Time and History

Thank you very much, and good afternoon, brethren. It is a pleasure to be here. I still get a—sometimes when I hear the coordinator of Ambassador of Bible College, I look around. It says Mr. Antion back here, but I'm thrilled. I've been moving in and, of course, working with him and, as Mr. Dean can attest, moving boxes of books and things into the office next door. So I feel like it's sort of real now, and all the more real when I come and do things like this.

I did want to pass on—I expressed to the Thomases last night—my wife sent her regrets. She would have liked to come and visit, but we've got a four-and-a-half-year-old at home, and that alone is a challenge when it comes to traveling. Shortly after he was born, my wife herniated a disk in her back that she actually is managing very well, but long trips in the car can be very difficult.

So she just said, it'll be better for you and everyone else if I stay home. But she would have liked to have been here to meet all of you. She's actually, between the two of us, we're both a little on the introverted side, but I'm pretty strong. She's outgoing and friendly, so I'm used to having her around to carry a conversation. Anyways, I know I've got limited time, and we do.

It's nice to have the one sunny day out of this stretch that we were promised, at least from the weathermen. And on one of these beautiful sunny days in the summer, doesn't it seem like time can just stretch on forever? On the other hand, when you're having a really good time, it goes by so fast. That's where we get this perspective of saying sometimes that time is relative, meaning that how we perceive it is based on external things.

And you'll experience that this afternoon. I was thinking the hour and a half or so that we have for services will probably seem to go by much more slowly than the time afterwards when we're enjoying a meal together and talking. I get that a lot of times at summer camp, this wonky perspective of time gets me because I'm having a wonderful time and time just flies.

But I'm so distracted and apart from everything else that by the time I've been there a couple days, it seems like it's been forever. I forget that I've ever had anything else. So I want to keep that in mind, this idea of time being relative. And we're going to apply that in another factor that I'm going to get to a certain part of the Bible. One of the things I want to mention is that they say time really is relative.

And I don't want to get into Einstein's theories and light speed travel. But it's good for us to remember that time is measured by what? By change. Physical change. Usually by movement. We might track the movement of the sun across the sky. Or if I look at my watch, these dials are going around and around in a circle. We can discern our age by changes in our body. But in Malachi 3 and verse 6, I'm not going to turn there, but you can make note, it tells us something very special about God.

He says, I am the Eternal, I change not. God's not physical. He doesn't have these changes. So we could say that God lives outside of time. Before the physical universe was created, you could make the case that there was no time. Because there was nothing to change. So that when God created physical energy and matter that can and do change, my way of thinking means that's when He invented time. But since God is still outside of time, He can pay attention to it as much or as little as He wants.

And 2 Peter 3 and verse 8 is where Peter says, for the God, a day is like a thousand years and a thousand years like a day. Since God lives outside of time, and I was looking, I thought I had the Scripture written down where it says, God inhabits eternity. And knowing me, I've got it somewhere later in my notes.

But He can pay attention to time as much or as little as He wants. He can focus in and intervene with those changes a lot. Or He can let time pass by with scant intervention. Now, I'm being rather abstract right now, but as I said, I wanted to establish that idea and then also bring in another thing that I learned about when I started graduate school studying history. And it's something I didn't really like at first because I had to change my way of thinking.

But it was the idea of what history itself is. I learned the definition of the word history as someone's account of something. Literally, it comes from the same word in Latin as story. In French, the word for history is estoire, which is the same exact word for story, meaning someone chooses what to put in their story. When I say I didn't like it, it's because I always came into studying history thinking, well, everything that happened is history, the sum total of all things.

Well, I thought if that was the story of history, who could write a history that includes everything? Maybe God, and that's it. My focus is early American history. So if I were to write a history of the beginning of the United States, what would I choose to include? I'd probably say something about George Washington. I would talk about important things that he said and did. Would I write about what he ate for breakfast every day? Would I include how he petted his cat? What the cat ate for breakfast? To be honest, I don't know if Washington had a cat.

