FROM CREATION TO ABRAHAM
Is the Bible one large myth from start to finish about a deity that intervenes in the affairs of human beings by using magic interjections? Or is it a mystery that hides the truth and demands diligence and perseverance to unlock its treasures. One task of the Bible apologist is to negotiate that ancient ship through the heavily mined harbor of science, so called, into the open sea where it can be learned and enjoyed without distraction. But getting from here to there is not easy, mainly because the mines of secular knowledge (corrupted into a religion called “scientism”) become more sophisticated and widespread as time and technology goes on. Many Christians have the tendency to cower below deck rather than stand at the rails and fight in the open. Legitimate scientific discovery – the kind that comes with empirical evidence – should never be feared but embraced. This is what unlocks the mystery of what we read in the Bible. The Author doesn’t tell us every little detail but lets the human mind piece together the puzzle. Every discovery in the natural realm is a friend of the Bible – from the angle of the bend of a protein in the skin cell on our lower leg to every spade of dirt overturned in Middle Eastern architectural digs. Every important discovery points back to the Creator of the universe and reveals the wonder of His person – He is a person, a wonderful person, with a name, Yahweh.
So it seems beneficial to provide some context to the first part of the Bible – Genesis chapters 1 through 11 – where so much of the controversy surrounding Hebrew and Christian Scriptures has found a home. The question is, can we know anything about the Bible without knowing its context? Can we take events in the Bible literally? It depends how we regard it. Do we consider it a collection of stories not necessarily connected to the reality of everyday life? Are some of the narratives historical and others figurative, or metaphorical? Can we regard Scriptures as Yahweh’s literal word to us that we can take at face value, or do we get to pick and choose what is literal and what is figurative?
Here we argue for the literal. We are compelled by simple respect for the author to take the Bible for what it says at every turn unless it is obvious that the passage is figurative. This is not real hard to understand. It’s when we weave our twisted traditions into the fabric of the simple words that we hopelessly confuse the issue. The best rule of thumb is to let Scripture interpret Scripture before we wrap our bony fingers around the text and squeeze the life out of it.
FIRST UP, ANGELS
Take angels, for example. How do we define them? As the Creator, Yahweh passed on His attributes to His angels. How could He do anything else? He is what He is, and everything He makes and anything He does is an extension of Himself. Whenever it was that He created them (the Scriptures are silent), Yahweh’s angels assumed His ability to think (mind), to emote (emotions), and to will (volition). We have this from Job 38:4-7:
Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell Me, if you have understanding, who set its measurements? Since you know. Or who stretched the line on it? On what were its bases sunk? Or who laid its cornerstone, when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy?
The angels witnessed the creation and sang and shouted for joy. They had the ability from Yahweh to consider, to understand (mind), and because of it, they became excited (emotion) and decided to express themselves in song (volition). They had the soulish characteristics of their Creator, and why wouldn’t they? What Yahweh produces expresses what He is.
We use the term “Creator,” but we may, according to many materialists and assorted critics, be overly presumptuous. How’s this, then? We contend for not only a creator, but also a personal Creator, one who cares about us.
Having a Creator and angels in the very beginning puts us squarely in the crosshairs of scientists who claim the origin of our universe began at the so-called Big Bang, where out of nothing matter materialized. Out of this swirling mass of material, planets and stars and solar systems and galaxies coalesced into orderly bodies regulated by natural laws out from which they don’t say. They also claim that life began spontaneously in a primordial swamp, and that it evolved into all life we see today. They agree that all life is related in some way to photosynthesis whereby particles, or waves, from our star the Sun are ingested by plants and transformed into plant sugars, providing the food upon which all animal and human life depends. Those who hold these views are the ones holding the guns aimed at us. Fair enough. Can we answer them?
From all appearances, the universe we are familiar with had a beginning. Scientific evidence indicates an expanding universe, so by extrapolating backwards, scientists have concluded that the universe began at a concentrated single point some 13.5 billion years ago. Logic demands a “first cause,” because something does not come from nothing. No matter what a person believes, or theorizes, or holds as an ideology, the fact is something does not come from nothing. It never has and never will. For something to happen – anything – something or someone had to make it happen.
Roger Penrose, Oxford University mathematician, tackled the question of a random beginning of our universe and said this: “Try to imagine phase space… of the entire universe. Each point in this phase space represents a different possible way that the universe might have started off. We are to picture the Creator, armed with a ‘pin’ — which is to be placed at some point in phase space… Each different positioning of the pin provides a different universe. Now the accuracy that is needed for the Creator’s aim depends on the entropy of the universe that is thereby created. It would be relatively ‘easy’ to produce a high entropy universe, since then there would be a large volume of the phase space available for the pin to hit. But in order to start off the universe in a state of low entropy — so that there will indeed be a second law of thermodynamics — the Creator must aim for a much tinier volume of the phase space. How tiny would this region be, in order that a universe closely resembling the one in which we actually live would be the result?”
John Lennox, another Oxford mathematician, cites Penrose’s answer:
“His calculations lead him to the remarkable conclusion that the ‘Creator’s aim’ must have been accurate to 1 part in 10 to the power of 10 to the power or 123, that is 1 followed by 10 to the 123rd power zeros.”
As Penrose puts it, that is a “number which it would be impossible to write out in the usual decimal way, because even if you were able to put a zero on every particle in the universe, there would not even be enough particles to do the job.” A chance, or random, beginning (Big Bang) of our universe is impossible. A conscious “first cause” as creator had to have deliberately created it.
Further, here is a quote by Olufemi Dokun-Babalola: “During the last several decades a number of prestigious scientists have attempted to calculate the mathematical probability of the random-chance origin of life. The results of their calculations reveal the enormity of the dilemma faced by evolutionists.
“Dr. Blum estimated the probability of just a single protein arising spontaneously from a primordial soup. Equilibrium and the reversibility of biochemical reactions eventually led Blum to state: ‘The spontaneous formation of a polypeptide of the size of the smallest known proteins seems beyond all probability. This calculation alone presents serious objection to the idea that all living matter and systems are descended from a single protein molecule which was formed as a ‘chance’ act.’”
Suffice it to say, our universe and all life was created by a person who wanted to do it, figured out how to do it, decided to do it, and did it using language. This “first cause” must have had a mind capable of conceiving a universe consisting of matter, time, and space; an emotion to desire to make such a universe happen; and a will to decide to execute the creation of it. Assuming that this first cause did indeed create what we see around us, we can detect design and the design is finely calibrated at every level in order to make possible carbon based life forms. Small deviations in any part of the design would render the whole non-functional. Even a cursory glance at creation, from galaxies to quanta, reveals design, intricate design possessing the signature of its designer. For example, the distance between the sun and Earth must be precise for life to exist. Any further away, even fractionally, we freeze. Any closer, we burn up. The Earth rotates daily and orbits around the sun at 67,000 mph. The Earth is of perfect size and has a precise gravitational pull that holds in place a thin, 50-mile layer of mainly nitrogen and oxygen gases – the only planet we know of whose atmosphere can sustain life. Our moon is of perfect size to exert its gravitational influence upon our ocean tides to keep the ocean from stagnating. These physical facts regarding our planet add circumstantial evidence for a super intelligent first cause.
RABBITS, RABBITS EVERYWHERE
Academia, by and large, refuses to consider the evidence. For example, the Fibonacci Sequence underscores design in the universe. Leonardo Fibonacci, an Italian mathematician, devised his sequence this way, and unveiled a signature of creation:
If a pair of rabbits is placed in an enclosed area, how many rabbits will be born there if we assume that every month a pair of rabbits produces another pair, and that rabbits begin to bear young two months after their birth?
Dan Reich, mathematician at Temple University writes: “This apparently innocent little question has as an answer a certain sequence of numbers, known now as the Fibonacci sequence, which has turned out to be one of the most interesting ever written down. It has been rediscovered in an astonishing variety of forms, in branches of mathematics way beyond simple arithmetic. Its method of development has led to far-reaching applications in mathematics and computer science.”
Reich: “Even more fascinating is the surprising appearance of Fibonacci numbers, and their relative ratios, in arenas far removed from the logical structure of mathematics: in Nature and in Art, in classical theories of beauty and proportion.”
Here is how it happened. Fibonacci arrived at the solution of the rabbit riddle with this calculation:
- At the end of the first month, they mate, but there is still only 1 pair.
- At the end of the second month the female produces a new pair, so now there are 2 pairs of rabbits in the field.
- At the end of the third month, the original female produces a second pair, making 3 pairs in all in the field.
- At the end of the fourth month, the original female has produced yet another new pair, the female born two months ago produces her first pair also, making 5 pairs.
The sequence is, therefore, 1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21,34,55,89,144, etc. But the real intrigue of this sequence begins with the ratios between the numbers. For example, if we take 21 and 34 and divide the lower (21) by the higher (34) we arrive at .618. If we divide 34 by 21 we have 1.619. The further along the sequence we do this calculation, the closer the ratio approaches phi – .618034. This ratio is called the Golden Ratio or the Golden Mean. The Golden Ratio was first called The Divine Proportion in a book of the same name published in 1509 by Luca Pacioli, with illustrations by Leonardo DaVinci. DaVinci may have been the first to call the ratio the Golden Section.
The builders of the Parthenon incorporated phi in the Golden Rectangle by laying the larger part (1.618) horizontally and the smaller part vertically (1). The Great Pyramid builders relied heavily on the Golden Ratio. The Renaissance opened the door for extensive usage of the Golden Mean, or Divine Proportion, as a source of beauty in paintings and sculptures such as The Last Supper and the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel by Michelangelo. Kepler, the astronomer of this period, said this of the Divine Proportion: “Geometry has two great treasures: one is the theorem of Phythagoras; the other, the division of a line into extreme and mean ratio. The first we may compare to a measure of gold; the second we may name a precious jewel.” The Greek letter phi was first attached to the ratio in the early 1900s. It is the equivalent of the letter “F”, the first letter in Fibonacci, a number in his sequence, and the 21st letter of the Greek alphabet. To describe this ratio as golden and divine is warranted by its ubiquity in human history and in the natural world. From the design of galaxies to the Great Pyramid to the double helix of the DNA molecule, the ratio is intricately present in how our universe is constructed, in how human beings are designed, and in what human beings do. In Elliott’s Wave Principle Robert Prechter and Alfred Frost applied the Fibonacci Sequence to human behavior regarding the stock market, claiming that even investing trends follow the famous sequence.
As remarkable as are the Golden Section and the Golden Rectangle, the Golden Spiral is even more amazing. Based on a series of golden rectangles divided into a square and a smaller Golden Rectangle, the Golden Spiral appears when we draw a diagonal through the Golden Rectangle (ABCD) and the Golden Rectangle (EFDC) to find the center point. The length of lines BPD and CPF are in phi, the Golden Ratio, as are lines FP and DP. In Figure E, when we strike an arc, or quarter circle connecting opposite corners of each square of the Golden Rectangles, we have a Golden Spiral, a figure found throughout nature.
We find it in the height and length of the waves of the DNA molecule laid horizontally; in the seed arrangement of a sunflower, in the arrangement of a pineapple skin, in the seeds of a pine cone, in the petals of a rose, in the shell of the chambered Nautilus, in the curl of a seahorse’s tail, in the curl of a chameleon’s tail, in the human fingerprint, in the uncurling of a fern leaf, in the cochlea of the inner ear, in the swirling arms of a hurricane, in a whirlpool, in the horn of a mountain sheep, in ocean waves, in spiraling galaxies, etc.
Peter Tompkins says: “Plato, in his Timaeus, went so far as to consider phi, and the resulting Golden Section proportion, the most binding of all mathematical relations, and considers it the key to the physics of the cosmos.”
The Golden Ratio, the Golden Section, the Golden Rectangle, and the Golden Spiral are the signature of the Creator written on His creation. All this is to say that a person is behind it all – behind what we observe and behind what holds it all together. We could say the Creator has His fingerprints all over creation.
Natural laws guide all physical interactions, whether these interactions include planetary orbits, or the movements of galaxies, or the vibrations of subatomic particles of matter. Every chemical reaction is determined by a natural law. The very fact that natural laws exist is circumstantial evidence that an intelligent person exercised volition to maintain His creation. The fact that natural laws exist argues for a lawgiving, first-causing person.
Our universe obeys the mathematical rules laid down by natural laws. Certainly, things change, but not randomly and unpredictably. Saturn will not suddenly become unhinged and fly toward us. The universe is reliably the same year after year, even though there is no logical reason for it to be so.
Water has no taste, no odor, no color, and nothing alive can exist without it. Living things consist mostly of water. The human body is two-thirds water, and it keeps our temperature at 98.6 degrees so we can live in an environment of fluctuating temperatures. It possesses chemical neutrality, enabling it to carry substances like food nutrients, minerals, and medicines to all parts of our bodies. It has a surface tension that allows it to flow upward against gravity and bring nourishment to the tops of the tallest trees. It freezes from the top down so fish can breathe under ice. Oceans contain 97% of Earth’s water. Evaporation carries this water up, leaving the salt behind, and forms clouds driven by the wind in order to distribute fresh water over the land, watering vegetables for the sustenance of people and animals. This cycle purifies and recycles the precious commodity and allows life in all forms to flourish. None of this is random or weirdly self-generating. A designing mind made it happen, and instituted the physical laws to make it continue.
Photosynthesis is a supernatural phenomenon that follows natural laws. It is the ability of plants, primarily, to take sunlight (photo) and water to produce (synthesize) sugars (food) for themselves and for herbivores. No life on Earth can exist without this process.
Light from the sun is a form of energy that comes to Earth as photons, or, simply put, as particles of the sun itself. They supply the energy necessary to break the bond between the two hydrogen atoms and the one oxygen atom in water. When the energetic photons enter a plant leaves’ tiny cells containing chloroplasts, green chemical molecules in the chloroplasts called chlorophyll absorb them. Meanwhile carbon dioxide in the air enters the leaves through the stomata – minute openings in plant leaves – and is diffused into the chlorophyll where the photons from the sun and water (H2O) from the roots meet to start the process of building sugars that the plant needs to produce fruit. The chemical reaction from these three ingredients – photons, carbon dioxide (CO2), and water (H2O) – breaks apart each molecule and produces oxygen (O2) and sugar (C6H12O6). The formula for the overall reaction is this:
6H2O + 6CO2 ————— C6H12O6 + 6O2
Written out in translation, it is: six molecules of water plus six molecules of carbon dioxide produce one molecule of sugar plus six molecules of oxygen
The plant does not need oxygen, so it expels it. Breathers like us need it and breathe it in; plants need what we breathe out (CO2). This is the classical definition of symbiosis. We need what plants reject, and plants need what we reject. Plants need the sugar for growth and development, and developed plants become food for herbivores. Without this process (which had to be complete from the inception of creation) human, animal, and plant life cannot exist. Only the mind and will of the first-causing person could have devised such an intricate and complex system to sustain life on this planet.
SO WHAT HAPPENED?
Lucifer was the archangel commissioned to administrate creation and to answer to Yahweh. He could have done his job for eons, but at some point, perhaps when Yahweh revealed His intention in creation, he thought about his position as top angel, yet subordinate to Yahweh and to His plans; and these thoughts may have led him to desire his Creator’s place above all. He exercised his will and decided he would lead his underlings in a revolt against Yahweh and his loyal angels. We don’t know what his arguments were, but he was able to convince a third of the angels to commit to the scheme.
