Word of the DayWiddershins (withershins) (adverb)
Pronunciation: ['wid-êr-shinz]
Definition: Moving in a direction opposite the usual; moving counterclockwise or in the contrary direction (of the sun, especially).
Usage: Today's word is basically an adverb but may be used as an adjective without the final [s]. As a predicate adjective, however, the [s] is usually left on. D. H. Lawrence wrote in 'Plumed Serpent' (1926) "She made up her mind, to be alone, and to cut herself off from all the mechanical widdershin contacts. He, too, was widdershins, unwinding the sensations of disintegration and anti-life."
Suggested Usage: Today's word is another wonderword from the land of kilts and bagpipes that we should all fight to keep alive: "Gerard does everything widdershins; he will either turn out a grandiose success or an abrupt failure." Niches for this word abound in everyday conversations: "Remember, the prophets agree that you get nowhere walking widdershins up the escalator."
Etymology: Middle Low German weddersinnes based on wider "back," whence German wider "against" and wieder "again." The English adverb wither "wrong, perverse" is rarely used any more. The "shins" is from earlier "sinnes" and is related to Latin sentire "sense, feel" since both go back to an original root *sent- "go in or choose a direction." We borrowed "sense" from the noun of this verb. The same root also turns up in English send "to cause someone to go in a direction."
–Dr. Language, YourDictionary.com
Sunday, December 30, 2007
Saturday, December 29, 2007
Finally!
I just completed my year long + task of recording the entire Authorized Version of the Bible to CD. It's not professional but it's something I can leave behind to my family that has some value, as opposed to debt, fading photographs, and broken mementos.
Thursday, December 27, 2007
Matthew, chapter 27
1 ¶ When the morning was come, all the chief priests and elders of the people took counsel against Jesus to put him to death:
2 And when they had bound him, they led him away, and delivered him to Pontius Pilate the governor.
Further information;
Luke 23:1 ¶ And the whole multitude of them arose, and led him unto Pilate. 2 And they began to accuse him, saying, We found this fellow perverting the nation, and forbidding to give tribute to Caesar, saying that he himself is Christ a King. 3 And Pilate asked him, saying, Art thou the King of the Jews? And he answered him and said, Thou sayest it.
4 Then said Pilate to the chief priests and to the people, I find no fault in this man.
5 And they were the more fierce, saying, He stirreth up the people, teaching throughout all Jewry, beginning from Galilee to this place. 6 When Pilate heard of Galilee, he asked whether the man were a Galilaean.7 And as soon as he knew that he belonged unto Herod’s jurisdiction, he sent him to Herod, who himself also was at Jerusalem at that time. 8 And when Herod saw Jesus, he was exceeding glad: for he was desirous to see him of a long season, because he had heard many things of him; and he hoped to have seen some miracle done by him. 9 Then he questioned with him in many words; but he answered him nothing.
This is God’s answer to a seared conscience. If you are a dishonest skeptic, if your reason for asking is just foolishness, God will not speak to you. God isn’t interested in showing you anything if you aren’t interested in the truth, dealing honestly with yourself and your sins.
Luke 23:10 And the chief priests and scribes stood and vehemently accused him.11 And Herod with his men of war set him at nought, and mocked him, and arrayed him in a gorgeous robe, and sent him again to Pilate. 12 And the same day Pilate and Herod were made friends together: for before they were at enmity between themselves.
Herod and Pilate, like two church dividers who had been enemies, become friends.
Luke 23:13 ¶ And Pilate, when he had called together the chief priests and the rulers and the people, 14 Said unto them, Ye have brought this man unto me, as one that perverteth the people: and, behold, I, having examined him before you, have found no fault in this man touching those things whereof ye accuse him: 15 No, nor yet Herod: for I sent you to him; and, lo, nothing worthy of death is done unto him. 16 I will therefore chastise him, and release him.
3 Then Judas, which had betrayed him, when he saw that he was condemned, repented himself, and brought again the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders,
Here’s a flashback to Judas. Judas was an apostle who was baptized, could heal, repent, and make restitution and still not be saved.
4 Saying, I have sinned in that I have betrayed the innocent blood. And they said, What is that to us? see thou to that.
Psalm 94:21 They gather themselves together against the soul of the righteous, and condemn the innocent blood.
Notice “the innocent blood”. The definite article is very important.
5 And he cast down the pieces of silver in the temple, and departed, and went and hanged himself.
Between the Book of Acts account and this one you get the idea that he hung himself and then his bowels gushed out. Some say this might have happened when the earthquake comes and he falls on the rocks and splits open as some do when falling from a height. But, this is speculation.
6 And the chief priests took the silver pieces, and said, It is not lawful for to put them into the treasury, because it is the price of blood.
How very righteous of them. They’ve paid the blood money but reject its return to them. Modern Pharisees will also split hairs over minor points that would seem ridiculous.
7 And they took counsel, and bought with them the potter’s field, to bury strangers in.
Donating to the poor is always the last refuge of a Pharisee to justify himself.
8 Wherefore that field was called, The field of blood, unto this day.
9 Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremy the prophet, saying, And they took the thirty pieces of silver, the price of him that was valued, whom they of the children of Israel did value;
But, this was WRITTEN in Zechariah who was probably referring to what Jeremiah had SPOKEN.
Zechariah 11:10 And I took my staff, even Beauty, and cut it asunder, that I might break my covenant which I had made with all the people. 11 And it was broken in that day: and so the poor of the flock that waited upon me knew that it was the word of the LORD.
12 And I said unto them, If ye think good, give me my price; and if not, forbear. So they weighed for my price thirty pieces of silver. 13 And the LORD said unto me, Cast it unto the potter: a goodly price that I was prised at of them. And I took the thirty pieces of silver, and cast them to the potter in the house of the LORD. 14 Then I cut asunder mine other staff, even Bands, that I might break the brotherhood between Judah and Israel.
15 ¶ And the LORD said unto me, Take unto thee yet the instruments of a foolish shepherd. 16 For, lo, I will raise up a shepherd in the land, which shall not visit those that be cut off, neither shall seek the young one, nor heal that that is broken, nor feed that that standeth still: but he shall eat the flesh of the fat, and tear their claws in pieces.
17 Woe to the idol shepherd that leaveth the flock! the sword shall be upon his arm, and upon his right eye: his arm shall be clean dried up, and his right eye shall be utterly darkened.
Notice that the reference is to the “idol shepherd”. The beast at the end times has a patch over his eye with types being a cyclops, the one eyed pirate, etc. etc. and the right arm being evidenced by Napoleon, Kaiser Wilhelm, Hitler etc. etc. Perhaps he will have a stroke or survives an assassination attempt. We’ll have evidence on that later.
10 And gave them for the potter’s field, as the Lord appointed me.
11 ¶ And Jesus stood before the governor: and the governor asked him, saying, Art thou the King of the Jews? And Jesus said unto him, Thou sayest.
12 And when he was accused of the chief priests and elders, he answered nothing.
13 Then said Pilate unto him, Hearest thou not how many things they witness against thee?
14 And he answered him to never a word; insomuch that the governor marvelled greatly.
Isa 53:7 He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth.
15 Now at that feast the governor was wont to release unto the people a prisoner, whom they would.
16 And they had then a notable prisoner, called Barabbas.
John 18:40 Then cried they all again, saying, Not this man, but Barabbas. Now Barabbas was a robber.
Luke 23:16 I will therefore chastise him, and release him. 17 (For of necessity he must release one unto them at the feast.) 18 And they cried out all at once, saying, Away with this man, and release unto us Barabbas: 19 (Who for a certain sedition made in the city, and for murder, was cast into prison.)
Barabbas was a robber, a murderer, and a revolutionary, three times guilty. He was a wicked, evil man, not a dashing vagabond. I’ve known murderers and robbers and there is nothing movie like or romantic about them. They are human dogs, knowing only their own lusts and nothing else.
17 Therefore when they were gathered together, Pilate said unto them, Whom will ye that I release unto you? Barabbas, or Jesus which is called Christ?
18 For he knew that for envy they had delivered him.
Abel was killed because of envy and jealousy. Satan sinned because of envy. Envy and jealousy are the root sins. It’s hard to say whether or not pride or envy comes first.
Proverbs 14:30 A sound heart is the life of the flesh: but envy the rottenness of the bones.
Proverbs 27:4 Wrath is cruel, and anger is outrageous; but who is able to stand before envy?
19 When he was set down on the judgment seat, his wife sent unto him, saying, Have thou nothing to do with that just man: for I have suffered many things this day in a dream because of him.
The only person who stood up for Christ was a gentile woman, therefore gentile women are not today beasts of burden and gentile culture elevates women in a way that is not found under Hamite or Shemite culture.
20 But the chief priests and elders persuaded the multitude that they should ask Barabbas, and destroy Jesus.
21 The governor answered and said unto them, Whether of the twain will ye that I release unto you? They said, Barabbas.
22 Pilate saith unto them, What shall I do then with Jesus which is called Christ? They all say unto him, Let him be crucified.
This is a much used verse for sermons.
23 And the governor said, Why, what evil hath he done? But they cried out the more, saying, Let him be crucified.
24 When Pilate saw that he could prevail nothing, but that rather a tumult was made, he took water, and washed his hands before the multitude, saying, I am innocent of the blood of this just person: see ye to it.
Here we get the phrase, “washed his hands of the matter”.
25 Then answered all the people, and said, His blood be on us, and on our children.
This request was honored by God for two thousand years. But, don’t let yourself be a part of this judgment. It is a fact of history but not an excuse for a Christian to harm God’s people. Avoid anti-Semitism. To fail to avoid it is to risk God’s wrath on your country. It is between God and the Jews. Pray for Israel, pray for the peace of Jerusalem, pray for the Jews. Only Christ can save them as per the last part of Numbers 35:33. The Jews can only be saved individually by the blood of Jesus Christ.
See Matthew 18:7.
Three times this innocent man is condemned with shouts of “Barabbas”, “Let him be crucified”, and “His blood be on us……”.
26 ¶ Then released he Barabbas unto them: and when he had scourged Jesus, he delivered him to be crucified.
Barabbas means “son of a father”, according to Strong’s.
Scourging is a type of whipping.
Psalm 129:3 The plowers plowed upon my back: they made long their furrows.
Isaiah 52:14 As many were astonied at thee; his visage was so marred more than any man, and his form more than the sons of men: 15 So shall he sprinkle many nations; the kings shall shut their mouths at him: for that which had not been told them shall they see; and that which they had not heard shall they consider.
Isaiah 53:5 But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.
To claim that this means that Christians can’t be sick is to misunderstand what the atonement relates to as we are talking about the disease of sin here being healed.
If you are a charismatic and believe in faith healing then I expect you to not wear glasses or ever need to go to a doctor. After all, if you do either of those things you must not have enough faith according to your doctrine.
27 Then the soldiers of the governor took Jesus into the common hall, and gathered unto him the whole band of soldiers.
28 And they stripped him, and put on him a scarlet robe.
This color is mentioned in Revelation in a significant way. What “church” is linked to this color?
Revelation 17:3 So he carried me away in the spirit into the wilderness: and I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet coloured beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns. 4 And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet colour, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication:
29 And when they had platted a crown of thorns, they put it upon his head, and a reed in his right hand: and they bowed the knee before him, and mocked him, saying, Hail, King of the Jews!
30 And they spit upon him, and took the reed, and smote him on the head.
His feet, because you’ve gone places you shouldn’t have, His hands, because your hands have touched things they shouldn’t have, and the crown of thorns, because you’ve been thinking things you shouldn’t. Just a thought.
31 And after that they had mocked him, they took the robe off from him, and put his own raiment on him, and led him away to crucify him.
The robe He wore was a Roman robe. He never owned a robe, hence the blasphemous Catholic movie. His own raiment is a reference to what He wore.
Luke 23:25 And he released unto them him that for sedition and murder was cast into prison, whom they had desired; but he delivered Jesus to their will.
It has been said that whenever a preacher preaches Jesus to their congregation that this is what they do, deliver Jesus to their (the congregation’s) will.
32 And as they came out, they found a man of Cyrene, Simon by name: him they compelled to bear his cross.
Simon is a North African. Perhaps he is a descendant of Ham.
33 ¶ And when they were come unto a place called Golgotha, that is to say, a place of a skull,
A Bible Believer knows that Jesus was crucified outside of the city. See “without the camp” in Old Testament references. Here is something from the New.
John 19:20 This title then read many of the Jews: for the place where Jesus was crucified was nigh to the city: and it was written in Hebrew, and Greek, and Latin.
Hebrews 13:11 For the bodies of those beasts, whose blood is brought into the sanctuary by the high priest for sin, are burned without the camp. 12 Wherefore Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered without the gate.13 Let us go forth therefore unto him without the camp, bearing his reproach.
I believe the location is called Gordon’s Cavalry on some maps. Ignore the Roman Catholic heresy.
34 They gave him vinegar to drink mingled with gall: and when he had tasted thereof, he would not drink.
Psalm 69:21 They gave me also gall for my meat; and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.
35 And they crucified him, and parted his garments, casting lots: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, They parted my garments among them, and upon my vesture did they cast lots.
Psalm 22:18 They part my garments among them, and cast lots upon my vesture.
Men crucify Christ there, in the skull. It is our head that refuses to accept Christ, as well as our heart. More on this when I get to John.
36 And sitting down they watched him there;
People like to watch suffering. They like traffic accidents, violent sports, and if you permitted it, they’d enjoy watching executions.
37 And set up over his head his accusation written, THIS IS JESUS THE KING OF THE JEWS.
38 Then were there two thieves crucified with him, one on the right hand, and another on the left.
Here needs to be inserted a reminder from Exodus about the Passover.
Exodus 12:7 And they shall take of the blood, and strike it on the two side posts and on the upper door post of the houses, wherein they shall eat it.
Luke 23:39 And one of the malefactors which were hanged railed on him, saying, If thou be Christ, save thyself and us. 40 But the other answering rebuked him, saying, Dost not thou fear God, seeing thou art in the same condemnation? 41 And we indeed justly; for we receive the due reward of our deeds: but this man hath done nothing amiss. 42 And he said unto Jesus, Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom. 43 And Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, To day shalt thou be with me in paradise.
You can tell a lot about a person’s spiritual state by what verses they change or remove when they translate a Bible using different manuscripts than the Christians used for 2,000 years.
39 And they that passed by reviled him, wagging their heads,
40 And saying, Thou that destroyest the temple, and buildest it in three days, save thyself. If thou be the Son of God, come down from the cross.
41 Likewise also the chief priests mocking him, with the scribes and elders, said,
42 He saved others; himself he cannot save. If he be the King of Israel, let him now come down from the cross, and we will believe him.
43 He trusted in God; let him deliver him now, if he will have him: for he said, I am the Son of God.
44 The thieves also, which were crucified with him, cast the same in his teeth.
45 Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land unto the ninth hour.
46 And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
Jesus is quoting Psalm 22, and we would do well to look at this Psalm to uncover its prophecies. Here is what we would have cried in Hell but since we have accepted Christ we will never have to say this in Hell.
1 ¶ To the chief Musician upon Aijeleth Shahar, A Psalm of David. My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring? 2 O my God, I cry in the daytime, but thou hearest not; and in the night season, and am not silent. 3 But thou art holy, O thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel.
4 Our fathers trusted in thee: they trusted, and thou didst deliver them. 5 They cried unto thee, and were delivered: they trusted in thee, and were not confounded. 6 But I am a worm, and no man; a reproach of men, and despised of the people. 7 All they that see me laugh me to scorn: they shoot out the lip, they shake the head, saying, 8 He trusted on the LORD that he would deliver him: let him deliver him, seeing he delighted in him. 9 But thou art he that took me out of the womb: thou didst make me hope when I was upon my mother’s breasts. 10 I was cast upon thee from the womb: thou art my God from my mother’s belly. 11 ¶ Be not far from me; for trouble is near; for there is none to help.
12 Many bulls have compassed me: strong bulls of Bashan have beset me round.
13 They gaped upon me with their mouths, as a ravening and a roaring lion. 14 I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint: my heart is like wax; it is melted in the midst of my bowels. 15 My strength is dried up like a potsherd; and my tongue cleaveth to my jaws; and thou hast brought me into the dust of death. 16 For dogs have compassed me: the assembly of the wicked have inclosed me: they pierced my hands and my feet. 17 I may tell all my bones: they look and stare upon me. 18 They part my garments among them, and cast lots upon my vesture. 19 But be not thou far from me, O LORD: O my strength, haste thee to help me. 20 Deliver my soul from the sword; my darling from the power of the dog. 21 Save me from the lion’s mouth: for thou hast heard me from the horns of the unicorns. 22 ¶ I will declare thy name unto my brethren: in the midst of the congregation will I praise thee. 23 Ye that fear the LORD, praise him; all ye the seed of Jacob, glorify him; and fear him, all ye the seed of Israel. 24 For he hath not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted; neither hath he hid his face from him; but when he cried unto him, he heard. 25 My praise shall be of thee in the great congregation: I will pay my vows before them that fear him. 26 The meek shall eat and be satisfied: they shall praise the LORD that seek him: your heart shall live for ever.
27 All the ends of the world shall remember and turn unto the LORD: and all the kindreds of the nations shall worship before thee. 28 For the kingdom is the LORD’S: and he is the governor among the nations. 29 All they that be fat upon earth shall eat and worship: all they that go down to the dust shall bow before him: and none can keep alive his own soul. 30 A seed shall serve him; it shall be accounted to the Lord for a generation. 31 They shall come, and shall declare his righteousness unto a people that shall be born, that he hath done this.
Job is a picture of a man in Hell with no hope.
Job 19:7 Behold, I cry out of wrong, but I am not heard: I cry aloud, but there is no judgment. 8 ¶ He hath fenced up my way that I cannot pass, and he hath set darkness in my paths. 9 He hath stripped me of my glory, and taken the crown from my head.
10 He hath destroyed me on every side, and I am gone: and mine hope hath he removed like a tree.
Suffering the darkness of Hell forsaken by God where the light is darkness.
Job 10:21 Before I go whence I shall not return, even to the land of darkness and the shadow of death; 22 A land of darkness, as darkness itself; and of the shadow of death, without any order, and where the light is as darkness.
Suffering the torments of Hell.
Job 17:14 I have said to corruption, Thou art my father: to the worm, Thou art my mother, and my sister. 15 And where is now my hope? as for my hope, who shall see it? 16 They shall go down to the bars of the pit, when our rest together is in the dust.
Job 18: 13 It shall devour the strength of his skin: even the firstborn of death shall devour his strength. 14 His confidence shall be rooted out of his tabernacle, and it shall bring him to the king of terrors.
Suffering the fires of Hell.
Job31:12 For it is a fire that consumeth to destruction, and would root out all mine increase.
Job 15:30 He shall not depart out of darkness; the flame shall dry up his branches, and by the breath of his mouth shall he go away.
Forsaken of God.
Job 13:27 Thou puttest my feet also in the stocks, and lookest narrowly unto all my paths; thou settest a print upon the heels of my feet. 28 And he, as a rotten thing, consumeth, as a garment that is moth eaten.
Job 30: 16 And now my soul is poured out upon me; the days of affliction have taken hold upon me. 17 My bones are pierced in me in the night season: and my sinews take no rest. 18 By the great force of my disease is my garment changed: it bindeth me about as the collar of my coat. 19 He hath cast me into the mire, and I am become like dust and ashes. 20 I cry unto thee, and thou dost not hear me: I stand up, and thou regardest me not.
47 Some of them that stood there, when they heard that, said, This man calleth for Elias.
This is a reference to Elijah being promised in Malachi, chapter 4.
48 And straightway one of them ran, and took a spunge, and filled it with vinegar, and put it on a reed, and gave him to drink.
He doesn’t take the vinegar with gall but takes this.
49 The rest said, Let be, let us see whether Elias will come to save him.
50 ¶ Jesus, when he had cried again with a loud voice, yielded up the ghost.
There are more details we will get to in the other gospels.
51 And, behold, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom; and the earth did quake, and the rocks rent;
It was torn from the top, not by man, but by God.
52 And the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose,
53 And came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many.
Here is a partial resurrection of Old Testament saints, the rest will be finished at the end of the Tribulation when the Tribulation saints are raptured. This is, along with Christ’s resurrection is the first of the three “Come up hither” in the Bible.
Proverbs 25:7 For better it is that it be said unto thee, Come up hither; than that thou shouldest be put lower in the presence of the prince whom thine eyes have seen.
54 Now when the centurion, and they that were with him, watching Jesus, saw the earthquake, and those things that were done, they feared greatly, saying, Truly this was the Son of God.
These centurion’s or Roman captains of a hundred are all good men in the Bible.
55 And many women were there beholding afar off, which followed Jesus from Galilee, ministering unto him:
56 Among which was Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James and Joses, and the mother of Zebedee’s children.
No women are listed as opposing Christ, even Pilate’s wife was not against him.
57 ¶ When the even was come, there came a rich man of Arimathaea, named Joseph, who also himself was Jesus’ disciple:
58 He went to Pilate, and begged the body of Jesus. Then Pilate commanded the body to be delivered.
Pilate made sure he was dead first, as per the following;
John 19:33 But when they came to Jesus, and saw that he was dead already, they brake not his legs: 34 But one of the soldiers with a spear pierced his side, and forthwith came there out blood and water.
John 19:38 ¶ And after this Joseph of Arimathaea, being a disciple of Jesus, but secretly for fear of the Jews, besought Pilate that he might take away the body of Jesus: and Pilate gave him leave. He came therefore, and took the body of Jesus.
Mark 15:43 Joseph of Arimathaea, an honourable counsellor, which also waited for the kingdom of God, came, and went in boldly unto Pilate, and craved the body of Jesus.
44 And Pilate marvelled if he were already dead: and calling unto him the centurion, he asked him whether he had been any while dead. 45 And when he knew it of the centurion, he gave the body to Joseph.
Then in the resurrected Jesus’ own words;
Revelation 1:18 I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death.
59 And when Joseph had taken the body, he wrapped it in a clean linen cloth,
60 And laid it in his own new tomb, which he had hewn out in the rock: and he rolled a great stone to the door of the sepulchre, and departed.
61 And there was Mary Magdalene, and the other Mary, sitting over against the sepulchre.
62 Now the next day, that followed the day of the preparation, the chief priests and Pharisees came together unto Pilate,
63 Saying, Sir, we remember that that deceiver said, while he was yet alive, After three days I will rise again.
64 Command therefore that the sepulchre be made sure until the third day, lest his disciples come by night, and steal him away, and say unto the people, He is risen from the dead: so the last error shall be worse than the first.
65 Pilate said unto them, Ye have a watch: go your way, make it as sure as ye can.
Pilate seems to have lost interest. Or perhaps he believes in his heart. Either way, he tells them to use their own watch to guard the tomb.
66 So they went, and made the sepulchre sure, sealing the stone, and setting a watch.
It didn’t work.
2 And when they had bound him, they led him away, and delivered him to Pontius Pilate the governor.
Further information;
Luke 23:1 ¶ And the whole multitude of them arose, and led him unto Pilate. 2 And they began to accuse him, saying, We found this fellow perverting the nation, and forbidding to give tribute to Caesar, saying that he himself is Christ a King. 3 And Pilate asked him, saying, Art thou the King of the Jews? And he answered him and said, Thou sayest it.
4 Then said Pilate to the chief priests and to the people, I find no fault in this man.
5 And they were the more fierce, saying, He stirreth up the people, teaching throughout all Jewry, beginning from Galilee to this place. 6 When Pilate heard of Galilee, he asked whether the man were a Galilaean.7 And as soon as he knew that he belonged unto Herod’s jurisdiction, he sent him to Herod, who himself also was at Jerusalem at that time. 8 And when Herod saw Jesus, he was exceeding glad: for he was desirous to see him of a long season, because he had heard many things of him; and he hoped to have seen some miracle done by him. 9 Then he questioned with him in many words; but he answered him nothing.
This is God’s answer to a seared conscience. If you are a dishonest skeptic, if your reason for asking is just foolishness, God will not speak to you. God isn’t interested in showing you anything if you aren’t interested in the truth, dealing honestly with yourself and your sins.
Luke 23:10 And the chief priests and scribes stood and vehemently accused him.11 And Herod with his men of war set him at nought, and mocked him, and arrayed him in a gorgeous robe, and sent him again to Pilate. 12 And the same day Pilate and Herod were made friends together: for before they were at enmity between themselves.
Herod and Pilate, like two church dividers who had been enemies, become friends.
Luke 23:13 ¶ And Pilate, when he had called together the chief priests and the rulers and the people, 14 Said unto them, Ye have brought this man unto me, as one that perverteth the people: and, behold, I, having examined him before you, have found no fault in this man touching those things whereof ye accuse him: 15 No, nor yet Herod: for I sent you to him; and, lo, nothing worthy of death is done unto him. 16 I will therefore chastise him, and release him.
3 Then Judas, which had betrayed him, when he saw that he was condemned, repented himself, and brought again the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders,
Here’s a flashback to Judas. Judas was an apostle who was baptized, could heal, repent, and make restitution and still not be saved.
