Posts Tagged ‘Hebrew’

Everyone Did Right In Their Own Eyes…maybe we need to look in a mirror

Posted: January 31, 2020 in Christian, My view of the world
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I was raised in a denomination that believes in replacement theology and also believe because the Israeli religious authority were responsible for the crucifixion of Christ that Israel blew their chance at the brass ring and that the church is the “new Israel”. They also believe the old testament was a great collection of stories that really have no bearing on our salvation and because of these factors, Israel didn’t hold a lot of significance to me for other than being the genetic ancestors of Christ. Therefore some of the more ‘boring’ books of the Old Testament (which there were many back then) just got glossed over to fulfill the ‘reading the scripture’ requirement that my mother enforced on me while growing up.

In January 15, 2010, the Lord saved me from myself and I started on a marvelous journey of discovery that has taken me all through the ancient history of God’s people. I quickly discovered that the bible has more than twenty seven important books and that the other forty nine books are much, much more than a bunch of filler, as I was taught as a child. Now that I have realized that the significant part of the word of God starts in Genesis and ends in Revelation and that every fact entered into the scripture by the Holy Spirit has been placed there for our learning, if we are willing to pay attention to detail. It also reveals to us throughout its marvelous pages that it is a continuous web that is woven into a cohesive structure, designed to stand up to the forces throughout the ages that have been, and still are, trying to destroy the veracity of the word of our Lord. Once those facts sunk into my head, then those ‘boring’ books became exponentially less boring and I began pouring through these wonderfully educational and eye-opening books.

Judges was one of those ‘boring’ books to me growing up. Other than the story of Sampson and Delilah, I knew almost nothing about the book. Now that I have actually sat down and read the book with my new understanding, it seems quite interesting and lays out a four hundred year decline from an appreciative, worshipful people into a nation that continually turns its back on The Lord. One of the curiosities of Judges is the opening; everyone did what was right in their own eyes. The author (which many commentators believe is Samuel) used this phrase to open a couple of different chapters to explain the attitude of the Israelites throughout this four hundred year period of the history of the Lord’s chosen. This is not a pleasant comment, rather it’s an drear judgement stating that they had turned away from following the statutes laid out in Deuteronomy 12:8 when the Lord warned them of doing just this before they crossed the Jordan to possess the land. While this topic I’m writing isn’t a synopsis of the book of Judges, the opening statement written during this dismal period of Israel’s history and contained within the pages of Judges, should be a warning to us all. So, what does it mean and why should we care?

Judges 17:6 In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes. (NKJV)

This is a scathing indictment against Israel’s attitude. The Lord chose the Jews to be his people. He brought them out of Egypt using supernatural powers that scared the wits out of the leader of the world. He guided them throughout their wanderings in the Midian wilderness and protected them with a special cloud that was unmistakable in it’s unnaturalness during the day and an astral object of fire at night, preparing them to come together as a nation so they could defeat the Satanic kingdoms in Canaan, and what happens…they lose faith in the Lord at the last minute, even though they have all this extraterrestrial stuff going on around them. He punishes them for ‘doing right in their own eyes’ by causing all the unfaithful adults to die in the wilderness, while protecting them with more of the supernatural stuff for thirty eight more years and do they learn their lesson? No. Within a couple of generations, they revert back to ‘doing right in their own eyes’ again.

In first Samuel, the Lord is explaining the Israelites rejection of the Him as their king, to Samuel.

