Should Christians celebrate Christmas?

Old earthers like you have about sixty theories of the Ice Age. Oard is an expert on the subject, but you have put forth no old earther expert. Oard has silenced a lot of them after forty years of research. Darwin and deep time have massive scientific problems.

 

You're relying on that one man, while I have read an eclectic mix of verified scientific facts for some 55 to 60 years. I van even remember things about the first International Geophysical year in 1957.

And most of what I've studied has been FACT, not opinion, imagination and guesswork.

While I don't believe in evolution (Never sqaw evidence that one species of any living thing eventually producing another species) I DO believe in CHANGE. For example, yje first horses were the size of a collie, while alligators could reach 50 ft. in length. Young-earthers have a hard time explaining those facts away, not to mention two other things I mentioned - the formation of the Grand Canyon & the soil covering of the Appalachian Mts. There are many more, of course, but those two are pretty obvious.

 

The majority of Puritans refused to celebrate any "holy day" except the Lord's day (Sunday). They considered Christmas to be a popish invention. The objection to Christmas is still alive in many Reformed Presbyterian churches today. Some Reformed Baptist churches are of the same conviction. Others have a more nuanced view of Christmas. They celebrate Christmas culturally and socially, but it is not celebrated by the local church. I am of this conviction. I hold to the Regulative Principle of Worship and do not believe we are to worship in any manner not prescribed by scripture. I have no problem with celebrating Christmas culturally and socially. I also have no issue with meditating upon the advent of our Lord, although that can be done anytime during the year. So, I am not "anti-Christmas". My church does celebrate the holiday, so I make due even though it is not my preference.

 

Yes, I cited one guy, Oard, but you cited no one. Young Earth Creationism is a scientific endeavor, and no old earther has a better theory on the Ice Age. As for old earth, we know that the Enlightenment borrowed from the Greeks and Hindus and postulated deep time which cannot be proven by science. If you live in the East, why not visit the Creation Museum? They have research staff who are PhD. They will tell you that stars don't go north and south.

As for the Grand Canyon, it you have a couple of great lakes left from the Ice Age and they break their basins and race to the sea, a canyon will form rapidly. I did a thread here on the Lake Missoula Flood, which after fifty years of denial, the old earthers admitted happened.

 

the Anglicans affirmed in the AV 1611's extratextual material, that theu held easter & Christmas to be the 2 holiest days of the year. But we must remember the Anglicans are largely the RCC minus a pope or mariolatry.

 

I think that you have an intelligent perspective. I am elderly so I don't get as much done as I think about doing. I tell people God's richest blessings to you and yours--(I think that salvation is the richest blessing so I say that to non-Christians.)

 

The Lake Missoula floods didn't create one big canyon; they swept a path several miles wide before them. And many of those areas are still soil-free. (Hello, Appalachian Mts. with soil cover!)

But PLANETS or other close objects in space can go any direction.

And "old earth' does not clash with creation. It reminds us that God caused fossils to form, & for us to find them for a reason. It reminds us that God established the max speeda light & rays, & allowed us to discover it for a reason. And it proves "young earthers" wrong.

 

The fossils are the graveyard of the Genesis Flood when God destroyed all land life not on the Ark. It was a violent flood that completely changed the surface of the earth so that the old world that Noah knew was totally gone forever. The reason that we find fossils is to remind us of what God did. The folded layers of fossils that you were talking about earlier show that the layers were bent while they were fresh because if they had solidified they would have been broken.

The Lake Missoula Flood runs from Montana to the Pacific Ocean so it altered a vast landscape. It was discovered by an old earther as a flood but he was ostracized by the scientific community of the day until photos were taken from airplanes to prove him right. It was an end of the Ice Age event just like several other major floods worldwide.

We have no chain of custody to establish that the speed of light has been constant scientifically.

 

Thanks. You said better what I tried to briefly articulate earlier.

