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Thursday, April 16, 2020

The Bible a True History Book!


Dennis Edwards
God has given man His revelation of Himself. He gave it first to Adam in the Garden of Eden. Adam passed God’s plan or revelation on to his descendents. Some tried to follow God, others didn’t. But the revelation of God and His plan was successfully passed on to godly men from the time of the Creation until the time of the Flood some 1,650 - 2260  years later.
Before the Flood men lived longer because the conditions on earth were better than they are today. Somehow man was protected from the ultra-violet light of the sun that slowly kills us. Men lived longer. Many of the first men lived 900 years or more. Adam lived 930 years. Methusalah lived 969 years. His name actually means “death sent.” It was in the year of the Flood that Methusalah died and the Flood “sent death” to all mankind. Noah, a godly man who found grace in the sight of the Lord, with his family were the only ones who survived the Flood. 
All the people who had descended from the orginal couple, Adam and Eve, and all the animals and birds died. Only those animals and birds that Noah and his family brought with them in the Arc survived. As a result of the Flood man has found fóssil graveyards of millions of animals buried in sedimentary rock all around the world. Sedimantary means rock laid down by water. The Flood, also remembered in the “myths” of some 240 different cultures around the world, is the best explanation for the geological record we find today.
Mankind has forgotten his beginnings. He has forgotten the Flood that came as a judgment from the hand of God for mankind’s rejection of God’s loving principles. In 1859 Charles Darwin introduced his theory to offer a contrary beginnings story, a story that rejected the ideas of the Bible, the idea of a God of judgment, a God we should fear and obey. Charles proposed that the Creation created itself through a non-directed natural process. He didn’t openly attack Christianity, but offered a non-Biblical explanation for the beginnings of life and the diversity found in nature.
The war against God had started right back in the Garden of Eden when Satan or the Devil deceived Eve into taking of the forbidden fruit. Had God really said that they shouldn’t eat from that tree? Had God really told them the truth? “And when she saw that the fruit was good for food, and pleasant to the eyes, and desireable to make one wise, she took of the fruit and did eat.” And then she gave it unto her husband, a husband that knew better, a husband who had walked with God alone in the garden, had talked with God and had remembered His words. But Adam, even though he knew better, also disobeyed and ate. And their eyes were opened.
The Devil, who had been an achangel named Lucifer, the bearer of the light, had already led a rebellion against God and taken 1/3 of the angels with him. C.S. Lewis tells us that “It was through pride that the devil became the devil. Pride leads to every other vice. It is the complete anti-God state of mind.” God let the Devil test Adam, the fiirst man, but Adam failed the test. God knew he would. But right there at the beginning, just a short time from the creation of the earth, God promised He would send a Redeemer, a seed of the woman who would crush the head of the Serpent.
The prophecy of the promised seed of the woman overcoming evil was used by evil men who declared themselves to be the promised seed. Nimrod the grandson of Ham, Noah’s disobedient son, used it to declare himself the first city dwelling ruler in Mesapotamia. Many after him have also assumed the title and claimed descendency from the gods: Viking kings, Greek and Roman emperors and others before and after them.
The 1,650 - 2260 years of history from before the Flood are all but lost except for the record of the Bible. A secular writing from the early civilization in Babylon has a passage where a king asked to hear some of the stories from the time before the Flood. But the first 8 chapters in the Bible, the pre-Flood period, give us very little information about what that period was like. We do learn that by 1,650 - 2260 years man had been thoroughly corrupted. The Devil and his evil angels had sowed their evil seeds so that the heart of man was fully set on evil continually and violence filled the face of the earth. However, most of the first chapters of Genesis are a mere chronological record of some of the men who were forefathers of Noah. If we add up the dates of the deaths and births of the pre-Flood forefathers we come up with a total of around 1,650 - 2260 years from the creation of Adam until the Flood depending on which Old Testament manuscripts we use, the oldest Hebrew manuscript, or the oldest Greek manuscript. Both manuscripts were used at the time Jesus lived. Most of the quotes from the Old Testament found in Matthew 's Gospel and the book of Acts come from the Greek Old Testament which had been translated from Hebrew around 250 BC. The Greek Old Testament chronolgical record is some 610 years longer than the Hebrew Old Testament chronology. We have some Greek manuscripts from before the time of Christ.. However, the oldest Hebrew manuscript is from about 900 AD. Some scholars believe the Greek dates are more accurate than the Hebrew dates.
If we take the 1st chapter of the Bible as recorded history and not as an allegorical or mythical story, we are left with the impression that the earth was not created 4.5 billion years ago. Rather it seems to be only thousands of years in age. The Christian scholar Gleason Archer in his “A Survey of The Old Testament” published in 1985 said,

