The study I am doing currently in my “self-determined curriculum”, is in Genesis and in Romans.  I love the Old Testament.  I guess because it takes us back to the very beginning, and I have a deep-seated need to pull together the “big picture” in everything that I strive to understand.  It’s just how I am wired.

My real journey into study of the scriptures, under the tutelage of the Holy Spirit, that is, began about seven and a half-to eight years ago.  But the great thing about the Bible is that it is a never-exhausted supply of new things to learn.

People don’t “get anything out of the Bible” when they try to read it, because the Holy Spirit isn’t going to “give” you anything that you can get on your own.  You have to let the Spirit teach you what it means instead of depending on your own understanding.

Secondly, you aren’t going to be granted new things to comprehend, until you are being obedient in the things the Lord has already taught you!

Abraham was called to come out from his country and from among his kindred, to the promised land God would give him, but when he ran to Egypt due to famine, God had no word for Abraham.

When you go to your Bible, pray for understanding first.  Ask for it.  You have not because you ask not, or you ask amiss.  If you pray for understanding so it can make you look good and holy and righteous before others, then you’re not going to get it.  If you read without praying, you’re not going to glean anything.

You have to read.  Or, if you are not good on sitting still to read, invest in a GoBible or some app on your smart phone that will read the Bible to you while you do other things.  But it’s not just reading.  You have to STUDY.  Study to show thyself approved, a workman that need not be ashamed.  Study means knowing something well enough that it is in your memory.  It may not mean necessarily memorizing chunks of scripture but you should become so familiar with the Bible that you know where to look for certain stories, verses, topics, and historical events.

Meditate on it.  A good way to meditate on the word is to choose a small portion that you carry with you and refer to frequently during the day, or read just before sleep so it sinks down into your subconscious mind where you can “chew on it”.

Make sure you use good reference books and good translations.  Word-for-word rather than “thought for thought” translations, and not paraphrases.  Obey what you learn, and tell it to someone else.  That reinforces the learning process.

The book of Genesis introduces many topics which will be further developed and addressed later in scripture.  It is the story of the human family.  It informs of covenants made by God with man, of individual and universal types, and nation-people-group specific types.

I like the way J. Vernon McGee put it.  You need to get the telescopic view before you can get the microscopic one.  This is exactly what I set out to achieve in 2008.  I have to work that way in anything I learn.  I need to have a grasp of the scope, know what I am taking on,  before I can settle into the minutiae of the details and nuances.

I never really realized it, but the first eleven chapters of the Book of Genesis covers over 2000 years of time.  No wonder that book seems to take forever to read through!!! (And that is not accounting for the potential gap between vs 1 and vs 2 that there is some disagreement about among “old Earth” and “young earth” proponents.

Did you ever notice that in Genesis 1:20 says that God said “Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creatures that have life and the fowl that fly above the earth in the open firmament of the heaven?”  God called the moving creatures and fowl forth from the water of the seas.   And God created great whales and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind (phylum) and every winged fowl after his kind.

I am NOT endorsing theistic evolution.  But scripture says it.  It’s right there!  We can’t go beyond what God has given to us.  God created them by speaking them into existence, but He brought them forth out of the sea.  Hebrews 11:3 tells us “through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the Word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.  In other words, the things in our world that we see now, were made out of things that did not even exist previously.  Ex nihilo.  Out of nothing!

Why does God say in Genesis 1:28 for man, after he created man, to be fruitful and multiply and replenish the Earth?  You can’t re-plenish something unless it was “plenished” before.  What filled the Earth before Genesis 1:2?  Another species?  There is some reason to believe that Satan lived here before.  But what and/or whom else?

For that matter, God created Adam and Eve as “adults” in other words, already aged to a certain degree.  So when Adam was 130, was he actually 130? So is the age of the Earth young or is it old? Or maybe it is both.  Maybe whatever happened between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2 was similar to what is going to happen at the end of the Millennium?  When God will destroy it all with fire and create new heavens and a new Earth.

