Summation #8 (The Genesis Series, Part 53)

Keeping the focus on the ministry of the Cross of Christ and His promise to us of eternal life is imperative. A myriad of voices and causes arise, but the primary and dominate focus of the redeemed must be the ministry of reconciliation…reconciling the lost sons and daughters of Adam unto God.

God is in the soul business.  John 3:16:

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

Our Father is in the soul business—and, by the way, it is a family business.  In every year, decade, and century, a new cause célèbre arises.  Each passes on, replaced by another in turn, but the cause of the Cross remains the cause of the Cross.

Israel’s King Solomon, whose God-given wisdom surpassed all before and after him, whose power and riches were a marvel unto the nations to this very day, came to this conclusion in Ecclesiastes 12:12-14:

12 And further, by these, my son, be admonished: of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh.

13 Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man.

14 For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil.

Dear visitor, have you yet to be reconciled unto God?  Have you been born a second time, this time of the Spirit of God, even as Jesus declares in John 3:3?   

Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

Your eternal destiny is hinged to the decision you make today.  In just a few moments, I will invite you to follow me in a simple prompt, and you will say YES or NO.  The prophet Joel pens God’s Words in Chapter 3, Verse 14:

Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision: for the day of the LORD is near in the valley of decision.  

You are in the valley of decision.  Follow the prompt from your heart, and for you, everything changes today…EVERYTHING! Today, all your sins will be washed away by Christ’s cleansing blood.  God will remember your sins no more.  Today, all of Satan’s bondages will be broken, every single one!  Today, you will be reconciled unto God.  Today, you will be BORN AGAIN.  Here is the prompt I promised. You are in the valley of decision and it is time to choose: Click onto Further with Jesus for childlike instructions and immediate entry into the Kingdom of God.  NOW FOR TODAY’S SUBJECT.

GOD SAID, Genesis 10:1:

Now these are the generations of the sons of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth: and unto them were sons born after the flood.

GOD SAID, Genesis 11:6-9:

6 And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.

7 Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another''s speech.

8 So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city.

9 Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the LORD did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the LORD scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.

GOD SAID, Genesis 18:1:

And the LORD appeared unto him in the plains of Mamre: and he sat in the tent door in the heat of the day;

MAN SAID: My dream is to be independently wealthy.  I’ll eat the best food, live in the best homes, drive the best cars, wear the best clothes, and I’ll have people to wait on my every need.  What did you say?!  ‘This night thy soul shall be required of thee (Luke 12:20)?’ That’s a terrifying thought!  I just can’t think it!

Now THE RECORD: Welcome to GodSaidManSaid feature 1273 that will once again certify the supernatural bonafides of God’s beautiful Book. All of these features are given for the edification of the children of faith and to be used as a mighty soul-winning platform.  Use them as a digital soul winning tract.  Think of someone you would like to affect with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  Think of a subject that person would be interested in.  Type the keywords into our search bar, top right, and the screen will populate with GodSaidManSaid features.  Send a subject onto your friend.  Expect excellent results! This website grows by one, God willing, every Thursday eve. 

Thank you for visiting. May God’s glorious goodness be your portion. 

You have arrived at the GodSaidManSaid “Genesis Series;” this is Part 53.  Each of these features begins with the following information from the first feature:

According to a 2006 issue of Discover magazine concerning the deceased Carl Sagan: “Sagan approaches religion like any phenomenon.  He isn’t on a quest for life’s meaning, for a comforting philosophy, or even a guide to how we should treat the neighbors.  Sagan seeks truth of a demonstrable kind.  As a puckish example, he wonders why the book of Genesis didn’t include God-inspired truths…” [End of quote]

The BORN AGAIN scratch their heads in bewilderment.  Did these folks actually read the book of Genesis?

The challenge was: If God did, in fact, author the Bible, why didn’t He include God-inspired truths in Genesis, the Bible’s very first book? This is the eighth in a bullet-point, multi-part summation of the Genesis Series, which will be formatted in an instant-replay fashion. If you haven’t, take some time to visit the features reviewed.  You will not be wasting time.  This information is staggering. 

The Genesis Series took 45 weeks to catalogue; the summation of the series will take nine weeks. This is summation number eight, which will review features 36, 37, 38, 39, and 40.

