-
†. Gen 6:5 . . And the Lord saw that the evil of man was great in the
earth, and every imagination of his heart was only evil all the time.
Man's descent into depravity didn't catch his creator by surprise. After all;
not only can God see the future but He can also manipulate it; so He was
well aware even before Gen 1:1 that the people He was about to create were
destined from day-one for a global deluge.
Also, when God inspected His handiwork at Gen 1:31, He evaluated it not
just good, but "very" good. So as far as He was concerned; everything was
going smoothly and according to plan-- nothing was broken, and nothing
was maladjusted.
†. Gen 6:6 . . And the Lord regretted that He had made man upon the
earth, and He became grieved in His heart.
I seriously doubt that the regret and grief that God felt was somehow related
to His thinking that creating human life was a big mistake. It's difficult to
discern from the language and grammar of the text; but it's far more likely
that the regret God felt in Gen 6:6 was directly related to what He was about
to do next: the destruction of a major portion of the life that He himself put
on earth.
In other words; the destruction of life is not something God enjoys as if He
were an outdoor guy who kills fish and wildlife for sport with no more
sensitivity than a kid blasting aliens in a video game. Man's creator knew the
day was coming when He would have to do what He was about to do next,
and clearly wasn't looking forward to it.
But to be quite forthright; it seems insane to me that God would go forward
with plans to create life on earth knowing in advance that He would one day
be destroying so much of it. Where's the logic in that? I just don't get it; but
then, no surprise there.
The human mind is organic-- produced by a three-pound lump of flabby
organic tissue; and not even all three of those pounds are utilized for
cognitive processes. 60% of the human brain's mass is fat. All considered:
the human mind is practically that of an insect in comparison to the mind of
the inventor who created human life.
†. Gen 6:7 . . And the Lord said: I will blot out man, whom I created,
from upon the face of the earth, from man to cattle to creeping
thing, to the fowl of the heavens, for I regret that I made them.
The destruction of earth's birds and beasts was unavoidable; they became
collateral damage in God's war against the sinful antediluvians.
The Hebrew word for "blot" is from machah (maw-khaw') which means: to
stroke or rub; by implication, to erase; also to smooth (as if with oil), i.e.
grease or make fat; also to touch, i.e. reach to.
God intended to not only remove the antediluvians from the face of the
earth, but also to scrub off all of their works too so that when He was done,
it would be very difficult, if not impossible, to even be able to tell the
antediluvians were ever here at all.
It's always been a mystery to me why paleo-anthropologists have managed
to find so few fossilized remains of pre-historic human beings.
In 1992, Tim White of the University of California at Berkeley, discovered the
fossilized skeletons of human-like creatures in Ethiopia's Afar Rift who lived
4.4 million years ago but those are not the remains of h.sapiens; but rather,
of beasts that resemble h.sapiens. To my knowledge; no truly human
remains have been found from that era.
While mysterious; that lack of remains isn't exclusive. Take for instance the
Passenger Pigeon. That bird at one time numbered an estimated four to five
billion individuals; which is a number equal in quantity to the current year
round population of all North American birds combined. Yet an archeological
search for the pigeon's bones left behind by people who ate the bird for
food, through all pre-Columbian times, has thus far yielded very few
remains; at only two sites.
But my point is: where are the remains of the antediluvians? They're gone;
lock, stock, and barrel-- no metal implements from Tubal-Cain's blacksmith
shop, no musical instruments from Jubal's work shop, no dwellings, no
footprints, no bones, no pottery, no cave art, not even any geological
evidence of a world-wide deluge: nothing. It's like they were never here.
God moved against the antediluvians like a relentless newspaper editor
deleting superfluous words and sentences so skillfully that the reader cannot
even tell those superfluous words and sentences ever existed in the original
copy.
Why would God do that? I would hazard to guess that His purpose in doing
so was to prevent people from believing too easily that the Flood actually
happened.
The funny thing about the Bible is that portions of it are just as effective at
driving people away from God as they are at attracting them. No doubt it is
God's wishes that everybody believe the Bible; but at the same time it
seems He's thwarted His own wishes by taking steps to ensure that a
substantial number of people don't. For example:
"Moses summoned all Israel and said to them: You have seen all that The
Lord did before your eyes in the land of Egypt to Pharaoh and all his
servants and all his land; the great trials which your eyes have seen, those
great signs and wonders. Yet to this day The Lord has not given you a heart
to know, nor eyes to see, nor ears to hear." (Deut 29:2-4)
"No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father
except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him." (Matt
11:27)
"A natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God; for they are
foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are
spiritually discerned." (1Cor 2:14)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
†. Gen 6:5 . . And the Lord saw that the evil of man was great in the
earth, and every imagination of his heart was only evil all the time.
