{"id":1225,"date":"2010-10-24T08:30:19","date_gmt":"2010-10-24T08:30:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/bibleandculture\/2010\/10\/the-garden-of-the-gods.html"},"modified":"2010-10-24T08:30:19","modified_gmt":"2010-10-24T08:30:19","slug":"the-garden-of-the-gods","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2010\/10\/the-garden-of-the-gods.html","title":{"rendered":"The Garden of the Gods"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Colo<\/a><\/form>\n
Colorado Springs is a pretty, spiritual place in many ways. It is the home of Navigators,  Dobson ministries, the Franciscan Retreat Center (where I met with the Ad Lib society),  the Air Force Chapel, and in terms of general revelation, the Garden of the Gods.   This post will be about what beauty erosion over millenia can do. <\/p>\n\"Colo<\/a><\/form>\n

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If you have visited Sedona Arizona, home of the big red rocks,  then the Garden of the God’s will appear familiar territory. What we have is spectacular rock formation whipped literally into interesting and odd shapes by the wind. <\/p>\n\"Colo<\/a><\/form>\n

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Jutting up from out of the ground,  the Garden of the God’s stands out even in the general craggy landscape of Colorado Springs. <\/p>\n\"Colo<\/a><\/form>\n

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In the cliffs dwell all sorts of beautiful blue birds who feast on the juniper berries that dot the bushes all around. <\/p>\n\"Colo<\/a><\/form>\n<\/div>\n
Here’s our budding scholar Yuliya in a panoramic view. <\/p>\n\"Colo<\/a><\/form>\n

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You can just see in the bottom of the picture above one of the many beautiful yellow aspens which dot the landscape of this region, and turn into brightly burning bushes at this time of year.<\/p>\n\"Colo<\/a><\/form>\n

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Balance rock is one of the more famous formations, seen above and below, with description of how it got that way.  I personally do not have any problem with statements indicating that the earth is very old indeed, as: 1) the Bible does not try to instruct us about the age of the earth; 2) this is a separate question from whether there is evolution of various species; and 3) for the last time, the genealogies in the Bible are not intended to be exhaustive or complete. They are segmented and more like ancient royal genealogies, which often left out whole generations for one reason or another (they were insignificant or were skeletons in the closet).  This is the case as well with Jesus’ genealogy in Matt. 1. It is not complete. <\/p>\n\"Colo<\/a><\/form>\n

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Colorado Springs is a pretty, spiritual place in many ways. It is the home of Navigators,  Dobson ministries, the Franciscan Retreat Center (where I met with the Ad Lib society),  the Air Force Chapel, and in terms of general revelation, the Garden of the Gods.   This post will be about what beauty erosion over millenia…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":199,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1225","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Garden of the Gods - The Bible and Culture<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2010\/10\/the-garden-of-the-gods.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Garden of the Gods - The Bible and Culture\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Colorado Springs is a pretty, spiritual place in many ways. It is the home of Navigators,  Dobson ministries, the Franciscan Retreat Center (where I met with the Ad Lib society),  the Air Force Chapel, and in terms of general revelation, the Garden of the Gods.   This post will be about what beauty erosion over millenia…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2010\/10\/the-garden-of-the-gods.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Bible and Culture\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2010-10-24T08:30:19+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/bibleandculture\/files\/import\/assets_c\/2010\/10\/Colo%20007-thumb-400x225-18626.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Ben Witherington\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"The Garden of the Gods - The Bible and Culture","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2010\/10\/the-garden-of-the-gods.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"The Garden of the Gods - The Bible and Culture","og_description":"Colorado Springs is a pretty, spiritual place in many ways. 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A graduate of UNC, Chapel Hill, he went on to receive the M.Div. degree from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and a Ph.D. from the University of Durham in England. He is now considered one of the top evangelical scholars in the world, and is an elected member of the prestigious SNTS, a society dedicated to New Testament studies. Witherington has also taught at Ashland Theological Seminary, Vanderbilt University, Duke Divinity School and Gordon-Conwell. A popular lecturer, Witherington has presented seminars for churches, colleges and biblical meetings not only in the United States but also in England, Estonia, Russia, Europe, South Africa, Zimbabwe and Australia. He has also led tours to Italy, Greece, Turkey, Israel, Jordan, and Egypt. Witherington has written over thirty books, including The Jesus Quest and The Paul Quest, both of which were selected as top biblical studies works by Christianity Today. He also writes for many church and scholarly publications, and is a frequent contributor to the Beliefnet website. Along with many interviews on radio networks across the country, Witherington has been seen on the History Channel, NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, The Discovery Channel, A&E, and the PAX Network.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/author\/bwitherington"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1225","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/199"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1225"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1225\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}