I was telling a friend the other day that most followers of Yeshua (Jesus) do not have a clear sense of the whole story of the Bible. Let's consider why that is the case.
First of all, it's a lot, right? The Bible is a long compilation of many books, many of which are hard to understand. The compilation does not fall in chronological order. I could go on.
Second, people lead busy lives - - working, providing for their families, caring for loved ones in various stages of life. Therefore, they tend to depend on others to teach them bits and pieces about this vital and holy book. Not a criticism, just a fact. This takes the form of sermons, devotional guides, commentaries, classes and so forth.
As a result, it becomes a bit like the Indian parable of the three Indian blind men who were trying to identify the large animal (which was an elephant). Each man was feeling a different part of the elephant and accordingly each man drew a different (erroneous) conclusion about the animal's identity.
Trying to understand the Bible without an understanding of its overarching theme (God's redemptive acts toward mankind) or a sense of the whole of the story is a deficit in the Body of Messiah. Concurrently, there is little in the way of what the Catholics call "catechism classes". I sometimes wish that all evangelical congregations would require new believers to undergo a series of training classes, not as a condition for salvation of course, but as a condition of membership. It's a missing piece of discipleship, sort of like a baby who does not get the colostrum.
This past January, a fellow believer and I began to co-teach a weekly ladies Bible study. Fortunately, lol, we each have very different teaching styles, which gives the ladies some variety. At any rate, I debated about what to teach, to start out with, and I finally became impressed (by the Lord, I believe) to do an Old Testament overview.
So, as I gear up RDM blog again, we'll start with that, in 3 posts, with this being the first one. Keep in mind that this is not primarily an apologetics forum. There is widespread disagreement in the Body of Messiah (The Church) as to some of my positions, but I am not going to get bogged down at this time in defending them. (I've done that in other posts.) Additionally, not all the "Bible stories" are included in this short series, important though those are. That would take "forever"! The purpose of this series of posts is to establish in the mind of the reader "the story" of the Old Testament.
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Approximately 6000 years ago, God created the heavens and the Earth, in six literal days. Last, He created Adam (Hebrew word means "person") in His own image. From Adam's body, He created Eve. He put Adam in charge of the entire Garden of Eden. (The Edenic Covenant)
Adam and Eve were deceived by the Enemy of our Souls, in the form of a serpent. Both of them sinned, which brought physical and spiritual death upon them and all their descendants. God gave them hope, however, with the first mention of redemption/the gospel in the Bible, Genesis 3:15. This promise of hope is also known as the Adamic Covenant. They were expelled from Gan Eden (The Garden of Eden) and their toil on the Earth was greatly increased. They had many children, who married and intermarried, to begin populating the Earth. Lifespans were quite long, allowing humans to routinely live and produce offspring well into their hundreds.
In those days, there was much more interface between humans and angelic beings. The Scriptures record that these angelic beings caused much of the "advancement" of human civilization. However, these same angelic beings violated the restrictions God had placed on them. They chose to sin with human women, and they produced offspring (Genesis 6:4) who were half-angel and half-human. "These are the giants of old".
Wickedness and violence began to fill the Earth. It became so bad that God began to sorrow over having made Man. The promise of the Adamic Covenant was in danger of becoming impossible to fulfill, as more and more human bloodlines were corrupted by angel seed. Noah's bloodline was still pure and untainted. In order to fulfill the promise of a Redeemer, God sealed Noah's family in the Ark and sent the Great Flood, in approximately 2100 BCE.
After the year that Noah and his family were on the Ark, it rested on the mountains of Ararat. The family exited the Ark, along with the animals, and it was as though a new page began to be written. God established with mankind the Noahic Covenant (Genesis 8:20-9:17).
Let me close this post by explaining the concept of Oral Chain of Transmission.
Both Adam and his son, Seth, lived more than 900 years.
Enoch, Seth’s son, was born 622 years after Adam and 492 years after Seth was born. Adam had over 300 years to educate his grandson, Enoch.
Before Enoch was translated, he had 300 years to train his son, Methuselah (oldest living man), and 113 years to train his grandson, Lamech.
Methuselah and Lamech, the 7th/8th generations from Adam, lived with Noah for the first 600 years of
his life.
This oral tradition of the Word of God continued during the 350 years of Noah’s life, then, AFTER the Flood.
Because Shem, Noah’s son, lived more than 500 years, he was still alive well after Abraham’s son, Isaac, was born. Shem was able to pass down to Abraham’s father, Terah, the accumulated knowledge and history he possessed.
These long lives firmly facilitated and PRESERVED the oral transmission of God’s ways from generation to generation.
I don't know about you, but that blows my mind.
Ok, we will take the story up again in the next post.