When this transpired, we are not told. What we do know is that Lucifer led his fellow rebels on a destructive foray against the Earth and against the living on the Earth. They attacked genetically by throwing off restraint Yahweh had placed upon them at their creation. He had given them the heavens as their domain, but they focused their efforts on a single planet with the goal of implanting and propagating their rebellious, contaminated, and poisonous genome. How did they accomplish this? Did they materialize into gene-bearing creatures able to copulate with animals and transform them into ravaging and carnivorous beasts, irrevocably changing their genetic makeup? Is this the origin of animal predation? Were there high orders of primates that suffered the same fate at the hands of the angels? What about humans? Were they present and were they affected? More on this coming up.
WERE WE THERE?
A rather unconventional question to be sure, but the following passage from Jeremiah 4:23-26 is worth some thought:
I looked on the earth, and behold, it was formless (tohu) and void (bohu); and to the heavens, and they had no light. I looked on the mountains, and behold, they were quaking, and all the hills moved to and fro. I looked, and behold, there was no man, and all the birds of the heavens had fled. I looked, and behold, the fruitful land was a wilderness, and all its cities were pulled down before the Lord, before His fierce anger.
Nothing historical or anything predicted in the Bible concerning the future matches this description. There have always been people and birds and light on the Earth, even to the very end of the Great Tribulation. Our era’s worst catastrophe – Noah’s flood – had men, birds, and light. So what was Jeremiah describing?
A closer look reveals a perfect match to Genesis 1:2, the verse describing the judgment cataclysm that occurred after creation. In both places we see desolation, emptiness, darkness, and catastrophic overthrow. All men were gone; birds were gone; and all cities were destroyed. The question is, who were these people and who built these cities if not human beings?
Ezekiel writes in 28:11-19:
Thus says the Lord God, you had the seal of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. You were in Eden, the garden of God. Every precious stone was your covering: the ruby, the topaz and the diamond; the beryl, the onyx and the jasper; the lapis lazuli, the turquoise and the emerald; and the gold, the workmanship of your settings and sockets was in you. On the day that you were created they were prepared. You were the anointed cherub who covers and I placed you there. You were on the holy mountain of God. You walked in the midst of the stones of fire. You were blameless in your ways from the day you were created until unrighteousness was found in you. By the abundance of your trade you were internally filled with violence, and you sinned. Therefore I have cast you as profane from the mountain of God, and I have destroyed you, O covering cherub, from the midst of the stones of fire. Your heart was lifted up because of your beauty; you corrupted your wisdom by reason of your splendor. I cast you to the ground; I put you before kings, that they may see you by the multitude of your iniquities. In the unrighteousness of your trade you profaned your sanctuaries. Therefore I have brought fire from the midst of you. It has consumed you, and I have turned you to ashes on the earth in the eyes of all who see you. All who know you among the peoples are appalled at you. You have become terrified and you will cease to be forever.
This cannot be a description of a mere mortal, but of Lucifer himself. Yet here during his judgment, we have references to kings and peoples. Who are these if not those who existed between the first two verses of Genesis?
In Isaiah 14:12-18 we read another passage that cannot possibly be of a mortal man:
How you have fallen from heaven, O star of the morning, son of the dawn! You have been cut down to the earth; you who have weakened the nations! But you said in your heart, “I will ascend to heaven; I will raise my throne above the stars of God, and I will sit on the mount of assembly in the recesses of the north. I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.” Nevertheless you will be thrust down to Sheol; to the recesses of the pit. Those who see you will gaze at you. They will ponder over you, saying, “Is this the man who made the earth tremble; who shook kingdoms; who made the world like a wilderness and overthrew its cities; who did not allow his prisoners to go home?
When Lucifer was cast down in judgment, the ramifications were enormous. Nations and kingdoms and cities were weakened, shaken, and overthrown; all of which, presumably, were comprised of human beings.
The basis of the judgment of Genesis 1:2 is Lucifer (Satan) and his angels’ rebellion and their insurrection against Yahweh and their genetic contamination of all life on Earth. Lucifer succeeded in forcing Yahweh’s hand in destroying His own creation. How did this happen?
DRAMATIC INTERVENTION
Of course we have few details of an era not involving us, but we can say with a high degree of certainty, having studied Satan’s strategy in our history, that his evil genome was at the heart of it, because life from Yahweh had to be compromised for Satan’s plan to succeed. What else could warrant the dramatic intervention of the Creator upon His special planet? It is hard to imagine that He would have created so many benign dinosaurs and other mammals and animals and humans, and yet throw into the mix the savage beasts like the Tyrannosaurus Rex, the raptors, the great lizards, etc. That is not His character or personality. Something happened that genetically altered His perfect creation.
Satan always intended to strike at the root of the Lord’s plan. This plan was based on life, and life requires a genetic code, whether plant, animal, angelic, or human. Nothing is alive without it, and it is found in every cell of living things. Ultimately, the human being was the Lord’s choice to fulfill His plan, so they and the place designed for them to live (Earth) became the target of Satan’s assault. His angels, equipped with their evil genetic code and the means to deliver it, succeeded in contaminating the Earth via the animals and humans upon it until it was rendered genetically irredeemable. Yahweh had no choice but to judge it and to drive out the satanic element into its proper and original domain in the heavens above it. Lucifer was to administer the Earth, not usurp it through an illegal occupation.
Yahweh judged the Earth by water. It was the complete destruction of every living thing. Peter writes of the aftermath:
For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water: Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished (2 Peter 3:5-7).
The Earth was half in and half out of water, indicating that water may have swamped more than just the Earth. Whatever the case, the contaminated creation was judged and cleansed of the angelic intrusion, but the judgment that eradicated the angelic element left the Earth in ruin – wasted, empty, and dark – just like Jeremiah described. This is why we see the Spirit in verse two, like a brooding hen, intent upon bringing forth life out of death. This is the meaning of the Hebrew verb “rachaph,” translated “moved upon” in a popular translation. What this brooding produced was a restoration of planet Earth.
HE DID IT!
It should be apparent that a person (a very smart one) devised and executed creation and its governing laws. The circumstantial evidence is overwhelming to the fair minded, and we can see through all sorts of observation that the creation is an expression of the person who created it. But all this is natural. If we are to know the nuts and bolts of creation’s history and the person and the philosophy behind it, we have to read and understand the Hebrew Scriptures. Not an easy task, especially for those who draw exclusively upon nature for their answers. That’s only half the battle and half the knowledge. The important part is knowing the “why” of it all.
Here are the first two verses from Genesis 1:
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.
Taken word by word, it becomes apparent that what was ultimately positive in verse one declined into something drastically negative in verse two. To understand what happened requires a short lesson in the Hebrew language – the language of the Hebrew Scriptures, a.k.a. the Torah. But first a little background.
Genesis 1:1 is very straightforward – Yahweh created the heavens and the Earth. How did He do this? Passages from what we call the New Testament tell us:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being (John 1:1-3);
God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spoke in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds; who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power (Hebrews. 1:1-3);
He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist.
(Colossians 1:15-17).
The second person of the Triune God, Christ the Logos (Word) spoke, and the universe materialized. It is no more complicated than that. And what He spoke was perfect because He is perfect. It could be no other way, because what He is is expressed in what He speaks, and what is produced is an expression of what He is – perfection. There was no flaw in His creation.
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth (Genesis 1:1).
Something bad happened and certainly verse two refers to it.
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 (Gen. 1:2)
Here’s the short lesson in a couple Hebrew verbs – tohu and bohu. The Earth was “without form.” This is the word tohu, which means much more than without form. This translation into English implies that verse one is not complete, that the Earth was a formless mud ball awaiting further work as if the creative Word was incomplete or insufficient. How can we say this about the perfect Logos – the Word? We can’t. He spoke and creation was! Read John again. It should be obvious to us that this spoken word did not result in a process creation, but in a finished product. To say that verse two shows an incomplete creation of Earth is to diminish the power of the Logos of the Triune Creator. He needed no time and no process. He spoke and it was done!
What do the two words in question mean? Tohu means waste; bohu means empty. Hardly what we would expect of our perfect Creator. In fact Isaiah wrote in 45:18:
For thus says the LORD that created the heavens; God himself that formed the earth and made it; he hath established it, he created it not in vain (tohu), he formed it to be inhabited: I am the LORD; and there is none else.
It is clear. The Lord did NOT create the heavens and earth as a wasted place (tohu). But if it is a record of an ongoing creation, then verse 2 is in direct contradiction to Isaiah. So what gives?
The word “was” in Gen. 1:2 can be and should be translated “became” wasted and empty, because, after all, it was a planet under judgment. Yahweh judged the Earth with water to dislodge the vile denizens who had overstepped their boundaries in the heavens to illegally usurp the Earth, and with their genetic corruption of living things, ruined the Earth through genetic contamination. Their angelic genome had to be judged, and that judgment left the Earth wasted, empty, and dark. This is why we see the Spirit in verse two acting as a brooding hen bringing forth life out of death. This is the meaning of the Hebrew word “rachaph,” translated “moved upon” in the version cited. What this brooding produced was a restoration of Earth so the Lord could start again.
It is our contention that we should regard Genesis 1:2 – 2:25 as a restoration of Earth in the span of six 24-hour days. The seventh day is the Sabbath – Yahweh’s rest from His labor. Skeptics charge that the first two chapters of Genesis are two different accounts of creation written by different authors. Nonsense. An unbiased reading shows chapter 2 supplying important details omitted in chapter 1, not least among them the details of Adam’s creation and the bringing forth of the woman from and for the man.
Nothing in the record suggests anything figurative, forcing us to decide whether we will take Scriptures at face value. Do we who love this Word bend to secular scorn and derision and allow that these two important chapters are nothing more than fables and metaphors of a higher and abstract truth? So-called sophisticated intellectuals armed with scientific hypotheses cannot brook such simplicity. So what? Are these “thinkers” ready to jettison their seven-day week because the Bible begins with it? How about the 24-hour day? Or the one man/one woman marriage arrangement? Though they viscerally detest the Bible, ironically, they live within parameters laid down in it. They live according to a calendar based upon the birth of Jesus. They find safety and comfort in a system of jurisprudence predicated upon Moses and his law. We should never back away from the literal interpretation of the Scriptures but rather embrace it. What it says is what it means. The religion of scientism – metaphysical speculation dressed in the apparel of “science” with its jargon and unproven hypotheses – will never agree with this, but true science of empirical facts will.
Noteworthy here is the ease with which Yahweh intervenes in His creation. We could call any intervention “supernatural” (above nature) because Yahweh is outside and above His creation. Not only so, He has every right to intervene to see His plan carried out despite the natural laws He has put in place to govern the normal flow of routine existence. Already we have seen His intervention when He spoke matter into being, and when He created angels. He intervened when the rebel angels corrupted and contaminated the Earth. He intervened in restoring the Earth. He intervened when He created the first human couple of our era. Should this trouble us? Does He not have the prerogative to interject Himself into His own creation, especially knowing what His enemy’s strategy is? Of course He does! And what is prayer after all if not our pleas for His intervention in the lives of those we love and care for and pray for?
When Yahweh called the cosmos into being, He had a plan. He is the architect, and Earth is His building site. Though His enemy ruined the original and forced judgment upon it, Yahweh brought forth a renewed building site (Earth), gathered material (human beings), breathed His life into them (spirit), and gave them work to do (tend the garden), and fellowshipped with them daily. What was His plan? Simply this: that human beings filled with His divine life would become the corporate Bride of His Son Christ. Was it the knowledge of this plan that put Lucifer over the edge? Was he jealous of another creature that would fulfill Yahweh’s lofty purpose? We don’t know, but we do know the Scriptures reveal the matter of the Bride of Christ as being a vital part of Yahweh’s purpose. This makes much sense. What Father does not want the best for his son; and will not go to any length to get it, especially when it comes to a wife?
Though He had to destroy His original creation through judgment, Yahweh was undaunted. His Spirit brooded over the water and restored life to a desolate and empty planet. For six days Yahweh worked to return Earth to a condition suitable for the man and his wife. This was restoration of the planet, not the creation of it.
The first two days were simply a restoration of the infrastructure of the planet and its surroundings, so Yahweh had no stated sentiment; but the third day He called good. The fourth and fifth days were also good, but the sixth day was not only good, but also very good, because the sixth day contained the point of it all – the creation of the man. On the seventh day Yahweh rested, so He blessed and sanctified (set apart) that day. The building of the woman followed sometime later after Adam finished naming the animals. He found none of them to be his match, so he went under the knife to provide the building material for his bride. The typology here regarding Jesus’ experience of dying and of giving of His substance (blood and water from His side) for the His Bride is foundational! Let’s drill down and have a deeper look.
CREATION. WHY?
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth (Genesis 1:1) “
The question is why did Yahweh do it? Without the Bible there is no way of answering that question. With the Bible we can. The reason for Yahweh’s creation is singular: to acquire for His Son a collective body and bride comprised of His human creatures. Some say Yahweh was lonely and needed fellowship. Nonsense. That implies a lack in His character, in His trinity and that is false. Some say creation was to glorify Yahweh. Really? Does His ego demand such a thing? Please! Others say that creation was to praise Him. Of course, it does but Yahweh is not so petty and insecure as to need praise from anyone. He knows who He is and needs no propping up. That is not to say we shouldn’t praise Him and that He does not appreciate it, but He didn’t create us to be a praising choir. His creation was for His Son. “It is not good for a man to be alone.” Glory, praise and fellowship are ancillary to this one unique purpose.
Verse one clearly shows the Father actively and aggressively setting about to accomplish the plan conceived in His mind in eternity past. His explosive and thunderous word called into being the far reaches of the universe with galaxy upon galaxy weaving together in an intricate pattern of beauty and brilliance. But amidst this display of power and intelligence, our utterly small planet became the stage for the universal drama and divine purpose to play out.
The awestruck angels shouted for joy as the universe unfolded before their eyes in all its sweeping and magnificent perfection, having as its focus the utterly small, pale blue planet, distinguished from all other spheres by its abundance of plant, animal, and human life. There was no barrier between Earth and heaven where Yahweh’s habitation and throne is. Lucifer and his viceroys administered creation (as they were designed to do) with dignity and an attitude of worshipful humility.
EARTH DESTROYED (AND FOR GOOD REASON)
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. (Gen 1: 1, 2)
To iterate, what explains the glaring contrast between verse one and verse two? Verse one tells us of the glorious creation of the heaven and the Earth and verse two speaks of darkness, death, desolation, emptiness and chaos. How can the perfection of verse one be swallowed up in the catastrophe that is verse two? How can the dark and violent situation in verse two come from our perfect and utterly positive Creator? It can’t. He did not create Earth a waste place overtaken by water. Remember:
For thus says Yahweh, Who created the heaven—He is the God who formed the earth and made it; He established it; He did not create it waste, but He formed it to be inhabited. (Isa. 45: 18).
In fact, according to Genesis 1:10, Earth is defined as dry land, the very opposite of what we find in verse two. Originally, it had no seas upon it, but verse two reveals an Earth flooded with death water. Peter explains this when warning about skeptics.