I Samuel 8:7-20 And the LORD said to Samuel, “Heed the voice of the people in all that they say to you; for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected Me, that I should not reign over them. “According to all the works which they have done since the day that I brought them up out of Egypt, even to this day—with which they have forsaken Me and served other gods—so they are doing to you also. “Now therefore, heed their voice. However, you shall solemnly forewarn them, and show them the behavior of the king who will reign over them.” So Samuel told all the words of the LORD to the people who asked him for a king. And he said, “This will be the behavior of the king who will reign over you: He will take your sons and appoint them for his own chariots and to be his horsemen, and some will run before his chariots. “He will appoint captains over his thousands and captains over his fifties, will set some to plow his ground and reap his harvest, and some to make his weapons of war and equipment for his chariots. “He will take your daughters to be perfumers, cooks, and bakers. “And he will take the best of your fields, your vineyards, and your olive groves, and give them to his servants. “He will take a tenth of your grain and your vintage, and give it to his officers and servants. “And he will take your male servants, your female servants, your finest young men, and your donkeys, and put them to his work. “He will take a tenth of your sheep. And you will be his servants. “And you will cry out in that day because of your king whom you have chosen for yourselves, and the LORD will not hear you in that day.” Nevertheless the people refused to obey the voice of Samuel; and they said, “No, but we will have a king over us, “that we also may be like all the nations, and that our king may judge us and go out before us and fight our battles.” (NKJV)

The book of Judges is a dismal account of the continued breakdown of faith and the patterned slide into a self-reliance spiral of failure that can be explained in a nutshell in the above scripture when the Lord tells Samuel they have totally rejected Him. This passage is sort of a companion to the book of Judges and helps enlighten us to the meaning behind the indicting phrase: “everyone did what was right in their own eyes”

The Lord ended up granting their wish for an earthly king and we find that Moses in Deuteronomy explained about the roles of a future king and the rules he was expected to follow. God knew they wouldn’t stay with it, but gave them the statutes to follow anyway. One of the statutes was a commandment for each King to write out his own copy of the Torah. It sounds like a time-consuming process, and I’m sure it was, but it was designed to burn the Mosaic Law into the brain of the King by the time he had finished this massive project. One look at the history of the kings of Israel and Judah tells us that very few bothered to give more than a cursory nod to the statutes laid out by the Lord. The priests had all had intimate knowledge of the Torah, but that doesn’t mean every Jew did. Handwritten copies of the law would have been rare and expensive and also required the ability to be able to read. The practice of having the king write their own copy of the Pentateuch was designed to make sure the King intimately knew the law and would deny him an excuse when he would ultimately break it. The Lord may have put it into place for the same reason as the rest of the Mosaic Law, to expose the weak and sinful nature of the Jews which were a small insignificant nation of people chosen to represent the Lord, hand-picked from a sinful, broken human race.

Just because the Lord allows us to do things, doesn’t mean that is what he would have us do. The Lord wanted the Jews to accept him as their ruler, their King to rule from the Mercy Seat in the Holy of Holies, but as He told Samuel, they rejected him. In fact, the whole history of the Jews is a history fraught with rejection and disobedience spattered with small periods of time of faithfulness and trust and love. The book of Judges as well as the books of the prophets are written records of failure to follow the Lord, time after time. We have a compressed history of the Israelite nation to look back on and shake our heads in dismay as we read of their apparent lack of faith in their deliverer, savior, guide and father, but we need to be conscious of the time periods we are dealing with. We are looking at a history of thousands of years this record has recorded. By perspective, we have just a little over two hundred years under our belts and look how far the United States has slipped from a country founded on freedom of religion and principles based on the bible and faith in our Lord to one that wholly rejects God and anything associated with Christ, Christianity or support of Israel in it’s short history. Comparatively, Israel is the shining example of faith and redemption and loyalty, because overall, they were faithful for much longer at a time before sliding into self righteousness.

The bigger problem though, is that it is simply a reflective attitude of all of us humans. People have to make a concerted effort to rely on the Lord and not their own inflated and contorted views of their own abilities to manage their lives and the lives of others around them. Unfortunately we as a modern people do no better than the Jews of the time of the judges and we have their failed examples to learn from and to fall back on, or to use the words of George Santayana, “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it”

God Bless, Jim
updated 11-28-20

What’s Up Ezekiel?…Is God Really Done With Israel?

Posted: November 22, 2019 in Christian
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Israel has been one the dominating and driving forces behind world politics for several decades now and political questions regarding the future of this seemingly tiny, insignificant nation seem to be at the center of many of the world’s problems today. The question regarding Israel’s future is also a sticky subject that helps create divisions within the body of Christ as many churches deny Israel has a prophetic future, which, in my opinion, denies the integrity of the scriptures.

