I guess my response is: Does 'all' ever mean 'all' in the bible? Just because you can find a place where it is a limited all doesn't mean it is always a limited all.
There is only one all that concerns me for now, and that is did God make all in 6 days. I see clearly not.
I see logic in the creation week which all you YEC's don't.
A parent walks into their teenager's room and the place looks tohu and bohu like a bomb has hit it and the teen is asleep in bed. First thing the parent does is draw the blinds, switch on the light to see - and then tells the teen to clean up this devastation. Which is what God did.
Also, if one were to create heavenly bodies, earth, space and all would be created first, and at the same time logically. Just like God creates all land animals one day, sea animals the next. But before God utters one word like "Let..." there is already an earth - albeit tohu and bohu.
Let's be literal and say that in Gen 1:1 God ONLY made the heaven (second heaven - or space/time) and the earth. Then God by this description made earth "without form and void" meaning a bad job. Why? Why not just create it right, right from the start? And scripture says God did not make it tohu and bohu.
Isa 45:18
For thus saith the LORD that created the heavens; God himself that formed the earth and made it; he hath established it, he created it not in vain, H8414 he formed it to be inhabited: I am the LORD; and there is none else.
Notice that the same word "tohu" or Strongs H8414 is used in Isa 45:18 as in Gen 1:2
And the earth was without form, H8414 and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
God DID NOT by His own words create the world "tohu".
But besides that, why do you suppose any of your examples are examples of a limited "all"? The text was describing a state that could be described as "in progress" on the one hand or as "didn't continue" on the other.
Because they ARE examples of limited all's. Find me an all that is not limited.
You make the mistake of folks who say God knows all things to include the unlimited future, which is not so. God does not even know all that I may choose to have in my next meal, because it is my choice. The Bible is FULL of examples of God not knowing what our choices will be till we make them, because God gave us free will.
On the one hand:
God planted a garden, but gave man responsibility for it, to "tend" it. Thus, God help in the instantiation of the dominion. But the whole world was NOT a garden. Thus, it appears that God started the dominion-taking process, and man was supposed to continue it. How else do we know this? How about two verses after your first example:
[Gen 1:28 KJV] And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.
Even God didn't think they already had dominion over everything. But did that mean He didn't mean "all" in vs 26? Vs 28 says He did, but it involved some work on man's part.
Thus they had to exercise the dominion He offered to them. They had to subdue the earth and make it work for them.
Even with all todays technology, man has not even begun to subdue the earth, let alone survey the ocean depths etc. Thus even today it is far from an all all or inclusive all.
On the other:
If God gave them the whole earth, that included the Garden of Eden, right? And even if "all" didn't mean "all", surely you would admit that it included the Garden, right? Yet they were denied re-entry after the fall. There was a part of the earth that they lost dominion of.
Thus they didn't continue in the dominion He gave them originally.
Fine, then prove my point for me. God never gave them all dominion from the start, because they were limited to living in Eden, and afterwards they were limited to outside Eden. So both cases there were parts of the earth away from their dominion.
I think your post is indicative of how you see the world--that "everything continues as it always has". Yet Peter warned against this way of thinking.(2Pet 3:4)
So now you think this prophecy refers to OEC's. What a laugh. It refers to the 5 unwise virgins who let their oil supply dwindle, because they thought the night the Lord returned would be like all past nights when He had not. BTW I am not holding my breath that Christ will return in my lifetime, because up to now all the false prophets proclaiming His imminent return have been wrong.
In light of that, let's approach your second and third examples.
"Are" is a present tense verb. Yes, some "are" poisonous. Have they always been? I don't know for sure, but it's very possible that there were no poisonous plants in the beginning. After all, He called it all "very good". Maybe "very good" means that there weren't any poisonous plants or animals, or any animals that wanted to kill and eat men, like sharks and tigers.
And now we wander off into a Terry Pratchet Diskworld where you make up rules you would like to apply to the past, without any need for evidence. Now we are fiction writing.
The non-fiction writing shows a world with world upon world of fossils all eating each other - worlds we have never seen because they are past worlds. That's called science - specifically palaeontology.
We get a lot of our understanding of the earth of the past from fossils, but fossils are indicative of death, and we imply the life that those animals and plants lived prior to death. The one time that would be hard to talk much about today, using fossils, is a time when no animals died. If none died, then none would be leaving fossils to tell us that or how they lived.
This is circular logic. If there is a fossil, it is because it died. If it died, it died before the fall, because before the fall, nothing died. SAYS WHO? Certainly not Paul. Paul said death entered the world by one man, Adam - a stretch because it entered by one Woman, and Paul referred only to human death. And even then he was stretching it because lots died before Adam and Eve died, including the animal God killed to cloth them. So one could equally say death entered because God killed an animal. But I would be lying, because animals had been killing animals forever, and were doing so outside and inside Eden before the fall.
Folks have taken Paul's "Death entered by one man" and created a whole world of fiction around this to say not one leaf fell off a tree before Adam sinned. Ellen White wrote this, that as Adam sinned, the first leaf withered and fell off a tree. Nice fiction. I like fiction now and then, and there is a lot of it on TOL.
Theoretically, then, we would have no understanding of the beginning of creation from fossils. We wouldn't know if there were poisonous plants.
By your logic/fiction, yes, that logically follows, but in reality the past is as easy to read in the rocks as old light is to read from Hubble. Scientists understand what happened.
We have never "seen" a star form. We think we have seen the evidence that a star formed "recently", usually some thousands of years or more after the light left the source. But the view we are seeing is not like a viewing of a formation, but of the conditions we THINK are formation conditions. As far as I know, we have never seen an area of space where a star wasn't, suddenly have a star in it. We have seen the opposite, or close to opposite, where a star was, then it wasn't (or then there was a supernova there). We are implying from the data that there are star forming regions because stars we see there seem to be young.
But even if that theory is correct, when did that star first appear? Even the closest star forming region is 1500 light years away, and the stars have been there as long as we've been looking. So all of the stars must be at least 1500 years old. The currently theory suggests it takes around 10 MILLION years for a star to form. And we've been watching them for a couple of hundred years, and you think we are actively seeing stars form???
So, if God really did form the heavens and the earth in 6 days, and it looks to us like it takes 10 million years, all of the stars would appear like they were already there, which is what we see, and maybe there would be dusty regions. I think you've regressed in your explanation.
But wait a second, the standard theory picks out possible star forming regions because of new stars and dust. But if dust is clearing, ISN'T THAT EXACTLY THE SCENARIO YOU USED TO SAY THE SUN WASN'T MADE DURING THE SIX DAYS? Why do YOU get to say stars were made when dust is clearing, and the bible isn't allowed to say the sun was made when the atmosphere is clearing? (That's called a double standard.)
Sorry, more Diskworld or YEC fiction. The cosmos looks like stars are forming and exploding and all the other good stuff science says is happening because stars ARE forming and exploding in supernovae, releasing heavier elements to make up elements heavier than iron, to give life. We are stardust.
We just did away with your limited "alls" in the first three verses. This is the way logic works.
I appreciate the effort you put into your post, but we did not even make a dent in my limited alls. Find me an unlimited all in the Bible.
Agreed, but they cold come again.
That's why I don't like to call Christians who are interested and trying "heretics" because it is a word suggestive of inquisition. I personally don't call YEC's heretics because it is quite possible to believe in Jesus and receive eternal life, and have a bad science education. After all, most of what we know today from palaeontology and cosmology was unknown to the early apostles.