“For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old and the Earth standing out of the water and in the water: Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished” (2 Pet. 3: 5-6).
The picture is indeed bleak, for the original creation became dark and dead and under water. We see the formerly pristine Earth floating in a sea of death in which all light is extinguished. What caused such a drastic change? From fullness to emptiness; from a clear, open, and brilliant sky reaching unimpeded to the throne of Yahweh to darkness upon the face of the deep; from abundant life to profound abjection; from peace to chaos. What happened?
Some say nothing happened; that verse two is a continuation of verse one; that Yahweh created the Earth as an empty, dead, tumultuous mud ball and then started working on it to perfect it. I say balderdash to this spin of the Lord’s word. What He creates is complete and perfect. To allow that the Earth was in a ruined and desolate condition as part of the creative process is to impugn the Creator’s character.
We’ve already seen that what happened is a sad story of jealousy and corruption and intrigue and rebellion. To summarize: Yahweh’s archangel, Lucifer, the son of the morning, the light bearer, witnessed the creation with awe and led the angels in songs and shouts of joy. They saw the thought and plan of Yahweh to secure a corporate bride for His Son becoming a reality. But deep in Lucifer’s heart there may have been a germ of jealousy because Yahweh had chosen an inferior creature to fulfill His plan. Were not the angels suitable for such a sublime calling? Was he not the most beautiful and powerful of all Yahweh’s creatures? Had he not been faithful in every detail of his work, of overseeing the creation, especially the Earth and all the life upon it? Surely, he had, but Yahweh had chosen lowly humans for the fulfillment of His purpose, not the angels. Could this have been the source of Lucifer’s undoing? We can’t be certain, but something turned his heart against the very One who had given him life, position, and trust.
To our peril we underestimate the power and tenacity of our archenemy. Isaiah and Ezekiel, in ostensibly describing the kings of Babylon and Tyre, give us a vivid picture of Lucifer and of the details of his rebellion. Many times in Scripture we have such dual meanings. Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28 are like this, pronouncing judgment on earthly kings while at the same time describing the mighty angel in the heavens who seeks the destruction of our race and our planet.
THE GREAT MAKEOVER
Then God said, Let there be light; and there was light (Gen. 1: 3).
The first thing a dead and dark situation needs is light, for without light there is no life and life was Yahweh’s ultimate goal after His terrible judgment upon the ancient creation. His speaking brought in the light and because He is true light itself and because we know He unveiled the light of the sun and stars on the fourth day, then the light of verse three must have been His incursion as the brooding Spirit into the desolation of His ruined creation.
And God saw the light, that it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness. (Gen. 1: 4)
For Yahweh to restore the Earth to its second habitable state, He had to call forth light. Light is primary because it exposes every negative thing, drives away darkness, and provides the atmosphere in which life can thrive. Yahweh is the source of light, and light is Himself poured forth. Whether in speaking, shining, or in generating life, the Lord conveys His very person, not just something detached from who He is. He is the Word; He is the light; He is the life. Without Him there is no physical light and without light there is no physical life. We may clinically dissect light into its component waves and particles; but ultimately light is the shining forth of the person Himself. Since He cannot co-exist with evil, neither can light and darkness share the same space.
It is important to note that everything in the physical realm mirrors its creator and light is no exception. Where light is, darkness is not. No amount of darkness can swallow up light, but even the tiniest amount of light chases away darkness.
And God saw the light, that it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. And evening and morning were the first day. (Gen. 1: 4-5)
Everything in life and in creation is about restriction and parameters. In the restoration of the first day, darkness is restricted by the presence of light. A day cycle is restricted by one revolution of the Earth. Daylight is segmented into morning, afternoon, and evening. Yahweh’s restoration took six days and the seventh He rested, so even He subjected Himself to His own creation. Restraint is designed by the Lord to accomplish His plan.
And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. 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. And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day. (Gen. 1: 6-8)
Our Lord is a limiting Creator and in day two He continues to construct parameters to confine our universe. When He originally created heaven and Earth, there was nothing between Earth and heaven to restrict the fellowship of the Creator with His creation. But after the ruination of judgment when He flooded the Earth with death water, the Earth, according to Peter, was standing out of water and in water. By making a firmament, Yahweh divided the waters. It was a structure, a barrier surrounding the universe that held back the water above it from the water below it. It is as if our universe is inside a colossal bladder protected from the water surrounding it. It is an impassable barrier put there because of Lucifer’s sin. No longer do we have an open heaven between the Lord and Earth. A confining barrier, the firmament, separates Earth from Him. The water above the firmament is under and before the throne of the Almighty and is kept in place by the protective barrier that confines our universe. Without the firmament, the Earth, and perhaps the universe as well, would drown again. Though we are protected by it, it also limits our access to Him.
Interestingly, this is the only day of the six that He did not call “good;” perhaps because His work in dividing the waters was galling to Him. In restoring the atmosphere around Earth by establishing a barrier around the universe, He knew that there would not be the clear sky between His throne and His beloved Earth. The barrier was necessary to restore the universe, but it meant separation between Him and His creation. He could not proclaim it good. Necessary, but regrettable.
Yahweh calls the firmament Heaven, so we now live in a multi-dimensional arrangement—the atmosphere surrounding Earth, outer space, and the dwelling place of Yahweh. Earth is far removed from Him in time and distance, but the record shows that He did not abandon Earth, nor had His original purpose in creation suffered a fatal blow. In these verses, He is at work to make the Earth habitable again so that upon it He could gain a people for Himself.
Though there could be many dimensions that we cannot access (there are ten according to the Book of Enoch), the three-tiered structure that we are aware of as believers becomes a recurring theme throughout the Scriptures and nature. For example, our Yahweh is triune. Man is made in three parts—body, soul, and spirit. Noah’s ark had three stories. The Israelites went from Egypt through the wilderness and to the good land. Moses tabernacle and Solomon’s temple had three sections—the outer court, the Holy Place, and the Holy of Holies. The Earth has a core, a mantle, and a crust. Water has three atoms. Plants have roots, stems, and foliage. There are three kinds of created life—plant, animal, and human. Of conscious life there are three—animal, human, and divine. These are just some of the many examples of the basic structure of three first seen on the second day of the restoration.
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. And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas; and God saw that it was good. Then God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seeds, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth; and it was so. (Gen. 1: 9-11)
The third day must have been a joy to our working, restoring Creator, for out of the death water He brought forth the dry land. The inference is obvious. Surrounded by death for three days and nights and having passed through the realm of death, Jesus broke its bonds and came forth on the third day in resurrection. He put death in its place even as Yahweh put the death water in its place. The Earth emerged from death to provide the soil upon which the Lord could bring forth created life.
Then God said, “Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb that yields seed, and the fruit tree that yields fruit according to its kind, whose seed is in itself, on the earth”; and it was so. And the earth brought forth grass, the herb that yields seed according to its kind, and the tree that yields fruit, whose seed is in itself according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. (Gen. 1: 11-12)
At first blush, the Genesis account is about the physical restoration of Earth so that He could reintroduce physical life; but, as is the case with so much of the Scriptures, there is a deeper reality beneath the apparent. Christ is our dry land resurrected from the death water on the third day upon and in whom divine life grows and multiplies. First the lowly grass-life precedes the more advanced herb-life. Then the fruit-producing trees appear as the culmination of the plant life.
Then God said, “Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs and seasons, and for days and years; and let them be for lights in the firmament of the heavens to give light on the earth”; and it was so. (Gen. 1: 14-15)
When Yahweh judged the Earth before the seven days of Genesis, He did it with water. When the billions, if not trillions, of stars went dark at that time, their hydrogen may have contributed to vast amounts of water, thereby swamping the universe. This is certainly a more plausible explanation than the theory that Yahweh created everything with the appearance of age. He would have had to trick us if His creation is only 6,000 – 10, 000 years old, because some of the stars are millions of light years away from us. We need billions of years of history to even see a star in the sky. Yahweh is the Lord of order, and He doesn’t manipulate nature in order to fool people, no matter how arrogant they are in their attitudes. That’s not His character. He is the Creator of nature, of course, and so He can do what He wants. Is it far-fetched to believe that the once burning stars that went cold and dark at the judgment, could have been re-ignited on the fourth day?
Then 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. God set them in the firmament of the heavens to give light on the earth, 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. So the evening and the morning were the fourth day. (Gen. 1: 16-19)
The light from the first day was the Lord’s presence as He went about straightening out the big mess resulting from Satan’s rebellion. He is light and when He embarked on the restoration, light was there. Out of this light came the lesser forms of life—grass, herb, and tree. Now on the fourth day, after the dry land came out of the waters of death and the plant life was established, there was a need for further, more defined light to bring in the higher forms of life.
The account of Yahweh’s physical restoration of the Earth and the heaven above it is far more significant than just a dull recitation of cold historical facts. The concepts laid out before us here in chapter one move forward and develop throughout the Scriptures, and this constitutes a foundational principle of the Lord’s revelation in His Word. Most, if not all, of His truth begins in seed form in Genesis. For example, here He makes the sun, the moon, and stars; objects that bear light and cause life to grow. But they also represent a principle and that is, Yahweh is light and by His light we have life.
Then God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that has life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. And God created great whales, and every living creature. . .which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind. Then God said, “Let the waters abound with an abundance of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the face of the firmament of the heavens.” So God created great sea creatures and every living thing that moves, with which the waters abounded, according to their kind, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. And God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.” So the evening and the morning were the fifth day. Then God said, “Let the earth bring forth the living creature according to its kind: cattle and creeping thing and beast of the earth, each according to its kind”; and it was so. And God made the beast of the earth according to its kind, cattle according to its kind, and everything that creeps on the earth according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. (Gen. 1: 20-25)
The higher the conscious life the more useful it is to Yahweh’s purpose. Though a fish can live in salt water without harm, and a bird can soar far above the Earth, the land animal can bear the yoke and be productive. These higher forms of life took their places in the restoration.
YAHWEH’S TREASURE
Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion . . . over all the earth . . .” (Genesis 1:26)
The whole thrust of the restoration of Earth was to get to this point – the creation of the man and the making of the woman. The human life is the highest created life. Being in Yahweh’s image means possessing His inward qualities. It means being like Him, having the same makeup, the same virtues, the same characteristics. And shouldn’t it be so? The Lord creates that which comes from Him. He is what He is and if He creates, then the creature will be an extension and expression of the Creator. If the Creator is righteous and holy, then so the person He creates.
We are like Him both inwardly and outwardly. Inwardly, in our spirit and soul, we are created in His image. Outwardly, in our body, we are in His likeness. How can that be when the Scriptures declare plainly that Yahweh is spirit and that no one has seen Him at any time? True, He is Spirit but He is also the Son and the Son has a form, a physical form, and we are made in that likeness.
WHAT MAKES US TICK
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. (Gen. 2:7)
Our inward parts—soul and spirit—correspond directly to the soul and spirit of their Creator. Yahweh possesses intellect, emotions, and volition and so did Adam and his descendants. His intention for Adam and for us is to be like Yahweh in every inner aspect. For Adam to be made love and righteousness and peace and holiness, he had to be filled with the one thing he lacked and that was the life of his Creator. The Lord’s life – containing all His attributes – would have activated and energized those characteristics in Adam, like a hand in glove, and would have made him the embodiment of those qualities.
It is no mistake that image precedes dominion. The Lord created man in His image; that is, the Creator and the man had matching attributes—love, righteousness, empathy, purpose, passion, thoughtfulness, etc. The one thing the man lacked was the life of the Creator that would have energized and activated all the virtues resident in his soul. The man’s spirit needed the highest life for that spirit to rule over the soul and to infuse the soul (mind, emotion, will) with the energizing life of Yahweh. This proper soul in turn would have ruled over the body and the man would have been in perfect alignment with his Creator, living a life of peace, joy, and contentment; and possessing the means to exercise dominion over creation, particularly over the evil one. This purpose has never changed.
ADAM’S TREASURE
Then the Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone; I will make him a helper suitable for him. Out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast. . .and every bird. . .and brought them to the man. . .The man gave names to all. . .but for Adam there was not found a helper suitable for him. (Gen. 2:18-20)
When the Lord saw Adam, He saw Eve in him. The man Adam was not just an individual, but a corporate person. This is a profound and sublime principle, and it is the beginning of the explanation of Christ and His people unveiled throughout Scripture. From the eternal past, the Father saw the fullness of His Son in the nation of Israel as His Bride and in the Christian community as His Body. These two entities are the fullness of Him that fills all in all. This is what makes them important in Yahweh’s eyes and what gives them dignity and depth and glory. An old saint wrote in the 19th century:
“If I am entitled, on the authority of Holy Scriptures, to regard myself as a constituent part of that which is actually needful to Christ, I can no longer entertain a doubt as to whether there is the fullest provision for all my personal necessities.”-MacIntosh
Again, Adam and Eve were one person, one complete entity, possessing His image inwardly (spiritually) and His form, or likeness, outwardly (physically). On the positive side the reason for this peculiar design was for this complete “man” to exhibit to the universe the multifaceted wisdom and virtue of the Creator. On the negative side, this complete man was to exercise dominion over creation. Implicit in this purpose is a big problem, the problem of rebellion.
What does the man’s solitude tell us about his human nature? Here he was in the paradise of the garden of Eden with food enough and more to meet his physical needs, and with fellowship with his Maker to answer his spiritual hunger. What was lacking? Animals surrounded him, so in that sense he was not alone; but animals don’t talk. Adam found no match among them though he studied them thoroughly, even to the point of naming them. They don’t communicate on the same level with man and without communication there is solitude. There was no one and nothing to satisfy his soul, to meet his psychological needs. He needed someone like himself, not a clone but a counterpart; not an exact replica but a suitable match; not reinforcement but a balance; not a sycophant but a complement. Man needed a fairer equivalent who would bring another perspective, who would ease his decisiveness, temper his passions, moderate his resolve, soften his hardness, support his responsibilities, gird up his walk with his Lord, and join with him to be one complete person. Yahweh knew the solitary man could never accomplish His purpose no matter how devoted he was. He needed one like himself; that is, one like himself in body, soul, and spirit. Not that the other would think and feel and decide exactly as he would, but that the other would have the capability to think, to feel, to decide, and to communicate.
Why did Yahweh use a rib and not a foot bone or a piece of Adam’s skull? Why did He not scoop up another handful of dirt and create her as He did Adam? In the human body nothing is deeper than the marrow of the bone, that place where the lifeblood of a human being originates. Yahweh went to the depth of the man’s being, to the seat of his physical life, to extract the elements for his counterpart. This constituted the life of the woman. Matthew Henry said it best:
“The man was dust refined, but the woman was dust double-refined, one remove further from the earth. . .the woman was made of a rib out of the side of Adam; not made out of his head to rule over him, nor out of his feet to be trampled upon by him, but out of his side to be equal with him, under his arm to be protected, and near to his heart to be beloved.”