💣 Feature #36: Noah, Ham, Canaan, Armageddon…and Alcohol

Genesis 9:24-25:

24 And Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son had done unto him.

25 And he said, Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren.

The following excerpts are from the GodSaidManSaid feature, “Alcohol and Armageddon:”

In etymology, which is the study of words, a guideline exists known as the rule of first occurrence. The rule basically states that a word''s definition is established during the word''s first use. The word "drunken" is first found in Genesis 9:21. This is the first account of the existence of alcoholic beverages and of someone suffering the effects of alcohol, and it happened to none other than Noah.  Some creation scientists suggest that Noah was blindsided. He was an expert husbandman, making wine for hundreds of years, but this time, immediately after the worldwide flood, things were not the same. Further on in this feature I will explain. Nevertheless, Noah became drunk and passed out in his tent. His son Ham, in the presence of his brothers, showed disrespect to his father concerning this matter. When Noah awoke, being aware of what Ham did, he cursed Ham''s son Canaan.

Foundational names in Genesis like Canaan, Ishmael, and Esau have one thing in common: God’s judgment is upon them.  And, these three have an axe to grind with the children of Israel. These three, in large part, have amalgamated together under the common banner of Ishmaelites, or Muslims.

They will find themselves complicit in bringing about the great and horrendous world-ending battle of Armageddon. Imagine, the first occurrence of alcoholic beverages will go on to participate in the battle of Armageddon.

The devastating effects of alcohol are already, in fact, like an Armageddon on the world''s population.  The costs in broken homes, ruined careers, premature deaths—from livers to the highway, ruined minds, and even damaging the child in the mother’s womb is beyond calculation and a precursor of the global judgment to come.

The Word of God speaks about wine and strong drink. (Wine is the main focus of this article.) I wrote earlier that Noah was the first man in recorded history to become drunken and that  some scientists say that this righteous man was blindsided, and here''s the reason why: The natural fermentation process which causes the juice of the grape, for instance, to ferment, is a result of atmospheric changes that took place during the days of Noah. Prior to the great Noahitic flood, a water canopy encompassed the earth.  This water canopy was destroyed by God and cast down to the earth. It has since been replaced with an ozone layer. According to scientists, the banished water canopy would have filtered out the ultraviolet killer rays from the sun. For one thing, UV rays cause bacteria (a natural yeast) to form on the grapes in the field as well as on all other fruits, which in turn causes the juice to ferment. Prior to Noah, these UV rays were blocked by God''s water canopy. Consequently, Noah would have been unaware of the dangers of fermentation.

In Proverbs 23:31, it reads:

Look not thou upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth his colour in the cup, when it moveth itself aright.

In other words, don''t drink the wine after it has fermented. Also, the wine God commanded us not to drink had a very low alcoholic content because of the low levels of sugar in the grapes of the Middle East in comparison to today''s alcoholic beverages.

Some of the confusion concerning the drinking of alcoholic beverages is that many erroneously think that the word "wine" in the Bible strictly refers to the fermented juice of the grape. A simple search of the scriptures, however, reveals that unfermented grape juice is called wine as well as the fermented juice. This is shown in the following Scripture passages:

Isaiah 65:8:

Thus saith the Lord, As the new wine is found in the cluster, and one saith, Destroy it not; for a blessing is in it: so will I do for my servants'' sakes, that I may not destroy them all.

Joel 2:24:

And the floors shall be full of wheat, and the vats shall overflow with wine and oil.

Please note that it is called wine as it comes forth from the wine press.

In the Old Testament, there are two Hebrew words which are both translated into English as the word wine: tirosh and yayin.  As in the Old Testament, the word wine in the New Testament can mean unfermented or fermented wine.

“Well, Jesus made wine, didn’t He?”

Now concerning the marriage supper in Cana where Jesus turned water into wine, there is one very obvious reason that certifies that Jesus, in fact, did not create fermented wine and that reason is that the Lord Jesus Christ was sinless. Had He created fermented wine and contributed to the drunkenness of others, He would have been guilty of disobeying the many commandments forbidding it.

Should we suppose Jesus would have created wine that, if consumed by a pregnant woman attending the marriage supper, could have harmed her unborn child with fetal alcohol syndrome? Do you suppose that our Lord Jesus would have given the people fermented wine causing men to lust after their neighbors'' wives, fist-fight in the parking lot, and wreck their chariots on the way home?

