Clever? That's All Right Then!

Something came up on the Media this week which, I have to admit, had made me feel very apprehensive! It was a case of a female medical student, Lavinia Woodward, of Christchurch College in Oxford, a very middle class cocaine addict, who was spared an immediate jail term by a judge, because having such a conviction recorded on her CV would destroy all her hopes of becoming a cardiac surgeon. The day after reading the article, I posted a message on Facebook saying that as a patient, I would not want her within a mile of the theatre whilst holding a scalpel.

Did she merely receive a parking ticket? No, it was much worse than that. Rather, she was guilty of grievous bodily harm, or GBH. During a disagreement with her boyfriend, a student from Cambridge, she stabbed his leg with a knife, threw a laptop at him, and also a glass, whilst together at a pub. Not that this was the first incident she was involved in. Despite the judge concluding that this was a one-off incident, fellow students at the college accommodation unit has testified of her violent behaviour occurring several times in the past, with one male student becoming frightened of her, and another female student asking the college authorities for a relocation of her residence, which was immediately granted.

Christchurch College, Oxford.

And so her sentencing was postponed, "for further investigation" by the Court, with a high probability that she would be spared jail in order for her to complete her studies and afterwards pursue her career as a cardiac surgeon. Imagine that. A cocaine addict with a scalpel, to whom you entrust your life and hope to come through the procedure with a healthily beating heart and everything else all hunky-dory. All because of her wealthy, middle-class background (her father also attended Oxford) and her brilliant learning abilities, there is a high chance of a reprieve. And that despite the universal opinion, by both Media and public alike, that had she been a shelf-stacker at Tesco's, then she would without doubt be inside already. The same applies if she had been male.  

Among my regular readers who are familiar with my lashing out at our Englishness, I hope this case will drive the nail into the coffin once and for all. It is nothing more than class favouritism, an attitude condemned by the Apostle James in his letter. I find it rather incredulous that despite calling our nation a Christian country, or at least one with a Constitution based on Christian principles, the vast majority holds the Bible as an ancient, obsolete book filled with myths and legends, even if regarded with a degree of respect, but no longer applicable to us on a day-to-day basis, especially in the realm of Science.

The reverence shown to academics and to successful professionals has made me think just where our priorities lie. Is education and career success the be-all-and-end-all of reverence and respect? Let's make a fictional illustration here. A middle class couple raises their son who successfully makes it into university. Then after graduation, and now in the world of work, he starts on the low rung of the ladder as a clerical assistant at a local office, but then rises rapidly into a managerial position, and eventually ends up among the Board of Directors, all within less than a space of twenty years. It can be said that this is Evolution symbolised in a miniature, personal scale. However, not long after leaving university, he marries his sweetheart he had met at college. But within their first decade after their wedding day, their marriage falls apart. Yet despite this, his parents beam with pride with their son's professional achievement, and even boasting about this to their peers, while at the same moment they brush aside the failure of his son's marriage as just one of those things which didn't work out, and therefore considered as barely relevant.

So what is the point of the story? Mainly this: Really, our culture, respected by many British church-goers, has turned God's priority on its head. Where all human accomplishments, including success in the office, will one day be destroyed by God himself. In turn, a healthy marriage has eternal implications, especially among Christian believers. Marriage between man and wife was instituted by God himself at the dawn of history when he married Eve to Adam, and sanctioned it. Unfortunately, now living in a fallen world as a result of Adam's transgression, marriage is something which takes effort to work out, rather like steering a ship through stormy waters, an endeavour, figuratively speaking, taking the efforts of two people. Really, by our experience of being one of a married couple, robustness of marriage is attained by a 100% commitment to each other. That is, for example, for me no longer living for myself, but to live for my wife's best welfare and interests. Because our God is love (1 John 4:8) - I believe in the importance of relationships way above career achievements, and no finer illustration is used in the Bible as comparing the love between husband and wife to that of Jesus Christ and his Church. This is, I believe is the most important lesson which people such as Lavinia Woodward must learn. Unfortunately for her, despite her high intelligence and learning, she is totally lacking in godly wisdom which her future profession will require from her.

Oh yes, the mention of Adam and Eve brings me back to the subject of Divine Creationism, now held to ridicule by all unbelievers, and even diluted to the level of Theistic Evolution by academic Christians. At present, at my daily Bible reading, I'm going through Revelation of St John, the last book in the Bible. At least in three places it is stated specifically that everything we see, hear, touch, taste, and smell are all created specifically by God. The first reference is found in Revelation 3:14 where the Lord addresses the church at Laodicea. The second reference if found in Revelation 10:5-6, when a mighty angel, with one foot on land and the other in the sea, has a private conversation with John, revealing an oath to God who made the heaven and everything in it, the earth and everything on it, and the seas with everything in them. And then, in Revelation 13:6-13, there is the threefold testimony from three angels who literally fly around the skies, apparently fully visible to all mankind. It's the first angel who exhorts the human race to worship him who made the heavens, the earth, the seas, and springs of water. 