The Lord God. . .brought her to the man. The man 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.” (Gen. 2: 22-23)
A solitary man is a half-person. Unless called by Yahweh to remain single, a man is unbalanced, unpolished, undisciplined, unrefined; in love with himself, with the entertainments of the world, with lust, with excitement, with pleasure, with the lack of responsibilities, and with independence. Marriage should cost the man his selfish lifestyle; that is, his “rib.” In a proper marriage, one in which he joins with his equal, he will have to be reduced in order to be enlarged. His independence will have to be cut out of him. He will no longer be free to do as he pleases. He will be shackled with the obligation of caring for his wife, of providing for her, of taking her advice, of relinquishing his opinion and his desires and his ambitions. A proper marriage must cost the man dearly so that he will appreciate the one brought to him to make up the loss. Marriage cost Adam his rib. Eve owed her life to him. This is a proper marriage.
THE PURPOSE LAUNCHED
Then God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” (Gen. 1:28)
The complete man is comprised of male and female, for it takes a plural man to fulfill Yahweh’s purpose. The Lord’s command to be fruitful and multiply can only be carried out by a complete man—male and female. The fruitfulness and multiplication have everything to do with life. Man was created with the matching attributes of his Creator; that is, created in His image. This mirror image vessel needed the divine life of his Creator to fill him to produce fruit. The Lord’s life is intrinsically reproductive, expansive, fruitful. Every plant and animal life strives to reproduce because the Creator is like that. He wants to be expressed, to be exhibited, to grow, to increase, to reproduce. The man began as the increase of his Creator because he contained His characteristics and virtues, and when filled with His dynamic life would have become fruitful as his Creator. When we received this life at our new birth, the maturation process began. This life progresses typologically from the lowly grass to the herb to the trees to the fish to the birds to the beasts and to the highest life, man. This is the nature of Yahweh’s life. He wants to grow, to mature, to reproduce, to fill up everything. Everyday we can enjoy this wonderful, expansive life in us and watch it take over our lives and touch other lives as well.
Being in Yahweh’s image means we are like Him in His virtues and characteristics. It also means that this image must be filled with His life to be energized and to become useful. The filling of this image in us with His life is the Lord’s way of reproducing Himself, of expressing Himself, of expanding Himself, of filling up His universe with Himself. So, when He tells the male and female that they are to be fruitful and to multiply and to fill the Earth, He is commissioning them to be filled with His eternal life first and foremost. This is why He restored the earth to its original condition.
The original Earth was inhabited and thriving before Lucifer fell and corrupted it, so man’s commission was to fill it up with life, to multiply, to be fruitful. Had this record in Genesis been Yahweh’s original creation, there would have been no sense in using the word replenish, for there would have been no prior filling that would have required refilling. The Lord’s way of restoration is by life, not by knowledge, nor by behavior, nor by dry, cold instructions. Whatever He does on Earth with human beings He does according to His life because in His life are all the virtues needed to fulfill His purpose and to deal with His enemy. Be fruitful, multiply, fill all have to do with life—the eternal, uncreated, indestructible, overcoming life of the Creator Himself.
LURKING
Many Christians fantasize that they can deal with Yahweh’s enemy as if he were a mere shadow, or a cowering figment. Satan was Lucifer, the Daystar, the highest created being with extraordinary power and with thousands of years of experience dealing with human beings. He indwells the flesh of every person and has implanted His evil nature in their souls as a responder to the enticements of the flesh. Nothing but Yahweh’s authority can counter this overt and covert rebel. We should take him seriously. He watched carefully as Yahweh went about restoring His earth, creating the plural man, and charging them with the exercise of dominion. He was plotting man’s demise even as the Triune God took counsel, for he knew that only the collective man, filled with Yahweh’s indomitable life could defeat him. If we dare confront Satan with our own meager strength and resolve, we risk serious damage to ourselves and to others. Dominion issues spontaneously from a life given over unconditionally to the Source of Life. For our welfare we must concentrate on Him and on being filled with Him. Then He will use us as vessels of authority to rule over creation and over the inveterate adversary. This is the only way.
Satan the corrupter usurped the Earth along with the universe some time in the distant past. The Lord’s recreation, or restoration, described in the two opening chapters of Genesis, addresses this problem. He created man to express and exhibit His life by allowing that life to fill him and to activate his created virtues. By this inward filling of Yahweh’s life, the man would have the strength to exercise authority and dominion over creation, especially over the enemy. It is rather strange that He would create man to exercise authority if this were His original creation. If creation were perfectly sin free, then there would have been no problem and, therefore, no need for the exercise of dominion. But because of Satan’s prior rebellion, there was an enormous problem present even as Yahweh worked through the six days of restoration. To meet and resolve this problem, He made the plural man with the purpose and capacity to exercise His authority.
Satan the rebel had tried to overthrow Yahweh and, thereafter, he embodied the root of all sin—rebellion. Nothing in Satan’s arsenal rivals rebellion against authority, for it is rebellion that opens the way for all other sins. The Lord’s word — “let them have dominion”—informs our understanding of the gravity of the situation at the time of Genesis one and two. Had Satan brought in hatred, then the Lord would have said, Let them have love. Or if confusion, then peace. But Satan brought in every negative thing when he rebelled, for rebellion is the ship carrying the evil cargo. Only authority and dominion sink that ship.
TO OBEY OR TO DISOBEY
And out of the ground the Lord God made every tree grow that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. (Gen. 2:8)
The Lord God commanded the man, saying, “From any tree of the garden you may eat freely; but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you shall surely die.” (Gen. 2:16-17)
We can never accuse Yahweh of being coercive because, though He prohibited Adam from eating the tree of knowledge, He allowed for Adam’s will to choose his destiny. He preferred that Adam eat of the tree of life so that his spirit would have been filled with the eternal life of his Creator represented by the tree. By this infilling, Adam’s entire being—spirit, soul, and body—would have been occupied by the eternal life and thus able to fulfill Yahweh’s purpose for mankind. But though Yahweh knew His purpose for Adam and how to achieve it, He did not force. He knew that only a willing creature could accomplish His purpose because the creature must love his Creator in order to willingly choose His way.
In the Lord’s prohibition, death would follow the eating of the knowledge tree; death in the form of a person. That person would corrupt the soul, deaden the spirit, and, in time, kill the body. The Lord did not mean that He would kill the man if he ate wrongly, but that the nature of His enemy would enter and corrupt and deaden. The fact that Adam had the free will to choose reveals Yahweh’s deep love for him, for what kind of love could the Creator have had for a creature void of reciprocating love? Yahweh knew going in that He faced an implacable enemy, the personification of death, and that only His life in the man was the antidote. His deep desire was that His willing creature would choose the way of life and not the way of death. He warned but did not coerce. He prohibited, but did not shackle. He wanted willingness and love from Adam, not cold, lifeless submission.
There is nothing inherently wrong with the knowledge of good and evil. Adam’s sin was in the disobeying. Man, being physical, psychological, and spiritual, must be ruled by Yahweh to accomplish the purpose for which he was created. For that Yahweh created Adam with a spirit to rule over the soul and body, and only that spirit is the repository of Yahweh’s eternal life. The fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil appeals to the mind with its knowledge. If the mind and the body are allowed to take the lead in a human being, then the result is spiritual dormancy and physical death. Yahweh’s intention is that the life-filled spirit rule over the body and the soul. Only then can the man properly acquire and process the universe of knowledge surrounding good and evil. For man to know of the spiritual warfare between Yahweh and Satan, between good and evil, without the spiritual filling of Yahweh’s life, then the man is weak and susceptible to the lure of evil. A soul, particularly the will, left unrestrained by the higher life of the spirit, has no power to choose the good and, by default, will fall into the clutches of the evil one, and that leads to the dormancy of the spirit, the definition of death.
The knowledge of good and evil opens to the man a dark world of warfare between the rebellious angel with his daring horde, and Yahweh with His faithful angels. In that realm reside duplicity and malice and the unthinkable aspiration of supplanting Yahweh from His throne. Every kind of wickedness unfolds to the one who possesses this knowledge and only the one armed with the life of Yahweh can handle it. Without being filled with Yahweh’s life, empty Adam would be overwhelmed by evil. When Lucifer presented his plan to his subordinate angels, he opened their eyes to evil and rebellion and to the terrible possibility of defeating their Creator and overtaking His throne. One third of them responded to Lucifer because they could not resist the lure of power. If the mighty angels could not resist Lucifer’s overtures, how much less the inferior man? Such knowledge of the universal warfare between Yahweh and Satan (necessary knowledge to be sure, to defeat him) must come after the filling of Yahweh’s eternal life, the sure antidote to the death spawned by rebellion and disobedience.
ENTER DISOBEDIENCE – GENESIS 3
Though Satan and his horde lost control of Earth due to the judgment water, he was not far away. When Yahweh brought the man and woman to their test of obedience, Satan was close by to provide the temptation.
In Yahweh’s order He is the head over man and man is head over the woman. In the fatal exchange with the crafty serpent the woman abandoned the proper order – her covering – and acted independently and conversed with a talking snake that embodied the adversary of Yahweh. Why would she leave the protection of Adam? And why would she stray so near the prohibited tree? Was she attracted to its beautiful fruit with a yearning to partake? Being a three-part creature with her spirit as the deepest and most important component designed to contact and fellowship with Yahweh, she failed to live according to what would have kept her close to and satisfied with her head, the man, and in communion with her caring Creator. She chose rather to be independent and to explore her own world, making conversation with the reptile. Did she not think that strange? A talking serpent? Yahweh designed her to be dependent upon Him and upon Adam, but she left both and paid an awful price.
Materializing in the body and brain of a serpent, Satan deceived the woman into disobeying her Creator, and Adam, rather than lose his wife, followed suit. It is easy to lay the entire responsibility at the feet of the weaker vessel; but it does not easily rest there. Was the man not given charge over his own wife to watch over her, to protect her; to care for her; to lead her into all the truths with which he was acquainted; to foster in her, as in him, a deep love and trust for her Creator; to lead her to and to partake with her the tree of life that would have filled them with Yahweh’s own life, a sure repellent to the tempting serpent; to stand between her and enemy of her soul? Why did he not defend her? Why was he unaware of her absence from his strong arms? Was he more concerned with his own interests? Or did he not want to be bothered? Was he unaware of the danger lurking about seeking their ruin? The woman failed, to be sure, but the man failed by allowing her to wander from his protective side. Lots of blame to go around.
Some would ask why Yahweh would let them sin in the first place. The answer can only be that Yahweh creates according to what He is. He is a person, and a person can think, can emote, can decide. Every soul has a faculty to think (mind), has a faculty to feel (emotions), and faculty to decide (volition). He did not create automatons programmed to carry out His wishes robotically. No angel or human is created that way. Granted, when a thinking person can decide, it is very risky for the Creator, but that is Yahweh’s decision, and it has proven to be a painful one for Him. Nevertheless, He has found over the millennia a small remnant who has proven faithful to Him and to His purpose. They are few, to be sure, but they are enough.
What happened when the first couple disobeyed? If we can figure this out, it will go a long way in piecing together what happened on the pre-adamic Earth, and what happened during Noah’s lifetime.
Satan intends either to destroy outright, or to irredeemably corrupt covertly. Being in the body of the serpent he couldn’t harm them physically, so he lured the woman into disobedience. Eve opened herself to the overtures of Satan and he entered her and corrupted her genome. He insinuated himself into the DNA molecule found in every cell of her body and began his insidious work. That molecule carries all the information that makes up a person, and from that moment of disobedience onward Satan became a part of her makeup. His life and nature infused her genome. Adam also chose to disobey Yahweh’s prohibition, and he ingested the evil nature into his being as well. Satan, through deception, insinuated himself into the core of the man and woman, and moved himself through reproduction into every child born thereafter. Satan administered a chokehold on the very creatures Yahweh had created to carry out His purpose. It was a coup d’etat of epic proportions.
Proof of the satanic intrusion came in the immediate aftermath of their disobedience. How did the guilty couple respond?
Then the Lord God called to the man, and said to him, “Where are you?” (Gen. 3:9)
The first step in salvation is the Lord’s decision to call out to us. If He doesn’t call, we can’t respond. Why should He call to sinners? His righteousness does not require it. His holiness recoils at it. His majesty and power are devoted to the administration of creation. What draws Him to the lowly and pathetic sinner and causes Him to call out to them? Only His limitless and eternal love for His human creature. Only His boundless mercy and tenderness and patience and kindness and goodness. The serpent thought he had ruined Yahweh’s human being by his deception, but what he did, in fact, was open the reservoir of every positive virtue found in the infinite Almighty. What the serpent meant for evil, Yahweh countered with good. What the serpent meant to alienate, Yahweh’s tender arms embraced. What the serpent detested; Yahweh loved with all His heart. What the serpent sought to destroy; Yahweh came to save. This is why He called out. Not to judge and condemn, for their consciences had already done that. Not to expose their sin, for their eyes saw the evil in and around them. He called to them. They were full of death; He came to them full of life. They were ravaged by guilt; He came to forgive. They were distraught and fearful; He came as their assurance and peace. Everything they could possibly have needed in their desperation; Yahweh was and more. This is why He called out to them. His unconditional love compelled Him.
Unhinged by shame, they tried to hide themselves with fig leaves and shadows. They passed blame for what they had done. Rather than listen to their complaints, Yahweh went straight to the source and cursed the serpent for his duplicity. With the curse came the first prophecy in Scriptures (Genesis 3:15), and it is monumental. To Satan He said:
And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; he shall bruise you on the head, and you shall bruise him on the heel
Here we have two genomes – the seed of the serpent (Satan) and the seed of the woman – capable of propagating after their kind; not in some figurative or metaphysical way, but in actual, physical manifestations. Satan’s life and nature has resided in every human being born after the original act of disobedience. He entered the flesh of the first couple, took up residence, and has propagated himself ever since. Where did this happen? In the DNA of every person who has ever lived from that moment to this. Every human being carries the genome of Satan, and those genes express themselves as all genes do. Nothing in the sordid history of humankind can refute this. Paul said in Romans 7:18:
For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwells no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not.
Jesus told the Pharisees in John 8:44:
Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.
Satan is every bit a father to us as our earthly father. We carry his genetic package in us and we humans dispense it with every child brought into the world.
DEATH – A THING OR A PERSON?
The Lord God commanded the man, “. . .for in the day that you eat from it you shall surely die.” (Gen. 2:17)
The woman said to the serpent, “From the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat; but from the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden, God has said, ‘You shall not eat from it or touch it, or you will die.’ ” The serpent said to the woman, “You surely will not die!” (Gen. 3:2-4)
Yahweh had warned the couple that if they disobeyed Him and partook of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, they would die. What did the man and woman know about death? Was this not a foreign concept to them? How could they relate to such a warning in their state of innocence? Wasn’t the Earth perfect in every way? Wasn’t the universe problem-free during this time when the Lord brought forth the dry land, the vegetation, the animals, and the first couple? Far from it. The Earth, though restored, was rebel territory teeming with evidence of the past cataclysm of judgment. Signs of death abounded, which the man, via Yahweh’s tutelage, surely recognized and understood. The Earth held in its bosom the remains of great civilizations usurped by Yahweh’s enemy and destroyed by His watery judgment. Yahweh in His infinite mercy upon His newly created man must have enlightened him to the history and danger of his environment. He must have shared with the man the reason for his creation—to rule over the animals, the Earth, and over every creeping thing. Had there been no problem in creation, there would have been no need to rule. The man knew all this, but didn’t convey adequately to the woman the formidable strength and ubiquity of the death surrounding them. Rather than rule over the serpent, which was the divine mandate, the woman conversed with the creature without fear, with disrespect for Yahweh’s prohibition and provision.
