Since I've been studying the Old Testament
a lot lately, I've also been relating what I learn with the times we're
now living in as well as with the rapture, tribulation and millennium.
I was thinking about creation last night, and how the fall contributed
to all that we're experiencing now and wanted to share something with
you all that I find really exciting.
I'm sure we're all aware of what evolutionist say about the earth, humans and everything, as we've all been taught it since we were children. I could never accept a lot of it, even before I knew God. It just didn't seem "right" to me. What I'm going to share next, is not exactly stated in the bible, but is extrapolated from what is stated. So it's certainly not gospel truth, but it is quite possible. To me, this makes a whole lot more sense then what the evolutionists say though. I know we talked about one aspect of this on another thread, so some may be familiar to you.
First, just to explain the theory, let me share my notes from a book I have called Tonopah by Christopher A Lane:
Before the fall, Adam and Eve were super extraordinary creatures. They were supremely intelligent, highly advanced, beings that put today's finest scientific minds to shame. Contrary to popular secular thought, they were wise beyond imagination, knowledgeable beyond belief, gifted in understanding the secrets of the universe. Drawing on the full capacity of their complex brains, they were undoubtedly the most brilliant, insightful human beings ever to walk the earth: Godlike in the true sense of the term. Until the fall.
Free will was perhaps their most astonishing trait. God created Adam and Eve with the ability to choose the depth, and quality of their relationship with Him. Unfortunately they chose poorly. Instead of "evolving", many believe that the bible supports an entirely opposite movement: a de-evolution from near perfection to a state of chaos. We see this in the universe itself - the principal of entropy: everything moving from available energy to a state of disorganization. Instead of getting smarter and smarter, becoming more civilized and advanced, mankind is moving backwards, degenerating.
Consider some of the marvels of the ancient world: the great pyramids, the hanging gardens of Babylon, Easter Island.... we can't even figure out how to build these using modern technology. So it's been suggested that aliens from other planets may have helped construct them. But if the theory of de-evolution is true, if ancient man was incredibly advanced rather then primitive....
Adam named and cared for all the animals, so he was apparently quite knowledgeable in the area of veterinary biology. He and Eve took care of the Garden - they must have had a pretty good grasp of animal husbandry and botany. Cain built an entire city. Jubal invented musical instruments, Tubal-Cain invented all manner of bronze and iron tools - and they were starting from scratch. We're talking about a metallurgist ushering in the metal age a few short generations after the creation of the world!
The Fall twisted all of creation: tame creatures became wild; safe, kind beasts became predators; plant eaters began to seek meat. Death entered the system and mankind had to struggle to survive. That was all part of the curse. We're still seeing the results of that today, entire species becoming extinct as the ecosystem sputters and stumbles along, out of control.
Maybe I'm nuts, but that makes a lot of sense to me. I've always felt that mankind was a whole lot smarter then we give him credit to be, back in the beginning. And once sin and death entered the picture, what happened was natural, all that knowledge and intelligence was turned toward evil and so everything became very corrupt in a very short period of time. If you look at the time span between creation and the flood, it's really not all that long, not as long as we've been around since the flood anyway.
So why didn't things get just as bad, just as quickly again? Simply because humans were devolving. By the time the flood was over and they were starting over again, they'd already devolved some so they couldn't have progressed as fast as they did before. Plus, we're told that this time God limited the evil we were able to do and He still does. Even so, one of the very first things to happen once the flood was over, was evil! (Noah got drunk and his son found him naked) Then, also to slow things up, God dispersed people all over the earth instead of allowing them all to be in one big group together. Then He confused the languages so we didn't all speak the same language which further slowed down the progression of evil. So those things and others, helped prevent us from destroying ourselves again quite so quickly, giving God time to call Abraham and begin the line that would ultimately bring Jesus into the world to save us.