4 Saying, I have sinned in that I have betrayed the innocent blood. And they said, What is that to us? see thou to that.
Psalm 94:21 They gather themselves together against the soul of the righteous, and condemn the innocent blood.
Notice “the innocent blood”. The definite article is very important.
5 And he cast down the pieces of silver in the temple, and departed, and went and hanged himself.
Between the Book of Acts account and this one you get the idea that he hung himself and then his bowels gushed out. Some say this might have happened when the earthquake comes and he falls on the rocks and splits open as some do when falling from a height. But, this is speculation.
6 And the chief priests took the silver pieces, and said, It is not lawful for to put them into the treasury, because it is the price of blood.
How very righteous of them. They’ve paid the blood money but reject its return to them. Modern Pharisees will also split hairs over minor points that would seem ridiculous.
7 And they took counsel, and bought with them the potter’s field, to bury strangers in.
Donating to the poor is always the last refuge of a Pharisee to justify himself.
8 Wherefore that field was called, The field of blood, unto this day.
9 Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremy the prophet, saying, And they took the thirty pieces of silver, the price of him that was valued, whom they of the children of Israel did value;
But, this was WRITTEN in Zechariah who was probably referring to what Jeremiah had SPOKEN.
Zechariah 11:10 And I took my staff, even Beauty, and cut it asunder, that I might break my covenant which I had made with all the people. 11 And it was broken in that day: and so the poor of the flock that waited upon me knew that it was the word of the LORD.
12 And I said unto them, If ye think good, give me my price; and if not, forbear. So they weighed for my price thirty pieces of silver. 13 And the LORD said unto me, Cast it unto the potter: a goodly price that I was prised at of them. And I took the thirty pieces of silver, and cast them to the potter in the house of the LORD. 14 Then I cut asunder mine other staff, even Bands, that I might break the brotherhood between Judah and Israel.
15 ¶ And the LORD said unto me, Take unto thee yet the instruments of a foolish shepherd. 16 For, lo, I will raise up a shepherd in the land, which shall not visit those that be cut off, neither shall seek the young one, nor heal that that is broken, nor feed that that standeth still: but he shall eat the flesh of the fat, and tear their claws in pieces.
17 Woe to the idol shepherd that leaveth the flock! the sword shall be upon his arm, and upon his right eye: his arm shall be clean dried up, and his right eye shall be utterly darkened.
Notice that the reference is to the “idol shepherd”. The beast at the end times has a patch over his eye with types being a cyclops, the one eyed pirate, etc. etc. and the right arm being evidenced by Napoleon, Kaiser Wilhelm, Hitler etc. etc. Perhaps he will have a stroke or survives an assassination attempt. We’ll have evidence on that later.
10 And gave them for the potter’s field, as the Lord appointed me.
11 ¶ And Jesus stood before the governor: and the governor asked him, saying, Art thou the King of the Jews? And Jesus said unto him, Thou sayest.
12 And when he was accused of the chief priests and elders, he answered nothing.
13 Then said Pilate unto him, Hearest thou not how many things they witness against thee?
14 And he answered him to never a word; insomuch that the governor marvelled greatly.
Isa 53:7 He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth.
15 Now at that feast the governor was wont to release unto the people a prisoner, whom they would.
16 And they had then a notable prisoner, called Barabbas.
John 18:40 Then cried they all again, saying, Not this man, but Barabbas. Now Barabbas was a robber.
Luke 23:16 I will therefore chastise him, and release him. 17 (For of necessity he must release one unto them at the feast.) 18 And they cried out all at once, saying, Away with this man, and release unto us Barabbas: 19 (Who for a certain sedition made in the city, and for murder, was cast into prison.)
Barabbas was a robber, a murderer, and a revolutionary, three times guilty. He was a wicked, evil man, not a dashing vagabond. I’ve known murderers and robbers and there is nothing movie like or romantic about them. They are human dogs, knowing only their own lusts and nothing else.
17 Therefore when they were gathered together, Pilate said unto them, Whom will ye that I release unto you? Barabbas, or Jesus which is called Christ?
18 For he knew that for envy they had delivered him.
Abel was killed because of envy and jealousy. Satan sinned because of envy. Envy and jealousy are the root sins. It’s hard to say whether or not pride or envy comes first.
Proverbs 14:30 A sound heart is the life of the flesh: but envy the rottenness of the bones.
Proverbs 27:4 Wrath is cruel, and anger is outrageous; but who is able to stand before envy?
19 When he was set down on the judgment seat, his wife sent unto him, saying, Have thou nothing to do with that just man: for I have suffered many things this day in a dream because of him.
The only person who stood up for Christ was a gentile woman, therefore gentile women are not today beasts of burden and gentile culture elevates women in a way that is not found under Hamite or Shemite culture.
20 But the chief priests and elders persuaded the multitude that they should ask Barabbas, and destroy Jesus.
21 The governor answered and said unto them, Whether of the twain will ye that I release unto you? They said, Barabbas.
22 Pilate saith unto them, What shall I do then with Jesus which is called Christ? They all say unto him, Let him be crucified.
This is a much used verse for sermons.
23 And the governor said, Why, what evil hath he done? But they cried out the more, saying, Let him be crucified.
24 When Pilate saw that he could prevail nothing, but that rather a tumult was made, he took water, and washed his hands before the multitude, saying, I am innocent of the blood of this just person: see ye to it.
Here we get the phrase, “washed his hands of the matter”.
25 Then answered all the people, and said, His blood be on us, and on our children.
This request was honored by God for two thousand years. But, don’t let yourself be a part of this judgment. It is a fact of history but not an excuse for a Christian to harm God’s people. Avoid anti-Semitism. To fail to avoid it is to risk God’s wrath on your country. It is between God and the Jews. Pray for Israel, pray for the peace of Jerusalem, pray for the Jews. Only Christ can save them as per the last part of Numbers 35:33. The Jews can only be saved individually by the blood of Jesus Christ.
See Matthew 18:7.
Three times this innocent man is condemned with shouts of “Barabbas”, “Let him be crucified”, and “His blood be on us……”.
26 ¶ Then released he Barabbas unto them: and when he had scourged Jesus, he delivered him to be crucified.
Barabbas means “son of a father”, according to Strong’s.
Scourging is a type of whipping.
Psalm 129:3 The plowers plowed upon my back: they made long their furrows.
Isaiah 52:14 As many were astonied at thee; his visage was so marred more than any man, and his form more than the sons of men: 15 So shall he sprinkle many nations; the kings shall shut their mouths at him: for that which had not been told them shall they see; and that which they had not heard shall they consider.
Isaiah 53:5 But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.
To claim that this means that Christians can’t be sick is to misunderstand what the atonement relates to as we are talking about the disease of sin here being healed.
If you are a charismatic and believe in faith healing then I expect you to not wear glasses or ever need to go to a doctor. After all, if you do either of those things you must not have enough faith according to your doctrine.
27 Then the soldiers of the governor took Jesus into the common hall, and gathered unto him the whole band of soldiers.
28 And they stripped him, and put on him a scarlet robe.
This color is mentioned in Revelation in a significant way. What “church” is linked to this color?
Revelation 17:3 So he carried me away in the spirit into the wilderness: and I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet coloured beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns. 4 And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet colour, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication:
29 And when they had platted a crown of thorns, they put it upon his head, and a reed in his right hand: and they bowed the knee before him, and mocked him, saying, Hail, King of the Jews!
30 And they spit upon him, and took the reed, and smote him on the head.
His feet, because you’ve gone places you shouldn’t have, His hands, because your hands have touched things they shouldn’t have, and the crown of thorns, because you’ve been thinking things you shouldn’t. Just a thought.
31 And after that they had mocked him, they took the robe off from him, and put his own raiment on him, and led him away to crucify him.
The robe He wore was a Roman robe. He never owned a robe, hence the blasphemous Catholic movie. His own raiment is a reference to what He wore.
Luke 23:25 And he released unto them him that for sedition and murder was cast into prison, whom they had desired; but he delivered Jesus to their will.
It has been said that whenever a preacher preaches Jesus to their congregation that this is what they do, deliver Jesus to their (the congregation’s) will.
32 And as they came out, they found a man of Cyrene, Simon by name: him they compelled to bear his cross.
Simon is a North African. Perhaps he is a descendant of Ham.
33 ¶ And when they were come unto a place called Golgotha, that is to say, a place of a skull,
A Bible Believer knows that Jesus was crucified outside of the city. See “without the camp” in Old Testament references. Here is something from the New.
John 19:20 This title then read many of the Jews: for the place where Jesus was crucified was nigh to the city: and it was written in Hebrew, and Greek, and Latin.
Hebrews 13:11 For the bodies of those beasts, whose blood is brought into the sanctuary by the high priest for sin, are burned without the camp. 12 Wherefore Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered without the gate.13 Let us go forth therefore unto him without the camp, bearing his reproach.
I believe the location is called Gordon’s Cavalry on some maps. Ignore the Roman Catholic heresy.
34 They gave him vinegar to drink mingled with gall: and when he had tasted thereof, he would not drink.
Psalm 69:21 They gave me also gall for my meat; and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.
35 And they crucified him, and parted his garments, casting lots: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, They parted my garments among them, and upon my vesture did they cast lots.
Psalm 22:18 They part my garments among them, and cast lots upon my vesture.
Men crucify Christ there, in the skull. It is our head that refuses to accept Christ, as well as our heart. More on this when I get to John.
36 And sitting down they watched him there;
People like to watch suffering. They like traffic accidents, violent sports, and if you permitted it, they’d enjoy watching executions.
37 And set up over his head his accusation written, THIS IS JESUS THE KING OF THE JEWS.
38 Then were there two thieves crucified with him, one on the right hand, and another on the left.
Here needs to be inserted a reminder from Exodus about the Passover.
Exodus 12:7 And they shall take of the blood, and strike it on the two side posts and on the upper door post of the houses, wherein they shall eat it.
Luke 23:39 And one of the malefactors which were hanged railed on him, saying, If thou be Christ, save thyself and us. 40 But the other answering rebuked him, saying, Dost not thou fear God, seeing thou art in the same condemnation? 41 And we indeed justly; for we receive the due reward of our deeds: but this man hath done nothing amiss. 42 And he said unto Jesus, Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom. 43 And Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, To day shalt thou be with me in paradise.
You can tell a lot about a person’s spiritual state by what verses they change or remove when they translate a Bible using different manuscripts than the Christians used for 2,000 years.
39 And they that passed by reviled him, wagging their heads,
40 And saying, Thou that destroyest the temple, and buildest it in three days, save thyself. If thou be the Son of God, come down from the cross.
41 Likewise also the chief priests mocking him, with the scribes and elders, said,
42 He saved others; himself he cannot save. If he be the King of Israel, let him now come down from the cross, and we will believe him.
43 He trusted in God; let him deliver him now, if he will have him: for he said, I am the Son of God.
44 The thieves also, which were crucified with him, cast the same in his teeth.
45 Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land unto the ninth hour.
46 And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
Jesus is quoting Psalm 22, and we would do well to look at this Psalm to uncover its prophecies. Here is what we would have cried in Hell but since we have accepted Christ we will never have to say this in Hell.
1 ¶ To the chief Musician upon Aijeleth Shahar, A Psalm of David. My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring? 2 O my God, I cry in the daytime, but thou hearest not; and in the night season, and am not silent. 3 But thou art holy, O thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel.
4 Our fathers trusted in thee: they trusted, and thou didst deliver them. 5 They cried unto thee, and were delivered: they trusted in thee, and were not confounded. 6 But I am a worm, and no man; a reproach of men, and despised of the people. 7 All they that see me laugh me to scorn: they shoot out the lip, they shake the head, saying, 8 He trusted on the LORD that he would deliver him: let him deliver him, seeing he delighted in him. 9 But thou art he that took me out of the womb: thou didst make me hope when I was upon my mother’s breasts. 10 I was cast upon thee from the womb: thou art my God from my mother’s belly. 11 ¶ Be not far from me; for trouble is near; for there is none to help.
12 Many bulls have compassed me: strong bulls of Bashan have beset me round.
13 They gaped upon me with their mouths, as a ravening and a roaring lion. 14 I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint: my heart is like wax; it is melted in the midst of my bowels. 15 My strength is dried up like a potsherd; and my tongue cleaveth to my jaws; and thou hast brought me into the dust of death. 16 For dogs have compassed me: the assembly of the wicked have inclosed me: they pierced my hands and my feet. 17 I may tell all my bones: they look and stare upon me. 18 They part my garments among them, and cast lots upon my vesture. 19 But be not thou far from me, O LORD: O my strength, haste thee to help me. 20 Deliver my soul from the sword; my darling from the power of the dog. 21 Save me from the lion’s mouth: for thou hast heard me from the horns of the unicorns. 22 ¶ I will declare thy name unto my brethren: in the midst of the congregation will I praise thee. 23 Ye that fear the LORD, praise him; all ye the seed of Jacob, glorify him; and fear him, all ye the seed of Israel. 24 For he hath not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted; neither hath he hid his face from him; but when he cried unto him, he heard. 25 My praise shall be of thee in the great congregation: I will pay my vows before them that fear him. 26 The meek shall eat and be satisfied: they shall praise the LORD that seek him: your heart shall live for ever.
27 All the ends of the world shall remember and turn unto the LORD: and all the kindreds of the nations shall worship before thee. 28 For the kingdom is the LORD’S: and he is the governor among the nations. 29 All they that be fat upon earth shall eat and worship: all they that go down to the dust shall bow before him: and none can keep alive his own soul. 30 A seed shall serve him; it shall be accounted to the Lord for a generation. 31 They shall come, and shall declare his righteousness unto a people that shall be born, that he hath done this.
Job is a picture of a man in Hell with no hope.
Job 19:7 Behold, I cry out of wrong, but I am not heard: I cry aloud, but there is no judgment. 8 ¶ He hath fenced up my way that I cannot pass, and he hath set darkness in my paths. 9 He hath stripped me of my glory, and taken the crown from my head.
10 He hath destroyed me on every side, and I am gone: and mine hope hath he removed like a tree.
Suffering the darkness of Hell forsaken by God where the light is darkness.
Job 10:21 Before I go whence I shall not return, even to the land of darkness and the shadow of death; 22 A land of darkness, as darkness itself; and of the shadow of death, without any order, and where the light is as darkness.
Suffering the torments of Hell.
Job 17:14 I have said to corruption, Thou art my father: to the worm, Thou art my mother, and my sister. 15 And where is now my hope? as for my hope, who shall see it? 16 They shall go down to the bars of the pit, when our rest together is in the dust.
Job 18: 13 It shall devour the strength of his skin: even the firstborn of death shall devour his strength. 14 His confidence shall be rooted out of his tabernacle, and it shall bring him to the king of terrors.
Suffering the fires of Hell.
Job31:12 For it is a fire that consumeth to destruction, and would root out all mine increase.
Job 15:30 He shall not depart out of darkness; the flame shall dry up his branches, and by the breath of his mouth shall he go away.
Forsaken of God.
Job 13:27 Thou puttest my feet also in the stocks, and lookest narrowly unto all my paths; thou settest a print upon the heels of my feet. 28 And he, as a rotten thing, consumeth, as a garment that is moth eaten.
Job 30: 16 And now my soul is poured out upon me; the days of affliction have taken hold upon me. 17 My bones are pierced in me in the night season: and my sinews take no rest. 18 By the great force of my disease is my garment changed: it bindeth me about as the collar of my coat. 19 He hath cast me into the mire, and I am become like dust and ashes. 20 I cry unto thee, and thou dost not hear me: I stand up, and thou regardest me not.
47 Some of them that stood there, when they heard that, said, This man calleth for Elias.
This is a reference to Elijah being promised in Malachi, chapter 4.
48 And straightway one of them ran, and took a spunge, and filled it with vinegar, and put it on a reed, and gave him to drink.
He doesn’t take the vinegar with gall but takes this.
49 The rest said, Let be, let us see whether Elias will come to save him.
50 ¶ Jesus, when he had cried again with a loud voice, yielded up the ghost.
There are more details we will get to in the other gospels.
51 And, behold, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom; and the earth did quake, and the rocks rent;
It was torn from the top, not by man, but by God.
52 And the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose,
53 And came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many.
Here is a partial resurrection of Old Testament saints, the rest will be finished at the end of the Tribulation when the Tribulation saints are raptured. This is, along with Christ’s resurrection is the first of the three “Come up hither” in the Bible.
Proverbs 25:7 For better it is that it be said unto thee, Come up hither; than that thou shouldest be put lower in the presence of the prince whom thine eyes have seen.
54 Now when the centurion, and they that were with him, watching Jesus, saw the earthquake, and those things that were done, they feared greatly, saying, Truly this was the Son of God.
These centurion’s or Roman captains of a hundred are all good men in the Bible.
55 And many women were there beholding afar off, which followed Jesus from Galilee, ministering unto him:
56 Among which was Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James and Joses, and the mother of Zebedee’s children.
No women are listed as opposing Christ, even Pilate’s wife was not against him.
57 ¶ When the even was come, there came a rich man of Arimathaea, named Joseph, who also himself was Jesus’ disciple:
58 He went to Pilate, and begged the body of Jesus. Then Pilate commanded the body to be delivered.
Pilate made sure he was dead first, as per the following;
John 19:33 But when they came to Jesus, and saw that he was dead already, they brake not his legs: 34 But one of the soldiers with a spear pierced his side, and forthwith came there out blood and water.
John 19:38 ¶ And after this Joseph of Arimathaea, being a disciple of Jesus, but secretly for fear of the Jews, besought Pilate that he might take away the body of Jesus: and Pilate gave him leave. He came therefore, and took the body of Jesus.
Mark 15:43 Joseph of Arimathaea, an honourable counsellor, which also waited for the kingdom of God, came, and went in boldly unto Pilate, and craved the body of Jesus.
44 And Pilate marvelled if he were already dead: and calling unto him the centurion, he asked him whether he had been any while dead. 45 And when he knew it of the centurion, he gave the body to Joseph.
Then in the resurrected Jesus’ own words;
Revelation 1:18 I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death.
59 And when Joseph had taken the body, he wrapped it in a clean linen cloth,
60 And laid it in his own new tomb, which he had hewn out in the rock: and he rolled a great stone to the door of the sepulchre, and departed.
61 And there was Mary Magdalene, and the other Mary, sitting over against the sepulchre.
62 Now the next day, that followed the day of the preparation, the chief priests and Pharisees came together unto Pilate,
63 Saying, Sir, we remember that that deceiver said, while he was yet alive, After three days I will rise again.
64 Command therefore that the sepulchre be made sure until the third day, lest his disciples come by night, and steal him away, and say unto the people, He is risen from the dead: so the last error shall be worse than the first.
65 Pilate said unto them, Ye have a watch: go your way, make it as sure as ye can.
Pilate seems to have lost interest. Or perhaps he believes in his heart. Either way, he tells them to use their own watch to guard the tomb.
66 So they went, and made the sepulchre sure, sealing the stone, and setting a watch.
It didn’t work.
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
Latest Reading
The World and Its God, by Philip Mauro, New York Gospel Publishing House, 1905. This book is referred to by the late Bob Jones, Sr. in his sermon, "We Faint Not', as one of the books that inspired him. I got it and read it. It's very interesting and a worthwhile read. His biggest topic is the theory of evolution, which the writer believes is disproven in his own day. But, in spite of that bit of misplaced optimism it's very interesting.
Along the same lines is The Evolution Handbook, by Vance Ferrell, published by Evolution Facts, Inc., 2001. If you ever wanted to be armed with information against the theory of evolution by the statements of non-believing scientists this book is a real eye opener. Most of it can be found for free on evolution-facts.org but I found the book to be easier to read. It's worth the time it takes to get through almost a thousand pages.
Along the same lines is The Evolution Handbook, by Vance Ferrell, published by Evolution Facts, Inc., 2001. If you ever wanted to be armed with information against the theory of evolution by the statements of non-believing scientists this book is a real eye opener. Most of it can be found for free on evolution-facts.org but I found the book to be easier to read. It's worth the time it takes to get through almost a thousand pages.
Monday, December 10, 2007
Christian Biologist fired for his beliefs, suit says
Christian biologist fired for beliefs, suit says
By Jason SzepMon Dec 10, 11:25 AM ET
A Christian biologist is suing the prestigious Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, claiming he was fired for refusing to accept evolution, lawyers involved in the case said on Friday.
Nathaniel Abraham, an Indian national who describes himself as a "Bible-believing Christian," said in the suit filed on Monday in U.S. District Court in Boston that he was fired in 2004 because he would not accept evolution as scientific fact.
The latest U.S. academic spat over science and religion was first reported in The Boston Globe newspaper on Friday. Gibbs Law Firm in Florida, which is representing Abraham, said he was seeking $500,000 in compensation.
The zebrafish specialist said his civil rights were violated when he was dismissed shortly after telling his superior he did not accept evolution because he believed the Bible presented a true account of human creation.
Creationists such as Abraham believe God made the world in six days, as the Bible's Book of Genesis says.
Woods Hole, a federally funded nonprofit research center on Cape Cod, said in a statement it firmly believed its actions and those of its employees in the case were "entirely lawful" and that it does not discriminate.
Abraham, who was dismissed eight months after he was hired, said he was willing to do research using evolutionary concepts but that he had been required to accept Darwin's theory of evolution as scientific fact or lose his job.
The Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination dismissed the case this year, saying Abraham's request not to work on evolutionary aspects of research would be difficult for Woods Hole because its work is based on evolutionary theories.
Abraham said this condition was never spelled out in the advertisement for the job and that his dismissal led to severe economic losses, an injured reputation, emotional pain and suffering and mental anguish.
The case underscores tension between scientists, who see creationist views as anti-science, and evangelical Christians who argue that protections of religious freedom enshrined in the U.S. Constitution extend to scientific settings.
Abraham, 35, is now a biology professor at Liberty University, a Baptist school in Virginia founded by the Rev. Jerry Falwell, a Christian pastor and televangelist.
(Editing by Todd Eastham)
By Jason SzepMon Dec 10, 11:25 AM ET
A Christian biologist is suing the prestigious Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, claiming he was fired for refusing to accept evolution, lawyers involved in the case said on Friday.
Nathaniel Abraham, an Indian national who describes himself as a "Bible-believing Christian," said in the suit filed on Monday in U.S. District Court in Boston that he was fired in 2004 because he would not accept evolution as scientific fact.
The latest U.S. academic spat over science and religion was first reported in The Boston Globe newspaper on Friday. Gibbs Law Firm in Florida, which is representing Abraham, said he was seeking $500,000 in compensation.
The zebrafish specialist said his civil rights were violated when he was dismissed shortly after telling his superior he did not accept evolution because he believed the Bible presented a true account of human creation.
Creationists such as Abraham believe God made the world in six days, as the Bible's Book of Genesis says.
Woods Hole, a federally funded nonprofit research center on Cape Cod, said in a statement it firmly believed its actions and those of its employees in the case were "entirely lawful" and that it does not discriminate.
Abraham, who was dismissed eight months after he was hired, said he was willing to do research using evolutionary concepts but that he had been required to accept Darwin's theory of evolution as scientific fact or lose his job.
The Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination dismissed the case this year, saying Abraham's request not to work on evolutionary aspects of research would be difficult for Woods Hole because its work is based on evolutionary theories.
Abraham said this condition was never spelled out in the advertisement for the job and that his dismissal led to severe economic losses, an injured reputation, emotional pain and suffering and mental anguish.
The case underscores tension between scientists, who see creationist views as anti-science, and evangelical Christians who argue that protections of religious freedom enshrined in the U.S. Constitution extend to scientific settings.
Abraham, 35, is now a biology professor at Liberty University, a Baptist school in Virginia founded by the Rev. Jerry Falwell, a Christian pastor and televangelist.
(Editing by Todd Eastham)
World History - Class One
World History - Class One
Of ape-men and Gamma Ray Bursts, gods and monsters before the Great Flood
“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” (Genesis 1:1) contains ten words in English – the Biblical number of the Gentiles- and seven words in Hebrew, “Berashith bara Elohim eth hashamayim waeth ha’aretz”, or seven words with 28 Hebrew letters (4x7), fourteen letters in the subject, and fourteen letters in the predicate, with “God” as the third word of the sentence according to a source I read.
This first verse denies atheism. “The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good.” (Psalm 14:1).
The majority of modern scientists teach that all matter resided in a singularity, the size of a period in a sentence. This entity, containing all light, matter, and energy that there is, violently exploded and the universe has been expanding ever since. This is called the Big Bang* and is highly theoretical and not without detractors as some ask questions like, “where did the singularity come from” and “if empty space is part of the universe then what about the empty space just ahead of the explosion or a trillion miles in front of it?”. (Q is for Quantum, An Encyclopedia of Particle Physics, by John Gribbin, The Free Press, 1998).
Medieval Kabbalists, believers in an occult form of Judaism, believed that in the beginning God filled the universe, then withdrew from it, leaving something the size of a mustard seed, which contained all light, energy, and matter, and exploded, creating what we now know as the universe. The modern Big Bang theory in an oversimplified form sounds a lot like this occultic belief.