Regarding Yahweh’s warning, how were they to know what death was? It was not until they stood guilty in front of the Lord and watched Him slay the innocent animals to provide them coverings that they had some hint. But death is more than physical expiring. Satan himself personifies death because he is anti-life. He is death. He negates life. Once the couple disobeyed Yahweh, something in them died. Their fellowship with the Lord died. Their innocence died. The purpose of their creation died. Death spread to their outward environment, and to their inward parts. Death was everywhere and there was no remedy. At least it seemed so to them.
Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loin coverings. (Gen. 3:7)
THE HIGH COST OF BLOOD
The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife, and clothed them. (Gen. 3:21)
The sinful man and woman stood before Yahweh clinging to their hastily made fig leaf coverings to hide the shame of their nakedness. Why was there shame involved? What is wrong with a married couple being naked together? What had changed? Their innocence had changed to shame and guilt.
Having lost their cloak of innocence, the guilty couple realized they were shamefully naked. The bond of perfection that linked their spirit, soul, and body had been abruptly breached and the body became a living corpse infested with the life of the adversary. The immediate and natural inclination was to cover the shame of nakedness, especially in the presence of Yahweh, the Holy One. This was the result of the activated conscience that became the guardian of good and the revealer of evil. The conscience, a component of the human spirit, knows good from evil and when it is filled with the life of Yahweh will always embrace the good and eschew the evil. In an unregenerate man, the conscience will function but will have no strength to do anything but reveal the sin, condemn the sinner, and heap guilt upon him. This was what happened in the garden, and the pair responded by trying to do something in their human strength and cunning to mitigate their guilt and shame, rather than cast themselves before Yahweh in repentance and humility. It didn’t work out so well.
A new element with its own life and a nature of its own had appeared to complicate matters considerably. Satan found a home in the physical flesh of the man and woman. In a very real sense, he was incarnated in human flesh, and that appearance in Adam and Eve’s bodies brought great shame to them. They had allowed themselves to be occupied and now used in a degrading way in front of their Creator. It must have been extremely painful for them to stand there covered in cobbled together fig leaves. All that remained for them was to be struck dead by their Judge. They were resigned to Yahweh’s penalty, whatever that meant.
Not only did their conscience condemn them and cause them extreme disgrace and anxiety, but also, they heard the sound of Yahweh walking in the garden, and they feared Him. The conscience was the inward judge, Yahweh the outward. Both had to be appeased, but when they heard Him, their immediate impulse was to hide. Their vain attempt to cover their sins with human effort, cunning and devices failed miserably in the presence of holiness. They rightfully feared, but Yahweh had other plans.
During the cursing of the serpent, He promised a seed to the woman, so He had to keep her alive. But to keep her alive in her present condition was untenable. Something had to be done to solve the sin problem. Innocent animals had to die and spill their blood to cover for the sins of Adam and Eve. They were doomed to death, so they needed a substitute. Yahweh slew the animals, shed their blood, and made skin coverings for the couple. They had to wear the remedy for sins from then on. Their garments would keep at bay the Judge of sin.
When Yahweh slaughtered the animals in front of them, He didn’t do it for the shock value; rather He did it to provide them with sin-covering blood and with garments. They had sinned and had lost the innocence that had clothed them from the time of their creation. This covering had been their protection against the attacks of the enemy lurking about them, as well as their means of entering and enjoying fellowship with their holy and righteous Lord. With that covering removed by sin, they needed some kind of armor to blunt the enemy’s advances and a shelter to shield them from their righteous Judge. Only another life could qualify on both counts and that life is found in Jesus Christ then and now. He is the true Lamb slain in time and space for our sins. When we receive His provision, we are cleansed by His shed blood and forgiven, and we are wrapped in His righteousness against the onslaught of the rebel spirit and against the righteous demands of our holy Creator. When Yahweh looks upon us, He sees only His Son. That is pure grace.
OUT! BOTH OF YOU!
. . .therefore the Lord God sent him out of the garden of Eden, to cultivate the ground from which he was taken. So He drove the man out. . .(Gen. 3:23-24)
That Yahweh had to drive out Adam and Eve implies that they didn’t want to leave, and why would they? They had been clothed with innocence and had been dwelling in Yahweh’s abode surrounded by His presence. Why they didn’t partake of the tree of life in such a favorable environment remains a mystery. But for their punishment and protection, Yahweh had to drive them out of His dwelling place. At the entrance to His Edenic tabernacle, according to the meaning of the Hebrew verb, He built another tabernacle wherein He placed cherubim—angels bearing a flaming sword to guard the way to the tree of life.
Yahweh had no choice but to banish the first couple from the garden, for in the garden grew the tree of life representing the divine and eternal life that was eternal. Had they ingested the eternal life while sin indwelt them, they would have lived forever in a fallen condition. But worse yet, Satan himself residing in the fallen flesh would have acquired eternal life as well. The embodiment of death itself would have escaped a final judgment. It is small wonder that angels with a flaming sword had to stand at the entrance, not so much to prevent human intrusion, but rebel angelic. Who knows what would have happened had they gained access to the tree of life? One shudders to think.
So began the sad history of the human race. Expelled from Eden; faced with the growing and gathering of food; raising kids; providing shelter; avoiding predators – this was a life of their own choosing.
CONTRARY SIBLINGS
Now the man had relations with his wife, Eve, and she conceived and gave birth to Cain and she said, I have gotten a man child with the help of Yahweh. Again she gave birth to his brother Abel. (Gen. 4:1-2)
Cain arrived through the promised pain of childbirth. In their excitement that this infant was the fulfillment of the promised seed, they named him Cain – “I have gotten a man from the Lord.” That name indicates they truly thought Cain was the promised seed from the Lord. But their excitement and hope were soon dashed. Cain may have been a problem child, a likely case since he was the first child in history with a fallen nature, and his parents had no experience of their own and none to draw upon. Here was a little headstrong human armed with an evil nature. Did they know what to do with him? Unlikely. As he grew, he probably became a bitter disappointment to them, so when their second arrived, they named him Abel – “vanity.” They may have thought that maybe Cain was the seed of the serpent, and they would have been right. That’s exactly who he was. Fearing a repeat with their second son, they named him Abel – “vanity.” But Abel proved out. He was entirely different from his brother, not because he didn’t have the same evil human nature, but because he learned early about Yahweh and had a heart to please Him. He grew up to raise sacrificial lambs to offer to his Lord on behalf of his family, while Cain farmed with his father to sustain the family physically. Cain’s work was critical, of course, but not even close to Abel’s in importance. Cain dealt with stubborn soil, Abel with a righteous Judge.
The first mention of these two brothers gives us no hint that they were different in nature. Both were sons of Adam and Eve, recently shattered by disobedience. The two sons received from their parents a corrupted genome and there was not one thing they could do about it. They did not ask to be born, they just were. They didn’t have the opportunity that their father did of being in the paradise of Eden where grew the tree of life. It wasn’t them who rejected perfection in favor of rebellion and disobedience. When they came out of Eve’s womb, they were already, by nature, occupied by the satanic nature. This is the condition of every human being ever born after Adam. Regardless how a person wants to spin the truth, there is no question that the human condition throughout history proves the inescapable and irrefutable fact that we are born sinners, and the only way we will ever remedy that problem is by another birth. We need the nature of Christ if we ever hope to subdue the galling wickedness of the sin nature we inherited from our first parents.
In so many ways these two brothers were similar—same father, same mother, same nature, same gender, same circumstances, same environment. But there was one glaring difference—their occupations. Cain labored in bringing forth food from the cursed ground that kept his family alive. It couldn’t have been easy with the promised proliferation of inedible and noxious thorns and thistles. It is one thing to putter around in a garden with a supermarket down the street; it is quite another to have yourself and three others dependent on your efforts to survive. Cain knew the pressure.
Abel tended flocks used for sacrifices and clothing. Because of human sins, blood had to flow from the sinner’s substitute; and this is why Abel raised lambs. For the family to have life and any blessing from Yahweh, they had to offer a substitute sacrifice to cover their sins. Lambs, therefore, were vital, not for food, but for clothing nakedness and for satisfying Yahweh. Abel met that need.
There is no indication that Yahweh was either pleased or displeased with the brothers’ occupations. Both were vital—one for the satisfaction and pleasure of Yahweh; one for the satisfaction and sustenance of the family. As is the case with all our relationships divine and human, it is altogether a matter of the heart. Did Abel regard Cain’s work as demeaning and menial and beneath that of a servant of Yahweh? No. Abel had no such heart of pride that would denigrate his brother for raising the food that kept him alive. Did Cain disparage his contemplative brother who, ostensibly, did nothing truly substantial for the survival of the family in the harsh environment of a fallen world, since sheep were strictly raised for sacrifice and clothing? Did he hate him when he saw his younger brother moving the sheep to pasture, where, upon waiting for their feeding, used his time to meditate upon Yahweh and the works of His hands? Yes. He probably felt trapped by his work. He saw his brother move about freely from one meadow and watering hole to the next, apparently without concern or care, only to return at evening to a meal of vegetables and fruit and grains coaxed from the stubborn Earth by real men doing real work. Cain never pondered the primacy of Abel’s work. He was blinded by what he saw as gross inequity, when, in fact, it was Abel’s efforts that opened Yahweh’s hand of help and blessing to all of them.
Because of the division of labor, Cain despised his younger brother and decided to test Yahweh. Would He not accept his crops as an offering, or would He require Abel’s lambs? It’s hard to understand what Cain was thinking when he came to Yahweh with a vegetable offering. What did he think his brother was doing by raising and tending a flock of lambs? The animals were not for food and were only good for clothing after they were sacrificed to Yahweh. With just a tiny opening in his heart, Cain could have seen that his farming efforts were keeping his brother alive so that his brother’s work could keep him in a proper relationship with Yahweh and under His blessing. Did Cain really think that what he could bring from a cursed Earth through his own efforts would satisfy Yahweh’s righteous requirement of perfect holiness? Apparently, or even more troubling and more likely, was the possibility that Cain presumptuously and arrogantly and defiantly thrust his armload of vegetables and fruit onto the altar knowing full well there wasn’t a drop of blood in any of it. No wonder he was rejected. What he should have done, and he knew it, was to humble himself as the pitiful and hopeless sinner he was and offer for himself one of Abel’s lambs. But the rebel Cain forced the issue, and his unfounded pride and Yahweh’s subsequent rejection burned a bitter hole in his soul.
Abel approached Yahweh as a pathetic, undone and hopeless sinner, knowing that only the sacrifice of another life could save him from his wretchedness. He learned the lesson from his parents’ experience—the only hope for the sinner was in the substitutionary death of an innocent animal, the harbinger of One whose death would free the world from the clutch of sin and death. He knew that “without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sin.” And without the remission of sin there is no peace of heart or easing of the conscience. But knowing all this was not enough for Abel. His tender heart received the faith from Yahweh that told him the sacrificial lamb would satisfy Yahweh’s requirement and would set his stricken conscience free from condemnation. Abel knew the import of his offering and knew the squalor resident in his fallen soul. To him, the offering of the innocent lamb was everything and he was nothing. This ability to see these truths is faith and Abel had faith, so much so that Yahweh regarded him as righteous.
AWAY WITH YOU!
Now Cain talked with Abel his brother; and it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother and killed him. (Gen. 4:8)
Cain’s reaction was predictable. The record mentions his offering first, indicating that he was the more overt, more forceful, more proud, more self-confident, almost daring Yahweh not to accept his bloodless offering. Cain also demonstrated that a person does what he is. We may turn certain behavior off and on, but in time we will be found out. What we are will come out in what we do. Cain was a wicked, arrogant, hateful, self-assured man who thrust his offering upon the altar in defiance of Yahweh’s requirement. He felt that the work of his own hands was enough to satisfy Yahweh, for after all it was his work that was keeping his family alive. It was not in him to humble himself and admit that he needed anything from his younger brother with the lanolin hands, but that is exactly what he needed to do, because Abel oversaw the sacrificial lambs needed to maintain the family’s relationship with Yahweh. Cain hated it all – the cursed Earth, the slaughtering of animals, the difficulty of life brought on by the screw-ups of others. His attitude and anger consumed him, and as a result, Yahweh rejected Cain’s offering and intervened to save him. What He told Cain teaches us a profound lesson.
And the LORD said unto Cain, Why are you angry? And why is your countenance fallen? If you do well, shall you not be accepted? And if you do not well, sin lies at the door. And it’s desire is for you, and you shall rule over him (4:6-7).
We make a mistake if we think sin is just an error in judgment or a misstep. It is far more than that. Here Yahweh warned Cain that if he did not go to his brother to obtain a proper offering and do well, sin was crouching at the door desiring to devour him. Sin was not just a thing, but a conscious being with a life of its own, able to stalk, attack, and devour its victim. Yahweh exhorted Cain that he must master it or it would consume him, because he wasn’t dealing with some harmless principle but a venomous and treacherous being; that is, Satan himself. Paul explained in Romans 7:18 that in his flesh “dwelt no good thing.” Principles and theories don’t “dwell,” only beings dwell. Satan is that “no good thing” dwelling in our flesh. Not only does he crouch at the door of our heart waiting for an opportunity to pounce, but Peter also describes him as a roaring lion on the prowl for a human meal (1 Peter 5:8). This is not a game to him. He’s in it to rip and devour human beings. Yahweh warned Cain of this and urged him to do well by humbling himself and by offering a suitable sacrifice.
Cain could not have misunderstood this vivid warning. Yahweh clothed sin with beastly qualities that should have sent shivers into Cain’s soul. Surely, he had seen the affects of the fall upon creation, including the animal kingdom. Formerly compatible existence had degenerated into a predator/prey relationship. Because of his work in the fields, Cain had witnessed the crouching predator seize its prey and tear it to pieces and devour it. This metaphor for sin should have put Cain into a state of shock and should have humbled him and sent him seeking out an offering from his brother. That was the only way for him to master the stalking beast at the door of his heart. The fact that Yahweh had accepted Abel’s gift was all Cain needed to know about how to maintain a relationship with his holy Creator, and it shouldn’t have taken such a dire warning to get his attention. But sin is a cruel tyrant not easily mastered. We need to pray everyday that our heart does not become so hard and calloused that it cannot hear the Lord’s word to us; or, if it does, refuses to obey it. There is too much Cain in our human nature. . .even as believers.
Make no mistake, sin can destroy a human being. Because we can’t see into the invisible realm, Yahweh used a metaphor to describe sin as crouching at the door; but when He said, “and its desire is for you,” the metaphor suddenly took on animal and even human qualities. Desire shows soul and metaphors have no soul. We need to dash the idea that sin is solely a trespass or violation of Yahweh’s prohibitions. It is far more. It is the expression of an evil being that seeks to damage and destroy us as useful vessels in the hands of our Lord. Our sins are the activation of Satan in our flesh. They are his expression. When we sin, we release Satan into our lives and into the world around us. Jesus, like us in every way, carried about in His flesh this archenemy, but because He never sinned, Satan remained dormant and powerless, even as Jesus moved inexorably toward the enemy’s head-crushing death.
