When I was going they said that there was water around the universe like a womb. God then took the water and dumped it on earth to kill everyone. Then he sucked it back up again after the flood and said he wouldn't do it again. I do remember them speaking of devil spirits - he sent the ones he defeated into the waters around the universe.
I'm not sure all the fine details now. I'm almost curious enough to ask my family but I think that would give them the wrong signals.
On the OTHER hand, what they were teaching at the offshoot I was attending, and what I BELIEVED for awhile, is that the devil spirits caused the flood and they are the ones in chains now. The offshoot I was going to taught that God was NOT the cause of ANY death, so therefore, according to the collective wisdom of the offshooter-wayferheads, the Angel of Death, was actually a devil spirt, as were the flood demons (excuse me, devil spirits) Which it wasn't until some guy I talked to (an ex-wayferhead) told me to be careful with that teaching cause he thought it was bad teaching.
So I'm wondering if the wayfers originally taught that, or if that was something that came later.
twi taught this.
I Peter 3:18-20 (KJV)
18 For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit:
19 By which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison;
20 Which sometime were disobedient, when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water.
twi taught that this meant that the spirits in prison were disobedient spirits whose
disobedience specifically included causing The Flood.
Reading it coldly, I see spirits who were imprisoned specifically because of their disobedience
in the timeframe of the days PRECEEDING The Flood. If it's meant to say that these spirits
caused The Flood, neither this account nor any other actually says that.
Hebrews 2:14 (NASB)
14 Therefore, since the children share in flesh and blood, He Himself likewise also partook of the same, that through death He might render powerless him who had the power of death, that is, the devil,
This is another single-verse doctrine of twi. I've gotten VERY leery of them,
since so many of them turned out to be based on misunderstanding the verse and
then spinning long doctrines out of whole cloth based on THAT.
The idea is that the devil (and thus, his minions) must be involved if any death
is caused by any supernatural means, since he had the power of death.
I'm open to reconsidering specifically who the angel of death was-and, more to
the point, who he took orders willingly from. However, I see no textual reason
to think that The Flood was caused by the imprisoned spirits, other than that
No, among the first things Noah did when he landed was to build an altar and offer
a sacrifice to God Almighty.
Some time after that, Noah settled down, farmed, and cultivated a vineyard.
After the vineyard's grapes were harvested and fermented, THEN Noah got drunk.
That had to at least be several months later.
Genesis 9:20-21a (NASB)
20 And Noah began to be an husbandman, and he planted a vineyard:
21 And he drank of the wine, and was drunken;
But I DO remember, reading some CES stuff at the time, saying that that God would not have satan work for him as an agent for doing his will, and that made sense to me. It Also made me think that this must have been a wayfer teaching if CES was correcting this. Because this is certainly NOT a mainstream belief, it's like it has to be particular to the wayfers.
It makes a lot more sense if you examine the life of Joseph. Joseph's brothers were envious of him, hated
him, and wanted him dead- showing him mercy by selling him into slavery. Once he was in slavery, he
worked well for an owner, and refused to deal corruptly with him. So he was framed and thrown into
prison- still having done nothing wrong other than not shut up in front of his envious brothers.
Eventually, his time in prison was used to A) turn him into the Chief Operating Officer of Egypt
with power of attorney for Pharaoh B) store food sufficient for Egypt and several other countries
to use to survive the coming famine (including Israel)
When he finally confronted his brothers, Joseph made an interesting comment about what his
brothers did to him because of their evil intent.
Genesis 50:20 (KJV)
But as for you, ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive.
I don't claim to understand a lot about how God works. I do know it's possible for someone
like God to use-unwillingly to them- beings of evil intent and confine their destructive
abilities to targets of God's own choosing, much like a surgical laser can zap cancerous tissue
while sparing healthy cells (presuming optimal conditions.)
To me, it's a spiritual equivalent to someone performing Aikido or a similar martial art-
a master practitioner can redirect the violence of an attacker and redirect it into something
of his own choosing.
Just because it is POSSIBLE is no guarantee this is how God works-but it's possible on paper.
Coming back to add that they also taught that the devil spirits poked holes in the universe or something to cause the rain. Because the heavens are made all of water or something. It's been a long time since I've been there, but that was what they were teaching.
Yeah, what can I say? They're silly.
Is there an actual verse they CLAIM supports this,
When I was taught it, the Noah record was simply read as true, and the heavy emphasis upon the amazing astounding and marvelous and wonderful works of the adversary was later and occurred as the Holy Spirit left.
I just checked the Amplified Bible... In Genesis 2:5-6. it states: (5) When no plant of the field was yet in the earth and no herb of the field had yet sprung up, for the Lord God had not yet caused it to rain upon the earth and there was no man to till the ground, (6) But there went up a mist (fog, vapor) from the land and watered the whole surface of the ground--
Then it goes on to say that "Then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground...etc."
Later on, in Genesis 7:11, it says, "In the year 600 of Noah's life, in the seventeenth day of the second month, that same day all the fountains of the great deep were broken up and burst forth, and the windows and floodgates of the heavens were opened."
There is no biblical evidence to support the idea that the mist went up from the land to water the whole surface once man had been formed, made, and created.
This post may border on doctrinal but I don't know any other way to discuss this in this thread without going into TWI doctrine.
I remember some in TWI teaching that there was no rain before the flood. It was not a prevalent doctrine but I did hear it.
I remember VPW teaching at Living Victoriously about the waters that were above the expanse of the universe. He taught that the universe was encased with water like a womb. He may have been reading from Kenyon, I don't remember. I heard it, considered it, thought it was cool but didn't dwell on it. I don't remember this teaching getting into the main theology of TWI. Others may have talked about it and even taught it but I don't remember it being an established doctrine. I also don't remember if VPW tied in the flood of Noah's time to this water that was outside the universe.