As quoted in the book, “The Whole Shebang, A State of the Universe(s) Report, by Timothy Ferris, Simon & Schuster, 1997”, astronomer Stuart Boyer admits, “Ultimately, the origin of the universe is, and always will be, a mystery”. I would suggest he read Genesis 1:1. That should help.
“And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” (Genesis 1:2). Because the Hebrew word for “without form”, transliterated Tohuw, is translated as “ in vain” in Isaiah 45:18 and it is said he didn’t create it that way, some people believe there is a large gap between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2, allowing for millions and millions of years, dinosaurs, ape-men and the like. The main problem with this theory is, number one, it’s pulling the text like taffy, and, number two, there is the problem of death entering the world with Adam’s sin (Romans 5:12), not before. The counter to this is that the word “world” in that verse, is “Kosmos” referring to the world system, however, this too is stretching the clear and literal meaning of the text. Anglican Archbishop Ussher calculated backwards from the Bible and other sources and came to a date of 4004 BC for creation or 6000 years
2
ago. The current Hebrew year is 5767. The Hebrew year begins in the Autumn while the Hebrew day begins in the evening and 5768 begins on September 12, 2007.
“And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.” (Genesis 1:3). As God did not create the Sun and the stars until the fourth day most scientists and many Christians scoff at this verse, claiming that, if they believe the verse at all, that there was a cloud cover over the earth blocking out the sun. But, not wanting to call the Biblical text a lie, let me just say that since 1967 a phenomenon known as Gamma Ray Bursts has been known in which a burst of light brighter than all of the universe’s suns combined and lasting for a few seconds at random intervals each day. This is not to say that these bursts of high energy radiation explain God’s light but to say that there are sources of light not from the stars (although the basis for these bursts is theoretical one theory is that they come from collapsing stars).
“4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. 5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.” (Genesis 1:4-5). Notice the beginning of the first day was in the evening and that this refers to a normal day consisting of evening and morning. Another popular theory is that the “days” of creation were ages of billions of years. This so-called “Day-Age” theory has the problem of the reference to “evening and morning” and the fact that the reference is of “Day” versus “Night”.
“6 And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. 7 And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. 8 And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.” Notice this day is not called good? (Ephesians 6:10-13; Isaiah 24:21; Job 41:31,32 if referring to outer space).
The idea of the universe or outer space being a division between water in space and water on earth is made all the more interesting by the fact that, according to astronomers there is a large water vapor “factory” in the Orion Nebula (Job 9:9; 38:31; Amos 5:8) and Cornell University reported in the April 10, 1998 edition of Science Daily that it produced enough water to fill the earth’s oceans 60 times each day.
“9 And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so. 10 And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.”
Modern science dates the earth at approximately 4.5 billion years old and the universe at about 15 billion years. The earth’s date is figured most significantly by radiometric dating which estimate the age of rocks using calculations based on the decay rates of radioactive elements such as uranium, strontium, and potassium. Oversimplifying the problems for this discussion, let me just say that there are many anomalies with dates differing between methods of dating of hundreds of millions of years and even the most
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enthusiastic believers in radiometric dating do not claim it’s a perfect way to obtain age estimates. I recommend the website for the Institute for Creation Research or icr.org.
Another thing to note is the prevalent theory, that complements the Genesis account, that no matter when the earth was formed it did contain one super-continent called Rodinia, consisting of Gondwanaland, Euramerica, and Siberia, which then the theorists say drifted apart and came together again in another super-continent called Pangea, which then drifted apart again all within the span of a few hundred million years give or take a few hundred million years. This information was gleaned from Palaeos.com and ecology.com online.
“11 And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so. 12 And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good. 13 And the evening and the morning were the third day.”
Grasses include wheat, rice, corn, and other grains such as millet and rye according to the Washington State University website. Fruits would include apples, citrus fruits, melons, etc.
“14 And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years: 15 And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so. 16 And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also. 17 And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth, 18 And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good. 19 And the evening and the morning were the fourth day. “
The stars and other objects in the universe are created in their current positions and distance which over rules using distance as age based on the Big Bang expansion. The Static Universe theory better fits observational data than the Big Bang according to T.C. Van Flandern of the US Naval Observatory and V. S. Troitskii from the Radiophysical Research Institute in Gorky, Russia.
“20 And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. 21 And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good. 22 And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth. 23 And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.”
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Life from water is a no-brainer, even for a traditional modern scientist. The Hebrew word for “kind” transliterated as “Meen” is not a species as in a type of eagle but a more broad categorization such as a “Family” for example. The belief that creatures were not created but evolved from lower life forms, which is against the Bible, was introduced by the Greek philosopher, Anaximander* around 520 BC. (*‘Does God Believe in Atheists?’ by John Blanchard, Evangelical Press, 2000.) Evolution of life is a concept, although stated differently than the modern theory, in the Indian religion of Hinduism. In fact, in the Rig Veda (the Veda’s are ancient Hindu religious texts), the origin of all life comes from a cosmic egg, sounding similar to the Kabbala’s mustard seed and the Big Bang theory’s Singularity. Traditional modern scientists hold to life on earth either happening by chance on earth by a random mix of the vital elements for life over a long period of time or by the process of Panspermia, having been transported here on the solar winds or by meteorites from another planet.
Frances Crick, co-discoverer of the DNA helix, in ‘Life Itself: It’s Origin and Nature’, believes that it would have been mathematically impossible for life to have happened on earth by chance and that it must have come from somewhere else. However, geologist, astrobiologist, and paleontologist Peter Ward and astronomer and astrobiologist and NASA scientist Don Brownlee in their book, ‘Rare Earth’, state that the Earth is so unique that it is unlikely that life, as we know it, could exist anywhere else. With so many conflicting theories on the origin of life with so few facts to back them up, what prevents us from accepting the Bible by faith, as our final authority rather than the musings of Frances Crick, Peter Ward or any number of other scientists? If life could not have happened here by chance and it most likely didn’t happen anywhere else by chance then what do they have left? Nothing.
This brings to mind the problem that science has with what keeps the universe together. Since they believe that mass is the basis for gravity they have found that there is not enough mass in the universe to keep it from disintegrating, according to their theories. Now, we know that the universe is held together by the Lord Jesus Christ (Colossians 1:16,17). However, the scientist theorizes that there must be an invisible element called “Dark Matter”, which they say, according to ‘Q is for Quantum’, referenced beforehand, “is revealed by its gravitational influence on the bright stuff”. I would counter this with saying that the Lord Jesus Christ is revealed by his influence on the bright stuff, Mr. Bright Stuff.
“24 And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so. 25 And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.”
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Cattle, in the scriptures, refers to any domesticated livestock, not just beef cows but also sheep (Genesis 30:32). Once again, things do not change families or order. Dinosaurs, contrary to National Geographic’s fantasy in its November 1999 “Feathers for T. Rex” article by Christopher Sloan, did not become birds. The Smithsonian Institution vigorously protested that assertion in an open letter, a copy of which I have here.
“26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. 27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. 28 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.
29 And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. 30 And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so.
31 And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.” Note, that here in verse 29, as in verse 12, “herb yielding seed” is mentioned as part of the original diet, not only of mankind but of other creatures as well. Herbaceous plants would include vegetables and legumes (beans) which are high in protein.
Traditional, modern science does not believe God created man. It believes that man evolved through several stages of development through “ape-like” creatures with names such as Australopithecine, Homo Erectus, Cro-magnon, Homo Habilis. For instance, recently, in Time Magazine, the same science celebrity, who trumpeted his theory that whales and hippos have the same ancestor, which was a rip-off of another wild National Geographic story, Michel Brunet, claimed to have found the oldest pre-hominid skull in Africa, with a date of 7 million years. He was on the cover of Time. However, Brigitte Senut, of the Natural History Museum in Paris, explained that it was only the skull of a female gorilla. In fact, evidence has shown in virtually every case the bones found, declared to be that of some primitive form of ape-like ancestor of humans or near human is either the remains of an actual ape or of a variant of a human being contemporary with modern humans. These particular theories, that we have Neanderthals living among us, aren’t given much authority in the press.
Recently, it was stated that genetic studies had shown that we are not related to Neanderthals at all but the numbers given to prove that declaration were said by other scientists to be less than the variation between modern Chimpanzee groups that, after all, were still Chimpanzees. A great deal has been said about how apes have 98% of the DNA
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we do, and of how they are genetically similar to us. But, genetics teaches us that it is the expression of genes, not just their presence, that determines differences. After all, the London Telegraph, in August of 2003, reported an article from the science journal, Nature, that declared that we are even more closely related to the Swedish Mud Worm. So what.
Let’s proceed to Genesis, chapter 2. “1 Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. 2 And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. 3 And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.
4 These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens, 5 And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew: for the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground. 6 But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground. 7 And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.”
Notice that “day” in verse 4 stands for a period of time. Notice, also that the system that is in place today of rain, evaporation, rain did not exist as such in the beginning. Man is formed out of the dust of the earth and God, not only creates him but gives him life directly by breathing into him. Compare this to John 20:22-23 when he gave those specific apostles authority while they were on the earth to carry out their mission.
Genesis 2:8-15 gives us the location of the Garden of Eden, which was lost after the fall and the flood. It also gives us the day to day job of the first man. Verses 16 to 17 gives us the only stated restriction upon the man. Verses 18 to 25 give a reveals a very important concept in history, that the power to name was power of dominion over creation. This section finally ends with the creation of woman, the only creature not made out of dirt, and with the state of apparent innocence of the first couple.
Not speaking directly about the history of mankind but speaking directly to what eventually was to happen to mankind is the history given in Isaiah 14:12-14 and in Ezekiel 28:12-15 and chapter 31 as prophecy about contemporary tyrants points out how they are similar to Satan.
At this point it might be helpful to talk a little more about the current view of the majority of modern scientists with regard to evolution. One of the lynchpins of modern dating methods is the method known as Carbon 14 or radio carbon dating. Conventional radio carbon dating does not take into account specific differences between the activity of different carbon reservoirs. Natural variations in the amount of carbon brought on by such things as volcanic activity and variations caused by human interaction
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with the environment in regard to everything from atom bomb testing to pollution in the industrial age affect dating. Tree rings have been used to date things back as far as 8,000 years, according to scientists but tree rings are affected by the growing conditions around the tree, its location, and its interactions with catastrophe. To simplify a very complicated subject, let me just point out that modern manmade objects have given off dates of hundreds of millions of years and more importantly, modern objects such as cups have been found embedded in coal and other deposits that dated to the millions of years.
At this point a brief description of the scientific method as opposed to “science, falsely so called” (1 Timothy 6:20) might be in order. The scientific method, which true science is, a method or way of finding things out has to do with observation, experimentation, and then being able to reproduce the results of these experiments independently. As the atheist historian, Will Durant, said, “all theories of origins are pure conjecture”, so called scientific theories about the early earth and universe are more conjecture and guesswork than they are fact. Science can not reveal God by experimentation or observation because God is not the subject of experimentation but of revelation as He chooses to reveal himself as He will.
With regard to evolution let me quote the British Museum of Natural History’s former senior paleontologist Colin Patterson; “Ninetenths of the talk of evolutionists is sheer nonsense, not founded on observation and wholly unsupported by facts. This museum is full of proofs of the utter falsity of their views. In all this great museum there is not a particle of evidence of the transmutation of the species.” (quoted in “Does God Believe in Atheists?, page 114) I will now read some other quotes about evolution.
“Neo-Darwinism has failed as an evolutionary theory that canexplain the origin of species, understood as organisms ofdistinctive form and behaviour. In other words, it is not anadequate theory of evolution.What it does provide is a partial theory of adaptation, ormicroevolution (small- scale adaptive changes in organisms).” BrianGoodwin,Professor of Biology, Open University, UK, “Neo-Darwinism has failedas an evolutionary theory,” The Times Higher Education Supplement,May 19, 1995“Paleontologists have tried to turn Archaeopteryx into an earth-bound, feathered dinosaur. But it’s not. It is a bird, a perchingbird. And no amount of `paleobabble’ is going to change that.” Dr.J. Alan Feduccia,Prof. Avian Evolution and world authority on birds at the Universityof North Carolina. Archaeopteryx: Early Bird Catches a Can of Wormsby V. Morell, Science 259(5096):764–65, 5 February 1993
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“One must conclude that, contrary to the established and currentwisdom, a scenario describing the genesis of life on earth by chanceand natural causes which can be accepted on the basis of fact andnot faith has not yet been written.” Hubert P. Yockey,
“A Calculation of the Probability of Spontaneous Biogenesis byInformation Theory,” Journal of Theoretical Biology, Vol. 67, p. 398“The older textbooks on evolution make much of the idea of homology,pointing out the obvious resemblances between the skeletons of thelimbs of different animals. Thus the ‘pentadactyl’ [five bone] limbpattern is found in the arm of a man, the wing of a bird, andflipper of a whale, and this is held to indicate their commonorigin.Now if these various structures were transmitted by the samegene couples, varied from time to time by mutations and acted uponby environmental selection, the theory would make good sense.Unfortunately this is not the case. Homologous organs are nowknown to be produced by totally different gene complexes in thedifferent species. The concept of homology in terms of similar geneshanded on from a common ancestor has broken down.” William Fix,The Bone Peddlers: Selling Evolution, Macmillan Publishing Co., NewYork, 1984, p. 189“The earliest and most primitive members of every order already havethe basic ordinal characters, and in no case is an approximatelycontinuous series from one order to another known.In most cases the break is so sharp and the gap so large thatthe origin of the order is speculative and much disputed.” GeorgeGaylord Simpson,Temp. and Mode in Evolution (NY: Columbia University Press, 1944),p. 105–106.“What has closed the doors of the Academy to Mr. Darwin is that thescience of those of his books which have made his chief title tofame-the ‘Origin of Species,’ and still more the ‘Descent of Man,’is not science, but a mass of assertions and absolutely gratuitoushypotheses, often evidently fallacious.
This kind of publication and these theories are a bad example,
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which a body that respects itself cannot encourage.” On why theZoological Section of the French Institute denied Darwin’smembership in 1872. “Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, D. Appletonand Co., London, 2:400, footnote, 1911”“Don’t let the cosmologists try to kid you on this one. They havenot got a clue either–despite the fact that they are doing a prettygood job of convincing themselves and others that this is really nota problem.‘In the beginning,’ they will say, ‘there was nothing–no time,space, matter or energy. Then there was a quantum fluctuation fromwhich...’Whoa! Stop right there. You see what I mean? First there isnothing, then there is something. And the cosmologists try to bridgethe two with a quantum flutter, a tremor of uncertainty that sparksit all off.Then they are off and away and before you know it, they havepulled a hundred billion galaxies out of their quantum hats.” Dr.D. Darling,“On creating something from nothing,” New Scientist, Vol 151, No.2047, 14 September 1996, p.49“[The theory of evolution] forms a satisfactory faith on which tobase our interpretation of nature.” L. Harrison Matthews,Introduction to ‘Origin of Species: The Preservation of FavoredRaces in the Struggle for Life’, p. xxii (1977 edition“Karl Popper warns of a danger: ‘A theory, even a scientific theory,may become an intellectual fashion, a substitute for religion, anentrenched dogma.’This has certainly been true of evolutionary theory.” ColinPatterson,Senior Palaeontologist. British Museum of Natural History, London.Evolution (1977), p. 150
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“Evolution (as theory) is indeed ‘a conglomerate idea consisting ofconflicting hypotheses’, and I and my colleagues teach it as such.”Stephen Jay Gould,Professor of Zoology and Geology, Harvard University, “DarwinismDefined: The Difference Between Fact and Theory,” Discover, January1987, p65).“The driving force behind Darwin’s theory of origins was blatantracism, not science. Remember, the evidence that Darwin was a racistis easily discovered, he did not hide it. It can be seen in thesubtitle selected for his ‘The Origin of Species’. The words hechose to describe his effort were: ‘The Preservation of FavoredRaces in the Struggle for Life’. That should be enough for anyone.Darwin was out to prove the superiority of the white race over theblack. That goal was at the core of his stated thesis! He had anagenda, and that agenda was not scientific.”“The likelihood of the formation of life from inanimate matter isone to a number with 40,000 noughts after it... It is big enough tobury Darwin and the whole theory of Evolution.There was no primeval soup, neither on this planet nor on anyother, and if the beginnings of life were not random, they musttherefore have been the product of purposeful intelligence.” SirFred Hoyle,Respected British physicist and astronomer“The irony is devastating. The main purpose of Darwinism was todrive every last trace of an incredible God from biology.But the theory replaces God with an even more incredible deity—omnipotent chance.” T. Rosazak,Unfinished Animal (1975), pp. 101-102.“Not one change of species into another is on record....we cannotprove that a single species has been changed.” Charles Darwin“We still do not know the mechanics of evolution in spite of theover-confident claims in some quarters, nor are we likely to makefurther progress in this by the classical methods of paleontology orbiology; and we shall certainly not advance matters by jumping upand down shrilling, `Darwin is god and I, So-and-so, am hisprophet.’” Errol White,Proceedings of the Linnean Society, London, 177:8 (1966). 11
“In any confrontation [with creationists], you should be preparedto show that evolution is scientific, not that it is correct...Oneneed not discuss fossils, intermediate forms, or probabilities ofmutation. These are incidental. The question is, what is scientific,and what is religious.Therefore, if you must confront the creationists, we suggest youdiscuss the nature of science, the kind of knowledge it can provide,and the kind it cannot provide.” American Journal of ScientificAnthropology,Article in entitled ‘A Recommendation to the Association ConcerningCreation,’ Volume 2, 1983, 457-458“I have always been slightly suspicious of the theory of evolutionbecause of its ability to account for any property of living beings(the long neck of the giraffe, for example).I have therefore tried to see whether biological discoveriesover the last thirty years or so fit in with Darwin’s theory. I donot think that they do.To my mind, the theory does not stand up at all.” H. Lipson,“A Physicist Looks at Evolution,” Physics Bulletin, 31 (1980), p.138“We have proffered a collective tacit acceptance of the story ofgradual adaptive change, a story that strengthened and became evenmore entrenched as the synthesis took hold.We paleontologists have said that the history of life supportsthat interpretation, all the while really knowing that it doesnot.” Niles Eldredge,Chairman and Curator of Invertebrates, American Museum of NaturalHistory, “Time Frames: The Rethinking of Darwinian Evolution and theTheory of Punctuated Equilibria,” Simon & Schuster: New York NY,1985, p144)“Evidence from fossils now points overwhelmingly away from theclassical Darwinism which most Americans learned in high school. Themissing link between man and the apes is merely the most glamorousof a whole hierarchy of phantom creatures.In the fossil record, missing links are the rule. The morescientists have searched for the transitional forms between species,the more they have been frustrated.” Newsweek,November 3, 1980 12
“Darwinism is a creed not only with scientists committed todocument the all-purpose role of natural selection. It is a creedwith masses of people who have at best a vague notion of themechanism of evolution as proposed by Darwin, let alone as furthercomplicated by his successors.Clearly, the appeal cannot be that of a scientific truth but ofa philosophical belief which is not difficult to identify. Darwinismis a belief in the meaninglessness of existence.” R. Kirk,“The Rediscovery of Creation,” in National Review, (May 27, 1983),p. 641.“The fact that a theory [evolution] so vague, so insufficientlyverifiable, and so far from the criteria otherwise applied in ‘hard’science has become a dogma can only be explained on sociologicalgrounds.” Ludwig von Bertalanffy,Biologist“A growing number of respectable scientists are defecting from theevolutionist camp ... moreover, for the most part these ‘experts’have abandoned Darwinism, not on the basis of religious faith orbiblical persuasions, but on scientific grounds, and in someinstances, regretfully.The evolutionist thesis has become more stringently unthinkablethan ever before.” Wolfgang Smith,Ph.D. physicist and mathematician“So heated is the debate that one Darwinian says there are timeswhen he thinks about going into a field with more intellectualhonesty: the used-car business.” Sharon Begley,“Science Contra Darwin,” Newsweek, April 8, 1985, p. 80Since this is not a course on Bible doctrine but on history I will only touch briefly on the fall of man and woman in Genesis 3. There are two very key verses from an historical point of view. The first if verse 15 and the second is verse 24. Satan’s attempt to counterfeit the prophecy of the virgin birth of the Messiah in verse 15 is at the root of virtually all of the earth’s religions in a prideful and vain attempt to thwart the last part of the verse.
Speaking to Satan, the pre-incarnate Jesus Christ, the living Word, and God, says:
“And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.”
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First, it must be noted that originally, according to Bienkowski and Millard’s “Dictionary of the Ancient Near East”, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000, the goddess, Ishtar, who plays an extremely important role in history as a manifestation of Satan himself, was portrayed as a male deity in Venus, as the morning star, and , as the evening star, a goddess. This devil went on to become the biblical Ashtoreth. Finally, thousands of years later, in the Luciferian Madame Blavatsky’s “The Secret Doctrine” she/he/it is called “Lucifer, as Christ, the bright and morning Star;” (page 540, Volume 2).
The mother and child motif of ancient religion after the flood can not be dismissed if we are to understand history as it is tied to the Bible. Here, from Alexander Hislop’s “The Two Babylons” (chapter 2, section 2) we have this eye opening quote:
“The Babylonians, in their popular religion, supremely worshipped a Goddess Mother and a Son, who was represented in pictures and in images as an infant or child in his mother’s arms. From Babylon, this worship of the Mother and the Child spread to the ends of the earth. In Egypt, the Mother and the Child were worshipped under the names of Isis and Osiris. In India, even to this day, as Isi and Iswara; in Asia, as Cybele and Deoius; in Pagan Rome, as Fortuna and Jupiter-puer, or Jupiter, the boy; in Greece, as Ceres, the Great Mother, with the babe at her breast, or as Irene, the goddess of Peace, with the boy Plutus in her arms; and even in Thibet, in China, and Japan, the Jesuit missionaries were astronished to find the counterpart of Madonna and her child as devoutly worshipped as in Papal Rome itself; Shing Moo, the Holy Mother in China, being represented with a child in her arms, and a glory around her, exactly as if a Roman Catholic artist had been employed to set her up.”
Verse 24, which has to do with man being permanently kicked out of Eden, brings to mind the fact that mankind has futilely spent a great deal of time trying to get back to Eden. Much of history has to do with attempting to make the earth a paradise, for one person or a group of people, and slaughtering countless millions in that effort.
For a moment, let’s go back to verse 20 of chapter 3. Eve, the mother of all living, is mentioned in modern genetic theories. Here is a quote from the Wikipedia, a free online encyclopedia:
“A comparison of the mitochondrial DNA of humans from many races and regions suggests that all of these DNA sequences have evolved molecularly from a common ancestor sequence. Under the assumption that an individual inherits mitochondria only from one’s mother, this finding implies that all living humans have a female line of descent from a woman whom researchers have dubbed Mitochondrial Eve. Based on the molecular clock technique of correlating elapsed time with observed genetic drift, Eve is believed to have lived about 150,000 years ago. Phylogeny suggests she lived in Africa.”
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S. Paabo, Science 268, 1141 (1995) & R.L. Dorit, H. Akashi, W. Gilbert, Science 268, 1183 (1995) reported a similar finding with regard to men, in which 38 men from all over the world were discovered to have, after examining over 27,000 base pairs of genes, identical genetic sequences. They call this supposed common ancestor of all mankind, emerging out of Africa, Adam, believe it or not.
More recently (1998), a study of 67 men, as reported in Human Molecular Genetics brought the supposed origin of modern man closer than what these earlier studies suggested from 188,000 to 150,000 years down to a possible 55,000. Keep trying, Sparky, is all I can say.
Finally, the size of the human brain alone, and its intense consumption of 60% of the body’s available energy, which is way out of proportion with other animals, is a problem for evolutionists. Gibbons, EVOLUTION: Solving the Brain’s Energy Crisis, Science 1998 280: 1345-1347.
Genesis 4 details the rejection by God of Cain’s mode of worship, his sacrifice. Cain, as the Bible later tells us, was “of that wicked one” (1 John 3:12) and we know who that “wicked one” is from Matthew 13 and 1 John 5:19 along with our own reasoning powers (Isaiah 1:18). It then goes on to tell us about Cain’s murder of Abel. One note of interest is God’s banishment of Cain which was mirrored in the justice system of several African tribes, as discovered by European explorers. Banishment from the tribe was the worst possible punishment. Common sense tells us that Cain’s wife was a sister, as Adam and Eve were the head of the only human family and there is nothing in the text to say that they did not have many children by this time.
The mark of Cain has long been disputed in Christian circles and has been the subject of extra-biblical assumptions by racists and a source of pride by gypsies.
Here is the report of the first city built, called Enoch, after Cain’s son. The location of this first urban center would have been wiped out by the flood and as names of people and places can vary over cultures, languages, and time we might have evidence of it’s existence under another name. For instance, Jericho, is believed by some to be the longest continually inhabited city on earth. But, more likely, the remains of this first city are yet undiscovered unless we are driving our cars on the remains of its inhabitants. More on that later.