Would it be so hard to fathom that the miracle wine Jesus produced would be the finest wine that man has ever tasted and that the Creator of the universe (Hebrews 1:2) could accomplish this feat without the contamination of alcohol? Wouldn’t  you suppose that Christ’s miracle wine would be free of fermenting bacteria caused by harmful UV rays from the sun? The answers are "of course" and "of course."

FromArchaeology and Bible History:

In summary, we are left with the Biblical condemnation of alcoholic drink, and a definite denunciation of drunkenness as sin. Nowhere is moderate drinking given approval. The existence of light fermented wine does not mean that God sanctioned its use for beverage purposes. Furthermore, a different situation exists today with the use of modern strong alcoholic beverages. Solomon''s observation of long ago is just as applicable today, if not more so: "Look not thou upon the wine when it is red ... at the last it biteth like a serpent and stingeth like an adder" (Prov. 23:31,32). [End of quote]

The Christians'' motto should simply be, "We drink no wine that’s past the line," and of course that includes all fermented or distilled alcoholic beverages.

The following excerpts are from Wilkerson’s 1978 book, Sipping Saints:

The word “juice” does not appear in the New Testament and only once in the Old.  All fruit of the vine was called wine, whether it was fermented or not.  There are thirteen different words used in the Bible which are interpreted as wine, nine in Hebrew and Chaldee, and four in Greek. 

The distinction between fermented and unfermented wine is cited by ancient writers.  Again from Wilkerson’s Sipping Saints:

Even classical writers spoke of unintoxicating “wine.”  Horace, in 65 B.C., says: “Here you quaff under a shade, cups of unintoxicating wine – this day sacred in the revolving year, remove the cork fastened with pitch from the jar which was set to fumigate.

Aristotle says of sweet wine called “glukus” that it would not intoxicate, and the wine of Arcadia was so thick it was necessary to scrape it from the skin bottles in which it was stored and dissolve the scrapings in water.

Varro speaks of “gathering wine;” Cato of “hanging wine;” Ovid, “And scarce can the grapes contain the wine they have therein.”  Columella and other writers who were contemporaries with the apostles inform us that in Italy and Greece, it was common to boil the wines [which, of course, they would not have done if the alcoholic content were desired].

Archbishop Potter, born A.D. 161, in his Grecian Antiquities, Edinburgh edition, 1813, vol. ii, p. 360, says, “The Lacedaemonians used to boil their wines upon the fire till the fire was consumed; then after four years were expired, began to drink them.”  These ancient authorities called the boiled juice of the grape “wine.”

“The Mishna states that the Jews were in the habit of using boiled wine.” – Kitto, vol. ii, p. 477.

Concerning boiling the juice, Wilkerson weighs in with the following:

It is an unchangeable law of nature that vinous fermentation requires temperatures between 50 degrees and 75 degrees F.  Fermentation in climates above 75 degrees F would be acetous (vinegar-like).  Fermentation may be prevented by boiling, by filtration, by excluding air, and by adding sulfur.  Grape juice boils at 212 degrees F; alcohol evaporates at 170 degrees F – which is 42 degrees F below the boiling point – the object of boiling being to preserve the sweetness of the juice.

Concerning the Marriage Supper and Jesus:

John 2:10: And saith unto him, Every man at the beginning doth set forth good wine; and when men have well drunk, then that which is worse: but thou hast kept the good wine until now.  

Concerning the words good wine in verse 10, ancient writers Pliny and Plutarch stated that “good wines” were those which would not intoxicate, having had their alcoholic content removed.  Concerning “good wine,” Dr. S. Bacchiocchi of Andrews University, author of Wine In The Bible, said:

Scriptural and moral consistency requires that "the good wine" produced by Christ was fresh, unfermented grape juice. This is supported by the very adjective used to describe it, namely kalos, which denotes that which is morally excellent, instead of agathos, which means simply good. [End of quote]

Alcohol, a deadly global plague, will soon take its part in the world-ending battle of Armageddon.

💣 Feature #37: The Table of Nations'' Staggering Accuracy

Genesis 10:1:

Now these are the generations of the sons of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth: and unto them were sons born after the flood.