“From a superficial reading of Genesis 1, the impression would seem to be that the entire creative process took place in six twenty-four hour days. If this was the true intent of the Hebrew author… This seems to run counter to modern scientific research, which indicates that the planet Earth was created several billion years ago.”

In other words, Archer, a famous Christian educator in the twentieth century, believed that the plain reading of Genesis 1 seemed to be saying that the Creation event took 6 days. However, he was convinced by modern science that it couldn’t really mean what it says. He ended up accepting an alternative interpretation to include the millions of years which Science seemed to have “proven.”
Another famous British scholar of the same period, Professor James Barr, a former professor of Hebrew and the Old Testament at Oxford University wrote in a letter in 1984, “So far as I know, there is no professor of Hebrew or Old Testament at any world-class university who does not believe that the writer(s) of Genesis 1-11 intended to convey to their readers the ideas that:

a.       Creation took place in a series of six days which were the same as the days of 24 hours we now experience.
b.       The figures contained in the Genesis genealogies provide by simple addition a chronology from the beginning of the world up to later stages in the biblical story.
c.       Noah’s flood was understood to be world-wide and extinguis hall human and animal life except for those in the ark.”

Barr did not say he believed in that plain reading of the Scriptures, but rather was saying that it was obvious that the plain reading was meant to be conveyed by the writer(s). Barr did not believe in Genesis as a recent creation, but he understood that was what the Hebrew text was clearly saying.
Many natural phenonomen point to a recent creation rather than one billions of years ago. Charles Darwin is given credit for formulating a “scientific” framework for how the creation created itself. If you actually read his book, he never gets to the origin of the species, but rather deals with how species may have separated or changed over long periods of time.  He uses very little scientific proofs, but rather speculates on hidden “natural” processes. However, in one of his other books, “The Descent of Man,” Darwin theorizes how life could have originated in a small pond. I’ll include here a quote by the articulate atronomer and matematician Fred Hoyle who wrote in his book, “The Intelligent Universe” the following:

“There is not a shred of objective evidence to support the hypothesis that life began in an organic soup here on earth. Indeed, Francis Crick, who shared a Nobel Prize for the discovery of the structure of DNA, is one biophysicist who finds this theory unconvincing. So why do biologists indulge in unsubstantiated fantasies in order to deny what is so patently obvious, that 200,000 amino acid chains, and hence life, did not appear by chance. The answer lies in a theory developed over a century ago, which sought to explain the development of life as an inevitable product of the purely local natural process. It’s author, Charles Darwin, hesitated to challenge the church’s doctrine on the creation, and publicly at least did not trace the implications of his ideas back to their bearing on the origin of life. However, he privately suggested that life itself may have been produced in “some warm little pond,” and to this day his followers have sought to explain the origin of terrestrial life in terms of a process of chemical evolution from the primordial soup. But as we have seen, this theory simply does not fit the facts.”

