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CR18Day_03 @ nkjv@Genesis:3 @ RandyP comments: Hid from the presence? There is nowhere possible to hide from our omnipresent/omniscient Maker. Perhaps a better way of thinking this is that they kept themselves from reflecting HIS proper image knowing now by their guilt that they had done exactly what God had forbidden. Note that even with this new knowledge Adam/Eve did not seek to repent nor was it offered to them. The just divine sentence had to be carried out. Yet within that mortal imprisonment thus decreed thereto were immediate and future mercies indicated from God.

CR18Day_05 @ nkjv@Genesis:10 @ RandyP comments: This is now the second re-population of Genesis, first being the more controversial from Adam and Eve. Critics often ask "where did Cain and Seth get their wives"? The answer most likely is that they were sisters, but it doesn't have to stop there. Genesis was written not as an overall history as much as it was of all redemptive history (the details that would be important to our understanding of God's redemption). Seth and Cain's brothers and sisters are unnamed and unnumbered. Over the course of nine hundred plus years Eve surely bore Adam many. Those children married and had children. Those children bore many children. It could be that Cain and Seth married nieces or even grand nieces. While Cain was the first child, neither Able nor Seth necessarily have to be second and third if we are to look at the narrative as a redemptive history. In this passage we are back down to eight persons starting all over again. In both passages we can see how quickly the multiplication of being fruitful adds up.

CR18Day_23 @ nkjv@Genesis:41 @ RandyP comments: "..the thing is established by God, and God will shortly bring it to pass". We can remember back to Abraham where he was told by the LORD that his descendents will be brought into Egypt and that they would find favor, but the heart of the Egyptians would turn and they would be placed in bondage for many years. This storyline is part of that greater storyline and we are basically only into the first act. These men Joseph and Pharaoh for as much of a role as they play are only playing a part in a story much bigger than either of them written long before either were born. As much as we like to give preference in our theories to an individual's abilities and choices, very little in this chapter can be proved as being anything remotely concerned with that. God gives a dream to one man, HE gives the interpretation to another; HE gives it in such a way that the one man gives to the other (a complete stranger/a prisoner/a Hebrew) governorship over his vast empire. God gives seven years of plenty to fill the storehouses, gives seven years of severe famine, drives Joseph's brothers without their knowing to Joseph's feet to plead for wheat to survive the widespread famine. Yes, there is the individual's ability and choice involved to an extent but, it has only a secondary importance to God's choice and ability and some promises made three generations ago. And God is not yet finished. The story of Abraham's descendents in Egypt is only a part of an even larger story of the descendents being given the land of Canaan for their own, a story that will lead them all the way to a promised Messiah (going back to Adam and Eve) and the eternal salvation of their very souls.

CR18Day_23 @ nkjv@Mark:16 @ RandyP comments: Let us be clear as to why we believe in the death/resurrection/ascension of Jesus Christ the Son of God. It is not just because of these few testimonies from people that had seen Him in the flesh resurrected at the time (central and key as this evidence is). No we believe because of all that God has established prior to these testimonies even before Jesus Himself was born incarnate. We believe because of what was promised Adam and Eve of a seed to crush Satan, we believe because of what was promised Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, we believe because of what was promised to Moses and David and several verifiable prophets speaking to all Israel. We further believe because of the way God conducted HIMSELF even in man's utter disobedience, we believe because of the grace and mercy and longsuffering HE has shown successively to each generation, what HE has brought HIS people through, how HE has gathered HIS people, how lovingly HE has at times corrected them, how HE has stayed true to HIS word and not forsaken us even when we have not fully reciprocated. Much more do we believe because of the manner in which Jesus was born, the attention and resistance and tension from men His presence received even early on as an infant, later because of His teachings, because of His works (their size and scope and form). We believe because of the way He became despised and rejected for little or no tangible reason, sought after to kill, illegally tried and sentenced, brought before the Roman magistrate to execute because the Jews could not themselves do it. We believe because of the way people responded after His death, during the reports of His resurrection, the wild fire that immediately started throughout the region because of His gospel. We believe because of the effect this essential truth has proven to be in the everyday lives of everyday people throughout the ages ever since. In other words we believe because of all that God has established before and after to make this known, to confirm it as happening, to bless and favor those that this gospel has touched. In essence we have collected the best individual books relating to this evidence and establishment into one larger book of books. Each has it's own place in the chain of evidence. This Bible is why we believe what we do about that Jesus of Nazareth, His death/resurrection/ascension, that is why we believe even further in the revelation of His soon second coming and the day of final judgment. It is because of all that God has done throughout man's time on earth that brings us to these very same conclusions. Many will argue the resurrection and ascension singularly as if that were all it took to dispel all this other. I would say rather that it is all this other that proves the case for this one tremendously joyous thing: Christ indeed has Risen!

CR18Day_05 @ nkjv@Genesis:11 @ RandyP comments: The sin observed in Babel runs throughout children of men (son's of Adam). Essentially it is this 1. The make a name for himself 2. To make himself secure by his own doing both in direct rebellion to God. The command of God is to "go" fill the entire earth. With it comes frontier type individualism, non-centralized control, reliance upon God. With rebellion comes gathering into cluster, centralized power and control, socialization, many men working towards one cause the object of which is whatsoever the few in control task them to do. That whatsoever is the thing that most concerns God for the heart and intents of man toward God are only rebellion. Nimrod intends to have a tower built that reaches to the heaven. The tower is a symbol of man made religion for the masses to look up to, for the idols way up and authorities in the middle to look down from. It is such a minute and pitiful sight sight from heaven that the omnipresent God mockingly has to come way down from heaven even to see it. By confusing the one current language into many, God effectively partitions mankind against each other and thus partitions man from there being one central world government drunken on the blood of the godly as we the see in the end with the Whore of Babylon after God loosens HIS current restraint.

CR18Day_05 @ nkjv@Genesis:11 @ RandyP comments: Not only is this the dividing point of all the world languages, it should also be considered a major dividing point in the world's religions. From here each of the peoples are going to take their own freedoms and liberties with the base religions either man made demonic influenced faiths or God revealed and purposed faith or an intermingling. Some will choose to keep certain elements of the original like the Adam/Eve and flood accounts, some will carry on through to Abraham before splitting, some will rebel from this point and suppress the Genesis revelation altogether. That God has now set this in motion by confusing the languages must mean that there is enough of the message instilled in them that there is ample means for them to come to Christ at some point else be judged for not changing course back to Him.