Introduction                   Oct 4, 2019        

We need to understand better the argument for the authenticity of the transmission of scriptures into the canon, and the dynamics of how the canon was formed together. This is a subject I have not really grappled with before the class, but coming to New York City, in the very liberal worldview world, it’s not difficult to be challenged about the authenticity of the Bible. Some have argued about the transmission of scriptures, and what happened to it, and the whole questions of man writing God’s word. It has produced a lot of angst among some Christians who are questioned and in turn cast a shadow in their minds of the authority of scriptures. The inerrancy of scriptures is also challenged by the liberal scholars, and have therefore influenced the faith of Christians. The worst is that the so called orthodox Christians are being shifted in their view towards liberal stand, and hence shipwrecked their faith. That is a real sad case, and I intend to learn and pray that what I have learnt from this class can be applied to help them and to argue for Christ. Of course, this will be further developed as this canon issue grows over the years.

Gospels Mark, Matthew, Luke and John were written between AD 50-90

Let’s get this right. All of the gospels were written by the apostolic circle in the 1^st century. Any manuscripts written in the 2^nd century were not included in canon. The apocryphal gospels, for instance were all written in the 2^nd-5^th century.

Jesus died at AD 33. The gospels were written barely like 30 years after his death. Therefore when the first manuscripts were published, it was exposed to readers who knew Jesus personally, walked with him, and witnessed some of the miracles Jesus did, and what Jesus taught, if any contradicted their memory of the record, they would have called it out and faced rebuttal.

The Rabbinic Way of learning

The Rabbinic way of learning in the old Jewish ancient tradition, is pretty much memorization word by word. Richard Balkan wrote extensively in his book and argued for the accurate word for word recording of the gospels and the teaching of Jesus in the Bible. Between AD 33- AD60, the messages with Jesus’ teachings, records of his miracles etc were all memorized and transmitted verbally, while, they were also, simultaneously, written down by the apostles and disciples.

The quantity and quality of Gospel Manuscripts, 2500 copies manuscripts

Talking about accuracy of the gospel and NT manuscript, there are 5,800 manuscripts of New Testament in view, 2500 copies of gospel , Latin 9000. And they all agree with one another with very minor differences, due to copying etc in the ancient world of 1st & 2 centuries. With this kind of quantity and copied manuscripts, and very little or hardly anything variance, this argues well for the confidence of the authenticity of the gospels. These overwhelming amount of manuscripts copied and copied in the 1^st century shows forth the strength of the accuracy of the transmission of the scripture.

Liberals Removed all Supernatural from the Bible

Be warned that liberal thinkers theologians in Germany in the enlightenment period, literally stripped off all supernatural deeds of Christ, and retained only the virtuous sayings and teachings of Jesus. Liberal theologians like Richtsl, Boltzmann etc have all done a great disservice to the Kingdom of God by following the god of rationalizing in rationalizing away all the supernatural that they couldn’t reason out. They essentially humanized a divine Christ and made it, so called palatable to human reasoning’s of the enlightenment period. This is dark, by denying the divinity of Christ, its is actually anti-Christ. Its demonic at the highest intellectual attack of Christ and Christianity overall.

All Scripture is inspired by the Holy Spirit

That’s in 2 Tim 3: ¹⁶ All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness. This is the final stamp of approval from the divine transcendent God himself. All scripture is God breathed, caused into existence by the breadth of God himself. John 1 1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. That’s how authoritative the Word of God is. In John, Jesus is the Word, and God created the world through His Son Jesus Christ, also the Word. You can see the scriptures brings life, eternal life. Its no ordinary book.

 

 

 

 

 

There is an uptick of what the Lord wants to do through what God already put in my heart over the years and now the recent experience of my brother in Christ, classmate, Helder Nozima in Convergence conference crystallized it.  For 2 years now, I have been attending RTS seminary (Reformed Theological Seminary) in New York, I’m more and more convinced that we need and must start a Reformed Charismatic church in New York city, because the Reformed lacks the gifts of the Spirit, while the charismatics lacks the reformed theology, which I think it’s the best in the world, and most God centered, biblical and accurate. But there is hardly or none I find in New York that’s truly reflecting that, and now that I have been trained in reformed theology for 2 years, done 32 credit hours, eager to see such a church birthed.

