Class One
Of Ape-men and Gamma Ray Bursts
Genesis 1-3 versus Traditional Archaeology, Geology, and Dating
“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” (Genesis 1:1) contains ten words in English – the Biblical number of the Gentiles- and seven words in Hebrew, “Berashith bara Elohim eth hashamayim waeth ha’aretz”, or seven words with 28 Hebrew letters (4x7), fourteen letters in the subject, and fourteen letters in the predicate, with “God” as the third word of the sentence.
This first verse denies atheism. “The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good.” (Psalm 14:1).
The majority of modern scientists teach that all matter resided in a singularity, the size of a period in a sentence. This entity, containing all light, matter, and energy that there is, violently exploded and the universe has been expanding ever since. This is called the Big Bang* and is highly theoretical and not without detractors as some ask questions like, “where did the singularity come from” and “if empty space is part of the universe then what about the empty space just ahead of the explosion or a trillion miles in front of it?”. (Q is for Quantum, An Encyclopedia of Particle Physics, by John Gribbin, The Free Press, 1998).
Medieval Kabbalists, believers in an occult form of Judaism, believed that in the beginning God filled the universe, then withdrew from it, leaving something the size of a mustard seed, which contained all light, energy, and matter, and exploded, creating what we now know as the universe. The modern Big Bang theory in an oversimplified form sounds a lot like this occultic belief.
As quoted in the book, “The Whole Shebang, A State of the Universe(s) Report, by Timothy Ferris, Simon & Schuster, 1997”, astronomer Stuart Boyer admits, “Ultimately, the origin of the universe is, and always will be, a mystery”. I would suggest he read Genesis 1:1. That should help.
“And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” (Genesis 1:2). Because the Hebrew word for “without form”, transliterated Tohuw, is translated as “ in vain” in Isaiah 45:18 and it is said he didn’t create it that way, some people believe there is a large gap between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2, allowing for millions and millions of years, dinosaurs, ape-men and the like. The main problem with this theory is, number one, it’s pulling the text like Taffy, and, number two, there is the problem of death entering the world with Adam’s sin (Romans 5:12), not before. The counter to this is that the word “world” in that verse, is “Kosmos” referring to the world system, however, this too is stretching the clear and literal meaning of the text. Anglican Archbishop Ussher calculated backwards from the Bible and other sources and came to a date of 4004 BC for creation or 6000 years
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ago. The current Hebrew year is 5765. The Hebrew year begins in the Autumn while the Hebrew day begins in the evening.
“And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.” (Genesis 1:3). As God did not create the Sun and the stars until the fourth day most scientists and many Christians scoff at this verse, claiming that, if they believe the verse at all, that there was a cloud cover over the earth blocking out the sun. But, not wanting to call the Biblical text a lie, let me just say that since 1967 a phenomenon known as Gamma Ray Bursts has been known in which a burst of light brighter than all of the universe’s suns combined and lasting for a few seconds at random intervals each day. This is not to say that these bursts of high energy radiation explain God’s light but to say that there are sources of light not from the stars (although the basis for these bursts is theoretical one theory is that they come from collapsing stars).
“4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. 5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.” (Genesis 1:4-5). Notice the beginning of the first day was in the evening and that this refers to a normal day consisting of evening and morning. Another popular theory is that the “days” of creation were ages of billions of years. This so-called “Day-Age” theory has the problem of the reference to “evening and morning” and the fact that the reference is of “Day” versus “Night”.
“6 And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. 7 And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. 8 And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.” Notice this day is not called good? (Ephesians 6:10-13; Isaiah 24:21; Job 41:31,32 if referring to outer space).
The idea of the universe or outer space being a division between water in space and water on earth is made all the more interesting by the fact that, according to a Harvard website, http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/cfa/hotimage/worion.html , there is a large water vapor “factory” in the Orion Nebula (Job 9:9; 38:31; Amos 5:8) and Cornell University reported in the April 10, 1998 edition of Science Daily that it produced enough water to fill the earth’s oceans 60 times each day.