 

Remember, God told Noah,in Genesis 6:19 And of every living thing of all flesh you shall bring two of every sort into the ark, to keep them alive with you; they shall be male and female. 20 Of the birds after their kind, of animals after their kind, and of every creeping thing of the earth after its kind, two of every kind will come to you to keep them alive.

So, God brought male & female of EVERY ANIMAL & BIRD ON EARTH to Noah. to place in the ark. God likely placed them into a stupor so they wouldn't fight nor "bathroom" inside the ark. While God told Noah to also bring food for the people & animals, they likely ate very little, as he woulda needed an ark the size of Manhattan to have held enough food for fully-active animals(They spent a total of 364 days in the ark.)

And remember that MORE THAN 99% OF ALL SPECIES OF LIFE THAT HAVE EVER BEEN KNOWN TO HAVE EXISTED ARE NOW EXTINCT ! ! Several study groups have reached the same conclusion. There are now roughly C. 7.7 million species of animals & C.298K species of plants living today, outta an estimated FIVE BILLION species that have ever lived!

I believe Scripture comeletely, and Scripture sez Noah took some of every animal & bird aboard the ark. He didn't take T. Rex or brontosaurus cuz there were none alive to take, simple as THAT! They had become extinct before God made man.

But I agree the flood was violent. The remains of animals & fish that had been violently smashed against some of the cliffs in the British Isles & against some cliffs on the coast of France. they were smashed so violently that their remains are mingled among eath other, so crushed that the various species are identified only with difficulty.

The fact there are land animals, aquatic animals, & fish all smashed together indicates the agent was likely a "super tsunami". Scripture sez the "fountains of the deep" were broken open, and these were almost certainly on land; otherwise they wouldn'ta been known to man. (While I was in the Pacific in the USN, a tsunami passed under our ship & we didn't feel or see it at all.)

So, your premise remains refuted.

 

There you go again. Two of every sort or kind, but you change it to species and go off on a fantasy.

 

An explanation of how many animals were aboard the Ark, which was 510 feet long, 85 feet wide, and 51 feet high, with tree decks.

 

CAN YOU PROVE ME WRONG? OF COURSE NOT.

The Latin word 'species', meaning "a particular thing or group" was not applied to animals til the late 14th century. It certainly wasn't used when Genesis was written, but it still means "kinds". For instance, African elephants are of the genus Loxodonta, with two species, the bush elephant & the slightly- smaller forest elephant. So, clearly, "species" now means "specific kind of living thing". So I wasn't a bit remiss in using "species".

And I don't deny for one nenosecond that Noah had every species of land animal & bird aboard the ark. What I DO deny is that he had sauropods aboard such as T-Rex or Brontosaurus. or mammals such as Smilodon or Megatherium, the reason being that they were extinct before God remade the earth & created man. And I'm not gonna go off on a tangent here & debate what "cavemen" were.

 

Of course, it doesn't mean species. For example, all dogs have a common dog ancestor, even poodles. :Roflmao:Roflmao:Roflmao

"Species has a modern meaning that does not comply with the meaning of the Hebrew in Genesis as was pointed out in the video where Creation Museum discusses how many animals were on the Ark, and I have already given the dimensions of the Ark based upon the royal cubit, Scripture having listed how many cubits in length and width and height of the Ark.

All old earthers seems to insist that dinosaurs, made on Day 6, were somehow extinct by the time of the Genesis Flood 4300 years ago. I think that I have already listed a discussion of that above. It is true that many animals came off the Ark and did not last long for one reason or another. The earth was greatly changed and even man was allowed to eat meat after the Genesis Flood because with the breakup of the land apparently the vegetarian life was harder to sustain.

This great animal, called “behemoth,” is described as “the chief of the ways of God,” perhaps the biggest land animal God had created. Impressively, he moved his tail like a cedar tree! Although some Bible commentaries say this may have been an elephant or hippopotamus, the description actually fits that of a dinosaur like Brachiosaurus. Elephants and hippos certainly do not have tails like cedar trees!