Again, we don’t want to venture beyond what God has revealed and thereby “add to the Word of God” however, when you get to looking into string theory, black matter, time travel, black holes!   Whoa!  Maybe the spiral of time and all of eternity is actually the living out of every alternate scenario, from the tiniest difference in whether Harry met Sally, or Harry was hit by a car on the way to meet Sally, and they did or did not have a son named Alexander Fleming who invented Penicillin or not?!?

See how crazy that could get for our limited understanding of things?  And my understanding is a lot more limited than that of many folks.   (This is why I wrote an e-mail to Wendy Wippel and asked her to consider doing an article that  covers the black goo/black matter question for me,lol.  She promised to look into it).

Anyhoo, I just get so excited when the Holy Spirit teaches me stuff, opens up the scripture to me.  If God gave man “rule” over the earth then before the fall, could Adam control the weather like we do our heat pumps?  Like man has artificially figured out how to do now in our day?  (To some degree-no pun intended).

This is why I like to read commentaries by the old time preachers.  I’m telling you, we love to believe the longer mankind sticks around, the smarter we are.  It’s not true.  I believe we have lost as much knowledge as we have gained.  And the same is true for scripture.  Did you ever think about the fact God told husbands to love their wives, but He didn’t tell wives to love their husbands?  Nope, it’s not in there!  We are to obey them.  Respect them.  But God doesn’t have to tell us to love them, that is something we just do all on our own.  Men, on the other hand, can tend to “rule” without love.  We are equal, but we are assigned positions by God.  Roles.  Someone has to be in charge.  Women have intuition men don’t have.  We are wired to run multiple tracks in our mind at once, because if we couldn’t do that, we would miss the fact that little Johnny has been too quiet for too long while we are busy balancing the checkbook.  Men, on the other hand, keep things compartmentalized, so that when they hunt and gather and slay dragons, their entire faculties are focused on keeping themselves alive in the process because everyone else’s life depends on that.  That’s not sexist it’s just true!  This is the one thing Donald Trump has accomplished, and that is to finally kill “political correctness” that bane of our American existence.  Over in the EU, Muslim Extremism is accomplishing the same thing.  Borders are being closed.  Migrants are being deported.  The truth is the truth and it will set you free.  Too much gray, and we are getting back to the “black and white” of things.  And that is not a reference to race.  Yes, race relations in the public eye, anyway, are at an all time low.  But I don’t believe it.  It is not true for the average person.  Just in the realm of those who are totally brainwashed by academia and who have been conditioned not to think for themselves.  Small town America, and those of us who live between the coasts, make up a much more massive number than those on both coasts no matter how tightly they pack ’em in together in their skyscrapers.  (Ok, I’m in VA, so technically I am on one of the coasts, but we all know what sections of which coast constitute the extremes.)

And again I have digressed.  It’s what I do.  Why fight it.  While God reveals Himself to man starting in Genesis, He is also revealing man to himself.  Namely just how depraved we are.  When man disobeyed in the garden, it opened his eyes. Before someone is aware of evil, they are innocent.   That is why babies that die, go to heaven.  The “age of accountability is not really an age, but whether or not that person has reached the point of that comprehension of not just good vs bad, but righteous vs evil.

Man did not have the law at first.  The only “law” Adam and Eve had was not to eat of that fruit.  But the “law” didn’t come until Leviticus.  When you have the law, and you know the law, then if you disobey the law, that makes you a transgressor of the law.  Righteousness is always in faith for man. Righteousness is simply “to believe God”.

To believe what He has told us in His Word.  That is the only kind of “righteousness” man is capable of and then it is only by His Grace that He illuminates our understanding.

Salvation has NOTHING to do with man reaching God.  We can’t search out God.  We can obtain righteousness only in that God searches and seeks us out.  Pure and divine justice cannot ignore sin.  But our Creator grieves over us, and offers freely what we cannot obtain by ourselves by any other means, that is, Salvation.