Searching for God-inspired truths in Genesis? Here we go again!  The following excerpts are from Bill Cooper’s book, After the Flood. Mr. Cooper, B.A. Hons, comes with considerable academic accolades, including researcher, author, Honours Degree by Kingston University (England), and lecturer of numerous forums including Leeds University.  Mr. Cooper writes:

When I first came across this problem some thirty years ago, I found it most perplexing.  On the one hand, I had the Bible itself claiming to be the very Word of God, and on the other I was presented with numerous commentaries that spoke with one voice in telling me that the Bible was nothing of the kind.  

Now, it simply was not possible for both these claims to be valid.  Only one of them could be right, and I saw it as my duty, to myself at least, to find out which was the true account and which was the false. So it was then that I decided to select a certain portion of Genesis and submit it to a test which, if applied to any ordinary historical document, would be considered a test of the most unreasonable severity.  And I would continue that test until either the book of Genesis revealed itself to be a false account, or it would be shown to be utterly reliable in its historical statements.

The test I devised was a simple one.  If the names of the individuals, families, peoples, and tribes listed in the Table of Nations were genuine, then those same names should appear also in the records of other nations of the Middle East.  Archaeology should also reveal that those same families and peoples are listed in Genesis (or not as the case may be) in their correct ethnological, geographical, and linguistic relationships.  I allowed for the fact that a good proportion of these names would not appear.  Either the records that once contained them had long since perished, or the diversity of language and dialect had rendered them unrecognizable.  Some would be lost in obscurity.  I therefore would have been content to have found say 40% of the list vindicated.  In fact, that would have been a very high achievement given the sheer antiquity of the Table of Nations itself and the reported sparsity of the surviving extra-biblical records from those ancient times.  But when, over my twenty-five years of research, that confirmatory evidence grew past 40% to 50%, and then 60% and beyond, it soon became apparent that modern wisdom in this matter was wide of the mark.  Very wide of the mark indeed.  Today I can say that the names so far vindicated in the Table of Nations make up over 99% of the list, and I shall make no further comment on that other than to say that no other ancient historical document of purely human authorship could be expected to yield such a level of corroboration as that!  And I will add further that modern biblical commentators must make of it what they will. [End of quote]

Cooper traced 112 names. 

Timothy Osterholm, in his work The Table of Nations and the Origin of Races, writes:

We can also factually claim that wherever its statements can be sufficiently tested, Genesis 10 of the Bible has been found completely accurate; resulting partly from linguistic studies, partly from archaeology, and, more recently still, from the findings of physical anthropologists, who are, to this day, recovering important clues to lines of migration in ancient historical times.  As implied in verse 32 of Genesis 10, this Table includes everybody; meaning that so-called fossil man, primitive peoples (ancient and modern) and modern man are all derived from Noah’s three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. … As archaeologist William Albright noted, “it [the Bible] remains an astonishingly accurate document…and shows such remarkably ‘modern’ understanding of the ethnic and linguistic situation in the modern world, in spite of all its complexity, that scholars never fail to be impressed with its knowledge of the subject.” [End of quote]

💣 Feature #38: Tower of Babel & One Common Language

Genesis 11:6-9:

6 And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.

7 Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another''s speech.

8 So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city.

9 Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the LORD did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the LORD scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.

One of the Bible’s most maligned accounts concerns the Genesis record of Babel, its tower of rebellion, and the confounding of the once-common language. 

The Bible records that, until the time of Babel, everybody spoke the same language.  In the city of Babel, Nimrod and his followers decided to build a tower to heaven. They wanted to make a name for themselves—an ungodly name.  God, seeing that nothing could restrain them from their foolish and wicked endeavor, decided at this place to confound their language.  It was there in the city of Babylon that God created diversity of languages. 

Such fantastical claims in the Scriptures have been attacked and mocked incessantly by the world’s skeptics.  It was beneath them to countenance such foolish, Sunday-school drivel.  This contempt has prevailed in the halls of academia for centuries.  But it should have become obvious to these great mountains of intellect that God’s Word on this account was true after all, at least in regard to a single common worldwide language after microbiology firmly established one common mother and father for all this world’s present population.  What would this original common family have spoken if not the same common language?  Adam and Eve were downloaded with very sophisticated language skills.  One common language root should have been obvious.  In defense of the world’s wisest, I should note that the world’s common parentage was only uncovered in the last few decades.  Evidently, they haven’t had the time to update their unbelief.