I believe this was based on some scriptures that indicate there is water above the firmament.
(Gen 1:6) And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.
(Gen 1:7) And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.
(Gen 1:8) And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.
I always pictured this as the waters that were on the earth being separated from the clouds, that there was an expanse between them.
The ancients believed that the firmament was a set boundary, not just the sky or atmosphere. The Hebrew word for firmament gives the idea of a hard surface, something beaten into a shape. But of course their understanding of the universe (the stars, planets, rain, etc.) was limited. But if the scriptures are from God's perspective then a further study of the words and meanings and figures of speech would be in order. If taken literally then VPW and others are correct, there may be water outside of the known universe. Does this water surround the universe or is there some water in a defined area outside of the universe? Don't know.
Aside from the word firmament, there is also this verse that needs to be dealt with:
(Psa 148:4) Praise him, ye heavens of heavens, and ye waters that be above the heavens.
I really don't know the answer. It has not been worth my time to try to figure it out. It's not pertinent to my walk with my Father.
But then enter LCM. In his infinite wisdom and mastery of the Word (cough) he tied a number of things together and spat out something that somehow ended up in his FOUNDATIONAL class. Yes, he put it together so masterfully that it was a foundational truth.
I really couldn't follow his logic but here's an attempt: He believed that the face of the deep mentioned in Genesis 1:2 became the edge of the reservoir of water outside the firmament when the waters were separated. He went on to say that God often (always?)used water as a description of devil spirits. LCM saw devil spirits everywhere in the Word so no surprise that he saw them referred to in water everywhere. I don't remember and don't care what verse he used as the jumping off point to come to this conclusion but as his manner was, he read into a verse that used water to describe devil spirits and extrapolated it out to all verses that talked about water. He used the word deep in a similar fashion; found one place where deep may refer to devil spirits (or at least evilness) and then declared that anywhere the word deep was used it could be referring to devil spirits.
He then declared that the great deep referred to in Genesis 7 was this water outside of the universe and that devil spirits resided there and that it was water from this great deep that flooded the earth during Noah's flood.
Gen_7:11 In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened.
I believe that LCM put this in his foundational class (along with other stretches of "research" like the first sin of man)to show himself as a master teacher of the Word like VPW was. He had to have some wow factor in his class to set himself apart from all the offshoots that were simply reteaching VPW's material. But LCM lacked the intelligence and discipline necessary to really work the Word from a new angle and come up with anything solid.
When I heard his face of the deep, Noah's flood explanation I concluded the following:
Nowhere is the great deep described as being the reservoir of water (if it exists) outside the universe. LCM made this up.
Even if it did refer to this reservoir think about it: We were taught that the devil cannot break the laws of nature and he doesn't have foreknowledge. He has to work within these laws or boundaries and he does not know the future. He has to respond to the times. In this case the growth of evil upon earth.
So this water that is outside of the edge of the universe: how far away is it? Light years? Hundreds of light years? Thousands of light years? IF the earth's population had grown evil to the point that only Noah (and his family by grace) was worth saving (a specific time, window of opportunity) and this opened the door for the devil to try to destroy the earth and the devil did this with water from outside the universe: how did this water travel through the universe at above the speed of light to get to the earth at just the right time? Could it be transported from outside of the universe in a way that it would arrive on earth as water?
Fortunately for me the holes in LCM's "research" opened the door for me to take a hard look not only at LCM's teachings but also VPW's (blasphemy!). Then the TWI's hold on me was loosened. Praise the Lord.
I just checked the Amplified Bible... In Genesis 2:5-6. it states: (5) When no plant of the field was yet in the earth and no herb of the field had yet sprung up, for the Lord God had not yet caused it to rain upon the earth and there was no man to till the ground, (6) But there went up a mist (fog, vapor) from the land and watered the whole surface of the ground--
Then it goes on to say that "Then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground...etc."
Later on, in Genesis 7:11, it says, "In the year 600 of Noah's life, in the seventeenth day of the second month, that same day all the fountains of the great deep were broken up and burst forth, and the windows and floodgates of the heavens were opened."
There is no biblical evidence to support the idea that the mist went up from the land to water the whole surface once man had been formed, made, and created.
I generally look for more sound backup than the Amplified to settle deep concerns. To me ithe Amplified is more correctly called, The Embellished Version because it's their private interpretation. Holy Spirit doesn't always agree with what they have written, and because there are so many words therein, it's difficult (and certainly beyond my level of expertise) to backtrack to the any semblance of the original.
When the Embellished Version agrees with what I know, it can be interesting, but I wouldn't trust it on a question such as this, "was there rain before the flood."
I am looking at the One New Man bible, which has a Jewish background, and I got it from sidroth.org, which is a Messianic Jewish group (believe that Jesus/Yeshua is the promised Messiah). The emphasis on the record of the flood and of Noah is that the wickedness of man became great and God Almighty was going to destroy man, who He created, from the face of the earth, but Noah was a just man, perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God.
The concern, which seems of primary importance to consider for me, is whether i am helping to build the ark today and will I/am I in the ark of The Lord, or am I outside when God Almighty shuts the door.
14 Therefore, since the children share in flesh and blood, He Himself likewise also partook of the same, that through death He might render powerless him who had the power of death, that is, the devil,
This is another single-verse doctrine of twi. I've gotten VERY leery of them,
since so many of them turned out to be based on misunderstanding the verse and
then spinning long doctrines out of whole cloth based on THAT.
The idea is that the devil (and thus, his minions) must be involved if any death
is caused by any supernatural means, since he had the power of death.