Look what's happening now though. Basically, due to technology, (which is not evil in and of itself) we have gotten back the ability to all be together again like we were in the beginning. While we still have nations and we're still spread all over the earth and have different languages, all of that is overcome by technology such as the internet and translation devices etc. Daniel 12:4 tells us that during this time of the end, knowledge will increase and it most certainly has. We haven't gotten smarter, we're still devolving, but we can now share knowledge with each other more then ever, faster then ever, and plot yet more evil.
Think back again to just before the flood and what happened then. We have the "sons of God" and the "daughters of men" getting together and creating a foul race of "giants". This was also during the time that God shows us just how quickly human kind advanced and how very intelligent they were. They most certainly weren't "cavemen." Knowledge was increasing exponentially, and at the same time, so was evil. That's when it got so bad that God decided to destroy it all, even the animals were becoming evil!
Jesus said it would be the same way in our time, the last days, and so it is. Knowledge is increasing exponentially, so much so that encyclopedias are out of date before they can finish printing them, which is why they no longer print them. Knowledge has increased so much that it's impossible for us to keep up with it, even with our technology. And with that knowledge, evil has also increased exponentially as we're all very aware of. Even in the animal kingdom this is true. We see news reports of certain wild and tame animals doing things that were unheard of or very rare before - seeking out, attacking and killing humans, of animals for the very first time (that we know of) having homosexual relations! If you recall, one of the judgments during the tribulation will be animals seeking out, attacking and killing humans, so this is like a mini preview of that judgment.
Now, leaving this a moment, I'd like to go out on a limb with something that came to me recently as I studied. it's about the sons of God and daughters of men. (Gen 6:1-2) Here's a wild idea for you. What if for us, in our time, this is simply showing how the "sons of God", those of us who have been saved and are now children of God, saw the "daughters of men" those who are unsaved, and saw they were "beautiful". In other words we liked what we saw, and "married them" or in other words, yoked ourselves to them - no longer living the way God commands but living like the unsaved do? Isn't this a picture of exactly what's already happened to the majority of the body of Christ? It's a picture of "bad company corrupting good morals, " another thing the Lord warns us about, as well as a picture of what happens when we become "friends with the world" to any degree. It's right after this, in Gen 6:5 that we're told that God sees how great the wickedness on earth had become - like this is the final straw. Could the final straw be that God's people are corrupted or in danger of it? It looks like it just might be so to me.
In Noah's time, God allowed this to continue until at the end only 8 people were saved. Only one man and his family were found to be decent enough that God saved them from the flood. I put it that way because they most certainly weren't perfect.
We've also talked about this, but I think again that this points to the fact that we're going to discover that there's a lot fewer people that are really saved then is normally thought. But, we know for sure that God will indeed take us from this earth before He begins His judgement of it. And we know for sure that while He keeps the body of Christ safe with Him, He will also save a remnant during the tribulation. So we can rejoice in that as well.
One other point I'd like to bring up though and another reason why this resonates with me. Often people wrongly believe that once we're in heaven we will suddenly know all the answers to everything and understand everything. The bible shows this isn't exactly true. What is true is that our minds will no longer be finite and we'll be able to use all of our minds instead of the less then 10% we now use. (which reminds me that even our scientists have discovered that we used to use more of our minds then we do now and that for some reason we've been using less and less as time goes on) Therefore our ability to learn and understand things will be tremendously better then it is now. Better then we can really imagine I suspect. Because of that, things that we "kind of get" but not quite, will become clear to us then, like a veil has been removed from our minds. But, things we never thought to ask about and that actually need some thought and study before understanding, we still won't know. We will have to study them to learn the answers, but once we do, we will certainly be able to learn and understand them. So no, we won't know all things as soon as we get to heaven, but we will have the ability to learn and understand that far surpasses what we can now do or imagine.
I believe that's how Adam and Eve were before the fall - before decay and degeneration and de-evolution set it. After all in Gen 1:26 God tells us that He created mankind to rule over the whole earth and everything in it. He most certainly wouldn't want dummies doing something like that, so to me that says they had to have been very intelligent. Of course many other things in His word point to that as well too. It's exciting to me to know that one day soon we'll be able to use all of our minds again the way the Lord intended us to, without the taint from the Fall.