That's probably because the historians writing about his life didn't think that was important enough to include. So you pick and choose certain things that you would include. And that applies to the Bible in some ways. I am going to turn to John 21.

This is still setting this theme. John 21 and verse 25, closing out the book, the Apostle John tells us this to confirm what I was saying about history. There are also many other things that Jesus did, which if they were written one by one, I suppose not even the world itself could contain the books that would be written.

Now we cite that as an example of hyperbole in Scripture, but it might be true in more ways than we think. If we wrote every single thing about Jesus Christ, what was his body temperature at every moment? How many times did his heart beat? The amount of information would be staggering.

And I say that because now living in a computer age, historians are dealing with that. So much information is stored without discrimination often. How do you know what's significant? And how do you know what will be considered significant a hundred years from now, or fifty years from now? Well, keep those things in mind, because those two factors come together in a very important part of the Bible, which is history.

Much of the Bible is a book of history. And in the start of this book, in the early chapters of Genesis, we see that come together. At the start of the Bible, we're going to find that time is relative. And there's a factor in how we describe history that's very much a factor. It's a term I learned from oral historians. This is in my previous career when I worked with the Humanities Council. We used to do workshops on how to interview people and write oral histories, and they talked about what's called a velocity of narrative.

Velocity of narrative refers to the density of facts that you cover. For instance, imagine if you were telling someone your lifestyle, say, tell me about yourself. Well, I grew up around Cleveland, and you might spend one or two sentences covering all of your life until you go to college, maybe. Then life gets interesting and you start talking about your major and your career choices. Then I met my future spouse, and the velocity of narrative slows way down as you give more detail. We'll see that in the Bible. If we look into it, we'll see whether I'm wearing my glasses or not. Theologians, we believe that the first eleven chapters of Genesis cover about two thousand years of human history.

Just imagine that. We think that's about a third of the time that man has been on this planet. Only eleven chapters of the Bible covering it. And one of those chapters deals with just a week. That tells us the velocity of narrative in those early chapters might speed up and slow down dramatically. And so, the author of this history book, who we believe was God, had to choose carefully what he included and what not. And if we keep those things in mind, it can really affect what we look at and what we take from this passage of the Bible and maybe challenge some assumptions that we might make or it would be easy to make.

So let's, if you're there already, we'll turn to the first chapter of Genesis. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, and the earth was without form and void, and darkness was on the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. There are some very simple statements here. And what's interesting is moving forward from there, the rest of this chapter and the first three verses of the next chapter cover one week. One week of God making the earth to be not without form and void. Now, there are some people that say, well, he's doing so much, you know, making the life and trees and plants.

That couldn't have been in just a week. Well, I think it was a week. I think saying that God couldn't have done it that way might be expressing a lack of faith. You know, and some people want to say, well, those days really represent each a thousand years. Remember, we read in 2 Peter, a thousand years to the Lord is as a day. Well, I don't think that's the case. Now, there are some times when the Hebrew word that's translated day can mean an era or an indeterminate period of time, but grammatically, Hebrew scholars say when the combination of day and night is put together, when that happens, it means 24 hours.

And we see that throughout this section, this first chapter in chapter one verse five, verse eight, verse thirteen. I'm just running down on verse twenty-three and verse thirty-one. All these say, in the evening and the morning were the first day, second day, third day. So grammatically, this tells us, you know, these are real days and a real week. And of course that appears in other places in the Bible.

Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights, exactly 72 hours, which Christ cited as the sign that he was indeed the Messiah. He would likewise be three days and three nights in the grave.

There is some scientific evidence. If you look at verse twenty-four of Genesis one, God said, let the earth bring forth living... Actually, let me back up. I want to go to verse eleven first. God said, let the earth bring forth grass and the herb that yields seed in the fruit tree. So the earth did that. And then in verse fourteen, and by the way, in verse thirteen, the evening and the day were the third day. So that's the end of the day. So we move into the fourth day and God said, let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven that divide the day from the night, signs and seasons.