I love it when revelations of God's truth often comes in threes. Three Scripture references, the three tiers of Creation - heaven (that is, the Universe), earth (meaning land rather than the whole planet) and the seas. The three angels flying across the sky proclaiming the everlasting Gospel, and then in addition to heaven, it's the earth, seas, and springs of water. The revelation of the number three seems to endorse the source of all life as the one God of three Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

As I see it, these Scriptures speaks volumes! Because such events such as 144,000 Jews called to preach the Gospel to the whole world - chapter 7, the slaughter of the two witnesses and their physical resurrection three days later, in the sight of the entire human population - chapter 11, as well as the rise of the two beasts (these are men of great power and therefore not actual animals) - chapter 13. None of these events had ever occurred so far in history. And so accepting that these future events will occur during the last days of human history just prior to the Second Advent indicates a thorough rejection of the record of Divine Creation worldwide. So much so, that it takes an angel from heaven to declare the truth of it, giving all mankind an opportunity to repent (Greek, metaneo - to change their minds about Creation and the truth of Jesus being the risen Christ and Creator). Such is the grace of God - something Lavinia Woodward needs to learn about, along with every scientist and advocate of Evolution.

Whether because I am a believer of the risen Christ, or whether it's instilled in the mind of every human being, I cannot but help recognise the awesome power of God whenever I see scenes of natural beauty. Deciding on the three favourite beauty spots I have visited both within the United Kingdom and worldwide wasn't easy, as there are plenty of candidates. Within the United Kingdom, I would place - in no significant order: In England, the Dorset Heritage Coast, the Lake District National Park, and Duncansby Stacks on the northern tip of Scotland. Worldwide, again in no significant order, I would place the Grand Canyon, Niagara Falls, and the Great Barrier Reef as top places visited. Other potential candidates would include Mt. Etna in Sicily, where I stood on the rim of its active crater, Blue Mountains National Park near Sydney, and the Red Sea coral reefs at Eilat, Israel. In the UK, other sites of natural beauty which I visited would include Loch Ness in Scotland, and the Rhossili coastline in Wales.

Duncansby Stacks, Scotland.

The Evolutionist loves the Grand Canyon! To him, the cutting through of the Colorado Plateau by the river of the same name has exposed a near perfect evidence of the Geological Column consisting of sedimentary rocks laid one upon another in sequence by water. Never mind that a billion years of sedimentary strata is missing at the Unconformity Zone, where a more recent stratum is resting comfortably on metamorphic and granite bedrock, without showing any evidence of erosion that was meant to have taken place before the rest of the upper strata were laid down - yet the uniformitarian geologist will still use this fascinating natural beauty as proof that the truth of Divine Creation is safely debunked. Rather, whilst I was there in 1995, standing on Tonto Plateau halfway down inside the Canyon, I could not help notice the raised beaches with which the plateau consists, separating the rim of the Inner Gorge from the base of the cliffs defining the Outer Gorge. If these are raised beaches, then how much more powerful must the River have been in ancient times, compared to the under-fit river system we see at present?

Rhossili Beach and Worms Head, Wales.

Tonto Plateau inside Grand Canyon. Raised beaches?

These areas of natural beauty tells of the awesome power of God, as Paul testifies in his letter to the Romans (1:18-20). The Apostle could not be more accurate when he wrote that although creation testify the truth of God, men prefer to push away the truth. This is a crying shame. Because the truth of God is replaced by a knowledge which constitutes to be a lie. Gain a degree, or better still, a doctorate on this kind of knowledge, and he will be highly esteemed by the world. And even if he, or in this case, she, commits a formidable crime to the victim's hurt, the defendant's academic greatness will reprieve any punishment justly due, which would have been bestowed on everyone else with less wealth, brains and learning skills.

Our Eternal Home.

Not long after I became a Christian in 1973, I found my Dad's Bible, a KJV given to him by a Jehovah's Witness back in the 1950s, when I was still a small boy. Up to then I had an interest in General Science subjects, including physics, chemistry and biology. Within the third category was the teaching of the Theory of Evolution, with which as a young teenager, I became fascinated with the Dinosaurs, as I try to imagine a near paradise world of herbivores such as Brontosaurus, Triceratops Iguanodon and others, when suddenly their paradise was shattered by the approach of the carnivorous Tyrannosaurus Rex, the king of all Dinosaurs, sending all the herbivores running for their lives, with the possible exception of Triceratops, with its three huge horns protruding from a shield for a forehead, squared up to the carnivore and pierced its underside. A victory for the herbivore.

