God's revelation, Time?

[lemonbeam]

Why was the Bible revealed only a few thousand years ago, Jesus etc.

But there where millions of years prior to that when God (Yahweh) was hidden?! And people where worshipping other idols and Gods.

Why didn’t God (Yahweh) want us to worship him from the beginning of time?

 

[Verbum]

Hi Lemonbeam,

The Bible is not primarily a call to worship God; it is the good news of man’s redemption, as prepared in the Old Testament and achieved in the New.

As St. Paul tells us, man can know God naturally from observation of the world. So, even before the Bible, man could know God and worship Him. Possibly many did. Polytheism could have arisen from the fact that people locally each had their own name for God, and when they formed national groups they blended their individual religions together.

The story of salvation begins with the call to Abraham. God could have called someone else and called that person earlier or later. He knows best.

Does this answer your question?

Verbum

 

[06convert]

It’s hard to say exactly why the timeline is the way it is. The oldest civilizations knew there was a God.

Although their worshipping was a bit midguided and they were essentially led to believe certain things, or certain people were their “God”. I think it’s interesting that they realized there was a higher power at all. They just didn’t know or understand the details.

It’s probably for that reason that God reveiled himself.

 

[redhen]

Why was the Bible revealed only a few thousand years ago, Jesus etc.

But there where millions of years prior to that when God (Yahweh) was hidden?! And people where worshipping other idols and Gods.

Why didn’t God (Yahweh) want us to worship him from the beginning of time?

A good question, one that I’ve thought about as well. The best answer I’ve read (in my opinion) is one of demographics. It’s true that hundreds of millions of humans have lived and died before Abraham and Christ. But I believe (my stats may be wrong) that the majority of humans that have ever lived were born after Christ. In other words, ancient populations were relatively low. In fact there is one theory that about 70,000 years ago there was a bottleneck where the global human population was down to 15,000 people, or even less.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toba_catastrophe_theory

To me though, even this answer is unsatisfactory. It sounds similar to the “fullness of time” argument for the incarnation; Pax Romana, good highways, etc. But what better time than now, the Information Age?

 

[KyivAndrew]

Yes, as I understand it, there have been much, much more humans after Christ than before.

Plus God surely must have chosen an opportune moment for the Incarnation and for the work of the Church to begin and be spread. The Roman Empire provided the perfect conduit.
Had Christ been born some 8,000 years B.C., well there is the whole matter of the Ice Age.
The fact that He chose 1 A.D. and that Christ and the Church is still with us shows he chose the right time for coming to Earth for His Salvific Message to be heard by as many as possible.

Some say we humans, as we are today, only really came to our present full physical and mental make-up around 20,000 B.C. Who knows when God gave each human a soul?

Had Christ come earlier several centuries it is arguable whether His Mission would have gotten off the ground the way it did with the opportunities around the first century.

Just my 2 cents on a question I have as well considered.

 

[Deconi]

Adam and Eve knew God.

Their children, as exampled by Cain and Abel, also knew God! They ‘worshipped’ Him through their offerings etc. In fact it is the first record of the offerings. When Cain was ‘cast-out’ or left the family, he bore the ‘mark of Cain’ so all ‘others’ may see! This means there were populations that knew God, so they can differentiate what the ‘mark of Cain’ was!

From then until Noah, people went from ‘knowing’ God to the dillution of knowledge through generations to generations, until humanity only had a ‘concept’ of Supreme Being. But they still ‘knew’ there was something more than what can be seen!

Noah believed because he had residue this knowledge, enough for him to understand that The God, was addressing him; not the statutes and idols that the rest may have been worshipping. It is why he persevered in building an Ark that took more than a month, and probably a good portion of his life!

After Noah to Abraham, the same process again of people going from true knowledge of The Almighty’s existence, to again only a concept of what a god is, and Who God IS!

We can see that God confined revelation knowledge to a people, through Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Benjamin…etc etc. Remember Abraham was a Gentile until he was circumcised at about 90years old.

From all that, we have what we have through the people of God, until He Himself came down here to illuminate the understanding that ALL peoples and ALL creation are of God.

Now we have His Church that teaches whilst being Christian bears the mark of His people, ALL people are equal in His Sight and He desires ALL to be ‘back in the Garden.’

The Church has ‘only’ been here for 2-millenia, but through Her existence, God has left a BEACON for humanity so the misconceptions of the gaps between Adam to Noah to Abraham can no longer occur! Like The Church, God is NEVER hidden from humanity. St Paul clarifies this for us. The evidence for modern man is a plain as it was for all humans from Adam onwards. Yet, even in a ‘short’ period since Christ arrived, we already have those who do not believe their eyes, but look for alternative explanations to deny the obvious. Even The Bible has been dilluted and attacked; sometimes by non-believers!