The famed Jewish historian Josephus, who wrote shortly after the life of Christ, states the following in his book, The Antiquities of the Jews:

When God saw that they acted so madly, He did not resolve to destroy them utterly, since they were not grown wiser by the destruction of the former sinners; but He caused a tumult among them, by producing in them divers languages; and causing that, through the multitude of those languages, they should not be able to understand one another.  The place wherein they built the tower is now called Babylon; because of the confusion of that language which they readily understood before; for the Hebrews mean by the word Babel, Confusion.  The Sibyl also makes mention of this tower, and of the confusion of the language, when she says thus:—“When all men were of one language, some of them built a high tower, as if they would thereby ascend up to heaven; but the gods sent storms of wind and overthrew the tower, and gave everyone his peculiar language; and for this reason it was that the city was called Babylon.” [End of quote]

This notion of Babel and its great tower has been ridiculed through the years, but listen to the facts:  In 1899, the German Oriental Society set out on an expedition under the direction of Professor R. Koldewey to examine the famous ruin mound of Babel on the Euphrates.  It took 18 years of excavation.  They uncovered the royal seat of Nebuchadnezzar, and at the same time, one of the Seven Wonders of the World, the Hanging Gardens.  They also uncovered the legendary Tower of Babel. 

Listen carefully to this next piece of information.  This is a statement concerning the common language.  It was at the Tower of Babylon that God changed man’s speech from one common language to many.  George Smith, the staff member of the British Museum who translated the Babylonian account of the Flood, published the following mind-boggling translation of an ancient fragment found in the excavations.  This is what the Babylonians had written:

The building of this temple offended the gods.  In a night, they threw down what had been built, they scattered them abroad and made strange their speech.  The progress then impeded. 

This is the Babylonian’s account, not the Holy Bible''s. 

Alfredo Trombetti, in his book The Unity of the Origin of Language, states that he is able to prove the common origin of all languages.  Max Muehler, the comparative philologist, declared concerning the common origin of speech, “We have examined all possible forms which language can assume and we now ask, ‘Can we reconcile with these three distinct forms, the radical, the terminational, inflectional—the admission of one common origin of human speech?’  I answer decidedly, ‘yes.’”

“The admission of one common origin of human speech.”  Could it be?  The following excerpt is from J.M. McDowell’s The New Evidence That Demands a Verdict:

There is now considerable evidence that the world did indeed have a single language at one time. Sumerian literature alludes to this fact several times.  Linguists also find this theory helpful in categorizing languages. [End of quote]

Otto Jesperson of the University of Copenhagen wrote, “Some scholars see the insufficiency of the usual theories and, giving up all attempts at explaining it the natural way, fall back on the religious belief that the first language was directly given to the first men by God through a miracle.” 

Biblical researcher and author Grant Jeffrey, in his 250+-page book Unveiling the Mysteries of the Bible, reports the following concerning the Tower of Babel:

The French government sent Professor M. Oppert to report on a number of the cuneiform inscriptions discovered in the ruins of ancient Babylon.  Professor Oppert translated a long inscription by King Nebuchadnezzar (died 562 B.C.) in which the king referred to the ancient tower in the Chaldean language as Barzippa, which means “Tongue-tower.” 

In an inscription found on the base of the ruins of the Tower of Babel, King Nebuchadnezzar spoke in his own words, confirming one of the most fascinating events of the ancient past as recorded in the Word of God:

We say for the other, that is, this edifice, the house of the
seven lights of the earth,
the most ancient monument of Borsippa.
A former king built it, (they reckon 42 ages) but he did not
complete its head.
Since a remote time, people had abandoned it,
without order expressing their words.

According to the Scientific American May 2016 issue, nearly half of the world’s population—presently speaking in over 400 languages—finds the one common root of their language in a mother tongue called Proto-Indo-European, or PIE.  The title of the feature, written by M. Balter, is “Language Wars.”  An info brief at the beginning of the feature reads:

Nearly half the world’s population speaks one of the languages derived from a single ancient tongue, dubbed Proto-Indo-European, or PIE. 

Linguists have long argued that PIE first spread from the vast steppes of Central Asia to Europe some 6,000 to 5,000 years ago. 