Man's descent into depravity didn't catch his creator by surprise. After all;
not only can God see the future but He can also manipulate it; so He was
well aware even before Gen 1:1 that the people He was about to create were
destined from day-one for a global deluge.
Also, when God inspected His handiwork at Gen 1:31, He evaluated it not
just good, but "very" good. So as far as He was concerned; everything was
going smoothly and according to plan-- nothing was broken, and nothing
was maladjusted.
†. Gen 6:6 . . And the Lord regretted that He had made man upon the
earth, and He became grieved in His heart.
I seriously doubt that the regret and grief that God felt was somehow related
to His thinking that creating human life was a big mistake. It's difficult to
discern from the language and grammar of the text; but it's far more likely
that the regret God felt in Gen 6:6 was directly related to what He was about
to do next: the destruction of a major portion of the life that He himself put
on earth.
In other words; the destruction of life is not something God enjoys as if He
were an outdoor guy who kills fish and wildlife for sport with no more
sensitivity than a kid blasting aliens in a video game. Man's creator knew the
day was coming when He would have to do what He was about to do next,
and clearly wasn't looking forward to it.
But to be quite forthright; it seems insane to me that God would go forward
with plans to create life on earth knowing in advance that He would one day
be destroying so much of it. Where's the logic in that? I just don't get it; but
then, no surprise there.
The human mind is organic-- produced by a three-pound lump of flabby
organic tissue; and not even all three of those pounds are utilized for
cognitive processes. 60% of the human brain's mass is fat. All considered:
the human mind is practically that of an insect in comparison to the mind of
the inventor who created human life.
†. Gen 6:7 . . And the Lord said: I will blot out man, whom I created,
from upon the face of the earth, from man to cattle to creeping
thing, to the fowl of the heavens, for I regret that I made them.
The destruction of earth's birds and beasts was unavoidable; they became
collateral damage in God's war against the sinful antediluvians.
The Hebrew word for "blot" is from machah (maw-khaw') which means: to
stroke or rub; by implication, to erase; also to smooth (as if with oil), i.e.
grease or make fat; also to touch, i.e. reach to.
God intended to not only remove the antediluvians from the face of the
earth, but also to scrub off all of their works too so that when He was done,
it would be very difficult, if not impossible, to even be able to tell the
antediluvians were ever here at all.
It's always been a mystery to me why paleo-anthropologists have managed
to find so few fossilized remains of pre-historic human beings.
In 1992, Tim White of the University of California at Berkeley, discovered the
fossilized skeletons of human-like creatures in Ethiopia's Afar Rift who lived
4.4 million years ago but those are not the remains of h.sapiens; but rather,
of beasts that resemble h.sapiens. To my knowledge; no truly human
remains have been found from that era.
While mysterious; that lack of remains isn't exclusive. Take for instance the
Passenger Pigeon. That bird at one time numbered an estimated four to five
billion individuals; which is a number equal in quantity to the current year
round population of all North American birds combined. Yet an archeological
search for the pigeon's bones left behind by people who ate the bird for
food, through all pre-Columbian times, has thus far yielded very few
remains; at only two sites.
But my point is: where are the remains of the antediluvians? They're gone;
lock, stock, and barrel-- no metal implements from Tubal-Cain's blacksmith
shop, no musical instruments from Jubal's work shop, no dwellings, no
footprints, no bones, no pottery, no cave art, not even any geological
evidence of a world-wide deluge: nothing. It's like they were never here.
God moved against the antediluvians like a relentless newspaper editor
deleting superfluous words and sentences so skillfully that the reader cannot
even tell those superfluous words and sentences ever existed in the original
copy.
Why would God do that? I would hazard to guess that His purpose in doing
so was to prevent people from believing too easily that the Flood actually
happened.
The funny thing about the Bible is that portions of it are just as effective at
driving people away from God as they are at attracting them. No doubt it is
God's wishes that everybody believe the Bible; but at the same time it
seems He's thwarted His own wishes by taking steps to ensure that a
substantial number of people don't. For example:
"Moses summoned all Israel and said to them: You have seen all that The
Lord did before your eyes in the land of Egypt to Pharaoh and all his
servants and all his land; the great trials which your eyes have seen, those
great signs and wonders. Yet to this day The Lord has not given you a heart
to know, nor eyes to see, nor ears to hear." (Deut 29:2-4)
"No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father
except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him." (Matt
11:27)
"A natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God; for they are
foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are
spiritually discerned." (1Cor 2:14)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=