All of this points again to everything coming full circle and to me shows me yet more of what our Lord meant when He said that these times would be like the days of Noah. What do you think?
I'm sure we're all aware of what evolutionist say about the earth, humans and everything, as we've all been taught it since we were children. I could never accept a lot of it, even before I knew God. It just didn't seem "right" to me. What I'm going to share next, is not exactly stated in the bible, but is extrapolated from what is stated. So it's certainly not gospel truth, but it is quite possible. To me, this makes a whole lot more sense then what the evolutionists say though. I know we talked about one aspect of this on another thread, so some may be familiar to you.
First, just to explain the theory, let me share my notes from a book I have called Tonopah by Christopher A Lane:
Before the fall, Adam and Eve were super extraordinary creatures. They were supremely intelligent, highly advanced, beings that put today's finest scientific minds to shame. Contrary to popular secular thought, they were wise beyond imagination, knowledgeable beyond belief, gifted in understanding the secrets of the universe. Drawing on the full capacity of their complex brains, they were undoubtedly the most brilliant, insightful human beings ever to walk the earth: Godlike in the true sense of the term. Until the fall.
Free will was perhaps their most astonishing trait. God created Adam and Eve with the ability to choose the depth, and quality of their relationship with Him. Unfortunately they chose poorly. Instead of "evolving", many believe that the bible supports an entirely opposite movement: a de-evolution from near perfection to a state of chaos. We see this in the universe itself - the principal of entropy: everything moving from available energy to a state of disorganization. Instead of getting smarter and smarter, becoming more civilized and advanced, mankind is moving backwards, degenerating.
Consider some of the marvels of the ancient world: the great pyramids, the hanging gardens of Babylon, Easter Island.... we can't even figure out how to build these using modern technology. So it's been suggested that aliens from other planets may have helped construct them. But if the theory of de-evolution is true, if ancient man was incredibly advanced rather then primitive....
Adam named and cared for all the animals, so he was apparently quite knowledgeable in the area of veterinary biology. He and Eve took care of the Garden - they must have had a pretty good grasp of animal husbandry and botany. Cain built an entire city. Jubal invented musical instruments, Tubal-Cain invented all manner of bronze and iron tools - and they were starting from scratch. We're talking about a metallurgist ushering in the metal age a few short generations after the creation of the world!
The Fall twisted all of creation: tame creatures became wild; safe, kind beasts became predators; plant eaters began to seek meat. Death entered the system and mankind had to struggle to survive. That was all part of the curse. We're still seeing the results of that today, entire species becoming extinct as the ecosystem sputters and stumbles along, out of control.
Maybe I'm nuts, but that makes a lot of sense to me. I've always felt that mankind was a whole lot smarter then we give him credit to be, back in the beginning. And once sin and death entered the picture, what happened was natural, all that knowledge and intelligence was turned toward evil and so everything became very corrupt in a very short period of time. If you look at the time span between creation and the flood, it's really not all that long, not as long as we've been around since the flood anyway.
So why didn't things get just as bad, just as quickly again? Simply because humans were devolving. By the time the flood was over and they were starting over again, they'd already devolved some so they couldn't have progressed as fast as they did before. Plus, we're told that this time God limited the evil we were able to do and He still does. Even so, one of the very first things to happen once the flood was over, was evil! (Noah got drunk and his son found him naked) Then, also to slow things up, God dispersed people all over the earth instead of allowing them all to be in one big group together. Then He confused the languages so we didn't all speak the same language which further slowed down the progression of evil. So those things and others, helped prevent us from destroying ourselves again quite so quickly, giving God time to call Abraham and begin the line that would ultimately bring Jesus into the world to save us.