This kind of primeval imagination was still with me as one evening in 1973, alone in the house, during a thunderstorm, I was curious on the Bible's version on how it all began. I turned to Genesis chapter one, and I was emotionally moved to read about the six-day creation, the narrative of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden of chapter two, with my tension mounting up as I began to read chapter three.

"No, Adam, don't eat of that tree!" I thought, tensely as if I was watching a movie. Then it happened. First Eve took a bite out of (I assumed) the apple, then Adam himself took a bite as she held it up to him.

"Oh no!" I thought. So that's the origin of sin. Soon after, when God must have killed an animal to provide the couple with clothing made from its skin, they were expelled from the Garden.

There and then, my assumption that we are products of millions of years of an organic process was shattered. Why? Because when I read those chapters, I believed, and more so, I found myself praying. When I began to share my new beliefs, several unbelievers asked me who was Cain's wife. A question at the time I could not answer, which verified their beliefs that the Bible was a book of fairy tales, while their belief in organic evolution was based on facts. But I never ceased believing. Instead, I began to buy books written on this subject, and to reconcile the existence of Dinosaurs with Biblical Creation, and finished up with the idea that early man and Dinosaurs must have co-existed within the same time frame, and both were wiped out during the Noachian Deluge. This idea is regarded as absolutely ridiculous by evolutionists such as Richard Dawkins, but I find nothing amiss with this theory.

You can read more on this, including Cain's wife and the density of the primeval population in one of my earlier blogs:
Adam and Eve Historical? You Must Be Joking!!! Published August 14th, 2011, together with the blog which follows it.

Not much later, I was reading the book of Revelation, and chapters 21 and 22 absolutely stunned me! These chapters describe a city, New Jerusalem, coming out of heaven to settle upon a newly created Earth. The sheer beauty of the city and the pure holiness of it as given in its description, made me feel so unworthy. I was struggling with the idea of entering this city as one of its citizens. Why was this?

Because back then I had a poor idea of the meaning of God's grace. In the English language, we have the acronym that "grace" stands for Gift Received At Christ's Expense. In other words, the righteousness of Christ was imputed the moment I first believed. Absolutely true, my own righteousness could not get me into this beautiful city, for all my deeds were as filthy rags. But the righteousness of Jesus Christ, who lived a life perfectly without sin and his undeserved death on the cross, followed by his resurrection three days later, meant that, as a believer, God sees my life as Christ lived it. That is grace.

But it took me many years after conversion to fully realise it. Mainly due to one of my seniors looking for every shortcomings as a boy, alongside the Roman Catholic teaching that one mortal sin committed meant Hell for all eternity.

But the truth of grace still stands as fact, and it always will.

Reading the Bible, I was able to see that there always have been a steady pattern, each taking a similar but slightly different form. Starting with the Garden of Eden, this was an area of perfection and natural beauty, the paradise of God. Together with our first parents, God himself dwelt in the Garden, even walking in the cool of the day. When the couple sinned, they were expelled from the garden and from the Tree of Life which flourished within it. In the outside world, after the Curse was pronounced, (Genesis 3:14-19) they first noticed that various trees no longer yielded edible fruit. Trees such as Oak, Elm, Ash, Birch, Spruce, Cedar, Pine, along with many others were now yielding seed which were unfit for human consumption (See Genesis 1:29-30). Therefore mankind ever since lived by the sweat of his brow as he prepared and ate bread. In turn, he also watched the spectacular contest as the Tyrannosaurus Rex turn on to the Triceratops, and realised the gravity of the sin they had committed in the Garden, and therefore their own struggle for survival. According to the narration, T.Rex was a vegetarian before the Fall of Man, along with all other predators, they were all herbivores before the Curse (Genesis 1:30) as the plants that they were meant to feed on became unfit to eat after the Curse.

Later, God established the Tabernacle among the children of Israel. Represented by the Ark of the Covenant, situated within the Holy of Holies which was a cubic structure, this was to be the dwelling place of God. As with the Garden of Eden, nobody was allowed near it except the High Priest, and only then once a year, to offer the Atonement for the whole nation.

The Jebusite city of Jerusalem was captured by King David and was made the capital of Israel. His son, Solomon built the First Temple. Thus this original principle carried over from Eden, a dwelling place of God within the midst of the habitation of Man. Jerusalem was a good representation of Eden and a shadow of a more glorious Jerusalem which is still to come. But for it to happen, sin must be dealt with permanently, and so God became incarnate as the Man Jesus Christ to forever atone for all our sins, and to have his righteousness imputed on us who believe. As such we are cleansed from our sins and made fit to dwell in his more glorious city, the New Jerusalem, of which the present capital of Israel is a figure.

