A river out of Eden

“And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads. The name of the first is Pison: that is it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold; And the gold of that land is good: there is bdellium and the onyx stone. And the name of the second river is Gihon: the same is it that compasseth the whole land of Ethiopia. And the name of the third river is Hiddekel: that is it which goeth toward the east of Assyria. And the fourth river is Euphrates. And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.”

The first thing to notice about this section is that it was written at the time that it occurred. The writer refers to places that he knows about and assumes that all his readers know about as well. We would have to assume that the original document was written before the Flood, otherwise how would people trying to reconstruct these things after flood know what to write. Apart from Adam and his family, everyone was dead.

But, some might say, how come there are two rivers that we know about today? There are two possible ways to explain this: the first is that Noah and his family, who came out of the ark in the same region that the Tigris and Euphrates rivers have their sources. Any person who lives in one of the newer countries like the US or Australia know that settlers will name rivers and towns after places in their homeland. Noah and his family would have wanted to name these rivers after some that they remembered from before the Flood. The other possibility is that The names of the older rivers were written in cuneiform script and different people read the same symbols in different ways so that scribes after the Flood read the original cuneiform and interpreted the names in their own language. However, the first explanation fits the story best.

In spite of Higher Criticism, a person reading these documents would have to accept that they were originally written to be believes as written. This happened long before the crazy Humpty Dumpty world of “Words means whatever I want them to mean”.

1 Cor 14: 33 reminds us that God is not the author of confusion but of peace. If God is not the author of confusion then He would not give us language for communication and then use word to confuse u.

If you would like to find out more about God's grace at the beginning you might like to visit http://www.lulu.com/content/799024 and buy a copy of my book “The Scarlet Thread”.

(The view expressed in this blog are my own and should not be taken as inspired in any way.)

High and lifted up.

“And out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.”

The amazing thing about this verse is that it talks about factories. Each tree contains many factories and each factory is called a leaf. These leaves capture energy from the sun, using chlorophyl as a catalyst and carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to create the basic energy, carbohydrates, that every living thing needs. Carbon dioxide constitutes only about .04% of the gases in the atmosphere, while oxygen constitutes about 20% of the gases in the atmosphere. Isn’t it incredible that the LORD God is able to use only .04% of the gases in the atmosphere to produce all the energy that every living creature needs to live? Our job is to be impressed with the greatness of our God and His amazing ability to supply everything that we need with so little effort on His part. We live in a day when people talk about the importance in having great faith but we just need faith the size of a mustard seed (very small, see Matt 13: 31). It is the size of our God that matters not the size of our faith or ability.

The other interesting things about this verse is that it introduces the concept of choice into the human story. God gave us the ability to choose as a sign of His grace (see The Scarlet Thread for a full justification of this). If we choose to enjoy God’s love then our enjoyment of that love is significantly greater than if we are forced to enjoy God’s love. However, as God has perfect integrity, He gives us whatever we choose, with the overriding codicil that He takes His time in giving us the consequences of any choice not to enjoy His love in case we want to change our minds. This is another fact that gives evidence to the majesty and greatness of our God.

This is now the time for every Christian to devote their time to enjoying the greatness of our God and to put every thought of our own effort or ability to one side. Christianity is always small people doing small things in a small way, in conjunction with Almighty God doing almighty things in His almighty way. All we need is to be like Isaiah and have a vision of “the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up...” (Is 6: 1)

If you would like to find out more about God's grace at the beginning you might like to visit http://www.lulu.com/content/799024 and buy a copy of my book “The Scarlet Thread”.

(The view expressed in this blog are my own and should not be taken as inspired in any way.)

A garden in Eden

“And the LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed.”

In His wisdom and grace the LORD God gave us a complete record of the process of creation. He left nothing out and handed the record to Adam so that he could understand what God had done. However, when God finished the entire process we read that He rested. The LORD God rested because His creation was very good and there was nothing left to do. The LORD God was not tired in any way from the work of creation but He knew that, one day, some of His creatures would be tired so He set aside a day of rest. This is still not the end of the story. Why did God go through this whole process? He planted a garden eastward in Eden and put the man there. God had a plan and a purpose and this involved supplying the man He had formed with everything that He needed and giving him a purpose as well. This sets the pattern for God relationship with every person on earth. Within the context of the curse, which came later, the Lord God always supplies His people with everything they need, more than enough, and gives each one of us a purpose to live for as well. Our job is just to make sure that we do all that we can to appreciate the majesty and greatness of our God and lift up His Name in everything that we do.