Keep in mind when reading the excerpts that follow from the feature that evolutionists claim 2½ million years of evolution, yet the spread of language begins just thousands of years ago.  

Again from Scientific American:

Why do such geographically diverse languages use similar words for the same flower?  All these tongues, along with more than 400 others, belong to the same family of languages—the incredibly far-flung Indo-European language family—and have a common origin. [End of quote]

One common mother, one common father, and one common language until Babel, just like God’s Word said.

 💣 Feature #39: Abraham: The Father of Faith

Genesis 22:17:

That in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea shore; and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies;

The historicity of Abraham, the father of faith, has been roundly challenged through time by Biblical antagonists, but that doesn’t change the absolute accuracy of the Bible’s portrayal of this mighty and pivotal man of God.  Was there a Father Abraham?  This is the first of five features in the Genesis Series that will certify Abraham, the champion of faith. There is NO DOUBT!!!  

When God spoke to Abraham, He said He would multiply his seed as the "stars of heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea shore." Hebrews 11:12 refers to Abraham’s seed as innumerable. In Webster’s 1828 American Dictionary of the English Language, innumerable is defined as, "not to be counted, that cannot be enumerated or numbered for multitude."

As an aside, it’s interesting to track the growth of our mathematical vocabulary. As mathematical computations expand, numbers are created for which our vocabulary has no name. As the common use of a huge number grows, a name for that number is established. The largest number in the scriptures, that I am aware of, is 100 million-plus (Revelation 5:11).

The Word of God also states that Abraham would be the father of many nations, and he truly is that. His first born was Ishmael. All Moslems dub themselves Ishmaelites. All Hebrews are of the lineage of faithful Abraham through his son Isaac, the child of promise. After Abraham’s wife Sarah died, he married Keturah who bore him Zimran, Jokshan, Medan, Midian, Ishbak, and Shuah, and all their lineage of course lays claim to Abraham. All Christians are of the seed of Abraham. Galatians, chapter 3, verse 16 and verse 29:

16 Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ.

29 And if ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.

From a faithful man named Abraham, a vast multitude followed, embracing as much as three quarters of the world’s people. At a two-percent growth rate, approximately 160 million people would be added to the ranks of Abraham on an annual basis.

In the days of old, skeptics could confidently point to contradiction in the Word of God concerning Abraham. In quantifying the seed of Abraham, God compared them to the stars of heaven and referred to them as innumerable. He made this promise to Abraham approximately 4,000 years ago. This was in clear contradiction to the wisdom of the day. It was a clear contradiction until Galileo.  Up until then, man numbered the stars at only a few thousand. According to Dr. DeYoung, in his book Astronomy and the Bible, "On a clear, moonless night, about 3,000 stars are visible with the unaided eye." [End of quote] In 1694, Galileo turned his first astronomical telescope toward the sky and put God’s skeptics to silence.

In an attempt to estimate the stars of heaven, Dr. DeYoung offered the following calculation:

The stars we can easily see are all in our corner of the Milky Way Galaxy. The entire galaxy numbers about 100 billion stars. And beyond the Milky Way are other galaxies with many shapes and sizes. Around 100 billion such galaxies are known to exist. Taking the Milky Way as an average galaxy, the total number of stars is 10 to the twenty-second power. This figure would be pronounced as "ten billion trillion" stars.

Remember that in God’s prophecy concerning Abraham, He compared stars and sand. A final excerpt from Dr. DeYoung’s book is a calculation of the sand on the world’s seashores. It reads:

Let us consider a rough estimate for all the sand grains on the seashores of planet Earth. We will depict this total as a block of sand that is 10 feet deep, 100 feet wide, and 1,000,000 miles long. This length equals 42 trips around the world, a generous figure for the extent of the world’s sandy beaches.  [End of quote]

After a series of complicated computations, the result is that the sand upon the seashore equals 10 to the twenty-second power. This is the same number used by astronomers when they estimate the stars of heaven: 10 to the twenty-second power.

In the 1600s, Bishop Ussher wrote his master chronology of time, a tome titled The Annals of the World, in which he wrote that Abraham was born just two years after Noah died.  That dates Abraham back to just over 4,000 years.  Father Abraham is a very real and historic figure, and believe me, he is not done talking yet!

