BIBLICAL HISTORY: IMPACT OF WORLDWIDE FLOOD ON NATIONS AND GOD ESTABLISHES HIS NATION – ISRAEL

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If you have not already read Biblical History: Creation of Cosmos to Creation of Nations, can I suggest you do so, it was posted on 13/03/2023. I finished that post with God stepping into history to create the nations by confusing the language at the Tower of Babel. God created many new languages so that people would separate and populate all areas of the world God had created.

The next significant thing that God did was to create His own nation and He did so by selecting one obedient individual, Abraham from whom He would miraculously establish His nation Israel. It was miraculous because Abraham and Sarah could not have produced Isaac naturally. Sarah was 100 years old.

God’s nation, Israel, begins with a promise to one man, Abraham. For over four hundred years the people of Israel in bondage in Egypt rely on that promise to Abraham. God brought them out of Egypt with the greatest series of miracles ever. The EXODUS was the birth of the nation.

God tested Abraham’s obedience to the extreme by asking him to sacrifice his only son Isaac. If you want to be used by God this is the level of obedience needed. We need to trust God without qualification, absolutely.

“And the angel of the Lord called to Abraham a second time from heaven and said, “By myself, I have sworn, declares the Lord, because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will surely bless you, and I will surely multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore. And your offspring shall possess the gate of his enemies, and in your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed, because you have obeyed my voice.” Genesis 22:15

“For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth. It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples, but it is because the Lord loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers,” Deut. 7:6-8

It is obvious from these Scriptures alone that God has more plans for His nation Israel. From Biblical prophecies, we know that Jesus will rule all of the nations of the world from a newly constructed Jerusalem. It will be situated on the highest mountain in the world after God rearranges the earth and mountains during the time He pours out His wrath a second time prior to Jesus’ return to earth.

Back to the History of the world. Eight people came off the ark and it is interesting that they lived long lifetimes as did the pre-flood people. Shem died at the age of 1846 years. He outlived Sarah, Abraham’s wife. It is no wonder that the eight survivors of the Ark were considered gods by the Egyptian people. It was only after Noah’s generation that God reduced the life span to 120 years.

“Then the Lord said, “My Spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh: his days shall be 120 years.” Genesis 6:3

Four times in the Psalms, EGYPT is called by the name of Noah’s youngest son HAM. Semitic designation for EGYPT is MIZRAIM (Ham’s second son). The name MIZRAIM appears 680 times in the Hebrew Bible. CUSH (Ham’s first son) begot NIMROD (mighty hunter). The beginning of his kingdom (BABYLON) was BABEL on the plain of SHINAR where the TOWER OF BABEL was built.

Mizraim, Noah’s grandson, founded Egypt around 2100 B.C., a date consistent with both biblical and secular records. Of interest, the Bible also tells us that Javan, Noah’s grandson to Japheth established Greece.

The archaeological evidence does indicate that the eight people that came from the Ark who carried the sum total of all human knowledge, founded civilization, and outlived their descendants were deified in the pagan religions that arose after them.

All Egyptologists are well aware of a group of eight gods, four males and four females known as OGDOAD meaning eight. Note in these pictures on the walls of pyramids, eight people are pictured on the ark which is held up by the Egyptian creator God, Atum.

The OGDOAD are also well known in later Ptolemaic and Roman texts where they play a role in Egyptian cosmological theology concerning the creation of the universe from a watery abyss. These eight gods known as the Ogdoad derived from the Greek meaning eight and are found in what is considered the most ancient evidence in the fifth dynasty pyramid texts.

BENBEN STONES ATOP PYRAMIDS:

Benben stones in Cairo Museum. In the mythology of ancient Egypt, there are several accounts of the creation of the world. One of these is centered on the Egyptian Creator god Atum, and had its origins in the city of Heliopolis. The other in the city of Hermopolis . According to the Heliopolis version of the creation story, the universe was brought into being by Atum. In the beginning, there was nothing but darkness and chaos. It was out of the dark waters that the primordial hill, known as the Benben stone arose, on top of which stood Atum. As the Benben stone rose from the primeval waters, it has been suggested that this word is associated with the verb ‘weben’, which is the Egyptian hieroglyph for ‘to rise’. Also, in the Biblical flood account “And the waters continued to abate until the tops of the mountains were seen.” In both cases, land appears from a state of watery chaos. Desiring companionship, god Atum began the work of creation. In some versions of the myth, he created Shu and Tefnut (Adam and Eve?) who left Atum on the Benben stone and went away to create the rest of the world.

