| LESSON
TEXT:
The
Apostle Paul advised his spiritual son, Timothy, “Study to shew thyself
approved unto God, a workman needing not to be ashamed, rightly
dividing
the word of truth,” (2 Timothy 2:15). This is an absolute MUST
if
you ever really want to know God's will and plan for your life and for
the world around you. It is vital to your emotional, spiritual and
physical
health. It is crucial in knowing the real plan of God for the ages. It
is perhaps the most important factor to your material and financial
well-being.
Now we have
the law in
the U. S.
A. favoring the actually very Unscientific Theory of Evolution over the
much more scientifically tenable Bible account of Creation. We shall
study
this question of scientific Creation and unscientific evolution in your
Science course, but if you want to study ahead on this subject or are
facing
a dispute over the subject of which is the more correct and
scientifically
sustainable, you may visit the Institute for Creation Research website
which
will go even deeper into the subject than our Science Courses.
First, we
will look at the Book
of Genesis in general terms. It is described as The Book of Origins,
but
this description is not without its nay sayers. We will answer many of
these critics in the Science Course, but suffice it to say, at this
point,
that the facts described in the first chapters of Genesis have NEVER
BEEN
DISPROVED. And the Bible is not given primarily as a book of science,
but
of a loving Creator who loves His creation and especially the Creatures
He made in His own likeness and image, mankind. The book of Genesis is
also a book of Genealogy in which the first humans who peopled the
earth
are listed and their descendants and generations that followed. In this
book, we see an account of who fathered what nation which, when
compared
to a present day list of nations becomes quite amazing, especially when
you consider that transportation and communication in the days of any
Old
Testament writer would have made knowledge of national origins in lands
far removed from Palestine highly unlikely.
The word
"Genesis" is derived from
the Greek verb gennao, which means to beget or to give
birth
to. The name of the book, Genesis, is taken from an early translation
of
the Old Testament, the Septuagint, (LXX) made in
Alexandria,
Egypt by order of Ptolemy Philadelphus in about 285-247 BC. According
to
the Jewish historian, Josephus, this translation was made by 6 priests
from each of
the 12 tribes of Israel in 72 days. The Septuagint is the
oldest Hebrew text now available, though the Dead Sea Scrolls are
actually
older but somewhat fragmented.
In Genesis,
we have a very encapsulated
(Please use your standard English dictionary if you
do not know the
definition
of this or any other word in your lessons.) account of the
creation of
the
world and universe, including stars, sun and moon; of plants, animals,
and mankind, the beginning of human families, of laws and commandments
such as the sabbath, marriage, the family, work, sin, sacrifices,
races,
languages, civilizations, culture and God's redemption. We also see the
first demonstrations of disobedience to God's laws and the consequences
of that disobedience including the first murder. And, in Genesis 3:15,
we have the first promise of a redeemer, a Lamb of God, if you will, to
take away the sin of the world.
Additionally,
the book of Genesis
is the "family tree" of mankind in general and of the Israelites in
particular.
It also records the beginnings of such jealousies and hostilities as
are
causing problems, terrorist attacks and bloodshed in the Middle East
today,
in the early 21st Century! For example we see why the ancestor of
the Arabians, Ishmael, would have feelings of jealousy and
animosity
toward his half-brother, Isaac, who became heir to the promises
of
God's blessings. We see the hostility between the forebears of the
Palestinians,
the Philistines, who jealously plugged Abraham's and Isaac's wells
rather
than dig their own and join in prosperity. We see the origins of many
of
the other races and peoples and how the jealousy between relatives over
many things resulted in national feuds that have continued until today.
But we will deal in
more detain
with these facts as we progress through the verses dealing with these
facts.
[Click on Outline
of Genesis for a specific list of where events and stories take
place.
There will be Lesson Credit Quiz questions based on information
contained
in this source.]
At this
point, open your Thompson
Chain Reference Bible to the Appendix and find "OUTLINE STUDIES,
OR
ANALYSES OF THE BOOKS OF THE BIBLE. [In mine, that is APPENDIX Page
188.]
and read 4223—The Book of Genesis. There will be questions based on
this
reference source on every Lesson Credit Quiz and all your BIB101 Exams.
GENESIS
Chapter 1
The very
first statement in the
Bible is profound. "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the
earth." (Genesis
1:1). Evolutionists dispute and
ridicule this statement, but it is far more in line with the Rule
of Scientific Evidence to
believe in Creation than in Evolution. In fact, the main argument of
the
evolutionists that makes any sense is that because we cannot actually
SEE
God, He does not exist. But do you know who designed or built your car?