Actually, very few animals are singled out in the Bible for such a detailed description. Contrary to what many may think, what we know now as dinosaurs get more mention in the Scriptures than most animals! So dinosaurs—all the different kinds—must have lived alongside of people after the Flood.

Are Dinosaurs Mentioned in Ancient Literature?
Interestingly, the word “dragon” is used a number of times in the Old Testament. In most instances, the word dinosaur could substitute for dragon and it would fit very nicely. Creation scientists believe that dinosaurs were called dragons before the word dinosaur was invented in the 1800s. We would not expect to find the word dinosaur in Bibles like the Authorized Version (1611), as it was translated well before the word dinosaur was ever used.

Also, there are many very old history books in various libraries around the world that have detailed records of dragons and their encounters with people. Surprisingly (or not so surprisingly for creationists), many of these descriptions of dragons fit with how modern scientists would describe dinosaurs, even Tyrannosaurus. Unfortunately, this evidence is not considered valid by evolutionists. Why? Only because their belief is that man and dinosaurs did not live at the same time!

However, the more we research the historical literature, the more we realize there is overwhelming evidence that dragons were real beasts, much like our modern reconstructions of dinosaurs, and that their existence has been recorded by many different people, even just hundreds of years ago."

Dinosaurs and the Bible

 

The worldwide descriptions of dragons are similar, and they could well be one species of dino that survived. But there are umpteen hundred other plants & animals that were not around when man first was. These include many species better-adapted for survival than many of today are.

For instance, the mammoth could live in just about any climate but the very-coldest where vegetation is scarce. And their teeth were much-harder than those of elephants, so they lasted longer & could chew tougher vegetation. But SOMETHING killed them all, before homo sapiens was created.

There are just too many things that have happened to and on the earth for them to have happened in a short time. And Scripture's first few verses show God worked upon an already-existing planet.

 

The Woolly Mammoth may have been a type of elephant. The Genesis Flood created a great deal of heat for various reasons. That caused evaporation. Meanwhile, volcanic activity was widespread and huge. As the atmosphere was filled with dust, the cooling caused snow storms from all of the moisture in the air. If the summers were cooler and the winters were just the same or cooler, snow and ice could accumulate. Thus began the Ice Age. With ice covering thirty percent of earth, the oceans were lowered and it made it easy for animals and people to disperse throughout the earth. We know from the Grand Canyon in Arizona, that the sediment from the flood is very deep. The Great Unconformity, on top of which the Genesis Flood sediments were deposited, was photographed in the recent movie Is Genesis History? I will link it below. So the Woolly Mammoth got into Siberia. The Ice Age lasted about seven hundred years. With no or few natural enemies, as Oard pointed out, they could multiply rapidly. And no, there was no death before Adam sinned according to Genesis, so the correct time to place the death of the Woolly Mammoth is in the Ice Age after the Genesis Flood. Then as the ice receded, as Oard says, they sank into the ground and the area changed to perma-frost. Contrary to what you posted earlier, there meat is decayed to some extent and flies have laid eggs in the flesh, which can be shown by microscopic examination. Everything was created in six days. All that we have left from the time of Adam to Noah is what survived with Noah and his family, and some of that has since been lost. With Adam's sin all of creation became cursed, and that curse extended to animals also. Noah is a prophet.

Genesis 5:29 (KJV) And he called his name Noah, saying, This [same] shall comfort us concerning our work and toil of our hands, because of the ground which the LORD hath cursed.

 

The mammoth was not an elephant, any more than a hyena is a dog or a gorilla is a man, just because they share many physical features... There's a reasonable amount of anatomical differences between them I pointed out the teeth, & the fur is obvious - as are the mammoth's larger tusks & hump on its back. Now, you don't believe in evolution any more than I do, but you & your hero are implying evolution from mammoths to elephants. (Disregarding the mammoth's contemporary the mastodon, which doesn't resemble either the elephant or mammoth that closely. In normal progression, the mastodon woulda survived, while the mammoth & elephant woulda died out.)