“9 And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so. 10 And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.” Modern science dates the earth at approximately 4.5 billion years old and the universe at about 15 billion years. The earth’s date is figured most significantly by radiometric dating which estimate the age of rocks using calculations based on the decay rates of radioactive elements such as uranium, strontium, and potassium. Oversimplifying the problems for this discussion, let me just say that there are many anomalies with dates differing between methods of dating of hundreds of millions of years and even the most
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enthusiastic believers in radiometric dating do not claim it’s a perfect way to obtain age estimates. I recommend the website for the Institute for Creation Research or icr.org.
Another thing to note is the prevalent theory, that complements the Genesis account, that no matter when the earth was formed it did contain one super-continent called Rodinia, consisting of Gondwanaland, Euramerica, and Siberia, which drifted apart and came together again in another super-continent called Pangea, which then drifted apart again all within the span of a few hundred million years give or take a few hundred million years. This information was gleaned from Palaeos.com and ecology.com online.
“11 And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so. 12 And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good. 13 And the evening and the morning were the third day.” Grasses include wheat, rice, corn, and other grains such as millet and rye according to the Washington State University website. Fruits would include apples, citrus fruits, melons, etc.
“14 And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years: 15 And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so. 16 And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also. 17 And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth, 18 And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good. 19 And the evening and the morning were the fourth day. “ The stars and other objects in the universe are created in their current positions and distance which over rules using distance as age based on the Big Bang expansion. The Static Universe theory better fits observational data than the Big Bang according to T.C. Van Flandern of the US Naval Observatory and V. S. Troitskii from the Radiophysical Research Institute in Gorky, Russia.
“20 And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. 21 And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good. 22 And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth. 23 And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.” Life from water is a no-brainer, even for a traditional modern scientist. The Hebrew word for “kind” transliterated as “Meen” is not a species as in a type of eagle but a more broad categorization such as a “Family” for example. The belief that creatures were not created but evolved from lower life forms, which is against the Bible, was introduced by the Greek philosopher, Anaximander* around 520 BC.
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*‘Does God Believe in Atheists?’ by John Blanchard, Evangelical Press, 2000. Evolution of life is a concept, although stated differently than the modern theory, in the Indian religion of Hinduism. In fact, in the Rig Veda (the Veda’s are ancient Hindu religious texts), the origin of all life comes from a cosmic egg, sounding similar to the Kabbala’s mustard seed and the Big Bang theory’s Singularity. Traditional modern scientists hold to life on earth either happening by chance on earth by a random mix of the vital elements for life over a long period of time or by the process of Panspermia, having been transported here on the solar winds or by meteorites from another planet.
Frances Crick, co-discoverer of the DNA helix, in ‘Life Itself: It’s Origin and Nature’, believes that it would have been mathematically impossible for life to have happened on earth by chance and that it must have come from somewhere else. However, geologist, astrobiologist, and paleontologist Peter Ward and astronomer and astrobiologist and NASA scientist Don Brownlee in their book, ‘Rare Earth’, state that the Earth is so unique that it is unlikely that life, as we know it, could exist anywhere else. With so many conflicting theories on the origin of life with so few facts to back them up, what prevents us from accepting the Bible by faith, as our final authority rather than the musings of Frances Crick, Peter Ward or any number of other scientists? If life could not have happened here by chance and it most likely didn’t happen anywhere else by chance then what do they have left? Nothing.
This brings to mind the problem that science has with what keeps the universe together. Since they believe that mass is the basis for gravity they have found that there is not enough mass in the universe to keep it from disintegrating, according to their theories. Now, we know that the universe is held together by the Lord Jesus Christ (Colossians 1:16,17). However, the scientist theorizes that there must be an invisible element called “Dark Matter”, which they say, according to ‘Q is for Quantum’, referenced beforehand, “is revealed by its gravitational influence on the bright stuff”. I would counter this with saying that the Lord Jesus Christ is revealed by his influence on the bright stuff, Mr. Bright Stuff.
“24 And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so. 25 And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.” Cattle, in the scriptures, refers to any domesticated livestock, not just beef cows but also sheep (Genesis, chapter 30). Once again, things do not change families or order. Dinosaurs, contrary to National Geographic’s fantasy in its November 1999 “Feathers for T. Rex” article by Christopher Sloan, did not become birds. The Smithsonian Institution vigorously protested that assertion in an open letter, a copy of which I have here.
