Ellie, I had previously read the article on keeping the tithe, so that I am forewarned against being coerced into such practices. The church building which my lady friend attends includes an optional donation time in their Sunday service, which makes me uncomfortable, but they also do proper accounting of all monies received, and announce everything to the members, so that, although I am wary of them, I don’t get the impression anything underhanded is going on there. Moving on, the article on Christians keeping the Sabbath was extremely helpful in this case. In particular the scripture of Colossians 2:14:
Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross;
Galatians 5:13,14:
For, brethren, ye have been called unto liberty; only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another. For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this; Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
and Romans 13:9
For this, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Thou shalt not covet; and if there be any other commandment, it is briefly comprehended in this saying, namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
Though my initial post was unfortunately cryptic, you and Rowan understood my concerns very well. These scriptures make it clearer to me what it means that Christ has fulfilled the Law, that the past ordinances were done away with; that the new covenant is about loving God and our neighbors, and that any other commandments are stated in Romans 13:9. I can understand Exodus 34:12-16 to mean that marriage involving idolaters was explicitly forbidden, and Revelation 7:9-10 answered any remaining doubts I had regarding the race issue. Incidentally, I am interested in the dietary and farming laws, and I’d like to discuss this at some future point in time. My lady friend is indeed Japanese, and I am indeed white. She is also very devout, and we are spiritually on the same page, so to speak. So that, based on this scriptural evidence, and the result of our prayers, I have tentatively asked her to be with me, and she has accepted. Next week I’ll make her the official overture to join together in Christ until the day that one or the other of us dies. I think this solves the problems I was having, and thank you all very much for helping me out.
Rowan, I don’t mean to be rude, but I’m trying to focus on learning of the Gospel before venturing out into this kind of territory, so I don’t want to give it any more study time before I finish reading through the Bible, but I will say that serpent seed is thematically fascinating. Its appeal is in its ability to ascribe a reasoning as to why so much of the world is under Satan’s influence. Personally, I’m not thinking that there are any people with reptilian blood in their veins, and as for CI, it is more focused on the idea that the serpent is metaphorical for a fallen angel, thus producing a corrupted bloodline, which, depending on the concentration of corruption in one’s veins, results in either more or less destructive behavior in the individual. But, this is a digression that would best be discussed in another thread, at another time. I’m sorry, but I’m not ready to talk about it in any depth.
(This thread is about to go in a different direction)
I have absolutely no experience with Mormonism or 7th Day Adventism, but from what you posted about them, they don’t seem Biblically based. You guys mention Hebrew Roots cults every now and then, and they seem to be ignoring Christ and His sacrifice, which I understand better now thanks to your help. Rowan said in his reply “Being holy has nothing to do with any kind of racial purity, but rather separating from sin…”, and Chris said “if God didn't want people of different skin colours and backgrounds to be able to breed with one another, he would have made it impossible by natural means”, and I agree with these ideas. But then you said that there really are no races as such, and then Chris echoed the sentiment with “what we call races is merely the result of the human body adapting to it's environment over long periods of time.” -I don’t understand this- it sounds an awful lot like evolution to me. How long a period of time are we talking about? For instance, I’m not sure how long the Aborigines have been in Australia, but can you imagine that in five hundred years all the whites and Asians living in Australia will have gradually become Aborigines? Just because of the hot desert environment? Is that the deciding factor? If it is, then the natives of the hot desert environments of Central America should be black as well, but they aren’t. They’re different people. Or to say it a different way, suppose the population of a village in Congo moved to Finland and never interbred with anyone outside of the original villager population; would they eventually become white people? I seriously doubt that, although I’m open to correction if I’m wrong about this. In the most extreme example I can think of: What if half of the world’s population moved to Tunisia, and the other half moved to Sicily. It is only about 160 kilometers across the Mediterranean at that point. Are we to suppose that everyone on the African continent will become black-skinned, and that the Italian side will all become white-skinned? If God wants, then He can certainly cause whites to become blacks, but I get the impression that God doesn’t like breaking the rules He has set for us here on Earth. He has given us a very sensible Earth on which to live, setting up sensible rules for us to follow, and provided us with a very sensible Book of teachings. So that, the easy way to explain the different peoples is that God made all the races, as they are now, from the very beginning, and put them in varying places around the world. If we start talking about adaptations, and drastic morphological changes taking place over time, isn’t this more or less the same argument that evolutionists put forth? Do Indian tigers become Siberian tigers simply by virtue of differing environmental factors?
Hmm, this might end up belonging in a different thread as well, but I’d like to take this opportunity to opine on and ask for discussion on the Flood, since it was brought up and it’s related to the topic. There are many points that remain unresolved in my mind. I will try to outline my argument. As we know, God makes kind after kind, each reproducing according to innate characteristics which He has decided upon.
Genesis 1:24- And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.
