God, Theotokos St. Mary The Ever-Virgin, and St. Mark the Evangelist, Apostle and Martyr, and His Holiness Pope Shenouda III, the father of fathers and the shepherd of shepherds. Amen.
THE 'DAY-AGE THEORY: This theory attempts to equate the geological ages with creation week of Genesis. Although the Hebrew word for "day" - YOM,can occasionally mean a time of indefinite length if the context requires, such usage is rare, and the word almost always does mean a literal day, i.e. either a twenty-four-hour period or the daylight portion of that period. In Genesis there is no room for indefinite meaning. The use of a numeral with day "first day", and so on, or the use of boundary terms, "evening and morning", are usages that elsewhere in the Pentateuch invariably require the literal meaning of "day". The proof that the "days" of Genesis are to be understood as literal days is found in The Ten Commandments. The fourth Commandment says; "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work: but the seventh day is Sabbath of the Lord Your God: in it you shall not do any work .. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them, and rested the seventh day" (Exodus 20:8-11). It is clear from the strong wording that God used in this commandment-written with His own finger on a table of stone, according to Exodus 31:18-that the "days" of God's week are exactly equivalent to the days of man's week. Furthermore, the word twice translated "days" in this passage (Hebrew; YAMIM) occurs more than seven hundred times elsewhere in the Old Testament and always means literal days. It is well to note also that there is at least one good word-Hebrew; OLAM- that means "age" or "long indefinite time", and this word should have been used in Genesis 1 and Exodus 20 if that were the writer's intended meaning. The fact that He used the words "day" and "days" without any hint in the context of a non literal meaning, makes it evident that He intended the literal meaning. The creation days were then literal days, then of course, evolution would be completely out of the question. Another proof that the day meant 24 hour, is the verse "and it was evening and it morning, one day"(genesis 1:5,8,13,19,2,3).This verse is repeated in the first six days of the Creation, but it is not written in the seventh. Each day of the first six had a beginning and an end
Could the day of the Creation be as many millions of years£ In other words, a period of time? If supposed that the above statement could be true, can the flora and fauna; that do not live more than some hundreds of years, live in a dark night and painful cold all its Iife. How would plants live without the sun and the photosynthesis? How would animals live without oxygen (plants make no photosynthesis because of darkness) ? On the other side, how would animals and plants live their whole life in a hot sun?
What does science say and how does it explain the day 4? Science says that the day is the period of the rotation of the earth in front of the sun, that is 24 hours. This had not changed since the beginning.
EXAMPLES for 'day' that means 24 hours: 1. The one hundred and fifty days of the Great Flood (Genesis 8:3). 2. The forty days that the spies spent in Canaan (Numbers 13:25). 3. The three days that Jonah spent in the belly of the fish (Jonah 1:17). 4. The forty days during which the Lord Jesus Christ appeared to His disciples after His glorious Resurrection (Acts 1:3).
REPRODUCE AFTER ITS KIND: There is still another important Biblical emphasis that completely precludes any real evolution. The phrase, "after its kind(s)", is used no less than ten times in the first chapter of Genesis. Every created "kind" ; Hebrew-MIN- was to reproduce after its own kind and not to generate some new kind. This does not preclude "horizontal" variation within limits (e.g., the different varieties of dogs or cats or people), but it does prohibit "vertical" variation from one kind to some higher kind (e.g., monkeys to men). This truth also stressed again in the New Testament (e.g., I Corinthians 15:38,39 "But God gives it a body as He pleases, and to each seed its own body. AH flesh is not the same flesh, but there is one kind of flesh of men, another flesh of animals, another offish, and another for birds"}.
THEISM versus EVOLUTION: Regardless of what the Bible says, those who seek to honor God should realize that evolution is naturalistic and materialistic by its very nature. It is merely an attempt to explain the origin of things without God. Naturalism and chance constitute the very essence of evolution. Evolution is also in conflict, with the teachings of Christ: 1- He should not have healed the lame and sick if progress is measured by the 'survival of the fittest'. 2- He taught self-sacrifice, but evolution is necessarily based on self-preservation in the struggle for existence. Evolution is also the most inefficient and cruel method for creating man that could be conceived.
If God is a God of love and wisdom and power (as the Bible teaches), then how could He ever be guilty of devising such a scheme as evolution? What possible reason could there have been for such flesh-eating monsters as Tyrannosaurus Rex, for example, to rule the earth for 100 million years before man evolved? If the geological ages really took place and if man was not merely the end but in fact the goal of the evolutionary process as 'theistic evolutionists7 believe, then multiplied billions of animal have suffered and died for no apparent reason. The account of creation in Genesis ends with the conclusion that everything that God had made was in HIS judgment, '"very; good' (Genesis 1:31). Surely God could not possibly have viewed the fossilized remains of billions upon billions of His creation period. The Bible says that death only entered the world as a result of man's sin (Romans 5:12; I Corinthians 15:21) and will be removed once sin is removed (Revelation 21:4,27), but evolution requires suffering and death as an integral part of the very process that brought man into the world. Thus theistic evolution is a contradiction in terms. If one wishes to believe in evolution, he is free to make that choice, but he certainly should not associate a wise, powerful, loving God with such a monstrous system. Looking at the Holy Bible with an accurate scientific look, we would notice many characteristics that are found only in the Holy Bible and not in any other book: 1) The 1st Characteristic: The Holy Bible was not affected by the scientific mistakes contemporary to its writing throughout history. 2) The 2nd Characteristic: It is a firm, scientific rock on which every scientific theory that contradicted It, soon fell to pieces. 3) The 3rd Characteristic: There is a great accordance between the proved scientific facts and the Holy Bible-only when it is studied accurately. 4) The 4th Characteristic: The Holy Bible contains scientific facts that science discovered recently. This will be extensively explained later in this study.
EVOLUTION IN THE PHILOSOPHIES & SYSTEMS OF THE WORLD: Any form of atheism (there is no God) or pantheism (God and the universe are the same) or occultism (beyond the bounds of ordinary knowledge, mysterious, magical) must necessarily be based on evolution. Determinism, Existentialism, Behaviorism, Freudianism and other such amoral psychological systems are deeply rooted in evolutionary theory. These are facts and can easily be documented from the writings of the founders and leaders of each of the above systems. Evolution, in fact, is not only the basic premise of all atheistic and humanistic religious but also of the various pantheistic religions, i.e. Taoism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Hinduism, and other such faiths, are essentially based on some form of evolution, accepting the space-time cosmos as the only ultimate and eternal reality and denying any real transcendent Creator of the cosmos. Not only is evolutionary philosophy basic in most anti-Christian social, economic, and religious philosophies, but it is also the pseudo-scientific rationale of the host of anti-social immoral practices that are devastating the world today; i.e. abortion, the drug culture, homosexual activism, animalistic amorality, etc. By the very fact of goodness and beauty in the world, it would seem that such a harmful and godless theory of origins an evolutionism could not possibly be true. Evolution also contradicts true science. All real facts of science support special creation, not evolution!
THE ORIGIN OF LIFE: It is impossible to account for the origin of life in the first place. The popular notion of spontaneous generation was demolished by Louis Pasteur and others back in the 19th century, yet evolutionists still cling to the idea of 'abiogenesis', the imaginary gradual development of complex molecules from basic elements until they finally become replicating molecules, which are then assumed to be living. No replicating molecule has ever yet been synthesized from no living chemicals in the laboratory, despite multitudes of costly experiments attempting to do so. Yet evolutionists imagine that what cannot be accomplished by trained scientists with costly equipment in artificially-controlled environments somehow occurred by a blind chance a billion years ago. Some unknown type of atmosphere somehow generated unknown primitive life forms from unknown chemicals, and that's how life began!
However, life even at the simplest imaginary level is so complex that the chance for this to happen by accident is infinitesimally small. The famous mathematical astrophysicist, Sir Fred Hoyle, recently argued that the probability this could happened once in the entire history of the universe is roughly equivalent to the probability that a tornado sweeping through a junk-yard would assemble a Boeing 747! Living organisms are known to be structured around a remarkable system called the DNA molecule (deoxyribonucleic acid), in which is encoded all the growth of the information necessary to direct the growth of the complete organism from the germ cell. Although the variation potential in the DNA molecule is extremely large, allowing a wide range of variation in any given type of plant or animal, it also serves to insure that such genetic systems of the parents. The tremendous amount of ordered information in even the simplest living organism is so great that it is almost impossible to imagine that scientists could ever synthesize it from elemental chemicals, no matter how long they took, and even more inconceivable that it could ever happen by chance. Even if a genetic code centered in the DNA molecule could even arise by chance, it certainly could never happen more than once. Yet it has recently been found that there are several different genetic codes present in certain organisms, and all evidence indicates that each must have had a separate origin. The intensive search for even the slightest traces of life on other planets or in interplanetary space reflects the wistful hope that evolutionary theory will be vindicated by evidence that life has also developed somewhere else in the universe. As yet, despite the space probes, giant telescopes, and even the UFO furor, the idea of E.T. - extra terrestrial- life remains science fiction and nothing more. There is not the slightest evidence of biological life as we understand it anywhere else in the universe. The fact that almost all living flesh is composed of the same basic type of molecule (DNA), made up in turn of the same basic elements (carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, and so on) found in the earth is of course a definite confirmation of Scripture. The Bible states plainly that both plants (Genesis 1:11,12) and animals (Genesis 1:20,24} were 'brought forth7 from the earth and its waters, and that even man's body was formed of 'the dust of the ground' (Genesis 2:7). However, the fact that there was a life principle that was not inherit in these basic substances is also stressed in the case of both animals ('living creatures' Genesis 1:24} and man ('living soul' Gen. 2:7}, and there is not the slightest evidence that future scientists will ever be able to synthesize anything corresponding to a 'living soul', nor that natural processes ever accomplished any such thing in the past.
In response to "There are discrepancies that can be found in the Bible and whenever topics such as geology, astronomy, anatomy". Here is Part 2 of Creation versus Evolution by Fr. Markos Hanna. Please, do not claim that the Holy Bible, the Life-Giving Word of God contains discripancies.
ORIGIN OF SPECIES: More than one hundred years ago, Charles Darwin achieved lasting fame by publishing "The Origin of the Species". Yet it is now recognized that, in that book, he never gave one specific example of the origin of any new species of plant or animal. He discussed numerous examples of "variation" within species indulged in many speculations as to how different organisms might have evolved in the past, along with various notions as to possible relationships deduced from similarities, but he never gave any real proof of genuine vertical evolution.
It is significant that, even at this late date, well over a century after Darwin, and despite the lifelong efforts of thousands of scientists and untold millions of dollars spent on elaborate studies and experiments, evolutionists still have never experimentally observed the evolution of a single new species, nor do they have any certain knowledge of the mechanism by which evolution works.
There have been thousands of examples of plants and animals that have become extinct during human history. If 'the present is the key to the past7, as naturalistic scientists like to imagine, then the universal law of biological science would seem to be deterioration and extinction rather than evolution.
There are a number of serious difficulties with this geological time scale and the evolutionary interpretation of its fossil record. There are several important facts in the fossil record that argue convincingly against evolution.
In the first place, out of the billions of fossils that have been shown to exist in the mile-deep graveyard extending around the earth, there are no fossils of true evolutionary transitional forms!
Every one of the great phyla, orders, classes, and families, as well as most genera and species, appear quite suddenly in the fossil record, with no preliminary or intermediate forms leading up to them.
There are no transitional sequences from one species to another species, let alone transitions between genera, families, and higher categories in the classification scheme. It seems necessary to conclude, therefore, that the real reason transitional fossils have never been found is because transitional animals never existed!
A second problem in reference to the fossil record, is that a great many modern kinds of animals are evidently degenerate, rather than higher, forms of those that are found as fossils. These would include practically all mammals; elephants, tigers, wolves, rhino, hippos, bears, beavers, and others. It is also true of multitudes of plants of all kinds, as well as insects (giant ants, giant cockroaches, giant dragonflies, and so on), birds, fish, amphibians, and reptiles.
TRANSITIONAL FOSSILS : DOES IT EXISTS No gradual transitions are evident between the different forms with transitional structural features but only sudden jumps at best. Many of the supposed "hominid" fossils, e.g. Australopithecus, Ramapithecus, are extinct apes, where others, e.g. Neanderthal, clearly represent extinct tribes of men. Such extinct tribes, or "races", as some call them, are best explained as descendants of families that emigrated from Babel (Confusion, Septuagint Translation) after the "confusion of tongues" (Genesis 11:6-9). As a result of isolation, inbreeding, and perhaps mutation, they gradually deteriorated in strength and intelligence and eventually became extinct. Did "dinosaurs" and great monstrous animals ever exist? The answer is very simple. God granted them the blessing of being fruitful, of multiplying and of filling the earth, why had they become extinct, then*?- Their existence was for man's good, but may he live with them1?- Of course, it is impossible, but their rapid extinction was of benefit to man-they decompose to oil... The perishing of these great monsters that were very huge and spreading, were stored in the earth's layers as oil, great amount of oil. This is the oil on which man depends daily as a main source of power all over the world nowadays. The dinosaurs perished and were buried under the great sediments, then they decomposed to oil. Oil moved in the layers of sediments in the earth till it reached some impenetrable layers. We call those places, "oil-pots" in which oil gathers till it is extracted. ."
EVOLUTION versus ENTROPY (law of degeneration) There is no real evidence at all for progressive evolution but much evidence for disintegration and extinction or, at best, biologic stability. It is possible to equate deterioration with development. Evolution and entropy are both supposed to represent universal laws of changes, but each is the opposite of the other, so they cannot both be true. Entropy represents a law of science, to the extent there is such a thing, whereas evolution represents the wishful thinking of those trying to explain the existence of life apart from God and has no scientific basis at all. More and more it appears that there is a degenerative principle pervading all nature. Some have called this the 'law of morpholysis' (which means 'breaking-down of structure'), but the Bible explains it as the great curse placed on the ground because of Adam's sin (Genesis 3:17-20). According to this principle, 'the whole creation groans and travails in pain together until now' under 'the bondage of corruption (or decay)'(Romans 8:21,22). There is a universal tendency from the highly organized to the disorganized. Never is there an inherent, natural, undirected, complexity. The natural tendency is always degenerative. Prior to the curse, entropy, like energy, was 'conserved' with decay processes balanced by growth processes. Now, however, decay prevails. No one has ever seen anything evolve, no one knows how-evolution works, the fossil record shows no evolutionary transitions taking place, and the basic laws of science show it to be impossible. Yet evolutionists insist that this is 'science' and should be taught as proved fact to school-children!
