The Book of Genesis (or how Murphy's Laws reflect human nature).
In the beginning, there was no religion, no lawyers and no antacids. This is because antacids are for relief from acid produced by stress.
Preachers and lawyers often become politicians, either declared or subtle (Gen. 3:1) and organize 'gummints', either secular or "sanctified" or both.
Both secular and "sanctified" governments eventually organize real or virtual wars, whether religious, political, economic or simply cultural and social.
So in the absence of religion and lawyers, there was an almost complete absence of acid-causing stress.
Now the earth was in total darkness which discouraged the evolution of televangelists (as they are attracted by spotlights, applause, and certain colors, such as green).
And the earth was covered with water which prevented pond scum from evolving into serpents which walked upright and carried their briefs in case they could tempt anyone with their cries of "sue', sue', sue'!"*.
*(pronounced in the original as "su-eeee", an invitation for swine to approach the trough).
There wasn't even a psychiatrist to ask the scum how it felt about itself. But if there had been, the Psych would have have encouraged the scum to accept itself (You're OKAY, I'm scum, OKAY?) thereby preventing pond scum from evolving into psychiatrists or anything else.
And the water prevented upright serpents from caucusing, inaugurating taxes, and drafting wars.
Then God turned on the lights and began decorating the place with livestock, creeping stock, flying stock and stocked fish. He added more plants than even Martha can name, or the stock could eat, and so provided for air re-conditioning. With all this "stock", He still saw no need for a stock market, and "behold, it was very good" (Gen. 1:31).
God engineered a perpetual clock/calendar using the sun, moon and stars (Gen. 1:14-18). Meanwhile, mankind seldom got past his attempt to stop his VCR from flashing "12:00", but did find the time to concoct over 40 calendars currently being used in the world.
(Source: "Calendars", L.E. Doggett, http://charon.nmsu.edu/~lhuber/leaphist.html)
Then God created man and woman. And the whole world promptly went to hell (or if you prefer, 'into the toilet'.) Gen. 6:5,11-13.
The first couple were given free, self-sustaining real estate including food, water, shelter and entertainment, with minimal duties (Gen.2:15) and only one stipulation, "of all the fruit trees in the garden, abstain from one tree only." Gen. 2:16-17.
Then an 'upright' serpent came along and convinced Eve of her civil rights to be equal with God (Gen. 3:5), of the Establishment's agenda to keep her in subjection (v.1), and that her parent's generation had lied to her (v. 4).
Thus, the passing of wisdom from previous generations (learning from history, or instruction) was rejected. The basis for insurrection and rebellion was established. "Parent's know nothing; teenagers have all the knowledge they need and are also immortal." ( See Gen. 3:4).
This 'upright' serpent opened a dialogue on 'common ground', created a sense of dissatisfaction (Gen.3:1), offered a choice based on pragmatism (it seemed edible), popular appeal (it looked good), and vanity ('be the smartest kid on your block, or in your garden', v.6).
Eve was 'sold'* and immediately began recruiting 'friends and neighbors' which consisted only of Adam. Thus, MLM's, or multi-level marketing, was born.
*(See also, "spiritual slavery", 2 Tim. 2:26, Rom. 7:23.)
Instead of childlike obedience (Mat.18:3-4), A & E chose 'enlightened human reason', the 'scientific method of proof', the pragmatism of 'if it feels good, do it', and the concept that "truth is relative". In this non-theoretical case, "E=mc2", where "End = man's choice times 2". Both Adam and Eve disobeyed, making the wrong choice between life and death (Deu. 30:19), thereby understanding the difference between good and evil, and that "truth" is divinely declared, but in the end, the prime real estate was repo-ed (Gen. 3:23-24).
The first couple, totally without benefit of any society biased by race, sex, religion, wealth or "a village culture", managed to produce a delinquent who originated family violence, abuse and murder. They raised Cain. No excuses. And they were un-Abel to blame society.
Rather than "society" producing a criminal, the disobedient (or "criminal") Adam and Eve produced "society", a worldwide primordial soup of scum (except for Noah, Gen. 6:5-8*) and God said, 'Let the 'can' be flushed' (Brit.-'Let the chain be pulled'.) And it was so (Gen. 7:17-24).