The New Jerusalem will be huge - about 1,500 miles (2,430 km) each side. The Scripture gives it as 2,430 km long, wide and high, to form a cube. Whether this was what the writer meant it is still, to me at least, unclear. If true, then if the city was placed at the Northeast of the USA, so that the east wall is aligned with New York City, then we would be able to see the upper side of the wall from the UK, three thousand miles away. If the city is a cube, then this is backed by both Solomon's Temple and the Second Temple, existing at the time Jesus Christ was on earth. The inner sanctuary, known as the Holy of Holies, was cubic in shape. When the Lord Jesus returns to set up his throne of his father David, his throne will be housed within the cubic sanctuary of the Third Temple of Ezekiel 40, which will overlook the city of Jerusalem, wherein it will be built. Again, this will be a figure of Eden restored.

On the other hand, Scripture describes a very high mountain, on which the city will rest (Revelation 21:10). Could the mountain itself be 1,500 miles high? For it is also written that the wall will be 65 metres high. But this could equally mean 65 metres thick. We can't be sure.

On each side there will be three gates, each made of a pearl, all twelve of them, each also with the name of each of the twelve tribes of Israel. Therefore if the city has twelve gates, that means that people will be free to enter and leave the city, as in the case of Jerusalem today. Revelation 21:24-26 says that the nations shall bring their glory and honour into it, with splendour brought in by the kings of these nations. So there is strong indication that there will be a large population of the saved living outside the city, but will have full access to the city every day, as the gates will never be shut during the day, and there will be no night there.

But who are these people living outside, and who will live within it's walls? The city rests on twelve foundations, each having the name of the twelve apostles of Jesus Christ. The Bible also says that the city comes down from heaven as a bride prepared for her husband. (21:2,9). The New testament teaches that the Church is the Bride of Christ (for example: John 3:29, 2 Corinthians 11:2, Ephesians 5:23-33). The twelve foundations bear this out, as the twelve apostles were the founders of the churches after the resurrection of Christ. Therefore its the saved from the Resurrection to the Rapture - the Church Age, who will have their homes within the city walls (See John 14:1).

The city will be 2,430 km square. This gives an area of 5,905,900 square kilometres. Of course, it would be utterly impossible to give any accurate numbers for its population, because only God knows exactly how many there will be. But by using some population statistics, we can give some guesses, but please bear in mind that that's what they are - guesses.

According to the 1997 census, the population in the UK was 243 humans per every square km. This was equal to a square 64x64 metres per person, if everyone was equally distributed. That is over half the length of a football pitch for each person. In an area of 5,905,900 square km, this would support a population of 1,434,890,700 people. Then again, if we multiply this by four, leaving each with a square 32x32 metres per person, the population would reach 5,739,562,800. Then again this is just a rough guess. To round up the number to 5,800,000,000 it looks very small compared to the number of people who ever lived throughout the whole of human history. But taking a look at the population of some of the largest nations in the world (1997), we get this:

China...1,210,000,000
India...980,000,000
USA.....268,000,000
UK......58,000,000

China comes very close to the original conservative population number in the New Jerusalem. But again, if the number looks small, this would endorse what Jesus Christ had once said, that the road to destruction is broad, and there are many walking on it. But the road to life is narrow, and very few will be able to find it (Matthew 7:13-14).

But the fact that the city has twelve gates seem to indicate that there will be many more living on the new Earth outside, but will have full access to the city. These may include all the Old Testament saints, among them a number of antediluvian saints. These include Adam, Abel and Enoch. Seth, the son of Adam, born to replace the murdered Abel, had a son, Enos - who was an evangelist. From him men began to call upon the Lord. (Genesis 4:26). There could have been a remnant of several thousand saved souls before the Flood, failure for others to repent eventually dwindled the number down to eight - Noah and his family. Then there might have been a remnant of Shem's descendants saved, then from Israel, a remnant from each generation (See my last blog, I Have Reserved 7,000..." On top of this, after the end of the Church age, 144,000 Jews will convert a multitude, so great that they cannot be numbered (Revelation 7). Added still to this will be those born during the Kingdom reign of Christ in Jerusalem. A significant number of these will be saved. Hence, throughout eternity, nations living outside will bring their glory and splendour into the city.

Finally, let me define this narrow path. It is not whether it's the right church, denomination or the right religion. The gate to the narrow path is Jesus Christ himself. For there is no other name under Heaven in which we can be saved. Only Christ himself and him crucified. There is no other way.

Now is the time to turn to Jesus Christ for salvation, after being convicted of your sin and your unworthiness of eternal life, having broken the Law of God. If you repent and believe on the Lord, you will eventually have a home within the New Jerusalem.