Other candidates for the oldest city are Catal Hoyuk, which traditional modern scientists prefer to date at 8,000BC and regard as the world’s oldest and largest “Neolithic” city with a population in the thousands. Neolithic means “new stone” as Paleolithic refers to “old stone age”. These designations are used more to classify the types of artifacts found than as real attempts at actual dating as they are not consistent over the entire spectum of human civilizations. Stone, bronze, and iron “ages” exist at the same time among
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different cultures around the world and some people still use stone and live in caves, such as the Tasaday in the Phillipines, as late as 1978.
Caral, in Peru, has also been dated to be of great age but it’s traditional date of 2600BC makes it much younger than either Jericho or Catal. The Phoenicians claimed that their city, Byblos, was the oldest city on earth.
We have Jabal, the father of nomadic herders mentioned in chapter 4, Jubal, of musicians, Tubalcain, of brass and iron workers, and then a hint of how violent this early human culture was in the statement of Lamech.
Finally, Seth is born to replace Abel. With the birth of his son, it would appear that formalized religion, or religion as we understand it, began with the mention in the last verse of calling upon the name of the Lord. The groundwork is laid in this chapter for all future religious wars. Less than two centuries have passed since creation, from a literal reading of the Biblical account.
One note of interest concerning so-called fossil fuels. There are two main theories as to the origins of the products which run our cars and provide us with so many other essential products for modern civilization. One is that they came from decayed plant and animal life and the other is that they were present at the formation of the earth and did not have an origin in living matter. In the first theory the organic molecules left by these decaying organisms form something called kerogens which are transformed into hydrocarbons (petroleum) by a process called catagenesis. How fast does this process occur? This can be done very fast in a process called pyrolysis with high heat and the absence of oxygen. The Petroleum Institute of Victoria, New Zealand has dated some petroleum deposits in the Gulf of Mexico at 6-7,000 years according to one source I read. I have not been able to verify that claim. However, I’d like to point out this article found on World Net Daily on May 25, 2004;
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“Sustainable oil?
Posted: May 25, 20041:00 a.m. Eastern
By Chris Bennett
About 80 miles off of the coast of Louisiana lies a mostly submerged mountain, the top of which is known as Eugene Island. The portion underwater is an eerie-looking, sloping tower jutting up from the depths of the Gulf of Mexico, with deep fissures and perpendicular faults which spontaneously spew natural gas. A significant reservoir of crude oil was discovered nearby in the late ‘60s, and by 1970, a platform named Eugene 330 was busily producing about 15,000 barrels a day of high-quality crude oil.
By the late ‘80s, the platform’s production had slipped to less than 4,000 barrels per day, and was considered pumped out. Done. Suddenly, in 1990, production soared back to 15,000 barrels a day, and the reserves which had been estimated at 60 million barrels in the ‘70s, were recalculated at 400 million barrels. Interestingly, the measured geological age of the new oil was quantifiably different than the oil pumped in the ‘70s.
Analysis of seismic recordings revealed the presence of a “deep fault” at the base of the Eugene Island reservoir which was gushing up a river of oil from some deeper and previously unknown source.
Similar results were seen at other Gulf of Mexico oil wells. Similar results were found in the Cook Inlet oil fields in Alaska. Similar results were found in oil fields in Uzbekistan. Similarly in the Middle East, where oil exploration and extraction have been underway for at least the last 20 years, known reserves have doubled. Currently there are somewhere in the neighborhood of 680 billion barrels of Middle East reserve oil.
Creating that much oil would take a big pile of dead dinosaurs and fermenting prehistoric plants. Could there be another source for crude oil?
An intriguing theory now permeating oil company research staffs suggests that crude oil may actually be a natural inorganic product, not a stepchild of unfathomable time and organic degradation. The theory suggests there may be huge, yet-to-be-discovered reserves of oil at depths that dwarf current world estimates.
The theory is simple: Crude oil forms as a natural inorganic process which occurs between the mantle and the crust, somewhere between 5 and 20 miles deep. The proposed mechanism is as follows:
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Methane (CH4) is a common molecule found in quantity throughout our solar system – huge concentrations exist at great depth in the Earth.
At the mantle-crust interface, roughly 20,000 feet beneath the surface, rapidly rising streams of compressed methane-based gasses hit pockets of high temperature causing the condensation of heavier hydrocarbons. The product of this condensation is commonly known as crude oil.
Some compressed methane-based gasses migrate into pockets and reservoirs we extract as “natural gas.”
In the geologically “cooler,” more tectonically stable regions around the globe, the crude oil pools into reservoirs.
In the “hotter,” more volcanic and tectonically active areas, the oil and natural gas continue to condense and eventually to oxidize, producing carbon dioxide and steam, which exits from active volcanoes.
Periodically, depending on variations of geology and Earth movement, oil seeps to the surface in quantity, creating the vast oil-sand deposits of Canada and Venezuela, or the continual seeps found beneath the Gulf of Mexico and Uzbekistan.
Periodically, depending on variations of geology, the vast, deep pools of oil break free and replenish existing known reserves of oil.
There are a number of observations across the oil-producing regions of the globe that support this theory, and the list of proponents begins with Mendelev (who created the periodic table of elements) and includes Dr. Thomas Gold (founding director of Cornell University Center for Radiophysics and Space Research) and Dr. J.F. Kenney of Gas Resources Corporations, Houston, Texas.
In his 1999 book, “The Deep Hot Biosphere,” Dr. Gold presents compelling evidence for inorganic oil formation. He notes that geologic structures where oil is found all correspond to “deep earth” formations, not the haphazard depositions we find with sedimentary rock, associated fossils or even current surface life.
He also notes that oil extracted from varying depths from the same oil field have the same chemistry – oil chemistry does not vary as fossils vary with increasing depth. Also interesting is the fact that oil is found in huge quantities among geographic formations where assays of prehistoric life are not sufficient to produce the existing reservoirs of oil. Where then did it come from?
Another interesting fact is that every oil field throughout the world has outgassing helium. Helium is so often present in oil fields that helium detectors are used as oil-prospecting tools. Helium is an inert gas known to be a fundamental product of the radiological decay or uranium and thorium, identified in quantity at great depths below
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the surface of the earth, 200 and more miles below. It is not found in meaningful quantities in areas that are not producing methane, oil or natural gas. It is not a member of the dozen or so common elements associated with life. It is found throughout the solar system as a thoroughly inorganic product.
Even more intriguing is evidence that several oil reservoirs around the globe are refilling themselves, such as the Eugene Island reservoir – not from the sides, as would be expected from cocurrent organic reservoirs, but from the bottom up.
Dr. Gold strongly believes that oil is a “renewable, primordial soup continually manufactured by the Earth under ultrahot conditions and tremendous pressures. As this substance migrates toward the surface, it is attached by bacteria, making it appear to have an organic origin dating back to the dinosaurs.”
Smaller oil companies and innovative teams are using this theory to justify deep oil drilling in Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico, among other locations, with some success. Dr. Kenney is on record predicting that parts of Siberia contain a deep reservoir of oil equal to or exceeding that already discovered in the Middle East.
Could this be true?
In August 2002, in the “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (US),” Dr. Kenney published a paper, which had a partial title of “The genesis of hydrocarbons and the origin of petroleum.” Dr. Kenney and three Russian coauthors conclude:
The Hydrogen-Carbon system does not spontaneously evolve hydrocarbons at pressures less than 30 Kbar, even in the most favorable environment. The H-C system evolves hydrocarbons under pressures found in the mantle of the Earth and at temperatures consistent with that environment.
He was quoted as stating that “competent physicists, chemists, chemical engineers and men knowledgeable of thermodynamics have known that natural petroleum does not evolve from biological materials since the last quarter of the 19th century.”
Deeply entrenched in our culture is the belief that at some point in the relatively near future we will see the last working pump on the last functioning oil well screech and rattle, and that will be that. The end of the Age of Oil. And unless we find another source of cheap energy, the world will rapidly become a much darker and dangerous place.
If Dr. Gold and Dr. Kenney are correct, this “the end of the world as we know it” scenario simply won’t happen.
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Think about it ... while not inexhaustible, deep Earth reserves of inorganic crude oil and commercially feasible extraction would provide the world with generations of low-cost fuel. Dr. Gold has been quoted saying that current worldwide reserves of crude oil could be off by a factor of over 100.“
Genesis 5 reveals the life spans of Adam’s offspring and ends with Noah and his three sons, the progenitors of the entire human race as we now know it.
Genesis 6 explains the foundation for all later mythologies about how the “gods” interacted with human kind. As in Genesis 3:15 we have the format Satan’s counterfeiting of the virgin birth through the miraculous births of Buddha and Lao-tze in India and China respectively, and for the death of the child and it’s resurrection in Assyrian, Babylonian, and Egyptian mythology, as well as the goddess, known as the “mother of god” and the “queen of heaven”, “holy virgin”, in near eastern religion, we have here the starting point for later myths about the assault on creation by demonic beings.
The Greeks called their gods, Daemons, and Plato and others admitted that they were possessed by their own particular demon, however, they did not look at the actions of these beings as necessarily bad, but inspiring, and enlightening. They were givers of wisdom, which we can see mirrored in Satan’s statements about how the tree of the knowledge of good and evil would make one wise. Zeus, the chief of the pantheon of Greek gods, we know by the writings of the historian, Herodotus, to be the same god as Bel in Babylon or Baal in Canaan, who Jesus called Satan. Modern mythologists refer to Quetzcoatl in Mexico and Viracocha in Peru as well as Odin in Norse mythology to be the same as Zeus. This makes all of these gods to be mirrors of or representations of Lucifer himself. Let’s look at the particular verses in question.
1 And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, 2 That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose.
3 And the LORD said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years.
4 There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.
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Pre-flood man and later, we will state, by implication, animals were infested by heavenly beings who “kept not their first estate” and later cultures, in their apostate condition, referred to these beings as gods. Notice that verse 4 reveals that this occurred before AND after the flood. Of the many references to gods mating with women we will get to in a moment but just as a reminder of how the word of God views these creatures before we start.
“They sacrificed unto devils, not to God; to gods whom they knew not, to new gods that came newly up, whom your fathers feared not.” Deuteronomy 32:17
“Are there any among the vanities of the Gentiles that can cause rain? or can the heavens give showers? art not thou he, O LORD our God? therefore we will wait upon thee: for thou hast made all these things.” Jeremiah 14:22
Now, here are some much later myths regarding the polluting of god’s creation by these “alien” beings;
According to Greek mythology and writers such as Plutarch, the author of the biography, “Lives of Illustrious Men”, such heroes as the Athenian Theseus were thought to be the sons of gods such as Zeus or Poseidon. Now, we know from the words of Jesus and Herodotus that Zeus is another name for Satan. Men of history, such as Alexander the Great, the Bible’s “prince of Grecia” in Daniel 10:20, were said to be of his offspring by myths surrounding their birth. Aprhodite, who is also known as Venus, Ishtar, Minerva, Diana, Cybele, and Ashtaroth, aka in Babylon as “the holy virgin”, “the mother of god”, and the “queen of heaven”, in the Bible, had human lovers and offspring. She is also known as Erzulie in Voodoo, Oshun in the Afro-Caribbean religion, Tlazolteot in the Aztec/Mexican religion, Obatala and Ani in Africa, and Kali in India. As we will see later, the old “gods” of the pagan cultures were often both male and female. Essentially, they all come back to Satan/Lucifer himself as Madame Blavatsky, the mother of modern Satanism and the new age movement called him;
“Lucifer represents .. Life .. Thought .. Progress .. Civilization .. Liberty .. Independence .. Lucifer is the Logos .. the Serpent, the Savior.” pages 171, 225, 255 (Volume II)
“It is Satan who is the God of our planet and the only God.” pages 215, 216, 220, 245, 255, 533, (VI)
“The Celestial Virgin which thus becomes the Mother of Gods and Devils at one and the same time; for she is the ever-loving beneficent Deity ... but in antiquity and reality Lucifer or Luciferius is the name. Lucifer is divine and Terrestrial Light, ‘the Holy Ghost’ and ‘Satan’ at one and the same time.” page 539
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Back to Zeus. Zeus/Satan had affairs with mortal men AND women. The pagan gods were known to appear as animals and it has been suggested that one reason that the animal world of the pre-flood had to be destroyed, except for those that God had chosen to go with Noah, was that even the animals had been polluted with sexual contact with these devils. Note myths of fantastic animals and how the Bible refers to such creatures of which we have physical evidence that are mixed in with descriptions of Satan himself as the “children of pride” in Job 41. Pride was Satan’s first sin. See Isaiah 14:12-14.
Not only were the so-called gods responsible for this perversion but they are credited with giving mankind knowledge and freeing him from the constraints set by God. Heretical Gnostic sects of early Christianity refer to Satan as “knowledge giver” and Lucifer, “giver of light”. In keeping with this theme one Polynesian legend tells that in the beginning heaven was so close to the ground that men had to walk bent over but that a god freed them so that they could stand up and heaven went far away.
The supernatural entities that corrupted the pre-flood earth are undoubtedly the “gods” of human memory and mythology who intermingled with humankind before “and after that” as the Bible clearly says. Special knowledge was granted by the gods in all the ancient mystery religions of the pagan world. As the Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus, probably, a generic name for many practitioners of magic and alchemy from the days of Egypt on down to contemporary times, says ‘as above so below’ and then goes on to define the ultimate, if legendary special knowledge given to man by the gods we have secret societies with secret knowledge given to man by supernatural entities down through the ages. Legend has it that this tablet was first placed in the King’s Chamber of the Great Pyramid of Cheops. It defines the deity of the sun, which was universally worshipped as a serpent in the ancient world as explained by Alexander Hislop in “The Two Babylons”.
The pre-flood civilization has been memorialized in legends, both real and imaginary, as Atlantis by the Greek philosopher, Plato, in his dialogues, Timaeus and Critias, as well as many others, and as Mu in Indian folklore, a lost civilization that was the mother of all civilizations. The Vedas and the Mahabarrata, Hindu religious literature, written sometime in the middle of the first millennium BC refer to an ancient world where wars that appear almost nuclear in description with fire raining down from what is often translated as flying ships and what appears to be some type of rockets. Now, all of these references are highly controversial and not universally accepted as referring to anything but the object of a fertile imagination, however, it is very clear from both the Bible’s brief account and from legend that the pre-flood world was a violent and corrupted age.
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6 And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart. 7 And the LORD said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them. Genesis 6:6 & 7
The pre-flood history of mankind is marked by two great events. One has to do with mankind’s rebellion in sin which the Bible equates later with witchcraft;
“For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry. Because thou hast rejected the word of the LORD, he hath also rejected thee from being king.”Samuel to Saul in 1 Samuel 15:23. The same could have been said of Adam.
Satan’s offer of knowledge, special god-like knowledge, to Eve is mirrored in today’s science and ethics controversies with regard to cloning and other bio-ethics issues as well as our destructive capabilities.
To quote from the foreword of the 1996 book, “Forbidden Knowledge”, by Roger Shattuck. “ One powerful reading of history points out that the most advanced nations on Earth have produced unthinkable weapons of destruction at the same time as they have developed a media culture that revels in images of destructive violence. Can such a combination fail to propel us toward barbarism and self-annihilation?”
The resultant spiritual death of Adam, in that day, as he physically didn’t die for several hundred years, is a great tragedy for all of mankind as we are born with a predilection for sin and must be born again to be saved from its consequences. Death is an aberration and the heritage of sinful mankind. See Romans 5:14.
To paraphrase the evolutionary biologist and professor of immunology at UCLA, William Clark in his book, “Sex and the Origins of Death”, death was not present in the original “creation”, a term he uses euphemistically to describe evolutionary processes and the formation of life, and in fact, he goes on to say that death is not necessary for the biological definition of life.
God has now called Noah to build the Ark and has announced “the end of all flesh” and of his covenant with Noah, mirrored in the fantastic Sumerian fable, the Epic of Gilgamesh as Utnaphishtim, who survives the greatest natural catastrophe recorded in the Bible. No one survives the great spiritual catastrophe recorded in these first few chapters of Genesis until the first advent of Jesus Christ and his death, burial, and resurrection, the last Adam, as Paul refers to him in 1 Corinthians 15:45.
.Study Questions for World History Class One
1. What is the Big Bang Theory?
2. What ages does traditional modern science give for the earth and the universe?
3. By what process does traditional science hold that life has become what it is on earth?
4. By what name is the feminine side of Satan referred to in ancient literature?
5. What was the name of the first city ever built?
6. What Greek philosopher first referred to Atlantis, the lost civilization?
7. What is the name of the great, Sumerian fable that includes the destruction of the world by flood?
Quiz for World History – Class One
1. What was the name of the first city ever built?
2. What Greek philosopher first referred to Atlantis, the lost civilization?
3. What is the name of the great, Sumerian fable that includes the destruction of the world by flood?
Turn in your study paper.
Of ape-men and Gamma Ray Bursts, gods and monsters before the Great Flood
“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” (Genesis 1:1) contains ten words in English – the Biblical number of the Gentiles- and seven words in Hebrew, “Berashith bara Elohim eth hashamayim waeth ha’aretz”, or seven words with 28 Hebrew letters (4x7), fourteen letters in the subject, and fourteen letters in the predicate, with “God” as the third word of the sentence according to a source I read.
This first verse denies atheism. “The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good.” (Psalm 14:1).
The majority of modern scientists teach that all matter resided in a singularity, the size of a period in a sentence. This entity, containing all light, matter, and energy that there is, violently exploded and the universe has been expanding ever since. This is called the Big Bang* and is highly theoretical and not without detractors as some ask questions like, “where did the singularity come from” and “if empty space is part of the universe then what about the empty space just ahead of the explosion or a trillion miles in front of it?”. (Q is for Quantum, An Encyclopedia of Particle Physics, by John Gribbin, The Free Press, 1998).
Medieval Kabbalists, believers in an occult form of Judaism, believed that in the beginning God filled the universe, then withdrew from it, leaving something the size of a mustard seed, which contained all light, energy, and matter, and exploded, creating what we now know as the universe. The modern Big Bang theory in an oversimplified form sounds a lot like this occultic belief.
As quoted in the book, “The Whole Shebang, A State of the Universe(s) Report, by Timothy Ferris, Simon & Schuster, 1997”, astronomer Stuart Boyer admits, “Ultimately, the origin of the universe is, and always will be, a mystery”. I would suggest he read Genesis 1:1. That should help.
“And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” (Genesis 1:2). Because the Hebrew word for “without form”, transliterated Tohuw, is translated as “ in vain” in Isaiah 45:18 and it is said he didn’t create it that way, some people believe there is a large gap between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2, allowing for millions and millions of years, dinosaurs, ape-men and the like. The main problem with this theory is, number one, it’s pulling the text like taffy, and, number two, there is the problem of death entering the world with Adam’s sin (Romans 5:12), not before. The counter to this is that the word “world” in that verse, is “Kosmos” referring to the world system, however, this too is stretching the clear and literal meaning of the text. Anglican Archbishop Ussher calculated backwards from the Bible and other sources and came to a date of 4004 BC for creation or 6000 years
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ago. The current Hebrew year is 5767. The Hebrew year begins in the Autumn while the Hebrew day begins in the evening and 5768 begins on September 12, 2007.
“And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.” (Genesis 1:3). As God did not create the Sun and the stars until the fourth day most scientists and many Christians scoff at this verse, claiming that, if they believe the verse at all, that there was a cloud cover over the earth blocking out the sun. But, not wanting to call the Biblical text a lie, let me just say that since 1967 a phenomenon known as Gamma Ray Bursts has been known in which a burst of light brighter than all of the universe’s suns combined and lasting for a few seconds at random intervals each day. This is not to say that these bursts of high energy radiation explain God’s light but to say that there are sources of light not from the stars (although the basis for these bursts is theoretical one theory is that they come from collapsing stars).
“4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. 5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.” (Genesis 1:4-5). Notice the beginning of the first day was in the evening and that this refers to a normal day consisting of evening and morning. Another popular theory is that the “days” of creation were ages of billions of years. This so-called “Day-Age” theory has the problem of the reference to “evening and morning” and the fact that the reference is of “Day” versus “Night”.
“6 And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. 7 And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. 8 And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.” Notice this day is not called good? (Ephesians 6:10-13; Isaiah 24:21; Job 41:31,32 if referring to outer space).
The idea of the universe or outer space being a division between water in space and water on earth is made all the more interesting by the fact that, according to astronomers there is a large water vapor “factory” in the Orion Nebula (Job 9:9; 38:31; Amos 5:8) and Cornell University reported in the April 10, 1998 edition of Science Daily that it produced enough water to fill the earth’s oceans 60 times each day.
“9 And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so. 10 And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.”
Modern science dates the earth at approximately 4.5 billion years old and the universe at about 15 billion years. The earth’s date is figured most significantly by radiometric dating which estimate the age of rocks using calculations based on the decay rates of radioactive elements such as uranium, strontium, and potassium. Oversimplifying the problems for this discussion, let me just say that there are many anomalies with dates differing between methods of dating of hundreds of millions of years and even the most
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enthusiastic believers in radiometric dating do not claim it’s a perfect way to obtain age estimates. I recommend the website for the Institute for Creation Research or icr.org.
Another thing to note is the prevalent theory, that complements the Genesis account, that no matter when the earth was formed it did contain one super-continent called Rodinia, consisting of Gondwanaland, Euramerica, and Siberia, which then the theorists say drifted apart and came together again in another super-continent called Pangea, which then drifted apart again all within the span of a few hundred million years give or take a few hundred million years. This information was gleaned from Palaeos.com and ecology.com online.
“11 And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so. 12 And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good. 13 And the evening and the morning were the third day.”
Grasses include wheat, rice, corn, and other grains such as millet and rye according to the Washington State University website. Fruits would include apples, citrus fruits, melons, etc.
“14 And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years: 15 And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so. 16 And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also. 17 And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth, 18 And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good. 19 And the evening and the morning were the fourth day. “
The stars and other objects in the universe are created in their current positions and distance which over rules using distance as age based on the Big Bang expansion. The Static Universe theory better fits observational data than the Big Bang according to T.C. Van Flandern of the US Naval Observatory and V. S. Troitskii from the Radiophysical Research Institute in Gorky, Russia.
“20 And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. 21 And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good. 22 And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth. 23 And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.”
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Life from water is a no-brainer, even for a traditional modern scientist. The Hebrew word for “kind” transliterated as “Meen” is not a species as in a type of eagle but a more broad categorization such as a “Family” for example. The belief that creatures were not created but evolved from lower life forms, which is against the Bible, was introduced by the Greek philosopher, Anaximander* around 520 BC. (*‘Does God Believe in Atheists?’ by John Blanchard, Evangelical Press, 2000.) Evolution of life is a concept, although stated differently than the modern theory, in the Indian religion of Hinduism. In fact, in the Rig Veda (the Veda’s are ancient Hindu religious texts), the origin of all life comes from a cosmic egg, sounding similar to the Kabbala’s mustard seed and the Big Bang theory’s Singularity. Traditional modern scientists hold to life on earth either happening by chance on earth by a random mix of the vital elements for life over a long period of time or by the process of Panspermia, having been transported here on the solar winds or by meteorites from another planet.
Frances Crick, co-discoverer of the DNA helix, in ‘Life Itself: It’s Origin and Nature’, believes that it would have been mathematically impossible for life to have happened on earth by chance and that it must have come from somewhere else. However, geologist, astrobiologist, and paleontologist Peter Ward and astronomer and astrobiologist and NASA scientist Don Brownlee in their book, ‘Rare Earth’, state that the Earth is so unique that it is unlikely that life, as we know it, could exist anywhere else. With so many conflicting theories on the origin of life with so few facts to back them up, what prevents us from accepting the Bible by faith, as our final authority rather than the musings of Frances Crick, Peter Ward or any number of other scientists? If life could not have happened here by chance and it most likely didn’t happen anywhere else by chance then what do they have left? Nothing.
This brings to mind the problem that science has with what keeps the universe together. Since they believe that mass is the basis for gravity they have found that there is not enough mass in the universe to keep it from disintegrating, according to their theories. Now, we know that the universe is held together by the Lord Jesus Christ (Colossians 1:16,17). However, the scientist theorizes that there must be an invisible element called “Dark Matter”, which they say, according to ‘Q is for Quantum’, referenced beforehand, “is revealed by its gravitational influence on the bright stuff”. I would counter this with saying that the Lord Jesus Christ is revealed by his influence on the bright stuff, Mr. Bright Stuff.
“24 And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so. 25 And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.”
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Cattle, in the scriptures, refers to any domesticated livestock, not just beef cows but also sheep (Genesis 30:32). Once again, things do not change families or order. Dinosaurs, contrary to National Geographic’s fantasy in its November 1999 “Feathers for T. Rex” article by Christopher Sloan, did not become birds. The Smithsonian Institution vigorously protested that assertion in an open letter, a copy of which I have here.
“26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. 27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. 28 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.