And He made the two great lights, the greater light to rule the day, which we call the sun, the lesser night. Now, this was not a twenty-four hour period, but a thousand years. Imagine those plants that He created and then left in the dark for a thousand years.

How many would still be around? Now you could say, well, there was some light, because back in verse three He said, let there be light. But now if we go to verse twenty-four, we see another thing. Now we're on the...in the sixth day, God said, let the earth bring forth living creatures. And He made the land...boy, too much coffee. He made land creatures. This should remind us, God made certain plants which were created, remember, according to some people, three thousand years earlier, many of those plants are dependent on insects and or birds for pollination.

If they had to wait three thousand years, they would have ceased to exist. And I'm focusing on this just to remind you that the narrative speeds up. Here for this basically a full chapter, God is being meticulous covering seven days of a week. But seeing that and realizing, okay, He means a day when He says a day, that could make us tend to want to apply that to everything.

But there are some places in the early chapters of Genesis where God doesn't give us the specific time. He leaves it open. And we read the best example of that already at the start of the chapter. In the first two verses, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, and the earth was without form and void and darkness on the face of the deep. We tend to just read that and say, okay, that's what happened. But as I think many of us know, without telling us how much time was involved, we should realize there is an opportunity for perhaps an immense passage of time to be covered there.

The Hebrew there, where we read, in the beginning, actually the Hebrew could and should be translated in a beginning.

There is a different beginning described in John chapter 1 verse 1, where it also says, in the beginning, but there it says, in the beginning was the Word. And the Word was with God, and the Word was God. John, of course, goes on in that chapter to explain that he's referring to the one that became known as Jesus Christ. And it says that he made all things. Without him, nothing was made that was made. That would then obviously include angels who are created beings. And I'm thinking of time sequence, and now Job 30 verse 7, I'm not going to turn to all these scriptures, we'll turn to some later, but in Job 30 verse 7 is where it says, the angels sang and shouted for joy when God created the earth. Well, that gives us an obvious sequence. Angels must have been created first, because they were there to sing for joy when the earth was created. Okay, and those angels would include the one that became Satan, and whose heart was lifted up because of his beauty, who iniquity was found within. We'll come back to that in a moment. But let's also look in Genesis 1 and verse 2.

The earth was without form and void. And this is a review I know from many of you old-timers, but the Hebrew word there translated was as hayah. Now, it always makes me want to do a karate demonstration and say hayah, but it's not that. But that Hebrew word could properly be translated as became. And it is translated became other places in early Genesis. So this could be saying, in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, and the earth became without form and void. Not that God made it that way in the first place. As a matter of fact, how many of you remember this? The without form and void come from the Hebrew words tohu and bohu, which I heard a lot of times growing up. Of course, Mr. Armstrong liked to say that, and I don't know how many times as a kid I was thinking, tohu and bohu. Are those two Disney characters? To me, that always sounds, but they're not Disney characters. But in Isaiah 45 verse 18, it specifically says that God did not create the... well, it says that He did create the heavens and the earth, and He didn't create them in vain. God did not create the heavens and the earth tohu, but they became tohu and bohu for that matter. If God didn't make it that way, but it did become that way, how long did it take?