“26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. 27 So God
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created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. 28 And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.
29 And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. 30 And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so.
31 And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.” Note, that here in verse 29, as in verse 12, “herb yielding seed” is mentioned as part of the original diet, not only of mankind but of other creatures as well. Herbaceous plants would include vegetables and legumes (beans) which are high in protein.
Traditional, modern science does not believe God created man. It believes that man evolved through several stages of development through “ape-like” creatures with names such as Australopithecine, Homo Erectus, Cro-magnon, Homo Habilis. For instance, recently, in Time Magazine, the same science celebrity, who trumpeted his theory that whales and hippo’s have the same ancestor, which was a rip-off of another wild National Geographic story, Michel Brunet, claimed to have found the oldest pre-hominid skull in Africa, with a date of 7 million years. He was on the cover of Time. However, Brigitte Senut, of the Natural History Museum in Paris, explained that it was only the skull of a female gorilla. In fact, evidence has shown in virtually every case the bones found, declared to be that of some primitive form of ape-like ancestor of humans or near human is either the remains of an actual ape or of a variant of a human being contemporary with modern humans. These particular theories, that we have Neanderthals living among us, aren’t given much authority in the press.
Recently, it was stated that genetic studies had shown that we are not related to Neanderthals at all but the numbers given to prove that declaration were said by other scientists to be less than the variation between modern Chimpanzee groups that, after all, were still Chimpanzees. A great deal has been said about how apes have 98% of the DNA we do, and of how they are genetically similar to us. But, genetics teaches us that it is the expression of genes, not just their presence, that determines differences. After all, the London Telegraph, in August of 2003, reported an article from the science journal, Nature, that declared that we are even more closely related to the Swedish Mud Worm. So what.
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Let’s proceed to Genesis, chapter 2. “1 Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. 2 And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. 3 And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.
4 These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens, 5 And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew: for the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground. 6 But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground. 7 And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.”
Notice that “day” in verse 4 stands for a period of time. Notice, also that the system that is in place today of rain, evaporation, rain did not exist as such in the beginning. Man is formed out of the dust of the earth and God, not only creates him but gives him life directly by breathing into him. Compare this to John 20:22-23 when he gave those specific apostles authority while they were on the earth to carry out their mission.
Genesis 2:8-15 gives us the location of the Garden of Eden, which was lost after the fall and the flood. It also gives us the day to day job of the first man. Verses 16 to 17 gives us the only stated restriction upon the man. Verses 18 to 25 give a reveals a very important concept in history, that the power to name was power of dominion over creation. This section finally ends with the creation of woman, the only creature not made out of dirt, and with the state of apparent innocence of the first couple.
Not speaking directly about the history of mankind but speaking directly to what eventually was to happen to mankind is the history given in Isaiah 14:12-14 and in Ezekiel 28:12-15 and chapter 31 as prophecy about contemporary tyrants points out how they are similar to Satan.
At this point it might be helpful to talk a little more about the current view of the majority of modern scientists with regard to evolution. One of the lynchpins of modern dating methods is the method known as Carbon 14 or radio carbon dating. Conventional radio carbon dating does not take into account specific differences between the activity of different carbon reservoirs. Natural variations in the amount of carbon brought on by such things as volcanic activity and variations caused by human interaction with the environment in regard to everything from atom bomb testing to pollution in the industrial age affect dating. Tree rings have been used to date things back as far as 8,000 years, according to scientists but tree rings are affected by the growing conditions around the tree, it’s location, and its interactions with catastrophe. To simplify a very complicated subject, let me just point out that modern manmade objects have given off dates of
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hundreds of millions of years and more importantly, modern objects have been found embedded in coal and other deposits that dated to the millions of years.