29 And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. 30 And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so.
31 And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.” Note, that here in verse 29, as in verse 12, “herb yielding seed” is mentioned as part of the original diet, not only of mankind but of other creatures as well. Herbaceous plants would include vegetables and legumes (beans) which are high in protein.
Traditional, modern science does not believe God created man. It believes that man evolved through several stages of development through “ape-like” creatures with names such as Australopithecine, Homo Erectus, Cro-magnon, Homo Habilis. For instance, recently, in Time Magazine, the same science celebrity, who trumpeted his theory that whales and hippos have the same ancestor, which was a rip-off of another wild National Geographic story, Michel Brunet, claimed to have found the oldest pre-hominid skull in Africa, with a date of 7 million years. He was on the cover of Time. However, Brigitte Senut, of the Natural History Museum in Paris, explained that it was only the skull of a female gorilla. In fact, evidence has shown in virtually every case the bones found, declared to be that of some primitive form of ape-like ancestor of humans or near human is either the remains of an actual ape or of a variant of a human being contemporary with modern humans. These particular theories, that we have Neanderthals living among us, aren’t given much authority in the press.
Recently, it was stated that genetic studies had shown that we are not related to Neanderthals at all but the numbers given to prove that declaration were said by other scientists to be less than the variation between modern Chimpanzee groups that, after all, were still Chimpanzees. A great deal has been said about how apes have 98% of the DNA
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we do, and of how they are genetically similar to us. But, genetics teaches us that it is the expression of genes, not just their presence, that determines differences. After all, the London Telegraph, in August of 2003, reported an article from the science journal, Nature, that declared that we are even more closely related to the Swedish Mud Worm. So what.
Let’s proceed to Genesis, chapter 2. “1 Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. 2 And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. 3 And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.
4 These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens, 5 And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew: for the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground. 6 But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground. 7 And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.”
Notice that “day” in verse 4 stands for a period of time. Notice, also that the system that is in place today of rain, evaporation, rain did not exist as such in the beginning. Man is formed out of the dust of the earth and God, not only creates him but gives him life directly by breathing into him. Compare this to John 20:22-23 when he gave those specific apostles authority while they were on the earth to carry out their mission.
Genesis 2:8-15 gives us the location of the Garden of Eden, which was lost after the fall and the flood. It also gives us the day to day job of the first man. Verses 16 to 17 gives us the only stated restriction upon the man. Verses 18 to 25 give a reveals a very important concept in history, that the power to name was power of dominion over creation. This section finally ends with the creation of woman, the only creature not made out of dirt, and with the state of apparent innocence of the first couple.
Not speaking directly about the history of mankind but speaking directly to what eventually was to happen to mankind is the history given in Isaiah 14:12-14 and in Ezekiel 28:12-15 and chapter 31 as prophecy about contemporary tyrants points out how they are similar to Satan.
At this point it might be helpful to talk a little more about the current view of the majority of modern scientists with regard to evolution. One of the lynchpins of modern dating methods is the method known as Carbon 14 or radio carbon dating. Conventional radio carbon dating does not take into account specific differences between the activity of different carbon reservoirs. Natural variations in the amount of carbon brought on by such things as volcanic activity and variations caused by human interaction
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with the environment in regard to everything from atom bomb testing to pollution in the industrial age affect dating. Tree rings have been used to date things back as far as 8,000 years, according to scientists but tree rings are affected by the growing conditions around the tree, its location, and its interactions with catastrophe. To simplify a very complicated subject, let me just point out that modern manmade objects have given off dates of hundreds of millions of years and more importantly, modern objects such as cups have been found embedded in coal and other deposits that dated to the millions of years.
At this point a brief description of the scientific method as opposed to “science, falsely so called” (1 Timothy 6:20) might be in order. The scientific method, which true science is, a method or way of finding things out has to do with observation, experimentation, and then being able to reproduce the results of these experiments independently. As the atheist historian, Will Durant, said, “all theories of origins are pure conjecture”, so called scientific theories about the early earth and universe are more conjecture and guesswork than they are fact. Science can not reveal God by experimentation or observation because God is not the subject of experimentation but of revelation as He chooses to reveal himself as He will.
With regard to evolution let me quote the British Museum of Natural History’s former senior paleontologist Colin Patterson; “Ninetenths of the talk of evolutionists is sheer nonsense, not founded on observation and wholly unsupported by facts. This museum is full of proofs of the utter falsity of their views. In all this great museum there is not a particle of evidence of the transmutation of the species.” (quoted in “Does God Believe in Atheists?, page 114) I will now read some other quotes about evolution.
“Neo-Darwinism has failed as an evolutionary theory that canexplain the origin of species, understood as organisms ofdistinctive form and behaviour. In other words, it is not anadequate theory of evolution.What it does provide is a partial theory of adaptation, ormicroevolution (small- scale adaptive changes in organisms).” BrianGoodwin,Professor of Biology, Open University, UK, “Neo-Darwinism has failedas an evolutionary theory,” The Times Higher Education Supplement,May 19, 1995“Paleontologists have tried to turn Archaeopteryx into an earth-bound, feathered dinosaur. But it’s not. It is a bird, a perchingbird. And no amount of `paleobabble’ is going to change that.” Dr.J. Alan Feduccia,Prof. Avian Evolution and world authority on birds at the Universityof North Carolina. Archaeopteryx: Early Bird Catches a Can of Wormsby V. Morell, Science 259(5096):764–65, 5 February 1993
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“One must conclude that, contrary to the established and currentwisdom, a scenario describing the genesis of life on earth by chanceand natural causes which can be accepted on the basis of fact andnot faith has not yet been written.” Hubert P. Yockey,
“A Calculation of the Probability of Spontaneous Biogenesis byInformation Theory,” Journal of Theoretical Biology, Vol. 67, p. 398“The older textbooks on evolution make much of the idea of homology,pointing out the obvious resemblances between the skeletons of thelimbs of different animals. Thus the ‘pentadactyl’ [five bone] limbpattern is found in the arm of a man, the wing of a bird, andflipper of a whale, and this is held to indicate their commonorigin.Now if these various structures were transmitted by the samegene couples, varied from time to time by mutations and acted uponby environmental selection, the theory would make good sense.Unfortunately this is not the case. Homologous organs are nowknown to be produced by totally different gene complexes in thedifferent species. The concept of homology in terms of similar geneshanded on from a common ancestor has broken down.” William Fix,The Bone Peddlers: Selling Evolution, Macmillan Publishing Co., NewYork, 1984, p. 189“The earliest and most primitive members of every order already havethe basic ordinal characters, and in no case is an approximatelycontinuous series from one order to another known.In most cases the break is so sharp and the gap so large thatthe origin of the order is speculative and much disputed.” GeorgeGaylord Simpson,Temp. and Mode in Evolution (NY: Columbia University Press, 1944),p. 105–106.“What has closed the doors of the Academy to Mr. Darwin is that thescience of those of his books which have made his chief title tofame-the ‘Origin of Species,’ and still more the ‘Descent of Man,’is not science, but a mass of assertions and absolutely gratuitoushypotheses, often evidently fallacious.
This kind of publication and these theories are a bad example,
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which a body that respects itself cannot encourage.” On why theZoological Section of the French Institute denied Darwin’smembership in 1872. “Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, D. Appletonand Co., London, 2:400, footnote, 1911”“Don’t let the cosmologists try to kid you on this one. They havenot got a clue either–despite the fact that they are doing a prettygood job of convincing themselves and others that this is really nota problem.‘In the beginning,’ they will say, ‘there was nothing–no time,space, matter or energy. Then there was a quantum fluctuation fromwhich...’Whoa! Stop right there. You see what I mean? First there isnothing, then there is something. And the cosmologists try to bridgethe two with a quantum flutter, a tremor of uncertainty that sparksit all off.Then they are off and away and before you know it, they havepulled a hundred billion galaxies out of their quantum hats.” Dr.D. Darling,“On creating something from nothing,” New Scientist, Vol 151, No.2047, 14 September 1996, p.49“[The theory of evolution] forms a satisfactory faith on which tobase our interpretation of nature.” L. Harrison Matthews,Introduction to ‘Origin of Species: The Preservation of FavoredRaces in the Struggle for Life’, p. xxii (1977 edition“Karl Popper warns of a danger: ‘A theory, even a scientific theory,may become an intellectual fashion, a substitute for religion, anentrenched dogma.’This has certainly been true of evolutionary theory.” ColinPatterson,Senior Palaeontologist. British Museum of Natural History, London.Evolution (1977), p. 150
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“Evolution (as theory) is indeed ‘a conglomerate idea consisting ofconflicting hypotheses’, and I and my colleagues teach it as such.”Stephen Jay Gould,Professor of Zoology and Geology, Harvard University, “DarwinismDefined: The Difference Between Fact and Theory,” Discover, January1987, p65).“The driving force behind Darwin’s theory of origins was blatantracism, not science. Remember, the evidence that Darwin was a racistis easily discovered, he did not hide it. It can be seen in thesubtitle selected for his ‘The Origin of Species’. The words hechose to describe his effort were: ‘The Preservation of FavoredRaces in the Struggle for Life’. That should be enough for anyone.Darwin was out to prove the superiority of the white race over theblack. That goal was at the core of his stated thesis! He had anagenda, and that agenda was not scientific.”“The likelihood of the formation of life from inanimate matter isone to a number with 40,000 noughts after it... It is big enough tobury Darwin and the whole theory of Evolution.There was no primeval soup, neither on this planet nor on anyother, and if the beginnings of life were not random, they musttherefore have been the product of purposeful intelligence.” SirFred Hoyle,Respected British physicist and astronomer“The irony is devastating. The main purpose of Darwinism was todrive every last trace of an incredible God from biology.But the theory replaces God with an even more incredible deity—omnipotent chance.” T. Rosazak,Unfinished Animal (1975), pp. 101-102.“Not one change of species into another is on record....we cannotprove that a single species has been changed.” Charles Darwin“We still do not know the mechanics of evolution in spite of theover-confident claims in some quarters, nor are we likely to makefurther progress in this by the classical methods of paleontology orbiology; and we shall certainly not advance matters by jumping upand down shrilling, `Darwin is god and I, So-and-so, am hisprophet.’” Errol White,Proceedings of the Linnean Society, London, 177:8 (1966). 11
“In any confrontation [with creationists], you should be preparedto show that evolution is scientific, not that it is correct...Oneneed not discuss fossils, intermediate forms, or probabilities ofmutation. These are incidental. The question is, what is scientific,and what is religious.Therefore, if you must confront the creationists, we suggest youdiscuss the nature of science, the kind of knowledge it can provide,and the kind it cannot provide.” American Journal of ScientificAnthropology,Article in entitled ‘A Recommendation to the Association ConcerningCreation,’ Volume 2, 1983, 457-458“I have always been slightly suspicious of the theory of evolutionbecause of its ability to account for any property of living beings(the long neck of the giraffe, for example).I have therefore tried to see whether biological discoveriesover the last thirty years or so fit in with Darwin’s theory. I donot think that they do.To my mind, the theory does not stand up at all.” H. Lipson,“A Physicist Looks at Evolution,” Physics Bulletin, 31 (1980), p.138“We have proffered a collective tacit acceptance of the story ofgradual adaptive change, a story that strengthened and became evenmore entrenched as the synthesis took hold.We paleontologists have said that the history of life supportsthat interpretation, all the while really knowing that it doesnot.” Niles Eldredge,Chairman and Curator of Invertebrates, American Museum of NaturalHistory, “Time Frames: The Rethinking of Darwinian Evolution and theTheory of Punctuated Equilibria,” Simon & Schuster: New York NY,1985, p144)“Evidence from fossils now points overwhelmingly away from theclassical Darwinism which most Americans learned in high school. Themissing link between man and the apes is merely the most glamorousof a whole hierarchy of phantom creatures.In the fossil record, missing links are the rule. The morescientists have searched for the transitional forms between species,the more they have been frustrated.” Newsweek,November 3, 1980 12
“Darwinism is a creed not only with scientists committed todocument the all-purpose role of natural selection. It is a creedwith masses of people who have at best a vague notion of themechanism of evolution as proposed by Darwin, let alone as furthercomplicated by his successors.Clearly, the appeal cannot be that of a scientific truth but ofa philosophical belief which is not difficult to identify. Darwinismis a belief in the meaninglessness of existence.” R. Kirk,“The Rediscovery of Creation,” in National Review, (May 27, 1983),p. 641.“The fact that a theory [evolution] so vague, so insufficientlyverifiable, and so far from the criteria otherwise applied in ‘hard’science has become a dogma can only be explained on sociologicalgrounds.” Ludwig von Bertalanffy,Biologist“A growing number of respectable scientists are defecting from theevolutionist camp ... moreover, for the most part these ‘experts’have abandoned Darwinism, not on the basis of religious faith orbiblical persuasions, but on scientific grounds, and in someinstances, regretfully.The evolutionist thesis has become more stringently unthinkablethan ever before.” Wolfgang Smith,Ph.D. physicist and mathematician“So heated is the debate that one Darwinian says there are timeswhen he thinks about going into a field with more intellectualhonesty: the used-car business.” Sharon Begley,“Science Contra Darwin,” Newsweek, April 8, 1985, p. 80Since this is not a course on Bible doctrine but on history I will only touch briefly on the fall of man and woman in Genesis 3. There are two very key verses from an historical point of view. The first if verse 15 and the second is verse 24. Satan’s attempt to counterfeit the prophecy of the virgin birth of the Messiah in verse 15 is at the root of virtually all of the earth’s religions in a prideful and vain attempt to thwart the last part of the verse.
Speaking to Satan, the pre-incarnate Jesus Christ, the living Word, and God, says:
“And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.”
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First, it must be noted that originally, according to Bienkowski and Millard’s “Dictionary of the Ancient Near East”, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000, the goddess, Ishtar, who plays an extremely important role in history as a manifestation of Satan himself, was portrayed as a male deity in Venus, as the morning star, and , as the evening star, a goddess. This devil went on to become the biblical Ashtoreth. Finally, thousands of years later, in the Luciferian Madame Blavatsky’s “The Secret Doctrine” she/he/it is called “Lucifer, as Christ, the bright and morning Star;” (page 540, Volume 2).
The mother and child motif of ancient religion after the flood can not be dismissed if we are to understand history as it is tied to the Bible. Here, from Alexander Hislop’s “The Two Babylons” (chapter 2, section 2) we have this eye opening quote:
“The Babylonians, in their popular religion, supremely worshipped a Goddess Mother and a Son, who was represented in pictures and in images as an infant or child in his mother’s arms. From Babylon, this worship of the Mother and the Child spread to the ends of the earth. In Egypt, the Mother and the Child were worshipped under the names of Isis and Osiris. In India, even to this day, as Isi and Iswara; in Asia, as Cybele and Deoius; in Pagan Rome, as Fortuna and Jupiter-puer, or Jupiter, the boy; in Greece, as Ceres, the Great Mother, with the babe at her breast, or as Irene, the goddess of Peace, with the boy Plutus in her arms; and even in Thibet, in China, and Japan, the Jesuit missionaries were astronished to find the counterpart of Madonna and her child as devoutly worshipped as in Papal Rome itself; Shing Moo, the Holy Mother in China, being represented with a child in her arms, and a glory around her, exactly as if a Roman Catholic artist had been employed to set her up.”
Verse 24, which has to do with man being permanently kicked out of Eden, brings to mind the fact that mankind has futilely spent a great deal of time trying to get back to Eden. Much of history has to do with attempting to make the earth a paradise, for one person or a group of people, and slaughtering countless millions in that effort.
For a moment, let’s go back to verse 20 of chapter 3. Eve, the mother of all living, is mentioned in modern genetic theories. Here is a quote from the Wikipedia, a free online encyclopedia:
“A comparison of the mitochondrial DNA of humans from many races and regions suggests that all of these DNA sequences have evolved molecularly from a common ancestor sequence. Under the assumption that an individual inherits mitochondria only from one’s mother, this finding implies that all living humans have a female line of descent from a woman whom researchers have dubbed Mitochondrial Eve. Based on the molecular clock technique of correlating elapsed time with observed genetic drift, Eve is believed to have lived about 150,000 years ago. Phylogeny suggests she lived in Africa.”
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S. Paabo, Science 268, 1141 (1995) & R.L. Dorit, H. Akashi, W. Gilbert, Science 268, 1183 (1995) reported a similar finding with regard to men, in which 38 men from all over the world were discovered to have, after examining over 27,000 base pairs of genes, identical genetic sequences. They call this supposed common ancestor of all mankind, emerging out of Africa, Adam, believe it or not.
More recently (1998), a study of 67 men, as reported in Human Molecular Genetics brought the supposed origin of modern man closer than what these earlier studies suggested from 188,000 to 150,000 years down to a possible 55,000. Keep trying, Sparky, is all I can say.
Finally, the size of the human brain alone, and its intense consumption of 60% of the body’s available energy, which is way out of proportion with other animals, is a problem for evolutionists. Gibbons, EVOLUTION: Solving the Brain’s Energy Crisis, Science 1998 280: 1345-1347.
Genesis 4 details the rejection by God of Cain’s mode of worship, his sacrifice. Cain, as the Bible later tells us, was “of that wicked one” (1 John 3:12) and we know who that “wicked one” is from Matthew 13 and 1 John 5:19 along with our own reasoning powers (Isaiah 1:18). It then goes on to tell us about Cain’s murder of Abel. One note of interest is God’s banishment of Cain which was mirrored in the justice system of several African tribes, as discovered by European explorers. Banishment from the tribe was the worst possible punishment. Common sense tells us that Cain’s wife was a sister, as Adam and Eve were the head of the only human family and there is nothing in the text to say that they did not have many children by this time.
The mark of Cain has long been disputed in Christian circles and has been the subject of extra-biblical assumptions by racists and a source of pride by gypsies.
Here is the report of the first city built, called Enoch, after Cain’s son. The location of this first urban center would have been wiped out by the flood and as names of people and places can vary over cultures, languages, and time we might have evidence of it’s existence under another name. For instance, Jericho, is believed by some to be the longest continually inhabited city on earth. But, more likely, the remains of this first city are yet undiscovered unless we are driving our cars on the remains of its inhabitants. More on that later.
Other candidates for the oldest city are Catal Hoyuk, which traditional modern scientists prefer to date at 8,000BC and regard as the world’s oldest and largest “Neolithic” city with a population in the thousands. Neolithic means “new stone” as Paleolithic refers to “old stone age”. These designations are used more to classify the types of artifacts found than as real attempts at actual dating as they are not consistent over the entire spectum of human civilizations. Stone, bronze, and iron “ages” exist at the same time among
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different cultures around the world and some people still use stone and live in caves, such as the Tasaday in the Phillipines, as late as 1978.
Caral, in Peru, has also been dated to be of great age but it’s traditional date of 2600BC makes it much younger than either Jericho or Catal. The Phoenicians claimed that their city, Byblos, was the oldest city on earth.
We have Jabal, the father of nomadic herders mentioned in chapter 4, Jubal, of musicians, Tubalcain, of brass and iron workers, and then a hint of how violent this early human culture was in the statement of Lamech.
Finally, Seth is born to replace Abel. With the birth of his son, it would appear that formalized religion, or religion as we understand it, began with the mention in the last verse of calling upon the name of the Lord. The groundwork is laid in this chapter for all future religious wars. Less than two centuries have passed since creation, from a literal reading of the Biblical account.
One note of interest concerning so-called fossil fuels. There are two main theories as to the origins of the products which run our cars and provide us with so many other essential products for modern civilization. One is that they came from decayed plant and animal life and the other is that they were present at the formation of the earth and did not have an origin in living matter. In the first theory the organic molecules left by these decaying organisms form something called kerogens which are transformed into hydrocarbons (petroleum) by a process called catagenesis. How fast does this process occur? This can be done very fast in a process called pyrolysis with high heat and the absence of oxygen. The Petroleum Institute of Victoria, New Zealand has dated some petroleum deposits in the Gulf of Mexico at 6-7,000 years according to one source I read. I have not been able to verify that claim. However, I’d like to point out this article found on World Net Daily on May 25, 2004;
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“Sustainable oil?
Posted: May 25, 20041:00 a.m. Eastern
By Chris Bennett
About 80 miles off of the coast of Louisiana lies a mostly submerged mountain, the top of which is known as Eugene Island. The portion underwater is an eerie-looking, sloping tower jutting up from the depths of the Gulf of Mexico, with deep fissures and perpendicular faults which spontaneously spew natural gas. A significant reservoir of crude oil was discovered nearby in the late ‘60s, and by 1970, a platform named Eugene 330 was busily producing about 15,000 barrels a day of high-quality crude oil.
By the late ‘80s, the platform’s production had slipped to less than 4,000 barrels per day, and was considered pumped out. Done. Suddenly, in 1990, production soared back to 15,000 barrels a day, and the reserves which had been estimated at 60 million barrels in the ‘70s, were recalculated at 400 million barrels. Interestingly, the measured geological age of the new oil was quantifiably different than the oil pumped in the ‘70s.
Analysis of seismic recordings revealed the presence of a “deep fault” at the base of the Eugene Island reservoir which was gushing up a river of oil from some deeper and previously unknown source.
Similar results were seen at other Gulf of Mexico oil wells. Similar results were found in the Cook Inlet oil fields in Alaska. Similar results were found in oil fields in Uzbekistan. Similarly in the Middle East, where oil exploration and extraction have been underway for at least the last 20 years, known reserves have doubled. Currently there are somewhere in the neighborhood of 680 billion barrels of Middle East reserve oil.
Creating that much oil would take a big pile of dead dinosaurs and fermenting prehistoric plants. Could there be another source for crude oil?
An intriguing theory now permeating oil company research staffs suggests that crude oil may actually be a natural inorganic product, not a stepchild of unfathomable time and organic degradation. The theory suggests there may be huge, yet-to-be-discovered reserves of oil at depths that dwarf current world estimates.
The theory is simple: Crude oil forms as a natural inorganic process which occurs between the mantle and the crust, somewhere between 5 and 20 miles deep. The proposed mechanism is as follows:
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Methane (CH4) is a common molecule found in quantity throughout our solar system – huge concentrations exist at great depth in the Earth.
At the mantle-crust interface, roughly 20,000 feet beneath the surface, rapidly rising streams of compressed methane-based gasses hit pockets of high temperature causing the condensation of heavier hydrocarbons. The product of this condensation is commonly known as crude oil.
Some compressed methane-based gasses migrate into pockets and reservoirs we extract as “natural gas.”
In the geologically “cooler,” more tectonically stable regions around the globe, the crude oil pools into reservoirs.
In the “hotter,” more volcanic and tectonically active areas, the oil and natural gas continue to condense and eventually to oxidize, producing carbon dioxide and steam, which exits from active volcanoes.
Periodically, depending on variations of geology and Earth movement, oil seeps to the surface in quantity, creating the vast oil-sand deposits of Canada and Venezuela, or the continual seeps found beneath the Gulf of Mexico and Uzbekistan.
Periodically, depending on variations of geology, the vast, deep pools of oil break free and replenish existing known reserves of oil.
There are a number of observations across the oil-producing regions of the globe that support this theory, and the list of proponents begins with Mendelev (who created the periodic table of elements) and includes Dr. Thomas Gold (founding director of Cornell University Center for Radiophysics and Space Research) and Dr. J.F. Kenney of Gas Resources Corporations, Houston, Texas.
In his 1999 book, “The Deep Hot Biosphere,” Dr. Gold presents compelling evidence for inorganic oil formation. He notes that geologic structures where oil is found all correspond to “deep earth” formations, not the haphazard depositions we find with sedimentary rock, associated fossils or even current surface life.
He also notes that oil extracted from varying depths from the same oil field have the same chemistry – oil chemistry does not vary as fossils vary with increasing depth. Also interesting is the fact that oil is found in huge quantities among geographic formations where assays of prehistoric life are not sufficient to produce the existing reservoirs of oil. Where then did it come from?
Another interesting fact is that every oil field throughout the world has outgassing helium. Helium is so often present in oil fields that helium detectors are used as oil-prospecting tools. Helium is an inert gas known to be a fundamental product of the radiological decay or uranium and thorium, identified in quantity at great depths below
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the surface of the earth, 200 and more miles below. It is not found in meaningful quantities in areas that are not producing methane, oil or natural gas. It is not a member of the dozen or so common elements associated with life. It is found throughout the solar system as a thoroughly inorganic product.
Even more intriguing is evidence that several oil reservoirs around the globe are refilling themselves, such as the Eugene Island reservoir – not from the sides, as would be expected from cocurrent organic reservoirs, but from the bottom up.
Dr. Gold strongly believes that oil is a “renewable, primordial soup continually manufactured by the Earth under ultrahot conditions and tremendous pressures. As this substance migrates toward the surface, it is attached by bacteria, making it appear to have an organic origin dating back to the dinosaurs.”
Smaller oil companies and innovative teams are using this theory to justify deep oil drilling in Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico, among other locations, with some success. Dr. Kenney is on record predicting that parts of Siberia contain a deep reservoir of oil equal to or exceeding that already discovered in the Middle East.