As I said, there were many critters that were better-equipped to have survived, that became extinct, not just mammoths. These beasts were NOT here when man was created; otherwise they'd still be here as Noah woulda had some of them on the ark.

And there was no death IN THE PRESENT WORLD ARRANGEMENT til Eve & Adam sinned.

Sorry, Captain, your hero's attempts, and yours, to make a case for a "young earth" goes "POOF!" in the face of PROVEN FACT vs. imagination, opinion, & guesswork.

 

So, you don't think that the Woolly Mammoth was a type of elephant? So, would you say that the poodle is a type of dog? (Well that one might be beyond debate one way or another.) How can you say that one or another of an animal might have survived for one reason or another? There are lots of kinds that died out after Noah's Flood, apparently so not every animal from Adam's day survived after Noah's Flood. We just don't know how many died out after Adam because everything was destroyed by the Genesis Flood and the seven continents were formed by it.

As the movie Is Genesis History? points out, the sedimentary layers from the flood are five thousand feet high in the Grand Canyon; the fossil layers are the graveyard of the animal life killed in the Flood when only life on the Ark survived.

There was no death before Adam sinned, which probably was shortly after the Creation of the world. That fact of no death applied to the animals also.

You seem to think that the Young Earth Creationist movement is more of a minority than it is and that it revolves around Ken Ham, who is a leader but Ken Ham would be the first to pay tribute to Dr. John Whitcomb, who still is alive here in Indianapolis and played a significant role in the dedication of the Ark Encounter in Williamstown, Kentucky. Also, Ken Ham worked for Dr. Henry Morris at his Institute for Creation Research and he worked with Creation Ministries International. However, it is true that Answers in Genesis is the largest apologetics ministry in the world at this time (not counting denominations) and I am guessing that the investment in Kentucky of the Creation Museum, the Ark Encounter, and the offices of AiG represent two hundred million dollars. Ken Ham said that forty thousand families donated to the Ark Encounter and several million people have visited Kentucky in the last ten years. However, the idea of the young earth goes back to the church fathers and was believed until the Enlightenment, roughly the eighteenth century, and died out in the church about the time of the Civil War and was picked up again by Morris and Whitcomb about 1961. So my hero is Dr. Whitcomb, who fought in the battle of the Bulge and taught here in Indiana, having been educated at Princeton University.

But maybe you would be interesting in today's news from the Creation Museum about an upgrade:

 

Actually, those animals were destroyed before God made the present world arrangement. And while we've been focusing on mammoths & elephants, there's no accounting for the MILLIONS of species that are extinct that man apparently never saw. To have taken a pair of EVERY ONE of them aboard the ark woulda required an ark the size of a city.

As for the Grand canyon's sedimentary layer, there's evidence (not opinion or guesswork) that the area was covered by aeas at least 3 times, with Noah's flood being the topmost one. it's the only one where remains of modern life have been found.

And yes, people useta believe the earth was young til they found evidence showing otherwise. They also useta bellieve t5he earth was flat, & that the celestial objects revolved around us. Funny what a little FACT-FINDING can do!

And I believe that you believe God has always existed, as I do. It'd really be a stretch to believe He sat around twiddling His thumbs for a googolplex of a googolplex of our years til one day He decided to create a physical universe.

While you're to be congratulated & praised for trying to defend your beliefs, there's simply too much EVIDENCE against a young earth, (as opposed to imagination, opinion, & guesswork) such as the slow mountain erosion, objects in the sky being so far away it takes their light millions of years to reach us, and the FACT that over 99% of all species of life that's ever lived on earth is extinct, and was so before man coulda seen it. Nice try, but no cigar!