My friend Helder is an ordained Brazilian Presbyterian pastor who is now studying in RTS as well, and we have great conversations about this subject. He and wife recently attended a powerful conference, Convergence, a reformed charismatic conference on prophetic recently in Oklahoma, and he is pumped! https://www.convergenceconference.org/

See his FB sharing on this that says: “Can’t ignore anymore I still don’t know what to do But I can’t ignore the supernatural and supernatural demonstrations of the Holy Spirit. Prophesies, word of knowledge, discernment of spirits, languages… and gifts of cures. After coming to the convergence, to see cures (many, even of palsy resulting from pour) and being the target of supernatural actions of the spirit, I have no more to deny or choke this in my ministry. I continue to believe in the doctrines of grace, child baptism and the church’s church. But I also believe in the contemporary and exercise of all the gifts granted by the holy spirit I have the honor to follow Sam storms, Matt Chandler, Andrew Johnson, Jack Deere, Wayne Grudem and other retired and charismatic. I have the honor to call charismatic Arminians as Michael Brown brother. I’m not alone. How to do this? I don’t know Maybe something has to start from scratch. But it would be a serious sin to bury the gifts God gave me, and help to bury other people’s gifts.”

It would be a serious sin to “bury” the gifts God gave us. Have you thought f it that way? That’s  pretty scary to bury gifts that God gave you for a purpose. What do you plan to do as Christians? Do you just let it sit with you and not do anything about it? Like the parable of the talents? The guy hid the talent God gave him and did nothing. What then happened to that guy? What the little that he has is also taken away from him and given to the guy with 10 talents! Not to mention the absolutely scary scene of gnashing of teeth & outer darkness.

Seriously folks in the world today will want an experience with God, an encounter with God, to see the reality of Jesus. I say we need both the word & the Spirit to get the fire going. Revival is at hand coming to New York.

If you desire to see the prophecies flowing, healing gifts operating, and word of knowledge going together with great reformed teachings of the word of God in a meeting, check us out as we start a small group with these mentioned operating right here in Manhattan.

 

 

 

 

 

A refreshing encouraging memory lane with Hope KK founding days

August 30, 2019

Today my wife, daughter and I visited Malacca, and met up with Abigail Chong, our ex Hope KK Church leader for dinner. She is now pastoring Hope Malacca Church with her husband David. Its amazing she brought up how her first walk into Hope KK Church, when the sermon was about living water inside you, and how I asked everyone how many people would know that you are a Christian. She was struck by the Spirit of God that day. She commented it was the anointing of God in Hope KK at that time, that was palpable. College students like her, at that time, would be so smote by the worship and teaching of God’s word especially Friday night DMM (David’s Mighty Man) leadership teaching. Students from Hope Sabah in the church would wake up at 5:30 am three times a week, to pray. She even would end up at times sleeping through her lunch break in school. LOL. But she mentioned again it’s the anointing of God that made all these possible. All these were happening during our planting Hope KK Church for the first 5 years before we left for the US in 2001. Eighteen years have passed, but the memory was intact from a fervent servant of the Lord. It’s amazing to hear her story, which is almost faded from my memory. Interestingly I never heard this from Hope KK over the years I visited them. Tonight must be the timing of the Lord to speak this word of anointing to me. I was certainly refreshed and encouraged, and the words that struck me is the “anointing of God” at that time in Hope KK (Kota Kinabalu).

So the question is what’s happening now in New York? Great question, and many things come to my mind. NYC is certainly a different ball game altogether for church planting. The helicopter style of dropping a planter to a new city and leave without a denomination on the ground support has not worked in any planting experience in NYC. Paul’s church planting tent making ministry model may work in an extra ordinarily gifted person in Paul, and with enough support this can be done in the western world, and New York too. However, this planting in urban city has multiple facets and cultural dimensions embedded in it, that I wasn’t aware. I was ill prepared, but now by the grace of God, I am in Reformed theological seminar doing my MABS now, and later with City to city church planting module. Its amazing how much I have learnt and I have been illumined. Anointing doesn’t change, but the theology has strengthened and deepened. But theology in itself won’t cut it, but it has to be soaked in prayers, and seeking the face of the Lord, for that anointing comes from the Lord himself.