But the war against God has been going on since the dawn of time. The Devil has been able to deceive mankind into accepting the false theory of evolution as one of sciences “foundation” truths. Modern man has been convinced that the creation created itself and God is merely a left over idea from our ignorant forefathers. However, the fact that we find all over the world fóssils of all sorts of animals, including dinosaurs, buried in sedimentary rock is glowing proof that a world-wide flood once covered the planet and destoyed all living air-breathing animals.
Generally, historians and early scientists followed the Biblical framework as truth until the church system became so corrupt and hypocritical that men sought to throw off its influence. But in doing so they threw away the baby with the bath water. They threw away Christ and the truth of the Bible and accepted the so-called “liberating” theory of evolution as the bases for true science and learning. Evolution has permanated our culture in books, television, movies, etc. As a culture, we have lost the fear of God because of it. We just want to do our own thing.
Our whole modern science is running under a false paradigm that evolution is true and that the creation created itself. Man has exalted himself and there is no fear of God in the land. Evil men and seducers are waxing worse and worse deceiving and being deceived, as Apostle Paul has clearly taught. According to Apostle John, the great business men of the earth are deceiving all nations through their "sorceries," which in the Greek is spelled "farmakeia." It's the root word for where we get our word "pharmacy." In the Greek it signifies spells which can involve the use of drugs. Interesting, isn't it?
Please, pick up your Bible and read it. Read through the book of Genesis. God created everything in 6 days and then rested on the 7th. We get our 7 day week from that truth. The month comes from the time it takes for the moon to orbit around the earth, around 29 ¼ days. The day comes from the time it takes the earth to rotate around axis, around 24 hours. The year comes from the time it takes for the earth to orbit around the sun, some 365 ¼ days. But the week has no such correlation to any orbit or rotation, and yet we have a 7 day week, just as the Bible states.
During the time of the French Revolution and the Russian Revolution, the revolutionaries tried to change the length of the week from 7 days in an attempt to get away from the Biblical truth. The French tried 10 days and the Russians tried 5 or 6 days. But each attempt failed and men have conformed throughout the world to a day of rest over a 7 day period. Our 7 day week is a testimony to the truth of Genesis 1, as are many other scientific proofs.
One of the greatest scientific proofs is the fóssil record because fóssils are formed in sedimentary rock, that is, rock formed by the deposition of sediment by water. The worldwide Flood 4,500 years ago, as the Bible records, is the best explanation for the millions of dead animals buried in sedimentary rock and remaining there as fóssils. Scientists have even recently found the remains of blood cells when they cut open a fossilized dinosaur bone. They put it under a microscope and lo and behold there were blood cells. How those blood cells had remained within the bone for supposedly 63 million years, the scientist couldn’t understand. In fact, the particular scientist who had discovered the blood cells was afriad to announce her discovery because she understood the complication fresh blood cells would make to the evolutionary theory. Blood cells should decompose completely in a lot less than 63 million years, probably only in a few thousand in the best preserving conditions. But here they were red blood cells within the dinosaur bone. 
She no doubt got some help from some of her other atheistic scientists and they decided they needed to release the finding anyway. However, never once did they doubt the evolutionary paradigm. The paradigm is fact. Like the famous Jesuit Priest and paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardim had said,

“Evolution is a general postulate to which all theories, all hypothesis, all systems must henceforth bow and which they must satisfy in order to be thinkable and true. Evolution is a light which illuminates facts, a trajectory which all lines of thought must follow.”