The answer? We don't know. He doesn't tell us. Now, scientists may or may not be right about this, but many scientists estimate that the earth is about 4 billion years old. Theologians who add up the ages of who would be God, who in the Bible, say, well, we think Adam was created about 6,000 years ago. Okay, what's 4 billion minus 6,000? Actually, Mr. Dean probably has a calculator that could give me that, but I just know it's a lot. That leaves a lot of potential room between Genesis 1-1 and 1-2. Before the earth became uninhabitable, tohu and bohu, the fossil record indicates that perhaps it had life forms on it. Perhaps even including what we call dinosaurs. Perhaps angels, which is something that we theorize and think, have a good reason to think is true. I referenced the accounts in Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28. Angels might have lived on this earth a long time before Adam and Eve. Matter of fact, in Jude 1 and verse 6, my Bible fell right open to it, so I'll read it for you. Jude 1 and verse 6 says, the angels did not keep their proper domain. Some versions say their first estate. What was their first estate or their proper domain? We could theorize it might have been this earth in the time before it became tohu and bohu. As I said, I quoted Ezekiel 28.15 where it says, of Satan, you were perfect in your ways until iniquity was found in you.

How long did it take for perfection to turn to iniquity? Again, we don't know. Possibly millions or billions of years. Possibly a much shorter time. But now that we've realized, you know, that in some places, Genesis does describe the amount of time involved for something and some places does not. And that could affect a lot of how we view the world. So far, I've been reviewing what I think is history for most of us. As I said, as a teenager, I heard this explained a lot of times, never dreamed that I'd be standing up here explaining it to people who already know. I'm hoping some of you are newer and might be hearing it for the first time, or don't mind the review.

But let's see if that affects some of our suppositions. Oh, I love using that word.

About the first family. When I say first family, I don't mean Barack and Michelle and Malaya and what's the other ones? Well, the Obama family. I mean Adam and Eve and their children.

We know, and from Genesis 1, I'm going to go back to Genesis 1, on the sixth day, God created land creatures, and He created man in His own image. God created man or Adam, which means red mud or mankind. And the next chapter, He goes back and fills in more of the details, gives us another account of that. So in Genesis 2, in verse 15, the Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to tend and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, of every tree of the garden you may freely eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat of it. And the day you eat of it you'll surely die. And by the way, I do believe that there were two actual trees there. I think they were symbolic, but when God says there were trees, I think there were trees. But we're focusing on time today, not horticulture. And we know in Genesis 3 in verse 1, the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And He said to the woman, by the way, I skipped ahead. We don't know how long it took for Adam to be put to sleep and God to form the woman. But hopefully not a long time. Adam was lonely enough that he was glad to see her. I'm guessing. Anyways, we have the original marriage, which I'm skipping over. I'm guessing with the whole Supreme Court thing and decision, we focused a lot on this description of what God made marriage. One man, one woman joined together as one flesh. And, you know, mankind didn't invent what is marriage. God did. He did it right here. So I'm not going to reiterate that even though I just did. But as I said, the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field, which the Lord God had made. And He said to the woman, He came up to Eve and said, as God said, you shall not eat of every tree of the garden. Now we understand this wasn't just any talking snake. This was Satan, who presented himself in a form designed to not scare the woman.

Something she'd seen. And that always amazes me. But I think that's the case. No snakes had been dangerous to her before, so a snake comes walking up. We presume, a lot of people theorize, that it had legs before this. We're not certain. But it started asking her these questions.

And what I want to note here is the description of when this happened.

Wait a minute. Maybe we should say the lack of description of when this happened.

How long were they living in the garden before this happened and they ate the fruit?

Now we tend to think this was day eight. We went through all those days. Now this is the eighth day. And on the eighth day, God created Harley Davidson, right? Have you seen the t-shirts?

I always know some people are going to laugh at that and some people are going to say, what kind of... I've seen every kind of name brand you can imagine. But we don't know this was day eight. It doesn't tell us. I kind of suspect this might be some time later. We know later it's going to say in Genesis 3, 8, Adam and Eve after they sinned, they heard God walking in the garden in the cool of the day. We presume maybe that was the first time he came to visit, but maybe that was just his normal time to come visit. My wife likes to call her mom, who lives down in Kentucky, about once a day and they chat. Can you imagine if God visited Adam and Eve almost every day and talked to them and taught them things? One of the reasons I think that is how many things does mankind know how to do that it's hard to imagine him figuring out on its own? Now we can think of a lot, but I learned a lesson from baking cookies when I was a teenager. Now you might think this is really bizarre, but I learned to bake chocolate chip cookies and I did it enough that I had the recipe memorized and I could whip them up because I love chocolate chip cookies. One day I made them up and I baked them and they kept falling apart and I realized I'd forgot the egg. It's amazing what a difference egg makes in baked goods. Now who figured that out? Can you imagine? I imagine the first person that wanted to bake, imagine they saw a chicken running around and something come out of it that looked a little bit different than chicken poop, but who thought I'm going to eat that?

