Reply to danny discussion board 1 obst 515 turabian cite | OBST 515 – Old Testament Orientation I | Liberty University

 Reply Prompt: You will be required to reply to at least 1 other classmate’s thread in a minimum of 200 words. Be sure that your reply engages specific issues, questions, or passages related to the thread. Your reply must demonstrate that you have read the thread in its entirety and that you are providing thoughtful analysis (considering assumptions, analyzing implications, and comparing/contrasting concepts). 

Reply to Danny 

Using Terry Mortenson’s (author of the article we were required to read) Answers in Genesis online article concerning Six Literal Days, here is a basic argument:[1]

1. Those to whom Moses is writing were not highly educated Hebrew scholars or scientist. They were mostly slaves who had been set free from bondage. The language that Moses would have used would have been plan language that they and their children could understand.
2. The plan language of the text clearly refers to 6 literal days. God created light and said let the light be called “day” and the darkness called “night” and there was evening and morning the first day (Genesis 1:3-5).
   1. Mortenson notes that every time the Hebrew word for “day” (יוםֹ, yom) is used with the word for “evening” or “morning” or is modified by a number it always means a 24-hour day.
   2. God also God said He created the sun, moon, and stars so that one could tell time
   3. God even set the work rest pattern for the week based on His creative week.
3. Lastly, while Jesus was on the earth, He treated Genesis 1-11 as actual history; his apostles did the same.

My view of the age of the universe is that we live in a young universe. Honestly, I have not thought much about this. I have always been in circles that hold to this view, and I have always just accepted it. However, if I were to have to give an argument for my view, I would follow the points laid out in the online article we all have been required to read by Mortenson.[2] These points are as follows:

1. Genesis is history, not poetry, parable, prophetic vision, or mythology.
2. The very dominant meaning of yôm in the Old Testament is a literal day, and the context of Genesis 1 confirms that meaning there.
3. God created the first animate and inanimate things supernaturally and instantly.
4. The order of creation in Genesis 1 contradicts the order of events in the evolution story in at least 30 points.
5. Exodus 20:8-11 resists all attempts to add millions of years anywhere in or before Genesis 1 because Exodus 20:11 says that God created everything in six days.
6. In Jesus’ comments about Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Noah and the Flood, Sodom and Gomorrah, Tec., He clearly took the events recorded in Genesis as literal history, just as did all the New Testament writers.
7. The Bible teaches that there was no animal or human death before the fall of Adam and Eve. So the geological record of rock layers and fossils could not have been millions of years before the fall.
8. The nature of God as revealed in Scripture rules out the idea that He created over millions of years.
9. The global catastrophic flood of Noah was responsible for producing most of the geological record of rock layers and fossils.  
10. The genealogies of Genesis 5 and 11 give us the years from Adam to Abraham, who virtually all scholars agree lived about 2000 B.C. This sets the date of creation at approximately 6,000 years ago.
11. For eighteen centuries the almost universal belief of the Church was that the creation began 4,000-5,000 years before Christ. This argues for God’s control in revealing truth, and that unbelievers studying creation have become the authority rather than the Bible when one abandons or rejects a young earth view.

I definitely believe Adam and Eve were the first created humans who actually did exist in the Garden of Eden. The reason I would hold to this would be the Biblical evidence, and the necessity of Adam and Even theologically. Biblically speaking, the Old Testament as well as the New Testament treat Adam as a real person. It is a little more difficult to find Adam in the Old Testament, but he is there. Just a few examples: In 1 Chronicles 1:1 he is listed as the head of the genealogy of Israel. It would be strange to list him there if he was just figurative. Deuteronomy 32:8 speaks of the “Sons of Adam.” Other passages that seem to allude to Adam include: Hosea 6:7; Job 31:33; Psalm 82:7; Ecclesiastes 7:29; Ezekiel 28:9.

In the New Testament both Jesus and Paul interpreted Genesis literally. In Matthew 19:4-5, Jesus speaks of God creating male and female in the beginning which references Genesis 1. In 1 Corinthians 11:8-9 and 1 Timothy 2:13-14, Paul uses the Genesis account in his argument treating it as literal or historical.

Theologically, if Adam were not a real person through whom the whole human race was plunged into sin, can one really believe Christ is the second Adam through whom the human race may be saved (Romans 5:12-17).

[1]Terry Mortenson, “Six Literal Days,” Answers in Genesis, April 1, 2010. https://answersingenesis.org-days-of-creation/six-literal-days/

[2] Terry Mortenson, “Young Earth Creationist View Summarized & Defended,” February 16, 2011. http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/aid/v6/n1/yec-view-summary