Quote from Forum Archives on August 1, 2013, 1:45 pm

Posted by: knyoj <knyoj@...>

I read everything, little that it be, but I don't post. So I will now.

I go to a Bible study on Sunday nights, led by a retired Nazarene pastor that is an awesome guy. He is 64 and I am 65 and the rest of the guys are in their 20's - interesting mix. I'm been going for well over a year and totally enjoyed the studies and the fellowship. One of the fellows in the group is a former elementary student who is 25 and also a wonderful Christian man.

We have finished our study of the book of Revelation and I had John (the leader) say to one of the guys that we are going to have a six week study basically based on the work of Ken Ham. He apparently has been reading a lot of his work and also watching videos of him. I also overheard John saying that unless we understand Genesis properly, all else is out of focus.

I know that Ham is a "young earth" proponent, and it seems, unless I am wrong, that he strongly feels unless you are young earth, your Christian view is sort of out of whack (my words). Some accuse him of saying that unless you believe in young earth, you can't be saved. He flatly denies this on his website, but he does say this:

"The point is, believing in a young earth won’t ultimately affect one’s salvation, but it sure does affect what those that person influences believe concerning how to approach Scripture. Such compromise in the church with millions of years and Darwinian evolution etc., we believe has greatly contributed to the loss of the Christian foundation in the culture."

Am I to understand from this quote, that if I don't particularly agree with "young earth" that I am not approaching the Scriptures well, and that I am compromising - the kind of compromise that has contributed to the loss of Christian foundation in the culture? 

It guess I will have to wait and see how my friend John approaches this in the next six weeks. John has never taken an extreme viewpoint on anything we have studied, but I'm hearing glimpses of an upcoming extreme view that unless we embrace Ham's "young earth" theory, our whole Christian view might be in question. 

Can I be ignorantly frank: I, for some reason, really don't seem to care a lot about whether the earth is young or old. I've never connected it in any way to my walk with the Lord. Is this something that I have missed? I simply haven't found it discussed among my Christian friend for most of my life.

I know that there was some discussion of Ham on the Assembly of God Theology Facebook page, but I can't seem to find the post and comments. If any of you have a link to that, I would appreciate it so I could re-read the comments. 

I have read some comments from Christian authors that Ham is neither a scientist nor a scholar, and a lot of what he says if faulty. I have no opinion as I don't know enough.

Ok....here's the question.....do any of you have any knowledge of Ham's credibility. Even if he is credible, I'm not sure that I can "swallow" his statement about not accepting young earth vs. old earth basically bringing Christianity down in the culture. As a matter of fact, that never crossed my mind as being part of the reason. I guess if one believes that unless you have Genesis all figured out (as Ham seems to believe he does) then you are whacked out in your Christian experience. I cannot hold to that view.

I have no intention of bringing any division into the Bible study group. If they all want to embrace this (from the leader), then they can. I can remain silent or just miss some of the gatherings so I don't have to hear it all. We have had a tremendous amount of unity since we began meeting, and I certainly don't consider this a huge deal. 

Ken

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