9 - OPENING REVELATION

ODDS AND ENDS

About 1400 BC, Moses was instructed by God on tekhelet (pronounced t-chell-et), A Hebrew word for a color of blue that the LORD wished to be used in the veil covering the Holy of Holies, Temple clothes for the priests, and the Jewish prayer shawl, the tallit. Apparently, knowledge of the source of the dye was lost after the Roman destruction of the Jewish Temple in 70 AD. Blue and purple dyes, produced from sea snails, gave birth to important industries along the Mediterranean coast for centuries. These colors primarily adorned the garments of the nobility and priests. The Islamic invasions of the Holy Land in the seventh century destroyed these industries. The Talmud stated the color tekhelet was from a sea snail from the beaches of Israel also, but the actual source was lost long ago.

A professor specializing in ancient dyes has recently identified the source as Murex trunculus, a spiny shellfish once thought extinct. The Talmud (Menahot 44a) further mentions the snails visit the beaches of Israel once every seventy years. Seventy is a Biblical number like seven, twelve, and forty. There were seventy nations noted after the Flood. Likely, this is why the seven day Feast of Tabernacles (also known as Succoth or Booths) in Numbers 29:12-35 begins with the sacrifice of 13 bulls. Each day thereafter the number of bulls sacrificed is reduced by one to seven on the seventh day of the feast for a total of seventy bulls sacrificed during the feast. I believe it is for the seventy nations after the Flood. Tabernacles is a peculiar feast because, there is an additional or eighth day, the day after the feast ends. The first day of Tabernacles and the eighth day, the day after the feast ends, are to be treated as High Shabots or Sabbaths, regardless of the day of the week they fall on. Per Zechariah 14:16, all the nations which came against Israel in the End Times will come to Jerusalem yearly on this feast during Christ’s millennium. I suspect the seventy bulls represent the Gentile nations formed after the Flood, and the single sacrifice of a bull on the eighth day represents Israel. There was also the seventy weeks prophecy regarding the Messiah’s first coming in Daniel 9:24. Per Psalm 90:10, the average life of a man is seventy years. The Sanhedrin consisted of seventy members, plus the High Priest. Seventy seems to represent completeness.

The Jerusalem Post has reported the tekhelet-producing snails are appearing by the thousands along the Mediterranean coast. Some Orthodox Jews believe this heralds the approaching Messianic Age.

One of the more interesting prophetic beliefs regards the Jubilee, or the fiftieth year on the Hebrew time scale. After seven biblical weeks of seven years each came the Jubilee year. After the initial conquest of Canaan, circa 1400 BC, the land was doled out to the individual tribes and thereafter to individual citizens. The land was regarded as being owned by God, and the citizens were tenants of God. One could never sell God’s land, but one could rent it out till the next Jubilee. If one rented out his portion of God’s land the year after the Jubilee, he could rent it out a maximum of forty-two harvests. Remember crops could not be planted or harvested for storage in the seventh year of a Biblical week, and there were seven Biblical weeks before the Jubilee. If one rented out God’s land, it had to return to the family in the Jubilee year. It could not be sold permanently.

Some Jews believe 1917 was a Jubilee year, and the land returned to the Jews. Of course, I believe that the Anglo-Saxons are the lost tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh who got the extraordinary blessings of God which resulted in the British Empire and America that arose at the end of the sixth millennium after Creation, i.e. the last 250 years during which the Anglo-Saxons were dominant, a model equivalent to the creation of man at the end of the sixth day (Remember Jewish days begin at sunset). Hence, the land returned to Israel (Great Britain) and the Jews in 1917. In 1967, fifty years later, Jerusalem was recaptured from the Jordanians, along with the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and the Golan Heights. Thus, more land returned to the Jews. Some have said this too was in the year of Jubilee. They look forward with great interest to 2017, supposedly the next Jubilee, waiting to see if even more land will return to Israel.

However, I do have some problems with this view. According to Leviticus 25:9, the Trumpet of the Jubilee was blown on the tenth day of the seventh Jewish month, Tishri, on Yom Kippur in the fall. The Jewish civil year begins on Tishri 1, but the religious year, per Exodus 12:2, begins on 1 Nisan with Passover on 14 Nisan, i.e. the first month became the seventh month and the seventh month became the first month. Thus, God changed the Hebrew calendar at the time of the Exodus from Egypt. The British took Jerusalem around the time of the first day of Hanukkah in December of 2017. If the 1917 Jubilee began on Yom Kippur, or in the fall, it seems to me the 1967 Jubilee would begin in the fall also, but the Six-Day War began around the fifth of June in 1967, i.e. the 49th year, a few months before the Jubilee year began.

There is potentially another problem. Around 701 BC, Hezekiah’s Jerusalem was besieged by the Assyrians. The Jews had little or no hope for victory unless God intervened. Hezekiah prayed to Him for relief. Thereafter, in one night, one angel slew 185,000 Assyrians causing the Assyrian king to return home. After the Assyrian defeat, God said in 2 Kings 19:29 ‘This shall be a sign to you: You shall eat this year such as grows of itself, and in the second year what springs from the same; also in the third year sow and reap, plant vineyards and eat the fruit of them.’

