The Pre-Flood World, Parts 1 & 2

Author: Ian Taylor

1. The Fall of man took place in the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve had been created in perfection in a perfect world; they were physically perfect and quickly becoming full of God’s wisdom. There were three kinds of tree in the Garden: trees to provide food, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and the Tree of Life. Satan tempted Eve where she was most vunerable: pride. He offered the opportunity for Adam and Eve to obtain wisdom without having to go to God each time; they would thus be independant. Eve quickly fell for this lie, Adam came moments later, saw what had happened and immediately knew the awful decision that was set before him: the choice of being obedient to God and losing his wife or joining her. He too fell for the lie but knowingly. Genesis 3:6 … the woman saw that the tree was desirable to make one wise … The outworking of this verse is found in 1 John 2:16 … and the pride of life. Pride was their problem which lead to disobedience then, after God had given each of them the opportunity to repent, they refused and this was the condemning sin. God first approached Adam (3:11-12) and gave him the opportunity to repent, to say, “I am sorry Lord, please forgive me.” But Adam’s pride caused him to blame Eve. God gave Eve the same opportunity (3:13) but with the same pride she blamed the serpent. We are all descendants of Adam and Eve and all have inherited Adam’s sin. However, the good news is that God has provided a way for us to return to Him by being “Born again.” This means doing what Adam refused to do: Sincerely confess to God that we are sinners and ask for forgiveness. Earlier God had warned Adam (Genesis 2:17) that if he ate the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge he would … surely die. They did not die that day but were expelled from the Garden to prevent them from eating of the Tree of Life and thus living forever in their sin (3:22). However, science tells us that cells begin to die in our body from the moment we are born; eventually, the rate of replacement is exceeded by the rate of decay and we die. Adam lived for 930 years. According to the Jewish historian, Josephus (A.D. 37-100) in his Antiquities of the Jews Book 1, chapter 1, verse 3: The number of Adam’s children … was thirty-three sons and twenty-three daughters. A modest number considering how long Adam (and Eve) lived .

The tree as a motif of knowledge occurs throughout history (The Learning Tree) and the Israelites copied the Cananite practices and worshipped “at the groves” or within a group of trees. Dante’s Divine Comedy, written in the fourteenth century, describes the Roman poet Virgil’s quest to find his dead lover, Beatrice. In purgatory he sees the worshippers at the Tree of Knowledge. This long poem forcibly introduced pagan ideas of death into Christendom. At the time of the French Revolution (1789), it was popular to decorate a “liberty tree” and dance around it. This custom later became the familiar May Pole celebrated today as Socialist Victory Day, May 1st. The liberty being celebrated by the humanist is actually liberty from the laws of God.

2. Following the Fall of Adam and Eve in the Garden, God pronounced the curse, firstly as it would affect the serpent, then Eve, then Adam. Genesis 3:15 And I will put enmity between you [the serpent] and the woman, and between your seed [serpent’s seed] and her seed [Jesus]; He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel. When the sainted Jerome (A.D.347-419) translated the Hebrew to produce the Latin Vulgate Bible there was a slip of one letter in the Latin pronoun ipse (his) to ipsa (her). In 1609 the English Catholic Church in exile in France translated the Latin into English to produce the Douay-Rheims Bible and the gender of Genesis 3:15 was erroneously retained as “her head” and “her heal.” The error was corrected in the 1961 edition of the New Jerusalem Catholic Bible where a footnote explained that there had been a typographical error! This is the foundation verse for the doctrine of the goddess. Statues of “Our Lady” will often show the serpent’s head beneath her foot, a direct result of the gender change in Genesis 3:15 and epitomizing the doctrine that has resulted from it.

The goddess piercing the serpent’s head is found as a theme in Egypt while the Madonna and child theme is found throughout the ancient mid-east. The entire goddess theme was soundly rejected at the time of the Reformation and has not appeared in the Protestant Church until very recently. In her book, Sophia (1986), the United Methodist minister, Susan Cady, suggested that since wisdom is spoken of as “she” in the book of Proverbs (e.g. 3:13-18, 4:5-9) while Jesus is referred to as “the wisdom of God” in 1 Corinthians 1:24, then the name Jesus could be replaced by “Sophia”, the Greek word for wisdom. One short step later and we can expect a goddess in the Protestant Church! The Greek Parthenon (from parthenos = virgin) in Athens was dedicated to the virgin goddess Athene and contained her image. In Nashville, TN, there is a replica of the Parthenon built in 1895 while a 43 feet tall gilded image of the goddess was installed in 1986.

3. No capital punishment for Cain. Capital punishment for the murderer was commanded by God immediately after the Flood in His instructions to Noah: Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God made he man. (Genesis 9:6). This is acknowledged by scholars to be the beginning of human government where man is given permission by God to enforce law and order by the death penalty. This same commandment is repeated in Numbers 35:30-34 and Leviticus 18:24-25. It is sometimes erroneously argued that the executioner commits another murder but this is not the case since 1 Kings 2:32, 33 and 37 then 2 Sam. 1:16 each point out that the murderer’s blood be upon his own head. In other words, the murderer is responsible for his own death. Since all human government exists only by God’s permission, it follows that lawlessness and anarchy is not only rebellion against human authority, but blasphemy against God Himself. From the statement, for in the image of God He made man (Genesis 9:6), murder is actually an offense against God. Society understood this until about two centuries ago when the formula began to change to an offense against society, seemingly without a whimper of protest from the Christian community. At this point, capital punishment was claimed to be a “barbaric practice,” an appeal was made to “Christian forgiveness” and finally to “rehabilitation.” Today, murderers with sufficient funds to satisfy lawyers can get away scot free.

