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Proposal

Written for an end-time setting, the language of Revelation 14:7c ("Worship him who made heaven, earth, sea, and the fountains of waters") seems to speak eloquently to the crescendoing dismissal of a six-day creation and a global flood initiated by James Hutton's bombshell, Theory of the Earth, 1785, and later by Mark Noll's Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, published in 1994. Recently, New Testament scholar, Jon Paulien, establishes a verbal parallel allusion between Revelation 14:7c and Exodus 20:11. Building on Paulien's research, Revelation 14:7 may implicitly affirm the creation chronological phrase "in six days" of Exodus 20:11 even though not explicitly stated in the allusion. This can represent a contemporary divine endorsement of the concept of a historical creation week. Finally, the work of three other scholars indicate that the biblical flood is also reaffirmed by the surprise ending of Revelation 14:7c. In the judgment theme and context of Revelation 14 the final words, "fountains of waters," recall God's global Genesis judgment flood. These conclusions indicate how Revelation 14:7 affirms the historicity of these twin concepts so crucial to the gospel, and endorses a responsible biblical literalism.

Keywords

Deep time, fossiliferous geologic column, mantra, verbal allusion, end-time, biblically constructed cosmology, faith, reason, hermeneutics, responsible biblical literalism, theistic evolution, progressive creation, James Hutton, Friedrich Schleiermacher, Charles Darwin, Mark Noll, Revelation 14:7, Exodus 20:11, Genesis 7:11, "fountains of the deep, " Jon Paulien, Wilhelm Michaelis, Oleg Zhigankov, Henry Morris

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