I'm open to reconsidering specifically who the angel of death was-and, more to
the point, who he took orders willingly from. However, I see no textual reason
to think that The Flood was caused by the imprisoned spirits, other than that
they were disobedient at the time.
Okay, I ALSO remember how everybody was saying that it was something like a "Hebrew idiom?" IF I'm using that phrasing correctly. They said that the people in the OT thought ALL things, bad and good, came from God, and it wasn't until the NT that Christ revealed the devil. So when any death came "from God" in the OT, it really was the devil.
Ok, As you well know, I'm no bible scholar, but that just doesn't make sense. What about the Egyptians killed in the Red sea? What about the battle of Jericho, and all the battles in the OT? Where God was clearly on the Hebrew side? What about David killing Goliath? Was that all at the hands of the devil? Clearly not.
And I get your example about Joseph, where God can take evil and make it for good. In fact, it's a really good lesson to remember.
I generally look for more sound backup than the Amplified to settle deep concerns. To me ithe Amplified is more correctly called, The Embellished Version because it's their private interpretation. Holy Spirit doesn't always agree with what they have written, and because there are so many words therein, it's difficult (and certainly beyond my level of expertise) to backtrack to the any semblance of the original.
When the Embellished Version agrees with what I know, it can be interesting, but I wouldn't trust it on a question such as this, "was there rain before the flood."
There's 3 different types of Bible versions:
word for word
concept for concept
paraphrases
The "word for word" ones are the best ones for doing research. Paraphrases are nice to listen to,
but are patently useless for study. The Amplified Bible is a paraphrasing Bible.
Furthermore, I consider the name to be false advertising, since the Amplified Bible actually
is NOT any louder than any other version.
I am looking at the One New Man bible, which has a Jewish background, and I got it from sidroth.org, which is a Messianic Jewish group (believe that Jesus/Yeshua is the promised Messiah). The emphasis on the record of the flood and of Noah is that the wickedness of man became great and God Almighty was going to destroy man, who He created, from the face of the earth, but Noah was a just man, perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God.
The concern, which seems of primary importance to consider for me, is whether i am helping to build the ark today and will I/am I in the ark of The Lord, or am I outside when God Almighty shuts the door.
Luke 17:26-30 (NASB)
26 And just as it happened in the days of Noah, so it will be also in the days of the Son of Man: 27 they were eating, they were drinking, they were marrying, they were being given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all. 28 It was the same as happened in the days of Lot: they were eating, they were drinking, they were buying, they were selling, they were planting, they were building; 29 but on the day that Lot went out from Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven and destroyed them all. 30 It will be just the same on the day that the Son of Man is revealed.
Okay, I ALSO remember how everybody was saying that it was something like a "Hebrew idiom?" IF I'm using that phrasing correctly. They said that the people in the OT thought ALL things, bad and good, came from God, and it wasn't until the NT that Christ revealed the devil. So when any death came "from God" in the OT, it really was the devil.
There are legitimate figures that switch the active sense for the passive sense.
We use it whenever we break a dish and say "The dish broke", or a child knocks
something down or drops it and says "It fell."
The idea was that "the snare of the devil" was hidden until revealed by Jesus
(which, I suspect, wasn't based on a verse of any kind). Further, that the
language supported that kind of talk where God is spoken of as the Origin
of everything, mainly to prevent people from focusing on the devil the way
twi did in the 90s and later.
Bullinger's explanation was a different figure for much the same reason.
Bullinger used "synedoche" (parts for the whole) and said "God" was used
for the entire spiritual realm. (At least, I heard people claiming that
Bullinger used that very figure for his explanation. Either that or it
was "metonymy" (an attribute for the whole.) It's easy to mix the usage
of one for the usage of the other.
Ok, As you well know, I'm no bible scholar, but that just doesn't make sense. What about the Egyptians killed in the Red sea? What about the battle of Jericho, and all the battles in the OT? Where God was clearly on the Hebrew side? What about David killing Goliath? Was that all at the hands of the devil? Clearly not.
Technically, some of those might be seen as the removal of protection-
God walled up the Red Sea, then stopped doing it, and TECHNICALLY the
normal Red Sea killed a lot of soldiers. Jericho's walls were destroyed,
and then the ISRAELITES, not God, killed a lot of people (God's spared
TECHNICALLY from having done it because He gave the order but didn't
actually kill anyone HIMSELF.)
As for other battles, including David vs Goliath, I think the explanation
falls down with many of those.
Therefore, the single verse twi based all of that on must be re-examined.
Hebrews 2:14-16 (NASB)
14 Therefore, since the children share in flesh and blood, He Himself likewise also partook of the same, that through death He might render powerless him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, 15 and might free those who through fear of death were subject to slavery all their lives. 16 For assuredly He does not give help to angels, but He gives help to the descendant of Abraham.
Hebrews 2 speaks of salvation, angels, Jesus, and humans.
The idea that the devil is the SOLE being who has ANY say over death is more than the verse says.
People who can order an execution are said to have the power of life and death.
No verse says that God has no authority over death. Rather, we see instances where people
are raised from the dead, removing the rulership of death over them for a time.
(The Shunnamite woman's son, Jesus Christ, Lazarus, the little girl Jesus raised...)
The idea that God would-of necessity- have to use the devil's own authority to kill
goes FAR beyond what this verse says, and goes firmly into the category twi calls
"private interpretation."
I can make a flowing, sensible, artistic explanation about how that would work,
but all my reasoning is useless if it takes me a different direction than Scripture.
And I get your example about Joseph, where God can take evil and make it for good. In fact, it's a really good lesson to remember.
Okay, reading more posts now...
