December 24, 2014

TALES FROM EDEN: Day Five


Disclaimer: It should go without saying that these are by all means fictitious tales. I want to make this absolutely clear: This is not a new revelation from God. I am not dictating the Word of God. Please take everything I say here with great caution and perfect deference to the Bible. This is simply one man’s poor attempt at imagining what it would have been like to be Adam. I have tried to remain faithful to the Bible’s account and to not deviate from it.

Day 5
The early morning came with gusts of wind and a light shower of cool rain, which greatly refreshed me. I was still under the Tree of Life, which provided a thick covering over me. The Lord soon came walking through the rain in the cool of the morning,[1] as He was accustomed to do in those days. His radiant appearance was ever a source of awe.

When I rose from my knees after several minutes of worship, He smiled at me and said, “When you awake from your sleep, I will bring to you your wife.” Then, immediately, I became tired and rested on the ground.

Sleep quickly overcame me, and I dreamed of the woman He would make, though I knew nothing of what she would be. She was glowing brightly in my dreams, and had much the same look as I had. My dream was wrong, since I could not dream of how perfect she could be or what beauty she might possess. Then, a deeper sleep without dreams passed over me.[2]

When I awoke, while it was still dawn, I first heard a thousand birds chirping in the trees. The rain had ended and the gusts of wind had changed to a breeze. There were many animals standing around, which I presumed that the Lord had brought near. A cloud of fireflies had come into the area, and white blossoms seemed to be gracefully floating through the air. Where were they? Where was the Lord and my created wife? I felt a soreness in my side and looked upon it, and saw that there was a long scar in my side just below my breast.[3] How did this scar get there, I wondered within myself.

Then, through the trees covered with the white blossoms, I began to see two people walking toward me.[4] One was my majestic Lord, glowing bright, and the other was still hard to see behind Him. As they drew nearer, I felt my knees grow weak and my heart beat heavily. She was so much more perfect than I had dreamed! My eyes were unable to look elsewhere. She, too, was gazing toward me with a beautiful grin that reflected my own. Her form and her countenance were seemingly so perfectly crafted in loveliness for me, that I knew my Lord knew all there was to know about me. Her long, curly black hair was flowing down around her. I wish not to speak all the words to describe her in detail, but I could write pages of her beauty.

Nevertheless, I dare not speak more highly of her than my Lord, whose beauty,[5] yet of another kind, cannot be matched by any of His creatures, though so lovely as this my wife.

Adam, this is your wife taken from your side, formed from one of your ribs, whom I give to you. She shall be your wife from this time forth.” And He told me to love her, to freely give myself to her, to delight in her, and to esteem her above even my own soul;[6] all of which I needed not to be told, for it was deeply my longing to do all these things and still more.

As I beheld her I wondered in myself and finally spoke,
“This one—at last!—is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.
My Lord, she truly is perfectly suited for me,
            and I praise You for Your gift to me!
She shall be called a Woman,
            because she was taken out of Man.”[7]
The first four days of my life had seemed to be weeks. I had been eager for a companion those few days, for I was designed for fellowship.

The woman seemed fully contented and even cheerful with my authority to name her, yet I soon discovered that she was my equal in both mind and will. She was only submitted to me by reason of her faithfulness to God and her humility.

And so it was, on account of her wisdom and equality with me, that I quickly chose to entrust my deepest thoughts and heart to her. It was clear to me, then, that God had intended a mutual respect and appreciation and oneness of mind to develop between me and this woman. All her thoughts were accounted as my own.

Before the Lord left us, He told us to be fruitful and multiply and to populate the earth.[8] He told us to subdue the earth and to have dominion over all the animals: the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, the cattle, and even all the earth, with all the creeping animals that creep on the earth. All things were placed under us.[9] Also, He told us that every seeding plant and every fruitful tree in the whole land of Eden was given to us for food, save the Tree of Knowledge.[10] This I certainly knew, but it seemed to be given more for the sake of the woman. He explained that the green plants were also for all the animals to eat if they chose, from the greatest to the smallest, everything that had the breath of life.[11] Then, He told us to enjoy His Creation. All things were for us to enjoy.[12] 

With joy and gladness, we together worshipped Him. When we got up from our knees, He was gone, once more.

That day my wife and I walked together and discussed the world and laughed at many things of which I now have only a vague recollection. There was a freshness to life that excited us and made us feel fully alive. We later understood that this feeling of being alive was partly from having the Lord God communing with us—with our very hearts—as we walked and enjoyed the garden. Our lives were never again so filled with purpose, meaning, and excitement. We knew what it meant to be alive (and later we knew what it meant to have died).

It happened that our thoughts soon began to be felt and sensed before we even formed the words in our mouths. Our hearts were joining as one.

As this happened though the day, we felt intensely drawn to each other, and soon we knew[13] each other. We knew each other as one soul, spirit, and body.

As we lay down to sleep together when the night drew on, I finally named my wife “Eve,” having asked if she would like that name, for she was to be the mother of all the living.[14] 

Eve spoke to me as we lay together, “What are we doing here on the ground, my lord?”

I said, “We are made to rest from our day as the darkness covers the land, and to drift into unconsciousness. This rest is to remind us of our frailty and to keep us humble. It is to show us that we must trust in the Lord God every day. Everything in this world is to teach us about God and our relationship with Him.”