How is the Age of a Rock Determined? There is no correlation of rock characteristics as such with the 'age' of rocks. Any rock type (sandstone, shale, and so on) can be found in any age. Minerals of all types, metals of all types, coal and oil, structures of all type, and all degrees of looseness or consolidation can be found in any geological age. The remarkable fact is that the geological age of a rock is determined primarily by the fossils it contains, on the basis of the fossil sequences that had been assigned different ages by Cuvier, Eyell, and their followers well over a century ago. The circle of reasoning involved is subtle but once assumed generates a powerful argument for evolution (i.e., the assumed ladder of progress from simple to complex) is assumed in building up the geological series, rocks containing simpler fossils are older and rocks containing more complex and specialized forms are called younger. Then, the paleontological sequences so constructed are taken as proof of evolution. The main evidence for evolution-foss// record-is based on assumption of evolution implicit in the dating of the rocks by the fossils in the record. The creationist, of course, argues that since all the evidence points to catastrophism; with every feature formed rapidly, there is no evidence for the millions of years arbitrarily inserted between the catastrophes. Science, meaning literally Knowledge, should be based on what we see, not what we don't see. What we see in the geologic and palenontologic records of the past is no transitional forms and no evidence of great time spans in between the catastrophic events that formed all the geologic features of the earth. The reasonable conclusion is that no such transitional forms or long time spans ever existed.
HUMAN POPULATION: The present human population of the world supports the Book of Genesis record. The world population in the year 1800 has been estimated at about 850,000,000 whereas in the year 1650 it was only about 400,000,000. In the year 1986 it was somewhat over, 4,000,000,000. The population thus seems to be doubling itself about every one hundred years, and there is no objective reason to assume this rate was significantly lower in the past. The present rate seems to be more rapid than this, in fact. Now if the original population was two (say Noah and his wife), one can easily calculate that the population would only have to double itself 31 times to produce the present world population. Assuming the Usher chronology to be correct, Noah and his wife had their family about 4,500 years ago. This gives an averaging doubling interval of 145 years, which is quite reasonable and conservative. However, if the original pair lived, say, 500,000 years ago, which is much les than the usual anthropological estimate, the average doubling time is over 16,000 years, which is absurd, The world's present population, as well as their dispersal from Ararat (and later Babel), can easily be explained in terms of the Biblical framework. The same applies to animal populations and their geographical distribution. During the Ice Age following the Flood, extensive land bridges existed across the Bering Straits and down the Malaysian archipelago into New Guinea and possibly to Australia. People and animals could have migrated on foot to practically all parts of the world. Men also knew hoe to construct ships, as is evidenced by the Ark itself, and there is increasing evidence of ancient navigation to all regions of the globe, even to Antarctica. Some people have ridiculed the story of Noah's Ark, alleging it would have been impossible for him to keep two of every kind of animal on the Ark for a year, but this objection is easily answered.
THE ARK'S DIMENSIONS: The Ark's dimensions are given by God to Noah (Genesis 6:15-17) as 300 cubits by 50 cubits by 30 cubits. Assuming each cubit to be 18 inches (the most likely value, according to archaeologists), each of the Ark's three decks (averaging 15 feet in height) would have contained about 34,000 square feet of floor space, and the total carrying capacity of the Ark was about 1,500,000 cubic feet the equivalent of 569 standard railroad stock cars. The smaller animals were, no doubt, placed in tiers cages on top of each other, with the few large animals, (e.g., elephants, rhino, camels, etc.) in separate stalls. There aie-according to leading taxonomist Ernst Mayr - less than 200,000 species of land animals (mammals, reptiles, birds, amphibians) living today, with a much smaller number of extinct species known from the fossils. At the most, therefore, the Ark would only have to carry, say, 80,000 animals. If the average animal was the size of a sheep (most animals are much smaller than this), and knowing that a railroad stock car can carry 240 sheep, it is clear that the Ark could have held as many as 140,000 animals. The Biblical 'kind' is very likely much broader than the species in most cases, so there would have been no problem at all, in accommodating all the world's land animals in the Ark. They were, no doubt, all young animals (they had to a live a year in the ark, then repopulate the earth) and therefore relatively small and docile. Furthermore, it is likely that many or most of the animals spent most of the Flood year in a state of relative dormancy, thus requiring a minimum of care. It is also noteworthy that Noah did not have to go out and bring them to the ark. The record says that God caused them to migrate to the ark as the time for the Flood drew near (Genesis 6,7 &8); "And all the wild beats after their kind, and all the cattle after their kind, and every reptile moving itself on earth after its kind, and every flying bird after its kind, went in to Noah into the Ark, pairs; male and female..." (Gen.J:6).
EVIDENCE FOR CREATION: Is there any scientific evidence for creation? The truth is that the scientific evidence supports creation. FIRST beginning! This is usually referred to in scientific terms as "The Big Bang Theory". Of course, this implies that someone or something brought the universe into existence. SECOND: the universe bears all the marks of having been "finely tuned" to make life possible. For example, the elementary forces of gravity, electromagnetism, and the atom are precisely what they need to be. The earth's size, distance from the sun, rotational period, composition, and many other factors are all just right. The chances of there being even one planet where all these factors converge by accident are very slim indeed. THIRD: the evidence is mounting that life on earth simply could not and did not come into existence through natural processes in a primordial "soup". For example, the experiments to prove that it could have happened are suspect because little progress has been made possible due to the ingenious on the part of experiments. FOURTH: the genetic code of all biological life on earth contains evidence of intelligent design. This is because the genetic code contains information in complex computer programs as well as information in books. FIFTH: the fossil record continues to be an embarrassment to the Darwinian Theory of evolution. The many transitional forms which Darwin predicted would be found simply have not surfaced. This fact has forced evolutionists to modify Darwin's Theory, often in absurd ways. In short, it is the theory of naturalistic evolution which is in serious trouble scientifically today, while the Biblical teaching of creation never looked better.
IS CHRISTIANITY UNDER ATTACK? The reason that people do not want to accept creation is that it means there is a Creator who sets the rules. Thus, no person can write his own rules! The growing acceptance of atheistic evolution has resulted in many rejecting God as Creator. Over the years, many have used evolution to justify abortion, Communism, Nazism, drug-abuse, homosexual practices, and worse. Increase in the popularity of evolution has gone hand-in-hand with the increase in popularity of these social issues. While evolution is not to blame for the social ills of society, it has become the justification for lending respectability to such social attitudes. The ultimate cause of these problems is the rejection of God as Creator. Creation evangelism may be a new term to many, but it is Biblical method. St. Paul used it with great success. Creation evangelism is a tool the Church needs to use to restore the right foundations in order to present the whole Gospel message. Evolution is one of the biggest barriers to today's people being receptive to the Gospel of our Lord God and Savior; Jesus Christ. Creation evangelism is a powerful method that removes these barriers and opens people's hearts and minds to the Gospel. The media and the public education system tell us that 'creation' cannot be taught in schools because it is religion, while 'evolution' is science. This is a lie, because science is 'knowledge' while evolution theory is nothing but a philosophy or attitude of mind, based on chance, which is in conflict with the teachings of our Lord Jesus Christ.
The Bible Account of Creation is the Most Important, Most Sensible, and Most Believable Explanation. There are three verses from one chapter of the first book in the Old Testament, Genesis, that mean more to man than all the books men ever wrote, and we have all the rest of the Bible besides. The First Verse: "In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth" (Genesis 1:1). This gives us the origin of life. We begin with a First Great Cause, all-wise, all-powerful, and all-loving God.
The Second Verse: “Then God said; ‘Let the earth bring forth the living creature according to its kind” (Genesis 1:24). The most fundamental scientific fact, the law that governs the continuity of life. If life is to continue on this earth, it must be reproduced, and reproduction must be acceding to law, God's universal law of reproduction ‘according to kind'. No living thing; animal and/or vegetable has ever violated that law. Even man, with all his power, has never been able to persuade or compel that intangible, invisible thing we call life, to violate the law laid down in the 24th verse, of chapter one in the Book of Genesis, establishing reproduction according 'to kind'. They have not found one single species that can be proven to have come from another, yet the only thing that has seriously menaced religion in 1900 years is the effort to substitute man's guess for God's Law, when there is nothing to support man's guess and every thing to support God's law. So, the second verse gives us the governing life’s continuity.
The Third Verse: "Then God said; Let Us make man in Our Image, according to Our Likeness." (Genesis 1:26).
After God made all things, He made man; not as He had made all other things; but in His own Image.
God puts man, here, as a part of the divine plan, and for a purpose, that is the only place you will find it
This gives us the explanation of man's presence.
GOD'S BOOK In spite of the increase in the number of books and published material which appear every day, and in spite of the progress in human knowledge, the Holy Bible is still unconditionally number one amongst all of them. It is indeed God's Book and the Book of books.
Naming it "the Holy Bible" is not the deed of man, but of the Holy Spirit the writer of the Book "and that from childhood you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus" (2 Timothy 3:15), ..."the gospel of God which He promised before through His prophets in the Holy Scriptures" (Romans 1:1, 2). This naming differentiates - without doubt - between the message of God "the Holy Bible" and of the other books which men author in different branches of knowledge.
The Holy Bible is God's Book from its beginning to its end. It contains many books, some of which are ascribed to known writers such as Moses, David, Solomon, Matthew, Luke, and Paul. Yet these were not their own writings. The writer of God's Book, from its beginning to its end is the Holy Spirit - the Spirit of God "knowing this first, that no prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation, for prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit" (2 Peter 1:20, 21). St. Paul also says "All Scripture is given by inspiration of God" (2 Timothy 3:13).
All those who made an effort to resist the Bible and studied it for the purpose of discrediting it, were either attracted by it or were destroyed by it.
The Holy Bible is in two Testaments: the Old Testament and the New Testament. The word "testament" means covenant between God and man. They were also called testaments because they were marked by blood. The Old Testament was marked by the blood of slaughtered animals and the New Testament was signed by the Blood of Christ.