How about your electric or gas stove? No? Well then, how about your
computer?
Surely you must know who designed and built it! Then your computer must
have just evolved from silicon and some bits of wire and somehow all of
the parts just gradually, over billions of years came together in just
the right way and in the right quantities and presto! Your computer
evolved!
Thinking that the universe with all the stars, planets, comets and
asteroids
just banged into existence without a controlling designer is ludicrous.
The Rule
of Scientific Evidence
requires
that a hypothesis or theorem, to be validated, must be provable beyond
reasonable doubt either by repeatable observation, repeatable
experimentation
or by demonstrable evidence. Obviously, the theory of evolution, as
taught
in public schools, colleges and universities fails every one of these
tests.
As will be more thoroughly discussed in AIS Science courses, it is far
more scientific to believe and far more demonstrable that all living
things
reproduce after their own kind repeatedly and with little variation
generation
after generation and only when a designer, a genetic scientist or
breeder,
becomes involved that any significant changes occur. In fact, on two
different
recent National Geographic science programs, the narrator declared that
"evolution designed" some change in genetic codes of a specie to meet a
problem. In doing so, though he would not surrender to use the WORD
God, he admitted to the necessity of a designer for the change to
occur.
Since National Geographic is respected on most points as painstakingly
accurate and yet insist on the theory of evolution, the use by their
narrator
of the concept that anyone or anything "designed" rather than simply
chance
evolved is telling of the weakness of the theory. Yes, you can be
confident
that the Bible, God's word is really scientifically true when
it
says "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth."
(Genesis
1:1).
But who is
this God who made the
heavens and the earth? We have repeated scriptures that indicate
that He is a Spirit (20 Old and 19 New Testament books speak of God
being
a Spirit). Jesus Christ specifically states that God is a Spirit (John
4:24). A Spirit being with the capability of the most intense
of all love, agapé love. This is a
capability
mankind is also capable of. But God is also the capability of
filling
the earth and indeed the universe with His presence. This mankind
cannot do. This God also has the capability to speak worlds into
existence. And He also knows all things. I test in the genius range,
but
there is no way I can know all things. Nor can people with even greater
intelligence than God has blessed me with ever hope to know all things
as God does. This is a Spirit attribute far beyond the capability of
mortal
man. In this verse we see an Almighty Spirit who made all things that
exist
by His Word. We will go into more detail on these points in the DOC,
REL
and SCI courses. But at this point, let us go on to verse 2.
In Verse 2
And
the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of
the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
Here we see that at His first word, a planet, a giant ball of rock
appears
in space. We do not have all the details, but rock and water seem to
have
been all there was. At this point, some theologians believe there is a
gap of possibly thousands or millions of years
between
verse 1 and verse 2. This is an accommodation, an apologetic, to those
who teach the theory of evolution in an attempt to reconcile the Bible
and science by allowing time for the teachings of the theory of
evolution
and the Big Bang theorists to possibly have occurred. While this could
be a possibility if other parts of these theories withstood the test of
the Rule of Scientific Evidence. However, as we shall discover and have
already discussed slightly, real science declares chance happenstance
of
gradual continued improvement to be totally unlikely and therefore not
true. Even some evolutionists acknowledge that "evolution
created."
But who, pray tell, is "evolution" that did this creation? If
someone
or something created one thing to correct a problem, then that creator
had to have been, at the very least, an intelligent being or Spirit. If
darkness covered the face of the deep, then there must have been no sun
beating down and no stars. The moon, then would not have shed its
reflected
light, because there was no sunlight to reflect.
The only
difference between the
JPS and the KJV versions here is that the JPS version uses the words
"hovered
over" where the KJV uses "moved upon". If there is a significance
to the difference, it is in the difference between hovering over, as a
bird might hover over its nest or its prey and a swan or duck or ship
moving
on the waters. Some also see the "moved upon" as meaning an active
making
of a change in the waters.
We will study verses
3,4 and
5 as a paragraph: "3 And God said, Let there be
light:
and there was light. 4 And God saw the light, that it was
good:
and God divided the light from the
darkness.
5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called
Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day."
Because of the way daylight and darkness are caused, some will argue
that
this has to be. When the sun shines on the side of the earth facing the
sun, it is day and when it is away, it is night. This is perfectly true
so far as it goes, but why is it true? "Oh, that is a rule of physics."