Aww well…

 

[cassini]

Why was the Bible revealed only a few thousand years ago, Jesus etc.

But there where millions of years prior to that when God (Yahweh) was hidden?! And people where worshipping other idols and Gods.

Why didn’t God (Yahweh) want us to worship him from the beginning of time?

Hi Lemonbeam, here is my opinion.

Your question is an evolutionary myth and is a valid one only if you reject the Biblical timescale. If an evolutionary timescale causes unanswerable problems for the faith then you can bet your soul it is a false one.

There were no millions of years before the Bible and its revelations. Why bother to take the Bible seriously if before you open its pages you reject its simple revelations. Adam and Eve were the first ‘Christians’ so to speak. The Trinity existed then but had not been manifested in Christ. Thus loyalty to the Father then represented the Trinity (not now however, as a rejection of Christ now is a rejection of God). The Bible then tells us that man, the children of Adam, and their children and their children etc., divided into two after the fall, the few that remained faithful to the Law of God infused into Our First Parents and the rest that fell under the powers of the Devil (paganism) and sinned against the natural law and loyalty to the God of Adam and Eve. Then some 5,000 years ago God destroyed all mankind bar eight loyal men and women. From them came all the people on earth today. If people were around for millions of years the earth would have been overflowing with people. Multiply each generation even by a few and over millions of years you get hundreds of billions of poeple.

From the eight that came out of the Ark they too, as we read again in the Bible, separated into two, the pagans, and those loyal to the true God - hebrews, Jews. The rest you know, the coming of Christ, His rejection in turn by most, His acceptance by the few. Then He instituted the Church 2000 yeares ago. Thus there was not a day on earth when the true God had not been revealed to man.

 

[thistle]

Hi Lemonbeam, here is my opinion.

**Your question is an evolutionary myth and is a valid one only if you reject the Biblical timescale. If an evolutionary timescale causes unanswerable problems for the faith then you can bet your soul it is a false one. **

There were no millions of years before the Bible and its revelations. Why bother to take the Bible seriously if before you open its pages you reject its simple revelations. Adam and Eve were the first ‘Christians’ so to speak. The Trinity existed then but had not been manifested in Christ. Thus loyalty to the Father then represented the Trinity (not now however, as a rejection of Christ now is a rejection of God). The Bible then tells us that man, the children of Adam, and their children and their children etc., divided into two after the fall, the few that remained faithful to the Law of God infused into Our First Parents and the rest that fell under the powers of the Devil (paganism) and sinned against the natural law and loyalty to the God of Adam and Eve. Then some 5,000 years ago God destroyed all mankind bar eight loyal men and women. From them came all the people on earth today. If people were around for millions of years the earth would have been overflowing with people. Multiply each generation even by a few and over millions of years you get hundreds of billions of poeple.

From the eight that came out of the Ark they too, as we read again in the Bible, separated into two, the pagans, and those loyal to the true God - hebrews, Jews. The rest you know, the coming of Christ, His rejection in turn by most, His acceptance by the few. Then He instituted the Church 2000 yeares ago. Thus there was not a day on earth when the true God had not been revealed to man.

Can you clarify your first comments please. I hope you are not implying the earth is only a few thousand years old because that is something we are NOT obliged to believe.

 

[Deconi]

Nor are we obliged to reject it!

Mind you, he did state it was his opinion.

 

[cassini]

Can you clarify your first comments please. I hope you are not implying the earth is only a few thousand years old because that is something we are NOT obliged to believe.

Yes, I am saying the world is only a few thousand years old. Like you and all on CA forum I was educated to be a Copernican, a uniformitarianist and an evolutionist. I was thus stuffed up with intellectual pride, shooting down any uneducated opinion that actually believed the Bible literally where it touches on these matters. Like you I had to keep regurgitating that we don’t HAVE TO BELIEVE this and that and ended up believing I only had to believe in clearly defined dogmas and not in the ‘vestments’ they were wrapped in, resulting in 95% of the theology of these dogmas not making sense when considered under the influence of what we call science today. Following this rejection of revelation ALWAYS led to doctrinal confusion and usually rejection. Then one day an American scholar asked me to read a book pointing out all the metaphysical assumptions I had to make to become a Copernican, a uniformitarianist and an evolutionist. Now it is one thing to subject ‘lay science’ as the 67 professors at La Sapienza called it, to metaphysical assumptions, another to subject the theology of my faith to it also. Thus I began a 20 year study of it all and found no DOGMAS in science, only 400 years of fraud leading up to a science fit for atheists. Alas, theists support the science of atheists now. Since then I returned to the revelations of scripture that I held as a child. Once again every dogma and doctrine of the Catholic faith flowed with clarity and simplicity as God intended it.