My conclusion was (and is) that God Almighty will accomplish His purpose, and we can
cooperate and be a part of it, or we can oppose it and see God succeed despite our best
efforts. God's playing the really long game, and moves which seem senseless now will
make perfect sense in a decade or 2, or in a century or 2, and so on.
Thinking about what you guys said Earl Burton taught: The universe is a bubble with water on the other side of it...
Assuming that bubble burst, any water coming down to earth from it (as opposed to just floating off into the whatever, just making a beeline for earth) would take billions of years to get here. So the flood would not have happened yet.
I think the problem is reading modern scientific understanding about cosmology into the [let's be honest] ignorant cosmology of Genesis. Read the story on its own terms -- it says nothing about the "universe" being "inside a bubble" surrounded by water. Rather, it was the Earth that was surrounded by a firmament.
This is difficult for us to comprehend because we have some degree of scientific literacy. The writers of Genesis did not! For them, the earth was a flat disk surrounded above by a solid dome holding back a wall of water. When the "windows of heaven" were opened, it rained. The sun, moon and stars were INSIDE that dome. That's why the Bible can talk about stars falling from heaven. It was what they knew and understood.
When you think of the "waters above" being right up there on the other side of the dome, the notion of that dome opening up and all the water behind it crashing down on us and flooding the earth becomes much easier to understand.
Trying to rescue Genesis from the ignorance of its writers is something I no longer try to do (as I implied in another thread).
Of course, anyone is free to accept Earl Burton's teaching that the "firmament" really does exist and is billions of light years from earth, but be honest: do you think that's what the authors of Genesis were trying to convey? Which view makes more sense? That they were actually describing the universe as it is, or that they were describing the world around them as they saw it?
This sort of reminds me of CBS' TV series Under the Dome based on Stephen King's novel. Obviously the recent movie on Noah also pertains to this discussion.
Oh no, they do count. But this is the About the Way section, and in The Way, it happened in six days a few thousand years ago. Lots happened BEFORE that, but the earth as we know it, with life as we know it, happened in six days a few thousand years ago. We can quibble about Old Earth creationism elsewhere.
I would also note that you have said nothing to refute my on-topic point, which was the relationship between the "firmament" to the waters behind it as it relates to the flood. The fact that someone got addition and subtraction correct does not make that person an expert in calculus. :)
Wasn't The Way's view that the earth was created - some time - and became void and without form (tohu bohu).
Then, some undefined time later, the spirit of God breathed on the waters and all the things in Genesis took place and that was 6000 years ago. And creation of the things that we know took place.
Didn't that wellknown playwright sorry plagiarist VPW declare that dinosaurs etc occurred in the time before tohu bohu, way before the 6000 that the earth as we know it was (re-)created?
I have trouble with the firmament as a sort of membrane holding back earth-sized quantities of water. Much more it's something figurative or, as you put it Raf, the Hebrew worldview of the time.
And WW, what you write may or may not be true.
Nowadays, we know better. We know the universe started with the Big Bang,
and started with energy, some eventually converting to matter, and the planet Earth eventually being some of that matter. As for life on that planet, once there was a stable water cycle, then plant-life appeared.
Eventually, the atmosphere changed radically again (including the presence of plenty of oxygen, plants had to do that), animal life began with marine life, and amphibian and reptile life, and bird-types came next, then we got the land animals. What we consider "man" was a late arrival to all of that, no matter who's counting because supposedly rodentia and so on all predate primates.
We don't have the length of knowledge to say that (yet). Granted, it seems plausible to us all now. Maybe theories will change in 300 years time. Just as 300 years ago you would have believed, quite reasonably, something different from the current Earth-story.
Correct, Twinky. According to TWI, there was a vast period of time between Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2 that accounts for all the fossils and geological discoveries, etc. After Genesis 1:2, the account is literal -- which makes no sense because Genesis has the creation of the earth and the development of plant life before the making of the sun. Explore the implications of what TWI taught, and you'll find (I believe) that what Genesis teaches still does not fit with what we have been able to gather through scientific research and study.
Did marine life and birds emerge on the same day a few thousand years ago? That's what TWI taught. It is not true. Marine life came ages before birds. Did plant life precede the sun? Couldn't have. Is the earth older than the stars? Hardly. TWI managed to cram billions of years between Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2, but in doing so, it created an enormous "plot hole" in Genesis, where (among other things) God is now re-creating a new type of life on earth, soul life, different from the life that preceded Genesis 1:2.
And then there's the firmament (back on topic), which can make some sense on a poetic level but utterly fails to accurately describe the earth and the universe "above" it.
I figured that responding to your post would be on-topic, if your post was
on-topic. If neither was, perhaps we both should be sent to the corner.
Read my post again: it was about the firmament and cosmology, not about the progression of creation or the timing of the development of life on earth.
Did it rain before Noah? Yes. Absolutely. Of course it did. Is the universe inside a gigantic bubble? As far as I can tell, the premise is untestable, so not really worth debating. But was the Bible describing such a thing when it talked about the firmament? No. That's a late argument designed to explain why the Bible says what it does. The firmament WAS the sky. The concept of a thinning atmosphere giving way to outer space and billions of light years beyond our view was foreign to the writers of the Bible. The firmament was solid to them. A plain reading of Genesis offers no room for any other view save one: They didn't know and didn't pretend to know, but wrote based on what it looked like.
I'd never even heard the membrane thing when I was in twi. I didn't even
hear it in the Advanced class. I'm sure the fools taught something of it,
just not to me.
I didn't hear it in TWI, but it did form part of the syllabus of "His Story: God's Purpose of the Ages," which was the "new" foundational class being offered by Vince F. at around the time I left NY. I seem to recall a diagram showing the Earth surrounded by a layer of water on the outer atmosphere. It was an attempt to depict the cosmology shown in Genesis. Of course, there was no evidence that this was ever real, other than the description in the Bible and Vince's attempt to illustrate it literally. If I still have the syllabus somewhere, I'll post it. I'm pretty sure I tossed it ages ago.