THE ONENESS OF THE BIBLE AND ITS OBJECTIVE: The Holy Bible is a truly amazing Book. It contains 73 books (46 in the Old Testament and 27 in the New Testament). They were written during a period of 1500 years by about 40 writers of different backgrounds. Among them were kings such as David and Solomon, shepherd Amos, priest Zechariah, prophets such as Samuel and Isaiah, legislator Moses, commander Joshua, fishermen such as Peter and John, scholar Paul and physician Luke. It was written in distinct places such as the Sinai desert, wilderness of Judea, cave of Adullam, a prison in Rome, the island of Patmos, palaces of Mount Zion, shores of the rivers of Babel and in Jerusalem after it was rebuilt. With all the diversities in the personalities of the writers, the places and the times of writing, its 73 books form one book, in spirit, subject and objective. There is no wonder in this: (1) The center around which the Bible rotates from its beginning to its end is "Jesus Christ the Son of God ". The beginning of the Holy Bible tells us that He shall bruise the head of the serpent (the devil) (Genesis 3:15) and at the end of the Bible (the book of Revelation) we read that He is coming quickly, and His reward is with Him, to give to every one according to his work (Revelation 22:12). The Lord Jesus asserted this fact when He commented to the Jews that their Holy Books "testify of Me" (John 5:39). And in the dusk of the day of His Resurrection "beginning at Moses and all the Prophets, He expounded to them (the Disciples of Emmaus) in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself (Luke 24:27). He again confirmed this fact to His Disciples who were gathering before His Ascension saying "These are the words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms concerning Me" (Luke 24:44). (2) The heart of the Bible is the ways of God with the people. He approaches them according to His free grace and by raising their hopes in Him. The story of God in all of the Book concerns His coming near man who is hiding from God, where God declares Himself to him and raises his hope in Him. God called to Adam after Adam's fall and said to him "Where are you?" (Genesis 3:9). Man hides away from God wherever he is and in whatever he does, and God looks for man to show him the way of salvation. In the Holy Bible God appears different from gods in the books of other religions. In other religions, we see that man searches for god. But in Christianity, God searches for man, and that is the beauty of Christianity. Man the imperfect, the sinner, weak in all respects, is unable by himself to reach God the Holy One, without sin Who lives in unapproachable light!! (3) The Holy Bible teaches us that the grace of God does not reach us directly, but always through a mediator. It teaches us - that in order for us to receive the forgiveness of our sins - that requires the work of atonement and mediation, and that God does not overlook sin. This principle is displayed in all the Bible from its beginning to its end. From here we find the Old Testament full of prophecies about the Messiah (Christ) "there is one God and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus" (1 Timothy 2:5). The Gospels show Him present and working, the Epistles look at Him with faith and knowledge and wait for His second coming and the book of Revelation speaks about His authority and His eternal Kingdom. THE EVERLASTING BOOK: The Holy Bible is distinguished by its profound effect on the souls of its readers who approach it with faith and humility. It did and still does urge its readers to get rid of their sins, no matter how heavy and complicated they are. For true believers, the Bible is like Samson with all his strength, and for the proud and the unbelievers it is like Samson himself but after he shaved his head and lost his strength!! In spite of the fact that the Bible has been translated into about 850 languages, it did not lose its power, action and effect. This is due to the secret of its strength; not the eloquence of its words or its attractive style, but to the Spirit which its words contain. The Lord Jesus said "The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life" (John 6:63). It was able to attract millions of hearts to God after it stirred them to repentance, and brought them joy and peace and filled them with hope. There is no wonder in that, as it is a live book, strong, and effective in the souls of those who read it with faith. In the eighteenth century, the French philosopher Voltaire said that twelve men laid the basis of Christianity and that he himself would discredit it. He added that the Holy Bible would be a forgotten book within one hundred years. Yet hundreds of years have passed and nothing that Voltaire anticipated has happened. To the contraiy, the harsh scientific criticism which faced the Bible in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, revolved to detailed study of the Holy Bible, of its history and of all which relates to it. The Bible came out from this dilemma - the dilemma of the new age -stronger than those who criticized it had imagined. New archaeological discoveries, linguistic studies and the like served in uncovering the authenticity of the Bible and the truth of its stories in a way the scholars did not foresee. That is according to the saying of Lord "For assuredly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one title will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled" (Matthew 5:18). "Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will by no means pass away" (Mark 13:31). See Revelation 22:18-19
BLEESSINGS OF TH BIBLE There are uncountable blessings in the Word of God. We never hear about anybody who lived a holy life, without the Holy Bible being the basis of forming his spiritual life, We never hear about a faithful minister, a successful missionary, a struggling hero of faith, without the Holy Bible being the secret of his success, the source of his inspiration, his support and his strength. In the past, God commanded the placing of the two tablets off the Covenant upon which the Ten Commandments were written by the Fingers of God in the Ark of Testimony, together with the pot of Manna (Hebrew 9:4). This place is a gentle reference to the heart of the believer where the Word of God is kept, and where the Lord Jesus dwells; the real Manna Who descended from heaven for the life of all the world. We all know that because of the first fall, the whole of mankind was expelled from Paradise - their original home - to the world where we now live, referred to as a foreign home, in which we are all aliens. This foreign home is full of darkness and mankind is in a constant state of war against his old enemies "the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places (Ephesians 6:11). The Lord explained in His Holy Book that the main help in our sojourn and wars against our enemies is the Word of God. This principle is utterly clear in the whole Biblt. The Bible is: (1) Good Tidings of Hope and Comfort: Mankind has to die as the result of disobedience and transgressions. Meanwhile the Holy Bible brings to us glad tidings of life and freedom. It calls for sonship, liberation from slavery, cessation of the curse of the Law, descent of the blessings of the Cross and Resurrection, better life and the fellowship with God. What a beautiful message which the Bible carries "How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the gospel of peace, who bring glad tidings of good things!" (Romans 10:15). Every fifty years the Jews used to celebrate a year known as the "year of Jubilee" (Leviticus 25:11). They celebrated this year in a splendid way according to the Law. When the horns were blown announcing the beginning of the year of Jubilee, Joy found its way to many broken hearts. The poor who had sold his house or his land out of his hand, got it back, and the person who sold himself as a slave was liberated (Leviticus chapter 25). For this the Psalmist blessed "the people who know the joyful sound" (Psalm 89:15). The joyful sound here refers to the sound of the horns announcing the beginning of the year of Jubilee. The Holy Bible is the Divine horn which proclaims the coming of "the acceptable year of the Lord" (Luke 4:19), so that we own again our heavenly home which we lost by sin and disobedience, and regain our freedom after we enslaved ourselves to the power of sin and fell into the hands of Satan. The Holy Bible not only bring us glad tidings, but it ns also a great source of strength and hope, and boosting off the moral spirits. Among the strongest weapons in the hands of our spiritual enemies, is the spreading among God's people, of the sense of weakness, defeat and surrender. The Holy Bible, on the other hand, rejects such wicked moods and replaces them with faith, complete confidence in the Lord, trust in the hope of His salvation, and that He will come with might, even in the last quarter of the night, for all who wait upon Him. We read the words of Moses to his people when fear and horror got hold of them "Do not be afraid. Stand still, and shall hold your peace" (Exodus 14:13, 14). We hear after that about the deeds of the Lord with His people in the bare wilderness in the period of forty years. He supported them with the food of the angels and gave them water from a mute rock. He preserved their clothes and shoes, and gave them victory over nations which exceeded them in number and equipment. We read about the great works of God with God's fearing men everywhere and in every generation and about His very many promises to them "Because he has set his love upon Me, therefore I will deliver him; I will set him on high, because he has known My name. He shall call upon Me, and I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble; I will deliver him and honor him. With long life I will satisfy him, and show him My salvation" (Psalm 91:14-16). We read the words of the Lord of Glory "and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age" (Matthew 28:20). We read about the experience of Paul "If God is for us, who can be against us?" (Romans 8:31) and "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me" (Philippians 4:13). We also read about the love of God to sinners and His compassion towards them. Hence we should never lose hope, but rather gain strength and be encouraged. Life's difficulties are numerous and hard, and because of them many will be offended, will betray one another, and will hate one another (Matthew 24:10). God gave us His Book to support us in our sojourn, a strong constant comforter. We find it near to us in all times, and can sit listening to it as long as we wish. When troubles surround us, there is no better than God's Word to comfort and encourage us. There is no real comfort in what the people utter, and as Job said in his misfortunes "Miserable comforters are you all!" (Job 16:2). The Word of God has always been the source of comfort to all of God's people. David says "Remember the word to Your servant, upon which You have caused me to hope ... This is my comfort in my affliction, ... I remembered Your judgments of old, O Lord, and have comforted myself... Unless Your law had been my delight, I would then have perished in my affliction" (Psalm 119:49, 50, 52, 92). St. Paul explains this matter by saying "For whatever things were written before were written for our learning, that we through the patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope" (Romans 15:4) ... He commanded the believers to seek comfort from the Bible by saying "Therefore comfort one another with these words" (1 Thessalonians 4:18). The source of comfort of God's Word is not only due to its accounts about God's people, their forbearance, patience, and what God did with them, or what it contains from fair meanings, but to the fact that the words of the Holy Books were written by the Holy Spirit "The Helper" (John 14:26). (2) Light and Guidance: Perhaps the forefront blessings of the Word of God are the moving of the hearts to repentance, whether via reading or hearing it. The few words of Apostle Peter which appeared as a sermon on the day of Pentecost, were a source of stirring the hearts of three thousand souls to believe in Christ (Acts Chapter 2). The words of Apostle Paul - in prison - were the grounds of affecting, even frightening Felix the ruler, though -unfortunately - he lost this chance and sent Paul away (Acts 24:25). Again by reading the book of Isaiah, the Ethiopian eunuch of great authority under Candace the queen of the Ethiopians, and what followed of explanation by St. Philip, was the source of his belief (Acts 8:27-39). In the past, the Lord said on the tongue of Jeremiah the prophet ""Is not My word like a fire?" says the Lord, And like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces?" (Jeremiah 23:29). As intense fire makes iron malleable, the Word of God melts hard hearts and as hammers smash the rock, the Word of God affects hearts which are solidified by sin and crushes them by its power. Since man is a stranger on earth, he needs a guide to lead him and hold his hand. The Word of God is like the pillar of light which used to lead the children of Israel in the Sinai desert. The Word of God also accompanies us until we enter - not the worldly but the heavenly Jerusalem. It is like the star which directed the Magi and kept going before them "till it came and stood over where the young Child was" (Matthew 2:9). Likewise, the Word of God goes before us, leads us, and delivers us to where Jesus is. It never makes a mistake, and never misleads those who follow it. Hence we hear the words of the Psalmist "I am a stranger in the earth; do not hide Your commandments from me" (Psalm 119:19). This shows us that the Word of God is the best guide for man in his sojourn. It warns us when we turn away from the right way "Your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, "This is the way, walk in it", whenever you turn to the right hand or whenever you turn to the left" (Isaiah 30:21). It teaches and instructs us "For whatever things were written before were written for our learning, that we through the patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope" (Romans 15:4). "All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work" (2 Timothy 3:16, 17). No wonder that we hear the men of God speak about the Law as a light and a lamp "Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path" (Psalm 119:105). The wise Solomon said "For the commandment is a lamp, and the law a light" (Proverbs 6:23). St. Peter points to the words of the prophets and says "And so we have the prophetic word confirmed, which you do well to heed as a light that shines in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts" (2 Peter 1:19). For this reason - to express this fact - our Church lights candles during readings of the Gospel. St. Eronimps (Jerome) from the fourth century said "Lighting candles during the readings of the Gospel, a known custom in the Eastern Churches, is not to disperse the darkness but to express joy while hearing the Gospel like the lit lamps of the wise virgins, and to fulfill the words of the Psalmist "Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path" (Psalm 119:105) and the saying of the Wise "For the commandment is a lamp, and the law a light" (Proverbs 6:23). (3) A Weapon and a Helper: The Word of God is a mighty power, nobody comprehends except he who has lived with it and by it and experienced it. The Lord Jesus Who left us an example, that we should follow His steps (1 Peter 2:21) used this weapon in His argument with Satan who came to tempt Him. In each of the three temptations, the Lord Jesus answered the devil by saying "It is written ..." (Matthew 4:4, 7, 10) [Compare respectively with (Deuteronomy 8:3, 6:16, 6,13)]. Blessed is he who keeps the Word of God, as the Word turns into power inside him. Blessed is he who fills his bag with the spiritual arrows which are the Word of God. He is not afraid to meet his enemies, like the young man David who went to meet the mighty Goliath (1 Samuel Chapter 17).
St. Paul described the Word of God as "living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart" (Hebrews 4:12). The Word enters the depth of the heart and uncovers what is in the soul from evil desires and sinful thoughts. Then it works to eliminate the evil from the soul because it is sharper than a two-edged sword. The source of the power of the Word - as expressed by St. Athanasius - is God Himself Who dwells in His Words. When our teacher St. Paul commanded the Church of Ephesus to "Put on the whole armor of God" that they may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil, he mentioned a number of these weapons. He spoke about the breastplate of righteousness, the shield of faith and the helmet of salvation. Though all these weapons are used at the time of war - as passive weapons employed for protection, the Apostle came forward and spoke about an active strong weapon which "is the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God" (Ephesians 6:10-11). The Word of God is like the sword for the fighter by which he slays his enemy. The influence of the Word of God is well realized in our spiritual striving, as it has the power to bring the soul back to the road of righteousness "The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul" (Psalm 19:7). It also has the ability to cleanse us from our deficiencies as the Lord Jesus said "You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you" (John 15:3). It even sanctifies the soul "Sanctify them by Your truth. Your word is truth "(John 17:17). lives "So now, brethren, I commend you to God and to the word of His grace, which is able to build you up and give you an inheritance among all those who are sanctified" (Acts 20:32). It is also able to save our souls, "Receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls" (James 1:21). The Word of God girds the loins of our minds. When the thoughts wonder away from God, and start to slide down to the pit of vice, the Word of God does its work and comes forward to awaken the mind and makes if sober. For this St. Peter says "Therefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober" (1 Peter 1:13). Also our teacher St. Paul says "Stand therefore, having girded your waist with truth" (Ephesians 6:14). Truth is none other than the Word of God, "Your word is truth" (John 17:17). When the leadership of the Israelites was transferred to Joshua son of Nun after the death of Moses, the Lord commenced His work with Joshua by telling him, "This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate in it day and night, that you may observe to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success" (Joshua 1:8). It is clear from these words of the Lord that they are a direct command; His words shall not depart from our mouths. The reason "that you may observe to do", and the result "you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success". The Psalmist tells us about a pleasant experience at the forefront of the Psalms "Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly,... But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in His law he meditates day and night. He shall be like a tree planted by the "rivers of water", that brings forth its fruit in its season, whose leaf also shall not wither; and whatever he does shall prosper" (Psalm 1:1-3). What a pleasant experience of the Psalmist, and what a wonderful resemblance he introduced between the soul which delights in the law of the Lord and a tree planted by the rivers of water. The rivers of water here are the work of the Holy Spirit in the believer (John 7:38,39); the Holy Spirit Who wrote the Book. (4) Measure of Perfection! and Growth: Often a Christian deviates from the proper way, affected by the spirit of the time, tradition and imitation of others. The spiritual values are then distorted in his sight and the measures he uses change according to his moods, imaginations and his subconscious motives. He thinks that his life is not bad as long as he does not commit (big) sins - according to his measure. But when he resorts to the Book of God - the perfect Book, free from all errors - and judges himself by it and reads for example that God demands a perfect life from all of us, then he discovers his flaws and realizes his mistakes. We ought to measure everything in the light of the Word "To the law and to the testimony! If they do not speak according to this word, it is because there is no light in them" (Isaiah 8:20). When Paul and Silas reached the Jews in Berea and spoke to them about believing in the Lord Jesus "they received the word with all readiness, and searched the Scriptures daily to find out whether these things were so" (Acts 17:11). The Holy Bible is like a fine scale, when measured by it, the weight of our sins is known and we repent. It thus leads us to the road of perfection. How beautiful is that which King David said "The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul" (Psalm 19:7). Our teacher St. Paul also said "All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work" (2 Timothy 3:16, 17). The Lord Jesus said to the Jews who came to argue with Him "He who is of God hears God's words; therefore you do not hear, because you are not of God" (John 8:47). These words of the Lord explain to us an important aspect of our spiritual lives. We may measure our growth in grace, according to our love to study the Word of God. As we lose our appetite for the Bread of Life, we are sure that we suffer from a spiritual illness. It may be due to not breathing enough of the refreshing air in the fellowship with God. This is expressed by what St. John Chrysostom said to his people in one of his sermons "When I see your strong desire and your swiftness in coming here in order to hear the holy teachings, and as I watch your desire and longing for the spiritual food which is the Word of God, I sense your growth in virtue. We rule that the body is healthy when we see it eat food with appetite and pleasure. Likewise, your hunger for the Word of God, shows us clearly the readiness of your souls and their good health".