In the two brothers we have the contrast between the genome of the woman and the genome of the serpent, and the fledgling war to be played out in human history. Both were religious men—one of Yahweh’s righteousness and one of human device; one of profound love, one of visceral hatred; one of care and concern, one of bitter envy and jealously; one a seeker after the Lord, one at variance with Him; one humble, one arrogant; one pure, one sullied. The distinction between the two could not have been more glaring and so it has been since the beginning. Speaking to His disciples, Jesus said that the world would hate them because its works are evil, as evil as were their father Cain’s. Our works in Christ are righteous and the world has no toleration for them.
Even after the murder, Cain is unbowed. His arrogance is stunning. When Yahweh came and asked Cain of Abel’s whereabouts, he replied, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” He was the older brother and knew very well he was his brother’s keeper. His answer assessed blame. To Cain’s thinking, Yahweh should have been looking after Abel, not him. Yahweh answered, “The voice of your brother’s blood cries unto me from the ground.” Rather than repent of what he had done, he did what the seed of the serpent always does: he “went out from the presence of the Lord (4:16).” One must wonder about someone deliberately leaving the Lord’s presence at that time in history. In whose presence does that leave him? We all know. His demise is easily traced. He offered a bloodless offering of his own making; he allowed his anger to build until he lashed out at his younger brother and murdered him; he lied to Yahweh and accused Him of not watching out for Abel. Added to all that, he criticized Yahweh for His harsh judgment. This was a troubled man wrong in every way. He wanted nothing to do with Yahweh or his human family anymore. He was truly the expression of Satan himself, and he became the genesis of another way upon the Earth, a way of independence from all restraint. Going forward Cain would seek to improve his situation, to carve out an existence free of the oppressive presence of Yahweh, ignoring that the Earth was cursed. To Cain, this Earth was all he had, and he knew he had to make the best of it because he had cut all ties to the Lord and to the heavenly realm. His heart, his focus, his aspirations were all earthbound and Earth was cursed. This is the way of Cain.
THE SERPENT’S SEED UNLEASHED
Adam’s punishment was a cursed Earth; Cain’s was a cursed person. Adam felt his punishment indirectly, Cain directly. Having rejected the provision of Yahweh, he had nothing but a condemned Earth from which to derive his sustenance and upon which to find his dwelling. What a dreadful beginning to this human experience and what dogged tenacity lost humanity exercised to make a way in this world without its Creator. You would think Cain would have broken under the pressure of his wickedness. He knew well the misery and hardship that sin had brought down upon his own parents. He knew the purpose of Abel’s flock. He heard firsthand the beseeching and warning voice of Yahweh before he committed the vicious act. He heard Yahweh’s arraignment, conviction, and sentence directly afterward and yet he stood adamant, unmoved, hardened.
Cain, as an instrument of Satan, spilled his brother’s life on the ground and introduced death into the physical realm of human beings. Ever since, people have murdered one another, and death has reigned over human affairs; but one Man entered history and voluntarily allowed His blood to flow and rose from the dead. This act eviscerated death and forever ended its tyrannical control over humankind and over creation in general. Abel’s blood cried revenge from the ground, Jesus blood cries forgiveness from the heavens. Yahweh has eternal regard for His Son’s blood because it justifies His creation and condemns His enemy and all his works. The power of Cain and his way came to an end at Jesus’ death, the very place our liberation began.
Then Cain went out from the presence of the Lord and dwelt in the land of Nod on the east of Eden. (Genesis 4:16)
When Cain left the presence of the Lord, Satan seized the opportunity for another assault on humanity. He had burrowed into the flesh of the earliest family like an unwelcome parasite. The first son deliberately left Yahweh’s presence and, in so doing, began his sentence as a vagabond for the murder of his brother. Cain wandered to Nod, which means, “wandering, exile, restlessness” and that is where Cain spent his life trying to mitigate Yahweh’s punishment upon him. He “settled” in the land of “restlessness.”
CRAMMED TOGETHER. CULTURE OR DEPRAVITY?
Then Cain went out from the presence of the Lord and dwelt in the land of Nod on the east of Eden. And Cain knew his wife, and she conceived and bore Enoch. And he built a city, and called the name of the city after the name of his son–Enoch. To Enoch was born Irad; and Irad begot Mehujael, and Mehujael begot Methushael, and Methushael begot Lamech. Then Lamech took for himself two wives: the name of one was Adah, and the name of the second was Zillah. And Adah bore Jabal. He was the father of those who dwell in tents and have livestock. His brother’s name was Jubal. He was the father of all those who play the harp and flute. And as for Zillah, she also bore Tubal-Cain, an instructor of every craftsman in bronze and iron. (Genesis 4:16-24)
What does man do when he leaves the presence of Yahweh? He forsakes the realm of cultivation and planting and trusting in the heaven-sent rain, and replaces it with a city, the substitute for Yahweh’s protection and provision. Cities were vital to the development of human culture where human beings were no longer agrarians working with their hands under an open sky, but were crammed together in godless and unhealthy proximity, relying on others to produce food for them. It informs our perception of Cain, the murderer who abandoned his Creator, who built the first city. Since that time to the present, cities developed into centers of human culture with their inevitable degradation – unmistakable expressions of the way of Cain.
We begin to see the downward spiral of one who rejects the Lord. By leaving the presence of Yahweh, Cain consigned himself to a lifetime of wandering in a land of restlessness and banishment. To abate the consequences of his choice, he strived for permanence on a cursed Earth and engaged in the rearing of a family and in the building of a city—the primitive origin of human culture, the alternative for walking with Yahweh. Cain’s progeny ignored the principles of healthy and moral living in favor of the momentary gratification of sin. Lamech, the product of Cain’s’ abjection and a self-indulgent pleasure monger, spearheaded the decline into godlessness by taking two wives in direct defiance of the original pattern of one man and one woman.
Then Lamech took for himself two wives. . . (Genesis 4:19)
Having two wives satisfied Lamech’s sexual lust, a driving force in any decadent culture. His double insistence that his wives listen to what he had to say (4:23-24) exposes his chauvinistic demand for attention. His arrogant boasting about murdering a man and a boy portends the sad history of humanity. His pride and mean-spiritedness signal what was to become the modus operandi of human beings devoid of the moderating influence of Yahweh’s presence. So we have the dark side of sin and rebellion in its fledgling origin as it relates to Cain’s family and primitive human society. Lust, egocentrism, violence, arrogance, defiance—all are here primed to rush headlong toward destruction as history unfolds. This is the sad record of human life and interaction outside the restraint of the Creator. This is the enemy of all good and of all that is godly.
Who can argue for polygamy when it plainly began with the family of Cain? And who is surprised that Cain, the ancient author of murder, should produce world-loving violators of all things good and moral? Fruit can be nothing more or less than its seed and surely Cain is the serpent’s seed.
In seven generations from Cain, godless human culture made great strides in anchoring itself on this troubled planet. Humans have basic needs such as sustenance, protection, and recreation. By leaving the presence of the living Yahweh, Cain forfeited these provisions from His hand. He rejected it all to live independently, but that did not alter those intrinsic cravings in his progeny. Therefore, gifted men arose through polygamy to meet the needs of godless people. Jabal produced livestock, certainly not for sacrificing but for eating, contrary to Yahweh’s mandate in 1:29. Jubal furnished entertainment through music. Tubal-cain became the protector through the manufacture of tools and weapons. Thus, all basic human needs found their solution outside of Yahweh—food and clothing from Jabal; entertainment and recreation from Jubal; and invention and protection from Tubal-cain. And so, it is to this day. Men can live comfortably outside the presence of the Creator.
With the notoriety of Jabal, Jubal, and Tubal-Cain, it seems that the mention of Naamah is superfluous until we realize that her name means “beautiful” and “agreeable.” Coupled with Adah—adorable—and Zillah—adornment—we find these three ancient women representing the final pillar upon which the independent, godless culture rests; that is, the pillar of propagation. Sustenance, entertainment, protection, propagation. Thus is the ancient society capable of existing apart from the presence of Yahweh.
It is no mistake that the women of this Cainite culture were beautiful, for feminine beauty is a powerful attractant to men, especially men who are not governed by a relationship with Yahweh but by their own lusts. Under Yahweh, propagation comes through selfless love and attendant pleasure, but apart from Him it is reduced to animal lust. Cain and all who follow in his way, who depart from the deeply satisfying presence of Yahweh, crave pleasure, the raw, hollow pleasure residing in the flesh of fallen mankind. Sustenance and protection become mere means to pleasure. Cainite society and the historical replications are driven by the thirst for temporary and transient pleasure. Naamah was beautiful and, to the earthbound and fleshy, so is the world system today.
MESSIANIC CONDUIT
Adam had relations with his wife again; and she gave birth to a son, and named him Seth, for, she said, “God has appointed me another offspring in place of Abel, for Cain killed him.” (Gen. 4:25)
SETH – ABEL’S REPLACEMENT
At last, some relief for the beleaguered couple who had watched with dismay the decline of their firstborn and the demise of their second—the bitter fruit of their own decisions. But Seth was born and given the name “appointed” and “settled.” He was appointed to replace Abel in the line of the promised seed and that settled the souls of his parents who had sought and now found hope for their lives. Seth, as well, “settled” upon Yahweh and His purpose, putting himself in that precious line of the coming Redeemer.
Eve’s plaintive proclamation at Seth’s birth reveals her broken heart —“for Cain killed him”–but also a confidence that the mighty Yahweh had overcome the human cruelty of Cain’s senseless slaughter of her cherished Abel, and had provided his replacement. Of course, at the time, she didn’t know Seth’s outcome, but her words speak of a determination that she would do all in her power to raise Seth as a vessel of honor for the Lord’s use. In her naming Seth Eve put feet to her hopes and resolve. “Seth will be my second Abel and will follow his Lord all the days of his life.”
He created them male and female, and He blessed them and named them Man in the day when they were created. When Adam had lived. . .he died. Seth lived. . .and he died. Then Enosh lived. . .and he died. Kenan lived. . .and he died. (Gen. 5:2-14)
What is the point of a genealogy of living and dying men? This is not just a common list of meaningless men, but also a record of Yahweh’s faithfulness and patience with his people, and a memorial to the faithfulness and patience of those people who lived their lives in and with their Creator and propagated children who did the same thing. These were men with a future. Unlike Cain who left the presence of Yahweh and propagated evil in the world, Seth, the compensation for Abel, immersed himself in the Lord’s presence and followed Him all the days of his life, and his life was memorialized by the Holy Spirit in the genealogy of chapter five. From Seth came Enoch and eventually Jesus, the incarnated Christ.
Even as Yahweh created Adam after His likeness and in His image, so also did Adam implant in his son Seth the knowledge and hunger for Yahweh. This was more than simple genetics. This involved the shaping and training of a vessel to contain what it was designed to contain – the image of the Creator. Adam poured into Seth the very purpose of his existence, and Seth continued the same. This faithfulness resulted in the incarnation of the Son of Yahweh for which these men are immortalized in the record.
ENOCH
Enoch lived sixty-five years, and became the father of Methusaleh. Then Enoch walked with God. . .(Gen. 5:21-22)
Enoch was the seventh in the line of Seth and he walked with Yahweh. He did not merely dwell in the presence of Yahweh, nor did he just call upon the name of the Lord as his predecessor Enosh did; rather Enoch “walked” with Yahweh—not “after Yahweh,” or “before Yahweh:” but with Yahweh. His communion with Him was personal, profound, real, and permanent. Enoch was the culmination of Seth who was Abel’s replacement in the line of Christ. It was out of Seth that the promised genome would come, but that promise is not accomplished by magic, but by lives captured by the vision and experience of Yahweh. Men with soft hearts toward their Lord will see Him, will follow Him, will call upon His name, and will walk with Him in their daily existence upon this cursed Earth. Seth’s generations consisted of such men and women and the Lord used them to change the course of history.
METHUSALEH
Somehow, we consider the characters in the Scriptures as larger than life; when really they are frail and needy as we are. Enoch, though he is only one of two men who never tasted death, is no exception. The record says he walked with Yahweh after the birth of Methusaleh. Yahweh no doubt stipulated the name of the child because his name means, “When he dies it shall come.” This informed Enoch of a coming judgment that would follow the death of his son, but he didn’t know when that would be. This surely became his incentive to step it up another level.
Methusaleh lived 969 years, longer than any other man. Why? The answer provides a window into the heart of Yahweh. He is the Lord of mercy, not wanting to judge His creation; not willing that any should perish. But seeing the abject corruption on the Earth, He had no choice. Still, He held out for any true human beings to repent and be saved. Judgment would come, but only upon the death of Methusaleh, the faithful man who lived longer than any other person in history. He was a living testimony to the longsuffering of the grieving Creator.
No one can accuse the Lord of being hasty about rendering judgment, but even His longsuffering has a limit. In this case it was 120 years. Seeing that Cain and his progeny were the originators of independence from Yahweh, of the world system to replace Yahweh, and of the contamination of the human race through angel/human copulation, and having no desire to repent, the Lord had to be reaching out to Adam (the same word as “man” in the verse) and to those of his family who named the name of Yahweh. They were all that remained of pure human stock and they included Noah and his family along with his uncles, aunts, cousins and siblings and nieces and nephews. Noah, undoubtedly, being a preacher of righteousness, preached to his extended family, begging them to repent, to help him build the ark, to save themselves before the end of Yahweh’s mercy. But, alas, the Lord declares them no different than Cain—all flesh. It must have been a sad time indeed for Noah to close the door on his own loved ones, but when judgment comes, and it will, there is no preventing its crushing finality.
NOAH
Lamech . . .became the father of a son. Now he called his name Noah, saying, “This one shall give us rest from our work and from the toil of our hands. . .Then Lamech. . .had other sons and daughters. (Gen. 5:28-30)
Though Lamech received from the Lord the meaning of his son’s name, he didn’t know when the Lord would give rest through him. His grandfather Enoch had been gone for centuries and his father, whose death was the signal for judgment, was 369 when Noah was born. It had to be a time of anxiety for Lamech, but when day followed day, and year followed year, he proceeded to enlarge his family and died five years before the flood having enjoyed his grandchildren—Ham, Shem, and Jepheth—for ninety-five years.
Enoch walked with Yahweh and everyone knew it and was translated. The Scriptures record the deaths of those closest to him—his son Lamech and grandson Methusaleh. Could this be that they did not rise to Enoch’s level? Or did they precisely fulfill the calling on their lives? Noah is the answer to those questions.
JUDGMENT BY WATER II
Now it came about, when men began to multiply on the face of the land, and daughters were born to them, that the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful; and they took wives for themselves, whomever they chose. Then the Lord said, “My Spirit shall not strive with man forever, because he also is flesh; nevertheless his days shall be one hundred and twenty years.” The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men, and they bore children to them. Those were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown. Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. The Lord was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart. The Lord said, “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, from man to animals to creeping things and to birds of the sky; for I am sorry that I have made them.
(Gen. 6:1-7)
This is one of the most sobering passages in Scripture because it reveals the departure of the Spirit of Yahweh from the affairs of men, and not just men in general, but from men who had at one time named Yahweh as their own. The word “strive” means to rule or to judge. We can be certain that Cain’s line had nothing to do with the Lord’s Spirit, but surely Seth’s line did. The Spirit had the latitude in Seth and in some of his descendents, most notably in Enosh and Enoch, to rule over them and to judge their hearts. But sadly, the ruling Spirit had been pushed away and forsaken. Seth’s line, in general, had forfeited the Spirit’s rule over them and had become no different than the decadent family of Cain. If men reject the Spirit, He has no choice but to depart and to leave them to judgment.