The Fruit Of The Spirit Is Love...

In this blog, along with those following, I like to look at the well known text, Galatians 5:22, which reads:

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control, against such things there is no law.

I included this verse of Scripture in my last blog, All Things Work Out For Good... published January 3rd, 2012. In this article, let's take a look on the first one love.

It is an interesting that Paul here writes "fruit" in the singular, and not in the plural, as he lists nine virtues here. This brings to my mind an image of an orange. An orange is one fruit, but once the rind is peeled, a number of segments are exposed, in this case, eight. Furthermore, each segment of the orange is complete in itself, each having its own skin, which means that all eight segments can be separated yet each remaining intact and without risk of any damage. But all together within the protection of the rind which covers them, it is one fruit, and to me the orange represent all which the eight segments represent - love.

An Orange cut in half reveals eight segments

First, let us point out that God is Love (1 John 4:8). That is more than saying that God has love. True pure love had always, and will always, exist between the three persons of the Godhead, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The other eight listed virtues are just all different characteristics of this one love. Because God has existed from eternity past in three persons, God is complete in himself. He never needed to be loved by anyone outside the Godhead, neither does he ever feel the need to love anyone. This is quite a contrast to the Allah of the Muslims or the Jehovah of the Watchtower, both being lonely entities in eternity past, before initiating Creation. Instead, the true God is all in all, perfect and complete. But it was his pleasure to share his love with creation, and that was the reason why God created the earth and put mankind on it, to reveal his love for him, for man to share in the love of the Trinity and at the same time, lovingly care for all other life on the planet and to have dominion over it. All of God's creation was perfect, including our first parents, Adam and Eve.

But when sin entered the world through Eve's deception and Adam's disobedience, a separation took place between God and mankind, and mankind has been struggling ever since, including attempting to get right with God by self effort, the basis of all what is called religion.

In my last post, I shared my experience of being terrified of Hell just after Christmas Day. I then examined the source of this fear and discovered that it was caused by God temporarily withdrawing his presence as part of his discipline to me as his son, to partake in his holiness. Not only is God being love, he is the source of all life. Therefore, for life to exist, God has to be present in order for the life to be sustained.

Death is the cessation of life. It is the result when God withdraws his presence entirely. When a saint, or true Christian believer dies, only his body ceases to live, and that is destined for the grave. His soul goes immediately to Heaven to be in the full presence of God. But when the unbelieving sinner dies, his soul is forever separated from the presence of the living God, who is love and perfect holiness. It is this separation and banishment from his presence which,I believe, defines Hell.

But while we are alive, every single person, even the unbeliever, enjoys the presence of God up to a certain degree in his life. Various Scripture teaches this. First, we have John 1:9 saying that the true light which shines in every man was coming into the world. Isaiah 49:6 also says that Christ will be a light to the gentiles. Also Romans 1:19-21 God has made his presence felt and seen through Creation, and verse 21 says that God is in them, that is, the unbelievers (KJV) or they knew God (NIV). In Romans 2:4 Paul writes that the goodness of God is with them, along with patience, riches and forbearance. The conscience is by means of distinguishing right from wrong, it is a guiding light from God and every person has it. But the best known verse is John 3:16 which says that God so loved the world. So every person alive has the presence of God in his life. I believe that alongside conscience and a level of light shone into the person, this also what sustains the heartbeat, the flow of the bloodstream, the digestive system and breathing (most of the time) and the magnificent immune system, protecting the body from disease-bearing foreign bugs. All these indicate the presence of God in the person, sustaining him, loving him, for the purpose of repentance, forgiveness of sins, reconciliation to God, and eternal life, which is the eternal presence of the Life-Giver. Therefore we can say that physical death is the complete withdrawal of God's presence, resulting in the cessation of bodily life.

A friend of mine once said to me that surely God could not have loved the Iraqi dictator, the late Saddam Hussein. I replied by quoting John 3:16, even when it was hard to imagine God loving such a person. But loved him he did, as with Adolf Hitler, Lenin, Joseph Stalin and other notorious dictators. God's grace was available to them during their lives as it is to us now.

And now let us go back to the creation of Adam and Eve. One of God's chief principles of the whole of Creation is for Christ, who himself is God, to have a people for himself, so intimate that these people are likened to a bride. When a person repents and believes in Jesus as Saviour, the presence of God in his life becomes more real, due to the re-birth of the man's spirit, the receiving of eternal life and becoming the home of the indwelling Holy Spirit. The saved person becomes a member of the church, which is the bride of Christ. And I think this is why there is both male and female. Of course, the idea of a couple in the biological sense is procreation, to produce children. But there is a mystical connection between the marriage of a man to a woman and of Jesus Christ and his Church. Therefore, marriage is a kind of figure, the husband
is the figure of Jesus Christ, the wife as his Church, the bride of Christ, a model of which God foresaw from eternity past.