Well, then who made the rule of physics? Did that just evolve, too? How
does a virtually indisputable physical law come into being? Is it
either reasonable or scientific to think it just happened without any
controller
or law giver? The answer is so obvious that the statement, "The
fool
hath said in his heart, There is no God," (Psalm 14:1)
is
demonstrably true.
In Verse 5,
we also see the
Biblical arrangement of day and night. To this day, devout orthodox
Jews
still celebrate the beginning of a new day at sunset, not midnight.
This
fact is of great significance in understanding the truth of the Day of
Crucifixion and the Day of Resurrection in the Gospels. It is also
important
from the standpoint of realizing that there easily could be a
considerable time
gap between the words, "In the beginning, God created the
heavens
and the earth," and the "first day" in which God set light and
dark, night and day.
From this
point on, please have
your own Bible open to Genesis Chapter 1 and read each verse as you
study
it in this lesson text. Or you may go to BibleGateway.com
and copy and paste the whole chapter to your own computer or
print
it out on a full sized sheet so you have room to make permanent notes
for
yourself for future reference. Several other languages and versions are
available in addition to the KJV.
Verses 6
through 10 deal
with the separation of land and sea. This does agree specifically with
much of science which speaks of continental drift and of earth crust
plates
sliding against and over and under each other. This is another
point
we will discuss in much more detail in SCI101. We see evidence of
an upheaval, sometimes combined with additional evidence that the
upheaval
was violent, sudden, and of short, rather than long
duration.
Many of the mountain chains are an example of this as well as the Grand
Canyon, where both logic and a computer model indicate a sudden, very
large,
sudden gush of water rather than a gradual erosion over a long period
of
time. This would be scientifically consistent with either a sudden
upheaval
of the land mass from under a large volume of water, as might be read
into
verse 7, or with the universal Flood of Noah's day.
Verses 11
to 13 tell us of
the beginning of plant life. Scientifically, plant life would, of
necessity
predate animal life because plants are the foundation of the entire
food
chain. The vast majority of the smallest animal specimens feed on
microscopic plant life. Plants have the unique ability, called photosynthesis,
to convert inorganic mineral matter, with the aid of energy from the
sun,
to organic matter digestible by animals. The complexity of the food
chain
and the process of photosynthesis refutes the possibility of chance
mutation
to improves species from the simple single-celled to the complex plants
and creatures of today. It is a much closer parallel to the evolution
of
the Model T to today's modern air conditioned cars with all their
electronic
gadgetry and technical advances in virtually every aspect. Any
evolutionary
change in living matter is most easily, logically and therefore
scientifically,
explained as an improvement in design and construction rather than
chance
happenstance as evolutionists would have you believe. The symbiotic
relationships between certain individual plant species and just one
specific animal or insect creature are scientifically far to complex to
be the result of accidental or undesigned mutation of species.
Likewise,
the complexity of sexual reproduction of many species including human,
and the list of evolutionary impossibilities could go on for the
remainder
of your semester.
And finally,
as verse 12 indicates,
the seed of the herb and grass and tree all reproduce after their own
kind.
In nature, mutations rarely reproduce and when they do, they even more
rarely show the traits of the mutation. More frequently the hybrid
returns
to its original form within a generation or two. Only when man uses
genetic
design and engineering do you see mutant varieties reproduce dependably
and if left alone for a few generations, all or nearly all will revert
back to the original form before the mutation and genetic designing by
an intelligent being occurred. And verse 13 reaffirms the beginning of
the day as evening. z
Beginning
with verse 14 and continuing
through verse 19, we have the specifics of God ordering the sun to rule
the day with its own heat and radiant energy and the moon to rule the
night
with the light it reflected from the sun. The stars, some of which
modern
astronomy has measured to be so many millions of light-years distant
that
they appear tiny and faint to us on earth are still declared to have
been
made by God. Since they are indeed following fixed paths with relation
to each other which are entirely and reliably predictable, how, except
by a Great Creator and lawgiver can the Rule
of Scientific Evidence be
met to explain their existence? We will also deal with this
question
in more detail in REL301 in our study of Apologetics. However, if the
earth
already existed and was without form and void before the sun, moon,
other
planets and stars, then the Big Bang theory is out the window, although
we shall explore this theory more fully in the Science courses.
