Shabbat shalom, mishpocah! Well, we’re getting ready to do the second Torah portion! Getting things started, we see that, by the time we reach Genesis 6, we've already seen the Creation and the downfall and destruction of a lost mankind. Noah, in YHWH's eyes, was the only righteous man on Earth; someone who did everything YHWH asked him to do. And so it is no surprise that Noah and his family were the ONLY people who were saved from destruction (Genesis 6:9-22) - for Noah was a righteous man:
Genesis 6: 9 Here is the history of Noach. In his generation, Noach was a man righteous and wholehearted; Noach walked with God.
What powerful words! Noah was RIGHTEOUS and WHOLEHEARTED before YHWH! Being "righteous" means more than just "believing" in God; it means to believe, hear, obey and do.
Surely there were others on earth who "believed" but they were destroyed because they didn't bother adhering to YHWH's Torah - His "Divine Instructions in Righteousness." We see examples of how Noah obeyed when he sacrificed CLEAN animals to YHWH in Genesis 8:20. How did he know to offer CLEAN animals? He came from the "good" line of Abel and Enosh whose descendants called on the Name of YHWH (Genesis 4 and 5).
Note also that Noach was not a Jew. There were no Jews until Jacob had one of his 12 sons whom he named Yehudah (Judah) where the term "Jew" originated. Noach wasn't even a Hebrew as nobody was considered Hebrew (Heb: "to cross over") until Genesis 12:1 when Abram (who was later renamed Abraham) accepted and obeyed YHWH and "crossed over" physically and spiritually into the land YHWH showed him, when he became the first Patriarch and Torah obedient follower of YHWH.
Yet Noach, back in Genesis 6 (like Cain and Abel in Genesis 4) was Torah observant - which reveals that one does NOT have to "be Jewish" in order to obey His Divine Instructions! (This fact is also revealed in the "New Testament, when read in context.)
For more, please read our synopsis of this week’s Torah portion and be sure to do all the readings. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask!
One interesting to contemplate: Christians "insist" that "Jesus abolished the Torah." At least since the late 1700s, Christians have compromised Scripture (mainly Genesis 1-11) through such beliefs as the gap theory and theistic evolution. Do you think this is why so-called believers accept evolution and millions of years?
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely! The main problem, IMHO, is that most are lukewarm, knowing ABOUT God and the Bible, but not really KNOWING Him (because, at most, they read the last third of the Bible only and yet believe themselves to have the market cornered on Truth). Most don't seem to notice or care that Scripture has been watered down by "intellects" who have come up with supposed explanations for Creation. They're not that much into God. Too much of a hassle. For those types I always like to ask: "If you knew someone was putting just a little horse manure into the brownie dough, would you still be willing to eat it?"
DeleteOf course, they always say, "NO!" And then I come out with the clincher: "So, why are you so ready, willing and able to depart from Scriptural Truth, just because someone suggests some scientist can disprove what the Bible contains?"
The Bible - no matter what version you use - contains the basics about God, His commands, His Son and what is expected of mankind. The Bible tells us GOD created the Universe and everything in it.
We may not know exactly how long a "day" was "in the beginning," but we know there were seven of them, and that the last was when He rested from creating. We may not know exactly how the universe was formed, but we see there was a process that continued until Man was formed and commanded to be "fruitful and multiply."
That's ALL we know concerning what happened "in the beginning." Scientists have no actual proof that the universe is is billions of years old. They have no proof about how planets were formed. We don't even have proof that the Garden of Eden existed. All we have is what we see in the Bible. We either believe what we see in there, or we don't. Conjecture doesn't equate to proof.
On the topic of Creation and the Flood, may I please obtain some your insights to this article:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.icr.org/article/1161/256
Not sure what to tell you Kevin. The author is qualified to say what he says in the article and what he says is accurate. But I'm not sure of his point. Is he trying to disprove science or prove the Bible? He points out that (at that time in 1997), the idea that there was a frozen pool of water near the moon's south pole was only "speculation". He did not dismiss the idea that there could be water on the moon, so I guess he is only trying to reconcile "what we see" with "what scripture says".
DeleteScience tends to speak in "absolutes" while forgetting they are, at times, only speculating. Scientists were not present at creation, so they are only guessing how things came about, and Creationists were not present at creation either, so they are only guessing how things came about using a few verses from Scripture! I, for one, have no problem with what science does. It only "describes" based on observables. Many years ago I wrote an article about this very subject: https://www.therefinersfire.org/science_and_bible.htm.