Could this be true?
In August 2002, in the “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (US),” Dr. Kenney published a paper, which had a partial title of “The genesis of hydrocarbons and the origin of petroleum.” Dr. Kenney and three Russian coauthors conclude:
The Hydrogen-Carbon system does not spontaneously evolve hydrocarbons at pressures less than 30 Kbar, even in the most favorable environment. The H-C system evolves hydrocarbons under pressures found in the mantle of the Earth and at temperatures consistent with that environment.
He was quoted as stating that “competent physicists, chemists, chemical engineers and men knowledgeable of thermodynamics have known that natural petroleum does not evolve from biological materials since the last quarter of the 19th century.”
Deeply entrenched in our culture is the belief that at some point in the relatively near future we will see the last working pump on the last functioning oil well screech and rattle, and that will be that. The end of the Age of Oil. And unless we find another source of cheap energy, the world will rapidly become a much darker and dangerous place.
If Dr. Gold and Dr. Kenney are correct, this “the end of the world as we know it” scenario simply won’t happen.
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Think about it ... while not inexhaustible, deep Earth reserves of inorganic crude oil and commercially feasible extraction would provide the world with generations of low-cost fuel. Dr. Gold has been quoted saying that current worldwide reserves of crude oil could be off by a factor of over 100.“
Genesis 5 reveals the life spans of Adam’s offspring and ends with Noah and his three sons, the progenitors of the entire human race as we now know it.
Genesis 6 explains the foundation for all later mythologies about how the “gods” interacted with human kind. As in Genesis 3:15 we have the format Satan’s counterfeiting of the virgin birth through the miraculous births of Buddha and Lao-tze in India and China respectively, and for the death of the child and it’s resurrection in Assyrian, Babylonian, and Egyptian mythology, as well as the goddess, known as the “mother of god” and the “queen of heaven”, “holy virgin”, in near eastern religion, we have here the starting point for later myths about the assault on creation by demonic beings.
The Greeks called their gods, Daemons, and Plato and others admitted that they were possessed by their own particular demon, however, they did not look at the actions of these beings as necessarily bad, but inspiring, and enlightening. They were givers of wisdom, which we can see mirrored in Satan’s statements about how the tree of the knowledge of good and evil would make one wise. Zeus, the chief of the pantheon of Greek gods, we know by the writings of the historian, Herodotus, to be the same god as Bel in Babylon or Baal in Canaan, who Jesus called Satan. Modern mythologists refer to Quetzcoatl in Mexico and Viracocha in Peru as well as Odin in Norse mythology to be the same as Zeus. This makes all of these gods to be mirrors of or representations of Lucifer himself. Let’s look at the particular verses in question.
1 And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, 2 That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose.
3 And the LORD said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years.
4 There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.
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Pre-flood man and later, we will state, by implication, animals were infested by heavenly beings who “kept not their first estate” and later cultures, in their apostate condition, referred to these beings as gods. Notice that verse 4 reveals that this occurred before AND after the flood. Of the many references to gods mating with women we will get to in a moment but just as a reminder of how the word of God views these creatures before we start.
“They sacrificed unto devils, not to God; to gods whom they knew not, to new gods that came newly up, whom your fathers feared not.” Deuteronomy 32:17
“Are there any among the vanities of the Gentiles that can cause rain? or can the heavens give showers? art not thou he, O LORD our God? therefore we will wait upon thee: for thou hast made all these things.” Jeremiah 14:22
Now, here are some much later myths regarding the polluting of god’s creation by these “alien” beings;
According to Greek mythology and writers such as Plutarch, the author of the biography, “Lives of Illustrious Men”, such heroes as the Athenian Theseus were thought to be the sons of gods such as Zeus or Poseidon. Now, we know from the words of Jesus and Herodotus that Zeus is another name for Satan. Men of history, such as Alexander the Great, the Bible’s “prince of Grecia” in Daniel 10:20, were said to be of his offspring by myths surrounding their birth. Aprhodite, who is also known as Venus, Ishtar, Minerva, Diana, Cybele, and Ashtaroth, aka in Babylon as “the holy virgin”, “the mother of god”, and the “queen of heaven”, in the Bible, had human lovers and offspring. She is also known as Erzulie in Voodoo, Oshun in the Afro-Caribbean religion, Tlazolteot in the Aztec/Mexican religion, Obatala and Ani in Africa, and Kali in India. As we will see later, the old “gods” of the pagan cultures were often both male and female. Essentially, they all come back to Satan/Lucifer himself as Madame Blavatsky, the mother of modern Satanism and the new age movement called him;
“Lucifer represents .. Life .. Thought .. Progress .. Civilization .. Liberty .. Independence .. Lucifer is the Logos .. the Serpent, the Savior.” pages 171, 225, 255 (Volume II)
“It is Satan who is the God of our planet and the only God.” pages 215, 216, 220, 245, 255, 533, (VI)
“The Celestial Virgin which thus becomes the Mother of Gods and Devils at one and the same time; for she is the ever-loving beneficent Deity ... but in antiquity and reality Lucifer or Luciferius is the name. Lucifer is divine and Terrestrial Light, ‘the Holy Ghost’ and ‘Satan’ at one and the same time.” page 539
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Back to Zeus. Zeus/Satan had affairs with mortal men AND women. The pagan gods were known to appear as animals and it has been suggested that one reason that the animal world of the pre-flood had to be destroyed, except for those that God had chosen to go with Noah, was that even the animals had been polluted with sexual contact with these devils. Note myths of fantastic animals and how the Bible refers to such creatures of which we have physical evidence that are mixed in with descriptions of Satan himself as the “children of pride” in Job 41. Pride was Satan’s first sin. See Isaiah 14:12-14.
Not only were the so-called gods responsible for this perversion but they are credited with giving mankind knowledge and freeing him from the constraints set by God. Heretical Gnostic sects of early Christianity refer to Satan as “knowledge giver” and Lucifer, “giver of light”. In keeping with this theme one Polynesian legend tells that in the beginning heaven was so close to the ground that men had to walk bent over but that a god freed them so that they could stand up and heaven went far away.
The supernatural entities that corrupted the pre-flood earth are undoubtedly the “gods” of human memory and mythology who intermingled with humankind before “and after that” as the Bible clearly says. Special knowledge was granted by the gods in all the ancient mystery religions of the pagan world. As the Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus, probably, a generic name for many practitioners of magic and alchemy from the days of Egypt on down to contemporary times, says ‘as above so below’ and then goes on to define the ultimate, if legendary special knowledge given to man by the gods we have secret societies with secret knowledge given to man by supernatural entities down through the ages. Legend has it that this tablet was first placed in the King’s Chamber of the Great Pyramid of Cheops. It defines the deity of the sun, which was universally worshipped as a serpent in the ancient world as explained by Alexander Hislop in “The Two Babylons”.
The pre-flood civilization has been memorialized in legends, both real and imaginary, as Atlantis by the Greek philosopher, Plato, in his dialogues, Timaeus and Critias, as well as many others, and as Mu in Indian folklore, a lost civilization that was the mother of all civilizations. The Vedas and the Mahabarrata, Hindu religious literature, written sometime in the middle of the first millennium BC refer to an ancient world where wars that appear almost nuclear in description with fire raining down from what is often translated as flying ships and what appears to be some type of rockets. Now, all of these references are highly controversial and not universally accepted as referring to anything but the object of a fertile imagination, however, it is very clear from both the Bible’s brief account and from legend that the pre-flood world was a violent and corrupted age.
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6 And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart. 7 And the LORD said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them. Genesis 6:6 & 7
The pre-flood history of mankind is marked by two great events. One has to do with mankind’s rebellion in sin which the Bible equates later with witchcraft;
“For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry. Because thou hast rejected the word of the LORD, he hath also rejected thee from being king.”Samuel to Saul in 1 Samuel 15:23. The same could have been said of Adam.
Satan’s offer of knowledge, special god-like knowledge, to Eve is mirrored in today’s science and ethics controversies with regard to cloning and other bio-ethics issues as well as our destructive capabilities.
To quote from the foreword of the 1996 book, “Forbidden Knowledge”, by Roger Shattuck. “ One powerful reading of history points out that the most advanced nations on Earth have produced unthinkable weapons of destruction at the same time as they have developed a media culture that revels in images of destructive violence. Can such a combination fail to propel us toward barbarism and self-annihilation?”
The resultant spiritual death of Adam, in that day, as he physically didn’t die for several hundred years, is a great tragedy for all of mankind as we are born with a predilection for sin and must be born again to be saved from its consequences. Death is an aberration and the heritage of sinful mankind. See Romans 5:14.
To paraphrase the evolutionary biologist and professor of immunology at UCLA, William Clark in his book, “Sex and the Origins of Death”, death was not present in the original “creation”, a term he uses euphemistically to describe evolutionary processes and the formation of life, and in fact, he goes on to say that death is not necessary for the biological definition of life.
God has now called Noah to build the Ark and has announced “the end of all flesh” and of his covenant with Noah, mirrored in the fantastic Sumerian fable, the Epic of Gilgamesh as Utnaphishtim, who survives the greatest natural catastrophe recorded in the Bible. No one survives the great spiritual catastrophe recorded in these first few chapters of Genesis until the first advent of Jesus Christ and his death, burial, and resurrection, the last Adam, as Paul refers to him in 1 Corinthians 15:45.
.Study Questions for World History Class One
1. What is the Big Bang Theory?
2. What ages does traditional modern science give for the earth and the universe?
3. By what process does traditional science hold that life has become what it is on earth?
4. By what name is the feminine side of Satan referred to in ancient literature?
5. What was the name of the first city ever built?
6. What Greek philosopher first referred to Atlantis, the lost civilization?
7. What is the name of the great, Sumerian fable that includes the destruction of the world by flood?
Quiz for World History – Class One
1. What was the name of the first city ever built?
2. What Greek philosopher first referred to Atlantis, the lost civilization?
3. What is the name of the great, Sumerian fable that includes the destruction of the world by flood?
Turn in your study paper.
Genesis. chapters 1-3
The First Book of Moses
Called Genesis
50 chapters, 1534 verses, 38,267 words
(coincides with the church at Ephesus in Revelation and Isaiah, chapter 1)
“Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen…” Revelation 2:5
Isaiah, chapter 1
2 Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth: for the LORD hath spoken, I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against me.
9 Except the LORD of hosts had left unto us a very small remnant, we should have been as Sodom, and we should have been like unto Gomorrah. 10 Hear the word of the LORD, ye rulers of Sodom; give ear unto the law of our God, ye people of Gomorrah.
Genesis, verse 1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
“In the beginning” states that at the beginning of time. “In the beginning God” states that God predated time itself. God has no beginning. “In the beginning God created” denies atheism and polytheism. If you deny this you are calling Jesus Christ a liar. See Jesus’ words in Mark 13:19. If you deny this you are calling Moses a liar. See Exodus 31:17 and Exodus 20:11 which he wrote stating that it was from God. If you deny this you are calling Isaiah a liar. See Isaiah 42:5. If you deny this you are calling Paul a liar. See Ephesians 3:9 and then read the disciple/apostle John’s account in John 1:1-3 and read 1 John 1:1. Now read Colossians 1:15-17.
“In the beginning God created the heaven”. Which heaven is this? The Heaven of verse 8 is a division or firmament between the waters on earth and the waters above. See the ISO’s proof of a literal water factory in Orion. The heaven that the birds fly (Luke 24:51) in is mentioned in verse 20. There are three heavens as per 2 Corinthians 12:2. Is this is the heaven of Revelation, chapter 4. Please read. Now read the entire verse, “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. “ The earth is further separated into watery Seas (capital) and dry land also called Earth (capital), although the accompanying article will show that there is more water above than below the firmament called Heaven.
Another view, my own, in fact, might be that this is a broad statement that is explained in full in the ensuing chapter. This will happen at the end of Chapter One in regard to man’s creation and then the same event in more detail in Chapter Two.
“God” in Hebrew is Elohim, a plural word. God is three persons in one. See 1 John 5:7; Matthew 28:19; Hebrews 9:14; and possibly Colossians 2:2. God is not three separate entities. See Deuteronomy 6:4 & Mark 12:29. God has a soul or intellect which no man has ever seen, called God the Father, who invisibly sits on the throne in heaven. See John 1:18; 1 John 4:12. God has a spirit called God the Spirit. See John 4:24; Isaiah 61:1;
2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
See the reference in Jeremiah 4:23 with regard to the next time this condition takes place, in the Great Tribulation, perhaps. This gives us a tip as to what the phrase “without form and void” means. The “darkness” of John 1:5 is wickedness, spiritual darkness in reference to the realm of Ephesians 6:12 which is a place of great evil as in Job 25:5, Job 26:5, and Job 15:15. This is the base of operations of the prince of the power of the air in Ephesians 2:2, who is the prince of this world in John 12:31; 14:30; & 16:11, the god of this world in 2 Corinthians 4:4, he who has power over death as per Hebrews 2:14. He is king over the children of pride as in Job 41:34 and over the children of disobedience mentioned in Ephesians 2:2; 5:6; & Colossians 3:6. It is to destroy his works that Jesus would come as per 1 John 3:8.
This”darkness” is inhabited by devils, the pagan world knew as gods. See Deuteronomy 32:17. These gods are also called the vanities of the gentiles as per Jeremiah 14:22. There are many of them as per 1 Corinthians 8:5. They are all manifestations of Satan by a careful reading of Mark, chapter 5, in much the same way as the Holy Spirit is existent in millions of believers’ bodies.
Their leader, Satan, was originally the cherub (see Ezekiel, chapters 1 & 10 for a description of the cherubim) who was over the throne of God in heaven as per Ezekiel 28:14 but pride was found in him and he wanted to rise above the angels of God as per Isaiah 14:12-15. (See Revelation 1:20 for the connection between angels and stars).
The “darkness” was “upon the face of the deep”. Is that water on earth? The oceans which had not been created yet, or is this something else? Notice the reference to “the face of the deep” in Job 38:30 and its immediate context to being a mention of constellations. The earth itself is, at this time, in the waters of space as per 2 Peter 3:5-7 which in context is not talking about the Flood of Noah. Look carefully at the wording and the words mentioned in the surrounding passages.
The Holy Spirit now moves upon the waters that surround the earth. Something has happened. We are never told when the angels, the sons of God, were created, nor when Satan and the other cherubim were created, nor are we told when the devils were created, or when Satan fell. It certainly must have been before this heaven and earth, the creation of is about to be described, were made. The solar system shows signs of a great war, in my opinion. There are things missing, going backwards like Venus, and things that once existed like the Martian magnetic field, are gone.
(para)3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
Here are the heaven and the earth with no suns, no stars, and nothing else but God, who says for there to be light. This is a light from God devoid of any other source who covers Himself with light like a garment in Psalm 104:2. Now, read Acts 26:18; 2 Corinthians 4:4; 1 John 1:5; & Revelation 21:23 along with Isaiah 60:19, 20.
Science has a term for the creation of light from sound through water and that is sonoluminescence.
4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.
God alone determines what is good for only He is truly good and He, not man, is the measure of all things. Here He divides what He has made, that which is good, His light from the spiritual darkness or just darkness that filled the universe, “the face of the deep”.
5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.
Notice the capitalization of the word Day and the word Night. Now the second phrase in this verse seems to make it clear that we are talking about a normal day, but how could we, when there is no sun or stars yet, or moon? There is something different about this “Day” and this “Night”. When Judas departs from the Last Supper it is night (John 13:30). Now, to keep us from thinking that this is just a reporting of the time of day Paul says that “The night is far spent, and the day is at hand:” in Romans 13:12 thus signifying to me that this night is the church age. We are told in Proverbs 30:5 that “joy cometh in the morning” and Psalm 130:6 repeats a phrase that bears a second look. Jesus’ resurrection is revealed in the early morning in Matthew 28:1; Mark 16:2; 16:9; Luke 24:1; & John 20:1. Clearly God called the light, which He had just called good, by the name of Day. The darkness which covered the face of the deep He called Night. See before what I said that the darkness represents. This is the first day of creation when God interposed Himself into something wicked and shone His light on it as when He sent God the Son to live as one of us and die by our hand (John 8:12; 9:5). The first evening and morning are made with light coming directly from Himself, not the sun or stars.
Notice that in God’s prophetic timetable the day starts with evening. This is important when studying which day Christ was crucified. This also has an impact on the theory that the seven days of creation coincide with history. If that is the case and God is using the Hebrew designation for what constitutes a day then one would assume he would use the Hebrew year as well. That means that 5800 years have not arrived as yet so the contemporary evangelical idea that we are about to be raptured might have to be rethought. The Jewish year, 5767, began on the evening of September 23, 2006. Many early church leaders believed that the earth would last 6,000 years before Christ returned to rule again.
If the first day represents the first thousand years then we have God’s separation of good and evil by the introduction of His light into the spiritual darkness. Satan, prior to the time first mentioned here, has rebelled and brought great destruction to God’s creation. This can be understood by Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 38 passages referring to Satan. Now, God begins the process of returning creation to Himself.
(para)6 And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.
The firmament is that barrier that divides the waters on the earth from the waters in the heavens. We would call it outer space or the universe.
7 And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.
Like the dry land between the heights of the Red Sea which the Hebrews marched this divides the waters above from the waters below.
8 And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.
This is what was presaged as being created in verse 1. Still now sun and moon and stars. This second day is supernatural, as well. This Heaven is capitalized. This is the Heaven which God split with His light. But notice that on this day, nothing is said to be “good”. We know what lives in this “sea”. See Isaiah 27:1 and cross reference with Revelation 12:9.
In this thousand years the Great Flood of Noah takes place wiping out the corrupted creation that became foul after Adam’s fall.
(para)9 And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.
Now God has come down to the planet.
10 And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.
Now the earth, mentioned in verse 1, is mentioned and the waters on earth are called Seas.
11 And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.
“After his kind” simply means that an apple tree doesn’t bear figs. Things have offspring similar to themselves. There is plenty of room for variation in this process but apple trees have never been known to bear oranges.
12 And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
God speaks and the thing is done by His command. Jesus is that Word that is spoken according to John 1:1-3.
13 And the evening and the morning were the third day.
The third day and still no natural light, only God’s power. The third thousand years has the first wanderings of the three men who left the Ark. Human populations and life itself are growing. The third day takes us down beyond Moses’ leading the Israelites through the Red Sea down to the establishment of the David’s kingdom.
(para)14 And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years: 15 And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.
The sun and the stars are for signs and seasons on earth. That is their purpose. Also they give light. Earth is not some backwater in some remote corner of the universe. Earth is the center of the universe. Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, proposed after the Michelson-Morley Experiment could show no motion in the Earth, stated that it was impossible to scientifically prove absolute motion of the earth. In other words, as Astronomer Fred Hoyle has said, neither Ptolemy’s Earth Centered Universe nor Copernicus’ Sun Centered Solar System were disprovable or provable. So, if the Bible teaches that the earth is the centerpoint of God’s creation, fixed and unmoveable, then there is nothing that so-called science can do to prove it is not true. Christians will fight against evolution but have totally capitulated to the Styrofoam Sun of high school days connected to orbiting Styrofoam planets by pipe cleaners. The Copernican Revolution, which removed the Earth from its central position in the universe began the process of undoing the authority of God and His Bible in the minds of man. A recent survey of Christian teenagers showed that 80% of them did not believe there was any absolute truth.
The sun is a type of Christ but not to be worshipped as in primitive cultures (Malachi 4:2). The Sun rises in the East and moves against the world which moves from West to East, if it is indeed moving at all. If you are with Christ you are moving against the world. The moon is a type of the Christian. When the earth gets in between the moon and the sun, there is an eclipse. See Psalm 104:19.
Science has a name for nuclear fusion produced via sound and that is sonofusion.
16 And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.
The stars are all named and numbered. Psalm 147:4. The moon, like the Christian, has no light of its own (Job 25:5) but can only reflect the Sun like Christ.
17 And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth, 18 And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good. 19 And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.
Esther 9:1 defines rule as having power over something but common sense tells you that. Notice how God has started at the heights and come down to earth as Christ did, starting in heaven He comes down to earth. Now, the universe is powered by what God has created rather than by His supernatural light alone.
Christ comes at the end of the fourth day/thousand years of creation. He will rule over the day and the night. All power is given to Him. (Matthew 28:18)
(para)20 And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.
This is the first time that the word “life” shows up in the Bible and natural life is connected with water. Read John 3:3-5. Read Proverbs 5:18. Life has a connection with water. Isaiah 48:1.
Birds are closer related, in God’s order, to fish which is probably why they lay eggs. Birds and fish come from water. God has life come from water, even fowl, which can mean more than birds as we shall see in Leviticus 11:19 that the bat is included because it has wings and flies in the air. The definition of life, something that breathes air, is found in Genesis 2:7; 6:17; & 7:15. We also have Outer Space called Heaven and now we have the atmosphere of the earth called heaven so there are two represented here and the third, “the abode of God and the blessed dead” mentioned by Paul. (10/22/06)
21 And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
In Job 7:12, he asks rhetorically if he is a whale that a watch should be set over him, as in keeping a close eye on him? A whale is a type of Satan or antichrist in Ezekiel 32:2 in Matthew 12:40, the great fish that swallowed Jonah in Jonah 1:17 is said to be a whale. A whale is likened to the Leviathan of Isaiah 27:1 and therefore used as a type of Satan in Psalm 104:26. Therefore a whale is very important in prophetic writing and it is appropriate that it is the first creature mentioned by name. A whale is classified as a type of fish because it swims in the sea like other fish. Our classification is different and based on a different standard, which is our mistake.
The waters bring forth abundantly, after their kind, which is a designation that is far wider than our “species”, a “kind” of animal is just that. Whales don’t become fish and they didn’t come from hippos as per a National Geographic article I read and the rantings of the madman, Michel Brunet. It is twice stated in this chapter now that the waters brought forth life. This is good to God.
22 And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth.
This command is given to all the animals and living things and it is still in force today.
23 And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.
5,000 years from creation brings us to the close of the first millennium after Christ and, according to the Hebrew calendar about the time that the Crusader kingdoms of Roman Catholic Europe were falling. It is a time of upheaval and the beginnings of the Reformation’s light in Europe.
(para)24 And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.
Land animals come from the earth as do some birds which we will see later. Once again, it is reinforced that creatures produce “after his kind” and reptiles do not make birds.
25And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
Again we have a clear statement that things did not involve into other things. It’s either one or the other. Either this is a lie or evolution is.
(para)26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
Man was made in the image of God, the trinity, as in “our image”. After the fall of Adam, Adam’s offspring, beginning with Seth, are made in his image as per Genesis 5:3. We know that Cain was “of that wicked one” (1 John 3:12). What is the image of God? Well certainly it is not about appearance as both Adam and Eve are made in His image but one is a man and the other is a woman. There is something else involved in being made in God’s image than mere appearance. Colossians 1:15 says that Jesus is the “image of the invisible God” so He is not a physical clone of something you cannot see. (See 2 Corinthians 4:4). The image must refer to some quality or the nature of the individual. Perhaps, the ability to discern good and evil, and to choose, or to stand upright and walk, to speak, to create words and put them to paper, or to act in a creative manner knowing the difference between that which is good and that which is evil is the image of God. See Hebrews 1:2,3; Colossians 3:9; for the argument that since Jesus is the image of God, Adam is made like Christ. There is no “image of God” between Genesis 3 and Matthew.
Now, the argument against man losing the image of God with Adam’s fall is 2 Corinthians 11:7 and in that woman is said to be the image of man, however, in context it is talking about position not nature or quality.
Notice that mankind has dominion. John Locke, in his “Two Treatises on Government” makes the point that it was not just Adam that was given dominion but mankind as in this chapter the reference is to man as a grouping. In the next verse we see that male AND female are included in the designation, man. Locke’s point is that it is nonsensical to say that only Adam had dominion over the life of the earth and that this did not pass to his descendants and, in fact, no one argues this point.
27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
Both male and female are created in the image of God. Period. See Galatians 3:28. So, the argument in 2 Corinthians 11:7 is not about quality, value, or nature but position.
28 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.
Man’s dominion is over every living thing. Dominion is area of rule or authority or control. It does not constitute ownership because God is the owner (See Leviticus 25:23; Psalm 50:10-12). Man is out of his dominion when he goes above where the eagle flies. See Psalm 115:15,16.
(para)29 And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.
Meat is defined here as food, specifically fruits and vegetables. The first man is a vegetarian.
30 And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so.
The animals are vegetarians, too. This is why, in the millennium, the lion will eat straw like an ox (Isaiah 11:7).
This is the last thousand years before Christ’s return to rule physically on earth. Man feels supreme over all the earth. He thinks of his dominion as fully realized before Christ takes over the kingdoms of the earth (Revelation 11:15).
(para)31 And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.
Everything that God has made, He recognizes as good. It is the sixth day of creation. The conditions are perfect.