When Adam and Eve sewed together fig leaves to cover themselves, that was symbolic of the way in which man tries to “fix” the problem of separation from God by his own works.

His ways are not our ways. That is why Cain’s offering was not acceptable.  The first animal sacrifice was when God killed animals to use their skin as a covering for Adam and Eve.  Without the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sins.  Abel offered a sacrifice that involved shedding of blood, because Abel understood he was a sinner.  Cain offered something he wanted to offer, instead of what God had required.  And when God doesn’t accept what he offered, Cain got mad.

People today who claim not to believe in God, or who reject the God of scripture and create their own imaginary version, are doing the same thing.  The movie God’s Not Dead 2 did a good job of depicting this in the attorney who opposed the teacher who was on trial for speaking her Christian faith in her classroom.  It was a case of “overacting” but still, it emphasized something that is totally accurate and true.  Haven’t you ever noticed the person who claims to not believe in God, is awfully mad at God for someone who doesn’t believe in Him.  Awfully resentful.  Like the kid who walks out of the kitchen with crème filling all over his face and says “I didn’t eat a cupcake” essentially gives himself away.

I say God doesn’t believe in Atheists.  Therefore they don’t exist.

Well, we go right on down through Adam clear down past Enoch, and on down through the flood, and all this time the subject matter is mankind as a whole, but after the flood, God focuses on Abraham , his line, and the Covenants He made with them.  From Abraham to Joseph, was only 350 years.  So even though the first 11 chapters cover  a long time span, there is much greater detail starting with Abraham.  From Abraham to the time of Jesus was another 2000 years.  And now it has been about another 2000 years since Jesus.  That is where the six thousand year young-Earth position comes from.  And of course on the seventh day, God rested.  Why?  Was He tired?  Maybe like us, when we have a new baby, we know we better rest when the baby does because it’s going to be a long haul.  God doesn’t actually need rest, though, so what was the purpose of that?  There remaineth a rest for the people of God.  That’s why.  He wants us to know that there is a time coming when we believers will get to stop striving and contending with the curse we live under on this Earth.  But there is a “rest” all can enter into NOW, which is the redemption purchased by the shed blood of Christ.  That is available right now.  And yes, that is skipping ahead “in the book” but God is one author who doesn’t mind that.

Chapter 6 in Genesis is the flood story.  God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the Earth and that every imagination of thoughts of his heart was only evil continuously.   It “repented” the Lord that he had made man.  (Genesis 6:6). Isn’t it cool how God took Enoch before the flood?  Enoch is a foreshadowing of the church.  The earth was corrupt before God, filled with violence, and all flesh had corrupted his way upon the Earth (Genesis 6:11-12).  God had told man that a Savior was coming. (Jude 14 and 15 tell us Enoch preached and prophesied).  But man didn’t want to hear about the Savior he needed.  Cain and Abel represent the lost and saved of this world.  They represent the difference between a “form of godliness that denies the power thereof” (false converts/false confessors) and the genuine believer.

Noah built the ark.  The animals came to the ark.  Just like animals will run away from danger, to higher ground, away from fire, these animals knew to go to the ark.  Chapter 7 sees man and animals closed up by the hand of God in the ark, and the rains come.  Noah was 600 years old!  After the rains stopped, it took a long time for the waters to subside.  Noah didn’t just send out that dove.  He sent out a crow first.  And the crow is an unclean bird. They represent the lost.  They are scavengers and will eat anything.  Why did the raven not come back?  Maybe because of the feast that was the bloated carcasses of dead animals and humans floating around in the debris?  The dove, however, found no place to light, and came back the first couple of times.  First with nothing, second time with an olive twig, indicating somewhere there was land dry enough for a tree to sprout.  And then the last time, the dove did not come back.  So in the ark, clean and unclean are together.  It is God who does the separating.  If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature.  In this time, the saved and unsaved are both in the mix, but also, while we still abide in the flesh, the new man, new creature in Christ, dwells with the old man and old nature.   Our old nature seeks to feast on the carcasses.  The filth of television, movies, fornication, debauchery.  As believers we are not supposed to continue dwelling in that old nature.