The paradigm is true and cannot be questioned. Yes, they had found red blood cells in the dinosaur bone. Yes, it should have decomposed by now. Conclusion, we don’t know why the blood didn’t decompose over such a long period of time, but now we know it is possible. We just don’t know why or how. Never once were the “millions of years” doubted. Never once did they think that the Creationist scientist could be right and their young earth paradigm might give a more accurate history of the past. Never once did they doubt the 63 million years since the last dinosaurs supposedly died off. Since the discovery of the blood cells, another scientist has discovered soft tissue in a Dinosaur fossil. He published his findings and was rightly dismissed from his position. You can read the case at the following link:https://godreports.com/2017/08/university-settles-lawsuit-with-scientist-fired-after-he-found-soft-tissue-in-dinosaur-bones/
Fossils do not need millions of years to form. Fossils wouldn’t exist if they took millions of years. Fossils are formed because the animal is buried quickly in a sedimentary desposit which prevents natural decay from taking place and scavengers from eating the dead animal or bird or fish or insect. With the help of the right type of chemicals the fossiling process can take place relatively quick. Fossilized hats and tools have been found in old mineshafts after just a period of under 100 years.
The fossils are a testimony of a worldwide flood, a judgment God made on wicked man. But modern man doesn’t believe in a God of judgment, only a God of love. But another judgment has been foretold. Mankind is racing towards it because of his rejection of the truth of God’s revelation found in the Bible. Mankind prefers to believe the false evoltionary principles that only nature exists and that the creation created itself. As a results we are headed for some pretty difficult days ahead.
The Bible predicts that a Devil man will arise in the last days of man’s rule during the present despensation. The Beast or Antichrist will come in peacefully and deceive the world with his words so that all the world will be amazed at his abilities and powers. If we are understanding the scriptures properly, it seems he makes a 7 year “Holy Agreement” that allows the Jewish people to begin their sacrificial worship on the Temple mount in Jerusalem. The agreement seems to allow them to build a long desired 3rd Temple and start sacrificial worship on the Temple Mount once again.
The Antichrist has also by this time made an agreement with 10 of the nations. Many eschatology scholars believe the nations may come out of the former Roman empire. It may be 5 nations from the western empire and 5 nations from the eastern empire. After removing or subduing 3 of the nations by making them submit to him in some way, the 10 nations make an accord to have a military alliance with the Antichrist. The agreement makes him the most important leader in the world. Here's a picture of the countries which were part of the Roman Empire.
Under his guidance, the capable and powerful one-world government will at first be much better than the constant bickering and fighting that we see today in the world. Nationalism will be defeated and internationalism will come to the fore. We are all citizens of one world. Let us work together to save the planet, to fight efficiently against assassin viruses and other health problems. Let us work to bring health and security to all the poor of the world and redistribute the wealth. The final world government will be the best we’ve ever seen so far: the most idealistic, the most fair, the most compassionate, the most equal, and the most sharing. For a time it may even seem we’ve finally got a good world government under a good world leader.  You might want to read the article on the following link and watch the two videos available on the Corona Virus epidemic and where it may be leading us. https://thelibertariancatholic.com/celebrities-use-coronapocalypse-to-promote-atheistic-one-world-government/
For the first part of the 7 year agreement all seems to go relatively well. However, somewhere during his reign an attempt is made on the Antichrist’s life. He miraculously recovers. Then, because of the problems he is having in the Middle East even after the “Holy Agreement,” he invades Israel half way through the 7 year period and sets up his own headquarters in Jerusalem. He also implements the biometric technology which causes all men rich or poor, bond or free, to receive some sort of identication mark on their right hand or forehead so that no man might buy our sell without the identification mark. The mark may be some type of modern technology like a chip implant, or tatoo under the skin, or some other development, even a vaccine, that can be used to identify each person and keep them under monitoring and enable them to do financial transactions.
Jesus talking about these coming days referred to a prophecy in the book of Daniel in the Old Testament. He said, “When you shall see the abomination of desolation spoken of by Daniel the prophet stand in the Holy place (whosoever reads let him understand) for then shall be great tribulation which was not since the beginning of world to this time, nor ever shall be. And except those days be shortened, no flesh shall be saved. But for the elect’s sake those days shall be shortened.”
Some 7 times in the prophecies of Daniel and Apostle John we find that the tribulation period will last 3 ½ years, or 1260 days, of 42 months, or for a time (1), times (2), and ½ of times, or in other words 3 ½ years. God has repeated the length of the tribulation period so that we will not forget it or miss it when we read it. 7 times God repeats the number. He has cut the time short to be only 3 ½ years so that we will be able to bear it and know how soon it will be over and keep on holding on knowing that it won’t be long. Don’t be fooled by modern day false prophets who will prophesize that God will cut the days shorter. God has already shortened the days and He has told us 7 times in His Word how tong the period of tribulation will last – 3 ½ years.
Immediately after the tribulation of those days, or the tribulation trumpets found in Revelation 8-9, Jesus will return in the sky to rescue His elect, the true believers. Revelation shows us that the trumpets of tribulation are actually being poured upon the wicked and causing a 1/3 destruction on many aspects of life. Some of the imagery used in the description Apostle John uses to describe these events and destruction may very well indicate some sort of nuclear exchange during the tribulation period. Whatever it is, the events are pretty horrendous and 1/3 of mankind dies during it.
It is at the last trumpet, the seventh trumpet, that Jesus rescues His followers in the famous rapture event. His children are brisked away to enjoy the marriage feast with Jesus while the wicked on earth are receiving the vials of the wrath of God. The 45-75 day period of the wrath terminates in the Battle of Armageddon and with Jesus actually physically coming down and landing in Jerusalem with the armies of heaven in an apparent invasion from outer space or from another dimension. We, the true believers, will participate in the battle.
The Antichrist and his false prophet and the Devil will be thrown into the bottomless pit, the lake of fire, for a thousand years. While Jesus and his resurrected saints try to help those humans who managed to live through the wrath of God to restore the earth. The Bible calls this new dispensation the Millenium, a thousand years of peace on earth under seemingly new atmospheric conditions bringing longer life and changing the pre-millenium nature of animals to an idylic harmony.
Again, God is showing His patience with mankind trying to lovingly convince them to serve and follow Him. But after 1,000 years the Devil is loosed for a little season and goes out to deceive the nations once again. He is successful and organizes an attack against Jesus’s earthly headquarters in Jerusalem. It’s a this point that God has to destroy the surface of the earth by fire which Apostle Peter writes about in his espistle.

