Category: B6 – Bible’s Reliability

by John Holbrook Jr.
A Biblical View, Blog #118 posted September 2, 2020, edited March 10, 2021.

Can divine ordination and individual free will be reconciled?

The Holy Scriptures indicate that God the Father designed Universe and wrote its script before God-the-Son spoke it into existence and God-the-Holy Spirit energized it and gave life to its flora and fauna. That means that God preordained every aspect of and every happening in Universe before he created it.

Yet we humans believe that we have free will – that is, that we are free to choose what to think, say, or do.

The apparent contradiction between the two observations above disappears with the realization that the human story is a drama which has been authored by God-the-Father and is being produced and directed by God-the-Son with the help of God-the-Holy Spirit.

Let’s compare God’s drama of Creation and Shakespeare’s drama of Othello, which share a number of features.

In God’s drama, God-the-Son, Israel’s Messiah, is the protagonist, Satan is the antagonist, and Messiah’s Bride is the point of contention between them. Satan is evil and trying to drive a wedge between the future husband and wife and thereby spoil or even prevent their planned marriage. Within this story, everyone possesses free will. Yet the drama is unfolding exactly according to God-the-Father’s script.

In Shakespeare’s drama, Othello is the protagonist, Iago is the antagonist, and Othello’s bride Desdemona is the point of contention between them. Iago is trying to drive a wedge between husband and wife and spoil their existing marriage. Within this story, everyone possesses free will. Yet the drama is unfolding exactly according to Shakespeare’s script.

There are two major reasons why so many Christians have trouble with predestination.

First, they read Biblical passages like “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him shall be saved” (John 3:16) and “…God is love” (KJV 1 John 4:7), and they believe that God loves everybody. In doing so, they ignore the depth of God’s anger over and hatred toward sin and sinners, which is expressed in Biblical passages such as the following: “…you [God] hate all sinners” (KJV Psalms 5:5), “…God is angry with the wicked every day” (KJV Psalms 7:11) “…the wicked and him that loveth violence, his [God’s] soul hateth” (KJV Psalms 11:5), and “The face of the Lord is against them that do evil, to cut off the remembrance of them from the earth” (KJV Psalms 34:16). God is both perfect love and perfect judgment, which requires perfect justice – something that only he can provide. Thus God himself became a man, Jesus of Nazareth, lived a sinless life, and died on the cross at Golgotha to satisfy for all time the intersection between these two divine attributes – perfect love and perfect judgment.

Second, in reading 2 Peter 3:9, they ignore its context and thus misunderstand what it is all about. It says, “The Lord is not slack concerning his promise as some count slackness; but is long-suffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance” (KJV). Here Peter is writing to steadfast believers who have been complaining that the Lord had promised to return soon, but had not yet done so. Peter is pointing out to them that many people whose name are written in the Father’s Book of Life have not yet come into the Kingdom (that was over 1,900 years ago). Jesus will not return until all persons whom the Father has predestined to repent of their sins and accept Israel’s Messiah as their Lord and Savior have done so, for God is not willing that any of them perish. According to the drama’s script, none of them will perish.^[1]

The lesson here is that we Christians must keep a nuanced view of the world in accordance with everything that the Bible actually says about it.

© 2020 John Holbrook Jr.
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[1] See article by  Moreno Dal Bello – http://godsonlygospel.com/booklets/not_willing_that_any_should_perish.htm

by John Holbrook Jr.
A Biblical View, Blog #010 posted September 19, 2016, edited March 9, 2021.

One of the many Bible stories on which skeptics like to jump with both feet is the account of Noah’s ark – particularly the claim that the ark carried a male and female of every sort or kind of animal on earth. How, they ask, could the ark contain elephants, lions, tigers, rhinoceroses, giraffes, etc. and the food necessary to sustain them– let alone how eight people could tend them and keep the ark from becoming an unsanitary and nauseous dungeon? Surprisingly, the answer is simple and came to me from an unlikely source.

According to my chronology of ancient history, the Antediluvian Era lasted roughly 1656 years (3977-2321 BC). The Bible makes clear that the men of this era (a) failed to honor God and his commandments and (b) indulged in every form of iniquity. Some of the trouble appears to have been caused by (a) the nephilim (sometimes translated “giants”), who were mighty men of renown and may have been warriors that introduced conflict and war into antediluvian life and (b) marriages between “the sons of God” (perhaps God-honoring covenant-keepers) and the “daughters of men” (perhaps God-dishonoring covenant-breakers), thereby becoming “unequally yoked.”