Then she said, “I do trust Him. I will always trust in Him, for He speaks wisdom and no lie can be in Him.[15] His love compels Him[16] to speak only what is true.”
I said, “Yes, but we have been warned strictly to take heed to ourselves and to beware lest we partake of the Tree of Knowledge in the midst of the garden!”

And she said, “I could never do so wickedly against Him!”

“Nevertheless, understand that He would not warn us so directly if we could not choose to eat of that tree. He said Himself to me that we always have this choice between life and death before us, so guard yourself!”

Eve did take this to heart. She knew that somehow her heart could become corrupted and hardened against our Lord. We comprehended that our minds and our souls were weak and able to subtly depart from following after God. I also warned Eve of the talking, black serpent.

Many other things Eve and I discussed as the darkness grew. We soon felt the sleepiness overcome us, and we slept. Once more, I saw a vision:
I beheld much smoke rising from the four corners of the land, and many animals died on the land and in the oceans until there were very few left alive in the waters.

Then God spoke, “The waters shall come to abound with swarms of soulful creatures, and birds will come to fly above the earth across the face of the atmosphere of the heavens.”[17]

After the smoke had vanished, many sea creatures started forming within the oceans. I could see swarms of fish and sharks and other sea creatures. More and more kinds of sea creatures were forming in the waters that still live to this day. The oceans were abounding with fishes. Slowly, God was forming all the sea creatures with souls,[18] from the smallest to the greatest.

All kinds of wild beasts, both mighty and weak, were roaming upon the land. Such wild beasts I had never seen before, and the Lord God made me understand that these beasts would shortly vanish away never to walk on the earth again.

Then, after some time, I saw on the land some kind of wild birds forming. I kept looking until more kinds of smaller birds formed. Some I started to recognize, though they had teeth at this time.

Then God spoke and blessed the sea creatures, and told them to fill up the oceans and multiply. He also blessed the birds and said that they should begin multiplying upon the earth.[19]

And so it came to pass. Birds of all kinds were formed and began multiplying upon the earth, and creatures abounded greatly in the waters.

“This was the Fifth Day of Creation.”[20]


[1] Gen 3:8
[2] Gen 2:21
[3] Gen 2:21
[4] Gen 2:22
[5] Psalm 90:17
[6] 1 Peter 3:7; Eph 5:28-29
[7] Gen 2:23
[8] Gen 1:28
[9] Psalm 8:6
[10] Gen 1:29
[11] Gen 1:30
[12] 1 Tim 6:17
[13] Gen 4:1
[14] Gen 3:20
[15] Titus 1:2; Heb 6:17-18
[16] 1 Cor 13:4-6
[17] Gen 1:20
[18] Gen 1:21
[19] Gen 1:22
[20] Gen 1:23

December 05, 2014

NEWS: The “500,000” Year Old Shell Engravings


This story all over the news of a 500,000 year-old shell with etchings on it from Homo erectus or some human ancestor is a perfect example of everything that’s wrong with anthropology these days. The dating is hugely suspicious.

The mollusk shell was found on the Indonesian island of Java. It has well-defined, zigzag lines on it that appear almost certainly to have been intentionally engraved on the shell by an intelligent creature. The questions are: “when,” “how,” “why,” and “by whom?” These questions have been presumptuously and eagerly answered by the following: “~500,000 years ago,” “by a sharks tooth,” “for symbolic purposes,” “by Homo erectus.”[1,2,3] However, all of these answers are highly speculative. The true facts are only that this shell was buried sometime from 540-430,000 years ago and that at some point it was etched by relatively intelligent creatures. The dating is based on sediments found inside the shell. The etching could have been done at almost any point later
:

Although the team dated four of the shells in the collection, including the engraved shell, to about 500,000 years ago using two different techniques on sediments of sand and clay found inside them, Ciochon says that those sediments could have entered the shells during the earlier flood event that created the site, and that H. sapiens still could have come along much later and performed the etching.”[2]

So, although this finding has the potential of being hugely significant in regard to “human” evolution, it’s far from settled when these etchings were made. There are significant problems in dating the engraving to 500,000 years ago, as other scientists have noted. (1.) Why did mental evolution seem to stagnate for 400,000 years? (2.) Why haven’t other such ancient engravings been found elsewhere that can be tied to Homo erectus?[3]

If the proposed date of the etching does turn out to be valid, then evolutionary human ancestors were more intelligent and thoughtful than anyone has realized. However, this would actually highlight the intellectual revolution that appears to have happened about 80-50,000 years ago when human art took a huge leap. Not until about 60,000 years ago do we find cave art with hand prints or detailed drawings of animals. Such work can only be described as art. Simple lines drawn on a shell could easily be the work of a much lesser mind than the human mind. There is still good reason to hypothesize that somewhere from 80-50,000 years ago Homo sapiens went from being mere animals to being true, spiritual, self-aware humans.

The reason this story is all that is wrong with anthropology is because it is highly sensationalized with bold proclamations that this engraving was done by Homo erectus. Something this extraordinary requires extraordinary evidence. Extreme caution should be used when reporting such a finding, and many reports are anything but cautious. The proposed date for the engraving is too speculative. Caution would require that we doubt the date being valid. The idea that these lines represent art or symbolic thought is too speculative. We simply cannot be sure what was going on in the mind of the creator of these lines. Caution would require that we carefully question a symbolic meaning behind these lines. We can’t believe every report we read.


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