In the
20th through 23rd verses,
we have the events of the fifth day of creation. The waters bringing
forth
life first. In a sense, this might seem to agree with the Theory of
Evolution,
except that in the same day, the whales which are very complex and
intelligent
water mammals, other water creatures that move on their own power and
every
winged creature which would include birds, fowls and presumably bats
and
even flying squirrels and the like. Each is stated to bring forth after
its own kind. This is a direct contradiction of evolution which would
have
simple single-celled creatures evolving to two, four and so on to
multiple
celled and extremely complex creatures which theory also flies in the
face
of scientific rules of supporting evidence. In fact, all the real
scientific
evidence shows that all life forms have had only minute changes in all
the known history of man and the actual scientific fossil evidence
shows
no evidence whatever of any significant missing links or intermediately
improved species anywhere between the earliest life forms and present
life
forms. Only that those forms less adaptive to environmental changes are
now extinct. They have indeed been fruitful and multiplied and filled
the
earth.
And yet AGAIN
we have the reaffirmation
of the new day beginning at evening in verse 23.
Most
significant to us as mankind
are verses 24 through 31. In verse 24, are now on Day six where we have
the creation of mammals, reptiles and presumably amphibians if they
were
not already included in the water creatures. If you have not already
noticed,
each thing God created, after He had created it, He said it was
good.
And then
comes the big one. Mankind.
Verse 26 is a mainstay of those who follow the Athanatian/trinitarian
heresy.
They make a big issue of the word "us" in the plural that is used here.
Although I do not personally read Biblical Hebrew, reference sources
and
persons who do read Hebrew affirm that the Hebrew actually uses the
word
"Elohim" where we say God in English. Trinitarians will
tell
you that this is a plural word meaning more than one and therefore
meaning
trinity. In actuality, your Hebrew language experts, particularly those
from Jewish backgrounds will tell you that it is "super plural."
A mere trinity would not be sufficient to convey the totality of
plurality
that God is. He IS. He IS all and all and all in all. Nothing exists
without
this great Omnipotent, Omnipresent, Omniscient Holy Spirit who
repeatedly
declared through various prophets that He is ONE and beside Him there
is
no other. Indeed, He declares that He
knows not any! If He knows everything and He knows not any other
gods
or spirits of God, then either we believe Him and the Bible or we
believe
a lie and will end up being damned. And if the Bible repeatedly
declares
Him to be a Spirit and not a person, then how dare anyone calling
themselves
Christian say He
is three persons?
Verse 27, on
the other hand speaks
of God again as "His" once and as "He" twice in the singular. Thus even
the verse following the trinitarian favorite seems to dispute their
understanding
of verse 26. Verses 28 and 29 refer to God not implying more than one
and
actually saying "I" in 29 and 30 and "He" in 31. Verses 7 and 14 of the
Second Chapter also agree with God making man of the dust of the ground
in verse 7 and saying "I will make..." Eve in verse 14.
So
even in the first chapter of Genesis, the one word used as a touchstone
for trinitarians is outweighed by a total of eight different places in
the same chapter where it says of God "He," "His," or "I" did or said
something
in the singular.
In
verse 28, God blesses Adam
and Eve and gives them an order to be fruitful and multiply and
replenish
the earth. Many people believe that the use of the word "replenish" is
an indication that there had been a living population on earth before
Adam
and Eve. The same word "replenish" is used in the JPS version and there
seems to be no valid reason to question it. While admittedly the Bible
is not primarily a science textbook, I believe it is safe to say that
the
present earth's population of humans and animals was created in Genesis
there could also be a time gap
as earlier noted between verse 1 and 2 which could be anything
from
instantaneous to several thousands or even millions of years. While I
personally
have always doubted the existence of dinosaurs and prehistoric man for,
reasons we will go into in more detail in the Science course, I am
forced
by the word "replenish" in this verse to admit that the possibility of
a prior earth population of animate life could exist. This could
explain
why, if the supposed fossil remains of some creatures such as dinosaurs
and prehistoric man, if not hoaxes as at least a couple are known to
be,
exist and could tend to validate the theory that petroleum oil is the
fossilized
fat of dinosaurs. Other than the possibility of a translation
error,
this is really just about the only thing the use of that word here
could
mean. In any case, the gap
between verses 1 and 2 would permit the fact that God made the
universe
whenever it was made, whether a day or two before or millions of years.
And the Rule
of Scientific Evidence
would
dictate that whether who He is is known, or even personally knowable,
there
HAD to be a Creator Designer. Then God gives mankind dominion
over
all other living creatures. We will see later that the killing of
animals and the eating of meat was a part of God's plan and provision
for
us.