Look what's happening now though. Basically, due to technology, (which is not evil in and of itself) we have gotten back the ability to all be together again like we were in the beginning. While we still have nations and we're still spread all over the earth and have different languages, all of that is overcome by technology such as the internet and translation devices etc. Daniel 12:4 tells us that during this time of the end, knowledge will increase and it most certainly has. We haven't gotten smarter, we're still devolving, but we can now share knowledge with each other more then ever, faster then ever, and plot yet more evil.
Think back again to just before the flood and what happened then. We have the "sons of God" and the "daughters of men" getting together and creating a foul race of "giants". This was also during the time that God shows us just how quickly human kind advanced and how very intelligent they were. They most certainly weren't "cavemen." Knowledge was increasing exponentially, and at the same time, so was evil. That's when it got so bad that God decided to destroy it all, even the animals were becoming evil!
Jesus said it would be the same way in our time, the last days, and so it is. Knowledge is increasing exponentially, so much so that encyclopedias are out of date before they can finish printing them, which is why they no longer print them. Knowledge has increased so much that it's impossible for us to keep up with it, even with our technology. And with that knowledge, evil has also increased exponentially as we're all very aware of. Even in the animal kingdom this is true. We see news reports of certain wild and tame animals doing things that were unheard of or very rare before - seeking out, attacking and killing humans, of animals for the very first time (that we know of) having homosexual relations! If you recall, one of the judgments during the tribulation will be animals seeking out, attacking and killing humans, so this is like a mini preview of that judgment.
Now, leaving this a moment, I'd like to go out on a limb with something that came to me recently as I studied. it's about the sons of God and daughters of men. (Gen 6:1-2) Here's a wild idea for you. What if for us, in our time, this is simply showing how the "sons of God", those of us who have been saved and are now children of God, saw the "daughters of men" those who are unsaved, and saw they were "beautiful". In other words we liked what we saw, and "married them" or in other words, yoked ourselves to them - no longer living the way God commands but living like the unsaved do? Isn't this a picture of exactly what's already happened to the majority of the body of Christ? It's a picture of "bad company corrupting good morals, " another thing the Lord warns us about, as well as a picture of what happens when we become "friends with the world" to any degree. It's right after this, in Gen 6:5 that we're told that God sees how great the wickedness on earth had become - like this is the final straw. Could the final straw be that God's people are corrupted or in danger of it? It looks like it just might be so to me.
In Noah's time, God allowed this to continue until at the end only 8 people were saved. Only one man and his family were found to be decent enough that God saved them from the flood. I put it that way because they most certainly weren't perfect.
We've also talked about this, but I think again that this points to the fact that we're going to discover that there's a lot fewer people that are really saved then is normally thought. But, we know for sure that God will indeed take us from this earth before He begins His judgement of it. And we know for sure that while He keeps the body of Christ safe with Him, He will also save a remnant during the tribulation. So we can rejoice in that as well.
One other point I'd like to bring up though and another reason why this resonates with me. Often people wrongly believe that once we're in heaven we will suddenly know all the answers to everything and understand everything. The bible shows this isn't exactly true. What is true is that our minds will no longer be finite and we'll be able to use all of our minds instead of the less then 10% we now use. (which reminds me that even our scientists have discovered that we used to use more of our minds then we do now and that for some reason we've been using less and less as time goes on) Therefore our ability to learn and understand things will be tremendously better then it is now. Better then we can really imagine I suspect. Because of that, things that we "kind of get" but not quite, will become clear to us then, like a veil has been removed from our minds. But, things we never thought to ask about and that actually need some thought and study before understanding, we still won't know. We will have to study them to learn the answers, but once we do, we will certainly be able to learn and understand them. So no, we won't know all things as soon as we get to heaven, but we will have the ability to learn and understand that far surpasses what we can now do or imagine.