THE BIBLE IN THE LIVES OF THE MEN OF GOD We do not know about a single saintly man of God except the Word of God is the basis of his life. We do not know about a single successful minister except the Word of God is the basis of his ministry and from it he was filled and was satisfied and also from it he gave to the thirsty souls. The Word of God was - and is - the spiritual table, from which all the saints feed, whether they are missionaries, ministers, ascetic people, or ordinary believers. They read it day and night. They keep the Word of God and the Word keeps them. They are enlightened by it and it shows them the way, and makes them a light which shines for many. IN THE OLD TESTAMENT: From the beginning, God gave great importance to the Word. He commanded His servant Moses saying "And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes" (Deuteronomy 6:6-8). Certainly, these words deserve our attention. Let us make from them a measure of our love to the Word of God. When God started to deal with Joshua who led the people after Moses, His first command to Joshua was about keeping the Word "This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate in it day and night, that you may observe to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success" (Joshua 1:8). It is a clear command from God that His Words shall not depart from our mouths and that we strive to do the will of the Lord. As for David the great, prophet and king, it is very difficult to portray how close he was to the Word of God. All his praises are full of melodies about the Word of God and his love to it. In one of them he says "I delight to do Your will, O my God, and Your law is within my heart" (Psalm 40:8). What a big and loving pen which wrote "Your law is within my heart". This deserves deep meditation. From all of David's psalms, let us consider the everlasting praise,the melody of love to the Word of God; psalm 119. Psalm 119 is a unique chapter in the Bible and it is the longest. Nearly each one of its 176 verses contains an expression about the Holy Bible, such as "Your commands", "Your statutes", "Your decrees", "Your rules" and "Your law" etc. This praise shows us that the believer lives by Word of God all his life: It is the secret of his power in the days of his youth "How can a young man cleanse his way? By taking heed according to Your word" (Psalm 119:9). It is the meditation of the believer all the day "Oh, how I love Your law! It is my meditation all the day" (Psalm 119:97). It is his meditation through the night also "My eyes are awake through the night watches, that I maj meditate on Your word" (Psalm 119:148). It is his comfort for ever "You, through Your commandments, make me wiser than irn enemies; for they are ever with me" (Psalm 119:98). The Word of God is most dear for him that he cries with joy "The law of Your mouth is better to me than thousands of coins of gold and silver" (Psalm 119:72). Therefore I love Your commandments more than gold, yes, than fine gold!" (Psalm 119:127). David also explained that the study of the Word gives profound delight by saying "I long for Your salvation, O Lord, and Your law is my delight. (Psalm 119:127). It also gives him a new spirit "I opened my mouth and panted, for I longed for Your commandments" (Psalm 119:131). That was about David the harp of the spirit. Solomon the Wise, his son, says "My son, keep My words, and treasure My commands within you. Keep My commands and live, and My law as the apple of your eye. Bind them on your fingers; write them on the tablet of your heart" (Proverbs 7:1-3). Prophet Jeremiah expressed his desire for the Word of God as if he wanted to eat it "Your words were found, and I ate them, and Your word was to me the joy and rejoicing of my heart; for I am called by Your name, O Lord God of hosts" (Jeremiah 15:16). Again the Prophet Ezekiel tells us that God shows us by amazing words the power of the Word and its delight "Moreover He said to me, "Son of man, eat what you find; eat this scroll, and go, speak to the house of Israel". So I opened my mouth, and He caused me to eat that scroll. And He said to me, "Son of man, feed your belly, and fill your stomach with this scroll that I give you". So I ate it, and it was in my mouth like honey in sweetness. And He said to me: "Son of man, go to the house of Israel and speak with My words to them"" (Ezekiel 3:1-4). IN THE NEW TESTAMENT: In the New Testament our Lord Jesus Christ reveals the place of the Word. In the twelfth year of His Divine Incarnation, He was found sitting in the Temple as a boy Who loves the Word of God, sitting in the midst of the teachers, both listening to them and asking them questions (Luke 2:46). And when He accepted to be tempted by the devil, He defeated the devil by the power of the Word. In every one of the three temptations, Jesus answered the devil by "It is written ...". He explained to us that the Word is the food for the spirit "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God" (Matthew 4:4) [Compare with Deuteronomy 8:3]. The Word is the proof of His love "If you love Me, keep My commandments" (John 14:15), "The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life" (John 6:63). He also tells us that the ignorance of the Word is a source of making mistakes. He said to the arrogant Jews "You are mistaken, not knowing the Scriptures nor the power of God" (Matthew 22:29). More than that Jesus explained to us that the Holy Books are sufficient and able in their work for the salvation of mankind. In the parable of the rich man and Lazarus; when the rich man asked Abraham to send Lazarus to his five brothers that he may testify to them, lest they also come to this place of torment, the answer of Abraham was "They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them". But the rich man again begged Abraham saying "No, father Abraham; but if one goes to them from the dead, they will repent". This time the answer of Abraham was "If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rise from the dead" (Luke 16:27-31). And it happened, as He spoke these things, that a certain woman from the crowd raised her voice and said to Him, "Blessed is the womb that bore You, and the breasts which nursed You!". But He said, "More than that, blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep it!" (Luke 11:27,28). The early Christians were careful in teaching their children the Word of God since their childhood. Our teacher St. Paul pointed to that when he wrote to his disciple Timothy saying "and that from childhood you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus" (2 Timothy 3:15). As for the youth, the Word was the source of their steadfastness and power. St John wrote to them "I have written to you, young men, because you are strong, and the word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the wicked one" (1 John 2:14). The Epistles in the New Testament are full of verses which show the importance of the Word of God - we referred to that when we spoke about the blessing of the Book. Finally we see that God shows the importance of the Word in the book of Revelation as He says "Blessed is he who reads and those who hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written in it" (Revelation 1:3). All these written commands were reflected in the lives of the saints of the Christian Church. We found that they made a big effort in studying the Holy Bible and we see that they learned by heart many parts of it. The book of Psalms is only one of the beloved holy books which they learned and used in their prayers. We sense this fact clearly in their sayings and their writings, that the word of Christ dwelled in them richly (Colossians 3:16).
If I may, I'd like to share what the Orthodox Study Bible has to say about some of these verses...
the Orthodox Study Bible is not of the sources listed below by ilabib.
[quote author=ilabib link=topic=4953.msg68885#msg68885 date=1174439217] My Beloved in Christ, Frist, pay attention to the following. Below are the sources of teachings and references of our church. The Sources of Teachings in the Coptic Orthodox Church of God...
wherefore the commentaries u brought qouting the verses that i posted are not approved by our Copric Church, which me and you are part of.
This is easily the most ridiculous thing you have ever posted in this thread. I just said that the commentary i posted was from the ORTHODOX study bible. So it is in fact approved by all ORTHODOX churches. That being said, surely you do realize that the sources ilabib has listed is most certainly not an exhaustive list. There are far more Church Fathers then the ones he has listed. Please actually use your brain for a change instead of being told what is and isn't accepted by others.
[quote author=Κηφᾶς link=topic=4953.msg68907#msg68907 date=1174497697] This is easily the most ridiculous thing you have ever posted in this thread. I just said that the commentary i posted was from the ORTHODOX study bible. So it is in fact approved by all ORTHODOX churches.
Who told you it is fully accepted by all. The members of the committee that did the book and that are working on the Old Testament translation are mostly Greek and from other Orthodox Churches. But not any of us as Copts. Also you have to but in mind that the Orthodox Churches are separated in two, canonical and noncanonical. We, with the 5 sister churches are the canonical churches and also called the Oriental Orthodox Churches. The unity between the Orthodox Churches is general is more of a dogmatic unity than it is to tradition and to many other characteristics in a church.
Also ya3ny because you couldn't find a source in our church to back up your own understanding, you go to other Orthodox sources which are again not fully approved by our church, to find what you want. WOW, really interesting......
That being said, surely you do realize that the sources ilabib has listed is most certainly not an exhaustive list. There are far more Church Fathers then the ones he has listed.
May be you can list some. Am sure ilabib well love to answer back to you.
Please actually use your brain for a change instead of being told what is and isn't accepted by others.
lol, I think that’s maybe what you’ve been doing for all the previous posts. Using your own brain more than sources, which is fine sometime.....but not all the time. Also I am sorry, but I would never be smart enough (if you would call it) to understand the mysteries of our church without the help of other who lived their lifes trying to reach maybe %.000001 of those mysteries...including the Holy Bible.
1 fast comment: Why are you answering my little, small, and maybe worthless sentence about the Orthodox Study Bible, and not answering the 3 previous post which are about 15 pages long. waiting for an answer...................... :)
Comments
10 I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s Day, and I heard behind me a loud voice, as of a trumpet, 11 saying, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last,” and, “What you see, write in a book and send it to the seven churches which are in Asia: to Ephesus, to Smyrna, to Pergamos, to Thyatira, to Sardis, to Philadelphia, and to Laodicea.”
- was this a suggestion or a command? and in another verse of Revelation God tells St John via the Angel NOT to write a part of what he had been allowed to see.
If you think that the Bible is not the Words of God but that of men then tell me how can you make a clear distinction between what is written in it, and the gathered wealth of great sermons made under the guidance of the Holy Spirit through the ages that we hear or read till today and will to the end of time.
Whether you have digested the logic or not dear, the Scriptures (and I mean all of the Holy Bible) IS undeniably the Sacred Words of God. When we understand this truth, His Words being spoken or written are the same, and we hereby waste our time in an obsolete debate.
Now for the how?.......
Scripture Book writers are those humans who fully agreed and complied with their own free will to the Lord's Will, followed His Choice and accepted His Righteous Ways, albeit some had to undergo some sort of encouragement. They are all the Lord's Ambassadors, we often see they pray the Lord for help, they cannot do it all by themself, they cannot reach the depth contained within the Words all alone. You see how it is? And does an honest ambassador alter the message that he must carry to others?
An outstanding example: the Book of Genesis (i.e. the first Scripture) was written by Moses, do you think he could do that project from A to Z by himself, without God? obviously in this case the Holy Spirit does not just guide, He is the Energy and the Power enabling a man to do all actions for God's Glory.
I strongly suggest you carefully read the Book of Jonah.
[quote author=John_S2000 link=topic=4953.msg68754#msg68754 date=1174134820]
Revelation 1:
10 I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s Day, and I heard behind me a loud voice, as of a trumpet, 11 saying, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last,” and, “What you see, write in a book and send it to the seven churches which are in Asia: to Ephesus, to Smyrna, to Pergamos, to Thyatira, to Sardis, to Philadelphia, and to Laodicea.”
- was this a suggestion or a command? and in another verse of Revelation God tells St John via the Angel NOT to write a part of what he had been allowed to see.
Revelation would have to be the most unique of all the books in the Bible. It is entirely symbolic, and took the longest of any of the others to be accepted into the Canon. That being said, to answer your question, John was commanded to write down the things he saw in the book of Revelation. Note the wording. God did not say, "The things I say, write in a book and send...". John's point of view was incorporated into what he saw. Likewise, the way he described certain things, he did so with words that he had available to him at the time. Thus, seeing as how he was able to take a glimpse into the future (as is one interpretation of Revelation), he was unable to describe things the way we would have been able to today (i.e. if he saw a television, he couldn't use that word because it did not exist at the time of his writing the book). To put it simply: Ecumenical Councils. It was at these councils (I believe) where the Canon was selected, and certain books were called 'inspired' or not (regarding the NT). As for the OT, that had been established by the Jews, and I have no clue how they were selected. Allow me to rephrase what you've just said to match my point of view: Whether you have digested the logic (I have presented) or not dear, the Scriptures (and I mean all of the Holy Bible) undeniably contains the sacred words of God. When we understand this truth, His Words being spoken or written are the same etc, etc. It is 'altered' in the sense that it may not be word for word the same message that was given to him (orally, I'm assuming) when he left his country, but the gist of the message is there. The stories in the book of Genesis were almost certainly preserved orally among the Hebrews, so Moses was definitely very familiar with them. On top of that, if I recall correctly, much of Genesis is written in verse (i.e. poetry) because it was much easier to remember poetry than prose. The preservation of the oral tradition would have been done by the Holy Spirit (almost certainly) so that when Moses wrote it down, he would have an accurate history to document (along with the aid of the Holy Spirit as well). Why?
"All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work" (2 Tim 3:16-17).
"Blessed is he who reads and those who hear the words of this prophecy (Old & New Testament), and keep those things which are written in it; for the time is near" (Rev 1:3).
"For I testify to everyone who hears the words of the prophecy (the Entire Bible) of this book: If anyone adds to these things, God will add to him the plagues that are written in this book; and if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part from the Book of Life, from the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book" (Rev. 22:18-19).
"It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life" (St. John 6:63).
"For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart" (Heb 4:12).
"He who rejects Me, and does not receive My words, has that which judges him—the word that I have spoken will judge him in the last day" (St. John 12:48).
*(These are not my words but Someone who knows better.....)
If I may, I'd like to share what the Orthodox Study Bible has to say about some of these verses.
[quote author=minagir link=topic=4953.msg68808#msg68808 date=1174252550]
"All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work" (2 Tim 3:16-17).
3:14-17 Having exhorted Timothy with the example of his own steadfastness (vv. 10-13), Paul now issues a reminder of the depth of Timothy's training, which combined both oral and written instruction (see Matt. 28:16-20; 1 Cor. 11:2; 2 Thess. 2:15; 3:6). A part of this tradition is Scripture. Paul, of course, speaks of the OT since the NT did not yet exist.
You are mistaken here. When John writes about 'this prophecy' he is referring only to what is written in Revelation. From the Orthodox Study Bible:
1:3 A blessing is promised to those who read and here this prophecy (see Luke 11:28). This is the first of the seven beatitudes of the Revelation; the others are found in 14:16; 16:15; 19:9; 20:6 22:7, 14. Blessed here are both the reader and the hearers (the assembled faithful), provided that they heed what is read-for faith and works are inseperable. Time (Gr. kairos) here means an eschatological "decisive moment," a time of judgment, the time when all is fulfilled.
Once again, you are mistaken. If you finish the sentence, it says 'the prophecy of this book,' again referring only to Revelation. From the Orthodox Study Bible:
22:18, 19 This severe warning refers to the Book of Revelation, not to the Bible as a whole, and admonishes those in the communities addressed not to distort its message. To do so is to threaten one's very salvation (see Deut. 4:2; 12:32; Gal. 1:8, 9).
This is a reference to the teachings of Christ to the Apostles, which He taught orally ('The words that I speak to you are spirit...').
From the Orthodox Study Bible:
4:12, 13 The word of God and the sword here are living and powerful. The phrase His sight (v. 13) tells us this reference is not to the written word, Holy Scripture, but to the Word of God Himself, our Lord Jesus Christ (see John 1:1-18). Nothing is able to escape the discernment of Christ, the Word of God.
Once again, Christ is talking about the teachings He has given the Apostles, which they have passed unto us.
Please pray for me.
It does not make any difference whether Revelation is entirely symbolic or not: Bible books are not history books (although used by historians as reference), the Lord is giving His message to His beloved disciple St John, to be written then to be known by all the faithful.
Reading Jonah gives a lot of insight on God-prophet/messenger relationship.
The freedom God has given us should not by any means distract us from recognizing His Supremacy.
GBU
[quote author=John_S2000 link=topic=4953.msg68857#msg68857 date=1174381799]
To make it clearer (I hope) there exists this beautiful partnership between the Holy Spirit and His messengers, this is God's Will and His Wisdom.