Lest any think that God acted hastily, note that the flood was about 1,656 years after Creation (Gen. 5,6).
Now that's a lot of time for folks to be "fruitful and replenish* the earth" (Gen. 1:28). *(Heb. 'male'- to fill up, overflow). So, how many people 'missed the boat'? (Gen. 7:23).
Only ten generations are named (Gen. 5). But these men began at an average age of 123 years to produce children* and could have continued their entire lives, which was an average 910 years. While some began their "begetting" at age 65, Noah didn't start having children until age 500. That men had multiple wives would have facilitated high birth rates (Gen. 4:19; 6:1-2).
Much later, we still see large families. Abdon, a judge over Israel, (1183-1175 BC) had 40 children (not counting daughters)(Judges 12:13-14). Gideon, also a Judge, had 71 sons (Jud. 8:30). Jair had 30 sons (Jud. 10:3-4). King Ahab of Israel had 70 sons (2 K. 10:1). Rehoboam had 28 sons and 60 daughters (2 Chrn. 11:21). Abijah had 22 sons and 16 daughters (2 Chrn. 13:21).
*(For averages, we omitted Enoch and Noah who were considered 'exceptional', even by God. Gen. 5:21-24).
If those living before the flood, in their (average) 787 years of reproductivity, each sired only 700 children (with equal gender), in only four generations the world population would have been over 10.5 billion people (approx. 10,504,375,000). Of course, "evil" generations also produce wars resulting in famine, pestilence and death. But only "violence" is specifically mentioned (Gen. 6:5, 11- 13) and genocide seems to have been introduced by God in response to man's evil.
But extreme birth rates are not necessary to "fill up" the world. Jacob's (Israel's) family of 70 people joined Joseph and his Egyptian wife in Egypt about 1706 BC. At the Exodus of Israel (the nation) out of Egypt (1491 BC), they numbered 603,550 "men of war" (Num. 1:45-46), which, with women and children and the aged, would indicate a population of at least 1.2 million people.
Using a birth rate of 7 children per family, with a generation of 32 years and a life span of 70 years, Israel could have numbered 2,216,948 in 1491 BC.
If half were males, and 55% of the males were ages 20 and older, that would be 605,000 "men of war".
Using the Exodus birth rate for Genesis and considering the average life span of 910 years, the pre-flood population would have been 1,721,762,000 or 1.7 billion people. That is a little more than one-quarter of the world's current population of 6 billion. All but eight of them 'missed the boat' when Noah sailed.
The book of Revelation describes a future time when "a third" of the world's men (1/3 of 3 billion or one billion men in 2000 AD) will be killed by war (Rev. 9:1-19). War is usually accompanied by famine and pestilence. In Ezekiel 5, the prophecy against Jerusalem and Israel shows 1/3 being killed by war (verse 12) and another 1/3 dying from "pestilence and with famine".
In Rev. 6:1-8, 1/4 of the earth (= 1.5 billion in 2000 AD) is killed by sword, hunger, death and beasts.
Zech.6 talks about red horses, black horses, white horses and "grisled and bay" horses.
In Mat. 24, Christ's signs of "the end of the world" are false prophets and false religions (verses 3-5, 11, 15, 23-26), wars(verse 6), "famine and pestilence" (verse 7) and earthquakes.
Rev. 6 explains that the red horse is war (verse 4), the black horse is famine (verses 5-6), the pale horse is death (verse 8). The earthquakes are part of God's punishment (verses 12-17).
That leaves the white horse (of Rev.6) to represent false prophets and false religions (Mat. 24:3-26), which are a counterfeit of Christ on a white horse (Rev.19:11-16). The former "white horse" is at the opening of the first "seal", the latter is after all seven "seals", the seven "trumpets", three "woes" and the "seven last plagues" (Rev. 6-18).
Man's governments are substitutes for God's rulership (1 Sam. 8:4-8) and therefore are a form of secular religion. Christ showed in Mat. 24 that false religions (whether religious or secular) lead to wars which result in famine and pestilence, and leads to death.
"In the beginning" (Gen. 1:1), there were no lawyers, no theologians and no stress which required antacids.
In "the end", antacids won't be enough, because as we all know, "stress kills".
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Copyright M.H. and G.H. June 2000. All rights reserved.