Christians, which of the following do you believe?

Most believe all of it.

yes, i believe it and most Christians do as well. what it boils down to is this: with God, all things are possible.

but, you should know there is a lot of information out there about these things, and if you're truly interested, you should do a little research. for instance, the Bible does not say that Jonah lived inside a whale, it says a big fish, and there is a distinct difference between living in the two! like i said, do a little research so you will be better informed, whether you are a believer or not.

God bless you.

oh, to answer your last question, discernment comes from prayer, Bible study and from the Holy Spirit. much of the Bible IS literal, yet much is not. some, i do not understand. that's one of the amazing things about the Bible. one can study it for a lifetime and still not know it all. new things are revealed with each reading and rereading. when we get to heaven, we will then understand all.

1.. Yes I believe it. I cannot explain it scientifically if that's what you're looking for but the scriptures says that "with God, all things are possible. (Matthew 19:26)

2. Yes I believe it. God holy spirit, which is very powerful parted the red sea.

3. Yes I believe it and it's possible because like any other human, they had sex and had babies.

4. Yes I believe it. It's possible because the bible says that God is "the source of life". Wouldn't it make sense that he would have the ability to make someone dead come back to life?

5. Yes I believe it. If Noah and his family were killed off, we wouldn't be here. We are his descendants.

all these things are real and literally happened

1) Jonah lived in the stomach of a whale for days

he lived in a huge fish that required to breath air but swam in the water as a whale

2) Moses parted the Red Sea

god caused it by having a strong wind blow across the area to prat the water

3) The first two humans were Adam and Eve, they were created in the full human form, and populated the entire human species

it is easy to do

each generation married each other

4) Lazarus literally rose from the dead

god made him come back to life

5) There was a global flood that killed all life on Earth except for what was on Noah's Ark

it killed only the life that required air to breathe

water animals were not killed

1) It was a submarine! Lol I don't know, I haven't gotten to that part of the Bible yet so I'm still undecided about how to interpret it.

2) Sort of. Moses did not part the Red Sea, God caused it to part. The Red Sea was actually the Sea of Reeds, which is, incidentally, now a five-lane highway. It was called the Sea of Reeds because it was shallow enough that reeds grew in it. Tides and wind, directed by God, combined to drop the level of the sea so that dry ground was exposed and the Hebrews were able to cross. Once the Hebrews were safely across, God reversed the wind and tide so that the sea came rushing back and the Egyptians following them drowned.

3) Humans evolved from other primates, and Adam was the first human to develop language, the last great step in human evolution. The Bible says he named the animals. God saw Adam was lonely and caused to be born a female also capable of learning language. Adam and Eve were not necessarily the names of these first humans, but they're as good of names as any.

4) Again, haven't gotten to that part of the Bible, but as I recall from Sunday school, Jesus said Lazarus wasn't dead, only sleeping, so maybe the best interpretation is that Lazarus was just in a very deep coma.

5) I've heard of some scientific evidence of a global flood, but until I can track it down and verify it for myself I'm going to believe that "the whole world" really just meant "the whole world that Noah knew," meaning really a very small area because people didn't travel much back then.

My approach to interpreting Genesis comes from the tradition that it was first written down by Moses. If this is the case, then until Moses wrote it down, it must have been an oral tradition passed down among the Hebrews in an intergenerational game of telephone. It was intended to be the literal truth but got garbled along the way, so the truth must be extracted by interpreting Genesis based on what archaeologists have found to be true.

My approach to interpreting Exodus comes from the fact that Moses was, in fact, an Egyptian, the oldest son of Pharaoh, and his real name was Tutmose. Anything he wrote down concerning the Hebrews was filtered through his desire to portray himself as one of them, which is where we get the ridiculous tale of his mother putting him in a basket on the Nile and Pharaoh's daughter finding him.

I'm currently on Exodus (the Bible is slow going), so I haven't yet developed a strategy for interpreting the other books, although I imagine my interpretation of Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy will be similar to my approach to Exodus, with the added understanding that these laws were developed for a culture that lived in a desert surrounded by people who wanted them dead.

I have read Revelation (yeah, I cheated, I skipped to the end), and as far as I can tell that entire book is an allegory for Nero's reign.

Basically how you determine what's allegory and what's literal has to be done on a book-by-book basis, since they were all authored by different people. You have to determine it not on whim alone, but by close study of the text and an understanding of the historical context in which it was written. For example, Revelation reads like a really bad acid trip unless you interpret it in the light of the time it was written, which was Nero's reign, as an allegory for Jesus returning and ending Nero's persecution of the Christians. It had to be written as an allegory because if Nero had known Saint John the Divine was writing, "Jesus will return and then you'll be sorry," he would have had old John summarily executed. But if there's no reason something would have been written as an allegory, then it should be taken literally, but interpreted in the context of the time it was written.

I would say that I believe all of those things happened. As far as how they happened, I wasn't there so i can't give you any more information than whats written in the bible. I assume what you are looking for a scientific explanation, which there may be but I don't have it. However, I think the heart of your question is getting at the idea of 'God did it'. So really what you have to ask yourself is - assuming you don't believe in God - If God did exist would it be possible for him to do these things? i would say yes. So then the question is not about miracles but about the existence of God.

John 20:29 ESV

Jesus said to him, "Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed."

Dear Friend,

All of the above.

I try to believe all of it, but its hard to swallow