Verses 29 and
30 tell us that all
herbs, bearing seed, trees bearing fruit fowls of the air and even
creeping
things are given for meat to mankind. In other words, we were not
created
to be vegetarians, but omnivorous. We were to eat both plants and
animals
and God gave them to us for food.
Finally, in
verse 31, God declares
His whole creation "VERY good". Again the evening and the morning were
the sixth day, reaffirming that sequence for the beginning of days.
GENESIS
Chapter 2
This chapter
opens with the bold
statement "Thus the heaven and the earth were finished, and all the
host
of them." First of all, God has already declared His work both
completed
and very good in the last chapter. Now the word "finished" is
used
to indicate that there was nothing left to evolve! So then what
does,
"And all the host of them," mean? Again, there is no disagreement
between the KJV and the JPS versions and the reference to "host," most
often when used in this way in the Bible, refers to the countlessness
of
the stars. This second chapter is a more or less explanatory
recounting
of some of the events already stated in Chapter 1 and then goes on into
a brief description of how God made man and woman and a description of
the Garden of Eden. It ends with God ordaining marriage and the
statement
that man was not ashamed of being naked.
Verses 2 and
3 are the very first
Sabbath (Shabat) and is the basis for all subsequent 7-day
weeks.
The fact that basically the whole world follows a 7-day weekly cycle
even
today and whether acknowledging Judeo-Christianity or not, the cycle
goes
back to this Bible verse. There is serious debate as to when the real
Sabbath
day is, or whether Christians should worship on Saturday or Sunday, and
since calendars have been changed and the Jewish calendar follows lunar
cycles which are not consistent with the solar cycles, various
arguments
are set out to attempt to establish one or the other as true. We will
discuss
this point at greater length in this course in third semester BIB301
when
we study Levitical law in the Doctrine (DOC) Course and especially the
Religion (REL) Course, but for now, let us be content with saying that
so long as we take one day a week to rest, which is what God did here,
I believe the human body requires a day of rest to maintain health, and
even more importantly, God is pleased that we obey Him. Russian
(and
presumably all former Soviet republics) calendars actually show Sunday
as the 7th day of the week rather than the first. I do not believe that
the old legal saying, "Ignorance of the law is no excuse," applies in
this
case as the principle of taking one day of seven to rest is what is
emphasized.
However, it should also be a day in which our focus is upon the Lord,
loving
Him, thanking Him, serving Him and resting our bodies that He has given
to us. The easiest way for most of us, or at least the course of least
resistance, is to go to church and hopefully Sunday School on whichever
day we use as our Sabbath - one of seven. God "sanctified" or set apart
the seventh day as a commemoration of the completion of His creation.
Verse 4 may
seem confusing or contradictory
to those who want to question the Bible, because after telling us of
six
days of creation it now says that "... in the day that the Lord God
made
the earth and the heavens." Here is just one early example of how we
need
to understand language, not just of the Bible, but in general every day
conversation. We speak in these modern times, for example, of the day
of
Chivalry or the day of our modern industrial revolution, and we mean a
somewhat indefinite span of time in which certain events occurred. In a
sense, we still live in the day of the industrial revolution which
began
more than a century ago. We might also say we live in the day of
"political
correctness" in which we avoid using certain previously recognized
truisms
because they might offend someone or go against current political
trends.
So, in one sense, a day is a 24-hour time span, but in a broader sense,
it is also used to indicate a longer and usually indefinite span of
time
in which certain events took place or attitudes prevailed. From the
statement
that "the evening and the morning were the sixth day" or other day
specified
in Genesis 1, that indicates a definite time bounded by one evening and
one morning, while the word "day" in verse 4 clearly speaks of the
broader
time frame encompassing all of the originally specified days of
creation.
In verses 5
and 6, we find that
it had not yet rained and plants and trees were maintained only by a
dew
that arose from the earth. Some scoff at the Bible because they say
that
scientifically, dew condenses from the air on the leaves of trees and
grass
as the temperature of the surface of the leaves becomes lower than the
temperature of the surrounding air. That fact is true, and here we have
to realize that just as saying the earth is a giant ball which revolves
around the sun, although the this is real fact, at the time of Moses
and
the patriarchs, when people believed that the earth was the center of
the
universe and that the sun, moon and stars revolved around the earth,
would
have resulted in disbelief and ridicule and the broader principles and
plan of God would have been ignored as impossible. After all, can't you
see with your own eyes that the sun, moon and stars go around our
stable,
stationary earth? So to try to explain that the dew on the leaves
actually
condensed out of the air would also have been rejected by the hearers
or
readers as ignorant ravingsand the broader truths God wanted us to know
would have been discarded as well. Please do remember that the Bible is
not primarily a book of science, but a book explaining the love,
kindness,
mercy and grace of the Great Creator, who became our Savior as well,
and
outlining our duties and responsibilities in our relationship with Him.