Note:
Astronomers discover a huge chemical "factory" in interstellar space, suggesting origin of water in solar system
FOR RELEASE: APRIL 9, 1998
Contact: David BrandOffice: (607) 255-3651E-Mail: deb27@cornell.eduITHACA, N.Y. -- A team of U.S. astronomers, led by Cornell University astrophysicist Martin Harwit, has discovered a massive concentration of water vapor within a cloud of interstellar gas close to the Orion nebula. The amount of water measured is so high -- enough to fill the Earth's oceans 60 times a day -- that the researchers believe it provides an important clue to the origin of water in the solar system.
The amount of water vapor measured in Orion is 20 times larger than that observed in other interstellar gas clouds in our galaxy, the Milky Way. The discovery was made within the Orion molecular cloud, a giant interstellar gas cloud, a trillion miles across, composed primarily of hydrogen molecules.
The measurements were made with the long-wavelength spectrometer aboard the Infrared Space Observatory (ISO) launched in November 1995 by the European Space Agency with the participation of NASA. The observations were made in October 1997 and are reported today (April 20) in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Looking in the far-infrared region of the electromagnetic spectrum, the astronomers observed the characteristic signature of emission by water vapor. "The interstellar gas cloud that we observed is being pummeled by shock waves that compress and heat the gas," says Harwit, who is a Cornell professor emeritus, an ISO mission scientist and lead author on the research report. "These shock waves are the result of the violent early stages of star birth in which a young star spews out gas that slams into its surroundings at high speed. The heated water vapor that we observed is the result of that collision," he says.
Such a high concentration of water in Orion's giant gas cloud, which swirls around millions of stars along our spiral arm of the Milky Way, 1,500 light years from the sun, could have implications for the origin of water in the solar system, says ISO team member David Neufeld, professor of physics and astronomy at Johns Hopkins University. "The interstellar gas cloud that we observed in Orion seems to be a huge chemical factory generating enough water molecules in a single day to fill the Earth's oceans 60 times over."
Eventually, he says, the water vapor will freeze, becoming small ice particles. Similar ice particles are thought to have been present within the gas cloud from which the solar system originally formed. "It seems quite plausible that much of the water in the solar system was originally produced in a giant water vapor factory like the one we have observed in Orion," Neufeld says.
Cornell's Harwit speculates that the shock waves observed in the Orion gas cloud could be a cause as well as the result of star birth. The shock waves might also trigger the formation of additional stars and planets as they compress the gas cloud -- if the heat can be radiated away, says Harwit. "Water vapor is a particularly efficient radiator at far-infrared wavelengths and plays a critical role in cooling the gas and facilitating star formation," he notes.
The concentration of water vapor measured by the team was about one part in 2,000 by volume. The new observations confirm predictions by astrophysicists over the past 25 years that whenever the temperature exceeds 200 degrees Fahrenheit, chemical reactions will convert most of the oxygen atoms in interstellar gas into water.
"An enhanced concentrator of water is precisely what we expected in this gas cloud," says team member Gary Melnick of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. He adds that the strength of the water radiation detected from Orion was in perfect agreement with theoretical predictions published in the doctoral thesis of team member Michael Kaufman, a former Johns Hopkins graduate student now at NASA's Ames Research Center.
Panels showing two examples of measurements carried out on board the ISO, together with an image of the Orion nebula taken with the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 on NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, can be seen on the World Wide Web at http://www.pha.jhu.edu/~neufeld/orionwater.html.
Article taken from : http://www.news.cornell.edu/releases/April98/Orion.deb.html
on October 12, 2006, Thursday.
Chapter 2
1 Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.
God’s creation is finished. If Genesis 1 mentions only the creation of God’s dwelling place and the rest of the chapter details the other two heavens, then He’s done. Everything is complete.
2 And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. 3 And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.
This would parallel the millennial reign of Christ spoken of in Revelation.
(para)4 These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens, 5 And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew: for the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground.
There is a different atmosphere than now, with no rain. The entire earth would be like a lush, jungle paradise. A mist went up from the earth.
6 But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground. 7 And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.
A baby is not a living soul until it breathes some would say. Don’t believe me. Read the verse again. Man became a living soul after God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. Read Exodus 21:22. Now, come back to this verse. This verse is about the creation of the first man, not all subsequent men. Later, we see children in the womb spoken of as if they were already breathing air. Read Genesis 25:22 and Luke 1:41 and tell me if you think an unborn baby is alive or not. Read Psalm 51:5 and Isaiah 49:1. Jeremiah 1:5. Throughout the Bible life is a gift from God. Abortion is a homicidal rebellion against God’s handiwork. And remember, Exodus 21:22 refers to an accident, not a deliberate abortion.
(para)8 And the LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed. 9 And out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
Two trees are mentioned by name. You get eternal life if you partake of the tree of life and a knowledge of good and evil if you partake of that tree. They are not symbols, but real trees. Later, a fig tree is mentioned and then thorn and thistles. Now, read Judges 9:8-15 and place these trees. Before the law in Genesis 9:4, eating blood is forbidden, and during the law in Leviticus 17:14, and during the time of grace in Acts 15:19. Numbers 6 defines how a Nazarite is not to eat anything of the vine tree. Blood is not mentioned as being in Adam and Eve’s body in Genesis 2:23 and it is not in Christ’s body in Luke 24:39. Wine from the vine tree is a type of blood. See that Jesus’ first public miracle was turning water into wine, a type of blood. The first public miracle done openly was when Moses turned water into blood in the Old Testament. The supernatural tree of life is a vine tree, perhaps.
Adam and Eve ate of the supernatural vine tree and acquired blood. We know that flesh and blood can not inherit the kingdom of God from 1 Corinthians 15:50. Adam lost his kingship when he took blood. He must have had a circulatory system of water.
10 And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads. 11 The name of the first is Pison: that is it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold; 12 And the gold of that land is good: there is bdellium and the onyx stone. 13 And the name of the second river is Gihon: the same is it that compasseth the whole land of Ethiopia. 14 And the name of the third river is Hiddekel: that is it which goeth toward the east of Assyria. And the fourth river is Euphrates. 15 And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.
Can’t locate Pison or Havilah for certain. Gihon could be the Nile. Hiddekel is another name for the Tigris River. Euphrates and Tigris are certain but that’s all. Eden is sometimes drawn with the top at Mount Ararat with the Nile on the west and the Tigris and Euphrates on the east.
The first man is a husbandman, he takes care of the garden.
(para)16 And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: 17 But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.
He is told that he may “freely eat”. He could have taken of the “tree of life” which they will be allowed to partake if they have followed believed that Jesus Christ is the Son of God as per Revelation 2:7 defining it by 1 John 5:4,5 and have followed God’s commandments in the Tribulation and Millennium as per Revelation 22:14.
(para)18 And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.
Meet, match, or helper would apply.
19 And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.
Now, fowls of the air are said to be “out of the ground”. Coupled with 1:20 we see that birds were formed from a combination of water and earth. Adam’s name is red brown. Edom is the same root. Adam is a picture of a fallen race. Esau from which Edom came is a type of a fallen Christian. The Hebrew word for Rome is similar to Adam. Roman Christianity is an Adamic religion. This wasn’t a guessing game for God to see what Adam would call them. This is give Adam a chance to name them.
20 And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him.
The animals did not satisfy the need for a helper for Adam.
(para)21 And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; 22 And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man. 23 And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. 24 Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh. 25 And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.
See Genesis 15:12 for another deep sleep. The deep sleep is a type of death. God cloned woman from man. Adam is a type of Christ and the woman is a type of the church. In order to get the church Jesus Christ had to die, just as Adam had to die in type to get his wife. The woman was made out of a rib. Here, God uses the creation of the Woman as an example of how the husband and wife are to be one flesh. Woman is a contraction of the Anglo-Saxon “Womb man”.
A woman is a variation of a man. She is not a separate species. They are one flesh when married. But what does that say about the residents of eternity?
Woman was meant to be a helpmeet for man. Man is disorganized, dirty, and careless and woman is the opposite. The exceptions only prove the rule. No blood is mentioned in either Eve or Adam. Moses is writing this. 1 Corinthians 6:16 quotes this against fornication. Matthew 19:5 equates this as legitimate marriage. Ephesians 5:31 pictures this as a picture of Christ and His church. A marriage is a physical arrangement where flesh joins flesh. Notice there’s no ceremony or ring. Don’t mistake a marriage for a marriage ceremony. You are joined when your bodies are joined and that constitutes marriage. This means that some of the preachers so adamant that a preacher or even a Christian is not to be married and divorced has himself been married, perhaps, several times, unless he was a virgin when he was married.
Investigate Genesis 29:14; Judges 9:2; 2 Samuel 5:1; 2 Samuel 19:3; and 1 Chronicles 11:1.
They were naked and not ashamed. Little kids don’t have any inhibitions about nudity but as we get older and become more self-conscious about covering ourselves. Even “primitive” tribes cover themselves in some way, usually.
Chapter 3
1 Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?
The serpent is a very important figure in the Bible. The tribe of Dan is likened to a serpent (Genesis 49:17). Moses’ rod turns into a serpent (Exodus 4:3). He puts a serpent on a pole for Israelites to look at to be healed (Numbers 21:9) of which Jesus was a type in John 3:14. Another reference to Satan as a serpent is in Isaiah 27:1 where it is likened to a dragon in Revelation 12:9 in definition of Satan and in conjunction with Leviathan in Job 41.
Obviously, Revelation 12:9 shows us that a serpent can be a dragon. See 2 Corinthians 11:14 to see how Satan can falsely appear. Angels appear as men; Genesis 19:1 and 19:5 & Judges 13.. There are no angels with wings in the Bible. See my comments in the commentary of Revelation. They always appear as men. Satan, appearing as an angel of light, appears with wings, because he is a cherub, a living creature, as explained in Ezekiel 1, 10, and in Ezekiel 28:14. This is what I contend he appeared as to Eve, a false angel.
Why is he referred to as a “beast of the field”? See Ezekiel 1, 10, and Revelation 4 for a description of cherubim. Compare the descriptions of all three and see what a cherub’s face looks like. Now that you’ve done that you see it is an ox or a calf. In verse 14 he is cursed above all cattle. The devil is using a serpent or dragon through which to speak but he himself is a cherubim with the face of a calf and the body of a serpent. Because of the calf feet, the devil is called “Old Split Foot”. We know a cherub has wings. If an ox or domesticated class, an eagle or flying class, a man, and a lion or wild class are cherubs then what was the cherub that covereth in Ezekiel 28? The reptile is missing. He has been cast down.
He WAS a cherub, he IS a dragon, and when he APPEARS it is as an angel of light but he has horns, wings, and calves feet.
Since angels don’t have wings but Satan does, if you see an “angel” with wings run.
The first word the devil says is “Yea”. Satan is a positive character. Preaching that is all positive and not negative is Satanic. Judas betrayed Jesus with a kiss, after all. Why did Satan go to Eve? Because God gave orders to Adam. In verse 16 of the last chapter it is clear that God gave commands to Adam directly. When men sin they count the cost and then jump right in, while women have to be talked into it, to be deceived. When the devil wants to get us the best person to start with is our wives. See Job’s wife and Ahab’s.
All apostasy begins with questioning what God said, not the fundamentals. The Devil is a fundamentalist. What do you believe that the Devil doesn’t believe about the fundamentals. The issue isn’t the fundamentals, but about what God said. Did he really say 1 John 5:7; Acts 8:37, and is Joseph Jesus’ father in Luke 2:33?
2 And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden: 3 But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.
The first sin in the Bible is subtracting from the word of God. God said, “freely”. Go back to chapter 2, verse 16. Notice the cross section reference with 2:16,17. There was no “touch it” either so she has now added to the word of God. Salvation is a gift or you work for it. It is free or you go to Hell because you can’t earn it.
4 And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die:
First, the Devil questions the word of God, then he gets you to subtract from it, then he gets you to add to it. Finally, he denies it.
5 For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.
Special knowledge or secret knowledge, called arcane knowledge is the foundation of mystery religions of old and the new age movement of today. Gnosticism came from a word meaning knowledge. Knowledge is what a man thinks gives him power. Power over his environment and power over himself, power over the earth and power over even God. To know certain rituals, certain words, and phrases is to even be able to force God to bless you. The Catholic Priest does such a thing in his handling of the wafer that they regard as Jesus’ actual body.
This is the point where a child is held accountable for his or her sins, when they know the difference, not between right and wrong, but between good and evil. Between God and what is against God.
The Devil refers Eve to something that she must be aware of, gods. The sons of God, the gods, must have been visible to her.
(para)6 And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.
The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life as in 1 John 2:16 are the root problems of man that lead him from God. Everything about the temptation was positive. There was nothing negative about the entire thing except that God said not to do it. Evil is delineated as being in opposition to good, by its position here in Genesis. There are many things to learn about evil in the Bible. The fact that it is in opposite contrast to good is the first thing.
Notice that Adam is with Eve. He is fully aware of what is happening and perfectly willing to die for his Eve. See 1 Timothy 2:14.
First, a temptation is presented to you, then you are aware that it is sin, and the sin comes in during the debate over whether or not you will do it. That is where you cross the line. The action is just sin bringing forth death. This is called the Doctrine of Peccability.
All of our troubles begin in Genesis 3, first with questioning what God said.
7 And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons.
Satan didn’t lie. Their eyes were opened. Modesty, a sense of shame at their nakedness, was a first outside consequence. Self awareness when the spiritual blinders are taken aware is a shock. 2 Kings 6:17, Luke 24, show us that there is a spiritual blindness that can prevent our understanding. Also, see Isaiah 66:4 and 2 Thessalonians 2:11 to see that God can blind you. 2 Corinthians 4:4 shows that Satan can blind you to the truth.
The first time a fig shows up in the Bible it is used to cover a person’s nakedness so hereafter it becomes a sign of self-righteousness.
8 And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God amongst the trees of the garden.
Since God is a spirit (John 4:24) and Jesus is the image of God (Colossians 1:15), this is the Lord Jesus Christ, God the Son, the Word of God walking in the garden. Adam and Eve had fellowship with the Lord Jesus Christ. Notice that children hide when they’ve done wrong. However, notice that since the voice of the LORD God wasn’t walking in the garden so the walking reference must be to Adam and Eve.
(para)9 And the LORD God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou? 10 And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself.
Sin brings in fear. A fear of getting caught.
(para)11 And he said, Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat? 12 And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat.
When we try to alibi our sins in our depraved nature we wind up accusing God of error. Repeatedly through this chapter the verb “to eat” is used in some variation. Man’s trouble begins with questioning what God said and what man wants to put in his mouth.
13 And the LORD God said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.
Here, the woman passes the buck like the man just did.
(para)14 And the LORD God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life: 15 And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.
Here is the greatest prophecy of the Bible in verse 15 that Satan will counterfeit through many religions. He’ll eat dust, which is what mankind will return to so notice 1 Peter 5:8. This prophecy tells of the time when the seed of the woman, (the man is the one with seed) which is referring to the virgin birth of Christ, crushes the seed of the Devil, his son. Both advents are covered in this verse separated by a semi-colon and Christ is referred to as “it”. Romans 16:20 shows that Satan’s head was not crushed at Calvary. Habakkuk 3:13; Jeremiah 23:19; 30:23; & Psalm 68:21 also reveal this prophecy. Judges, chapter 4:21 details how Sisera is a type of Satan’s offspring done in by a woman as is Abimelech in Judges 9:53. Judges 5 is a song about the second advent. Goliath’s head is where his fatal wound occurs at David’s hand and Christ is crucified at Golgotha, the place of the skull. Achilles is the most prominent of the pagan myths about a vulnerable heel. See Job 18:9; Psalm 41:9 reinforced by John 13:18; Genesis 25:26 reinforced by Hosea 12:3;
(para)16 Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.
This is the woman’s curse. To bear rule is to have power over as defined Biblically in Esther 9:1 and we’ll see it in the next chapter with God’s discussion about sin with Cain. If a man can’t rule his home he’ll eventually wreck it.
(para)17 And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life;
Notice that Abraham is admonished to listen to his wife further on in Genesis 21:12 so this is not a statement saying not to ever listen to your wife. The ground is cursed until the millennium. All scientific achievement is designed to try to take that curse off the ground. It doesn’t work. All science is progress is an attempt to make a liar out of God.
18 Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field; 19 In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.
This is a promise that had proven true for thousands of years. Ultimately, the end of life is a tragedy for the flesh. We bury our loved ones and we, in turn, are buried. Sickness, accident, hard work, uncertainty all plague our earthly lives. Compare chapter 1, verse 29 with verse 18 and see even the diet had changed to match the animals. It will change again in chapter 9. Christ took the curse off the ground, bearing a crown of thorns on his head. There are no more unclean animals after Christ as per Acts 10:15.
(para)20 And Adam called his wife's name Eve; because she was the mother of all living.
Some people imply that she has given birth before this time but you can’t prove it by the context.
(para)21 Unto Adam also and to his wife did the LORD God make coats of skins, and clothed them.
To this day ladies love mink and fur coats. But, these are not just wool or fur but skins. When you skin an animal its dead. The first death on this earth is not a person. It’s an animal. Judging by the rest of the Bible we might say a lamb was the first animal death. So, perhaps Adam and Eve are wearing a sheepskin. We can also take for granted that they were forced to watch these skins being prepared.
(para)22 And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever:
See Revelation 22:14. If Adam had eaten of that tree he would have lived forever in sin, a 6,000 year old demon, separated from God. Obviously, the first threatened death was spiritual, not physical.
23 Therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken.
Man will always have to labor to produce his food.
24 So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.
He drove out the man from west to east. He drove out Cain in the next chapter from west to east. West to East is a departure from God.
Called Genesis
50 chapters, 1534 verses, 38,267 words
(coincides with the church at Ephesus in Revelation and Isaiah, chapter 1)
“Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen…” Revelation 2:5
Isaiah, chapter 1
2 Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth: for the LORD hath spoken, I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against me.
9 Except the LORD of hosts had left unto us a very small remnant, we should have been as Sodom, and we should have been like unto Gomorrah. 10 Hear the word of the LORD, ye rulers of Sodom; give ear unto the law of our God, ye people of Gomorrah.
Genesis, verse 1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
“In the beginning” states that at the beginning of time. “In the beginning God” states that God predated time itself. God has no beginning. “In the beginning God created” denies atheism and polytheism. If you deny this you are calling Jesus Christ a liar. See Jesus’ words in Mark 13:19. If you deny this you are calling Moses a liar. See Exodus 31:17 and Exodus 20:11 which he wrote stating that it was from God. If you deny this you are calling Isaiah a liar. See Isaiah 42:5. If you deny this you are calling Paul a liar. See Ephesians 3:9 and then read the disciple/apostle John’s account in John 1:1-3 and read 1 John 1:1. Now read Colossians 1:15-17.
“In the beginning God created the heaven”. Which heaven is this? The Heaven of verse 8 is a division or firmament between the waters on earth and the waters above. See the ISO’s proof of a literal water factory in Orion. The heaven that the birds fly (Luke 24:51) in is mentioned in verse 20. There are three heavens as per 2 Corinthians 12:2. Is this is the heaven of Revelation, chapter 4. Please read. Now read the entire verse, “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. “ The earth is further separated into watery Seas (capital) and dry land also called Earth (capital), although the accompanying article will show that there is more water above than below the firmament called Heaven.
Another view, my own, in fact, might be that this is a broad statement that is explained in full in the ensuing chapter. This will happen at the end of Chapter One in regard to man’s creation and then the same event in more detail in Chapter Two.
“God” in Hebrew is Elohim, a plural word. God is three persons in one. See 1 John 5:7; Matthew 28:19; Hebrews 9:14; and possibly Colossians 2:2. God is not three separate entities. See Deuteronomy 6:4 & Mark 12:29. God has a soul or intellect which no man has ever seen, called God the Father, who invisibly sits on the throne in heaven. See John 1:18; 1 John 4:12. God has a spirit called God the Spirit. See John 4:24; Isaiah 61:1;
2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
See the reference in Jeremiah 4:23 with regard to the next time this condition takes place, in the Great Tribulation, perhaps. This gives us a tip as to what the phrase “without form and void” means. The “darkness” of John 1:5 is wickedness, spiritual darkness in reference to the realm of Ephesians 6:12 which is a place of great evil as in Job 25:5, Job 26:5, and Job 15:15. This is the base of operations of the prince of the power of the air in Ephesians 2:2, who is the prince of this world in John 12:31; 14:30; & 16:11, the god of this world in 2 Corinthians 4:4, he who has power over death as per Hebrews 2:14. He is king over the children of pride as in Job 41:34 and over the children of disobedience mentioned in Ephesians 2:2; 5:6; & Colossians 3:6. It is to destroy his works that Jesus would come as per 1 John 3:8.
This”darkness” is inhabited by devils, the pagan world knew as gods. See Deuteronomy 32:17. These gods are also called the vanities of the gentiles as per Jeremiah 14:22. There are many of them as per 1 Corinthians 8:5. They are all manifestations of Satan by a careful reading of Mark, chapter 5, in much the same way as the Holy Spirit is existent in millions of believers’ bodies.
Their leader, Satan, was originally the cherub (see Ezekiel, chapters 1 & 10 for a description of the cherubim) who was over the throne of God in heaven as per Ezekiel 28:14 but pride was found in him and he wanted to rise above the angels of God as per Isaiah 14:12-15. (See Revelation 1:20 for the connection between angels and stars).
The “darkness” was “upon the face of the deep”. Is that water on earth? The oceans which had not been created yet, or is this something else? Notice the reference to “the face of the deep” in Job 38:30 and its immediate context to being a mention of constellations. The earth itself is, at this time, in the waters of space as per 2 Peter 3:5-7 which in context is not talking about the Flood of Noah. Look carefully at the wording and the words mentioned in the surrounding passages.
The Holy Spirit now moves upon the waters that surround the earth. Something has happened. We are never told when the angels, the sons of God, were created, nor when Satan and the other cherubim were created, nor are we told when the devils were created, or when Satan fell. It certainly must have been before this heaven and earth, the creation of is about to be described, were made. The solar system shows signs of a great war, in my opinion. There are things missing, going backwards like Venus, and things that once existed like the Martian magnetic field, are gone.
(para)3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
Here are the heaven and the earth with no suns, no stars, and nothing else but God, who says for there to be light. This is a light from God devoid of any other source who covers Himself with light like a garment in Psalm 104:2. Now, read Acts 26:18; 2 Corinthians 4:4; 1 John 1:5; & Revelation 21:23 along with Isaiah 60:19, 20.
Science has a term for the creation of light from sound through water and that is sonoluminescence.
4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.
God alone determines what is good for only He is truly good and He, not man, is the measure of all things. Here He divides what He has made, that which is good, His light from the spiritual darkness or just darkness that filled the universe, “the face of the deep”.
5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.
Notice the capitalization of the word Day and the word Night. Now the second phrase in this verse seems to make it clear that we are talking about a normal day, but how could we, when there is no sun or stars yet, or moon? There is something different about this “Day” and this “Night”. When Judas departs from the Last Supper it is night (John 13:30). Now, to keep us from thinking that this is just a reporting of the time of day Paul says that “The night is far spent, and the day is at hand:” in Romans 13:12 thus signifying to me that this night is the church age. We are told in Proverbs 30:5 that “joy cometh in the morning” and Psalm 130:6 repeats a phrase that bears a second look. Jesus’ resurrection is revealed in the early morning in Matthew 28:1; Mark 16:2; 16:9; Luke 24:1; & John 20:1. Clearly God called the light, which He had just called good, by the name of Day. The darkness which covered the face of the deep He called Night. See before what I said that the darkness represents. This is the first day of creation when God interposed Himself into something wicked and shone His light on it as when He sent God the Son to live as one of us and die by our hand (John 8:12; 9:5). The first evening and morning are made with light coming directly from Himself, not the sun or stars.
Notice that in God’s prophetic timetable the day starts with evening. This is important when studying which day Christ was crucified. This also has an impact on the theory that the seven days of creation coincide with history. If that is the case and God is using the Hebrew designation for what constitutes a day then one would assume he would use the Hebrew year as well. That means that 5800 years have not arrived as yet so the contemporary evangelical idea that we are about to be raptured might have to be rethought. The Jewish year, 5767, began on the evening of September 23, 2006. Many early church leaders believed that the earth would last 6,000 years before Christ returned to rule again.
If the first day represents the first thousand years then we have God’s separation of good and evil by the introduction of His light into the spiritual darkness. Satan, prior to the time first mentioned here, has rebelled and brought great destruction to God’s creation. This can be understood by Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 38 passages referring to Satan. Now, God begins the process of returning creation to Himself.
(para)6 And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.
The firmament is that barrier that divides the waters on the earth from the waters in the heavens. We would call it outer space or the universe.
7 And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.
Like the dry land between the heights of the Red Sea which the Hebrews marched this divides the waters above from the waters below.
8 And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.
This is what was presaged as being created in verse 1. Still now sun and moon and stars. This second day is supernatural, as well. This Heaven is capitalized. This is the Heaven which God split with His light. But notice that on this day, nothing is said to be “good”. We know what lives in this “sea”. See Isaiah 27:1 and cross reference with Revelation 12:9.