I believe that's how Adam and Eve were before the fall - before decay and degeneration and de-evolution set it. After all in Gen 1:26 God tells us that He created mankind to rule over the whole earth and everything in it. He most certainly wouldn't want dummies doing something like that, so to me that says they had to have been very intelligent. Of course many other things in His word point to that as well too. It's exciting to me to know that one day soon we'll be able to use all of our minds again the way the Lord intended us to, without the taint from the Fall.
All of this points again to everything coming full circle and to me shows me yet more of what our Lord meant when He said that these times would be like the days of Noah. What do you think?
Every time I consider this, it makes more and more sense to me. God made man in His image and made mankind to be "perfect" in every way. He never gives us a job to do without first giving us the ability to do the job. And He gave them the job of overseeing everything on the earth! Plus, God walked and talked with them every day in the Garden. I would think that would be pretty boring to Him if they were dumb. I think it'd get pretty boring if they were only as intelligent as we are now, actually. But, if they had full use of their brains instead of only using a tiny portion of them like we do, that makes sense then. Even just thinking back a couple thousand years ago when Jesus was here we see a huge difference between what people did then and what they do now with their minds. Back then, Jewish children began memorizing the Torah as soon as they could talk practically so they had it down, word for word by the time they were adults. When the epistles were written, the Christians memorized each one and then sent it on to another church so that church could memorize it. Long before they were put into book form as we have them, the early Christians had memorized every book of the NT verbatim! That's incredible to us, but to them, it wasn't. It was "normal".They were supremely intelligent, highly advanced, beings that put today's finest scientific minds to shame. Contrary to popular secular thought, they were wise beyond imagination, knowledgeable beyond belief, gifted in understanding the secrets of the universe. Drawing on the full capacity of their complex brains, they were undoubtedly the most brilliant, insightful human beings ever to walk the earth: Godlike in the true sense of the term. Until the fall.
On the other end of the spectrum, look at how quickly evil grew too. Because they were so advanced, they were also able to come up with horrible evil. A really stupid person isn't very imaginative and can't generally come up with things that are really evil, but the more intelligent you are, the more evil you can conceive. So even the fact that evil grew as fast as it did, shows their intelligence.
Plus, I'd never really considered or reflected on the fact that the evil contaminated the animals as well as the humans. I knew that sin had corrupted them as well, but just hadn't really thought about it much. But God did say that everything, including the animals were evil by the time of the flood and that's why He wanted to wipe out everything. If they hadn't been evil as well, God could have simply caused every human being to stop breathing and have been done with it. And that brings us to the plants, the vegetation. Even that was corrupted!
Now think of what's going on today. We're seeing more and more allergies to plants and animals, finding more and more plants that are dangerous to us and animals are becoming more dangerous to us as well. Remember the news reports of the little girl and the adult who'd been attacked with a disease that was literally eating their brains??? It was an amoeba!!!
There have been all kinds of weird new diseases caused lately by plants, animals, and who knows what, as well as old ones, so called rare ones, and even ones from third world countries that are now flourishing in civilized countries. With all our knowledge and technology, instead of getting healthier, people are getting sicker and are often told by doctors that they just don't know what's causing their pain or suffering.
Instead of getting smarter and smarter, becoming more civilized and advanced, mankind is moving backwards, degenerating.We've talked about this in numerous threads before too. For example, we've often talked about how much smarter children were in previous generations. (kind of like that show, "are you smarter then a 5th grader".) I remember we had a thread in the chat forum years ago that showed either a 4th or 5th grade test that I believe was from the 1950's or so and asked if we could pass it now. None of us could have and none of our kids or grandkids could either!
Now days though instead of realizing just how marvelously we were created to be, most folks would rather believe we used to be apes and aliens came here and did all the neat things we've found from the past. It gives me a whole new thrill now when I read:
Psalm 139:14 —I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.
Cindy I agree......it seems even in the last 5 years people seem to be stupider faster....
ReplyDeletelol, sounds funny, but I know what you mean. I agree. I mean it's one thing to make a mistake and elect Obama once, but to do it a second time is just unbelievable!
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