“But the (final) day of the Lord will come as a theif in the night; in which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervente heat, the earth also and all the works that are therein shall be burned up. Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness, looking for and hastenting unto the coming of the day of God, wherein the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with a fervent heat? Nevertheless we, according to His promise, look for a new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwells righteousness.” [2 Peter 3: 10-13]

God then forms a new heaven and a new earth. All mankind who have not accepted and lived for Christ will be raised to life and face the Great White Thrown Judgment Seat where each will be judged by his works whether they we evil or whether they were good. But you don’t have to face that fate. You can receive Jesus today and dedicate your life to Him today. If you do, you will come before the jugment seat of Christ on your death and you will not have to face that White Thrown at the end of time. You can be saved by faith in Christ today and start living and working for His kingdom, today, here and now. Or you can live for yourself and do your own thing and face the White Thrown Judgment Seat at the end of time where you will be judged by your works. Some will get to continue to live and will continue their training, while others will face a more harrowing future, maybe even eternal death.
It’s up to each one of us  what we want to do for eternity. God’s calling each of us today, right now. He loves every one of us and has wonderful plans for each of us if we’ll just accept Him into our lives. Jesus says He’s knocking on our hearts door, just waiting for us to answer. If you are lonely and needing a friend, a Saviour from your own failings, just call out to Jesus today and ask Him into your heart. Then begin your training by reading His book the Bible, especially the New Testament. Try to follow His commandments to love God and to love your neighbour as yourself. It’s not really that difficult and you don’t need to be religious to do it. If you need help in your walk with Jesus you can visit my blog at fightforyourfaith. blogspot.com or call me at 0351- 915016534 or write to me at dennismedwards@gmail.com . God loves you and has great expectations for you, if you’ll only give Him a try.

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