May I say that a lie has been sold by the modern “church” and bought by even many sincere believers who don’t know any better.  We are supposed to practice separation from the things of the world.  I used to call myself a “cussin’ Christian”.  In other words, I was quick to cast myself apart from the “holier-than-thou” reputation of fundamentalism. But that was before I understood what is truly “fundamental” and what is not.  Fundamentalism is a dirty word now, but truthfully, not without legitimate reasons.

If the devil can’t “get you” on the extreme of total rejection of God, then he will try to get you by distortion of God.

Now, I admit that because I am still in this flesh, sometimes this flesh prevails in certain moments.  I am still a work in progress.  Feed the new man, starve the old.  Take up your cross daily.  Crucify the flesh.  These things are not just catchy “christianese” phrases.  They are scriptural principles.

God allowed me to have sort of a tour of the “flavors” of Christianity.  I got sick of the worldliness of one extreme, ended up on a very fundamental church, which at first I rejoiced in, but the longer we were there, I started to see the many ways in which the fundamentalism itself had become an idol.

That is not to paint any church with the broad brush.  When you are sincere in seeking the Lord, and studying the Word, He gives you a discernment about these things.

Well, as you know, after the flood, mankind isn’t much improved.  Early on we learn Noah became a winebibber.  Whether changes in the atmosphere caused the grapes to ferment for the first time after the flood and Noah didn’t know this (canopy theory), or whether it was a case of Noah’s flesh prevailing, we know he got drunk and his son “discovered his nakedness”.  And there were consequences. Canaan was cursed to be servants of his brothers.  This became part of the Noahic covenant.  This curse was on Canaan, not on Ham, (which pertains to the falsehood of a curse on the dark skinned peoples of the world). The first two great civilizations in the world were Babylon and Egypt.  These were descendants of Ham.

Isn’t it comforting to know that God works through sinners who screw up?  Yeah, I still am a cussing Christian (from time to time), but the difference now is that I am not proud of it, and I repent when it does happen.  I think that is one of the things about maturing in your faith walk.  God does let you get by with a little early on, sometimes, but the more you have been taught, the more you are responsible for living up to.  Another reason not to ever compare your life to others.  Non-Christians don’t live by the same standards, but even among believers, the bar may be at a different place depending on what you have learned and what they have learned.  Just like you don’t like it when one kid comes and asks you why it’s “like this for my brother, and like that for me” the answer is going to be, because you are you, and he is he.  LOL  You are two different kids, of different ages and maturity levels with different learning experiences under your belts.  You have different dispositions, and different learning styles.

When you pray for strength, God gives you weakness, because He would rather you obey than “achieve”.  When you pray for good health, God sometimes gives you sickness instead because He doesn’t necessarily want you to “do great things” but rather to do good.

He gives some people poverty instead of riches, because He wants them to become wise.  He is not necessarily interested in your “happiness”.

Man tends to desire power, which lends itself to the praise of men, while God often gives weakness instead, so that we will know our need of Him.

God wrote Genesis so we can know where we came from and what we were “made for”, and so we can have certainty about our future.  And yet men are still trying to “work their way” to God.  Can’t be done, my friends.  Can’t be done.

Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life.  No man cometh unto the Father but by Him.  If you are not born again, then you are of your father the devil.  There is no such thing as the universal “family of God” on this earth.  There is one race, and that is the human race.  But there are two classes.  The saved/redeemed who are reconciled to their Creator through faith alone and having believed God, it is counted to them as righteousness.  And then there are the lost.  The God-rejecters who don’t believe God, and in fact resent His authority over them and desire to throw off His bands.  God will give them what they desire, but as soon as they realize what they have chosen, it will be too late.

Judgment is coming!

As it was in the days of Noah, and again in the days of Lot in Sodom.