In any event, God became disgusted by the behavior of his creatures and decided to destroy the civilization which they had managed to construct.[1] God instructed Noah to build an ark in which to preserve his family and representatives of every animal and avian species on earth.

God provided Noah with the plans and specifications of the Ark.

Make thee an ark of gopher wood; rooms shalt thou make in the ark, and shalt pitch it within and without with pitch. And this is the fashion which thou shalt make it of: The length of the ark shall be three hundred cubits, the breadth of it fifty cubits, and the height of it thirty cubits. A window shalt thou make to the ark, and in a cubit shalt thou finish it above; and the door of the ark shalt thou set in the side thereof; with lower, second, and third stories shalt thou make it. (KJV Gen 6:14-16)

The Ark’s passengers were Noah and his wife, his oldest son Japheth and his wife, his middle son Seth and his wife, and his youngest son Ham and his wife – four men and four women. In addition, there was a pair (male and female) of every animal species on earth.

…and thou shalt come into the ark, thou, and thy sons, and thy wife, and thy sons’ wives with thee. And of every living thing of all flesh, two of every sort shalt thou bring into the ark, to keep them alive with thee; they shall be male and female. Of fowls after their kind, and of cattle after their kind, of every creeping thing of the earth after his kind, two of every sort shall come unto thee, to keep them alive. And take thou unto thee of all food that is eaten, and thou shalt gather it to thee; and it shall be for food for thee, and for them. (KJV Gen 6:18-21)

The LORD himself shut Noah and his fellow passengers in the Ark. I believe that the door was closed and locked from the outside.

And they that went in, went in male and female of all flesh, as God had commanded him [Noah]: and the LORD shut him [Noah] in. (KJV Gen 7:16)

In 2321 BC, when Noah was 600 years old, a global flood devastated the earth. It utterly destroyed and buried the Antediluvian civilization and left the land surface devoid of plant and animal life and overflowing with mud and muck. For the next 370 days, the ark carried its passengers safely through the cataclysm.

Now the idea that the ark carried pairs of every animal and avian species for 370 days without touching land has engendered vigorous debate over the past four millennia. It is often ridiculed by representatives of the Academy.[2]  The questions are always the same: How could pairs of dinosaurs, elephants, lions, and tigers, etc. fit into and coexist peacefully in the ark? How could four men and four women feed all the animals and birds, let alone keep their respective cages clean and dispose of the refuse?

Is this what the ark looked like from the exterior?

Is this what the ark looked like from the interior?

In 1982, I was a member of a house church, and one Sunday, after the worship service, all the men were gathered in the living room discussing the Scriptural text for the day,[3] which was a portion of the story of the flood.[4]

The men took turns commenting on the above questions. The discussion touched on the size of the ark, the number of interior decks, the number of species involved, the various sizes of the cages necessary to accommodate them, the difficulties of storing and distributing the food, the dangers involved in dealing with dinosaurs, elephants, lions, tigers, etc., the herculean task of cleaning the cages and disposing of the refuse. The discussion produced more questions than answers.

Meanwhile, an eight year old girl, the daughter of one of the men, sat in our midst. Her name was Jennifer. She had obviously been raised to listen to, but not interrupt her elders. After sitting still and silently for some time – at least half an hour – she finally couldn’t stand it another minute and said in a quiet voice, “Maybe they were babies.”

All of us men were struck dumb. I don’t exaggerate. We said nothing for several minutes, and then one of us said, “Out of the mouth of babes…!” [5]

In all the reading that I have done, I have never run across the suggestion that all the animals, birds, etc. on the ark were babies. Yet it is the obvious answer to all the troubling questions that I have noted above.

The adults in our house church that morning were given two lessons:

First, the Lord has a role for everyone among His followers to play. He can and does use every man, woman, and child, no matter how humble their abilities and circumstances, to contribute to the equipping of the saints for ministry. Everyone of us there that morning went out into the world better able to explain the Word of God to unbelievers because the Lord spoke to us through the mouth of an eight year old girl.