That being said, if we could all try to becomes Bereans (Acts 17:11) and scripturally verify the opinions of some of our church leaders while allowing the text to speak to us as we study the scriptures for ourselves to see what the Holy Spirit has to say, we will find that the bible develops and carries a few major themes from cover to cover. The primary theme, I feel, is the coming of the Messiah, His death and resurrection on our behalf and His future as the final world leader. Another major theme that the Holy Spirit writes about from Genesis to Revelation is Israel, it’s beginning, it’s history and its future. I could pull scriptures from Genesis through Revelation to prove the continuity of the woven web of the scriptures, however, I believe I can take a few chapter from one book of the Old Testament, written six hundred years before Christ1, and use these chapter to answer the questions that deals with an event that, in part, is yet to happen! Isn’t God’s word wonderful, that it is structured to allow us to do this? The book I am referring to is the book of the prophet Ezekiel.

Following is a quick synopsis of this fascinating book.

Ezekiel was a prophet of God that was born into a priesthood lineage in Judea during the reign of Jeconiah (also known as Jehoiachin). Ezekiel lived most of his adult life in exile in Babylon and became a prophet after his famous encounter with God riding the ‘wheel within a wheel’ (Ezekiel 1:16 & also chapter 10) chariot being guided by four living creatures, which most likely were Cherubim.

For a person like me that has always found math and the sciences fascinating, Ezekiel has always been one of those rare gems of literature that stands out. From the first chapter he throws these strange descriptions at you of his encounters with God that you try to get your mind around. I picture his descriptions of the conveyances of the Glory of God to the best of his ability, from the perspective of someone living 2600 years ago, as being similar to him trying to give a description of a flashy ’51 Mercury, chopped and bobbed with immaculate paint and replete with chrome and spinners and side pipes, while traveling with some escorts circling in front and behind on fast shiny motorcycles (I can most definitely see God appreciating a fine, ’51 Merc). This first chapter sets the stage for the flavor and style of the rest of the book.

So what does Ezekiel say about Israel? The first several chapter are dedicated to warning the unfaithful children of God that they are getting ready to be hauled to the woodshed and punished by being sent into exile into Babylon. Chapter 9, verses 3-7 paint a pretty clear picture of the anger of God toward his chosen people: ¶ And the glory of the God of Israel was gone up from the cherub, whereupon he was, to the threshold of the house. And he called to the man clothed with linen, which [had] the writer’s inkhorn by his side; And the LORD said unto him, Go through the midst of the city, through the midst of Jerusalem, and set a mark upon the foreheads of the men that sigh and that cry for all the abominations that be done in the midst thereof. And to the others he said in mine hearing, Go ye after him through the city, and smite: let not your eye spare, neither have ye pity: Slay utterly old [and] young, both maids, and little children, and women: but come not near any man upon whom [is] the mark; and begin at my sanctuary. Then they began at the ancient men which [were] before the house. And he said unto them, Defile the house, and fill the courts with the slain: go ye forth. And they went forth, and slew in the city. (KJV) Chapter 10 gives us a vision by Ezekiel where God packs up and leaves the Temple because he considered it defiled. (This is one of many places throughout the scriptures where you can almost picture the Lord, shaking his head and mumbling, “Aye, yi, yi, what am I going to do with these kids!”)

Can you imagine what a faithful prophet, such as Ezekiel, seeing these vision that God is presenting to him; seeing the abominations of his people basically thumbing their noses at the Father? Can you imagine how he must have felt when he saw God order an angel to mark the faithful and order the other angels following him to slaughter every man, woman and child who didn’t have the mark of faithfulness to the Lord? Can we begin to understand what was running through Ezekiel’s mind when he saw the Glory of the Lord departing his Sanctuary in the Holy Temple at Jerusalem? I can’t, not really, but I think the preceding chapters of this vision that tell of the children of Israel worshiping idols and profaning and defiling the Temple, answers the question of why they were blinded.

