Creation Cautions

Caution is needed with modern English-versions of the Bible when studying Creation Issues.
Class Notes for Sunday, 8-15-2004

For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:
Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.
Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,
And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things.

Conclusion: In order to ignore God's Law, Evolution is "pushed" very hard, so that animals are worshiped, and man can become his own demi-god.

All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.

Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.

Conclusion: Try to remove Jesus' equality with God the Father, and remove our personal relationship with our Creator.

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. (note the plural "heavens")

Conclusion: This is the passage that day-agers try to assign to what they call the "gap theory", a huge period of time for starlight to travel, and going back to the dawn of all time, when all manifolds of reality had to have been created (in order to meet their erroneous "old earth" theory). It actually refers to how creation started. The singular "heaven" here is the 3D fabric of our universe, and the earth itself. Not multiple fabrics of space, but only one; the one in which we live. It is a statement of what we had when creation began, with just the earth and empty space. It is not a statement of all things ever created by Jesus (our Lord and our God).

Vapor dome theory was developed before modern translations were written. The theory states that before the flood, a shell of water existed out at the fringe of our atmosphere, even at the very edge of space. Some protection was needed, because if the heat of the sun were to strike the earth, a vapor cycle would have been set-up, causing regular rainfall. According to Genesis, before the flood no rain fell on the earth:

2:5 And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew: for the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground.
2:6 But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground.

From the King James Version of 1611, here is the scripture before Vapor Dome was theorized:

And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.
And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.
And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.

From the Blue Letter Bible for Genesis 1:6, the word "firmament" is defined as follows:

This seems consistent with the idea that the pre-flood earth had a water cavern shell beneath the surface, in a manner similar to here:

It should also be noted that this is the only place in the Bible where the word "Heaven" is used with a capital "H" (except at the start of a sentence) indicating that it is a name for a specific thing.

And God said, "Let there be an expanse between the waters to separate water from water."
So God made the expanse and separated the water under the expanse from the water above it. And it was so.
God called the expanse "sky." And there was evening, and there was morning-the second day.

Conclusion: Here, the false theory of vapor dome is attempted to be supported by getting huge volumes of water up at the fringes of space. This sets us up for the big error in Genesis 7:11.

In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened.

The Windows of Heaven is a series of windows which when opened, allow the movement of the very fabric of our 3D space manifold. It moves the Stars away from Earth during the first 5 months of Noah's flood, by moving the space in which the stars reside, not by moving the stars through space. This causes a huge time shift for those stars, wherein they age millions or even billions of years, while on earth, only 5 months pass by.
The definition for this from the Blue Letter Bible is "a lattice opening where smoke escapes". It has nothing to do with water. It only rained for 40 days and 40 nights, not 5 months.

In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, on the seventeenth day of the second month-on that day all the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened.

It should be noted that if you wanted to get your vapor dome to collapse down onto the earth as rain, then where did the "fountains of the great deep" come from? You really can't have it both ways.

So, what is the real answer for a "filter for the sun" in the pre-flood earth? How about what we have right now, only much more powerful? How about something as simple as a very powerful magnetic field? Elihu (from the book of Job) describes the wonderful capability of Jesus to "engineer the Earth". I believe that Job lived very shortly after Noah's Flood and at that time it was commonly recalled from parental stories that, before the flood, the sky was a solid bronze in appearance during the daytime. After the flood, it gradually faded to blue over a period of many years, as the magnetic field wound down.
from Job, NIV:

37:18 can you join him in spreading out the skies, hard as a mirror of cast bronze?
37:21 Now no one can look at the sun, bright as it is in the skies after the wind has swept them clean.

I do think that the NIV has its place, and for the most part is a wonderful translation (see, I even used it here). However, I think this should be a lesson to us all. Translate the Bible for what it says and for exactly what it says. Do your theorizing on the side and never change the Biblical meaning; it is safer that way.