Second, when you are confronting a puzzling situation, it is essential to ask yourself, “Have I put this situation in a box? Have I made one or more inferences that prevent me from seeing the truth of this situation? If I have, what are the inferences and what possibilities emerge after they are eliminated – that is, how do I start thinking outside the box that I have created in my mind?”[6]

In the case of the Biblical account concerning Noah’s ark, people infer – the story does not imply – that the pairs of species are adults. They know, however, that God specifies pairs (a male and a female) because he intends that they reproduce and thereby preserve their respective species. This intention catapults people’s thoughts into the adult world. They infer that adults are meant because babies cannot reproduce – yet. They have created a box in their minds that leads to a disbelief in the story because pairs of all species on earth can neither fit in the ark nor be cared for by four men and four women. In the case of our discussion on that Sunday morning, the box in our minds was smashed by four, softly spoken words, “Maybe they were babies.”

Thank you Jenny.

© 2016 John Holbrook Jr.

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[1] The civilization was undoubtedly singular, for it occupied a single land mass, and its people spoke a single language.

[2] I use the term Academy to refer to the scientists and scholars who rely on the consensus of their peers rather than the written Word of God.

[3] All the women were in the kitchen preparing a sumptuous meal.

[4] The story runs from Genesis 6:13 to 8:19. I can’t remember the exact portion that was read that morning.

[5] See Psalm 8:2 and Matthew 21:16.

[6] One of my favorite examples of a puzzling situation, which tripped up most adults in the 20^th century, is the following story: While driving in the family car, a man and his son are in a terrible accident. Both are severely injured, rushed to the nearest hospital, and put in separate operating rooms. The doctor who is assigned to work on the son enters the operating room, looks at the boy with horror, and cries out, “I can’t operate on him. He is my son!” (Many hospitals will not permit its medical personnel to operate on members of their own families.) Then who is this doctor?  This question stumped most people in that era, some of whom devised intricate attempts to identify this “man” who is not the man lying on the table in the operating room next door. The only trouble is – this doctor is not a man. This doctor is the boy’s mother. Why couldn’t most people see this immediately?  Because, when they heard the word “doctor,” they saw in their minds’ eyes first someone in a surgical gown (inference #1) and second a man in a surgical gown (inference #2). Then, since the doctor exclaimed, “He is my son!,” they inferred that the doctor is the boy’s father (inference #3). Thus they believed that they were dealing with two fathers (an impossibility excepting to homosexuals, who are now siring children with surrogate mothers and adopting other people’s children, about which I will not comment), which threw them into confusion. That they had been culturally conditioned to make inference #2 does not alter the nature of what was going on here. They were seeking to understand and evaluate reality on the basis of erroneous inferences, to which they clung despite the impossibility of inference #3. Alas, we humans do this all the time.

by John Holbrook Jr.
A Biblical View, Blog #009 posted September 12, 2016, edited March 9, 2021.

Most readers of the Bible and many people who have never read the Bible believe that they know where Noah’s ark is supposed to hand landed after the flood – Mount Ararat in Turkey. The problem here is that they have missed two important clues in the Biblical text and thus misplaced the ark’s landfall. The point is important because the position of the landfall governed the nature of the post-flood migrations via which mankind dispersed across the globe.

Voyage of the Ark (2321-2320 BC)

The Flood started when Noah was 600 years old, on the 17^th day of the 2^nd month of the year.

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 (KJV Genesis 7:11).

The Flood ended when Noah was 601 years old, on the 27^th day of the 2^nd month of the year – that is, just 1 year and 10 days after it began (or 360 + 10 = 370 days later).

According to my chronology, Noah was 600 years old in 1656 AM = 2321 BC, and thus the voyage of the Ark lasted just over a year, from 2321 BC to 2320 BC.

The Ark’s Landfall (2320 BC)

Genesis 8:4 states, “And the ark rested in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, upon the mountains of Ararat.” Genesis 11:2 states, “And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found the plain in the land of Shinar, and they dwelt there.” There are two problems here.

First, the ark’s landfall was east of the Land of Shinar. Shinar is another name for Mesopotamia, which includes the lands of Assyria, Babylonia, and Sumer. Yet the Mount Ararat that we know today is in eastern Turkey, at the conjunction of the Turkish, Armenian, and Iranian borders. It is therefore west of Shinar. To travel from Mount Ararat to Shinar is to travel eastward, not westward as Genesis 11:2 maintains.

Second, the text does not say that the ark rested upon the mountain (singular) of Ararat, but rather upon the mountains (plural) of Ararat. Ararat must have been, not a singular peak, but a mountainous region.