But let me here say that there are many unmarried Christians in the churches, as there have always been. I myself have been an unmarried Christian for nearly 27 years. Paul the Apostle himself was unmarried, a rare occurrence in Jewish life, and yet he wrote a lot about marriage. Therefore does a single person become less of a member of the Bride of Christ than a married man? By no means! A single Christian is every bit a member of the Bride as the married.

But the husband represents Christ. Just as the Lord Jesus was the breadwinner by leading a perfect, sin-free life and so to speak, earned his right to lay down his life to redeem us, so I believe that the man was designed by God with the in-built trait for productivity and to provide for his wife and family. But more than that, a husband should love his wife and be devoted to her in the same way as Christ loves the church and is fully devoted to her. The rise in feminism and the woman's liberation movement was caused by, I believe, the man's lack of showing proper love to his wife. Many men were dominant, others had a way of making their wives feel inferior or subjective to them without receiving the love, devotion and protection they deserved. Here in the UK, it is considered wimpish or lacking masculinity to show emotion, other than the emotion of anger, considered by some as "a true masculine trait". In turn, British newspaper journalists praise the British stoicism and the stiff upper lip as being "proper masculine traits" but unfortunately had the potential in leading to an environment where there was lack of love and affection in the home.

According to the latest statistics, one in three marriages end in divorce here in the UK. Some years ago I watched a TV documentary on the rise of divorces in Britain. One couple was featured in the programme on why this particular middle-aged husband was cooling towards his wife of more than twenty years. After intensive interviewing, she finally admitted that she had been attending night college and studied for a qualification that would launch her into a career which would give her independence. Having been brought up to be the traditional breadwinner, he felt that her prospective independence had killed something in their once robust marriage. To be fair, it would have been worth asking whether he showed love and devotion to her. Or did he spend much of his leisure time in his own pursuits? In addition to this, there was a story carried in the Daily Mail only last week about one husband who was divorcing his wife because she was specific in placing her career above the needs of her husband. Then the female journalist who reported the incident basically called the man an idiot, lacking consideration for his wife's ambition to fulfill her own wishes. I was aghast! When I logged in on the next day to check over the article again in preparation to this blog, the Daily Mail had already deleted it from its website.

I thought I should add here for those who may conclude that I'm against equal rights for women. That is not true. All I'm saying is that both men and women have different roles, neither one superior or inferior to the other. The man, or husband is a figure of the Lord Jesus Christ, who is head of the Church (see Ephesians 5:22-24). Now here is a question: if the Church chooses to exist independently of Jesus Christ, his love or provisions, how would the Lord himself feel?

God had created Eve out of the man Adam, and it was specifically for her to be a helper meet for him. Despite what feminists might say, woman was to be a companion to her husband, to love and be submissive to him (see Ephesians 5:22-33). In turn, he would love her and be fully devoted to her well being. I believe that if husbands in the Western world had taken heed to this sound advice, feminism and "equal rights for women" would never had been thought of, simply because the wife who is secure in her husband's love would not even think otherwise.

Finally, 1 John 4:8 says that God is love.

So let us quote 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 where Paul speaks of the greatness and goodness of love. But here we substituted the word "God" in place of "love" and we came up with this result (from the NIV):

God is patient, God is kind. God does not envy, he does not boast, he is not proud. He is not rude, he is not self-seeking, he is not easily angered, he keeps no record of wrongs. God does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. God always protects, always trusts, always hope, always perseveres.
And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

Adam and Eve - Historical? You MUST be Joking!!!

It was my intention to write about the truth of pre-Abrahamic Scriptures, as this was on my mind for the past week. The idea was stirred in my heart after the Media delivered report after report of the riots which at first broke out in Tottenham, North London, after a man was shot dead by Police. The riots then quickly spread across London, then into various provincial cities such as Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool. Along with the rioting, shops were ransacked and destroyed and merchandise looted.

Then only yesterday I came across this article in the Saturday's Daily Mail newspaper. Written brilliantly by A.N. Wilson, this columnist believes that the basic reason for the decline of our society is based on the breakdown of the family unit which, he writes, was sustained throughout history by a bedrock belief in the truth of religion. He praises Muslims, Hindus and Jews for allowing their faith to bind families together, yet let out a blast particularly at the Church of England for wringing her hands while congregation numbers dwindle. He then lets rip on the academics, particularly on what he calls "the nuttier fringes of the chattering classes" for leading the nation away from belief in God and the Bible's truthfulness. Two people he names: Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, both having written books debunking Divine Creation and the early history of the human race for the theory of Evolution. They present a very convincing argument in the name of Science that we are here as an end result of a long process of organic evolution covering a time span of around 200,000,000 years. At the same time, these two are convinced that religion is a poison to the fabric of society.