Recalling the mighty acts of God in our lives strengthen my faith and the God of Abraham, Isaiah, Jacob will not let us down, for he is the faithful awesome God. May God glorify his Name in us.

The Jesus of history as conjured by the liberals is an attempt to reconcile with science, which in many cases, do not agree within their own research and findings. Science has never been able to explain the walking on water by Jesus, the resurrection of Jesus, turning of water into wine, and not just in the gospel, but also in the OT, Moses parting of the Red Sea etc. Many scientists today including some big names have acknowledged there is no way to explain the miracles by science, and science can’t explain them and some of them have become professing christians. Bottom line, Christianity is a supernatural religion, not a human science religion/ethics club.

It all started in the Enlightenment period among the German Scholars & Philosophers. Names like Strauss, Bultmann, etc have all tried to reason away the gospel by removing all the supernatural deeds of Christ, in order to “appease” science of the day. In their attempt, they totally denied the divinity of Christ, and humanize the totally God-Man Jesus Christ. Gospels like Gospel of Thomas have all famously removed all those. Gospel of Thomas is a Gnostic gospel. The danger of liberalism is that they took away all the miracles & supernatural works of Jesus, but taken all the sayings of Jesus. This is precisely the gospel of the Gnostics. Then they embraced all the good virtuous sayings of Christ. That’s why they became so popular in the academic & university world. Check out any colleges, especially the humanities of the Ivy leagues in America, in Oxford Cambridge, in all the top schools in Europe, their influence is staggering. Christians would be naive thinking our warfare is just on evangelizing and losing the big picture mental intellectual world where all our young people flock to like in the major cities in the world.

You may be asking why do we even bother to entertain them? I thought so myself, but unfortunately apparently they have wielded quite a lot influence in the academic world, in the modern universities and Colleges, that is how liberalism started and invaded the colleges professors & our children in colleges. The only to fight that, is to have evangelical christians to become scholars by enrolling in Theological Seminaries.

I have benefited enormously from seminaries, and me coming from a pentecostal background in Reformed Theological Seminary, is a awesome combination. I would urge folks to join a reformed theological seminary, for they have the highest standard of theology. I will share a lot more, in my future posts.

What are some problems with non-Reformed views of the Sermon on the Mount and how does the Reformed view avoid (or answer) those same problems?

Sermon on the Mount presented enormous challenge to Christians to follow on the surface. Jesus basically went beyond the OT Torah Moses laws, as given to Israel. Like you shall not commit adultery, but Jesus said if you look at a woman with lust, you have committed adultery. Like an eye for an eye in the OT, but Jesus changed it to if you are slapped on the left cheek, turn the other cheek too.

Anabaptists seeing the radical nature of the call of Jesus on SM, decided to withdraw from the society and the civil law in order to really live out the commands of SM.

Thomas Aquinas taught in his Summa Theologia there are two levels, one is for all Christians, and a second for application only to a few, and that’s his way of separating the laity and clergyman as the commands are too hard for the former, which is essentially what the Catholics have taken.

Reformed teaching is saying not to turn SM into a new legalism with the stringent application of all the details, but the discovery of a new, radical love for both God and neighbor in our hearts. Jesus said in a number of places that he is the fulfillment of the law. That’s the only way to approach SM, by knowing and expediting the radical love of Jesus in our hearts, we can, and only then, respond in l=kind with our love to him and gradually our neighbor.

I think SM reaffirms the OT laws and point to Jesus as the ultimate fulfillment of the OT law. And we will have greater respect and understanding on the relationship between OT law and NT grace period in Christ.

Living in this very sexualized society today in America, or any big city, men facing worldly lustful temptations is very real. No one is exempt from this. We are continually bombarded by the sensual media of the world in the media. It’s a well-known fact that Christians struggle with purity in this world, and porn has been a real destructive force among millions of men and a lot of Christians are not spared. A very good book to read is “Mortifying Sins”- by John Owens.

One day I felt stirred in my heart to read this famous book by John Owens, and I started reading it, and as I was reading chapter one, he quoted this verse in Romans 8.