You have worded it beautifully, and I couldn't agree more. At no point have I ever argued that this is not the case. Only in so far as we allow God to control our lives. God has given us free will and that is something none of us should ever forget. That being said, God does not control if we do not allow Him to. Do you see how much love and respect God has given us, that we can control our own lives if we so choose, without any interference from Him. If we choose to submit to His will, then and only then will He take control. Actually, I do feel it does make a difference whether Revelation is entirely symbolic or not, but that is another issue. Now the statement that Bible books are not history books is false. There are recognized divisions within the Bible in classifying the books and here is an example of it:
q Law
o Genesis – Deuteronomy
o Five (5) books
q History (Old Testament)
o Joshua – Esther
o Twelve (12) books
q Poetry
o Job – Song of Solomon
o Five (5) books
q Prophecy (Old Testament)
o Isaiah – Malachi
o Seventeen (17) books
o Sometimes divided into Major Prophets (5 books) and Minor Prophets (12 books)
q History (New Testament)
o Matthew – Acts
o Five (5) books
o Sometimes divided into Gospels and Acts
q Epistles
o Romans – Jude
o Twenty-one (21) books
o Sometimes divided into Gentile Epistles (13 books) and Jewish Epistles (8 books)
q Prophecy (New Testament)
o Book of Revelation
o One (1) book
This was all taken from this site here. I agree again. God is supreme, but He is not a dictator. He is our Heavenly Father, and thus allows us to make our own choices and does not control our every actions.
Please pray for me.
Frist, pay attention to the following. Below are the sources of teachings and references of our church.
The Sources of Teachings in the Coptic Orthodox Church of God:
a. The Holy Bible:
1) The Old Testament: Contains 46 books
2) The New Testament: Contains 27 books
b. The Teachings of the Apostles:
1. Cannons of the Apostles: contains 157 canon
2. The Didaskalia and the Didache: Also known as the Books of the Teachings of the Apostles.
c. The Liturgical Books:
1. The Katamarous:
a. Which contains the daily readings used during the liturgies.
b. Daily Katamarous.
c. Sunday Katamarous.
d. The Holy Lent Katamarous.
e. The Holy Week Katamarous.
f. The Holy Fifty Days Katamarous.
2. The Synaxarium:
a. Which contains the historical account of the lives of saints
3. The Agpya:
a. Also known as the Book of Hours.
4. The Book of Holy Psalmody:
a. Which contains the midnight praises.
5. The Book of the Holy Liturgy:
a. Which contains the Three Liturgies used by the Coptic Orthodox Church of Christ.
b. St. Basil the Great.
c. St. Cyril the Pillar of faith.
d. St. Gregory the Theologian.
6. The Book of the Sacraments of Holy Baptism and Holy Myron.
7. The Book of the ceremony of Engagement and the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony.
8. The Book of Ordinations and the Sacrament of Holy Priesthood.
9. The Book of the Holy Lakani, and the Prayer of Prostration.
10. The Book of the Hymns and Praises to the Mother of God and the saints.
d. The Teachings and Writings of the Fathers of the Church:
1. The Apostolic Fathers:
A) St. Clement of Rome.
B) St. Ignatius.
C) St. Polycarp.
D) The Letter of Barnabas and The Book of Hermas
2. The Fathers of the Ecumenical Councils:
I) Eastern Fathers: (wrote in Greek)
1) St. Athanasius the Great (20th Pope of Alexandria)
2) St. Basil the Great (Arch bishop of Caesarea)
3) St. Gregory the Theologian (Bishop of Sazema)
4) St. John Chrysostom (Patriarch of Constantinople)
5) St, Cyril the Great (24th Pope of Alexandria)
6) St. Dioscorus (25th Pope of Alexandria)
7) St. Severus the Antioch (Patriarch of Antioch)
II) Western Fathers: (wrote in Latin)
1) St. Cyprian (Bishop of Carthage, Northern Africa)
2) St. Ambrose (Bishop of Milan, Italy)
3) St. Jerome (Palestian ascetic)
So, if we need to use refercnes or any teahings it must be out of these only. Not any other source.
[coptic]+ Iryny nem `hmot>[/coptic]
If I may, I'd like to share what the Orthodox Study Bible has to say about some of these verses...
the Orthodox Study Bible is not of the sources listed below by ilabib.
[quote author=ilabib link=topic=4953.msg68885#msg68885 date=1174439217]
My Beloved in Christ,
Frist, pay attention to the following. Below are the sources of teachings and references of our church.
The Sources of Teachings in the Coptic Orthodox Church of God...
wherefore the commentaries u brought qouting the verses that i posted are not approved by our Copric Church, which me and you are part of.
In response to "There are discrepancies that can be found in the Bible and whenever topics such as geology, astronomy, anatomy"
Below are Passages from the Book Creation Versus Evolution by Fr. Markos Hanna, second Edition. Please, remember you little brother in your prayers. Forgive me, I will have to send it in few messages since it exceeds the max. allowed length.
Creation versus Evolution
The creation-evolution question is certainly the most important area of apparent conflict between the Bible and science.
It is a great mistake for Christians to compromise on this issue, or may-be even worse, to ignore it.
Although almost all nations were founded on creationist principles and all the early schools taught creation, evolution has now become the dominant philosophy and for several generations has been taught as fact in practically all schools.
Evolutionary assumptions also dominate the news media and all other public institutions.
Evolution is only a THEORY! And the definition of theory is; "an explanation based on thought".
Evolution then is not really a science at all. It is a philosophy or an attitude of mind.
Chance constitutes the very essence of evolution.
Charles Darwin, in his "Descent of Man", used the phrase, "We may well suppose", 800 times! Eight hundred times in two volumes. Can you imagine that 4- Evolution is nothing but a guess.
Evolutionists admit that no one has ever seen any real evolution (from one kind of creature to a more complex kind of creature) take place. Many animals have become extinct within the few thousand years of written records that we have, but no new kinds of animals have evolved during that period. No man was present to observe and record them, so such ideas are entirely outside the scope of real science.
The sun and moon, according to Genesis, were not made until the fourth day, halfway through the creation period.
Not only is that contrary to evolutionary geology, but such an order would be completely lethal to the vegetation created on the third day, if the days were longer than twenty-four hours. There are many other contradictions between the order of creation in Genesis and the order of evolution in historical geology.
The Bible teaches that the work of creation was all accomplished and completed in six days of the creation week, as outlined in Genesis 1, whereas evolutionists contend that the process of evolution has been going on for billions of years and is still going on now in the present. The Bible could hardly be more definite on this point: "Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them ... And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it He rested from all His work which He had done" (Genesis 2:1,3).
In the New Testament, whenever God's work of creating the universe and all its creatures is mentioned, it is always in the past tense, example, Colossians 1:16, "For by Him were all things created". Also Hebrews 4:3, "God's works were finished from the foundation of the world"". This is of course in accord with the basic laws of science.
By the "Conservation Principle", nothing is now being created, just as The Book of Genesis says.
By the "Entropy Principle", there must have been a creation in the past, just as The Book of Genesis says.
I pray that this book may be a blessing to many for their edification and salvation of their souls, through the prayers of the holy Mother of God, Theotokos St. Mary The Ever-Virgin, and St. Mark the Evangelist, Apostle and Martyr, and His Holiness Pope Shenouda III, the father of fathers and the shepherd of shepherds. Amen.
THE 'DAY-AGE THEORY:
This theory attempts to equate the geological ages with creation week of Genesis.
Although the Hebrew word for "day" - YOM,can occasionally mean a time of indefinite length if the context requires, such usage is rare, and the word almost always does mean a literal day, i.e. either a twenty-four-hour period or the daylight portion of that period. In Genesis there is no room for indefinite meaning. The use of a numeral with day "first day", and so on, or the use of boundary terms, "evening and morning", are usages that elsewhere in the Pentateuch invariably require the literal meaning of "day".
The proof that the "days" of Genesis are to be understood as literal days is found in The Ten Commandments. The fourth Commandment says; "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work: but the seventh day is Sabbath of the Lord Your God: in it you shall not do any work .. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them, and rested the seventh day" (Exodus 20:8-11).
It is clear from the strong wording that God used in this commandment-written with His own finger on a table of stone, according to Exodus 31:18-that the "days" of God's week are exactly equivalent to the days of man's week.
Furthermore, the word twice translated "days" in this passage (Hebrew; YAMIM) occurs more than seven hundred times elsewhere in the Old Testament and always means literal days. It is well to note also that there is at least one good word-Hebrew; OLAM- that means "age" or "long indefinite time", and this word should have been used in Genesis 1 and Exodus 20 if that were the writer's intended meaning. The fact that He used the words "day" and "days" without any hint in the context of a non literal meaning, makes it evident that He intended the literal meaning.
The creation days were then literal days, then of course, evolution would be completely out of the question.
Another proof that the day meant 24 hour, is the verse "and it was evening and it morning, one day"(genesis 1:5,8,13,19,2,3).This verse is repeated in the first six days of the Creation, but it is not written in the seventh. Each day of the first six had a beginning and an end
Could the day of the Creation be as many millions of years£ In other words, a period of time?
If supposed that the above statement could be true, can the flora and fauna; that do not live more than some hundreds of years, live in a dark night and painful cold all its Iife.
How would plants live without the sun and the photosynthesis?
How would animals live without oxygen (plants make no photosynthesis because of darkness) ?
On the other side, how would animals and plants live their whole life in a hot sun?
What does science say and how does it explain the day 4?
Science says that the day is the period of the rotation of the earth in front of the sun, that is 24 hours. This had not changed since the beginning.
EXAMPLES for 'day' that means 24 hours:
1. The one hundred and fifty days of the Great Flood (Genesis 8:3).
2. The forty days that the spies spent in Canaan (Numbers 13:25).
3. The three days that Jonah spent in the belly of the fish (Jonah 1:17).
4. The forty days during which the Lord Jesus Christ appeared to His disciples after His glorious Resurrection (Acts 1:3).
REPRODUCE AFTER ITS KIND:
There is still another important Biblical emphasis that completely precludes any real evolution. The phrase, "after its kind(s)", is used no less than ten times in the first chapter of Genesis. Every created "kind" ; Hebrew-MIN- was to reproduce after its own kind and not to generate some new kind. This does not preclude "horizontal" variation within limits (e.g., the different varieties of dogs or cats or people), but it does prohibit "vertical" variation from one kind to some higher kind (e.g., monkeys to men). This truth also stressed again in the New Testament (e.g., I Corinthians 15:38,39 "But God gives it a body as He pleases, and to each seed its own body. AH flesh is not the same flesh, but there is one kind of flesh of men, another flesh of animals, another offish, and another for birds"}.
THEISM versus EVOLUTION:
Regardless of what the Bible says, those who seek to honor God should realize that evolution is naturalistic and materialistic by its very nature. It is merely an attempt to explain the origin of things without God.
Naturalism and chance constitute the very essence of evolution.
Evolution is also in conflict, with the teachings of Christ:
1- He should not have healed the lame and sick if progress is measured by the 'survival of the fittest'.
2- He taught self-sacrifice, but evolution is necessarily based on self-preservation in the struggle for existence.
Evolution is also the most inefficient and cruel method for creating man that could be conceived.
If God is a God of love and wisdom and power (as the Bible teaches), then how could He ever be guilty of devising such a scheme as evolution? What possible reason could there have been for such flesh-eating monsters as Tyrannosaurus Rex, for example, to rule the earth for 100 million years before man evolved?
If the geological ages really took place and if man was not merely the end but in fact the goal of the evolutionary process as 'theistic evolutionists7 believe, then multiplied billions of animal have suffered and died for no apparent reason.
The account of creation in Genesis ends with the conclusion that everything that God had made was in HIS judgment, '"very; good' (Genesis 1:31).
Surely God could not possibly have viewed the fossilized remains of billions upon billions of His creation period. The Bible says that death only entered the world as a result of man's sin (Romans 5:12; I Corinthians 15:21) and will be removed once sin is removed (Revelation 21:4,27), but evolution requires suffering and death as an integral part of the very process that brought man into the world. Thus theistic evolution is a contradiction in terms. If one wishes to believe in evolution, he is free to make that choice, but he certainly should not associate a wise, powerful, loving God with such a monstrous system.
Looking at the Holy Bible with an accurate scientific look, we would notice many characteristics that are found only in the Holy Bible and not in any other book:
1) The 1st Characteristic: The Holy Bible was not affected by the scientific mistakes contemporary to its writing throughout history.
2) The 2nd Characteristic: It is a firm, scientific rock on which every scientific theory that contradicted It, soon fell to pieces.
3) The 3rd Characteristic: There is a great accordance between the proved scientific facts and the Holy Bible-only when it is studied accurately.
4) The 4th Characteristic: The Holy Bible contains scientific facts that science discovered recently. This will be extensively explained later in this study.
EVOLUTION IN THE PHILOSOPHIES & SYSTEMS OF THE WORLD:
Any form of atheism (there is no God) or pantheism (God and the universe are the same) or occultism (beyond the bounds of ordinary knowledge, mysterious, magical) must necessarily be based on evolution. Determinism, Existentialism, Behaviorism, Freudianism and other such amoral psychological systems are deeply rooted in evolutionary theory. These are facts and can easily be documented from the writings of the founders and leaders of each of the above systems.
Evolution, in fact, is not only the basic premise of all atheistic and humanistic religious but also of the various pantheistic religions, i.e. Taoism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Hinduism, and other such faiths, are essentially based on some form of evolution, accepting the space-time cosmos as the only ultimate and eternal reality and denying any real transcendent Creator of the cosmos.
Not only is evolutionary philosophy basic in most anti-Christian social, economic, and religious philosophies, but it is also the pseudo-scientific rationale of the host of anti-social immoral practices that are devastating the world today; i.e. abortion, the drug culture, homosexual activism, animalistic amorality, etc. By the very fact of goodness and beauty in the world, it would seem that such a harmful and godless theory of origins an evolutionism could not possibly be true.
Evolution also contradicts true science. All real facts of science support special creation, not evolution!
THE ORIGIN OF LIFE:
It is impossible to account for the origin of life in the first place. The popular notion of spontaneous generation was demolished by Louis Pasteur and others back in the 19th century, yet evolutionists still cling to the idea of 'abiogenesis', the imaginary gradual development of complex molecules from basic elements until they finally become replicating molecules, which are then assumed to be living.
