Posts Tagged ‘theology’

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

 

 

What do the Golan Heights, Hebron and the Gaza Strip have in common…and why should we care?

Posted: August 22, 2012 in Christian, Israel, My view of the world
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With the volatile situation in the Middle East all over the news lately, I have recently become interested in the historical links between the conquest of Canaan and the surrounding area today and so I decided to do a little research.

We learn in the bible about the covenants the Lord has made with His firstborn children, the children of Israel. We also read in several places in the scriptures, references to the Jews and the conquest of Canaan, the promised land, where the Israelites fell short of doing what God commanded them to do whenever they were sent to attack and conquer the land of Canaan. Let us take a quick look at these areas and see what we can glean from the price the Jews paid, and continue to pay, for the lack of completing what The Lord commanded them to do…to kill and conquer and to not take hostages in the battles for these areas.

First, let’s look at the region of Bashan of the bible. A major city in the region of Bashan is Golan. We know the area today as the Golan Heights with Golan still as the major city of this hill country. Og of the Amorites was one the major king of the area during Joshua’s time and as you recall, Joshua didn’t utterly wipe out all the Amorites, these highland mountaineers are described as powerful people of great stature, “like the height of the cedars”1. In fact, Joshua got duped by the Gibeonites, a branch of the Amorites, into signing a treaty with them, against advice, and later The Lord ended up punishing His people for not honoring this ill-fated treaty when Saul killed a bunch of the Gibeonites and King David had to decide which punishment the Israelites would receive in 2 Samuel chapter 21. It may have been a horrible treaty, but this is an example that shows The Lord always honors His treaties and covenants.

Next, let’s look at Hebron2.. During the time of Joshua and the Canaan conquests, Hebron was under the control of three sons of Anak who was considered a descendant of the nephilim (Numbers 13:33) and also referred to as Rephaite3 (Rephaim) Anak is also linked to the name Anax in Greek mythology which was a king of giants and considered about 18 feet tall.4 Today, Hebron is the largest city in The West Bank.

OK, how about Gaza…Gaza is located along the western coast of Canaan (Israel) bordering Egypt and after Joshua and the tribe of Judah failed to completely eliminate all the Anakim (nephilim) from here, as well as Gath and Ashdod, and the rest of the the area as they were directed (as we read about in Joshua 11:22), it became a major city of the Philistines and remained a major thorn in the side of the Jews all through the book of Judges. Gaza happened to have been the city where Samson pulled the temple down around him in Judges 16:21.

A couple more…

Gath was the hometown of Goliath and his four brothers and David took care of those guys.

Ashdod is another coastal city near Gaza and was the city of Philistia where the Ark of the Covenant was taken and it kept pulling down the statue of Dagon, night after night…too bad they didn’t have video cameras…it would have been a fantastic thing to watch…

What do all these areas have in common? They are all locations within Canaan where Joshua was ordered by the Lord to utterly destroy the kingdoms within the land of Canaan. I used to have problems with apparent cruelty of Our Lord to kill not only the soldiers, but the women and children of these nations within the borders of Canaan until I studied about the nephilim and I realized the purpose behind the orders (destroy all signs of the corruption of the human genome). I truly feel because they didn’t fully carry out the orders of The Lord’s commandment and utterly destroy their enemies that lived in the above strongholds four thousand years ago. The Israelites are discovering that the dweller of the areas are once again a major thorn in the side of God’s people. I believe there is more to this than just the failure to eradicate all traces of the nephilim. We have found from the bible that demons are territorial and the failure to wipe out the races of the nephilim within their borders also meant that whatever demons (demons would be a study in its own right) Satan also planted in those areas are most likely still there doing their bidding for their master, just as they would have in the Bronze Age when Joshua fell short of fully obeying The Lord. The results we read about in the papers on a daily basis.

What is that you say? You don’t know who the nephilim are? Look here: http://www.nwcreation.net/nephilim.html

God Bless,

Jim

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

2 http://www.burlingtonnews.net/hebron.html

3http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rephaite

4http://www.theoi.com/Gigante/GiganteAnaxAsterios.html

A historical snapshot of Satan from Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28

Posted: August 22, 2012 in Christian
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I decided to share some thoughts I have gleaned from reading Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28 and give a quick rundown on a few things, using a macro view, that I see in these two complimentary chapters of these fascinating books.

My overall assumption from reading Isaiah chapter 14 is the Lord starts with a broad stroke and then narrows it a bit in focus. It seems He starts with Israel in the end-time, the last days, looking back upon the author of their oppression and trouble who has been defeated. A personage that The Lord refers to as the king of Babylon. He then narrows his scope and we find He is taking about Satan, giving an account of his mistreatment of, not only Israel, not only the people, but of all the creation. The Lord then continues with an account of Lucifer’s fall because of his pride and arrogance against the one that created him and then The Lord spells out, in no uncertain terms what he has in mind for Satan and The Lord’s contempt for him comes through rather plainly as he spells out his eternal sentence for his iniquity. The narrative continues once again about the creation and the burden that has been lifted from it.