4. Who were the “sons of God” in Genesis chapter 6? The straightforward translation of B’nai HaElohim is “sons of gods” since Elohim is plural; in Genesis 1:26 God Himself is called Elohim thus hinting at the trinity. The “sons of gods” are the fallen angels referred to in Genesis chapter 6 and certain passages from the New Testament. Here it is clear that Satan was attempting to ruin the human race so that the Messiah would not have an untainted female line from which He could be born. Undoubtedly, this was the reason that God had to destroy the entire human race except the untainted (perfect) eight that were saved in the ark of Noah.

Genesis 6:1-2 . the sons of God [fallen angels] saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all whom they chose tells us that the fallen angels became incarnate, that is, men. Scripture describes every angelic appearance on earth as male and it is perfectly reasonable to assume that they were male in every respect. The verse that follows (6:4) makes it plain that these incarnate angels had children, the nephilim, by the daughters of men, thus they must have been capable of reproduction. The Hebrew word nephilim has been translated as “giants” (KJV) or “tyrants” but since the word only appears three times in Scripture the exact translation is uncertain. The “sons of God” appear in Job 1:6 as the fallen angels while in Jude verses 6 and 7 these angels, are described as angels who kept not their first estate [i.e. heaven], but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day. Even as Sodom and Gomorrah … giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire. Just as men going after men in Sodom and Gomorrah are described as “going after strange flesh” (See Genesis chapter 19) this similarly applies to angels going after the daughters of men. Interestingly, the Greek myths are full of accounts of the gods who had children by women and their offspring became demi-gods or “heroes”; Hercules is perhaps the most well known. 2 Peter 2:4-5 relates how these fallen angels who sinned were “cast down to Tartaros and delivered into chains of darkness.” The word “Tartaros” is Greek and means a place lower than hell; the KJV erroneously translates “Tartaros” as “hell.” Finally, in the context of the wife being under her husband’s authority, Paul reminds his readers in 1 Corinthians 11:10 that women need to “have power on their head” that is, be under authority “because of the angels.”

5. There is a popular naturalistic explanation today that assumes that the “sons of God” are the godly line of Seth who married the ungodly daughters of Cain. An appeal is made to Matthew 24:37-38, As in the days of Noah . they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage . There is no redundancy of words here: daughters are supposed to be given in marriage but prior to the flood they were going out on their own authority and getting married, it is said, to the godly Sethites. The verse used to justify this naturalistic explanation is Matthew 22:30 For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are like the angels of God in heaven. Here it is assumed that angels are sexless thus the “sons of God” cannot refer to fallen angels since they had offspring but must therefore be human. The important words of Jesus here are “in heaven.” While the angels in heaven might well be sexless, those who became incarnate were undoubtedly complete men. Thus, this popular explanation actually denies the passages given in Genesis chapter 6 and in the New Testament concerning the fallen angels. More seriously, by denying the activities of the fallen angels this popular explanation effectively denies God’s judgment and permits the Genesis Flood to be local.

6. Was there ever a pre-Adamite world? In the early sixteenth century when the Europeans began to explore the Americas, they discovered the “red” Indian who was actually brown. Unlike the Hollywood Indian, when discovered in the 1500’s the Indians were naked; they explained that although their ancestors knew how to make clothes they had lost the art of sewing and weaving. “Specimens” of the Indian were brought back and paraded before the white Christian folk at the courts of England and Europe. Similar capitalistic ventures were made to Africa and more “specimens,” this time black, were brought back for exhibition. The Christians had a difficult time believing that these colored people were the descendants of Adam; in their mind, Adam was obviously white and, as far as Englishmen were concerned, spoke King James English! Racial prejudice found it easier to believe that the colored peoples were either descended from pre-Adamites or co-Adamites. In either event, there was no salvation for colored people while, for a Christian slave owner, the justification became ever easier with each increase in the margin of profit. There had always been strange stories about other races in the Garden of Eden. The Jews had a story about the evil female spirit named Lilith who visited Adam at night; then there was the Irishman, Francis Dobbs, who had his own theory that Eve had had a clandestine affair with the Devil while all this nonsense was supposed to account for the colored races. In 1655 Isaac de la Peyrere wrote a scholarly book about pre-Adamite man but throughout, every one of these fictions had to deny that the Genesis Flood was global. Clearly, there were only eight people on the ark and for the pre-Adamites or co-Adamites to have survived the Genesis Flood that flood must have been local. Any kind of evolutionary explanation introduced later demands that the Genesis Flood be local, thus it was the racial prejudice of sixteenth century European Christians who helped to lay the foundation for Darwin three centuries later. The Church authorities of the sixteenth century saw the local flood as a heresy and three scholarly tomes were written in defense of a global flood; this seemed to put to rest the heresy of multiple origins of man (polygeny) and the notion that the Genesis Flood was merely local. In the nineteenth century racist ideas again emerged, this time with a Darwinian twist. Darwin had actually met some of the natives of Terre del Fuego, South America, and in his mind they had just swung out of the jungle trees. To the genteel Victorians these degenerate people were perceived through Darwinian eyes to be struggling up on the lowest rungs of life’s evolutionary ladder. Many Christians of the past believed that there were pre-Adamic races and many still believe in pre-Adamic man today. American professor of geology, Alexander Winchell (1842-1891), published a book called Pre-Adamites in 1880 that was blatantly racist. Negro and ape heads in profile, distances between finger tips and knee caps measured to show that the dark races were closer to the ape than the Caucasian etc. And Winchell was a professing Christian! Other well-known Christians known by their writings to believe in pre-Adamite races include: Sir John Alexander Fleming, Benjamin Warfield, Reuben Torrey, Charles Shields, Jimmy Swaggart, Rendal Short, Derek Kidner, Derek Prince and John Stott. It would seem that all these men had accepted a local flood and some kind of evolution rather than the Scriptures.

Footnotes:
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