The Benben sacred stone represents the primaeval mound, the first land that appeared from the primaeval ocean, called the Nun. It was upon this land that the eight ‘gods’ (OGDOAD) sprang into being; four males and their wives, headed by the chief god ‘Nu’ which is phonetically similar to Noah.

The pyramids were themselves extensions of the Benben. We know this to be a fact linguistically because the Egyptian word for pyramid is bnbn.t which is the female version of the bnbn sacred stone. 

This explains the size and shape of the pyramids. They were a constant reminder to the Egyptians of the worldwide flood and the rebirth of the world from the deified eight occupants of Noah’s Ark.

Nu is Noah. The names for the three other males are Kek, Heh, and Amun and are the equivalent Egyptian religious names for Ham, Japheth, and Shem. The consorts (wives) are merely the feminine forms of the male names. The names also describe the forces of chaos KEK meaning darkness, HEH meaning unlimited.

Why isn’t this taught in our history classes?

In the next part of Biblical History, we will look at Israel’s, and the world’s history up to the time of the greatest event in all of history.

IS WORLD HISTORY BUILT ON JUBILEE CYCLES?

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When God set up His own nation Israel, He codified as law the pattern of six days and six years of labour and one of rest. It is the reason God created the cosmos in six days and rested on the seventh it was the pattern for man’s working week. The seventh day (Sabbath) was a rest day and the seventh year (Shemitah) was also a rest year. The Jubilee is built upon the Shemitah cycle (7 x 7 = 49), the year following is the Jubilee year.

The Jubilee cycle begins and ends in the 50th year on the 10th day of the 7th month. The 50th year is also the first year of the next Shemitah cycle. The Jubilee Cycle is therefore 49 years.

Can we build a reasonable biblical case for the Jubilee cycles as the prophetic backbone of the Bible? A straightforward summation of early biblical patriarchal lineages, reveals there were 41 generations which also represent 41 Jubilee cycles between Adam and Abraham and 41 from Abraham to Yeshua. Further insight is added when we consider that the book of Revelation associates the New Jerusalem with the number 144 and that the 144th Jubilee begins the 8th Millennium (new heaven and new earth). The soon coming 7th Millennium is Jesus ruling and reigning with the resurrected Saints on this earth for 1000 years.

For more information on Jubilee Cycles can I suggest you download my free Powerpoint presentation – Jubilee Cycles – Provide prophetic milestones in God’s Redemptive Plan on http://www.millennialkingdom.net – Resources.

Out of Jonathan Cahn’s presentation, I have chosen just three of the Jubilee years that demonstrate that God is in control of history and that He established Israel as His nation for His purposes.

1917 Balfour Declaration, (November 2, 1917): Statement of British support for “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people”.

1967 Battle for Jerusalem: Jerusalem was reunified under Israeli rule as a result of the 1967 Six-Day War launched against Israel by the Arab world

2017 On December 6, 2017, President Donald Trump announced what no previous president had officially declared while in office: Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. 

A SHORT TRUE HISTORY OF MANKIND

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Although made in God’s image, mankind performs disgracefully throughout Genesis. In an ill-intentioned plot to be like God, man rebels against God’s authority. Universal decay and death are God’s judgement. Still, mankind becomes so wicked that “every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” (Genesis 6:5), provoking God to flood the whole earth in judgment. You can find just about every evil under the sun in Genesis. The narrative describes with brutal honesty the grotesque horrors of sin.

Despite mankind’s sin, God is gracious in his judgment. He does not instantly strike Adam and Eve dead in the garden but preserves them to populate the earth. He does not completely obliterate humanity in the flood but preserves Noah and his family. Just 200 years after the flood we get mankind building the Tower of Babel. In another judgement, God creates many new languages and therefore nations in order to get people to populate the entire world. God then creates His own nation Israel to be His witness to the world. Its history reveals continual disobedience and judgement.

GOD THEN STEPS INTO HISTORY

Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you had known me, you would have known my Father also.” John 14:6

God sends His own Son, Jesus, first to die for us, to provide a way for mankind to come back into a right relationship with Him. Jesus’ death and resurrection made it possible for our Heavenly Father to send the Holy Spirit to indwell the spirits of those that repent of their sin and give their lives to Jesus as Lord thereby enabling them to live a life in Christ.