Addendum: I started a thread in Doctrinal to explore "Actual Errors in Genesis." My purpose in starting that thread is to keep from derailing this one.
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Raf
Thinking about what you guys said Earl Burton taught: The universe is a bubble with water on the other side of it... Assuming that bubble burst, any water coming down to earth from it (as opposed to
Thomas Loy Bumgarner
This sort of reminds me of CBS' TV series Under the Dome based on Stephen King's novel. Obviously the recent movie on Noah also pertains to this discussion.
Raf
There are no "rational" explanations, because the rational conclusion is that it never happened.
Nero
When I was going they said that there was water around the universe like a womb. God then took the water and dumped it on earth to kill everyone. Then he sucked it back up again after the flood and said he wouldn't do it again. I do remember them speaking of devil spirits - he sent the ones he defeated into the waters around the universe.
I'm not sure all the fine details now. I'm almost curious enough to ask my family but I think that would give them the wrong signals.
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WordWolf
twi taught this.
I Peter 3:18-20 (KJV)
18 For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit:
19 By which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison;
20 Which sometime were disobedient, when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water.
twi taught that this meant that the spirits in prison were disobedient spirits whose
disobedience specifically included causing The Flood.
Reading it coldly, I see spirits who were imprisoned specifically because of their disobedience
in the timeframe of the days PRECEEDING The Flood. If it's meant to say that these spirits
caused The Flood, neither this account nor any other actually says that.
Hebrews 2:14 (NASB)
14 Therefore, since the children share in flesh and blood, He Himself likewise also partook of the same, that through death He might render powerless him who had the power of death, that is, the devil,
This is another single-verse doctrine of twi. I've gotten VERY leery of them,
since so many of them turned out to be based on misunderstanding the verse and
then spinning long doctrines out of whole cloth based on THAT.
The idea is that the devil (and thus, his minions) must be involved if any death
is caused by any supernatural means, since he had the power of death.
I'm open to reconsidering specifically who the angel of death was-and, more to
the point, who he took orders willingly from. However, I see no textual reason
to think that The Flood was caused by the imprisoned spirits, other than that
they were disobedient at the time.
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WordWolf
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis%208&version=KJV
No, among the first things Noah did when he landed was to build an altar and offer
a sacrifice to God Almighty.
Some time after that, Noah settled down, farmed, and cultivated a vineyard.
After the vineyard's grapes were harvested and fermented, THEN Noah got drunk.
That had to at least be several months later.
Genesis 9:20-21a (NASB)
20 And Noah began to be an husbandman, and he planted a vineyard:
21 And he drank of the wine, and was drunken;
It makes a lot more sense if you examine the life of Joseph. Joseph's brothers were envious of him, hated
him, and wanted him dead- showing him mercy by selling him into slavery. Once he was in slavery, he
worked well for an owner, and refused to deal corruptly with him. So he was framed and thrown into
prison- still having done nothing wrong other than not shut up in front of his envious brothers.
Eventually, his time in prison was used to A) turn him into the Chief Operating Officer of Egypt
with power of attorney for Pharaoh B) store food sufficient for Egypt and several other countries
to use to survive the coming famine (including Israel)
When he finally confronted his brothers, Joseph made an interesting comment about what his
brothers did to him because of their evil intent.
Genesis 50:20 (KJV)
But as for you, ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive.
I don't claim to understand a lot about how God works. I do know it's possible for someone
like God to use-unwillingly to them- beings of evil intent and confine their destructive
abilities to targets of God's own choosing, much like a surgical laser can zap cancerous tissue
while sparing healthy cells (presuming optimal conditions.)
To me, it's a spiritual equivalent to someone performing Aikido or a similar martial art-
a master practitioner can redirect the violence of an attacker and redirect it into something
of his own choosing.
Just because it is POSSIBLE is no guarantee this is how God works-but it's possible on paper.
Yeah, what can I say? They're silly.
Is there an actual verse they CLAIM supports this,
or are they more honest that it's made-up?
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Kit Sober
When I was taught it, the Noah record was simply read as true, and the heavy emphasis upon the amazing astounding and marvelous and wonderful works of the adversary was later and occurred as the Holy Spirit left.
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DogLover
I just checked the Amplified Bible... In Genesis 2:5-6. it states: (5) When no plant of the field was yet in the earth and no herb of the field had yet sprung up, for the Lord God had not yet caused it to rain upon the earth and there was no man to till the ground, (6) But there went up a mist (fog, vapor) from the land and watered the whole surface of the ground--
Then it goes on to say that "Then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground...etc."
Later on, in Genesis 7:11, it says, "In the year 600 of Noah's life, in the seventeenth day of the second month, that same day all the fountains of the great deep were broken up and burst forth, and the windows and floodgates of the heavens were opened."
There is no biblical evidence to support the idea that the mist went up from the land to water the whole surface once man had been formed, made, and created.
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PatAnswer
This post may border on doctrinal but I don't know any other way to discuss this in this thread without going into TWI doctrine.
I remember some in TWI teaching that there was no rain before the flood. It was not a prevalent doctrine but I did hear it.
I remember VPW teaching at Living Victoriously about the waters that were above the expanse of the universe. He taught that the universe was encased with water like a womb. He may have been reading from Kenyon, I don't remember. I heard it, considered it, thought it was cool but didn't dwell on it. I don't remember this teaching getting into the main theology of TWI. Others may have talked about it and even taught it but I don't remember it being an established doctrine. I also don't remember if VPW tied in the flood of Noah's time to this water that was outside the universe.