No replicating molecule has ever yet been synthesized from no living chemicals in the laboratory, despite multitudes of costly experiments attempting to do so. Yet evolutionists imagine that what cannot be accomplished by trained scientists with costly equipment in artificially-controlled environments somehow occurred by a blind chance a billion years ago. Some unknown type of atmosphere somehow generated unknown primitive life forms from unknown chemicals, and that's how life began!
However, life even at the simplest imaginary level is so complex that the chance for this to happen by accident is infinitesimally small. The famous mathematical astrophysicist, Sir Fred Hoyle, recently argued that the probability this could happened once in the entire history of the universe is roughly equivalent to the probability that a tornado sweeping through a junk-yard would assemble a Boeing 747!
Living organisms are known to be structured around a remarkable system called the DNA molecule (deoxyribonucleic acid), in which is encoded all the growth of the information necessary to direct the growth of the complete organism from the germ cell. Although the variation potential in the DNA molecule is extremely large, allowing a wide range of variation in any given type of plant or animal, it also serves to insure that such genetic systems of the parents.
The tremendous amount of ordered information in even the simplest living organism is so great that it is almost impossible to imagine that scientists could ever synthesize it from elemental chemicals, no matter how long they took, and even more inconceivable that it could ever happen by chance.
Even if a genetic code centered in the DNA molecule could even arise by chance, it certainly could never happen more than once. Yet it has recently been found that there are several different genetic codes present in certain organisms, and all evidence indicates that each must have had a separate origin.
The intensive search for even the slightest traces of life on other planets or in interplanetary space reflects the wistful hope that evolutionary theory will be vindicated by evidence that life has also developed somewhere else in the universe.
As yet, despite the space probes, giant telescopes, and even the UFO furor, the idea of E.T. - extra terrestrial- life remains science fiction and nothing more. There is not the slightest evidence of biological life as we understand it anywhere else in the universe.
The fact that almost all living flesh is composed of the same basic type of molecule (DNA), made up in turn of the same basic elements (carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, and so on) found in the earth is of course a definite confirmation of Scripture.
The Bible states plainly that both plants (Genesis 1:11,12) and animals (Genesis 1:20,24} were 'brought forth7 from the earth and its waters, and that even man's body was formed of 'the dust of the ground' (Genesis 2:7).
However, the fact that there was a life principle that was not inherit in these basic substances is also stressed in the case of both animals ('living creatures' Genesis 1:24} and man ('living soul' Gen. 2:7}, and there is not the slightest evidence that future scientists will ever be able to synthesize anything corresponding to a 'living soul', nor that natural processes ever accomplished any such thing in the past.
Please, do not claim that the Holy Bible, the Life-Giving Word of God contains discripancies.
ORIGIN OF SPECIES:
More than one hundred years ago, Charles Darwin achieved lasting fame by publishing "The Origin of the Species". Yet it is now recognized that, in that book, he never gave one specific example of the origin of any new species of plant or animal. He discussed numerous examples of "variation" within species indulged in many speculations as to how different organisms might have evolved in the past, along with various notions as to possible relationships deduced from similarities, but he never gave any real proof of genuine vertical evolution.
It is significant that, even at this late date, well over a century after Darwin, and despite the lifelong efforts of thousands of scientists and untold millions of dollars spent on elaborate studies and experiments, evolutionists still have never experimentally observed the evolution of a single new species, nor do they have any certain knowledge of the mechanism by which evolution works.
There have been thousands of examples of plants and animals that have become extinct during human history. If 'the present is the key to the past7, as naturalistic scientists like to imagine, then the universal law of biological science would seem to be deterioration and extinction rather than evolution.
There are a number of serious difficulties with this geological time scale and the evolutionary interpretation of its fossil record. There are several important facts in the fossil record that argue convincingly against evolution.
In the first place, out of the billions of fossils that have been shown to exist in the mile-deep graveyard extending around the earth, there are no fossils of true evolutionary transitional forms!
Every one of the great phyla, orders, classes, and families, as well as most genera and species, appear quite suddenly in the fossil record, with no preliminary or intermediate forms leading up to them.
There are no transitional sequences from one species to another species, let alone transitions between genera, families, and higher categories in the classification scheme. It seems necessary to conclude, therefore, that the real reason transitional fossils have never been found is because transitional animals never existed!
A second problem in reference to the fossil record, is that a great many modern kinds of animals are evidently degenerate, rather than higher, forms of those that are found as fossils. These would include practically all mammals; elephants, tigers, wolves, rhino, hippos, bears, beavers, and others. It is also true of multitudes of plants of all kinds, as well as insects (giant ants, giant cockroaches, giant dragonflies, and so on), birds, fish, amphibians, and reptiles.
TRANSITIONAL FOSSILS : DOES IT EXISTS
No gradual transitions are evident between the different forms with transitional structural features but only sudden jumps at best.
Many of the supposed "hominid" fossils, e.g. Australopithecus, Ramapithecus, are extinct apes, where others, e.g. Neanderthal, clearly represent extinct tribes of men. Such extinct tribes, or "races", as some call them, are best explained as descendants of families that emigrated from Babel (Confusion, Septuagint Translation) after the "confusion of tongues" (Genesis 11:6-9). As a result of isolation, inbreeding, and perhaps mutation, they gradually deteriorated in strength and intelligence and eventually became extinct.
Did "dinosaurs" and great monstrous animals ever exist?
The answer is very simple. God granted them the blessing of being fruitful, of multiplying and of filling the earth, why had they become extinct, then*?- Their existence was for man's good, but may he live with them1?- Of course, it is impossible, but their rapid extinction was of benefit to man-they decompose to oil...
The perishing of these great monsters that were very huge and spreading, were stored in the earth's layers as oil, great amount of oil. This is the oil on which man depends daily as a main source of power all over the world nowadays.
The dinosaurs perished and were buried under the great sediments, then they decomposed to oil. Oil moved in the layers of sediments in the earth till it reached some impenetrable layers. We call those places, "oil-pots" in which oil gathers till it is extracted. ."
EVOLUTION versus ENTROPY (law of degeneration)
There is no real evidence at all for progressive evolution but much evidence for disintegration and extinction or, at best, biologic stability.
It is possible to equate deterioration with development. Evolution and entropy are both supposed to represent universal laws of changes, but each is the opposite of the other, so they cannot both be true. Entropy represents a law of science, to the extent there is such a thing, whereas evolution represents the wishful thinking of those trying to explain the existence of life apart from God and has no scientific basis at all.
More and more it appears that there is a degenerative principle pervading all nature. Some have called this the 'law of morpholysis' (which means 'breaking-down of structure'), but the Bible explains it as the great curse placed on the ground because of Adam's sin (Genesis 3:17-20). According to this principle, 'the whole creation groans and travails in pain together until now' under 'the bondage of corruption (or decay)'(Romans 8:21,22).
There is a universal tendency from the highly organized to the disorganized. Never is there an inherent, natural, undirected, complexity. The natural tendency is always degenerative. Prior to the curse, entropy, like energy, was 'conserved' with decay processes balanced by growth processes. Now, however, decay prevails. No one has ever seen anything evolve, no one knows how-evolution works, the fossil record shows no evolutionary transitions taking place, and the basic laws of science show it to be impossible. Yet evolutionists insist that this is 'science' and should be taught as proved fact to school-children!
How is the Age of a Rock Determined?
There is no correlation of rock characteristics as such with the 'age' of rocks. Any rock type (sandstone, shale, and so on) can be found in any age. Minerals of all types, metals of all types, coal and oil, structures of all type, and all degrees of looseness or consolidation can be found in any geological age.
The remarkable fact is that the geological age of a rock is determined primarily by the fossils it contains, on the basis of the fossil sequences that had been assigned different ages by Cuvier, Eyell, and their followers well over a century ago.
The circle of reasoning involved is subtle but once assumed generates a powerful argument for evolution (i.e., the assumed ladder of progress from simple to complex) is assumed in building up the geological series, rocks containing simpler fossils are older and rocks containing more complex and specialized forms are called younger. Then, the paleontological sequences so constructed are taken as proof of evolution. The main evidence for evolution-foss// record-is based on assumption of evolution implicit in the dating of the rocks by the fossils in the record.
The creationist, of course, argues that since all the evidence points to catastrophism; with every feature formed rapidly, there is no evidence for the millions of years arbitrarily inserted between the catastrophes. Science, meaning literally Knowledge, should be based on what we see, not what we don't see. What we see in the geologic and palenontologic records of the past is no transitional forms and no evidence of great time spans in between the catastrophic events that formed all the geologic features of the earth. The reasonable conclusion is that no such transitional forms or long time spans ever existed.
HUMAN POPULATION:
The present human population of the world supports the Book of Genesis record. The world population in the year 1800 has been estimated at about 850,000,000 whereas in the year 1650 it was only about 400,000,000. In the year 1986 it was somewhat over, 4,000,000,000. The population thus seems to be doubling itself about every one hundred years, and there is no objective reason to assume this rate was significantly lower in the past. The present rate seems to be more rapid than this, in fact.
Now if the original population was two (say Noah and his wife), one can easily calculate that the population would only have to double itself 31 times to produce the present world population. Assuming the Usher chronology to be correct, Noah and his wife had their family about 4,500 years ago. This gives an averaging doubling interval of 145 years, which is quite reasonable and conservative.
However, if the original pair lived, say, 500,000 years ago, which is much les than the usual anthropological estimate, the average doubling time is over 16,000 years, which is absurd, The world's present population, as well as their dispersal from Ararat (and later Babel), can easily be explained in terms of the Biblical framework. The same applies to animal populations and their geographical distribution. During the Ice Age following the Flood, extensive land bridges existed across the Bering Straits and down the Malaysian archipelago into New Guinea and possibly to Australia. People and animals could have migrated on foot to practically all parts of the world. Men also knew hoe to construct ships, as is evidenced by the Ark itself, and there is increasing evidence of ancient navigation to all regions of the globe, even to Antarctica.
Some people have ridiculed the story of Noah's Ark, alleging it would have been impossible for him to keep two of every kind of animal on the Ark for a year, but this objection is easily answered.
THE ARK'S DIMENSIONS:
The Ark's dimensions are given by God to Noah (Genesis 6:15-17) as 300 cubits by 50 cubits by 30 cubits. Assuming each cubit to be 18 inches (the most likely value, according to archaeologists), each of the Ark's three decks (averaging 15 feet in height) would have contained about 34,000 square feet of floor space, and the total carrying capacity of the Ark was about 1,500,000 cubic feet the equivalent of 569 standard railroad stock cars.
The smaller animals were, no doubt, placed in tiers cages on top of each other, with the few large animals, (e.g., elephants, rhino, camels, etc.) in separate stalls. There aie-according to leading taxonomist Ernst Mayr - less than 200,000 species of land animals (mammals, reptiles, birds, amphibians) living today, with a much smaller number of extinct species known from the fossils. At the most, therefore, the Ark would only have to carry, say, 80,000 animals. If the average animal was the size of a sheep (most animals are much smaller than this), and knowing that a railroad stock car can carry 240 sheep, it is clear that the Ark could have held as many as 140,000 animals. The Biblical 'kind' is very likely much broader than the species in most cases, so there would have been no problem at all, in accommodating all the world's land animals in the Ark.
They were, no doubt, all young animals (they had to a live a year in the ark, then repopulate the earth) and therefore relatively small and docile. Furthermore, it is likely that many or most of the animals spent most of the Flood year in a state of relative dormancy, thus requiring a minimum of care. It is also noteworthy that Noah did not have to go out and bring them to the ark. The record says that God caused them to migrate to the ark as the time for the Flood drew near (Genesis 6,7 &8); "And all the wild beats after their kind, and all the cattle after their kind, and every reptile moving itself on earth after its kind, and every flying bird after its kind, went in to Noah into the Ark, pairs; male and female..." (Gen.J:6).
EVIDENCE FOR CREATION:
Is there any scientific evidence for creation? The truth is that the scientific evidence supports creation.
FIRST beginning! This is usually referred to in scientific terms as "The Big Bang Theory". Of course, this implies that someone or something brought the universe into existence.
SECOND: the universe bears all the marks of having been "finely tuned" to make life possible. For example, the elementary forces of gravity, electromagnetism, and the atom are precisely what they need to be. The earth's size, distance from the sun, rotational period, composition, and many other factors are all just right. The chances of there being even one planet where all these factors converge by accident are very slim indeed.
THIRD: the evidence is mounting that life on earth simply could not and did not come into existence through natural processes in a primordial "soup". For example, the experiments to prove that it could have happened are suspect because little progress has been made possible due to the ingenious on the part of experiments.
FOURTH: the genetic code of all biological life on earth contains evidence of intelligent design. This is because the genetic code contains information in complex computer programs as well as information in books.
FIFTH: the fossil record continues to be an embarrassment to the Darwinian Theory of evolution. The many transitional forms which Darwin predicted would be found simply have not surfaced. This fact has forced evolutionists to modify Darwin's Theory, often in absurd ways. In short, it is the theory of naturalistic evolution which is in serious trouble scientifically today, while the Biblical teaching of creation never looked better.
IS CHRISTIANITY UNDER ATTACK?
The reason that people do not want to accept creation is that it means there is a Creator who sets the rules. Thus, no person can write his own rules!
The growing acceptance of atheistic evolution has resulted in many rejecting God as Creator. Over the years, many have used evolution to justify abortion, Communism, Nazism, drug-abuse, homosexual practices, and worse. Increase in the popularity of evolution has gone hand-in-hand with the increase in popularity of these social issues. While evolution is not to blame for the social ills of society, it has become the justification for lending respectability to such social attitudes. The ultimate cause of these problems is the rejection of God as Creator.
Creation evangelism may be a new term to many, but it is Biblical method. St. Paul used it with great success. Creation evangelism is a tool the Church needs to use to restore the right foundations in order to present the whole Gospel message. Evolution is one of the biggest barriers to today's people being receptive to the Gospel of our Lord God and Savior; Jesus Christ. Creation evangelism is a powerful method that removes these barriers and opens people's hearts and minds to the Gospel.
The media and the public education system tell us that 'creation' cannot be taught in schools because it is religion, while 'evolution' is science. This is a lie, because science is 'knowledge' while evolution theory is nothing but a philosophy or attitude of mind, based on chance, which is in conflict with the teachings of our Lord Jesus Christ.