In this thousand years the Great Flood of Noah takes place wiping out the corrupted creation that became foul after Adam’s fall.
(para)9 And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.
Now God has come down to the planet.
10 And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.
Now the earth, mentioned in verse 1, is mentioned and the waters on earth are called Seas.
11 And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.
“After his kind” simply means that an apple tree doesn’t bear figs. Things have offspring similar to themselves. There is plenty of room for variation in this process but apple trees have never been known to bear oranges.
12 And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
God speaks and the thing is done by His command. Jesus is that Word that is spoken according to John 1:1-3.
13 And the evening and the morning were the third day.
The third day and still no natural light, only God’s power. The third thousand years has the first wanderings of the three men who left the Ark. Human populations and life itself are growing. The third day takes us down beyond Moses’ leading the Israelites through the Red Sea down to the establishment of the David’s kingdom.
(para)14 And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years: 15 And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.
The sun and the stars are for signs and seasons on earth. That is their purpose. Also they give light. Earth is not some backwater in some remote corner of the universe. Earth is the center of the universe. Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, proposed after the Michelson-Morley Experiment could show no motion in the Earth, stated that it was impossible to scientifically prove absolute motion of the earth. In other words, as Astronomer Fred Hoyle has said, neither Ptolemy’s Earth Centered Universe nor Copernicus’ Sun Centered Solar System were disprovable or provable. So, if the Bible teaches that the earth is the centerpoint of God’s creation, fixed and unmoveable, then there is nothing that so-called science can do to prove it is not true. Christians will fight against evolution but have totally capitulated to the Styrofoam Sun of high school days connected to orbiting Styrofoam planets by pipe cleaners. The Copernican Revolution, which removed the Earth from its central position in the universe began the process of undoing the authority of God and His Bible in the minds of man. A recent survey of Christian teenagers showed that 80% of them did not believe there was any absolute truth.
The sun is a type of Christ but not to be worshipped as in primitive cultures (Malachi 4:2). The Sun rises in the East and moves against the world which moves from West to East, if it is indeed moving at all. If you are with Christ you are moving against the world. The moon is a type of the Christian. When the earth gets in between the moon and the sun, there is an eclipse. See Psalm 104:19.
Science has a name for nuclear fusion produced via sound and that is sonofusion.
16 And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.
The stars are all named and numbered. Psalm 147:4. The moon, like the Christian, has no light of its own (Job 25:5) but can only reflect the Sun like Christ.
17 And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth, 18 And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good. 19 And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.
Esther 9:1 defines rule as having power over something but common sense tells you that. Notice how God has started at the heights and come down to earth as Christ did, starting in heaven He comes down to earth. Now, the universe is powered by what God has created rather than by His supernatural light alone.
Christ comes at the end of the fourth day/thousand years of creation. He will rule over the day and the night. All power is given to Him. (Matthew 28:18)
(para)20 And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.
This is the first time that the word “life” shows up in the Bible and natural life is connected with water. Read John 3:3-5. Read Proverbs 5:18. Life has a connection with water. Isaiah 48:1.
Birds are closer related, in God’s order, to fish which is probably why they lay eggs. Birds and fish come from water. God has life come from water, even fowl, which can mean more than birds as we shall see in Leviticus 11:19 that the bat is included because it has wings and flies in the air. The definition of life, something that breathes air, is found in Genesis 2:7; 6:17; & 7:15. We also have Outer Space called Heaven and now we have the atmosphere of the earth called heaven so there are two represented here and the third, “the abode of God and the blessed dead” mentioned by Paul. (10/22/06)
21 And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
In Job 7:12, he asks rhetorically if he is a whale that a watch should be set over him, as in keeping a close eye on him? A whale is a type of Satan or antichrist in Ezekiel 32:2 in Matthew 12:40, the great fish that swallowed Jonah in Jonah 1:17 is said to be a whale. A whale is likened to the Leviathan of Isaiah 27:1 and therefore used as a type of Satan in Psalm 104:26. Therefore a whale is very important in prophetic writing and it is appropriate that it is the first creature mentioned by name. A whale is classified as a type of fish because it swims in the sea like other fish. Our classification is different and based on a different standard, which is our mistake.
The waters bring forth abundantly, after their kind, which is a designation that is far wider than our “species”, a “kind” of animal is just that. Whales don’t become fish and they didn’t come from hippos as per a National Geographic article I read and the rantings of the madman, Michel Brunet. It is twice stated in this chapter now that the waters brought forth life. This is good to God.
22 And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth.
This command is given to all the animals and living things and it is still in force today.
23 And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.
5,000 years from creation brings us to the close of the first millennium after Christ and, according to the Hebrew calendar about the time that the Crusader kingdoms of Roman Catholic Europe were falling. It is a time of upheaval and the beginnings of the Reformation’s light in Europe.
(para)24 And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.
Land animals come from the earth as do some birds which we will see later. Once again, it is reinforced that creatures produce “after his kind” and reptiles do not make birds.
25And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
Again we have a clear statement that things did not involve into other things. It’s either one or the other. Either this is a lie or evolution is.
(para)26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
Man was made in the image of God, the trinity, as in “our image”. After the fall of Adam, Adam’s offspring, beginning with Seth, are made in his image as per Genesis 5:3. We know that Cain was “of that wicked one” (1 John 3:12). What is the image of God? Well certainly it is not about appearance as both Adam and Eve are made in His image but one is a man and the other is a woman. There is something else involved in being made in God’s image than mere appearance. Colossians 1:15 says that Jesus is the “image of the invisible God” so He is not a physical clone of something you cannot see. (See 2 Corinthians 4:4). The image must refer to some quality or the nature of the individual. Perhaps, the ability to discern good and evil, and to choose, or to stand upright and walk, to speak, to create words and put them to paper, or to act in a creative manner knowing the difference between that which is good and that which is evil is the image of God. See Hebrews 1:2,3; Colossians 3:9; for the argument that since Jesus is the image of God, Adam is made like Christ. There is no “image of God” between Genesis 3 and Matthew.
Now, the argument against man losing the image of God with Adam’s fall is 2 Corinthians 11:7 and in that woman is said to be the image of man, however, in context it is talking about position not nature or quality.
Notice that mankind has dominion. John Locke, in his “Two Treatises on Government” makes the point that it was not just Adam that was given dominion but mankind as in this chapter the reference is to man as a grouping. In the next verse we see that male AND female are included in the designation, man. Locke’s point is that it is nonsensical to say that only Adam had dominion over the life of the earth and that this did not pass to his descendants and, in fact, no one argues this point.
27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
Both male and female are created in the image of God. Period. See Galatians 3:28. So, the argument in 2 Corinthians 11:7 is not about quality, value, or nature but position.
28 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.
Man’s dominion is over every living thing. Dominion is area of rule or authority or control. It does not constitute ownership because God is the owner (See Leviticus 25:23; Psalm 50:10-12). Man is out of his dominion when he goes above where the eagle flies. See Psalm 115:15,16.
(para)29 And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.
Meat is defined here as food, specifically fruits and vegetables. The first man is a vegetarian.
30 And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so.
The animals are vegetarians, too. This is why, in the millennium, the lion will eat straw like an ox (Isaiah 11:7).
This is the last thousand years before Christ’s return to rule physically on earth. Man feels supreme over all the earth. He thinks of his dominion as fully realized before Christ takes over the kingdoms of the earth (Revelation 11:15).
(para)31 And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.
Everything that God has made, He recognizes as good. It is the sixth day of creation. The conditions are perfect.
Note:
Astronomers discover a huge chemical "factory" in interstellar space, suggesting origin of water in solar system
FOR RELEASE: APRIL 9, 1998
Contact: David BrandOffice: (607) 255-3651E-Mail: deb27@cornell.eduITHACA, N.Y. -- A team of U.S. astronomers, led by Cornell University astrophysicist Martin Harwit, has discovered a massive concentration of water vapor within a cloud of interstellar gas close to the Orion nebula. The amount of water measured is so high -- enough to fill the Earth's oceans 60 times a day -- that the researchers believe it provides an important clue to the origin of water in the solar system.
The amount of water vapor measured in Orion is 20 times larger than that observed in other interstellar gas clouds in our galaxy, the Milky Way. The discovery was made within the Orion molecular cloud, a giant interstellar gas cloud, a trillion miles across, composed primarily of hydrogen molecules.
The measurements were made with the long-wavelength spectrometer aboard the Infrared Space Observatory (ISO) launched in November 1995 by the European Space Agency with the participation of NASA. The observations were made in October 1997 and are reported today (April 20) in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Looking in the far-infrared region of the electromagnetic spectrum, the astronomers observed the characteristic signature of emission by water vapor. "The interstellar gas cloud that we observed is being pummeled by shock waves that compress and heat the gas," says Harwit, who is a Cornell professor emeritus, an ISO mission scientist and lead author on the research report. "These shock waves are the result of the violent early stages of star birth in which a young star spews out gas that slams into its surroundings at high speed. The heated water vapor that we observed is the result of that collision," he says.
Such a high concentration of water in Orion's giant gas cloud, which swirls around millions of stars along our spiral arm of the Milky Way, 1,500 light years from the sun, could have implications for the origin of water in the solar system, says ISO team member David Neufeld, professor of physics and astronomy at Johns Hopkins University. "The interstellar gas cloud that we observed in Orion seems to be a huge chemical factory generating enough water molecules in a single day to fill the Earth's oceans 60 times over."
Eventually, he says, the water vapor will freeze, becoming small ice particles. Similar ice particles are thought to have been present within the gas cloud from which the solar system originally formed. "It seems quite plausible that much of the water in the solar system was originally produced in a giant water vapor factory like the one we have observed in Orion," Neufeld says.
Cornell's Harwit speculates that the shock waves observed in the Orion gas cloud could be a cause as well as the result of star birth. The shock waves might also trigger the formation of additional stars and planets as they compress the gas cloud -- if the heat can be radiated away, says Harwit. "Water vapor is a particularly efficient radiator at far-infrared wavelengths and plays a critical role in cooling the gas and facilitating star formation," he notes.
The concentration of water vapor measured by the team was about one part in 2,000 by volume. The new observations confirm predictions by astrophysicists over the past 25 years that whenever the temperature exceeds 200 degrees Fahrenheit, chemical reactions will convert most of the oxygen atoms in interstellar gas into water.
"An enhanced concentrator of water is precisely what we expected in this gas cloud," says team member Gary Melnick of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. He adds that the strength of the water radiation detected from Orion was in perfect agreement with theoretical predictions published in the doctoral thesis of team member Michael Kaufman, a former Johns Hopkins graduate student now at NASA's Ames Research Center.
Panels showing two examples of measurements carried out on board the ISO, together with an image of the Orion nebula taken with the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 on NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, can be seen on the World Wide Web at http://www.pha.jhu.edu/~neufeld/orionwater.html.
Article taken from : http://www.news.cornell.edu/releases/April98/Orion.deb.html
on October 12, 2006, Thursday.
Chapter 2
1 Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.
God’s creation is finished. If Genesis 1 mentions only the creation of God’s dwelling place and the rest of the chapter details the other two heavens, then He’s done. Everything is complete.
2 And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. 3 And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.
This would parallel the millennial reign of Christ spoken of in Revelation.
(para)4 These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens, 5 And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew: for the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground.
There is a different atmosphere than now, with no rain. The entire earth would be like a lush, jungle paradise. A mist went up from the earth.
6 But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground. 7 And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.
A baby is not a living soul until it breathes some would say. Don’t believe me. Read the verse again. Man became a living soul after God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. Read Exodus 21:22. Now, come back to this verse. This verse is about the creation of the first man, not all subsequent men. Later, we see children in the womb spoken of as if they were already breathing air. Read Genesis 25:22 and Luke 1:41 and tell me if you think an unborn baby is alive or not. Read Psalm 51:5 and Isaiah 49:1. Jeremiah 1:5. Throughout the Bible life is a gift from God. Abortion is a homicidal rebellion against God’s handiwork. And remember, Exodus 21:22 refers to an accident, not a deliberate abortion.
(para)8 And the LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed. 9 And out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
Two trees are mentioned by name. You get eternal life if you partake of the tree of life and a knowledge of good and evil if you partake of that tree. They are not symbols, but real trees. Later, a fig tree is mentioned and then thorn and thistles. Now, read Judges 9:8-15 and place these trees. Before the law in Genesis 9:4, eating blood is forbidden, and during the law in Leviticus 17:14, and during the time of grace in Acts 15:19. Numbers 6 defines how a Nazarite is not to eat anything of the vine tree. Blood is not mentioned as being in Adam and Eve’s body in Genesis 2:23 and it is not in Christ’s body in Luke 24:39. Wine from the vine tree is a type of blood. See that Jesus’ first public miracle was turning water into wine, a type of blood. The first public miracle done openly was when Moses turned water into blood in the Old Testament. The supernatural tree of life is a vine tree, perhaps.
Adam and Eve ate of the supernatural vine tree and acquired blood. We know that flesh and blood can not inherit the kingdom of God from 1 Corinthians 15:50. Adam lost his kingship when he took blood. He must have had a circulatory system of water.
10 And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads. 11 The name of the first is Pison: that is it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold; 12 And the gold of that land is good: there is bdellium and the onyx stone. 13 And the name of the second river is Gihon: the same is it that compasseth the whole land of Ethiopia. 14 And the name of the third river is Hiddekel: that is it which goeth toward the east of Assyria. And the fourth river is Euphrates. 15 And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.
Can’t locate Pison or Havilah for certain. Gihon could be the Nile. Hiddekel is another name for the Tigris River. Euphrates and Tigris are certain but that’s all. Eden is sometimes drawn with the top at Mount Ararat with the Nile on the west and the Tigris and Euphrates on the east.
The first man is a husbandman, he takes care of the garden.
(para)16 And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: 17 But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.
He is told that he may “freely eat”. He could have taken of the “tree of life” which they will be allowed to partake if they have followed believed that Jesus Christ is the Son of God as per Revelation 2:7 defining it by 1 John 5:4,5 and have followed God’s commandments in the Tribulation and Millennium as per Revelation 22:14.
(para)18 And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.
Meet, match, or helper would apply.
19 And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.
Now, fowls of the air are said to be “out of the ground”. Coupled with 1:20 we see that birds were formed from a combination of water and earth. Adam’s name is red brown. Edom is the same root. Adam is a picture of a fallen race. Esau from which Edom came is a type of a fallen Christian. The Hebrew word for Rome is similar to Adam. Roman Christianity is an Adamic religion. This wasn’t a guessing game for God to see what Adam would call them. This is give Adam a chance to name them.
20 And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him.
The animals did not satisfy the need for a helper for Adam.
(para)21 And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; 22 And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man. 23 And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. 24 Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh. 25 And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.
See Genesis 15:12 for another deep sleep. The deep sleep is a type of death. God cloned woman from man. Adam is a type of Christ and the woman is a type of the church. In order to get the church Jesus Christ had to die, just as Adam had to die in type to get his wife. The woman was made out of a rib. Here, God uses the creation of the Woman as an example of how the husband and wife are to be one flesh. Woman is a contraction of the Anglo-Saxon “Womb man”.
A woman is a variation of a man. She is not a separate species. They are one flesh when married. But what does that say about the residents of eternity?
Woman was meant to be a helpmeet for man. Man is disorganized, dirty, and careless and woman is the opposite. The exceptions only prove the rule. No blood is mentioned in either Eve or Adam. Moses is writing this. 1 Corinthians 6:16 quotes this against fornication. Matthew 19:5 equates this as legitimate marriage. Ephesians 5:31 pictures this as a picture of Christ and His church. A marriage is a physical arrangement where flesh joins flesh. Notice there’s no ceremony or ring. Don’t mistake a marriage for a marriage ceremony. You are joined when your bodies are joined and that constitutes marriage. This means that some of the preachers so adamant that a preacher or even a Christian is not to be married and divorced has himself been married, perhaps, several times, unless he was a virgin when he was married.
Investigate Genesis 29:14; Judges 9:2; 2 Samuel 5:1; 2 Samuel 19:3; and 1 Chronicles 11:1.
They were naked and not ashamed. Little kids don’t have any inhibitions about nudity but as we get older and become more self-conscious about covering ourselves. Even “primitive” tribes cover themselves in some way, usually.
Chapter 3
1 Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?
The serpent is a very important figure in the Bible. The tribe of Dan is likened to a serpent (Genesis 49:17). Moses’ rod turns into a serpent (Exodus 4:3). He puts a serpent on a pole for Israelites to look at to be healed (Numbers 21:9) of which Jesus was a type in John 3:14. Another reference to Satan as a serpent is in Isaiah 27:1 where it is likened to a dragon in Revelation 12:9 in definition of Satan and in conjunction with Leviathan in Job 41.
Obviously, Revelation 12:9 shows us that a serpent can be a dragon. See 2 Corinthians 11:14 to see how Satan can falsely appear. Angels appear as men; Genesis 19:1 and 19:5 & Judges 13.. There are no angels with wings in the Bible. See my comments in the commentary of Revelation. They always appear as men. Satan, appearing as an angel of light, appears with wings, because he is a cherub, a living creature, as explained in Ezekiel 1, 10, and in Ezekiel 28:14. This is what I contend he appeared as to Eve, a false angel.
Why is he referred to as a “beast of the field”? See Ezekiel 1, 10, and Revelation 4 for a description of cherubim. Compare the descriptions of all three and see what a cherub’s face looks like. Now that you’ve done that you see it is an ox or a calf. In verse 14 he is cursed above all cattle. The devil is using a serpent or dragon through which to speak but he himself is a cherubim with the face of a calf and the body of a serpent. Because of the calf feet, the devil is called “Old Split Foot”. We know a cherub has wings. If an ox or domesticated class, an eagle or flying class, a man, and a lion or wild class are cherubs then what was the cherub that covereth in Ezekiel 28? The reptile is missing. He has been cast down.
He WAS a cherub, he IS a dragon, and when he APPEARS it is as an angel of light but he has horns, wings, and calves feet.
Since angels don’t have wings but Satan does, if you see an “angel” with wings run.
The first word the devil says is “Yea”. Satan is a positive character. Preaching that is all positive and not negative is Satanic. Judas betrayed Jesus with a kiss, after all. Why did Satan go to Eve? Because God gave orders to Adam. In verse 16 of the last chapter it is clear that God gave commands to Adam directly. When men sin they count the cost and then jump right in, while women have to be talked into it, to be deceived. When the devil wants to get us the best person to start with is our wives. See Job’s wife and Ahab’s.
All apostasy begins with questioning what God said, not the fundamentals. The Devil is a fundamentalist. What do you believe that the Devil doesn’t believe about the fundamentals. The issue isn’t the fundamentals, but about what God said. Did he really say 1 John 5:7; Acts 8:37, and is Joseph Jesus’ father in Luke 2:33?
2 And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden: 3 But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.
The first sin in the Bible is subtracting from the word of God. God said, “freely”. Go back to chapter 2, verse 16. Notice the cross section reference with 2:16,17. There was no “touch it” either so she has now added to the word of God. Salvation is a gift or you work for it. It is free or you go to Hell because you can’t earn it.
4 And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die:
First, the Devil questions the word of God, then he gets you to subtract from it, then he gets you to add to it. Finally, he denies it.
5 For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.
Special knowledge or secret knowledge, called arcane knowledge is the foundation of mystery religions of old and the new age movement of today. Gnosticism came from a word meaning knowledge. Knowledge is what a man thinks gives him power. Power over his environment and power over himself, power over the earth and power over even God. To know certain rituals, certain words, and phrases is to even be able to force God to bless you. The Catholic Priest does such a thing in his handling of the wafer that they regard as Jesus’ actual body.
This is the point where a child is held accountable for his or her sins, when they know the difference, not between right and wrong, but between good and evil. Between God and what is against God.
The Devil refers Eve to something that she must be aware of, gods. The sons of God, the gods, must have been visible to her.
(para)6 And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.
The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life as in 1 John 2:16 are the root problems of man that lead him from God. Everything about the temptation was positive. There was nothing negative about the entire thing except that God said not to do it. Evil is delineated as being in opposition to good, by its position here in Genesis. There are many things to learn about evil in the Bible. The fact that it is in opposite contrast to good is the first thing.
Notice that Adam is with Eve. He is fully aware of what is happening and perfectly willing to die for his Eve. See 1 Timothy 2:14.
First, a temptation is presented to you, then you are aware that it is sin, and the sin comes in during the debate over whether or not you will do it. That is where you cross the line. The action is just sin bringing forth death. This is called the Doctrine of Peccability.
All of our troubles begin in Genesis 3, first with questioning what God said.
7 And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons.
Satan didn’t lie. Their eyes were opened. Modesty, a sense of shame at their nakedness, was a first outside consequence. Self awareness when the spiritual blinders are taken aware is a shock. 2 Kings 6:17, Luke 24, show us that there is a spiritual blindness that can prevent our understanding. Also, see Isaiah 66:4 and 2 Thessalonians 2:11 to see that God can blind you. 2 Corinthians 4:4 shows that Satan can blind you to the truth.
The first time a fig shows up in the Bible it is used to cover a person’s nakedness so hereafter it becomes a sign of self-righteousness.
8 And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God amongst the trees of the garden.
Since God is a spirit (John 4:24) and Jesus is the image of God (Colossians 1:15), this is the Lord Jesus Christ, God the Son, the Word of God walking in the garden. Adam and Eve had fellowship with the Lord Jesus Christ. Notice that children hide when they’ve done wrong. However, notice that since the voice of the LORD God wasn’t walking in the garden so the walking reference must be to Adam and Eve.
(para)9 And the LORD God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou? 10 And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself.
Sin brings in fear. A fear of getting caught.
(para)11 And he said, Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat? 12 And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat.
When we try to alibi our sins in our depraved nature we wind up accusing God of error. Repeatedly through this chapter the verb “to eat” is used in some variation. Man’s trouble begins with questioning what God said and what man wants to put in his mouth.
13 And the LORD God said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.
Here, the woman passes the buck like the man just did.
(para)14 And the LORD God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life: 15 And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.
Here is the greatest prophecy of the Bible in verse 15 that Satan will counterfeit through many religions. He’ll eat dust, which is what mankind will return to so notice 1 Peter 5:8. This prophecy tells of the time when the seed of the woman, (the man is the one with seed) which is referring to the virgin birth of Christ, crushes the seed of the Devil, his son. Both advents are covered in this verse separated by a semi-colon and Christ is referred to as “it”. Romans 16:20 shows that Satan’s head was not crushed at Calvary. Habakkuk 3:13; Jeremiah 23:19; 30:23; & Psalm 68:21 also reveal this prophecy. Judges, chapter 4:21 details how Sisera is a type of Satan’s offspring done in by a woman as is Abimelech in Judges 9:53. Judges 5 is a song about the second advent. Goliath’s head is where his fatal wound occurs at David’s hand and Christ is crucified at Golgotha, the place of the skull. Achilles is the most prominent of the pagan myths about a vulnerable heel. See Job 18:9; Psalm 41:9 reinforced by John 13:18; Genesis 25:26 reinforced by Hosea 12:3;
(para)16 Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.
This is the woman’s curse. To bear rule is to have power over as defined Biblically in Esther 9:1 and we’ll see it in the next chapter with God’s discussion about sin with Cain. If a man can’t rule his home he’ll eventually wreck it.
(para)17 And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life;
Notice that Abraham is admonished to listen to his wife further on in Genesis 21:12 so this is not a statement saying not to ever listen to your wife. The ground is cursed until the millennium. All scientific achievement is designed to try to take that curse off the ground. It doesn’t work. All science is progress is an attempt to make a liar out of God.
18 Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field; 19 In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.
This is a promise that had proven true for thousands of years. Ultimately, the end of life is a tragedy for the flesh. We bury our loved ones and we, in turn, are buried. Sickness, accident, hard work, uncertainty all plague our earthly lives. Compare chapter 1, verse 29 with verse 18 and see even the diet had changed to match the animals. It will change again in chapter 9. Christ took the curse off the ground, bearing a crown of thorns on his head. There are no more unclean animals after Christ as per Acts 10:15.
(para)20 And Adam called his wife's name Eve; because she was the mother of all living.
Some people imply that she has given birth before this time but you can’t prove it by the context.
(para)21 Unto Adam also and to his wife did the LORD God make coats of skins, and clothed them.
To this day ladies love mink and fur coats. But, these are not just wool or fur but skins. When you skin an animal its dead. The first death on this earth is not a person. It’s an animal. Judging by the rest of the Bible we might say a lamb was the first animal death. So, perhaps Adam and Eve are wearing a sheepskin. We can also take for granted that they were forced to watch these skins being prepared.
(para)22 And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever:
See Revelation 22:14. If Adam had eaten of that tree he would have lived forever in sin, a 6,000 year old demon, separated from God. Obviously, the first threatened death was spiritual, not physical.
23 Therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken.
Man will always have to labor to produce his food.
24 So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.
He drove out the man from west to east. He drove out Cain in the next chapter from west to east. West to East is a departure from God.
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