Thus faith in the Bible has been severely knocked, particularly in the early chapters of Genesis. If the Bible is likened to a vessel, say a pail or large bowl, to have the truth of the early chapters of Genesis called into question would result in a hole at the bottom which would render the vessel useless for holding water. Likewise, the Bible has been rendered ineffectual as a book for spiritual and moral guidance. It has become a book for fanciful stories and myth, at best these myths provide some hidden truth on how one should behave, but remains totally insufficient in historical and spiritual content. Yet the Bible, particularly the book of Genesis, contains the very essence for a stable, crime free society - the institute of marriage and the family unit: father, mother and children brought up in a godly manner. Yet our academics, as A. Wilson rightly comments, are responsible for our nation's moral and spiritual decline.

So in this article, I will try to show the historical truth of the early chapters of Genesis, much maligned by the academics, and how it applies to us today.

It is in the first chapters of Genesis where the institution of a man and woman bonded together in a marriage covenant had its origins. Marriage between a man and a woman began with that of Adam and Eve, and has been ongoing ever since, even to this day, whether the Bible is believed in or not. If the Bible is just a book of mythical fables, then why does history itself testify the importance of marriage? Even to the extent that the Church of England itself had its beginnings over the dispute between King Henry VIII and Pope Clement VII over the King's wish to divorce his first wife, Queen Catherine of Aragon.

In this article, I wish to spell out the historicity of the early chapters of Genesis, and to do this I need to write two separate blogs, this one and the one to follow, in it I will deal with the Noachian Deluge.

In 1973, when I was young in the faith, a man only a couple of years younger than me approached and asked:
"If Adam and Eve had sons Cain and Abel, who was Cain's wife?"
At that time I was stumped. He was better informed of the narration than I was, simply because as one new to the faith, I only read the story recently. Furthermore, the same question was asked several times by different people in different places.

In the account, we are told that Adam was created from the ground. He must have been created as an adult with full brain powers, for he was able to give names to every animal which passed him by. Each species were a pair, male and female. When Adam realised that he had no mate of his own, he felt incomplete in himself, and God was able to see this. Thus God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep while an operation was performed - exactly the same kind as performed in hospital theatres today where the patient is put under anaesthesia before an operation is carried out. A rib is removed from Adam's body, itself a living thing, and from it God created a woman who is to become Adam's wife and mother of all living.

Adam and Eve, by Michaelangelo, Sistine Chapel in Rome

The supernatural creation of both Adam and Eve as well as a talking snake which tempted them afterward are all easily debunked as a fanciful myth simply because none of these things had ever occurred in our lifetimes. We never experienced any talking animal, let alone a snake! But that does not mean that it couldn't have happened. Why not? Yet the snake has kept on saying the same words for millennia! As we shall see.

The Edenic Lie is closer to reality than we care to believe. The temptation the snake used were twofold, first that God was a jealous liar in declaring that they would die if they ate fruit from a specific tree. Secondly, the snake offered to exalt their status from the one they were already in (the crown and pinnacle of Creation) to one of divinity, with knowledge of what's good and evil, if they would just eat the fruit. In short, eat - and become gods, full of knowledge.

Our quest for education, knowledge and becoming gods are in all of us. It is like this as an individual, a family, group or nation. Hitler and his Nazi Party provides a good example of national superiority. Just as he wanted to bring his Reich into the rest of Europe, including the UK, he also believed in the lie that the Jews were an inferior race to his, and as a result, ushered in the Holocaust, with the needless slaying of six million Jews. It is interesting to realise that Hitler's slaughter of the Jews was the snake's attempt to prevent the Jews in returning to their own land to form the new State of Israel which, in turn, would eventually bring the return of its Messiah and the end of the snake's power.

Just as Adam and Eve disregarded God's commandment to abstain from eating from that particular tree in the belief that they will be exalted, so too the Edenic Lie, as with Hitler, is in all of us. We are more than happy to disregard God and his commandments for the quest of becoming gods ourselves. The theory of evolution, which denies the Biblical record of Creation, is but one proof of man's strong desire for the gradual climb towards divinity.

Therefore, this disregarding of God's commandments for personal exaltation to divinity makes up the threefold nature of sin, what it really is. First, sin is a rejection of God's Holiness. This includes hate, murder, adultery, blasphemy, lying and many other sins. Secondly, sin is a rejection of God's leadership with the desire to lead our lives our own way, independent from God. Idolatry and pleasure-seeking may be classified as this. Thirdly, a rejection of God's provisions where pride in self achievement may play a role in this, along with stealing, dishonesty and greed.