Or better yet, I'm going to break it open and mix it with some flour. Now maybe somebody figured out by trial and error, but you ever think maybe God was visiting Adam and even said, now here's my lesson for the day. Here's what you do with the thing that comes out of a chicken. You know, and other things. Here's how you make fire. Here's how to, you know, make wine with grape juice. All kinds of lessons. Perhaps how long had this been going on? Now I like to think several days, maybe weeks. There's something in my mind that says maybe not months because they were still naked. And I just have a trouble thinking that going on for too long. You know, you get calluses and stuff, but we don't know. But anyways, I want to move ahead in this because we do know that what happened. They sinned, and then in chapter 3 they were confronted with that. It wasn't pleasant. God confronted with them and he pronounced judgment, and they were going to be on their own. In chapter 3 and verse 20, Adam called his wife's name Eve because she was the mother of all living. Actually, I wanted to read a little before that. And verse 16, I don't know why, but I'm reversed in my notes.

God said to the woman, I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception, and pain you'll bring for children, and your desire will be to your husband, and he'll rule over you. Now, I do think that could refer to very real pain, but many scholars also think there was this pain in knowing that they were bringing children into a world that was cut off from God. Many of us have read or heard Mr. Armstrong describe theoretically how when Adam and Eve took of the forbidden fruit, God said, you're leaving the garden and making up the words that he might have said. Now you're cut off. Go form your own religions, your own systems of government, your own systems of education. I'm not going to be a part of this. Now, God reserved the right to intervene when he wanted to, and he would call a nation out. But mankind, for the most part, was cut off, living in the world under Satan's influence. And the next chapter shows, as I said, if there's this the sorrow of bringing children into a world cut off from the Creator, that would happen how soon? We don't know for sure, but in chapter 4 it says, Adam knew Eve his wife. She conceived and bore Cain. She said, I've begotten a man from the eternal. Now that might refer back to chapter 3 and verse 15, where there was a prophecy that one of her descendants would bruise Satan's head and Satan would bruise his heel.

But of course, we see that as a prophecy of Christ also. But we'll move on. Then she bore again, this time as Brother Abel. Now, Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground.

Now, wait a minute. Stop there. If you're like me, you've read this a whole lot of times, and you see one sentence flowing into the next, and you might not think about how much time has elapsed. Let's think back of what I've hopefully sort of established. And Genesis 1, verses 1 and 2 seems to cover perhaps millions or billions of years. And I know that's a debate with some people, but there's a possibility millions or billions of years. Then Genesis 1, verse 3, through Genesis 2, verse 3, covers one week. Now we're looking at chapter 4. The first two verses probably cover, I suspect, two, three, or four decades.

Now, you might say, wait a minute, we're just having babies born. But it says, you know, one was a tiller of the ground and one was a keeper of sheep. That was their life, their occupation, what they did for a living. How many toddlers are out there raising crops and livestock? I've got a four and a half year old at home. He doesn't know how to wipe himself. He's not raising sheep and livestock. And sorry, I'm letting my crash humor come in, but some time has passed here that God didn't decide to tell us how much.