The next several chapters of the book deal with judgment on Israel and on different nations and eventually to the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians during the twelfth year of exile (Ezekiel 33:21). At this point Ezekiel does something strange. He takes you from sixth century, B.C. and suddenly flings you into the future. Ezekiel 34 shows God examining those who are shepherding the children of Israel and pronouncing judgment on them. I believe these shepherds are idioms of the host nations of the Jews throughout history and God’s displeasure with them, until verse 22 where he talks about gathering his sheep together under his protection and speaks about how they will be safe with David as their prince. This is one of many places in the bible to make reference to the House of David being in their land in the end times, or as the question puts it, in the future.

The next few chapters of this wonderful book build upon the children of the Lord being once again in their land and receiving the blessing of the Lord, all the while hearing the rumbling of the nation’s gearing up against them. Chapter 38 tells us about the nations preparing and assembling themselves to go to war against Israel and about God talking to them and reminding them of a curious promise he made to them long ago2. Ezekiel 38:14-17 tells us how God is reminding the leaders that he set them up for this attack on his people, an attack designed to wipe the aggressors out once and for all: Therefore, son of man, prophesy and say unto Gog, Thus saith the Lord GOD; In that day when my people of Israel dwelleth safely, shalt thou not know [it]? And thou shalt come from thy place out of the north parts, thou, and many people with thee, all of them riding upon horses, a great company, and a mighty army: And thou shalt come up against my people of Israel, as a cloud to cover the land; it shall be in the latter days, and I will bring thee against my land, that the heathen may know me, when I shall be sanctified in thee, O Gog, before their eyes. Thus saith the Lord GOD; [Art] thou he of whom I have spoken in old time by my servants the prophets of Israel, which prophesied in those days [many] years that I would bring thee against them? (KJV). Chapter 39 starts out with something even stranger. Verse 1 & 2 are telling these aggressors that God is controlling the pace of the battle and is in charge of the events as they unfold. It reminds me of the same situation in Jerusalem six hundred years later where Christ set the pace and controlled the events leading up to his death. (Ezekiel 39: 1,2) “And you, son of man, prophesy against Gog, and say, ‘Thus says the Lord GOD: “Behold, I am against you, O Gog, the prince of Rosh, Meshech, and Tubal; “and I will turn you around and lead you on, bringing you up from the far north, and bring you against the mountains of Israel (NKJV). Pretty cool, huh.

This odd chapter continues with after battle descriptions that would seem familiar to DOD analysts, because it seems to describe a detailed after action report of a nuclear conflict. Verse 21 of chapter 39 changes gears again and gives us Gentiles a brief synopsis of the history and reasons for Israel’s punishment and their eventual forgiveness in the end. Verse 24 also seems to answer why they were blinded. (Ezekiel 39:24) “According to their uncleanness and according to their transgressions I have dealt with them, and hidden My face from them.” (NKJV)

Chapters 40 through 42 give really precise descriptions and measurements of a Temple in Jerusalem that has never existed…yet. Oh, yeah, remember back in chapter 10 where we read about God packing up and leaving the Temple? (Ezekiel 10:18) Then the glory of the LORD departed from the threshold of the temple and stood over the cherubim. (KJV) Chapter 43:2-5 describes to us the return of the Lord to his new Temple in Jerusalem (Ezekiel 43:2-5) And behold, the glory of the God of Israel came from the way of the east. His voice was like the sound of many waters; and the earth shone with His glory. It was like the appearance of the vision which I saw—like the vision which I saw when I came to destroy the city. The visions were like the vision which I saw by the River Chebar; and I fell on my face. And the glory of the LORD came into the temple by way of the gate which faces toward the east. The Spirit lifted me up and brought me into the inner court; and behold, the glory of the LORD filled the temple. (KJV)

I think this is fairly good evidence that God isn’t finished with Israel yet, don’t you?

I really need to add this is only one place in the scriptures that tells us God is not done with Israel.

What about the everlasting land covenant God talks about in several places in the bible?3

What about the book of Joel?

What about Paul stating the Jews are blinded only until the Church is out of here in Romans 11?

There are several more places, but those will do.

Jim

1http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ezekiel

2 This promise to Gog by Ezekiel, is one of those strange example of prophecy where we are given the foretelling today and we are told that we will be reminded of the warning centuries down the road. This is another good example of God being able to see the ‘big picture’ from beginning to the end.