Verse7 goes
into more specific detail
on how God accomplished the creation of the first man. In Chapter
1 Verse 26. It says, "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." It states a definite thoughtful act of design and creation on
God's
part. At no point does it say that three persons of God did the forming
nor that they planned nor agreed together to create or how to create.
There
is no, "Well, he should have My chin and Your feet and His hands," sort
of committee meeting between three persons of God. It strongly implies
by the words "the Lord God" that One Designer/Creator made the first
man
of the "dust of the ground" without any other person or spirit being
involved.
Verse 8 and 9
tell how "the" Lord
God planted the garden of Eden, placed mankind there and made the trees
to grow. It specifies a "tree of knowledge of good and evil" and a
"tree
of life".
Verses 10
through 14 name the river
juncture where the Garden was located. We will not oppose the
traditional
view that this was the same River Euphrates and Hiddekel or
Tigris
River that join just South of present-day Baghdad,
Iraq, but the Gihon and Pison rivers are both in Africa separated
from
Mesopotamia by the Arabian Peninsula and desert. If you wish to take
the
time to see a theory about where the Garden of Eden may have been, click
here. No test or quiz questions will be based on this theory.
Verses 15
through 17 states again
that God placed Man in the Garden of Eden "to dress it and keep it." He
told Man he could eat of EVERY tree of the Garden EXCEPT the tree of
knowledge
of good and evil. He was apparently even allowed to eat of the Tree of
Life at this time, but evidently neither Adam nor Eve did, since later
it was to prevent their eating of that fruit that God drove them out of
the Garden.
Verses 18
tells God's reason for
the creation of Eve, "the mother of all living," as she is described
elsewhere,
in more specific detail than in the first chapter. Chapter 1 only says
"male and female created He them. Here in Chapter 2, we have had Adam
created
of the dust of the ground in Chapter 1 verse 26 and reaffirmed in
Chapter
2 verse 7. Now in verse 18, we have God stating that it is not
good
for man to be alone without a spouse.
Verses 19 and
20 after recognizing
a need for a wife or "helpmeet" for Adam, go on to tell that God
formed the animals of the dust also, a fact omitted in the super
condensed
Chapter 1 version and says that God brought all before Adam to
name.
Note also that the fish were not mentioned as being named here. God
apparently
did not consider it that critical to take Adam to a body of water where
he could see and name fish. Land animals were certainly enough to keep
him busy inventing names.
Verses 21
through 24 tell how od
caused a deep sleep to come up
on Adam and
how a rib was removed from which
God made Eve. You have probably already heard sermons that include the
comment that Eve was made from a rib to mean she was to be beside Adam
not from his feet to be walked on.
Then we have
that famous verse quoted
in most wedding ceremonies even today, about the man leaving his
parents
and cleaving or sticking by and with his wife.
Verse 25
tells us something that
many Holiness people want to snip out of their Bibles. It says, "And
they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed."
Why should they be? Had not God made them as they were and pronounced
them
"Good?" For most of the history of mankind, nakedness was
considered
a shame by mankind, though never by God, and it remained for people
beginning
about the time of the Victorian age to begin attaching lewdness and
sexuality
to the lack of clothing. Of course, Hollywood has cashed in on this and
now nudity, especial partial nudity is considered sinful or even wicked
by most Christians because it is seen as producing sexual lust, which
clearly
IS sin.
GENESIS
Chapter 3
From the very
beginning of this
chapter in verse 1, we begin to see the part of mankind as sort of a
pawn
between God and Satan, His enemy. God creates mankind, makes him good
and
enjoys fellowshipping with His creation in a manner spoken of in verse
8 as "walking in the Garden." While undoubtedly, God knew from the
beginning
that mankind would sin and disobey His commandment, He also knew that
man
could live sinless and with joy if he chose to go that route.