Now let me get back to the theme of this thread: ‘God’s revelation, Time?’

Last Sunday after Penticost, the Gospel (Matt. 24 25) spoke of the end times, remember? Jesus said He would cause chaos in the heavens with the stars moving in all directions. But we all KNOW, DON’T WE, that because the stars are supposed to be up to billions of light years away, it will take billions of years for this movement to be seen on earth. Thus according to science the world could already have ended and we don’t know it yet. According to science this prophesy of the Gospel is impossible and thus we DON’T HAVE TO BELIEVE IN THAT GOSPEL, do we?

Now come to my traditional belief system, that held by all the Fathers, saints, and faithful up to the time of Galileo. We know God created the stars visible to man on the sixth day. Thus we have no problem believing that on the last day He will cause chaos in the stars as He appears from them to us all for our judgement.

Oh, one last thing, how good it feels to have purged that intellectual pride I had in rebutting a direct creation by fiat 6,000 years ago. Now I get laughed at instead. But you know what, I offer it up for rejecting revelation with ‘lay science’ for so many years and for sending any simple believer on the path to disbelief. Once again my Queen of science is scholastic theology, that practiced by St Robert Bellarmine and the Church in the seventeenth century.

 

[thistle]

Yes, I am saying the world is only a few thousand years old. Like you and all on CA forum I was educated to be a Copernican, a uniformitarianist and an evolutionist. I was thus stuffed up with intellectual pride, shooting down any uneducated opinion that actually believed the Bible literally where it touches on these matters. Like you I had to keep regurgitating that we don’t HAVE TO BELIEVE this and that and ended up believing I only had to believe in clearly defined dogmas and not in the ‘vestments’ they were wrapped in, resulting in 95% of the theology of these dogmas not making sense when considered under the influence of what we call science today. Following this rejection of revelation ALWAYS led to doctrinal confusion and usually rejection. Then one day an American scholar asked me to read a book pointing out all the metaphysical assumptions I had to make to become a Copernican, a uniformitarianist and an evolutionist. Now it is one thing to subject ‘lay science’ as the 67 professors at La Sapienza called it, to metaphysical assumptions, another to subject the theology of my faith to it also. Thus I began a 20 year study of it all and found no DOGMAS in science, only 400 years of fraud leading up to a science fit for atheists. Alas, theists support the science of atheists now. Since then I returned to the revelations of scripture that I held as a child. Once again every dogma and doctrine of the Catholic faith flowed with clarity and simplicity as God intended it.

Now let me get back to the theme of this thread: ‘God’s revelation, Time?’

Last Sunday after Penticost, the Gospel (Matt. 24 25) spoke of the end times, remember? Jesus said He would cause chaos in the heavens with the stars moving in all directions. But we all KNOW, DON’T WE, that because the stars are supposed to be up to billions of light years away, it will take billions of years for this movement to be seen on earth. Thus according to science the world could already have ended and we don’t know it yet. According to science this prophesy of the Gospel is impossible and thus we DON’T HAVE TO BELIEVE IN THAT GOSPEL, do we?

Now come to my traditional belief system, that held by all the Fathers, saints, and faithful up to the time of Galileo. We know God created the stars visible to man on the sixth day. Thus we have no problem believing that on the last day He will cause chaos in the stars as He appears from them to us all for our judgement.

Oh, one last thing, how good it feels to have purged that intellectual pride I had in rebutting a direct creation by fiat 6,000 years ago. Now I get laughed at instead. But you know what, I offer it up for rejecting revelation with ‘lay science’ for so many years and for sending any simple believer on the path to disbelief. Once again my Queen of science is scholastic theology, that practiced by St Robert Bellarmine and the Church in the seventeenth century.

Catholics are FREE to believe in a young earth or an old earth so don’t sit there being pompous telling us we must believe its only 6000 years old.
I firmly believe the earth is around 4.5 billion years old and that does NOT contradict Church teachings.

 

[Verbum]

Hi Cassini,

Are you paying rent or a mortgage? Any museum would gladly take you in for FREE.

Verbum