3 I have a friend that tried to convince me that when God said everlasting and forever, relating to these covenants, that God really didn’t mean forever and everlasting. I still don’t understand that one…Acts 17:11 ya’ll.

The Jewish dilemma and the first century church

Posted: August 22, 2012 in Christian
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While studying the book of Hebrews, which was primarily written to the Jews, I started thinking about the problem the Jewish believers faced in the first century and I took a look at the dilemma that the Jewish people found themselves in when confronted with the teachings of the author of the book of Hebrews (which I believe to be Paul). Part of the issue covered by the writer of Hebrews in his instructions and lessons to the Jews about Christianity concerned their predicament about the Old Covenant and also about the Temple that was still the centerpiece of Jewish worship that was still prominent in Jerusalem when the book of Hebrews was written about 68 AD.

I believe part of the Jewish quandary with what was being taught to them by the Hebrew writer was that all Jews were raised and taught and instructed from a child that the Temple was the Holy Place of their Lord. They would have known about the Messiah and were anticipating him but most likely most of them had no conception that the Messiah was to totally overturn and upset their whole religious system. Historically the evidence seems to support just the opposite, most Jewish people were expecting a Messiah that would come swooping in and save them from the oppressive hand of the oppressive Roman rulers that had dominion over these proud Jewish people. This attitude reflects and shows just how far the Jewish leadership had veered from the actual meaning and intention of the word of God in the Torah that they had before them about the coming Messiah.

To the Jews that heard the teaching of the Hebrew writer, the concept of taking and turning their backs on a part of life that they had grown up with, a religious system that was the linchpin around which their lives revolved, a religion that had been hammered into them so deeply it was an ingrained part of their life and was a daily, weekly and seasonally practiced and sometimes a legally required ritual would be difficult for any devout Jew to accept. If what these followers of Christ were saying and teaching was correct, the Jews were expected to believe that the covenant that God had handed down through Moses and that was exemplified by the beautiful temple standing in Jerusalem was no longer in effect and was being replaced by a new covenant that had no actual temple as a place to worship. Additionally the fact that their respected teachers and leaders, the Scribes and Pharisees, were disparaging these rabble-rousing Christians and constantly throwing stumbling blocks and sowing doubt and confusion wherever they could about this cult of heretics among the regular populace, while persecuting anyone that started professing belief in the chief heretic called Jesus Christ, had to cause a lot of anxiety among the believing Jews. All of these things would create a situation that would be akin to selling an ice box to an Eskimo and would require some extraordinary salesmen. We find that God had such super salesmen such as Paul, Barnabas, Titus, Philemon, Peter, James and Jude, as well as others…and even then it was a tough sell to the Jews as we read in these epistles.

To accept and believe in the Christ and this new movement called The Way, was possibly a guarantee of being looked upon with derision and possibly ostracized by your community leaders while the threat of persecution or death would be looming above the believers like the sword of Damocles. We need to remember that first century Christians met in homes and private areas, partially to try and escape prosecution because they feared for their lives. To a degree, it may not have mattered that the Torah from beginning to the end was a giant road-map full of prophecies and guide posts pointing toward Christ the Messiah. Or that the Messiah had been among them and had been executed upon that cruel tree by their leaders, because knowledge to all this information relied on access. While most of the population of the world was illiterate, I believe Judea would have had a much smaller percentage of illiteracy. However, even if a large percentage of the populace may have been literate, copies of the Torah were expensive and therefore, few and far between, so the people would rely on the Rabbis and leaders of the local Synagogues for their information and inspiration and interpretation of the scriptures. In today’s world we have a tendency to hold our Pastors and Ministers in high esteem…be they right or be they wrong (why do you think there are so many blasted denominations) why should the first century Jews be any different? On top of all this we need to remember it would have been common knowledge that all of the original disciples of Christ were martyred, tortured and killed except for John the beloved, by the Jewish leadership. No wonder first century Jews had a difficult time keeping the faith. What’s our excuse?