I believe this was based on some scriptures that indicate there is water above the firmament.
(Gen 1:6) And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.
(Gen 1:7) And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.
(Gen 1:8) And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.
I always pictured this as the waters that were on the earth being separated from the clouds, that there was an expanse between them.
The ancients believed that the firmament was a set boundary, not just the sky or atmosphere. The Hebrew word for firmament gives the idea of a hard surface, something beaten into a shape. But of course their understanding of the universe (the stars, planets, rain, etc.) was limited. But if the scriptures are from God's perspective then a further study of the words and meanings and figures of speech would be in order. If taken literally then VPW and others are correct, there may be water outside of the known universe. Does this water surround the universe or is there some water in a defined area outside of the universe? Don't know.
Aside from the word firmament, there is also this verse that needs to be dealt with:
(Psa 148:4) Praise him, ye heavens of heavens, and ye waters that be above the heavens.
I really don't know the answer. It has not been worth my time to try to figure it out. It's not pertinent to my walk with my Father.
But then enter LCM. In his infinite wisdom and mastery of the Word (cough) he tied a number of things together and spat out something that somehow ended up in his FOUNDATIONAL class. Yes, he put it together so masterfully that it was a foundational truth.
I really couldn't follow his logic but here's an attempt: He believed that the face of the deep mentioned in Genesis 1:2 became the edge of the reservoir of water outside the firmament when the waters were separated. He went on to say that God often (always?)used water as a description of devil spirits. LCM saw devil spirits everywhere in the Word so no surprise that he saw them referred to in water everywhere. I don't remember and don't care what verse he used as the jumping off point to come to this conclusion but as his manner was, he read into a verse that used water to describe devil spirits and extrapolated it out to all verses that talked about water. He used the word deep in a similar fashion; found one place where deep may refer to devil spirits (or at least evilness) and then declared that anywhere the word deep was used it could be referring to devil spirits.
He then declared that the great deep referred to in Genesis 7 was this water outside of the universe and that devil spirits resided there and that it was water from this great deep that flooded the earth during Noah's flood.
Gen_7:11 In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened.
I believe that LCM put this in his foundational class (along with other stretches of "research" like the first sin of man)to show himself as a master teacher of the Word like VPW was. He had to have some wow factor in his class to set himself apart from all the offshoots that were simply reteaching VPW's material. But LCM lacked the intelligence and discipline necessary to really work the Word from a new angle and come up with anything solid.
When I heard his face of the deep, Noah's flood explanation I concluded the following:
Nowhere is the great deep described as being the reservoir of water (if it exists) outside the universe. LCM made this up.
Even if it did refer to this reservoir think about it: We were taught that the devil cannot break the laws of nature and he doesn't have foreknowledge. He has to work within these laws or boundaries and he does not know the future. He has to respond to the times. In this case the growth of evil upon earth.
So this water that is outside of the edge of the universe: how far away is it? Light years? Hundreds of light years? Thousands of light years? IF the earth's population had grown evil to the point that only Noah (and his family by grace) was worth saving (a specific time, window of opportunity) and this opened the door for the devil to try to destroy the earth and the devil did this with water from outside the universe: how did this water travel through the universe at above the speed of light to get to the earth at just the right time? Could it be transported from outside of the universe in a way that it would arrive on earth as water?
Fortunately for me the holes in LCM's "research" opened the door for me to take a hard look not only at LCM's teachings but also VPW's (blasphemy!). Then the TWI's hold on me was loosened. Praise the Lord.
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RottieGrrrl
Just popping into add, WordWolf, GREAT post, as usual.
PatAnswer: FASCINATING STUFF!
I'm at work and actually busy for a change, so that's all I can add for now. lol. :)
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Kit Sober
I generally look for more sound backup than the Amplified to settle deep concerns. To me ithe Amplified is more correctly called, The Embellished Version because it's their private interpretation. Holy Spirit doesn't always agree with what they have written, and because there are so many words therein, it's difficult (and certainly beyond my level of expertise) to backtrack to the any semblance of the original.
When the Embellished Version agrees with what I know, it can be interesting, but I wouldn't trust it on a question such as this, "was there rain before the flood."
I am looking at the One New Man bible, which has a Jewish background, and I got it from sidroth.org, which is a Messianic Jewish group (believe that Jesus/Yeshua is the promised Messiah). The emphasis on the record of the flood and of Noah is that the wickedness of man became great and God Almighty was going to destroy man, who He created, from the face of the earth, but Noah was a just man, perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God.
The concern, which seems of primary importance to consider for me, is whether i am helping to build the ark today and will I/am I in the ark of The Lord, or am I outside when God Almighty shuts the door.
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Steve Lortz
I left in 1987, so Athletes of the Spirit was the most of the Martindale idiocy I was exposed to... I wasn't around for his re-tooled version of PFAL.
This is a fascinating thread!
Love,
Steve
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RottieGrrrl
Okay, I ALSO remember how everybody was saying that it was something like a "Hebrew idiom?" IF I'm using that phrasing correctly. They said that the people in the OT thought ALL things, bad and good, came from God, and it wasn't until the NT that Christ revealed the devil. So when any death came "from God" in the OT, it really was the devil.
Ok, As you well know, I'm no bible scholar, but that just doesn't make sense. What about the Egyptians killed in the Red sea? What about the battle of Jericho, and all the battles in the OT? Where God was clearly on the Hebrew side? What about David killing Goliath? Was that all at the hands of the devil? Clearly not.
And I get your example about Joseph, where God can take evil and make it for good. In fact, it's a really good lesson to remember.
Okay, reading more posts now...
