Playtime!

I've done a few really serious posts recently, so I thought it would be fun to do something a bit more fun for a change.  How many of us watch videos on YouTube?  Almost everybody (everyone who doesn't have a filter, that is).  But how many of us are sick of the horrible quality of the movies (No, not the stupidity of the kid pouring soup down his brother's back, I'm talking about the video quality, the sharpness of the picture)?  I know I am.  At least, I used to be.  However, I recently was shown this really cool trick: if you add &fmt=18 to the very end of the video url, it forces Youtube to play in higher quality!  See, when you upload a video to Youtube, it gets recompiled into FLV.  But, when you add this code, it plays an MPEG-4 version, which is higher quality.

Now for the caveats.  Since this video is higher quality, it is also larger (For one Music video I checked out, the FLV version was 11 MBs, while the MPEG-4 one was 22 MBs).  This means if you have slow internet connection speed, or a slow computer, you'll want to use this feature with caution.  Also, this doesn't work with every single video on Youtube.  I think it's just more recently uploaded ones.  

Enjoy.

Nature of Death

This entry is a continuation of my previous post, Ophidian's Oration.  This time I'm going to discuss the Death before the Fall.

 Often times, young-earth creationists claim that one of the reasons old-earth creationism is wrong is because they do not believe that anything died before the Fall.  Old-earth creationists (of which I am one), however, claim that the world is millions of years old and that animals were dying long before the Fall.  

Why do young-earth creationists believe no animals died before there was sin? They site this verse: Gen. 2:16-17 (ESV)  And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden,  but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”

Let's step back and examine this verse.  This is the first and only command that God gives to Adam and Eve.  Thus, breaking this one command is the only way they could have sinned.  God makes a statement here "for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die”.  Death.  What is death?  How would Adam have known what it means "to die", if he had never seen anything dead? It would have been like God telling you not to eat the cookies on the shelf, for in that hour you will glostugiliath.  I can imagine your blank face as you try to figure out what it means  to glostugiliath.  If Adam and Eve didn't know what death was, why would God tell them that they would die?

Also, I would like to point out that God appears to tell a lie. "for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die".  Well, we all know that Adam and Eve went on to live for a few years--enough to have several children--before they expired.  How do we fit that in with God's warning?  

I believe the answer appears a long time later, in book of Romans, chapter five.

 "For if, because of one man's trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ.  Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men.  For as by the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man's obedience the many will be made righteous.  Now the law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, so that, as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord."

So we see here that through Adam came death, but through Christ comes life.  We all know that Jesus gives us eternal life, that's what we're taught from the very first time we hear about Him.  Now follow me here, and pay close attention.  Through Jesus, comes Life. Through Adam, came Death.  Are we comparing apples and oranges; Physical death vs. Spiritual life?  I don't think so.  I believe that Paul is talking about Spiritual life and Spiritual Death.  When Adam disobeyed God, he introduced not physical death, but the death of the soul.  For added support, in John 8:51 when Jesus said,  "I tell you the truth, if anyone keeps my word, he will never see death."  [This sounds vaguely like the other side of what God said back in genesis ("If you do not keep my word, you will die").]  Is Jesus talking about physical death?  Absolutely not.  There is no one who has not died--Paul, John, Luke, Matthew, Mark--they died, some by very unpleasant means.  So, we can see that He meant spiritual death.  

Why would God punish sin with physical Death, while offering Spiritual Life through Christ?  I believe that Adam brought Spiritual Death to mankind, while Jesus Christ brought Spiritual Life.