God Bless, Jim

(10-9-19)

The Way https://www.blueletterbible.org/nkjv/act/9/2/s_1027002

Hebrew, the language of Adam

Posted: August 22, 2012 in Christian
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Have you ever thought about what language God used to speak to Adam and Eve? How about when the Trinity speak amongst themselves, what language do they use? Have you wondered what language that Adam and Eve spoke between themselves, or about what language Satan used to speak to Eve and what language Adam and Eve taught their children?

If you listen to scientists and archaeologist, you would learn that they probably grunted, snapped, spit, and growled out unintelligible sounds while beating the ground with sticks and dragging their knuckles as the walked…not the same picture we read about in the scriptures, is it? I wonder which is correct…God’s view or mankind’s view of our past…I think I’ll go with God’s view.

We read in Genesis chapter 11 that all the earth spoke the same tongue until after the flood where we learn that the grandson of Ham, a chap named Nimrod, really developed some great ideas and went forth conquering and building cites and before you knew it, he had built the first world empire, apparently centered, in the land of Shinar1 (later known as Babylonia…for reasons we will quickly discover). Nimrod had some outlandish delusions of grandeur and also in Genesis chapter 11 we find that he and his followers decided to build a tower to heaven…not only to build a tower, but the greatest and loftiest tower ever constructed with the purpose to basically spread the word that Nimrod, and not The Lord, is the greatest (makes you wonder who Nimrod’s hero was…it certainly wasn’t The Lord). He and his followers sought to elevate themselves to a higher and greater level than the Creator (it certainly sounds like Satan was behind this and it also sounds like what is going on today, doesn’t it?). This demonstrated even back then that human nature is perpetually self-elevating since Satan appeared on the scene, hawking his snake oil and influence upon humankind and sin was produced as a result…anyway…later in Genesis 11 we find that they built the Tower of Babel which is the root of the word Babylonia and babel also is a word meaning confusion.

The bible tells us God came down and visited Babel and that God caused Nimrods people to all start speaking unintelligible tongues to each other, therefore stopping Nimrod’s plan in his tracks. If you study the text carefully you will discover that the people that were affected by this were primarily the descendants of Ham (Nimrod’s father, Cush was the son of Ham and the grandson of Noah). Genesis 11:9 implies to me that those that were in this area were scattered and suddenly they could not only not understand each other, but by default, they also wouldn’t be able to understand the language of their relatives in other areas and those only one generation older, the other sons of Noah; Shem and Japath.

Fast forward a few hundred years and we find The Lord choosing Abram as the root of a family and later a nation that the Lord creates as His children, a nation he called after the God-given name of one of Abram’s descendants, Jacob, which God called Israel (at least when he was being good…). Abram’s ancestor was Shem and he came from an area, that I believe, wasn’t affected by the dispersion of language…in other words, I believe that the language of Abram was the language of Noah and the language of Adam…Hebrew2.

Why do I think this? There are indicators, one of which is Hebrew is one of the more precise languages ever known. What else?

Hebrew is one of the only languages known that have numerical values ascribed to the letters. This allows fast, easy and accurate copies of the text to be made…if the numerical value of the page being copied and the numerical value of the page where the text is copied to match, then it assures accuracy.

Ancient Hebrew was the base language of the only language system where the letter not only created an arbitrary sound that speaker and listener agree to, but the shape of the letter also looks like the object that is the base meaning behind the letter. Therefore it is one of the easiest languages to learn.

Hebrew is the language The Lord chose as the language of His people…do you think they spoke Hebrew just by chance, when we learn that there is nothing in the bible by chance? I don’t think so.

What about Greek, the language of the New Covenant, which also is very precise, which also has numerical values attached to the letters and both these factors afford a precision which helps eradicates ambiguities of the text. Personally, I haven’t wanted to take the time to research the root of Greek, but because exhibits many of the same qualities as Hebrew, I strongly suspect as we dig deeper, we will find God’s hand was right there creating this language that is also used to convey His precious and very coolly important word.