¹³ For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live. Romans 8 KJV

I was hit by this verse that says it as it is, so in your face kind of tone “If you live according to the flesh, you will die”. There is no negotiation. No reasoning. No further explanations. It just hits me in my head. I was alarmed by it, and thought to myself, I don’t want to die. Therefore I should not live after the flesh.

You know how as Christians we often play with such words. It’s like negotiating with God’s word. It’s like we don’t take God’s word seriously. We love the verses of God for blessings, but we take it with a grain of salt for those verses with warnings. And the reason we don’t take them seriously enough is that it doesn’t hit us in the heads, so to speak. It’s kind of head knowledge. Actually you can apply that to verses of promises too. So the key is to let it hit you on the heads.

I can describe my own experience. A sense of fear, Godly fear, dawned upon me, after I read that verse in Owens’ book. I immediately paused and meditated over that verse. It really sank it in. So when I face temptations, I recall that verse, it hits me again. It’s like the Spirit of God brings it alive. This makes me appreciate more what the Holy Spirit is working with the bible.

¹² For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. (Hebrews 4)

That’s the word of God. Sharper than a double-edged sword! It’s cutting. It divides soul and spirit. What happen is a lot of times, the word of God is blunted by our soul, spirit, and also the circumstances around us. It take us to calm down and spend time meditating through the logos to become rhema, quickened word of God. But that still doesn’t cut it sometimes, it is those special moments God really wants to communicate something to us. Its precious, and you won’t forget it. The thing is this, the more you spend time meditating and praying through God’s words, the more you will be getting revelation. This should motivate us pray more. Lets take a look at these verses:

² Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. (Rom 12)

That “renewal of the mind” is the key. How does that happen? Mind can only be renewed when we read the bible verses, meditating upon them, and prayerfully letting Holy Spirit convict us, touch us. Its just like what I described earlier experientially how I felt hit in my head when I read that “living by the flesh, you will die.” That’s renewing happening right away. And that happened to me when I was actually reading a renown author’s book “Mortifying your sins” by John Owen who quoted Romans 1 on this. God can do it in a thousand ways, and He is sovereign. What we should be concerned is that we need to seek the Lord in reading books, bible & prayer.

We all need a special revelation of the Lord like weekly.

I am wonderfully and fearfully made in my mother’s womb. I began to reflect upon this one time when I was jogging to catch my early morning shuttle bus last week, and my foot got caught on an uneven road surface, and I stumbled and almost fell. My reflex action, a built in mechanism that God has endowed to all of us, kicked into action and stabilized my body after a brief fumble. At that moment, it dawned on me how wonderfully I am made by God and that verse came into my mind. Then it hit me there is another portion of that verse that’s hardly caught by me, and that’s ‘fearfully’ made.

¹³    For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. ¹⁴    I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. (Psalm 139)

I want to talk about the verse that says we are “fearfully” made by God. I think we are wonderfully made, of course, just look at the complexity of our bodies, the muscles, tendons, blood vessels, the heart that’s constantly pumping, the kidney that’s constantly filtering, the liver that filters our blood to cleanse our blood, and the intestines as long as a football field. All these are too amazing for my mind to comprehend, and we have breath & spirit and emotion & feelings. Who and how is all these put together that’s called my body? I am just amazed. To say it’s wonderful doesn’t do the job; it has to also include the second portion that says we are “fearfully” made by God.

I totally get it. We are fearfully made by God. It’s a holy fear. I tremble and being amazed in awe at the amazing complex functionality and organism’s balance in the most amazing way that modern robot and artificial intelligence can only gaze from a distance. It’s fearful. It’s awesome.

Ephesians 1:4 ⁴ even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him.

That is another mind boggling thing. God chose us before the foundation of the world. That’s before Genesis 1. God had already chosen us to be holy before him. That’s sacred. Our life was not created randomly. But it was purposeful to be holy and sacred even before God created this world! Think about that! That’s how much God had thoughts about us. He loved us even before the world was created. It’s like David who said it’s just too wonderful for my thought.

If we only catch a glimpse of the awesomeness and fearfulness of our bodies creation by the Almighty God, we would start to appreciate life more, and more thankful to God and families. Mre awed by God. It’s an incredible feat that God put us all together in this world. The silent heart pumping away, the silent liver filtering away, the silent kidney filtering it away, we have taken all these sacred acts of God for granted. There needs to be an awakening to such appreciation of the beauty and wonder of the creation of God, that Genesis 1 must come alive again and again.