If you would like to find out more about God's grace at the beginning you might like to visit http://www.lulu.com/content/799024 and buy a copy of my book “The Scarlet Thread”.

(The view expressed in this blog are my own and should not be taken as inspired in any way.)

Recycling

“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. But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground. 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.”

At this stage of the earth’s history there was no rain. The Lord watered the plants with a mist and all the animals ate plants at that stage. It is interesting to note that that there is a bear in North America, the brown bear, that has an carnivorous intestinal tract but it is herbivorous. There is evidence in nature to support all the facts that are stated in the Bible if you are willing to observe and interpret with an open mind. The Lord also formed man out of the dust of the earth. It is interesting to note that when a person dies they eventually return to the dust. Another fact that we can enjoy is the fact that the Lord God invented recycling. One of the fist facts that students learn in elementary science is the fact that matter is neither created or destroyed, it just changes form. The theory of relativity expands this to show that matter can be transformed in energy under special circumstances. God, in His wisdom, established this pattern so that every living thing will eventually return to dust so that all the matter can be recycled indefinitely.

If you would like to find out more about God's grace at the beginning you might like to visit http://www.lulu.com/content/799024 and buy a copy of my book “The Scarlet Thread”.

(The view expressed in this blog are my own and should not be taken as inspired in any way.)

The first colophon

“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,”

This verse gives us the first of the colophons in the book of Genesis. Archaeologists have discovered cuneiform tablets with this kind of colophon at the end to show who was the author. There are a series of these colophons in the book of Genesis but they don’t occur anywhere else in the Bible. This is because the original material for the book of Genesis came from Mesopotamia and these tablets were written according to their methods. The source material for the end of Genesis came from Joseph but he was trained in the style of the Egyptians so he didn’t use a cuneiform colophon. When Moses left Egypt, he had the original documents and collected them as an introduction to the other information that he received from the Lord.

This first document was written by the hand of the Lord, just as the tablets of the Ten Commandments were. There is no such thing as two different accounts of creation, there is God’s account, which He gave to Adam and then there is Adam’s account that begins with his introduction to the scene on the sixth day. If we are willing to see these documents as high quality historical documents then we will save ourselves a lot of confusion and even unbelief.

Isn’t it better to accept God’s account that to believe in Darwin’s attempts to prove that his race was superior to all the other races.

If you would like to find out more about God's grace at the beginning you might like to visit http://www.lulu.com/content/799024 and buy a copy of my book “The Scarlet Thread”.

(The view expressed in this blog are my own and should not be taken as inspired in any way.)

Finished and rest

“Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.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. And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.”

This verse connects three aspects of God’s work permanently: very good, finished and rest. God doesn’t ever do anything that is less than very good. He doesn’t consider anything until it is finished and when the work is finished then there is rest. God doesn’t rest because He is tired, He rests because He is finished and there is nothing left to do. To imagine that the Gap Theory has any truth and then see that God rests because He has finished a very good work is to imagine that God is content with something that is less than very good.

There is another issue that every Christian should immediately consider when they read the word “finished” and that is the Lord’s cry from the cross: “When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, he said, It is finished: and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost.” (John 19: 30) and the words from His prayer “I have glorified thee on the earth: I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do.” (John 17: 4) If we compare spiritual things with spiritual (1 Cor 2: 13) things then we can rejoice that the work that Christ finished on the cross is very good and leads to eternal rest, which is equivalent to everlasting life.

If you would like to find out more about God's grace at the beginning you might like to visit http://www.lulu.com/content/799024 and buy a copy of my book “The Scarlet Thread”.

(The view expressed in this blog are my own and should not be taken as inspired in any way.)

It is very good

“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.”

When God finished the work of creation, he observed everything that He had made and saw that it was very good. Along the way, God looked at the things that He had made and step by step they were good but when the whole of creation was complete God sees that everything is very good. This establishes an important principle for the whole of the Bible, whenever God does things they are always very good. God never does anything that is less than very good. This is the main reason why God sent His only begotten Son to be the Saviour of the world. The Lord Jesus Christ was the only One Who could actually do a very good job. No one else was in His league but now that He has purchased our salvation with His own blood we have the kind of salvation that is very good. This means that no one can improve on the salvation that was bought by the blood of the Lamb of God. Anyone who wants to say that this salvation is less than sufficient is saying that God does things that are less than very good. However, God only does things that are very good and, If you would like to find out more about God's grace at the beginning you might like to visit http://www.lulu.com/content/799024 and buy a copy of my book “The Scarlet Thread”.

(The view expressed in this blog are my own and should not be taken as inspired in any way.)