This is the heart-wrenching decision by the loving but righteous Yahweh to destroy His creatures from off the face of the Earth; and we find no description that does justice to the agony of His heart. After a beginning of so much promise, when the perfect man and woman were placed in the garden under ideal conditions, and with access to everything they would ever need, and were encouraged to partake of the eternal, triumphant, and transcendent life of their Creator represented by the tree of life; Yahweh could only grieve at what disobedience had wrought in humanity in bringing it to the brink of destruction. Not only so, but all creatures given to man and placed under his sovereignty had to die as well. Here before our eyes are the dreadful consequences of our sin, so dreadful that even innocent creatures had to die! Such was the melancholy scene as evening settled on the descendents of Adam. If we understand that Adam and this world were a restoration of a previously ruined world, then Yahweh’s heart had to be doubly grieved as He contemplated the demise of this second race. With it would go the promise to Eve that from her womb would come one who would crush the enemy’s head. This indeed was a low point in the history of humankind.
NEPHILIM, THE CONTAMINATORS
Walking away from Yahweh, Cain’s family of many generations eventually lost their status as authentic human beings. This ignited Yahweh’s ire. The women in Cain’s family allowed themselves to be sexually used by fallen angels, thereby producing a hybrid creature with human and angelic DNA, destroying the purity of human stock. Seth’s family, on the other hand, was all that remained of untainted humanity, and they included Noah and his family along with his uncles, aunts, cousins and siblings and nieces and nephews. Noah, undoubtedly, being a preacher of righteousness, preached to his extended family, begging them to repent, to help him build the ark, to save themselves before the end of Yahweh’s extended mercy. But, alas, the Lord declares them no different that Cain—all flesh. It must have been a sad time indeed for Noah to close the door on his own loved ones, but when judgment comes, and it will, there is no resisting its crushing effect.
What a sad commentary on the aftermath of Adam’s disobedience. The serpent had managed to open a crack and in less than two millennia, the breach of sin had given way to overwhelming evil. Satan doesn’t need much to worm his way into the affairs of humanity and to wreak indescribable havoc. The satanic legacy is a breathtaking study of degeneration. Disobedience—casting blame—arrogance—defiance—murder—rejection of Yahweh—independence from Yahweh—establishment of the world system—copulation with fallen angels—contamination of humans—continual evil in thought and intent and behavior. Satan was on a rampage from the beginning and had nearly accomplished his goal of the complete ruination of the human vessel designed by Yahweh to recapture the Earth. Here is the stark reality.
There were giants on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men and they bore children to them. Those were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown. Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. (Gen. 6:4-5)
What he had done in the former world he was on the verge of repeating in the restored Earth. His thought had to have been that if this second version had to be destroyed, then there would probably not be a third. This would leave the Earth forever under his control and would become his base of operation to frustrate any future plan. All the momentum was on his side.
Satan’s way is to go to the very core of human beings and corrupt them genetically. In the garden he penetrated the first couple through their disobedience and deposited his seed into their genetic code. As with any seed, it must produce after its kind. Satan’s seed contains his life and his nature, and that is what Adam and Eve ingested when they disobeyed Yahweh. Out of Eve came Cain and Abel carrying the corrupted genetic package from their parents. Seth replaced Abel after the murder and followed Yahweh. This firmly placed him in the line of the Messiah as the seed of the woman. Cain left the presence of Yahweh and lived an independent life and allowed Satan to express his life in his progeny. It is alarming to watch the corruption. Human women allowed themselves to copulate with fallen angels, producing Nephilim, or giants. Soon the entire human race, except for a very few, was tainted with the angelic genome, rendering it irredeemable. This is precisely Satan’s thrust – to contaminate the race of humans like he had done in a previous era. The result was total contamination expressed through violence. Only Noah and his family were purely human.
Surely the adversary of Yahweh was enthused by his success in corrupting the human race, reducing it to Noah’s family. There was no positive spin that Yahweh or Moses the writer could put on the utter failure of human beings to remain pure and to choose the way of Yahweh. Once Satan had orchestrated the contamination of humanity, it was a short step to this: “Every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” Satan had penetrated and saturated the human soul genetically. Without the pure human strain, there was no way the promised seed of the woman could come to Earth. The situation demanded Yahweh’s intervention. His enemy had used supernatural means to thwart Yahweh’s plan. Yahweh would have to respond in kind. Should that bother us? Not at all! What is prayer if not a plea for His intervention in the lives of those for whom we pray? Satan knew from past experience that he could not mount a frontal assault against the Creator and expect to succeed. His past attack was much more sinister, and it resulted in the wholesale destruction of the original human race. He would use it again.
To the “scientifically minded,” it is appalling for Yahweh to intervene in creation. In their world He doesn’t exist; only natural laws are allowed to determine how the universe is run, not some cosmic puppeteer pulling strings behind the curtain. They regard natural laws as sacrosanct, untouchable, inviolate. However, to the believer, natural laws are not above the Creator. It is His creation, and He has every right to do with it as He sees fit. Watching Satan intervene supernaturally and contaminate humanity for a second time was not something Yahweh could tolerate, and He acted to preserve what was left of it.
ONE THIN THREAD
But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. (Gen. 6:8)
How thin a thread held humanity from extinction! Yahweh had suffered the anguish over His abused creation and had made the decision to eliminate it. Everything was set and judgment was in motion, when, amid the overwhelming and oppressive darkness and gloom of impending doom, a faint flicker of hope and light cast its rays toward the eyes of Yahweh. There in the distance beat a heart that had not gone the way of Cain, had not succumbed to the numbing effects of sin, had not declared its independence from its Creator, had not devised ways and means to live on the Earth apart from its true Source. There glimmering amidst decadent humanity and its violent and irredeemable nephiliptic hybrid was a tiny hope that the promised seed would yet have a way to enter the human race and put an end to the enemy. “But Noah!” What profound two words! Words of life and joy and hope and redemption. Words of victory, of resurrection, of defiance, of motivation. All was not lost! Noah was a true man!
Noah walked with God. (Gen. 6:9)
This simple statement is elegantly deep and rich. Four simple words – four proofs of Yahweh’s grace. Four simple words – four daggers in the heart of Satan. Four simple words – four reasons for every believer to persist. Walking involves every waking moment. We walk from the time we wake up to the time we go to sleep. Walking is our daily life. For Enoch and Noah to walk with Yahweh meant they spent their days in the presence of Yahweh, involving Him in all their decisions, dwelling upon Him, calling upon Him, praying to Him, resting in Him, working for Him. He was everything to them. He was not distant from them because they would not let Him be. They compelled Him to draw near to them. Whatever they had to do, wherever they had to go, they did nothing independent of their Lord. Their thoughts centered on Him. Their feelings narrowed from many things into a singular love for Him. Their decisions were according to His best interests. Their behavior reflected the One whom they served with all their heart. Their words, their attitudes, their ways of dealing with others, all exhibited their passion for Him. This is the meaning of “walking with Yahweh.” Everything about them had to do with Yahweh and that is why He was able to use them as He did.
Now the earth was corrupt in the sight of God, and the earth was filled with violence. God looked on the earth, and behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted their way upon the earth. (Gen. 6:11-12)
In describing the corrupt Earth, why didn’t Moses say that it was filled with lust? Or theft? Or extortion? Or deception? Because the end of all flesh is violence. Violence is the hallmark of corruption. In a corrupt world, when humans cannot work out their differences through communication, they resort to violence. In a corrupt world, the victim of adultery will kill. A victim of theft will kill. Corruption is the removal of restraint, and men left to themselves and guided by their fallen instincts will plunge into violence. Imagine the Earth before the flood. Dominated by the angel/human hybrid, the Nephilim society was a dreadful scene of mounting carnage. Violence, the apex of corruption, filled the Earth. It didn’t just appear here and there, but it filled the Earth. It should be no surprise to us that the end times will mimic the days of the flood. There will be wars (violence) and rumors of wars. The Earth then was and will be at the end of time filled with violence. This is the leading characteristic, the result, the satanic goal, of corruption, because violence destroys people, the only agency through which the Lord accomplishes His eternal purpose.
What distinguished Noah’s days? Violence from the fountain of evil. Satan will never rest until he destroys every human being from the face of the Earth. This is his goal, and if he doesn’t succeed, the Lord will gather unto Himself a remnant that will wrench from his vile hands the scepter of the Earth, will crush his head finally and completely, and will bring to fruition the King and His kingdom, the Father and His family, the Bridegroom and His bride. So as we near the end of this stage of history, violence and destruction will increase as it did before the flood when only a remnant found salvation.
THE ARK – FROM ONE AGE TO ANOTHER
Then Noah and his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives with him entered the ark. . .and the Lord closed it behind him. (Gen. 7: 7,16)
One translation says “and the Lord shut him in.” What can be more secure than this? Noah was utterly and completely safe in the ark and not one wave could assail him. We are no less safe in Christ because Yahweh put us there and there’s nothing we or any created being can do to reverse this reality. We are secure in time and in eternity because of Jesus’ work on this Earth that satisfied every righteous requirement of His Father. Noah built the ark precisely according to Yahweh’s instructions and Yahweh set His mark of approval on Noah’s work by shutting him in. Jesus’ work was of such pristine and sublime caliber that His Father set upon Him the seal of His approval by raising Him in resurrection. Now we are shut into Christ and there is not a safer place to be.
What anxiety, what terrible anxiety, accompanied the rebels, the detractors, the mockers when they watched with horror the vessel of mercy and salvation rise with the flood as they scrambled up the high places to suck in their last gasping breaths. Gone were the echoes of warning from the mouth of Yahweh’s preacher. Gone was the revelry of an existence devoid of Yahweh. Gone were the ephemeral pleasures of sin, and their overarching decadence. Gone were those moments of contemplation and conviction, however brief, at the dire prediction of the ridiculed ark-builder. Gone was all hope of contrition, of repentance, of salvation. Gone were all the fair-sounding pleas from the gracious lips of Yahweh’s oracle. All was gone, eerily and irrevocably gone, replaced by the cacophony of the implacable torrent, dashing into bits all memory of the pleasures that had gutted any hunger for righteousness, any tendency to obey the strange, though confident, prophet of righteousness. Now came the inevitable and irreversible termination of an abject and violent and irredeemable age. What had shut in Noah and seven souls with him had shut all others out. . . and irrevocably so.
. . .he sent out a raven and it flew here and there. . .he sent out a dove. . .she returned to him. . .(Gen. 8:7, 9)
The raven, dark and foreboding, signifies our natural life that leaves the confinement of salvation to feast upon death in a judged world. He loved the dead things so much he went here and there, never satisfied, always wanting something more and something new, and he never returned to the ark and to the one who gave him his freedom. The dove, gentle and pure, went out in search of the living thing. She mirrors our innermost part, our spirit, that part of us where the Lord resides and which loves eternal life. These birds show us clearly the battle raging in our souls. We must take control of the leading part of our soul—our mind—and set it on the Lord in our spirit. If we don’t, the “raven” in us takes over and flees to the dead flesh. Our flesh and our spirit are implacable antagonists and it’s our decision whether our lives express the raven or the dove.
THE RAINBOW
Then God spoke to Noah and to his sons, saying , Now behold, I Myself do establish my covenant with you. . .all flesh shall never again be cut off by the water of the flood. . .this is the sign of the covenant. . .I set My bow in the cloud. . .and I will remember my covenant. . .(Gen. 9:8-15)
Yahweh sealed His promise to never again judge the Earth by water by setting His rainbow in the sky. This shows His eagerness to bring heaven and Earth together, setting each end of the beautiful arch on the Earth and stretching upward into the heavens. The rainbow follows the storm when the sky begins to clear, and the dazzling rays of the warm sun strike the raging and receding cloud. What a wonderful picture of His grace to us. We sinful creatures deserve His stormy judgment and were it not for His mercy upon us, we would be swept away. But our Savior stood between Earth and heaven and endured the heaviest storm cloud that ever gathered, suffering under its lashing judgment, until through the oppressive darkness of death, a ray of hope and love flickered and reflected against the gloom, until there blazed for all creation to see the great arch bridging the chasm between heaven and Earth, proclaiming the all-encompassing peace, forgiveness and grace of our heavenly Father.
When the bow is in the cloud, then I will look upon it, to remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth. (Gen. 9:16)
When the Father looked upon the beautiful arch, He saw His Son, the connection between Earth and heaven, full of beautiful colors vividly exhibiting His complete array of virtues. Red, green, and blue are the primary colors that comprise the rainbow. Orange, yellow, indigo and violet are transitional, or secondary, formed by the combinations of the primary colors. This speaks profoundly of our Lord. Red is at the top of the bow indicating that judgment must first come before the barrier between Earth and heaven can be breached. It points to the fiery judgment of Yahweh which, for the sins of man, required Jesus to bear its full fury and cost Him His life. Green is the color of life. When the blood of the Lamb cleanses us from our sins (red), we are enlightened (yellow) to our need for eternal life (green). The more we are filled with His life, the more He becomes our Lord, our King, to rule over us, seen in the blue. We all live under the blue sky, itself a picture of His over-arching kingship. Blue leads to indigo which passes into violet, showing us that His ruling within us is progressive, is developmental, is continual until He becomes our king in every detail of our lives.
It is no mistake that red crowns the arch, green is in the middle, and violet is closest to Earth. The Son met the Father’s judgment, released His eternal life into humanity, and is now developing His kingship on the Earth in and among His chosen people. How wonderfully significant is the rainbow!
SATISFYING YAHWEH
Then Noah. . .offered burnt offerings on the altar. The Lord smelled the soothing aroma; and the Lord said to Himself, “I will never again curse the ground. . .(Gen. 8:20-21)
Nothing pleases the Father more than His beloved Son. When Noah offered the burnt offerings after departing the ark, he was, in effect, handling Christ as the ultimate and final sacrifice and this is what pleased Yahweh and triggered His promise to never again curse the ground, ground being that element from which He created man. This is a huge blessing, and it reveals a deep secret about Yahweh. If we want to please Him, if we want to enjoy His presence, if we want to experience His blessed Person, we must handle His Son properly. Not only must He be our Savior from sin and corruption, but He also must be the Lord over all the details of our lives. As Savior He is our burnt offering sacrificed for our sins, but to become our Lord, He must find a heart eager to relinquish all upon the altar. When Noah built the altar, he not only acknowledged his sinfulness and his need for cleansing, but he also, by his actions, stated emphatically that his own life was itself a sacrifice ready to be burnt up in the service of his Lord.