This is common sense for us, as we know that evolution is a farce. Thus, we can say that cats make cats only, dogs make dogs only, and so on. Tigers don’t become cats, and dinosaurs don’t become birds. How then do we account for Whites, Indians, Chinese, Japanese, American Indians, Amazon jungle Indians, Australian Aborigines, Malaysians, Mongolians, Samoans, and the very distinct types of Africans all living today, unless all these groups were represented in pairs on the Ark? Unless there are Chinese giving birth to Congolese, then it is dumbfounding to think that all peoples came from 8 individuals, but this same argument can and should be taken back to the Garden of Eden. Please hear me out.
Genesis 1:26-28 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. 27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. 28 And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.
Man is created here in Genesis 1, on the 6th day. And then this happens on the 8th day, after God has rested:
Genesis 2:7 And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.8 And the LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed.
I’m thinking this means that there were two separate creation events for mankind. The first taking place on the sixth day, consisting of men and women. The second took place on the 8th day, consisting of Adam and Eve. If this reading is correct, then all the differing peoples of mankind can be accounted for, from the very beginning.
This reasoning helps us with the Flood as well, as there is a further logistical problem we need to solve. Noah and his family would have had to travel over the entire planet in the time before the flood was to come to get all the locally endemic species: To south Australia to pick up kangaroos and penguins. To South Africa to pick up yet different penguins. To the far north for polar bears, to Borneo for orangutans, to the Amazon for lemurs and tree frogs, to the Chilean heights for condors, to Galapagos for tortoises, etc. Moreover, after the waters resided, they would have had to travel back to each of these destinations to drop off all the animals again.
Then there is the added issue of the flora. Noah would have had to travel to the Americas to gather tomatoes and potatoes and corn, Africa to gather aloe vera and watermelons, Thailand to get rosewood trees, and so on, otherwise they wouldn’t exist today. Since the flood covered the land for 10 months, therefore all plant life on earth would have died. All of it. Even the microbiota in the soil. With water-logged, rotted and dead seeds, regeneration would have been impossible, and the olive leaf which the bird found after 10 months of submersion could not have existed, as it would have rotted away by that time.
Genesis 7:21-23
And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, and every man: All in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land, died. And every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both man, and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven; and they were destroyed from the earth: and Noah only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark. And the waters prevailed upon the earth an hundred and fifty days.
I way I read this passage there is no mention of aquatic life being destroyed, although since fish and whales are mentioned earlier in Genesis, and since the flood was of fresh water, the concentration of saline in the ocean would have been disrupted to the point of suffocation of all salt-water fish, sharks, crustaceans, jellies, etc. So that Noah would have had to dive to the depths of all the oceans to gather every sea creature onto the Ark in some kind of salt water aquarium in order to save them. Plus, since the whole earth must have been covered under six miles- the height of Everest, assuming that Everest existed back then:
Genesis 7:19 And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth; and all the high hills, that were under the whole heaven, were covered.
that would mean that the level of the abyss would have risen dramatically, effectively destroying nearly all aquatic plants through lack of sunlight, as well as the aforementioned saline imbalance. The fresh water fish likewise would have been displaced with the rising waters, disrupted by the influx of salty seawater, and with no guarantee that they would be returned to their original locations when the waters receded, there would have been massive extinctions of all fresh water animal life, as well as the entirety of fresh water plant life.
In summary, Noah would have had to go to every country on earth to gather the indigenous flora and fauna and microbiota in all the soils, within the time allotted him by God, all whilst being preoccupied building a gigantic boat, and then to go back to each specific location afterward to return them all, since many can only live in their respective habitats, but as far as I know there is no record of kangaroo migration back from the Mediterranean to Australia, and I don’t know of any record of Noah or his family traveling to return all these lifeforms to their original locales. We could entertain the idea that all the continents were conjoined at the time, and so it would have been easier to traverse all that distance. But even then, the distance is too considerable, the mountains too high, the sea too deep for that to be plausible. And there are still all the different humans to consider. God makes kind after kind. So that, Chinese people can’t give birth to blacks, Indians to whites, and so on. I’ll pose the question again: If we believe that whites can eventually become blacks, based on changes in climatic conditions, then aren’t we basically believing in the false religion of evolutionism?
If the above conjecture is correct, I can think of only two things that could have happened. One option is that the flood was worldwide, but Noah failed to save everything, after which God re-created everything which Noah missed. In this case of a single, world-wide flood, there must be a second Genesis event to re-create all flora, fauna, and humanity, the whole-world over. But this event is not recorded in Scripture, even though it would have been incredibly important to do so.
The other option is that the flood was localized, and he did save everything locally. This is the more logical to me, since there is no mention of aquatic life being destroyed, and more importantly, since the dove finds the olive leaf.
….
……Wow, this became a lot longer than I thought it would. While writing it out, I realized that the idea that not everyone is descended from the Ark might be a point of contention, but this is just my honest interpretation of the Scripture. Thank you for reading, and please let’s discuss it, and correct me on any mistakes I may have made.