Thus, the ark must have landed in a mountainous region east of Shinar.

Samuel Shuckford points out that a number of scholars have sought to identify this region in which the Ark landed.[1] For instance, Portius Cato placed it “in the same latitude with Bactria (now eastern Afghanistan), between the Caspian Sea and Imaus (now the Tian Shan Mountains on the western border of Sinkiang, the westernmost province of China), north of Mount Paraponisus.”[2] Shuckford himself placed it “on the hills beyond Bactria, north of India,”[3] between the headwaters of the Oxus River (now Amu-Darya) to the northwest and the Indus River to the southeast.

These “hills beyond Bactria,” would be the mountains at the northern end of the Hindu Kush. From there, Noah’s descendants would have traveled westward to Shinar (Mesopotamia), as Genesis 11:2 maintains. In my opinion, the three likeliest candidates for the mountain on which the Ark landed are Kungur (25,825 ft.) and Mustagh-Ata (24,400 ft.) to the east (just over the border with China), and Pik Komminizma (24,590ft.) to the north, but there are also two lesser possibilities: Khan Tengri (22,949 ft.) further to the north and K2 (28,250 ft.) to the southeast, although neither can be regarded as between the Oxus and Indus rivers.

Initial Settlement (c. 2320-2295 BC)

Now I speculate: After being submerged for over a year and then being scoured by runoff from high-ground to low-ground, the land must have been a sea of mud, and the Ark’s inhabitants must have lived initially in the Ark and local caves. With the return of grass, shrubs, and trees to the land and the re-population of the local territory with animals and birds, they probably left the Ark and caves and created a settlement in the vicinity of the Ark’s landfall consisting of buildings, barns, water reservoirs, gardens, grain fields, etc. It probably took about 25 years (2320-2295 BC) to construct. There Noah, who was roughly 625 years old and therefore not fit for the rigors of traveling through virgin territory, probably remained for the rest of his life. His sons, who were roughly 125 years old, may have done so as well, although I believe that Seth probably migrated as far as Mesopotamia. Staying in the Initial Settlement would not have been an option for most of Noah’s grandchildren, some of whom would have been in their early twenties by 2295 BC. They would have been restless and ready to explore the unknown lands that lay over the horizon. Thus, although Noah remained mankind’s titular leader until his death in 1971 BC, he and his sons must have increasingly taken on the aura of legend, and leadership in practice must have passed to the leaders of the migrating groups.

Initial Migrations (c. 2295-2220 BC)

The initial, post-flood migrations occurred over the next 75 years (2295-2220 BC).

Although I am deeply indebted to Henry Morris[4] for his discussion of the Table of the Nations, I differ with him on the geographic origin of the initial, post-flood migrations. As I have just explained, I believe these migrations originated in eastern Tadzikistan, not eastern Turkey. Thus the paths that Morris and I trace for these migrations differ. The destinations, however, remain the same.

I speculate that, once the initial settlement was built and fully functioning circa 2295 BC, Noah’s grandchildren began migrating to the four points of the compass:

Northward into the great Siberian Plain between the Enisej River to the east and the Ural Mountains to the west, and from there fanning out in all directions.

Eastward into Sinkiang (northwest China), and from there to the Pacific coast from Siberia and the Koreas in the north to Indochina in the south.

Southward into the Indus Valley (Pakistan and India), from the Punjab in the north to Mohenjo-Daro in the south, and from thence across India to Bengal in the east and Tamil Nadu in the south.

Westward through Afghanistan and Iran into Iraq (ancient Mesopotamia), and from there north into Georgia, south through Palestine and into Egypt, and west across Asia Minor to the Balkans.

© 2016 John Holbrook Jr.

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[1] Samuel Shuckford, The Sacred and Profane History of the World Connected, Volume 1, 5^th edition (1819), Tolle Lege Press, Whitehall WV, 2009, pages 87-92.

[2] Shuckford, Volume 1, page 89. The Paropamisus Mountains extend from the southwestern end of the Hindu Kush across northern Afghanistan to the border of Iran in the west, but modern maps do not show a Mount Paraponisus. It may have one of the peaks at the northeastern end of the Hindu Kush. Only the area north of there (eastern Tadzikistan) lies north of India, between the Oxus River and the Indus Rivers.

[3] Shuckford, Volume 1, page 92.

[4] Morris, Henry, The Genesis Record (1976), Baker Book House, Grand Rapids MI, 1980.