The Bible Account of Creation is the Most Important, Most Sensible, and Most Believable Explanation.
There are three verses from one chapter of the first book in the Old Testament, Genesis, that mean more to man than all the books men ever wrote, and we have all the rest of the Bible besides.
The First Verse: "In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth" (Genesis 1:1).
This gives us the origin of life. We begin with a First Great Cause, all-wise, all-powerful, and all-loving God.
The Second Verse: “Then God said; ‘Let the earth bring forth the living creature according to its kind” (Genesis 1:24).
The most fundamental scientific fact, the law that governs the continuity of life. If life is to continue on this earth, it must be reproduced, and reproduction must be acceding to law, God's universal law of reproduction ‘according to kind'.
No living thing; animal and/or vegetable has ever violated that law. Even man, with all his power, has never been able to persuade or compel that intangible, invisible thing we call life, to violate the law laid down in the 24th verse, of chapter one in the Book of Genesis, establishing reproduction according 'to kind'. They have not found one single species that can be proven to have come from another, yet the only thing that has seriously menaced religion in 1900 years is the effort to substitute man's guess for God's Law, when there is nothing to support man's guess and every thing to support God's law.
So, the second verse gives us the governing life’s continuity.
The Third Verse: "Then God said; Let Us make man in Our Image, according to Our Likeness." (Genesis 1:26).
After God made all things, He made man; not as He had made all other things; but in His own Image.
God puts man, here, as a part of the divine plan, and for a purpose, that is the only place you will find it
This gives us the explanation of man's presence.
In spite of the increase in the number of books and published material which appear every day, and in spite of the progress in human knowledge, the Holy Bible is still unconditionally number one amongst all of them. It is indeed God's Book and the Book of books.
Naming it "the Holy Bible" is not the deed of man, but of the Holy Spirit the writer of the Book "and that from childhood you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus" (2 Timothy 3:15), ..."the gospel of God which He promised before through His prophets in the Holy Scriptures" (Romans 1:1, 2). This naming differentiates - without doubt - between the message of God "the Holy Bible" and of the other books which men author in different branches of knowledge.
The Holy Bible is God's Book from its beginning to its end. It contains many books, some of which are ascribed to known writers such as Moses, David, Solomon, Matthew, Luke, and Paul. Yet these were not their own writings. The writer of God's Book, from its beginning to its end is the Holy Spirit - the Spirit of God "knowing this first, that no prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation, for prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit" (2 Peter 1:20, 21). St. Paul also says "All Scripture is given by inspiration of God" (2 Timothy 3:13).
All those who made an effort to resist the Bible and studied it for the purpose of discrediting it, were either attracted by it or were destroyed by it.
The Holy Bible is in two Testaments: the Old Testament and the New Testament. The word "testament" means covenant between God and man. They were also called testaments because they were marked by blood. The Old Testament was marked by the blood of slaughtered animals and the New Testament was signed by the Blood of Christ.
THE ONENESS OF THE BIBLE AND ITS OBJECTIVE:
The Holy Bible is a truly amazing Book. It contains 73 books (46 in the Old Testament and 27 in the New Testament). They were written during a period of 1500 years by about 40 writers of different backgrounds. Among them were kings such as David and Solomon, shepherd Amos, priest Zechariah, prophets such as Samuel and Isaiah, legislator Moses, commander Joshua, fishermen such as Peter and John, scholar Paul and physician Luke. It was written in distinct places such as the Sinai desert, wilderness of Judea, cave of Adullam, a prison in Rome, the island of Patmos, palaces of Mount Zion, shores of the rivers of Babel and in Jerusalem after it was rebuilt. With all the diversities in the personalities of the writers, the places and the times of writing, its 73 books form one book, in spirit, subject and objective. There is no wonder in this:
(1) The center around which the Bible rotates from its beginning to its end is "Jesus Christ the Son of God ". The beginning of the Holy Bible tells us that He shall bruise the head of the serpent (the devil) (Genesis 3:15) and at the end of the Bible (the book of Revelation) we read that He is coming quickly, and His reward is with Him, to give to every one according to his work (Revelation 22:12).
The Lord Jesus asserted this fact when He commented to the Jews that their Holy Books "testify of Me" (John 5:39). And in the dusk of the day of His Resurrection "beginning at Moses and all the Prophets, He expounded to them (the Disciples of Emmaus) in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself (Luke 24:27). He again confirmed this fact to His Disciples who were gathering before His Ascension saying "These are the words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms concerning Me" (Luke 24:44).
(2) The heart of the Bible is the ways of God with the people. He approaches them according to His free grace and by raising their hopes in Him. The story of God in all of the Book concerns His coming near man who is hiding from God, where God declares Himself to him and raises his hope in Him. God called to Adam after Adam's fall and said to him "Where are you?" (Genesis 3:9). Man hides away from God wherever he is and in whatever he does, and God looks for man to show him the way of salvation.
In the Holy Bible God appears different from gods in the books of other religions. In other religions, we see that man searches for god. But in Christianity, God searches for man, and that is the beauty of Christianity. Man the imperfect, the sinner, weak in all respects, is unable by himself to reach God the Holy One, without sin Who lives in unapproachable light!!
(3) The Holy Bible teaches us that the grace of God does not reach us directly, but always through a mediator. It teaches us - that in order for us to receive the forgiveness of our sins - that requires the work of atonement and mediation, and that God does not overlook sin.
This principle is displayed in all the Bible from its beginning to its end. From here we find the Old Testament full of prophecies about the Messiah (Christ) "there is one God and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus" (1 Timothy 2:5). The Gospels show Him present and working, the Epistles look at Him with faith and knowledge and wait for His second coming and the book of Revelation speaks about His authority and His eternal Kingdom.
THE EVERLASTING BOOK:
The Holy Bible is distinguished by its profound effect on the souls of its readers who approach it with faith and humility. It did and still does urge its readers to get rid of their sins, no matter how heavy and complicated they are. For true believers, the Bible is like Samson with all his strength, and for the proud and the unbelievers it is like Samson himself but after he shaved his head and lost his strength!!
In spite of the fact that the Bible has been translated into about 850 languages, it did not lose its power, action and effect. This is due to the secret of its strength; not the eloquence of its words or its attractive style, but to the Spirit which its words contain. The Lord Jesus said "The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life" (John 6:63). It was able to attract millions of hearts to God after it stirred them to repentance, and brought them joy and peace and filled them with hope. There is no wonder in that, as it is a live book, strong, and effective in the souls of those who read it with faith.
In the eighteenth century, the French philosopher Voltaire said that twelve men laid the basis of Christianity and that he himself would discredit it. He added that the Holy Bible would be a forgotten book within one hundred years. Yet hundreds of years have passed and nothing that Voltaire anticipated has happened. To the contraiy, the harsh scientific criticism which faced the Bible in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, revolved to detailed study of the Holy Bible, of its history and of all which relates to it. The Bible came out from this dilemma - the dilemma of the new age -stronger than those who criticized it had imagined.
New archaeological discoveries, linguistic studies and the like served in uncovering the authenticity of the Bible and the truth of its stories in a way the scholars did not foresee. That is according to the saying of Lord "For assuredly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one title will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled" (Matthew 5:18). "Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will by no means pass away" (Mark 13:31). See Revelation 22:18-19
There are uncountable blessings in the Word of God. We never hear about anybody who lived a holy life, without the Holy Bible being the basis of forming his spiritual life, We never hear about a faithful minister, a successful missionary, a struggling hero of faith, without the Holy Bible being the secret of his success, the source of his inspiration, his support and his strength.
In the past, God commanded the placing of the two tablets off the Covenant upon which the Ten Commandments were written by the Fingers of God in the Ark of Testimony, together with the pot of Manna (Hebrew 9:4). This place is a gentle reference to the heart of the believer where the Word of God is kept, and where the Lord Jesus dwells; the real Manna Who descended from heaven for the life of all the world.
We all know that because of the first fall, the whole of mankind was expelled from Paradise - their original home - to the world where we now live, referred to as a foreign home, in which we are all aliens. This foreign home is full of darkness and mankind is in a constant state of war against his old enemies "the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places (Ephesians 6:11). The Lord explained in His Holy Book that the main help in our sojourn and wars against our enemies is the Word of God. This principle is utterly clear in the whole Biblt. The Bible is:
(1) Good Tidings of Hope and Comfort:
Mankind has to die as the result of disobedience and transgressions. Meanwhile the Holy Bible brings to us glad tidings of life and freedom. It calls for sonship, liberation from slavery, cessation of the curse of the Law, descent of the blessings of the Cross and Resurrection, better life and the fellowship with God. What a beautiful message which the Bible carries "How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the gospel of peace, who bring glad tidings of good things!" (Romans 10:15).
Every fifty years the Jews used to celebrate a year known as the "year of Jubilee" (Leviticus 25:11). They celebrated this year in a splendid way according to the Law. When the horns were blown announcing the beginning of the year of Jubilee, Joy found its way to many broken hearts. The poor who had sold his house or his land out of his hand, got it back, and the person who sold himself as a slave was liberated (Leviticus chapter 25). For this the Psalmist blessed "the people who know the joyful sound" (Psalm 89:15). The joyful sound here refers to the sound of the horns announcing the beginning of the year of Jubilee.
The Holy Bible is the Divine horn which proclaims the coming of "the acceptable year of the Lord" (Luke 4:19), so that we own again our heavenly home which we lost by sin and disobedience, and regain our freedom after we enslaved ourselves to the power of sin and fell into the hands of Satan.
The Holy Bible not only bring us glad tidings, but it ns also a great source of strength and hope, and boosting off the moral spirits.
Among the strongest weapons in the hands of our spiritual enemies, is the spreading among God's people, of the sense of weakness, defeat and surrender. The Holy Bible, on the other hand, rejects such wicked moods and replaces them with faith, complete confidence in the Lord, trust in the hope of His salvation, and that He will come with might, even in the last quarter of the night, for all who wait upon Him.
We read the words of Moses to his people when fear and horror got hold of them "Do not be afraid. Stand still, and shall hold your peace" (Exodus 14:13, 14). We hear after that about the deeds of the Lord with His people in the bare wilderness in the period of forty years. He supported them with the food of the angels and gave them water from a mute rock. He preserved their clothes and shoes, and gave them victory over nations which exceeded them in number and equipment.
We read about the great works of God with God's fearing men everywhere and in every generation and about His very many promises to them "Because he has set his love upon Me, therefore I will deliver him; I will set him on high, because he has known My name. He shall call upon Me, and I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble; I will deliver him and honor him. With long life I will satisfy him, and show him My salvation" (Psalm 91:14-16).
We read the words of the Lord of Glory "and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age" (Matthew 28:20). We read about the experience of Paul "If God is for us, who can be against us?" (Romans 8:31) and "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me" (Philippians 4:13). We also read about the love of God to sinners and His compassion towards them. Hence we should never lose hope, but rather gain strength and be encouraged.
Life's difficulties are numerous and hard, and because of them many will be offended, will betray one another, and will hate one another (Matthew 24:10). God gave us His Book to support us in our sojourn, a strong constant comforter. We find it near to us in all times, and can sit listening to it as long as we wish. When troubles surround us, there is no better than God's Word to comfort and encourage us. There is no real comfort in what the people utter, and as Job said in his misfortunes "Miserable comforters are you all!" (Job 16:2).
The Word of God has always been the source of comfort to all of God's people. David says "Remember the word to Your servant, upon which You have caused me to hope ... This is my comfort in my affliction, ... I remembered Your judgments of old, O Lord, and have comforted myself... Unless Your law had been my delight, I would then have perished in my affliction" (Psalm 119:49, 50, 52, 92).
St. Paul explains this matter by saying "For whatever things were written before were written for our learning, that we through the patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope" (Romans 15:4) ... He commanded the believers to seek comfort from the Bible by saying "Therefore comfort one another with these words" (1 Thessalonians 4:18). The source of comfort of God's Word is not only due to its accounts about God's people, their forbearance, patience, and what God did with them, or what it contains from fair meanings, but to the fact that the words of the Holy Books were written by the Holy Spirit "The Helper" (John 14:26).
(2) Light and Guidance:
Perhaps the forefront blessings of the Word of God are the moving of the hearts to repentance, whether via reading or hearing it. The few words of Apostle Peter which appeared as a sermon on the day of Pentecost, were a source of stirring the hearts of three thousand souls to believe in Christ (Acts Chapter 2). The words of Apostle Paul - in prison - were the grounds of affecting, even frightening Felix the ruler, though -unfortunately - he lost this chance and sent Paul away (Acts 24:25). Again by reading the book of Isaiah, the Ethiopian eunuch of great authority under Candace the queen of the Ethiopians, and what followed of explanation by St. Philip, was the source of his belief (Acts 8:27-39).
In the past, the Lord said on the tongue of Jeremiah the prophet ""Is not My word like a fire?" says the Lord, And like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces?" (Jeremiah 23:29). As intense fire makes iron malleable, the Word of God melts hard hearts and as hammers smash the rock, the Word of God affects hearts which are solidified by sin and crushes them by its power.
Since man is a stranger on earth, he needs a guide to lead him and hold his hand. The Word of God is like the pillar of light which used to lead the children of Israel in the Sinai desert. The Word of God also accompanies us until we enter - not the worldly but the heavenly Jerusalem. It is like the star which directed the Magi and kept going before them "till it came and stood over where the young Child was" (Matthew 2:9). Likewise, the Word of God goes before us, leads us, and delivers us to where Jesus is. It never makes a mistake, and never misleads those who follow it. Hence we hear the words of the Psalmist "I am a stranger in the earth; do not hide Your commandments from me" (Psalm 119:19). This shows us that the Word of God is the best guide for man in his sojourn.
It warns us when we turn away from the right way "Your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, "This is the way, walk in it", whenever you turn to the right hand or whenever you turn to the left" (Isaiah 30:21). It teaches and instructs us "For whatever things were written before were written for our learning, that we through the patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope" (Romans 15:4). "All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work" (2 Timothy 3:16, 17).
No wonder that we hear the men of God speak about the Law as a light and a lamp "Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path" (Psalm 119:105). The wise Solomon said "For the commandment is a lamp, and the law a light" (Proverbs 6:23). St. Peter points to the words of the prophets and says "And so we have the prophetic word confirmed, which you do well to heed as a light that shines in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts" (2 Peter 1:19).