Now, presume even if they were only in their 20s, they'd become tiller, you know, raisers of livestock, tiller of the ground. And verse 3 is going to tell us more time is passing. In the process of time it came to pass that Cain brought an offering of the fruit of the ground to the Lord. Abel also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of their fat. And the eternal respected Abel on his offering. He did not respect Cain in his offering. So Cain was angry and his countenance fell. Once again, there's two phrases there that tell us something. And in the...

let me read them again. In the process of time, and it came to pass, we don't know how much time is passing there. And one thing we can ask, what were Adam and Eve doing during that process of time? Well, do we need to know? No, we don't need to know, or else God would have told us. I'm guessing they were planting and raising crops. They were living life and probably doing what it says a couple chapters later when it says they were having children. Genesis 5 verse 4, it's across the page for me, you know, he begot sons and daughters.

Now, as I said, this relates to this discussion of historians picking and choosing what to write about in their books and what not. During this time, we don't know what George Washington's cat ate for breakfast. And God doesn't tell us what Adam and Eve were doing, but we do know that we're covering a process of time, and it came to pass.

God respected Abel's offering and not Cain's. How did Cain and Abel know that? Now, I always presume God told him, not Cain, that's out. I don't like that one. I like this one, Abel. It doesn't say that he did that. He might have, but I wonder, there's other ways that God shows his favor. And one example I thought of is when Jacob was working for his father-in-law, Laban, and God favored Jacob and blessed him and not Laban.

Now, how did God show that? He caused Jacob's flocks to increase. They had speckled and rings straked and all kinds of cattle, and Laban's cattle became the weaker. And that was over a period of time. And I warn you, I'm speculating here. I'm not reading a scripture saying, this is the way this was.

But it's worth if this was happening, if over the process of time, perhaps years, Cain wasn't being blessed, and Abel was, maybe it's counting its spell because he thought, I'm sick and tired of him getting all these blessings, and I'm not.

What's going on here? And then we do know God told him something. In verse 6, Lord said to Cain, what are you angry for? What's your countenance spell? If you do well, will you not be accepted?

It's sort of like God saying, well, what did you expect? You have to do well to be blessed.

So we don't know when, but sometime, and this time I think it probably wasn't a long time after, Cain allowed his anger to lead him to kill his brother Abel. So he got fed up and killed him.

Now, when a person, as I said, starts reading from Genesis 1-1, and you could do this in a morning, if you're like me, I like to get up and have my coffee and read my Bible for about a half hour or so, I can go all the way through chapter 4 in one sitting. And so in my mind, I'm thinking, all this has happened within a course of a few days. You know, we're in the second week of creation here. And then reality sits in, wait a minute, you've got adult children here, and who knows how long that process of time to take? So it's probably been more than a week or two, more than a year or two, I think several decades in, that we reached this point. And that helps us to understand some other things. After God cursed Cain with, you know, Cain killed Abel, God didn't kill Cain, but he sentenced him to punishment, banishment. And Cain complains about what others will do in verse 14.

Surely you've driven me out this day from the face of the ground, I'll be hidden from your face, this is Cain talking to God, and I'll be a fugitive and a vagabond on the earth, and it'll happen that anyone who finds me will kill me. And the Lord said, well, whoever kills Cain, vengeance will be taken on him sevenfold. So the Eternal set a mark on Cain, lest anyone finding him should kill him. And I'm going to say, I'm not even going to speculate what the mark was, but the big question is, who are these other people? Who's Cain worried about? If you sit down and read from beginning to end, you think, well, wait a minute, there's only three people on the planet. Now, there had been four until yesterday when Cain killed one of them. But if you stop and look at the long term of what it doesn't tell us and realize that the whole of, you know, 11 chapters are covering 2,000 years of history, God picks and chooses and tells us what we need to know. Now, I wanted to address this partly because I've heard a theory from some people that I don't think is right. And I think this is a heresy that could lead us astray. But I've heard some people say, well, there were already some humans on the planet before God created Adam and Eve. And Adam was a special creation. Now, who created those other people depends on whose version of this you're hearing.