After our first parents fell into sin by eating the fruit and disobeying God's commandments, God made a promise that the woman's seed shall bruise the snake's head, a way of announcing total defeat for the snake. Also the snake shall bruise the seed's feet, which indicate that the battle will not be easy, but will itself involve death of the seed. Further action is also demonstrated with God slaying an innocent animal to clothe the couple. Therefore innocent blood was shed to cover their nakedness, just as the blood of the innocent Lamb was shed to atone for our sins. This was of contrast to the aprons which they made from fig leaves soon after they fell. Aprons made from fig leaves defines Religion, the attempt to reconcile oneself to God by self-effort. When the beast was supernaturally slain and the couple clothed, God totally disregarded the fig leaves. It is worth of note that Adam and Eve did absolutely nothing in gaining their new clothes. God did everything. No one can be saved and be reconciled to God by self effort, not even the smallest made by man. The seed of the woman is, of course, Jesus Christ.

We now see Adam and Eve expelled from the Garden of Eden and Eve becomes the mother of Cain. Then after this, a sibling is born, Abel. We are told that after a period of time (but we are not told how long) both Cain and Abel set up altars. Cain's sacrifice, based on self-effort, was rejected by God. Abel's, based on faith in the Promise, was accepted. In a furious rage, Cain slays his younger brother, whose blood soaks into the ground. Then having received his judgement and punishment from God, we are told that he departed from the Lord, knew his wife and begotten a son, and went eastward to the land of Nod, and there built a city, and called the city after the name of his son, Enoch.

Taking this narration at face value, it's no wonder why skeptics ask, "Who was Cain's wife?" For here we read of only four characters: Adam, Eve, Cain and Abel. Abel was killed, leaving only three people on earth. So we see Cain, after the murder, pleading with God: "...that everyone who finds me will slay me...(Genesis 4:14). Everyone? With just his Mum and Dad sharing the whole land? And how on earth could he build a city by himself. It does not make sense! It is the next chapter which gives some answers, and I'm quite surprised to be asked, "Who was Cain's wife?" if only a little research was needed to solve this problem.

Here we read:
And Adam lived 130 years, and begat a son of his own likeness, after his image; and called his name Seth. Just earlier, the narration tells us that Adam and Eve fathered a son, Seth, to replace Abel, because Cain slew him. (4:25). Therefore we can dismiss the idea that the murder of Abel took place a mere twenty years after Creation. It was more likely to be closer to 130 years after Creation. This was the reason Seth replaced Abel as the father of the Messianic line. Originally, the Messianic line began with Abel, but the snake through Cain tried to have this line cut off before the Messiah arrived to bruise his head. The snake, of course, is the Devil.

So we can conclude here that during the 130 years between Creation and the birth of Seth, many other children were born to Adam and Eve. This would have been the fulfillment of the first command God gave to the innocent, unfallen couple. "Multiply and fill the earth and have dominion over it." (1:28). Not to have children during the next century of their existence would have been totally absurd! We have no idea how many children Adam fathered between Abel and Seth. But let us assume it was thirty. 15 boys and 15 girls. This would give Eve a rest period of over three years between each pregnancy. We assume that along with Cain and Abel, two baby girls were born. This would give Cain a wife straight away. He would have married his own sister, not only acceptable but a necessity in those days. If each of the thirty other children (i.e. 15 couples) had eight offspring each, this would raise the population to 152 people. And that's a very conservative number. If each of the 120 grandchildren of Adam (60 couples) had eight children, the population would have risen to 480 great grandchildren, plus 120 grandchildren, plus 30 children, plus two original parents, would equal 632 people. If each of the descendants of Adam's sons had much more than eight children each, and there is absolutely no reason not to be the case, the population would be much higher. So by the time of Cain's murder of Abel, it might have been possible that the population could have reached into the thousands.

Therefore it all makes sense. At the time of the murder, Cain had reason to be afraid of revenge, even from his own descendants, but more likely from his nephews and great nephews and nieces. As for building a city, this was probably on the banks of the River Euphrates (not the present river of that name, but the antediluvian predecessor). With the help of his relatives, the city might have started as a few houses along the river bank. But over the next thousand years or so, it could have grown into a sizeable city, perhaps like Ninevah, which took three days to explore. The city of Enoch could have been much larger, perhaps the size of Greater London or Los Angeles. After all, it took the last few centuries for London to grow to its present size.

To conclude this article: The narration of the early chapters of Genesis is perfectly historical, and we can see the effects of this to this day. From the dawn of history the institution of marriage between husband and wife and raising children is not only Biblical, but necessary for the survival of civilised society.

Maybe if our academics promote the truthfulness of Scripture instead of spending their lives debunking it as fable folklore, most likely the riots of last week may never had occurred.