Genesis 1: ⁷ then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.

That verse that says, “God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life” is sacred to me. That’s sacredness, holiness, glory & power of God. God breathed into Adam the breath of life. God didn’t breathe into Adam hot air, or cool air, but breath of LIFE. His personal breath. I love that our God is a personal God. He breathed into us. That’s personal. Which idol or god you have heard that their god breathed into their nostrils. Its almost too intimate. Our life came from the breath of God, and we are now the descendants of Adam & Eve. Its very important for me that the God that I love & follow is a personal God. Not a cosmic force somewhere, but one who feels with me & for me.

There is a lot of implications. First we should treasure life. All that we have comes from God. We may not have a lot, but a sense of thankfulness must fill our hearts every day. Whenever we lose sight of that, it’s time to remind ourselves of how wonderfully and fearfully made by God. The whole concept of identity has to come from the very hands that knitted us together. No one else can give us the identity. Not the culture, not the inner desire of our hearts, which often are deceitful.

Life begins at conception. Gender begins at conception. Our identity begins at conception. God’s hands knitted us in our mothers’ wombs. Wonderfully & fearfully made. We cannot question the wonderfulness and fearfulness of how God created us. There is no way for us to point our fingers back to God and say hey God you made a mistake. Our naturally born gender is determined by God. Do not change that or challenge that. We are not the creator; we are the creation.

Until we recognized the hands that knitted us in our mothers’ wombs are the same hands that were nailed to the cross, we will never experience the joy of true freedom & liberty through the redemption of God. And unless we are redeemed, we will always remain a creation of God that has never known our maker.

What is it & why do we need to understand it

Modern Criticism of 19^th century basically centered in Germany the Gospel has, in my understanding, perpetuated the modern critical interpretation by the liberalism thinkers of today. Some of the tangible effects today are like liberal Christians love the kindness and compassion of Christ but reject his resurrection and virgin birth and even the historicity of Christ!

Most average church goer Christian would probably respond so what? It hardly affects my life. But the reality is, it has affected millions of people especially the millennial generation with this being taught in colleges, being the liberalism colored lens. If we want to reach out to the educated mass today, we must understand better the liberalism Modern Criticism of the Gospel.

This is very problematic because essentially, they the liberals refuse to back down from being called a Christian, while rejecting the miraculous and the virgin birth f Christ and the resurrection of Christ, because they are amazed with the person Jesus Christ, and loving his virtuous deed and teachings, like the sermon on the Mount, the good Samaritan, stop being judgmental, feeding the poor, kind and compassionate, indeed Jesus is a par excellence moral character to them, but alas, nothing divine. And why? Because in their mind, this doesn’t fit into or congenial to their scientific minds and worldview! So they actually dissected the gospel and divided as they wish to try to “fit” into the science driven worldview.

A famous liberalism thinker scholar in Germany called Rudolf Bultmann in the 19^th century has impacted much modern liberalism. Robert Strimple wrote:             While he actually summarized the theology of the New Testament that is set in that mythical cosmological framework:

            The aeon is held in bondage by Satan, sin, and death and hastens to its end. That end will come very  soon, and will take…a cosmic catastrophe. The Judge will come from heaven, the dead will rise…”In the fullness of time, God sent forth his Son, a pre-existent divine Being, who appears on earth as a  man. He dies the death of a sinner on the cross and makes atonement for the sins of men…. The risen           Christ is exalted to the right hand of God in heaven and made “Lord” and “King”. He will come  again on the clouds of heaven to complete the work of redemption, and the resurrection and judgment of  men will follow.”[1]

This all fit into the biblical gospel very well, and we rejoice. But no! But Bultmannn insisted, it is impossible for any modern person to receive in such a message: “Man’s knowledge and master of their world have advanced to such an extent through science and technology that it is no longer possible for anyone seriously to hold the New testament view of the world-in fact there is no one who does. [2]