TOO MUCH TO DRINK
Then Noah. . .planted a vineyard. He drank of the wine and became drunk, and uncovered himself inside his tent. Ham. . .saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brothers. But Shem and Japheth took a garment. . .and covered the nakedness of their father. . .(Gen. (9:20-23)
The Lord is the authority of the universe. With that all Christians, if not all humans, agree. The problem arises when He delegates His authority to men, because without His delegated authority, there is no practical ruling on the Earth. Extreme human beings either despise authority and resist it at every turn, or they extol the person whom they deem is Yahweh’s authority and abrogate their responsibility of living under Yahweh’s rule. There is no doubt that Noah was Yahweh’s delegated authority on the Earth at that time, and what he did was shameful. Having been delivered from the great flood by the Lord’s grace, he fell into a slough of self-indulgence. Perhaps the Lord’s intention in placing this incident in the record is to teach us not to trust in man no matter how charismatic, powerful, credentialed, eloquent, or mature he may be. Though he may represent Yahweh’s authority, he is not perfect, and unless he is perfect, he has no right to command obeisance from anyone. He is a mere vessel in the Lord’s hand having no credibility apart from Him, and unless he has this view of himself, he will stumble and fall in full view of those around and will bring shame upon himself, upon the Lord’s people, and upon Yahweh Himself.
The Lord’s authority is necessary in creation because by it He can accomplish His purpose through man. The rebel angel seeks to destroy mankind and without the restraint of Yahweh’s authority exercised through man, he would succeed. His authority is an incarnated authority residing in men who are filled with His life and who walk according to His ways. People bearing Yahweh’s authority must not necessarily be conscious of it, but must lead by example, by encouragement, by exhortation so that the saints will know the way to go. It is the gentle hand of the trusted leader that guides, prods, and finesses members into the riches of Christ. The rod, on the other hand, corrects the errant soul and drives away the predator. In sum, authority has a two-fold function: to lead and guide and feed the saints to food and drink; and to drive away the enemy so that they can live and function in peace. Authority that violates these conditions is coercion and has nothing to do with Yahweh, the true Guide and Protector of His people.
EXPOSURE
When Noah awoke from his wine, he knew what his youngest son had done to him. So he said, “Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants he shall be to his brothers.” (Gen. 9:24-25)
Ham’s sin of exposing his father was an egregious violation of Yahweh’s authority resting on Noah, so Noah had no choice but to exercise that authority to restrain the rebellion lest it spread and dominate the Earth as in antediluvian days. Knowing that Ham was diabolical and would ingrain his ways into his offspring, Noah cursed Ham’s son, Canaan, to servitude to obstruct rebellion from overtaking him.
Ham rebelled against authority and all authority comes from Yahweh. For the universe to run properly, there must be authority. For Yahweh to accomplish His purposes using created beings with a free will there must be authority. For the building of the Body of Christ and the preparation of Bride of Christ, there must be authority. For the millennial kingdom to be established upon the Earth, there must be authority. Without authority there is no restraint and without restraint there is chaos. Rebellion is simply the refusal to come under the constraints of Yahweh and His principles. It is a choice to live for oneself and for no other. Ham was a vivid demonstration of one who hated restriction and who acted against it. Applied to ourselves in this age, if we properly submit to the Lord and to His delegates we will suffer. It requires us to lay aside our opinions, our ambitions, our abilities, and to come under the guidance and wisdom, not the control, of more mature saints in Christ. How we react to this requirement and what attitude we express, determines whether we receive a curse or a blessing upon our lives and upon the lives of our children.
COVERING THE SHAME
But Shem and Japheth took a garment and laid it upon both their shoulders and walked backward and covered the nakedness of their father; and their faces were turned away, so that they did not see their father’s nakedness. (Gen. 9:23)
Being under their father’s authority, Shem and Japheth took the high and noble path regarding his sin. Ham had described the situation and probably had urged his brothers to see for themselves, but they would have none of it. They knew Yahweh’s authority rested upon their father and if authority was damaged, especially at that fragile juncture immediately following the flood, then the evil forces that had instigated the flood would rise up again. So, they refused to see Noah’s nakedness.
When the seductive serpent appealed to the original pair and oversaw their fall, he entered their flesh as that “no good thing” described in Romans. At that instant, they realized their nakedness and sought to cover themselves. Eventually, of course, Yahweh covered them with the hides of sacrificed animals thereby restoring their right standing before him and enabling them to bear His image and authority. Noah, in his sin, threw off his covering before Yahweh, thereby exposing his sinful flesh to the invisible realm and to his rebellious son. This is an egregious sin for one in authority, for it damages his credibility before Yahweh, before the unseen principals in the air, and before men. Though Shem and Japheth did the right thing in covering Noah that did not mitigate his sin before Satan and Yahweh. He misrepresented Yahweh and that had dire consequences. Though two of his sons took the high road and covered their father, they knew what he had done, and that had to have had a profoundly negative impact upon them personally.
Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants he shall be to his brothers. He also said, Blessed be the Lord, the God of Shem; and let Canaan be his servant. May God enlarge Japheth, and let him dwell in the tents of Shem; and let Canaan be his servant. (Gen:9:25-27)
We should always consider that our decisions are significant, especially when we review the ramifications of Ham’s rebellion against his father. Ham forfeited his father’s blessing, and his son Canaan bore the curse of servitude. And rightfully so. Canaan’s progeny occupied Israel’s promised land and came under exile and subjection. To his eternal discredit and shame, Ham also produced Cush who sired Nimrod, the builder of the tower of Babel and the door through which the Nephilim reentered. The evil angelic strain survived the flood. The genetic contamination found new life when Cush and Canaan came along. All this is the legacy of Ham’s ill-fated and boneheaded decision regarding his father.
Shem became the father of all the Semitic tribes, the Israelites being most prominent and through whom the Promised Seed would come. Noah’s blessing confirms the transcendence of Shem’s legacy because he invokes Yahweh, the Lord of Shem. There is no higher blessing than this because Noah places Shem into the possession of the personal Yahweh who will use him to convey the One to come.
Japheth received from his father the earthly blessing of spreading throughout the Earth. That spread would energize its industry and traffic. Though Japheth received the Earth, so-to-speak, in order to participate in the higher spiritual blessing, he had to dwell in the tents of Shem, the father of the One who became flesh and “tabernacled among us.” Jesus Himself, the true tabernacle, is the reality of the tents of Shem, so in those tents must Japheth make his home in order to share in the highest blessing of all – Christ.
INTIMIDATOR
Now Cush became the father of Nimrod. . .a mighty hunter before the Lord. The beginning of his kingdom was Babel. . .(Gen. 10:8-10)
Throughout the book of Yahweh, the bitter rivalry between good and evil, between Yahweh and Satan, between light and darkness never fails to express itself on the sacred page. Of all the names of the generations of Noah’s three sons, only Nimrod warrants description, so extraordinarily evil was he. Whereas we may dig out a hint of the divine purpose in the name of Eber (river crosser), Nimrod, in accordance with his rebellious pedigree, makes such an ostentatious display of rejecting all things related to Yahweh, he captures space in the sacred record. He is the founder of Babylon, the ages-long counterweight to Yahweh and His purpose.
When Noah left the ark, he built an altar and sacrificed before the Lord. The altar was not a prominent feature on the Earth by any means, but rather small and apparently insignificant. Nimrod, by contrast, threw off the oppressive restraints of the new world, gathered souls, built a ziggurat (a stepped pyramid bearing a shrine), in direct defiance of Yahweh and His expectations of post-diluvian humanity. The difference between the altar and the ziggurat, between Nimrod and Eber, is the difference between the Lord who hides Himself in the affairs of men, who rewards those who diligently seek Him, who rarely makes an open show of who He is, and who moves about on the Earth with those faithful few who will give Him passage; and Satan, the ever-flamboyant dazzler who appeals to bodily senses of those easily influenced by exhibitionism and superficiality. The altar and the ziggurat; Nimrod and Eber—opposites set one against another, never to be reconciled to the bitter end.
Nimrod’s credentials are such that he warrants special mention in the record—a mighty hunter and the founder of Babylon, the eventual world system in direct opposition to Yahweh and His people. This intimidating man reached the pinnacle of human achievement by defiantly rejecting postdiluvian restraints, described by Alexander Hislop in The Two Babylons as an oppressively low brass ceiling of divine judgment upon sinful man. Nimrod refused to live under this low, but protective canopy of Yahweh’s constraints, and went forth hunting, not just animals, but also human souls. Typical people love charisma and strength and will sycophantically place themselves at the service of the self-assured. Nimrod gathered those who sold their souls to the devil to establish a rebel kingdom.
The Scriptures are full of protagonists and antagonists—one, by virtue of a life lived in the Lord’s presence, who advances the Lord’s interests on the Earth; the other dedicated to frustrating and thwarting the Lord’s work by any means. In Genesis ten Nimrod looms large as the mighty hunter who hunts and gathers souls to establish his kingdom at Babylon. Eber appears faint in comparison, yet it is through him that Abraham will come as the first Hebrew.
Here marks the beginning of what we call the “world.” It is a system of entanglements designed as a counterweight to the Lord’s purpose for Earth. It is no wonder that it began with Nimrod, the extension and expansion of his rebellious grandfather, Ham; and it should not surprise us that his description—a mighty hunter—was fulfilled in those souls he gathered about him to do his bidding in building up a kingdom in direct opposition to the real King. He was more than a hunter of animals, although this surely endeared him to the hungry populace; he was a hunter of souls and in that regard was the diabolical incarnation of the enemy of Yahweh. As a measure of Nimrod’s greatness and stature, none among the many names mentioned in the genealogy in chapter ten carry any description save this one remarkable man. Before he gathered the weak and fearful about him to begin his kingdom work, he had secured a name for himself as being mighty, an adjective used twice in the record. He was well suited to lead lesser souls into the construction of his godless kingdom. He pushed them forward with the promise of a name—a direct appeal to their vanity—and of a community—a deliberate violation of Yahweh’s command to populate the Earth. Such is the power of charisma, and such is the deception of the “mighty hunter.”
DARK CITY
“Come, let us build for ourselves a city, and a tower whose top will reach into heaven, and let us make for ourselves a name, otherwise we will be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth. (Gen. 11:4)
Yahweh’s command to Noah after the flood was to be fruitful and multiply and to replenish the Earth. This meant that his descendents were to scatter throughout the Earth, to thrust themselves into the unknown, into the unfamiliar, into a position of trust in Yahweh’s protection, sustenance and rest. But Ham’s rebellion fathered Nimrod’s rejection of Yahweh’s command and in his gathering about himself fellow rebels, they constructed an antagonist system. As a counterfeit to Yahweh’s protection, they built walls; to Yahweh’s worship, they built a religious tower; to Yahweh’s sustenance, they fabricated an economic system; to Yahweh’s peace and rest, they produced and enjoyed entertainment within the city walls. Everything needed for a self-sustaining community was fulfilled in Babel, centralized under one mighty man, Nimrod.
So goes the history of humanity. The strong always lust for centralization so they can control the weak and keep them subservient and underdeveloped. The Lord wants to scatter people to the four winds so that they can learn to trust Him, and to develop as they should. He wants to be supreme over them, so they are never ruled by a strong man who shatters their motivation to seek the Lord and to excel. Whereas the Lord says, “go and replenish the earth;” man says “come, let us build a city.” How cogent indeed was that writer who said, “Let us go forth therefore unto Him outside the camp.”
Earthbound and groveling souls think they can escape their need for Yahweh by forming a godless association and by exciting each other to hastily build a city and a tower. Their unity with their Creator had been broken with the onset of sin and could only be restored and maintained through sacrifices and a close walk with Him, something for which these rebellious city-builders had no stomach. They would rather cast their eyes to the Earth and make a memorial to themselves and their prowess, than to lift their eyes heavenward to Yahweh. So goes the evil enterprise of human beings drawn together to promote themselves.
Yahweh formed the first man from the soil of the Earth as His earthen vessel designed to contain His eternal life. The Babel-builders took that same soil, burned the life out of it, and used it to construct the city and tower. Metaphorically, this city, this world system, is fabricated by gathering human beings void of Yahweh’s life into an association dedicated to independence from Him, and to extol themselves and their names. How far afield does the enemy of Yahweh carry the willing! From clay vessels intended to hold divine life, to dead, clay bricks supporting a diabolical, enervating system. Same material, different function. Little wonder then that John the apostle urged the saints, “Love not the world,” for to do so is to risk being burned, being used, and being ruined.
THE SOJOURNER
Also to Shem, the father of all the children of Eber, and the older brother of Japheth, children were born. . . Two sons were born to Eber. . .(Gen. 10: 21,25)
This description of Shem seems rather odd when compared to that of his brothers. Rather than a simple litany of names, the record distinguishes Shem with peculiar details. He is called the “father of all the children of Eber.” Eber’s name means to cross over to the other side, and from it came the Hebrews – that nation through whom would emerge the promised seed of the woman. Abraham was called the Hebrew because he not only came from Eber, but he also carried out in a practical way the meaning of the name by crossing over the Euphrates on his way to Canaan in obedience to Yahweh’s calling. The record thus describes Shem, essentially, as the father of the Hebrews, leaving no doubt as to which of Noah’s sons would provide passage to the promised seed.
The record also describes Shem as the older brother of Japheth, apparently in fulfillment of Noah’s blessing upon Japheth— “let him dwell in the tents of Shem.” Japheth probably wondered why being confined to his older brother’s tents could be construed as a blessing, unless he realized that the only true blessing was in the promised seed, the Word become flesh as the true tabernacle, the tent of flesh in which dwelt the Father of all. The tabernacle of the wilderness was the house of Yahweh, the enlarged tent of Shem, the nation of Israel, the assembly of Yahweh with man. Jesus was the mobile tabernacle made of human flesh in which dwelt the Father. He was the promised seed, and by His death and resurrection, He spread Himself to His disciples and formed the assembly of Christians, the true tabernacle of Shem. Only in that assembly is Japheth blessed.
Eber became the father of Peleg. . .the father of Reu. . .of Serug. . .of Nahor. . .of Terah. . .the father of Abram, Nahor, and Haran. (Gen. 11:16-26)
What to the cursory reader of Old Testament genealogies seems to be an insignificant litany of strange names, they are in truth, the very lifeline of the seed promised to Eve. It is so like our Lord to hide Himself from the pompous detractors who disparage and reject the truth, and who attach themselves to strong, confident, and independent men. Nimrod commands the attention of the godless and doubters, but Eber sires a fair section of the line of Christ. In the line of the seed of the woman rested one history-changing man – Abram, the first Hebrew. From this point on Scriptures deal exclusively with the one nation that carried in it the one and only solution to all of Earth’s problems, the one and only fulfillment of Yahweh’s purpose.
The Lord always works with the ostensibly weak and truly humble and it is through them that He fulfills His purposes. The Babel builders toiled to make a name for themselves as do worldlings in the present age, but whom among them do we note? Not one. The Lord puts to shame the wise, the crafty, the graspers, choosing instead those faithful few souls who see beyond the obvious; those resolute who demand to know and practice the truth of their existence; those diligent who cross every barrier to seize the meaningful and the permanent in the realm beyond the senses; those intrepid who review the common mob of weaklings panting after their superficial misleaders and, instead, take the road less traveled by; those astute surveyors of the human condition who mourn and offer effectual prayers for others at their own expense; those rare few who reject their own comfort and ease and engage the enemy of their souls and the souls of their companions – this remnant, this offspring of Eber, this following of the Promised Seed commands the Lord’s blessing and presence.
I enjoyed reading about the pre-Adam history…and reading the scripture that describes that time.
Here’s something I’ve always wondered: if we take the Bible literally, how can Satan “inject” an evil nature into Eve’s DNA through eating something?