God Bless, Jim

P.S after I had written most of my theory, I discovered it is old hat to some, for I stumbled across this neat website that says basically the same thing I thought of…burst my bubble will ya…

http://www.jewishmag.com/58mag/hebrew/hebrew.htm

1 Genesis 10:8-12

2 There is a form of Hebrew called Ugaritic that has been discovered in some very ancient writings in an area of what we know of as Canaan. In itself, it offers some additional insights to biblical Hebrew, but there are those that attempt to use it to discredit the bible. Ugaritic and Hebrew are similar languages that are derived from a common root, just as Spanish and Italian are similar languages because they are both derivatives of a common root, Latin.

The Nephilim, Lessons from Enoch and Lessons from Noah and the Flood

Posted: August 22, 2012 in Christian
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I know I probably can’t do this justice, but I decided to tackle some subject matter that highly interest me and the patterns that they seem to represent. This subject covers the time between the creation and the Flood of Noah, and deals with some controversial beings called the Nephilim. To those that have no idea what Nephilim are…here’s a link to start with (there are many, many more references that could be cited, but maybe this link will help you start your own in-depth investigation into this eerie subject) http://www.nwcreation.net/nephilim.html

I like patterns. I look for patterns to assist me with understanding and remembering thoughts, items and concepts whether at work or at home. Therefore, I see patterns within the scriptures that I believe were intentionally woven into the fabric of the Holy Word to allow us to tie events and concepts together for our edification, our remembrance and our worship. With that in mind, I wish to begin this topic with some patterns I see represented in the bible. In my mind, I feel that the Nephilim represent Satan and sin, and that Enoch represents the saved children of God and Noah represents the remnant being saved from the judgment of an evil, unrepentant world. So, let’s see if I can tie these thoughts and patterns together.

To start at the beginning of the scriptures, the Holy Spirit tells us in Romans that Adam was a model, or a type for Jesus. Romans 5:14 Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those who had not sinned according to the likeness of the transgression of Adam, who is a type of Him who was to come. (NKJV)

I remember when I first read this I thought, “hold on, how in the world is Adam, who fell, like Christ?”. I owe the clarification of this comment to Chuck Missler who explained it in one of the 40,000 recordings he has made (OK, maybe not 40,000, but he has made a lot of fascinating instructional and inspirational recordings…). He explained it this way; Adam and Eve lived a guileless, perfect existence in a perfect environment, but Eve was deceived by Satan and because of this deception she chooses to defy God. Adam, knowing he would suffer along with her, (God told them they would die) made the conscious decision to stay with her, therefore taking on her sin. This caused their existence to radically change and the curse of death was heaped upon them, as well as the environment in which they lived. Christ chose to become human and to be born in our cursed existence and take upon himself our sin of death, to provide a pathway for us and creation to throw off the curse of death and re-establish the perfect world again in the end, thus reversing the curse that began with Adam and Eve. When explained this way, the connection between Adam and Christ makes perfect sense.

OK, so we know that the scriptures are full of patterns and types for us to look for and digest, so we can understand the meanings of them and apply the meaning to our lives. Let’s look at a few that I feel tie together the Nephilim, Enoch and the Flood.

1st Pattern…The Nephilim. I learned in history class about Greek and Roman gods. It seemed each and every one had superhuman strengths, they were huge imposing creatures that struck fear in the hearts of mere mortals, similar to the superheroes that we read about in comic books or watch on the silver screen. When I was a kid I never would have imagined that the basis of these legends had their root in the history of mankind and was recorded in the Word of God. Genesis, Deuteronomy, Numbers, Joshua, Samuel, Chronicles and Ezekiel1 most have references to these aberrant humans that were the result of the union of fallen angels2 and human females. It is very easy to infer from looking at the Hebrew meaning of the passages that the genetic code of all the offspring and their descendants would have been altered, corrupting the purity (or perfection) of the DNA of the children of the Lord (which would eventually become the Israelites) if they had been allowed to intermingle. I feel this was an early attempt by the original adversary, Satan, to corrupt the DNA code of man and prevent the future birth of the perfect human, Christ. For this reason, the only way to accurately insure that corruption of the line didn’t happen would have been to reformat the Earth, so to speak…hence, Noah.