What about Ezekiel 28? In this passage I see The Lord referring to Satan again as a king, this time king of Tyre, another earthly kingdom. The Lord starts this time with the beginnings of Satan and the esteem he seemed to have held in The Lord’s eyes. He continues about the pride and fall of Satan because of Lucifer’s vanity and how The Lord it seems, paraded the fallen Lucifer before the other ranking angels, cherubim, I assume as a poster child of his sin of vanity so that they could gaze upon him with derision and then cast him down upon the earth so all his equals could look on him in horror.

Before I continue, I am going to say that Act 17:11 is in full effect here, for what is see when I combine these two passages is purely conjecture on my part and could simply be the harvest of an active imagination.

From what I read from these two passages, I see this scenario; Satan is referred to as a king of two earthly kingdoms in these passages. He is held in contempt and paraded before kings and those that knew him. That tells me that there is a version of a ruling hierarchy in heaven. We already know that because of the fact that The Lord is the ruler of all things and those that are subjugated to him and Christ, including these cherubim kings…and Satan was one of these cherub kings. In my thinking, if there are kings, there are kingdoms. OK, what was Satan’s kingdom? The theme in Isaiah 14 seems to include a repeated reference to the freedom the earth also feels with the removal of Satan in verses 7, 8 and 25. My conjecture is Satan was given the earth as his kingdom to oversee. Satan’s pride and vanity caused him to attempt to elevate himself as God’s equal, an act that caused him to be cast out of heaven and into the creation he was ruling over which he had already corrupted and because of his corruption, a creation he caused to die by the introduction of entropy1

We also learn that Satan was cast down, along with a third of the angels into this creation and after he introduced iniquity into it it has been groaning from the burden of Satan until it’s release as the above verses indicate. Satan also apparently has limited powers for we can infer elsewhere in the bible that the tree of life is guarded by a cherub to prevent Satan from partaking of it and gaining immortality. I assume this because it wouldn’t take a super-angel like a cherub to guard it from Adam…however it would take an equal of Satan to guard it from him.

What about the idea of kings in the heavenly realm? I infer from this that there are other universes being watched over and ruled by other cherubim kings that probably are buzzing happily along, unaware of the bitter stench and ooze of the corruption caused by Satan that is emanating from this one.

God Bless

Jim Bussell

1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_%28information_theory%29

Marginalizing Truth…Marginalizing God

Posted: March 25, 2012 in Christian
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We humans seem to have a great gift of marginalizing what we don’t like or what makes us uncomfortable. In fact we seem to take marginalizing truth and right and wrong and moral law to operatic levels. Once we successfully marginalize what is truth and what is right and wrong and the teachings and tenets of Our Lord, then it is a simple step to shrink the influence The Lord has on a society and consequentially, it’s people. That is where I see the US now…and I’m being generous…We as a society have taken the simplicity of the concept of truth; what is truth and what are lies are no longer a black and white concept, rather our society has settled on many truths, your truths and my truths, and by tearing down the definitive dividing line between truth and fiction, right and wrong, good or evil, we allow the concepts to be manipulated any way that is comfortable for us….and we as Christians have allowed it to happen right under our noses. At one time our country stood on truth and right and wrong and the rule of law. Now our society seems to be unraveling at the seams and we can point to the time period when we allowed our representatives to outlaw prayer and God and moral law in our public institutions and schools, as the turning point of our country toward corruption.1

I personally feel my country has sunk too far into the stinking, festering cesspool of multiculturalism and humanism. Why do I feel that way? Just look around. It would take serious prayer of the children of The Lord to turn it around…and most Christians I know are apathetic at best…this why I see the leaders of the world attempting to go to war against God (as we saw in Psalm 2) for I believe ‘The Lie’ that they will believe that we read about in Revelation is Satan convincing the leaders of the world that he isn’t defeated and that they have a chance to overthrow God’s restraints if they side with him.

I may be harsh on myself and on the state of Christianity in America, but folks, we are at war, and the adversary is pulling no punches. The votes of the comfortably, apathetic Christian majority for the last forty years has gotten us in the mess that we are in here in America…my assessment may be harsh, but I feel sometimes candy-coating the truth at times like these does more harm than good.

The Lord allowed me to wreck my life several times and I am grateful, for those life lessons I learned lets me see Psalm 15 in a different light. I was asked the question; “Where do you find truth?” The psalmist tells us we find it within our hearts according to Psalm 15:2 A Psalm of David. LORD, who may abide in Your tabernacle? Who may dwell in Your holy hill? He who walks uprightly, And works righteousness, And speaks the truth in his heart; (NKJV).

Individuals that hold truth as a precious commodity are the glue that holds our societies together, but unfortunately those individuals are almost non-existent within the hall of our government building now. That is the tragedy.

God Bless, Jim

1http://www.schoolprayerinamerica.info/

 

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