At this point a brief description of the scientific method as opposed to “science, falsely so called” (1 Timothy 6:20) might be in order. The scientific method, which true science is, a method or way of finding things out has to do with observation, experimentation, and then being able to reproduce the results of theses experiments independently. As the atheist historian, Will Durant, said, “all theories of origins are pure conjecture”, so called scientific theories about the early earth and universe are more conjecture and guesswork than they are fact. Science can not reveal God by experimentation or observation because God is not the subject of experimentation but of revelation as He chooses to reveal himself as He will.
With regard to evolution let me quote the British Museum of Natural History’s former senior paleontologist Colin Patterson; “Ninetenths of the talk of evolutionists is sheer nonsense, not founded on observation and wholly unsupported by facts. This museum is full of proofs of the utter falsity of their views. In all this great museum there is not a particle of evidence of the transmutation of the species.” (quoted in “Does God Believe in Atheists?, page 114) I will now read some other quotes about evolution.
"Neo-Darwinism has failed as an evolutionary theory that can
explain the origin of species, understood as organisms of
distinctive form and behaviour. In other words, it is not an
adequate theory of evolution.
What it does provide is a partial theory of adaptation, or
microevolution (small- scale adaptive changes in organisms)." Brian
Goodwin,
Professor of Biology, Open University, UK, "Neo-Darwinism has failed
as an evolutionary theory," The Times Higher Education Supplement,
May 19, 1995
"Paleontologists have tried to turn Archaeopteryx into an earth-
bound, feathered dinosaur. But it's not. It is a bird, a perching
bird. And no amount of `paleobabble' is going to change that." Dr.
J. Alan Feduccia,
Prof. Avian Evolution and world authority on birds at the University
of North Carolina. Archaeopteryx: Early Bird Catches a Can of Worms
by V. Morell, Science 259(5096):764–65, 5 February 1993
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"One must conclude that, contrary to the established and current
wisdom, a scenario describing the genesis of life on earth by chance
and natural causes which can be accepted on the basis of fact and
not faith has not yet been written." Hubert P. Yockey,
"A Calculation of the Probability of Spontaneous Biogenesis by
Information Theory," Journal of Theoretical Biology, Vol. 67, p. 398
"The older textbooks on evolution make much of the idea of homology,
pointing out the obvious resemblances between the skeletons of the
limbs of different animals. Thus the 'pentadactyl' [five bone] limb
pattern is found in the arm of a man, the wing of a bird, and
flipper of a whale, and this is held to indicate their common
origin.
Now if these various structures were transmitted by the same
gene couples, varied from time to time by mutations and acted upon
by environmental selection, the theory would make good sense.
Unfortunately this is not the case. Homologous organs are now
known to be produced by totally different gene complexes in the
different species. The concept of homology in terms of similar genes
handed on from a common ancestor has broken down." William Fix,
The Bone Peddlers: Selling Evolution, Macmillan Publishing Co., New
York, 1984, p. 189
"The earliest and most primitive members of every order already have
the basic ordinal characters, and in no case is an approximately
continuous series from one order to another known.
In most cases the break is so sharp and the gap so large that
the origin of the order is speculative and much disputed." George
Gaylord Simpson,
Temp. and Mode in Evolution (NY: Columbia University Press, 1944),
p. 105–106.
"What has closed the doors of the Academy to Mr. Darwin is that the
science of those of his books which have made his chief title to
fame-the 'Origin of Species,' and still more the 'Descent of Man,'
is not science, but a mass of assertions and absolutely gratuitous
hypotheses, often evidently fallacious.
This kind of publication and these theories are a bad example,
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which a body that respects itself cannot encourage." On why the
Zoological Section of the French Institute denied Darwin's
membership in 1872. "Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, D. Appleton
and Co., London, 2:400, footnote, 1911"
"Don't let the cosmologists try to kid you on this one. They have
not got a clue either–despite the fact that they are doing a pretty
good job of convincing themselves and others that this is really not
a problem.
'In the beginning,' they will say, 'there was nothing–no time,
space, matter or energy. Then there was a quantum fluctuation from
which...'
Whoa! Stop right there. You see what I mean? First there is
nothing, then there is something. And the cosmologists try to bridge
the two with a quantum flutter, a tremor of uncertainty that sparks
it all off.