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WordWolf
There's 3 different types of Bible versions:
word for word
concept for concept
paraphrases
The "word for word" ones are the best ones for doing research. Paraphrases are nice to listen to,
but are patently useless for study. The Amplified Bible is a paraphrasing Bible.
Furthermore, I consider the name to be false advertising, since the Amplified Bible actually
is NOT any louder than any other version.
Luke 17:26-30 (NASB)
26 And just as it happened in the days of Noah, so it will be also in the days of the Son of Man: 27 they were eating, they were drinking, they were marrying, they were being given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all. 28 It was the same as happened in the days of Lot: they were eating, they were drinking, they were buying, they were selling, they were planting, they were building; 29 but on the day that Lot went out from Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven and destroyed them all. 30 It will be just the same on the day that the Son of Man is revealed.
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WordWolf
There are legitimate figures that switch the active sense for the passive sense.
We use it whenever we break a dish and say "The dish broke", or a child knocks
something down or drops it and says "It fell."
The idea was that "the snare of the devil" was hidden until revealed by Jesus
(which, I suspect, wasn't based on a verse of any kind). Further, that the
language supported that kind of talk where God is spoken of as the Origin
of everything, mainly to prevent people from focusing on the devil the way
twi did in the 90s and later.
Bullinger's explanation was a different figure for much the same reason.
Bullinger used "synedoche" (parts for the whole) and said "God" was used
for the entire spiritual realm. (At least, I heard people claiming that
Bullinger used that very figure for his explanation. Either that or it
was "metonymy" (an attribute for the whole.) It's easy to mix the usage
of one for the usage of the other.
Technically, some of those might be seen as the removal of protection-
God walled up the Red Sea, then stopped doing it, and TECHNICALLY the
normal Red Sea killed a lot of soldiers. Jericho's walls were destroyed,
and then the ISRAELITES, not God, killed a lot of people (God's spared
TECHNICALLY from having done it because He gave the order but didn't
actually kill anyone HIMSELF.)
As for other battles, including David vs Goliath, I think the explanation
falls down with many of those.
Therefore, the single verse twi based all of that on must be re-examined.
Hebrews 2:14-16 (NASB)
14 Therefore, since the children share in flesh and blood, He Himself likewise also partook of the same, that through death He might render powerless him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, 15 and might free those who through fear of death were subject to slavery all their lives. 16 For assuredly He does not give help to angels, but He gives help to the descendant of Abraham.
Hebrews 2 speaks of salvation, angels, Jesus, and humans.
The idea that the devil is the SOLE being who has ANY say over death is more than the verse says.
People who can order an execution are said to have the power of life and death.
No verse says that God has no authority over death. Rather, we see instances where people
are raised from the dead, removing the rulership of death over them for a time.
(The Shunnamite woman's son, Jesus Christ, Lazarus, the little girl Jesus raised...)
The idea that God would-of necessity- have to use the devil's own authority to kill
goes FAR beyond what this verse says, and goes firmly into the category twi calls
"private interpretation."
I can make a flowing, sensible, artistic explanation about how that would work,
but all my reasoning is useless if it takes me a different direction than Scripture.
My conclusion was (and is) that God Almighty will accomplish His purpose, and we can
cooperate and be a part of it, or we can oppose it and see God succeed despite our best
efforts. God's playing the really long game, and moves which seem senseless now will
make perfect sense in a decade or 2, or in a century or 2, and so on.
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Raf
Thinking about what you guys said Earl Burton taught: The universe is a bubble with water on the other side of it...
Assuming that bubble burst, any water coming down to earth from it (as opposed to just floating off into the whatever, just making a beeline for earth) would take billions of years to get here. So the flood would not have happened yet.
I think the problem is reading modern scientific understanding about cosmology into the [let's be honest] ignorant cosmology of Genesis. Read the story on its own terms -- it says nothing about the "universe" being "inside a bubble" surrounded by water. Rather, it was the Earth that was surrounded by a firmament.
This is difficult for us to comprehend because we have some degree of scientific literacy. The writers of Genesis did not! For them, the earth was a flat disk surrounded above by a solid dome holding back a wall of water. When the "windows of heaven" were opened, it rained. The sun, moon and stars were INSIDE that dome. That's why the Bible can talk about stars falling from heaven. It was what they knew and understood.
When you think of the "waters above" being right up there on the other side of the dome, the notion of that dome opening up and all the water behind it crashing down on us and flooding the earth becomes much easier to understand.
Trying to rescue Genesis from the ignorance of its writers is something I no longer try to do (as I implied in another thread).
Here's an interesting, non-atheist article on the subject of the firmament.
Of course, anyone is free to accept Earl Burton's teaching that the "firmament" really does exist and is billions of light years from earth, but be honest: do you think that's what the authors of Genesis were trying to convey? Which view makes more sense? That they were actually describing the universe as it is, or that they were describing the world around them as they saw it?
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WordWolf
Can't teach those wacky Hebrews anything.
After all, other groups' holy teachings of the cosmogony included things
like their chief god producing the universe in a moment of excitement,
or a big egg opening, or the earth being constructed from the bones and
corpse of an evil giant, and so on.
Nowadays, we know better. We know the universe started with the Big Bang,
and started with energy, some eventually converting to matter, and
the planet Earth eventually being some of that matter. As for life on
that planet, once there was a stable water cycle, then plant-life appeared.
Eventually, the atmosphere changed radically again (including the presence
of plenty of oxygen, plants had to do that), animal life began with marine
life, and amphibian and reptile life, and bird-types came next, then we
got the land animals. What we consider "man" was a late arrival to all of
that, no matter who's counting because supposedly rodentia and so on all
predate primates.
The silly Genesis account with its non-scientific mumbo-jumbo written by
the non-scientists, well that says.....