But, you know, I don't buy that. I think Adam was special, but he was special because he was created in God's image and he was the only human. As we saw in Genesis 3, verse 20, Adam called his wife's name Eve because she was the mother of all living. Now, by all living, I want to say that doesn't mean dogs, cats, horses, all human people. And I also reference Acts 17, 26, where it says, God made of one blood all nations on earth. Some people have said, well, that word blood isn't in the original Greek. Well, still, if God made of one, all nations, one what? One family? So, to be blunt, I think the reason some people propose this idea is because they don't see how the velocity of narrative speeds up and slows down. And a lot of it comes from a motivation that I think is racism. You know, the way I've heard it is white people want to say Adam and Eve were white, and from them, people were descended to have the opportunity for salvation to be in God's family, and people of other ethnicities don't have that. I always laughed and said, well, wait a minute. What makes you think they were white? Maybe Adam and Eve were brown, and the white people were the other people. I don't think that's true in any case, and I'll mention this, especially I'm trying to keep in mind that I don't take Mr. Dean's time, but I'm not planning to go quite as far as Noah's flood. But if we did, I think that would eliminate all the other people anyways. But, come back to my question, where did those people come from? Well, for that matter, in chapter 4, verse 17, it tells us Cain knew his wife, and she conceived and bore Enoch, and it goes from there. Where did Cain's wife come from? I think the simple statement is what I just read in Genesis 3.20. They came from Adam and Eve, or from Adam and Eve's children, or their grandchildren. Now, it makes sense to say, well, when did Cain kill Abel? Probably not the eighth day, or the second week after creation. It might have been decades later. What were Adam and Eve doing in the meantime? As it says in chapter 5, verse 3 and 4. After he begot Seth, Seth is going to come along later, but the days of Adam were 800 years, and he did what? He begot sons and daughters, and all the days that Adam lived were 930 years, and he died. Adam and Eve apparently had sons and daughters whose names we don't know. We know the names of three, Cain, Abel, and Seth. We don't know the names of the others, probably, because we don't need to. It's interesting, Jewish tradition, which is not the Bible, but it's something we could consider. Jewish tradition says that Adam and Eve had 33 sons and 23 daughters. That's 56 kids! Anybody here got more than five? Okay, why do we only know the names of those three? Well, two of them, Cain and Abel, have this special story that we have to learn from, so we know their names. Seth? Well, Seth was in the likeness and image of Adam. That tells us something. And, of course, if you follow the genealogy, Noah would be descended from Seth, and thus all of us. So, at the time, we think Moses might have put together the Pentateuch. By the time he was doing it, it makes sense to mention Seth. Of course, it was probably preserved in writing before that. But, if you read the rest of the chapter, Seth was this direct ancestor. Now, that doesn't mean that... Where am I going here? Oh, sorry, let me go back.

Sorry, I lost track of...

Yeah. And chapter 4, verse 25, Adam knew his wife Eve again, and she bore a son named Seth.

