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Should we believe a straight-forward reading of the Genesis account,
or should we interpret the text as being indicative of a billions-of-year-old-creation,
with a regional flood (Noah's Flood) having had occurred thousands years
ago, as old earth creationists (such as Hugh Ross of www.reasons.org)
propone?
Hugh Ross would have us believe that after billions of years of geological
processes (which caused the rock strata that we see), Noah's Flood then
occurred only in Mesopotamia, and wiped out all of humanity except the
eight who were saved on the Ark. Why would some of the humans have not
successfully migrated away from a merely regional flood? And why would
have all of humanity (Ross estimates 1 billion people) been confined
to merely Mesopotamia, thousands of years ago? (And why would all of
the animals also have been only in Mesopotamia, with none having migrated
from harm's way?)
Ross would have us believe that the "fountains of the deep"
and "forty days and nights of rain" produced a massive and
violent flood, and only in the Middle East. There exists, however, no
vast (about 1 million square mile), shallow-bowl-shaped erosion-event
horizon reflected in the shallow geology of Mesopotamia, which one would
expect from such a catastrophic event. And the legends from the ancient
Middle Eastern civilizations all speak of a global Flood, not a regional
flood such as that proposed by Ross.
He seems to think that God created humans in the Garden of Eden while
Neanderthal men were in decline (as Neanderthals have been discovered
buried shallower than humans in Israel). However, Neanderthal men created
works of art, ritually buried their dead, played flutes, and spoke like
human beings because they were human beings that lived during the Ice
Age in the centuries after the actually world-wide Noah's Flood.
The Church has largely accommodated the old earth/cosmos chronology
because of ignorance, or worldly expediency, or both. If Genesis does
not mean what it says, then why did God not indicate in simple language
the "true" history of the earth and cosmos? Most all agree
that a 6th grader would do some simple math and deduce that the Flood
devastated the entire earth around 2400 B.C., with the creation of the
earth and cosmos about 1,600 years before that. The Bible is to be understandable,
even to a 6th grader.
Let's tell the 6th graders (and others) that they are correct, that
the Bible can be trusted, and that there is a landslide of evidence
from geology, genetics, astronomy, archaeology and pagan ancient histories
which confirm the Biblical account. If I may be of assistance in disseminating
this faith-building information in a dynamic and entertaining way, please
contact me through my website www.GenesisVeracity.com, or call me at
713 784 6618.
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