Notice that
initially, the serpent
is described as being "subtil" meaning tricky or clever. This also
denotes
intelligence. There is some thought that he may have been
somewhat
like the "Komodo dragon" or a tree iguana. And while most evolutionists
tend to say that things with legs evolved from simpler things without
legs, I recently saw a
documentary
in which a certain species of snake has traces of rear legs and the
herpetologist
said that maybe it had "evolved" from s legged reptilian "billions" of
years ago. Maybe in fact, it was that specie which while still
possessing
legs enticed Eve and lost its legs because of it? That is just a big
maybe,
however and there is nothing to prove such a theory. For my take on
Satan's
trickery, see "The
Oldest Question" . Satan still uses this old tactic to confuse and
create doubt among those who want to trust and believe God even today.
"Did God really say...?" "Well are you really sure that is what He
meant
by that?" "Why you know that a loving God would never send anyone to a
place like Hell where they would be tormented for eternity." Or while
the
scriptures indicate God wants to heal us and keep us in health, Satan
says,
"That's why God gave us doctors." And so mankind glibly goes off to the
medical practitioner who prescribes one poisonolus substance to kill
this
sickness and hopes the side effects do not kill you or make you sicker
than the original disease, or prescribes a second medication to
counteract
the poisonous effects of the first medication on you while maintaining
its poisonous effects on the disease germs. Science attempts to thwart
hurricanes or tornados or lightning, but other unpredicted events occur
because of these efforts to get around what God set in moti on in His
pattern.
For years, lightning set natural wildfires that burned away undergrowth
and dead leaves periodically and the wildfires were not destructive to
the larger trees and native undergrowth, but as man decided to prevent
all wildfires and put out the natural ones, dead undergrowth and leaves
piled higher and higher and now if a wildfire starts it may burn
thousands
of acres and kill even large trees with the intense heat. So
whenever
man's knowledge comes into play, when he tries to be as a god and
change
the pattern set by the Almighty God, he usually has unforeseen
consequences
to face.
In Verses 2
and 3, Eve responds
to Satan's question by confirming that God has indeed said they are not
to eat of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge but she adds something not
contained in the Chapter 2 verse 17 account, "But of the tree of
the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the
day
that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die."
She adds, "...neither shall ye touch it." By moving the emphasis from
the
eating of the fruit to the touching of the tree, she may have opened
the
door of temptation a bit. What if someone else, maybe the serpent,
touches
the tree and gives her the fruit? What if one has fallen to the ground
and she doesn't need to touch the tree? In fact, if she is careful not
to touch the tree itself, or a leaf or branch of it, could she maybe
pull
off a fruit without touching the tree? She also modifies the "thou
shalt
surely die" to "lest ye die." If she understood this thought as she
repeated
it, she has already mentally reduced the severity of punishment from a
guarantee of sure death to a possibility of death. The
implication
by use of the word "lest" here is that there is a chance of death or a
danger of death, but that is far less than sure death.
In verses 4
and 5, the serpent representing
Satan becomes brazen in his challenge of God's word. You can be sure
that
he knew exactly what God had said and what He meant by that word. "Nah!
You won't really die! God is just afraid your eyes will be opened and
you
will be able to see things the way He sees them. You will know good and
evil like gods." There was a skin of truth stretched tightly over a lie
here, and this is another of Satan's tactics he still uses today.
In verses 6
and 7, Eve permits the
lust of the eye to overcome any sense she had of right and wrong and
she
sees the luscious Hayden Mango or Delicious Apple and tastes it. "Hmmm!
Good!" So the loving wifey takes one to her husband and he also eats.
Now
he should have recognized the fruit for what it was, but even if he did
not, "Ignorance of the law is no excuse," in many courts of law. And as
Jesus said, "If the blind lead the blind they shall both fall in the
ditch." (Matthew
15:14 and Luke 6:39). In other words, the principle still applies.
Whether a sighted person with full ability to see and know leads
another
who is blind to the facts into the ditch or whether annother blind
person
leads, the result is the same. They fall in the ditch.
Suddenly they
realize they are hairless
on their bodies, naked. Before sin intruded, they were not ashamed to
walk
in the Garden and talk with God in Genesis 2:25. But sin, disobedience,
and the knowledge of good and evil changed everything. Now
suddenly,
they were ashamed for God to see their nakednessand sewed together
aprons
of fig leaves. Today some mock this statement because they are only
acquainted
with certain subspecies of fig tree, but the main fig tree whose fruit
is used for food has large fuzzy leaves which could indeed be attached
at or near ends of the widest lobes and make aprons which could cover
the
genital area.