Okay, because she said, God's appointed me another son instead of Abel. Now, one thing I've wondered, we know that when we say Adam knew Eve, it meant they had relations. Do we assume that was the first time that it happened since Abel was born? Probably not. So, why would we assume that having the son was the first time having a son had happened? Now, come to verse 3, Adam lived 130 years and begot a son in his own likeness after his image. Seth looked like Adam in a way that perhaps some of the others didn't. Now, does that mean that all the other kids didn't look anything like them? Was it like a Star Wars movie with all these weird creatures? Probably not, but it's interesting to think of what the possibilities are here. Think about Adam and Eve. They're the only human beings who did not have parents. The only human beings ever. Everyone else had parents. Adam and Eve were created by God. That gave God a special opportunity, because one thing scientists have learned, and I know they're correct, when a woman is born, in her ovaries exist all the eggs that she'll ever have. They're already formed at birth. Okay, well, God had to make Eve with those ovaries with all these eggs. At least 56 of them. If he had to make them special anyways, why not put different chromosomes and different genetic factors in each one of them if he wanted to? That's a logical thing. That's the one time where it makes sense to do it. And that would explain why, when Seth came out, you know, Adam, they looked and said, hey, here's a son after my likeness. He looks like me. Maybe they'd had others that were coming out looking quite a bit different, and they wouldn't have been surprised by that, because it's the way it had always been. You know, they probably got this time one kind of yellow, this one red, this one brown. Hey, look, this one looks like you! You know, that's significant. They wouldn't have been surprised. And that might be why, back in verse 25, Eve made a big deal. It's like, oh, I've got one in place of Abel. Maybe Abel looked more like Adam than the others. If that's the reason Seth especially mentioned, in the same way that 50 some of the others weren't, maybe that's why he's mentioned there. Not that he was the next child born, but the next one after Adam's likeness. How many, if Seth came at age 130, how many kids can you have before you're 130 years old? I think of that, I was talking to Thomas, is they have, what, six grandchildren in the congregation? You're not 70 yet, are you? I mentioned this down in Portsmouth. We've got a couple who are deacon and deaconess, and they're in their 70s, and they've got three children in the congregation and nine grandchildren, and they're still working on it. By the time they're 130, who knows how many kids they'll be around? I say 130. I'm not sure if they're going to reach 130 in this flesh. They're looking forward to a spirit body.

But that really tells us a different thing, and all this circles back to that point. By the time Cain killed Adam, or Cain didn't kill Adam, Cain killed Abel, there might have been a lot of people on the planet, and were leading up to those strange days described before Noah and the Ark, when the heart of man was turned to evil continually. It wasn't necessarily a good time on the planet, and there's tons that we don't know. The velocity of narrative is so fast that we're only getting bits and pieces that God thinks, okay, you need to know this, you don't need to know all the rest. I'll catch you up later, you know, when you've got an eternity to learn about it.

But that can help us, perhaps, to answer a lot of questions about the early part of Genesis, that people make up answers that aren't necessarily right. As I said, that God created one race in His image, and all these other races aren't. Or, how could, you know, it has to be a myth, because Cain didn't have anybody to marry. It doesn't have to be a myth. There's a very easy, logical explanation. But I'm keeping an eye on the clock, and I wanted to stop short of the story of Noah. And actually, partly because at that point, the chronology evens out quite a bit. It speeds up and slows down some, but nothing like it does in the first few chapters. And here's that verse I wanted. I wanted to turn to Isaiah 57. Isaiah 57 and verse 15. I knew it was in my notes somewhere, just much later than I expected. Isaiah 57 and verse 15 tells us something about God that was what I tried to establish early on. I should have brought my other Bible. I've been there already. Isaiah 57 and verse 15 says, Thus says the high and lofty one, who inhabits eternity, whose name is holy. I dwell in the high and holy place. And he goes on from there, but God inhabits eternity. He doesn't change. Time doesn't affect him. What I think is really great is that he wants us to join him. He's asking us and preparing us to live in eternity with him. And there's where I want to turn from where we spent our time at the beginning of the Bible to the end. And I'm going to do a velocity of narrative thing and skip ahead to what we're looking forward to in Revelation 22.

In Revelation 22 12, Behold, I'm coming quickly, and my reward is with me to give to everyone according to his work. That reward is going to include inhabiting eternity. And Jesus says, I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last. That's what we need to know. Blessed are those who do his commandments that they may have a right to the tree of life and enter into the gates of the city. I've always liked that, and I'm not the first one to point it out, that at the beginning of the Bible we see the tree of life. And at the end, God brings back the tree of life. This is all a condensed version of where he's leading and building his family. God inhabits eternity. He's inviting us to live there. Later in the chapter, verse 17, the spirit and the bride say, come, let him who hears say, come, whoever thirst, whoever desires, let him take of the waters of life freely. God is preparing for that for us and his family.