For this reason - to express this fact - our Church lights candles during readings of the Gospel. St. Eronimps (Jerome) from the fourth century said "Lighting candles during the readings of the Gospel, a known custom in the Eastern Churches, is not to disperse the darkness but to express joy while hearing the Gospel like the lit lamps of the wise virgins, and to fulfill the words of the Psalmist "Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path" (Psalm 119:105) and the saying of the Wise "For the commandment is a lamp, and the law a light" (Proverbs 6:23).
(3) A Weapon and a Helper:
The Word of God is a mighty power, nobody comprehends except he who has lived with it and by it and experienced it. The Lord Jesus Who left us an example, that we should follow His steps (1 Peter 2:21) used this weapon in His argument with Satan who came to tempt Him. In each of the three temptations, the Lord Jesus answered the devil by saying "It is written ..." (Matthew 4:4, 7, 10) [Compare respectively with (Deuteronomy 8:3, 6:16, 6,13)]. Blessed is he who keeps the Word of God, as the Word turns into power inside him. Blessed is he who fills his bag with the spiritual arrows which are the Word of God. He is not afraid to meet his enemies, like the young man David who went to meet the mighty Goliath (1 Samuel Chapter 17).
St. Paul described the Word of God as "living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart" (Hebrews 4:12). The Word enters the depth of the heart and uncovers what is in the soul from evil desires and sinful thoughts. Then it works to eliminate the evil from the soul because it is sharper than a two-edged sword. The source of the power of the Word - as expressed by St. Athanasius - is God Himself Who dwells in His Words.
When our teacher St. Paul commanded the Church of Ephesus to "Put on the whole armor of God" that they may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil, he mentioned a number of these weapons. He spoke about the breastplate of righteousness, the shield of faith and the helmet of salvation. Though all these weapons are used at the time of war - as passive weapons employed for protection, the Apostle came forward and spoke about an active strong weapon which "is the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God" (Ephesians 6:10-11). The Word of God is like the sword for the fighter by which he slays his enemy.
The influence of the Word of God is well realized in our spiritual striving, as it has the power to bring the soul back to the road of righteousness "The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul" (Psalm 19:7). It also has the ability to cleanse us from our deficiencies as the Lord Jesus said "You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you" (John 15:3). It even sanctifies the soul "Sanctify them by Your truth. Your word is truth "(John 17:17).
lives "So now, brethren, I commend you to God and to the word of His grace, which is able to build you up and give you an inheritance among all those who are sanctified" (Acts 20:32). It is also able to save our souls, "Receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls" (James 1:21).
The Word of God girds the loins of our minds. When the thoughts wonder away from God, and start to slide down to the pit of vice, the Word of God does its work and comes forward to awaken the mind and makes if sober. For this St. Peter says "Therefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober" (1 Peter 1:13). Also our teacher St. Paul says "Stand therefore, having girded your waist with truth" (Ephesians 6:14). Truth is none other than the Word of God, "Your word is truth" (John 17:17).
When the leadership of the Israelites was transferred to Joshua son of Nun after the death of Moses, the Lord commenced His work with Joshua by telling him, "This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate in it day and night, that you may observe to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success" (Joshua 1:8). It is clear from these words of the Lord that they are a direct command; His words shall not depart from our mouths. The reason "that you may observe to do", and the result "you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success".
The Psalmist tells us about a pleasant experience at the forefront of the Psalms "Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly,... But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in His law he meditates day and night. He shall be like a tree planted by the "rivers of water", that brings forth its fruit in its season, whose leaf also shall not wither; and whatever he does shall prosper" (Psalm 1:1-3). What a pleasant experience of the Psalmist, and what a wonderful resemblance he introduced between the soul which delights in the law of the Lord and a tree planted by the rivers of water. The rivers of water here are the work of the Holy Spirit in the believer (John 7:38,39); the Holy Spirit Who wrote the Book.
(4) Measure of Perfection! and Growth:
Often a Christian deviates from the proper way, affected by the spirit of the time, tradition and imitation of others. The spiritual values are then distorted in his sight and the measures he uses change according to his moods, imaginations and his subconscious motives. He thinks that his life is not bad as long as he does not commit (big) sins - according to his measure. But when he resorts to the Book of God - the perfect Book, free from all errors - and judges himself by it and reads for example that God demands a perfect life from all of us, then he discovers his flaws and realizes his mistakes.
We ought to measure everything in the light of the Word "To the law and to the testimony! If they do not speak according to this word, it is because there is no light in them" (Isaiah 8:20).
When Paul and Silas reached the Jews in Berea and spoke to them about believing in the Lord Jesus "they received the word with all readiness, and searched the Scriptures daily to find out whether these things were so" (Acts 17:11). The Holy Bible is like a fine scale, when measured by it, the weight of our sins is known and we repent. It thus leads us to the road of perfection.
How beautiful is that which King David said "The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul" (Psalm 19:7). Our teacher St. Paul also said "All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work" (2 Timothy 3:16, 17).
The Lord Jesus said to the Jews who came to argue with Him "He who is of God hears God's words; therefore you do not hear, because you are not of God" (John 8:47). These words of the Lord explain to us an important aspect of our spiritual lives. We may measure our growth in grace, according to our love to study the Word of God. As we lose our appetite for the Bread of Life, we are sure that we suffer from a spiritual illness. It may be due to not breathing enough of the refreshing air in the fellowship with God.
This is expressed by what St. John Chrysostom said to his people in one of his sermons "When I see your strong desire and your swiftness in coming here in order to hear the holy teachings, and as I watch your desire and longing for the spiritual food which is the Word of God, I sense your growth in virtue. We rule that the body is healthy when we see it eat food with appetite and pleasure. Likewise, your hunger for the Word of God, shows us clearly the readiness of your souls and their good health".
THE MEN OF GOD
We do not know about a single saintly man of God except the Word of God is the basis of his life. We do not know about a single successful minister except the Word of God is the basis of his ministry and from it he was filled and was satisfied and also from it he gave to the thirsty souls. The Word of God was - and is - the spiritual table, from which all the saints feed, whether they are missionaries, ministers, ascetic people, or ordinary believers. They read it day and night. They keep the Word of God and the Word keeps them. They are enlightened by it and it shows them the way, and makes them a light which shines for many.
IN THE OLD TESTAMENT:
From the beginning, God gave great importance to the Word. He commanded His servant Moses saying "And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes" (Deuteronomy 6:6-8). Certainly, these words deserve our attention. Let us make from them a measure of our love to the Word of God.
When God started to deal with Joshua who led the people after Moses, His first command to Joshua was about keeping the Word "This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate in it day and night, that you may observe to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success" (Joshua 1:8). It is a clear command from God that His Words shall not depart from our mouths and that we strive to do the will of the Lord.
As for David the great, prophet and king, it is very difficult to portray how close he was to the Word of God. All his praises are full of melodies about the Word of God and his love to it. In one of them he says "I delight to do Your will, O my God, and Your law is within my heart" (Psalm 40:8). What a big and loving pen which wrote "Your law is within my heart". This deserves deep meditation. From all of David's psalms, let us consider the everlasting praise,the melody of love to the Word of God; psalm 119.
Psalm 119 is a unique chapter in the Bible and it is the longest. Nearly each one of its 176 verses contains an expression about the Holy Bible, such as "Your commands", "Your statutes", "Your decrees", "Your rules" and "Your law" etc. This praise shows us that the believer lives by Word of God all his life:
It is the secret of his power in the days of his youth "How can a young man cleanse his way? By taking heed according to Your word" (Psalm 119:9). It is the meditation of the believer all the day "Oh, how I love Your law! It is my meditation all the day" (Psalm 119:97). It is his meditation through the night also "My eyes are awake through the night watches, that I maj meditate on Your word" (Psalm 119:148). It is his comfort for ever "You, through Your commandments, make me wiser than irn enemies; for they are ever with me" (Psalm 119:98). The Word of God is most dear for him that he cries with joy "The law of Your mouth is better to me than thousands of coins of gold and silver" (Psalm 119:72). Therefore I love Your commandments more than gold, yes, than fine gold!" (Psalm 119:127). David also explained that the study of the Word gives profound delight by saying "I long for Your salvation, O Lord, and Your law is my delight. (Psalm 119:127). It also gives him a new spirit "I opened my mouth and panted, for I longed for Your commandments" (Psalm 119:131).
That was about David the harp of the spirit. Solomon the Wise, his son, says "My son, keep My words, and treasure My commands within you. Keep My commands and live, and My law as the apple of your eye. Bind them on your fingers; write them on the tablet of your heart" (Proverbs 7:1-3).
Prophet Jeremiah expressed his desire for the Word of God as if he wanted to eat it "Your words were found, and I ate them, and Your word was to me the joy and rejoicing of my heart; for I am called by Your name, O Lord God of hosts" (Jeremiah 15:16). Again the Prophet Ezekiel tells us that God shows us by amazing words the power of the Word and its delight "Moreover He said to me, "Son of man, eat what you find; eat this scroll, and go, speak to the house of Israel". So I opened my mouth, and He caused me to eat that scroll. And He said to me, "Son of man, feed your belly, and fill your stomach with this scroll that I give you". So I ate it, and it was in my mouth like honey in sweetness. And He said to me: "Son of man, go to the house of Israel and speak with My words to them"" (Ezekiel 3:1-4).
IN THE NEW TESTAMENT:
In the New Testament our Lord Jesus Christ reveals the place of the Word. In the twelfth year of His Divine Incarnation, He was found sitting in the Temple as a boy Who loves the Word of God, sitting in the midst of the teachers, both listening to them and asking them questions (Luke 2:46). And when He accepted to be tempted by the devil, He defeated the devil by the power of the Word. In every one of the three temptations, Jesus answered the devil by "It is written ...". He explained to us that the Word is the food for the spirit "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God" (Matthew 4:4) [Compare with Deuteronomy 8:3].
The Word is the proof of His love "If you love Me, keep My commandments" (John 14:15), "The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life" (John 6:63). He also tells us that the ignorance of the Word is a source of making mistakes. He said to the arrogant Jews "You are mistaken, not knowing the Scriptures nor the power of God" (Matthew 22:29).
More than that Jesus explained to us that the Holy Books are sufficient and able in their work for the salvation of mankind. In the parable of the rich man and Lazarus; when the rich man asked Abraham to send Lazarus to his five brothers that he may testify to them, lest they also come to this place of torment, the answer of Abraham was "They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them". But the rich man again begged Abraham saying "No, father Abraham; but if one goes to them from the dead, they will repent". This time the answer of Abraham was "If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rise from the dead" (Luke 16:27-31). And it happened, as He spoke these things, that a certain woman from the crowd raised her voice and said to Him, "Blessed is the womb that bore You, and the breasts which nursed You!". But He said, "More than that, blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep it!" (Luke 11:27,28).
The early Christians were careful in teaching their children the Word of God since their childhood. Our teacher St. Paul pointed to that when he wrote to his disciple Timothy saying "and that from childhood you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus" (2 Timothy 3:15). As for the youth, the Word was the source of their steadfastness and power. St John wrote to them "I have written to you, young men, because you are strong, and the word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the wicked one" (1 John 2:14).
The Epistles in the New Testament are full of verses which show the importance of the Word of God - we referred to that when we spoke about the blessing of the Book. Finally we see that God shows the importance of the Word in the book of Revelation as He says "Blessed is he who reads and those who hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written in it" (Revelation 1:3).
All these written commands were reflected in the lives of the saints of the Christian Church. We found that they made a big effort in studying the Holy Bible and we see that they learned by heart many parts of it. The book of Psalms is only one of the beloved holy books which they learned and used in their prayers. We sense this fact clearly in their sayings and their writings, that the word of Christ dwelled in them richly (Colossians 3:16).
[quote author=minagir link=topic=4953.msg68888#msg68888 date=1174442999]
[quote author=Κηφᾶς link=topic=4953.msg68828#msg68828 date=1174276831]
[coptic]+ Iryny nem `hmot>[/coptic]
If I may, I'd like to share what the Orthodox Study Bible has to say about some of these verses...
the Orthodox Study Bible is not of the sources listed below by ilabib.
[quote author=ilabib link=topic=4953.msg68885#msg68885 date=1174439217]
My Beloved in Christ,
Frist, pay attention to the following. Below are the sources of teachings and references of our church.
The Sources of Teachings in the Coptic Orthodox Church of God...
wherefore the commentaries u brought qouting the verses that i posted are not approved by our Copric Church, which me and you are part of.
This is easily the most ridiculous thing you have ever posted in this thread. I just said that the commentary i posted was from the ORTHODOX study bible. So it is in fact approved by all ORTHODOX churches. That being said, surely you do realize that the sources ilabib has listed is most certainly not an exhaustive list. There are far more Church Fathers then the ones he has listed. Please actually use your brain for a change instead of being told what is and isn't accepted by others.
This is easily the most ridiculous thing you have ever posted in this thread. I just said that the commentary i posted was from the ORTHODOX study bible. So it is in fact approved by all ORTHODOX churches.
Who told you it is fully accepted by all. The members of the committee that did the book and that are working on the Old Testament translation are mostly Greek and from other Orthodox Churches. But not any of us as Copts. Also you have to but in mind that the Orthodox Churches are separated in two, canonical and noncanonical. We, with the 5 sister churches are the canonical churches and also called the Oriental Orthodox Churches.
The unity between the Orthodox Churches is general is more of a dogmatic unity than it is to tradition and to many other characteristics in a church.
Also ya3ny because you couldn't find a source in our church to back up your own understanding, you go to other Orthodox sources which are again not fully approved by our church, to find what you want. WOW, really interesting...... May be you can list some. Am sure ilabib well love to answer back to you. lol, I think that’s maybe what you’ve been doing for all the previous posts. Using your own brain more than sources, which is fine sometime.....but not all the time.
Also I am sorry, but I would never be smart enough (if you would call it) to understand the mysteries of our church without the help of other who lived their lifes trying to reach maybe %.000001 of those mysteries...including the Holy Bible.
1 fast comment: Why are you answering my little, small, and maybe worthless sentence about the Orthodox Study Bible, and not answering the 3 previous post which are about 15 pages long.
waiting for an answer...................... :)