Abraham was not a Jew by birth.  He was from Ur of the Chaldees, the land he left at the age of 75.  According to the ancient historian Josephus, Abraham left the land of the Chaldees once his study of astronomy and mathematics made it clear to him that there was only one God over all, and He alone was to be worshipped and feared.  This revelation was not well received by the Chaldeans, who held a polytheistic religious view. 

Concerning Egypt and Abraham’s time there, Josephus writes:

He communicated to them arithmetic, and delivered to them the science of astronomy; for, before Abram came into Egypt, they were unacquainted with those parts of learning; for that science came from the Chaldeans into Egypt, and from thence to the Greeks also. [End of quotes]

Sir Walter Raleigh’s The History of the World (1614) referenced first-century AD historian Philo of Alexandria, saying that Abraham, through astronomy, “together with the motions of the stars and other heavenly bodies … found out the knowledge of the true God, while he lived in Chaldea.”  He further referenced a number of ancient historians who collectively agreed “that Abraham, the holiest and wisest of men, did first teach the Chaldeans, then the Phoenicians; lastly, the Egyptian priests, [astronomy] and divine knowledge” (Chapter 2, section 2).

Thus we see Abraham attributed by many as one of the chief instructors of the elite Chaldeans in their advanced knowledge! 

But Abraham did not just study and teach science for science’s sake. Through science, he proved the existence of the one true God.

On August 4, 2021, BBC Science Focus Magazine reported, “The Babylonians were using Pythagoras’s Theorem over 1000 years before he was born.” 

One historian headlined, “Abraham as Chaldean Scientist and Father of the Jews.”

💣 Feature #40: Where God Came Down

Genesis 18:1:

And the LORD appeared unto him in the plains of Mamre: and he sat in the tent door in the heat of the day;

Note: This review of Feature 40 is the second in a sub-series within the Genesis Series that certifies Abraham.  Remember, according to Ussher’s dating, Abraham was born two years after Noah’s death. 

The place is called Mamre and it surely plays a foundational role in the Gospel message:

⦁ At Mamre, Abraham builds an altar unto God—and archaeology shouts YES, HE DID!

⦁ At Mamre, the LORD (along with two angels) speaks to Abraham and Sarah, telling them that, in their old age, they would have a son whose name would be Isaac. This child, Isaac, would be the child of promise and through him, the Christ would come into this world and redeem all those who would call upon His name.    

⦁ At Mamre, Abraham negotiates with God regarding his nephew Lot, who lived with his family in Sodom, and the annihilation of the wicked cities of Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities of the plain, which was imminent. 

Joel Kramer is a Biblical archaeologist who lived in Jerusalem for 10 years.  He has a popular YouTube channel, Expedition Bible, which typically pulls in over half a million views for each video posted.  In his book Where God Came Down, Kramer investigates the relationship between the Bible and archaeology and Mamre. 

Let’s look at Mamre and see what the evidence shows.  Mamre has been described in previous passages as being at Hebron.  Since Abraham is also described as owning a lot of cattle, it makes sense that the exact location of Mamre where Abraham was dwelling would be located outside the walls of the city of Hebron itself.  There is such a place that fits this description and is close to ancient Hebron.  It was first evacuated in 1926 by German archaeologist Evaristus Mader.  When Mader first began his excavation, it was simply a large mound of dirt known by Arabic locals as “The Height of the Sanctuary of the Friend.” 

Take note that the Arabs know this place as “The Height of the Sanctuary of the Friend.”  In ancient times, a king often had a member of his ruling cabinet, an individual called “the king’s friend.” This “king’s friend” had no particular duty but to simply fellowship with the king.  Abraham is known in the Bible as “the friend of God.”  II Chronicles 20:7:

Art not thou our God, who didst drive out the inhabitants of this land before thy people Israel, and gavest it to the seed of Abraham thy friend for ever?

James 2:23:

And the scripture was fulfilled which saith, Abraham believed God, and it was imputed unto him for righteousness: and he was called the Friend of God.

When we look at this evidence in the light of the Biblical account, a picture begins to form:  We see that people were, in fact, living in this area at the time of Abraham (2,000 BC).  The large holes in the bedrock are, in fact, the remnants of trees that had once grown there.  The account in Genesis 18 has the LORD and His two angels visiting Abraham and resting under the shade of a tree in verse 4:

Let a little water, I pray you, be fetched, and wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree:

A natural spring was found at the site, and it still exists today, which Mader named “Abraham’s spring.”  This would have been an important water source for people and animals, as well as for trees, allowing them to grow to a large height and providing enough shade for Abraham and his three guests. 