The next
verses to the end of the
chapter are often used to distort God's identity. First of all,
verse
8 does not say that God as a person was walking in the garden, but
rather
His voice was heard. Did God ask where Adam was because He didn't
really know? Hardly. You can be sure He knew precisely. And at no
point in the following verses is there any mention of Adam and Eve
seeing
God. In fact, Jesus said that "No man hath seen god at any time;
the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath
declared
Him." (John 1:18).
So what is
God's emphasis on in
the whole passage from verse 8 through verse 24? Was it Adam and Eve's
nakedness? No. God only mentions nakedness in asking how they
knew
they were naked. Not once does He say, "You wicked, sinful, lewd man
(or
people), here let me make better clothes for you so you can cover your
nakedness better." In fact, it was not until verse 21 that God does
"make
coats of skins, and clothed them."
No, God's
emphasis was on obedience
to His word and commands. The reason is at least twofold. God demands
our
respect, honor and love and since He knows how He made us, He also
knows
best how our lives can be most succesful to our satisfaction and
productive
to His kingdom.
You have no
doubt already heard
many or at least several sermons or lessons which thoroughly discussed
Adam blaming Eve and Eve blaming the serpent, each "passing the buck"
or
attempting to. We have God then condemning the serpent to crawl on his
belly and eat dust. We also have the curse of perpetual
enmity
between the descendants of the serpent and the descendants of the
woman.
Here, an
interesting aside dealing
with evolution is the fact that generally, evolutionists promote a
belief
that simpler life forms gradually evolved to more complex, but on a
recent
National Geographic program, a herpetologist was discussing a
particular
type of tree snake and showed what he described as the remains of legs
that had evolved away as that specie of snake evolved from a legged
ancestor!
Could Eve's serpent have been a tree dwelling iguana who lost his legs
because of the temptation? You decide that one for yourself.
Verse 15 is
considered to be the
first prophecy of a coming Messiah, the "seed of the woman" by virgin
birth
would bruise the head of the serpent, representative of Satan and the
serpent
would bruise His heel symbolic of the persecution, torture and
crucifixion
of our Lord Jesus Christ. It also typifies the perpetual enmity
between
the vast majority of mankind all through history which have always
hated
and killed snakes and who have been bitten and killed by snakes. It is
interesting to note here in verse 15 that bruising does not
specifically
indicate killing and as we know, although Jesus was indeed slain, or
laid
down His life as the sacrifice for our sins and it might seem at that
point
that Satan had bruised His heel, but "Up from thr Grave He Arose!
Hallelujah,
Christ arose!" And while His Resurrection was a defeat or "bruise" for
Satan, that old liar, Satan, is still out there trying to kill, steal
and
destroy.
Continuing on
through verse
21, where God makes the coats of skins, for Adam and Eve, He has
pronounced
judgment on His errant creation. The unique suffering of human mothers
in childbirth and the weeds and labor of producing food by "the sweat
of
thy face," were additional punishments to the couple.
Verse 22 is
mistakenly used by some
to say that there is more than one person of God, but this overlooks
the
fact that Satan is also supernatural and we know he was present for the
judgment of Adam and Eve there in the garden. The verse says, "And the
LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and
evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of
life, and eat, and live for ever: " They grasp the words "become as one
of us" to say, "See, the Father was talking to either the Son or the
Holy
Spirit or both." But since this flies in the face of most scriptures in
which God clearly and plainly states that He is the Only real God and
the
Only real Spirit of God, we must look at it more in the immediate
context.
Who was present besides the one true Holy Spirit of the Lord?
Well,
there were Adam and Eve, but since they were the subject of discussion
the "us would not have been God and them. But we know Satan was there
and
probably at least some of his fallen angels and likely some of God's
faithful,
angels so there were plenty of supernatural beings present besides the
One True and Living God, who is described throughout the Bible as a
Spirit.
Here we have
evidence that for whatever
reason, neither Adam nor Eve had yet eaten of the Tree of Life, since
it
is precisely to prevent this eventuality after their disobedience in
the
matter of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil that causes God to
drive
them out of the Garden and place an Cherubims and a flaming sword
at its entrance to prevent access to the Tree of Life.
Edited January
2008 by Rev.
Samuel
M. Smith
Old
Testament Hebrew for 'In the beginning' 07225 re'shiyth
re'shiyth
[raysheeth] from the same as 07218; TWOT - 2097e; n f AV - beginning
18,
firstfruits 11, first 9, chief 8, misc 5; 51
1) first, beginning, best,
chief ; 1a) beginning
;
1b) first (Strong's number 7225)
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