What catches my attention is this line: “The mythical eschatology is untenable for the simple reason that the Parousia of Christ never took place as the New Testament expected. History did not come to an end,…it will continue to run its course.” This is a wrong exegesis statement from Bultmann and it has such huge significance, because that is the breaking point for him to turn away from true Christianity sadly. For a brilliant mind to land in such dark philosophical thinking, is very grieving as he and a lot of other liberalism scholars impacted the books and syllabus we read in colleges today and for the past centuries. Why blame it on the return of Christ (parousia) not happened yet? And that caused Bultmannn to conclude the mystical eschatology as untenable?? That means the supernatural miraculous, and the final judgment. So sad. Maybe he should have exegete the timing of the parousia, like a day is a thousand years to the Lord, and a 1000 years like a day.

He tried so hard to reconcile the mythical side of the bible to the reality of science of his days. He even tried to call to delete the mythological (supernatural for us) in the New Testament as “husk”, so that the “kernel” of truth might remain (as Harnack had suggested)? But he said that one couldn’t delete the husk because the truth (kernel) is actually embedded in the so-called husk. Therefor his conclusion is not to delete the mythological elements of the NT, but to transform that kerygma into the conceptual framework with which modern people operate. You see the attempts of these philosophers go deep. In my view these folks have just put science onto a pedestal that’s idolatry. Ironically, science can’t explain conclusively the black hole and tons of stuff including the evolution in our 21^st century, let alone their 19^th century.

So Bultmannn went ahead and reconstructed the whole Gospels, calling it to decontextlaization and recontextualization. Bultmannn teaches that we must understand the Gospel mythology, not cosmologically but anthropologically, or more specifically, existentially.

Christian’s response

The biggest problem is the definition of human nature, Being. Their problem can be summarized in Boltzmann’s question: “Must we understand it as the cross of Jesus as a figure of past history? Must we go back to the Jesus of history?”

Strimple writes: Christ’s death and resurrection saved all who believed in him because Jesus is God’s Son, whom he appointed as heir of all things, and through whom God made the universe. The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word” (Heb 1:2-3) This is the one whom the angels worship (1:6) and who is addressed as “God” (1:8), but “who was made a little lower than the angels…so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone, “ and who “ is not ashamed to call” those whom he makes holy “brothers” and who “shared in their humanity”. (2:9,11,14) In other words, the significance of his work is grounded in the significance of this person as the God-man. [3]

The question that confronts us today is that whether we are willing to understand ourselves as one crucified and risen with Christ.

---

[1] Strimple, Robert   The Modern Search for the Real Jesus    P&R Publishing 1995, New Jersey  p120

[2] ditto

[3] ditto

John Piper has a very good teaching on this very important subject albeit very challenging as we pit Bible Vs science ie. evolution as necessitated by the argument from our scientific driven society that was started in the Enlightenment age in the 19th century. A lot of Christians are not even bothered about this subject, and ask why? Pastors rarely touched on it too, but the liberals including the liberal Christians and scholars have a swinging time knocking down our creation narrative, and replacing it with evolution with books and talks. To me, this is very troubling and disturbing, and definitely needs to be examined and taught well so our folks in churches will respond well to the outside world, especially with our kids in schools facing evolution syllabus and books.

Tim Keller in a talk in TGC that scientists had concluded humans cannot be all from a single set of parents, ie Adam & Eve genetically. They are supposed to be from a group of homosapiens in the sub-Sahara desert in Africa. Now my question is, genetically where do these group of “early fathers” in Africa come from? The early group of humans in Africa can’t be direct creation from God or evolution from Garden of Eden?

Piper has taught that theoretically it is possible that God used evolution to create the mankind and animals called Theistic Evolution. Exegetically, you can’t reconcile that to the death of one man, brought death to the one man, etc. To believe in the historical Adam, it’s impossible to believe in Theistic Evolution. Hermeneutically, with the historical Adam & Eve, and that God breathed into the first man’s nostrils to give him life, this doesn’t compute with the billions of years to develop mankind. Looking at the spider coming out of the pond, with its ability to make web for its offspring, the question is such intricacy & complexity ability, where do they come from? Theistic evolution is a no go.

Just because Galileo made a mistake claiming from the bible that the earth is flat, does not mean science has triumphed over the bible. I would say Galileo made an exegetical mistake. Sola Scriptura.