JESUS SECOND COMING

We have Jesus’ promise that He will return to right all injustice on this planet which will also fulfill God’s covenant promises He made to Abraham and His nation Israel. God’s plan from the beginning was for mankind to rule and reign on this earth for six thousand years. God has ordained that there will then be a final one thousand years when Jesus will rule and reign (with a rod of iron) with the resurrected Saints. Only then will God destroy this earth with fire then the second resurrection followed by the White Throne judgement and finally a new heaven and new earth where only the righteous will dwell.

To keep the history short I have deliberately left out mention of the spiritual realm where we also have good and evil, angels and demons. Nevertheless, Satan and his demon’s role in our history has of course been diabolical. Jesus acknowledged Satan as God of this fallen world. During Jesus Millennial reign on this earth, Satan is bound in the abyss for most of the thousand years but at the end of the thousand years, he is released and he is still able to raise an army like the sand of the sea.

“And when the thousand years are ended, Satan will be released from his prison and will come out to deceive the nations that are at the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them for battle; their number is like the sand of the sea. And they marched up over the broad plain of the earth and surrounded the camp of the saints and the beloved city, but fire came down from heaven and consumed them, and the devil who had deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur where the beast and the false prophet were, and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever.” Revelation 20:7-10

Despite Jesus and the Saints ruling the nations (with a rod of iron), many will choose to rebel and join Satan’s final battle against God. Many of us like Satan want to be God and not be subject to His commandments/rules.

EXCELLENT NEW COMMENTARY ON GENESIS

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The Tyndale Old Testament Commentary series are designed to be non-technical and easily accessible commentaries on the English text, aimed at the busy pastor or preaching layman. The latest in the series is on GENESIS. This is the foundational book of the Bible so you need to know what it teaches.

The commentary opens with an Introduction to Genesis where the author highlights that this book is the book of beginnings and relates to the beginning of the world, of sin, of God’s promise of redemption, and of the nation of Israel, whom God chose as His people.

reliable and accessible

Importantly, Steinmann adopts the traditional literal ‘solar day’ view advocated by Young Earth Creationists.

Each pericope or section of text is treated with three separate sections: (1) Context, (2) Comment, and (3) Meaning. The Context section discusses the historical and literary context of the particular section of text. The Comment section provides more detailed commentary on the text itself. Though all verses in the text are covered, it is not strictly a verse-by-verse commentary. Given that this commentary is pitched at pastors and laymen rather than other scholars, there is no detailed Hebrew exegesis, though the author does make occasional reference to key Hebrew words and terms, along with clear explanations. Finally, the Meaning section offers a brief summary and meaning of the text, along with any theological notions and implications.

Numerous ‘Additional Notes’ that discuss a particular topic, idea, or interpretation in more detail also appear throughout the commentary. Topics include ‘The seven days of creation, ‘Knowledge of the name Yahweh in Genesis’, and ‘The ages of the persons in the genealogies of Genesis 5 and 11’.

Steinmann points to the notion of ‘God’s Chosen People’ as a prominent theme throughout the book of Genesis. God chooses his people by favouring a particular line of descendants. God chooses Seth over Cain, Shem over his brothers, Jacob (renamed Israel) over Esau. Because you have put your trust in Jesus as your Saviour and Lord, God chooses you and has at least one important task for you to do.

‘Justification by faith’ is another important theme and is clearly demonstrated in the life of Abraham. Abraham believed in the gracious promise of God that through him and his seed all the nations of the earth would be blessed. Despite Abraham not understanding how this prophecy would be fulfilled through the incarnation and death of Christ, he still trusts in God’s grace and promises: “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness” (Romans 4:3). Indeed, Hebrews 11 also indicates that Abel, Enoch, and Noah were also righteous through faith.

Steinmann’s commentary is an order of magnitude better than Derek Kidner’s previous volume on Genesis in this series. It contains clear and generally accurate historical and theological explanations of the book of Genesis. This is the purpose and goal of the Tyndale Old Testament Commentary series. Although the author often makes reference to Hebrew words and other ancient Near Eastern cognates, you will not find technical discussions of Hebrew grammar and linguistics. What you will find is a concise, reliable commentary on the text of Genesis that is also accessible to the busy pastor and preaching layman.

