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In the church where I was preaching yesterday, I sat in on an adult Sunday School class. It was using Lifeway Curriculum, and the teacher was largely reading from the teacher's guide. In it, she read that there were 5,200 years between Adam and Christ. Does anyone have info on how that calculation is made by the "new earth" folks. She also read a line that said everyone from Adam to Jesus was lost until Jesus came. I'm curious about the theology of these statements. This is not an attack but a question to try to help folks understand what they are being taught.

The 5200 years comes from Eusebius using the Septuagint. Don't you love LifeWay's stuff?

What was the curriculum?

5200 is much more meaningful and biblical than 4004. After all, it is a year's weeks of centuries. Also, Bishop Ussher is mispeld I think.

The second assertion in that was one that bothered me more than dates--the idea that no one went to heaven before Jesus came.

Does Lifeway carry a curriculum that claims hand tools have a gender? I nearly got tossed out of a "lady's home bible study" that asked the question "Do your sons know the use of such masculine tools as a hammer, screwdriver, and adjustable wrench?" The leader's husband was home from work that day, working on some project in the next room. He had to go out to the garage he started laughing so hard.

It's the Explore the Bible series but I haven't been able to find a copy yet.

Maybe I've now been out of the SBC too long to relate. I do read the statistics that there are still a lot of Christians who believe the earth is only 6,000 years old and buy into the Creation Museum kind of theology.

But when I was a Southern Baptist I could believe that the SBC didn't want to support women clergy, though I did, and I could believe that the fundamentalists wanted to push the idea of Biblical inerrancy. But if someone had told me that SBC Sunday School curriculum would one day support the idea that the earth was formed in 4004 BC (or some time there about) I'd have laughed at you.

I'm not a scientist, and I don't play one on TV. But the evidence is all around us that young earth creationism is just bunk.

It really disturbs me that any modern Christian born in the 20th or 21st century could believe such a thing much less that it be taught by a major Christian denomination. The more I think about it, how depressing!

I'll be interested William.

I realize that I have my own biases. But I have a hard time buying a view of God that gives us YEC. That isn't new. I argued for theistic evolution in a speech in High School more than 30 year ago.

Let's put this in perspective for just a minute. Sunday School curriculum is not authored at Lifeway, it is only edited there. The writers are independently contracted. Obviously, if something didn't fit with their perspective, it would not be published, but that may make a difference when it comes to the presentation of this material.

Most of what I've seen on this subject along this vein traces the human history recorded in the scripture back to the fall, not creation itself. That's easily done using the genealogies that are recorded.

The majority of Protestant Christians are conservative evangelicals, and among them, there are very few who accept the theory of evolution. Most of them are YEC and their doctrinal statements reflect that. That means the majority of American Christians believe in literal, Biblical creation.

OK then Sandy, not intending to be insulting, but I don't want to get into this one with you then. Wow I find the very idea to be totally out of the realm of possibility. So I don't think I'm going to argue with you about it.

I don't understand why so many Young Earth folks are so firm in the date of the fall and so loose on the duration of the elapsed time preceding it. I mean, we have Moses' inspired word for it that the fall occurred during the first 130 years of Adam's life, probably at least a few decades earlier (since Seth's birth postdated the births of Cain and Abel, and all three came after the fall), and we know from the same source that Adam was created within a few days of the creation of the earth. The iffiness in the Scriptures seems to be mostly postpatriarchal, and to get worse as we approach modern times.

I taught that lesson on Feb. 16, and I don't remember anything about no one being saved prior to Christ. My teacher support material from Lifeway was the teacher's book and commentary. I read both completely and do not remember anything about no one being saved before Christ (I would have challenged that). I suspect she was reading from some supporting material material that I do not have.

rfuss