Then they are off and away and before you know it, they have
pulled a hundred billion galaxies out of their quantum hats." Dr.
D. Darling,
"On creating something from nothing," New Scientist, Vol 151, No.
2047, 14 September 1996, p.49
"[The theory of evolution] forms a satisfactory faith on which to
base our interpretation of nature." L. Harrison Matthews,
Introduction to 'Origin of Species: The Preservation of Favored
Races in the Struggle for Life', p. xxii (1977 edition
"Karl Popper warns of a danger: 'A theory, even a scientific theory,
may become an intellectual fashion, a substitute for religion, an
entrenched dogma.'
This has certainly been true of evolutionary theory." Colin
Patterson,
Senior Palaeontologist. British Museum of Natural History, London.
Evolution (1977), p. 150
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"Evolution (as theory) is indeed 'a conglomerate idea consisting of
conflicting hypotheses', and I and my colleagues teach it as such."
Stephen Jay Gould,
Professor of Zoology and Geology, Harvard University, "Darwinism
Defined: The Difference Between Fact and Theory," Discover, January
1987, p65).
"The driving force behind Darwin's theory of origins was blatant
racism, not science. Remember, the evidence that Darwin was a racist
is easily discovered, he did not hide it. It can be seen in the
subtitle selected for his 'The Origin of Species'. The words he
chose to describe his effort were: 'The Preservation of Favored
Races in the Struggle for Life'. That should be enough for anyone.
Darwin was out to prove the superiority of the white race over the
black. That goal was at the core of his stated thesis! He had an
agenda, and that agenda was not scientific."
"The likelihood of the formation of life from inanimate matter is
one to a number with 40,000 noughts after it... It is big enough to
bury Darwin and the whole theory of Evolution.
There was no primeval soup, neither on this planet nor on any
other, and if the beginnings of life were not random, they must
therefore have been the product of purposeful intelligence." Sir
Fred Hoyle,
Respected British physicist and astronomer
"The irony is devastating. The main purpose of Darwinism was to
drive every last trace of an incredible God from biology.
But the theory replaces God with an even more incredible deity—
omnipotent chance." T. Rosazak,
Unfinished Animal (1975), pp. 101-102.
"Not one change of species into another is on record....we cannot
prove that a single species has been changed." Charles Darwin
"We still do not know the mechanics of evolution in spite of the
over-confident claims in some quarters, nor are we likely to make
further progress in this by the classical methods of paleontology or
biology; and we shall certainly not advance matters by jumping up
and down shrilling, `Darwin is god and I, So-and-so, am his
prophet.'" Errol White,
Proceedings of the Linnean Society, London, 177:8 (1966).
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"In any confrontation [with creationists], you should be prepared
to show that evolution is scientific, not that it is correct...One
need not discuss fossils, intermediate forms, or probabilities of
mutation. These are incidental. The question is, what is scientific,
and what is religious.
Therefore, if you must confront the creationists, we suggest you
discuss the nature of science, the kind of knowledge it can provide,
and the kind it cannot provide." American Journal of Scientific
Anthropology,
Article in entitled 'A Recommendation to the Association Concerning
Creation,' Volume 2, 1983, 457-458
"I have always been slightly suspicious of the theory of evolution
because of its ability to account for any property of living beings
(the long neck of the giraffe, for example).
I have therefore tried to see whether biological discoveries
over the last thirty years or so fit in with Darwin's theory. I do
not think that they do.
To my mind, the theory does not stand up at all." H. Lipson,
"A Physicist Looks at Evolution," Physics Bulletin, 31 (1980), p.
138
"We have proffered a collective tacit acceptance of the story of
gradual adaptive change, a story that strengthened and became even
more entrenched as the synthesis took hold.
We paleontologists have said that the history of life supports
that interpretation, all the while really knowing that it does
not." Niles Eldredge,
Chairman and Curator of Invertebrates, American Museum of Natural
History, "Time Frames: The Rethinking of Darwinian Evolution and the
Theory of Punctuated Equilibria," Simon & Schuster: New York NY,
1985, p144)
"Evidence from fossils now points overwhelmingly away from the
classical Darwinism which most Americans learned in high school. The
missing link between man and the apes is merely the most glamorous
of a whole hierarchy of phantom creatures.