2nd Pattern…While all this attempt to corrupt the human genomes by Satan though the Nephilim was taking place around the globe, there was a seventh generation descendant of Adam named Enoch that we are told in Genesis 5:22 and again in verse 24 walked with God for three hundred years after the birth of his son, Methuselah at the age of sixty-five. There is a Jewish tradition that Enoch was born on the 6th of Sivan3 which is the Jewish Feast of Weeks, or as we know it, the Day of Pentecost and we are told in Genesis 5:24 that three hundred sixty-five years later the Lord took him, or translated him, and according to Jewish tradition, he was translated also on his birthday (what a present!). The parallel between Enoch and the Church jumps right out at me…both were ‘born’ on Pentecost, Enoch was born amid a world of decay and corruption but found favor with God and followed his commandments and so subsequently God snatched Enoch from the sin and corruption of the world before he destroyed it. We are told in I Thessalonians 14:16 and 17 that the Church will be caught up to be with the Lord, just like Enoch was.

3rd Pattern…The days of Noah were dim days indeed for the Earth. Satan had, successfully it seemed, corrupted the line of man with the Nephilim so the birth of a pure Lord born of the line of David wouldn’t be able to take place. Genesis 6 speaks of this tale of woe where starting with verse two the Holy Spirit tells us that Sons of God (‘ĕlôhı̂ym)4 came down to co-mingle and produce offspring with the daughters of man (‘âdâm)4 and the product of those unions were the Nephilim, or ‘giants’ as the modern translations render them. Primarily because of this corruption of the human race, God decided to destroy life on the Earth. However, Genesis 6:8 is a short but very sweet verse to our ears because it simply says but Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord (KJV). Because Noah found favor with the Lord and his gene pool was pure (or perfect), The Lord chose to keep Noah, his family and male and female of all flesh safe from destruction as he wiped the impure seed of Satan’s attempt at destruction of the race of man from the face of the Earth. What are the lessons to be learned from Noah? Noah is a model of the remnant of the Children of Israel as we see in Isaiah 11:11, Jeremiah 23:3, Ezekiel 11:17, Micah 2:12 and Romans 9:27 which will be protected and saved from the judgment of the Earth by fire, just as the Flood was a judgment of the Earth by water.

Looking at the history of mankind before the flood, we see that the patterns there are exemplar to the history of mankind after the flood. Perhaps we should really take a close look at the lessons God has laid out for us and dig deep to find the gems and jewels of information hidden beneath the surface of these first chapters of the Book of Genesis.

Jim Bussell

P.S. While researching this I came across some interesting websites pointing to the Book of Enoch. Apparently it was discovered that the Ethiopians weren’t highly influenced by the Early Church leaders thus their bibles retain some characteristics of some of the early canons before the Early Church Fathers did their editing, resulting in the Book of Enoch being included in their scriptures. Supposedly the passages that Jude quotes about Enoch’s prophecies in Jude 14 are found there implying that he was familiar with the text. Also fragments of the Book of Enoch are included in the Dead Sea Scroll remains and, if we can believe the carbon 14 dating, these copies were ascribed around 200 BC. It seems most scholars believe the Book of Enoch was not written by Enoch himself, but it retains a good enough pedigree, that a healthy biblical library maybe should include one as historical reference. The Book of Enoch was translated from the Ethiopian text in 1906. Here is one interesting website: http://exodus2006.com/ENOCH.HTM

1 Genesis 6, Numbers 13, Deuteronomy 3, Joshua 14 & 15, II Samuel 20 and I Chronicles 20

2 fallen angels = sons of God. All of the earliest writings, as well as the Kaballah refer to sons of God as angels. It wasn’t until the 2nd century AD did a reference to sons of Seth appear in the writings of an early church father, Augustine. To consider the sons of God as righteous men, doesn’t really play in my mind as the scriptures tell us that the offspring of this union were giants, or when you look at Strong’s definition (H5303) they were not only giants, but were tyrants, bullies. You may have some children that are badly behaved, but to have aberrant offspring, there has to be something else in play, other than human to human unions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sons_of_God

3 http://www.khouse.org/articles/1994/101/

4 from Strong’s Concordance courtesy of E-Sword