At the center of the site was the stone structure, built, according to pottery found at the site, during the time of Abraham.  Although only a portion of this structure remained, the fact that it was built at the center of the site gives important clues as to its original purpose.  Genesis 13:18:

Then Abram removed his tent, and came and dwelt in the plain of Mamre, which is in Hebron, and built there an altar unto the LORD.

Why is it important that this structure, built during Abraham’s time, was in the center of the site, and how can we deduce that it was Abraham’s altar?  Everything that came after was built up around this structure, with this structure as it’s focal point. 

The following excerpts are from the book, Where God Came Down, by Joel Kramer:

In AD 324, Constantine defeated his pagan rival Licinius, to become the sole ruler over a united Roman Empire. Now, for the first time, Mamre was under the control of a Roman emperor who proclaimed Christian faith.  Not long after he consolidated power, Constantine’s mother-in-law, Eutropia, visited Mamre on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land.  She wrote to her son-in-law about the pagan worship practices she observed there. 

In response, Constantine wrote a letter to the regional leaders which was preserved through the writings of church historian Eusebius.  In his letter, Constantine wrote:

She [Eutropia] assures me, then, that the place which gains its name from the oak of Mambre [Mamre], where we find that Abraham dwelt is defiled by certain of the slaves of superstition in every possible way.  She declares that idols which should be utterly destroyed have been erected on the site of that tree; that an altar is near the spot; and that impure sacrifices are continually performed.

Constantine issued orders to put an end to the pagan worship by burning the idols and to cleanse the site by building a church:

That every idol which shall be found in the place above-mentioned shall be immediately consigned to the flames; that the altar be utterly demolished … the place itself we have directed to be adorned with an unpolluted structure … a church; in order that it might become a fitting place of assembly for holy men. [End of quote]

This report was confirmed as Mader excavated broken idols and stone carvings of Hermes dating to that period. 

We see, then, that Abraham was not some fictitious character created long after he was said to have lived, but rather the events surrounding his life have been pinpointed to an exact place, and have been recognized and honored as such since ancient times.  In other words, exactly what we would expect to find if the Biblical story was true.

Two final paragraphs from Where God Came Down:

So, from the top layer down to bedrock, the archaeology Mader unearthed couldn’t reveal answers to critical questions:  What is this site? Why, in this particular place, is there one thing built on top of another over such a long period of time? 

Fortunately, Mader did have an ancient text to aid his understanding and interpretation—the Bible.  As we will see in the following section, using the Bible, and particularly the book of Genesis, Mader was able to clearly identify the site he was excavating as Mamre, the ancient campsite of Abraham. [End of quotes]

Genesis is laden with foundational God-inspired truths, one stacked upon another, but only the children of faith have eyes to see them.

GOD SAID, Genesis 10:1:

Now these are the generations of the sons of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth: and unto them were sons born after the flood.

GOD SAID, Genesis 11:6-9:

6 And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.

7 Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another''s speech.

8 So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city.

9 Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the LORD did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the LORD scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.

GOD SAID, Genesis 18:1:

And the LORD appeared unto him in the plains of Mamre: and he sat in the tent door in the heat of the day;

MAN SAID: My dream is to be independently wealthy.  I’ll eat the best food, live in the best homes, drive the best cars, wear the best clothes, and I’ll have people to wait on my every need.  What did you say?!  ‘This night thy soul shall be required of thee (Luke 12:20)?’ That’s a terrifying thought!  I just can’t think it!

 

Now you have THE RECORD.

 

 

References:

Authorized King James Version

Blumner, R., Free Inquiry

GodSaidManSaid, “Abraham: The Father of Faith (The Genesis Series, Part 39)”

GodSaidManSaid, “Noah, Ham, Canaan, Armageddon…and Alcohol (The Genesis Series, Part 36)”

GodSaidManSaid, “The Table of Nations’ Staggering Accuracy (The Genesis Series, Part 37)”

GodSaidManSaid, “Tower of Babel & One Common Language (The Genesis Series, Part 38)”

GodSaidManSaid, “Where God Came Down (The Genesis Series, Part 40)”

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