The Old Testament Review

This is part 2 of 6 of the third chapter of my book, Biblical Glasses.

What happened before the time of Jesus Christ?

Besides condemned to physical death for their sin, Adam and Eve were also banished from the Garden of Eden, earthly paradise, unable to eat from the Tree of Life. They were forced to struggle and sweat in the fields for their food, as all of creation was punished for man’s sin. The Bible says:

The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. For
the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the
will of the One Who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be
liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the
children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the
pains of childbirth right up to the present time (Romans 8:19-22).

Eve was subjected to the pain of childbirth because of sin. She gave birth to Cain and Abel, and you know the story. They were preparing to offer a sacrifice to God (as a means of repentance for their sins); Abel offered the best lamb in his flock, while Cain’s offering was apparently less meaningful. God accepted Abel’s offering and rejected Cain’s. Cain got jealous and killed Abel. Then Cain was sent away from the family; he settled in the land of wandering (Nod), married his sister or niece, and raised a family. At age 130, Adam fathered Seth. Seth carried on the family lineage through the Bible.

You may be wondering how Adam could have lived to age 130, much less father a child that late in life. You may also wonder how Cain got married in the land of Nod, when he was the first child ever born in the entire world! Well, Adam actually lived to be 930 years old and father many more children! He obeyed God’s command to be fruitful and fill the earth.

The explanation is quite simple; keep in mind Adam was the first human, made physically perfect by a perfect God. He had no errors in his genetic code. Think of yourself as a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy, etc. You are not nearly as perfect as Adam! Adam contained the necessary genetic information for all the so-called races of people, all the eye shapes, nose shapes, hair types, muscle structures, skin shades, ear lobe varieties, etc. There is only one race: The human race!

Cain married either his sister or his niece. This was fine because of the purity in the human race. God had just created the perfect man and woman! The human race was pure enough to marry relatives without risk of deformation until the time of Moses. Only then was incest forbidden (see Leviticus 18). Later in the Bible, God commanded His chosen people, the Jews, to avoid intermarriage with other groups of people. He was not concerned with skin shades; He was concerned about spiritual purity. The Bible says: “Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness” (2 Corinthians 6:14)?

Going back to creation, remember that God separated the waters below from the waters above to make the sky on day two. The water above was possibly a different atmosphere than the one we tear up today. Perhaps it allowed for cleaner, nutrient-rich air and even a longer lifespan. Life was so different then; we cannot expect to understand it. There is very little Precambrian (pre-flood) evidence to examine. People were likely very strong and very tall. The Bible mentions giants and a king who required a bed thirteen feet long (see Deuteronomy 3:11)! People before the flood may have had an atmosphere that allowed for them to live large.

The dinosaurs lived primarily before the flood, when the atmosphere allowed for them to live to old ages and therefore grow to monstrous sizes. See, reptiles never quit growing; unlike mammals, they grow until they die. The older dinosaurs were probably the largest. But did you know that the average dinosaur was only four feet tall and weighed only a hundred pounds, about the size of a sheep? Dinosaurs and man lived together before the flood. Every living thing was vegetarian according to the Bible. That is hard to believe after going to school for twelve to sixteen years learning about evolution. It is even harder to believe after watching the Discovery Channel and movies like Godzilla and Jurassic Park. Remember, science proves that dinosaurs did indeed exist, but it shows nothing about dinosaur lifestyles.

For example, a complete T-rex skull fossil was found, providing evidence that the T-rex had large, pointy teeth. What does that tell us? It tells us this particular T-rex had large, pointy teeth. It does not tell us what the creature ate. In fact, Panda bears have incredibly large, pointy teeth, but they eat primarily plants. Piranha have razor sharp teeth, but most species eat only plants! Dinosaurs ate nothing but plants until after the flood; there is no viable evidence that suggests otherwise.

Dinosaurs are perhaps the most influential creatures used to support evolutionary claims, but the evidence about dinosaurs actually supports creation! The word dinosaur, which means terrible lizard, does not appear in the Bible, because dinosaur was not coined as a word until 1841. The Bible discusses dinosaurs, such as behemoth, in the Book of Job and even mentions dragons, such as leviathan, throughout the Bible.

A detailed discussion of the evidence for recently living dinosaurs must be saved for another time; however, I want to mention a couple interesting facts about them. Allosaur bones were found engulfed in un-decayed organic material, suggesting the creature lived recently. Un-fossilized dinosaur bones have been found in Alaska, suggesting living dinosaurs were there no more than 200 years ago. Sculptures, carvings, and drawings of various dinosaur kinds, such as Apatosaurus and Pterodactyl, have been found by archaeologists studying remote, yet fairly modern civilizations, like the Native American Indians. Explorers in the African Congo have repeatedly returned with eyewitness accounts of Mokele-Mbembe, a living Apatosaurus relative. Many eyewitnesses have reported their sightings of Nessie, the Loch Ness monster, Champ, the creature of Lake Champlain, and China’s legendary Lake Tianchi Monster, each a purported sea-dwelling Plesiosaur, a relative of the dinosaur. We hear of knights slaying fire-breathing dragons; even the nation of China relies on the dragon as its national symbol of pride. I do not know if there are any living dinosaurs, other than komodo dragons and iguana-type creatures, today, but I feel confident many dinosaurs survived into the Dark Ages and a few lived into the twentieth century. For what reason, other than that dinosaurs and dragons actually lived, would so many accounts of dinosaurs and dragons exist?

Living for 930 years allows for many children to be born. Adam and Eve did not populate the earth alone. Their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, etc., could have populated the world to several million people rather quickly. In fact, it probably happened within 1500 years! An example was given with a single pair of mammoths doubling, conservatively, every seventeen years. Within 500 years, they could have born a population over a billion mammoths.

Think about it: If Eve had a child every five years (conservative estimate) starting at age 110 and continuing to age 710, she would have had 120 children. You may think no woman could bear that many children, but keep in mind Eve was the perfect woman; she was physically flawless! I know it is not politically correct to make the following statement, but here it is anyway: One of the reasons women were created by God was to have children!

Say half of Eve’s children were girls, and ten of those girls had no children of their own. The other fifty girls each had a child every five years of their lives, starting at age 100 continuing to age 600. Now the population is over 5000. Say then half of those 5000 people are girls and have a child every five years from age 100 to 500. Now the population is up to 200,000. If half of those children are girls and have a child every five years from age 100 to 500, then the population would be eight million. All this happens by the fourth generation of Adam! The math may be off, but you get the picture. Even if there was a high mortality rate, population grew quickly.

Tomorrow, in part 3, we'll discuss Noah and the flood.