The book is thoroughly reviewed by Andrew S. Kulikovsky in the latest edition of Journal of Creation http://www.creation.com. The above is extracted from that review.

IS GENESIS HISTORY?

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THE FIRST STEP ON A JOURNEY TOWARD UNDERSTANDING THE HISTORY OF THE EARTH ACCORDING TO GENESIS

Featuring over a dozen scientists and scholars, Is Genesis History? answers some of the most common questions about the creation of the world as we know it. How does the world intersect with the history recorded in Genesis? From rock layers to fossils, from lions to stars, from the Bible to artifacts, this fascinating documentary will change the way you see the world. Join Dr. Del Tackett, creator of The Truth Project, as he guides you through the evidence for two competing views—one compelling truth.

Prayerfully consider supporting the ministry of RevelationMedia with a donation today, and they will send you the Is Genesis History? on DVD. Explore bonus footage including a special interview with Dr. Del Tackett on the DVD and share with your friends and family the powerful scientific evidence that supports a Biblical worldview with Is Genesis History? today.

Below is a helpful video. It is an introduction to Biblical Archaeology.

DVD: Is Genesis History?

SEEING THE BIBLE AS GOD’S VIEW OF HISTORY

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I do hope this account of the first five books of the Bible by RABBI ERIC TOKAJER will bring them alive for you as it did me.

The Bible is a history of the world from beginning to end, and that history is told over and over, one page at a time. Every word written adds more colour to the picture, and every phrase written provides more depth and contrast to help us see the fullness of the story as it is retold. To lay the foundation for what I am saying, let’s simply look at the first words of each of the five books of the Torah.

The book of Genesis begins with the words, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen. 1:1, TLV). So, Genesis begins by introducing us to GOD.

The book of Exodus begins with the words, “Now these are the names of the sons of Israel who came into Egypt with Jacob, every man with his family” (Ex. 1:1). ” Exodus begins with the word “and,” connecting us to the book of Genesis, which introduced us to GOD. Exodus introduces us to the children of Israel, who are in bondage because they went to Egypt.

The book of Leviticus begins again with the word “and.” “And the LORD called Moses and spoke to him from the tent of meeting, saying ..” (Lev. 1:1, MEV). The “and” connects Leviticus to Exodus and Genesis as the picture continues to be painted. In Leviticus, GOD calls Moses from inside of the Tent of Meeting while Moses is outside of the Tent of Meeting. We are introduced to a GOD who is inviting His people into His home.

At this point, we have been introduced to GOD. We have been introduced to His people in bondage in Egypt. We have been introduced to GOD calling to man.

The book of Numbers also begins with “and.” “And the LORD spoke to Moses in the wilderness of Sinai in the Tent of Meeting on the first day of the second month in the second year after they went out from the land of Egypt, saying” (Num. 1:1). The “and” in Numbers connects the book of Numbers to the book of Leviticus. In Leviticus, we are introduced to Moses as one who has entered GOD’s home.

So, in Genesis, we are introduced to GOD. In Exodus, we are introduce to GOD’s people in trouble/bondage. In Leviticus, we are introduced to a GOD who invites His people into His home. In Numbers, we are introduced to a GOD who has welcomed His people into His home.

The Book of Deuteronomy begins with the words, “These are the words which Moses spoke to all Israel on this side of the Jordan in the wilderness, in the plain opposite Suph, between Paran and Tophel and laban and Hazeroth and Dizahab” (Deut. 1:1). Deuteronomy, like Genesis, does not begin with the word “and” because it is the conclusion of the story being told in the Torah. What story, you may ask? The same story told with every word and every stroke of paint: the Gospel.

Genesis tells us about GOD. Exodus tells us we are in bondage. Leviticus tells us GOD wants us to dwell with Him. Numbers tell us how we dwell with Him. Deuteronomy tells us to tell others about Genesis through Numbers so they can participate in Deuteronomy themselves. You see, the Bible/Torah isn’t a bunch of commandments and a burden too heavy to carry.

The Bible/Torah is our history, yours and mine. Each word is a stroke of colour that introduces us over and over to GOD. And when we view it from the right perspective, we are impacted by the beauty and intricacy of the Good News in every word and phrase that GOD loves us so much that He wants to spend eternity with us.