...
HOW ABOUT THAT.
The ancient ignoramuses who had no idea what science would tell us millenia
later, they gave the same order in Genesis.
Energy, water cycle, plant-life, more atmospheric change,
marine life in all its varieties, birds, land animals, eventually including man.
Genesis 1:3 energy
Genesis 1:6-9 the water cycle
Genesis 1:11-12 plant life
Genesis 1:14-18 more atmospheric change
Genesis 1:20-21 all types of marine life, and also birds
Genesis 1:24-25 land animals
Genesis 1:26-27 people
Granted, all of that is poorly-phrased to be used as a 21st-century science textbook,
but, coming from people who should have no knowledge whatsoever of what 20th/21st
century science said about all that,
it is an ASTOUNDING COINCIDENCE to have hit upon ANY of it
when all the other ignorant religions wrote accounts so completely different
and so much more divorced from science.
I'd consider that singularly peculiar, at the very least.
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Raf
Of course, it all happens in six days a few thousand years ago, but who's counting?
It also has days and nights preceding the "making" of the sun, moon and stars, but who's counting?
It also has plant life preceding the making of the sun, but who's counting?
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Thomas Loy Bumgarner
This sort of reminds me of CBS' TV series Under the Dome based on Stephen King's novel. Obviously the recent movie on Noah also pertains to this discussion.
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WordWolf
Of course, that's only the view held by young earth Creationists,
and most Creationists are old earth Creationists and read that with a different understanding,
but who's counting?
Certainly the old earth Creationists don't count....
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Raf
Oh no, they do count. But this is the About the Way section, and in The Way, it happened in six days a few thousand years ago. Lots happened BEFORE that, but the earth as we know it, with life as we know it, happened in six days a few thousand years ago. We can quibble about Old Earth creationism elsewhere.
I would also note that you have said nothing to refute my on-topic point, which was the relationship between the "firmament" to the waters behind it as it relates to the flood. The fact that someone got addition and subtraction correct does not make that person an expert in calculus. :)
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Raf
(Get your popcorn, everybody).
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Twinky
Wasn't The Way's view that the earth was created - some time - and became void and without form (tohu bohu).
Then, some undefined time later, the spirit of God breathed on the waters and all the things in Genesis took place and that was 6000 years ago. And creation of the things that we know took place.
Didn't that wellknown playwright sorry plagiarist VPW declare that dinosaurs etc occurred in the time before tohu bohu, way before the 6000 that the earth as we know it was (re-)created?
I have trouble with the firmament as a sort of membrane holding back earth-sized quantities of water. Much more it's something figurative or, as you put it Raf, the Hebrew worldview of the time.
And WW, what you write may or may not be true.
We don't have the length of knowledge to say that (yet). Granted, it seems plausible to us all now. Maybe theories will change in 300 years time. Just as 300 years ago you would have believed, quite reasonably, something different from the current Earth-story.
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WordWolf
I figured that responding to your post would be on-topic, if your post was
on-topic. If neither was, perhaps we both should be sent to the corner.
I actually haven't looked at the initial subject. It didn't interest me
then or now. I responded here because I knew the answer off the top of
my head. Perhaps I'll actually look into the other thing, but that will
take more than just flipping a page. (We want competency here so I won't
rush something I personally can't rush.)
I'd never even heard the membrane thing when I was in twi. I didn't even
hear it in the Advanced class. I'm sure the fools taught something of it,
just not to me.
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Raf
Correct, Twinky. According to TWI, there was a vast period of time between Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2 that accounts for all the fossils and geological discoveries, etc. After Genesis 1:2, the account is literal -- which makes no sense because Genesis has the creation of the earth and the development of plant life before the making of the sun. Explore the implications of what TWI taught, and you'll find (I believe) that what Genesis teaches still does not fit with what we have been able to gather through scientific research and study.
Did marine life and birds emerge on the same day a few thousand years ago? That's what TWI taught. It is not true. Marine life came ages before birds. Did plant life precede the sun? Couldn't have. Is the earth older than the stars? Hardly. TWI managed to cram billions of years between Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2, but in doing so, it created an enormous "plot hole" in Genesis, where (among other things) God is now re-creating a new type of life on earth, soul life, different from the life that preceded Genesis 1:2.
And then there's the firmament (back on topic), which can make some sense on a poetic level but utterly fails to accurately describe the earth and the universe "above" it.
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Raf
Read my post again: it was about the firmament and cosmology, not about the progression of creation or the timing of the development of life on earth.
Did it rain before Noah? Yes. Absolutely. Of course it did. Is the universe inside a gigantic bubble? As far as I can tell, the premise is untestable, so not really worth debating. But was the Bible describing such a thing when it talked about the firmament? No. That's a late argument designed to explain why the Bible says what it does. The firmament WAS the sky. The concept of a thinning atmosphere giving way to outer space and billions of light years beyond our view was foreign to the writers of the Bible. The firmament was solid to them. A plain reading of Genesis offers no room for any other view save one: They didn't know and didn't pretend to know, but wrote based on what it looked like.
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Raf
I didn't hear it in TWI, but it did form part of the syllabus of "His Story: God's Purpose of the Ages," which was the "new" foundational class being offered by Vince F. at around the time I left NY. I seem to recall a diagram showing the Earth surrounded by a layer of water on the outer atmosphere. It was an attempt to depict the cosmology shown in Genesis. Of course, there was no evidence that this was ever real, other than the description in the Bible and Vince's attempt to illustrate it literally. If I still have the syllabus somewhere, I'll post it. I'm pretty sure I tossed it ages ago.
Addendum: I started a thread in Doctrinal to explore "Actual Errors in Genesis." My purpose in starting that thread is to keep from derailing this one.
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