In the fossil record, missing links are the rule. The more
scientists have searched for the transitional forms between species,
the more they have been frustrated." Newsweek,
November 3, 1980
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"Darwinism is a creed not only with scientists committed to
document the all-purpose role of natural selection. It is a creed
with masses of people who have at best a vague notion of the
mechanism of evolution as proposed by Darwin, let alone as further
complicated by his successors.
Clearly, the appeal cannot be that of a scientific truth but of
a philosophical belief which is not difficult to identify. Darwinism
is a belief in the meaninglessness of existence." R. Kirk,
"The Rediscovery of Creation," in National Review, (May 27, 1983),
p. 641.
"The fact that a theory [evolution] so vague, so insufficiently
verifiable, and so far from the criteria otherwise applied in 'hard'
science has become a dogma can only be explained on sociological
grounds." Ludwig von Bertalanffy,
Biologist
"A growing number of respectable scientists are defecting from the
evolutionist camp ... moreover, for the most part these 'experts'
have abandoned Darwinism, not on the basis of religious faith or
biblical persuasions, but on scientific grounds, and in some
instances, regretfully.
The evolutionist thesis has become more stringently unthinkable
than ever before." Wolfgang Smith,
Ph.D. physicist and mathematician
"So heated is the debate that one Darwinian says there are times
when he thinks about going into a field with more intellectual
honesty: the used-car business." Sharon Begley,
"Science Contra Darwin," Newsweek, April 8, 1985, p. 80
Since this is not a course on Bible doctrine but on history I will only touch briefly on the fall of man and woman in Genesis 3. There are two very key verses from an historical point of view. The first if verse 15 and the second is verse 24. Satan’s attempt to counterfeit the prophecy of the virgin birth of the messiah in verse 15 is at the root of virtually all of the earth’s religions in a prideful and vain attempt to thwart the last part of the verse.
Speaking to Satan, the pre-incarnate Jesus Christ, the living Word, and God, says:
“And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.”
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First, it must be noted that originally, according to Bienkowski and Millard’s “Dictionary of the Ancient Near East”, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000, the goddess, Ishtar, who plays an extremely important role in history as a manifestation of Satan himself, was portrayed as a male deity in Venus, as the morning star, and , as the evening star, a goddess. This devil went on to become the biblical Ashtoreth. Finally, thousands of years later, in the Luciferian Madame Blavatsky’s “The Secret Doctrine” she/he/it is called “Lucifer, as Christ, the bright and morning Star;” (page 540, Volume 2).
The mother and child motif of ancient religion after the flood can not be dismissed if we are to understand history as it is tied to the Bible. Here, from Alexander Hislop’s “The Two Babylons” (chapter 2, section 2) we have this eye opening quote:
“The Babylonians, in their popular religion, supremely worshipped a Goddess Mother and a Son, who was represented in pictures and in images as an infant or child in his mother's arms. From Babylon, this worship of the Mother and the Child spread to the ends of the earth. In Egypt, the Mother and the Child were worshipped under the names of Isis and Osiris. In India, even to this day, as Isi and Iswara; in Asia, as Cybele and Deoius; in Pagan Rome, as Fortuna and Jupiter-puer, or Jupiter, the boy; in Greece, as Ceres, the Great Mother, with the babe at her breast, or as Irene, the goddess of Peace, with the boy Plutus in her arms; and even in Thibet, in China, and Japan, the Jesuit missionaries were astronished to find the counterpart of Madonna and her child as devoutly worshipped as in Papal Rome itself; Shing Moo, the Holy Mother in China, being represented with a child in her arms, and a glory around her, exactly as if a Roman Catholic artist had been employed to set her up.”
Verse 24, which has to do with man being permanently kicked out of Eden, brings to mind the fact that mankind has futilely spent a great deal of time trying to get back to Eden. Much of history has to do with attempting to make the earth a paradise, for one person or a group of people, and slaughtering countless millions in that effort.
Discussion.