The above description could also refer to the end of a Biblical week with its Sabbath year followed by the Jubilee with sowing and reaping beginning again the third year. After a siege, it might be too late to plant that year, but certainly with supplies low, you would want to plant the second year, unless it was a Jubilee year. Then God would look after you. As already noted, this Jubilee year would be about 700 BC which would not correspond well to 1917 or every fifty years.

I had earlier noted that the reason Christ would reign for a millennium, is my belief that the LORD is fulfilling a Biblical week with each millennium representing a day in that week and Christ’s millennium being the Sabbath. I had further noted that though I believe the Flood occurred around 1656 years after Creation, I believed the three 2,000 year or forty Jubilee periods sequentially represented Creation, Israel, and the church. Each was begun with a miracle birth or creation and a sacrifice. The first 2,000 years began with the creation of Adam, and Eve from his side; the second with Isaac’s miracle birth (Sarah was no longer menstruating at 90 per Hebrews 11:11), though this was likely about a century after the period began with Abram’s birth. The third miracle birth was that of Christ from the seed of woman per Genesis 3:15 by the Holy Spirit (Matthew 1:18, Luke 1:35). The first sacrifice was that of animals to provide Adam and Eve with clothing, i.e. their skins, the first death(s) in that world. Adam was likely told that without the shedding of blood there would be no remission of sins per Hebrews 9:22. This is why Cain’s sacrifice of the fruit of the ground was unacceptable to the LORD (Genesis 4:3,5), Who accepted Abel’s offering from his flocks, with fire coming down from heaven to consume it per Jasher 1:15. The second sacrifice was the ram that spared Isaac, and the third was Christ’s sacrifice on the cross.

According to the Book of Jasher (8:2), Abram’s birth was heralded by a star that devoured four stars in the heavens to begin the second period of 40 Jubilees or 2000 years. Remember that Christ’s birth also was heralded by the Star of Bethlehem to begin the third period. Finally, the stars were created on the fourth day of Creation, early in the first 2,000 year Creation period. A star, or a comet, or stars began each forty Jubilee period.

One of the more interesting questions from the Bible arises with Noah, after the Flood, per Genesis 9:20: And Noah began to be a farmer, and he planted a vineyard. 21 Then he drank of the wine and was drunk, and became uncovered in his tent. 22 And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brothers outside. 23 But Shem and Japheth took a garment, laid it on both their shoulders, and went backward and covered the nakedness of their father. Their faces were turned away, and they did not see their father’s nakedness. 24 So Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son had done to him. 25 Then he said: “Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants he shall be to his brethren.” 26 And he said: “Blessed be the LORD, the God of Shem, and may Canaan be his servant. 27 May God enlarge Japheth, and may he dwell in the tents of Shem; and may Canaan be his servant. “

From the text it appears Noah’s son Ham sees his drunk father naked and tells his two brothers, who cover their father without viewing his nakedness. Noah awakens, finds out what Ham had done to him and curses Ham’s son. The words had done (underlined above) seem to indicate Ham did something worse than just view Noah naked. In the same light, if Noah wished to curse someone, it seems it would be Ham rather than Ham’s son, Canaan. Now, if Ham were cursed, the curse would likely include all his descendants, which would include Canaan, but the curse is specific to Canaan, Ham’s son. How can this be put together?

Perhaps from Leviticus 18:8 The nakedness of your father’s wife you shall not uncover; it is your father’s nakedness.

Perhaps, after the Flood, Noah’s wife died, and he took another wife, or perhaps, a second wife. She got drunk with her husband and was raped by her stepson, Ham. Canaan was the illegitimate son of that union. After all, per Genesis 35:22, Jacob’s son Reuben lay with his father’s concubine Bilhah.

For this, Reuben lost his birthright.

To me, this seems to best fit the text.

Where did Cain get his wife? This was question that Clarence Darrow asked William Jennings Bryan at the Scopes’ Monkey Trial in Dayton, Tennessee, in 1925. The 1960 movie Inherit the Wind, supposedly based on the Scopes trial, brought this question mainstream. Atheists and agnostics ask it of Christians with a gleam in their eye, knowing Christians have no answer. After all, you read about Adam and Eve, and then Cain and Abel. Cain slays Abel in Genesis 4:8. In Genesis 4:18 Cain knew his wife and she conceived and bore Enoch.

But where did his wife come from? She suddenly appears in the text. Supposedly, there is no good answer to this. Actually, it is answered very simply. In Genesis 5:4 After he (Adam) begot Seth, the days of Adam were 800 years; and he had sons and daughters.

Cain married his sister. After all Adam and Eve were genetically much closer, except for the Y chromosome in Adam and another X chromosome in Eve. Per Josephus in the first century AD, Adam had 33 sons and 23 daughters. Per the uninspired ancient history Book of Jasher, which recounts Genesis in verse 1:11: And the LORD God drove them (Adam and Eve) that day from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from which they were taken, and they went and dwelt at the east of the garden of Eden; and Adam knew his wife Eve and she bore two sons and three daughters. (The two sons were Cain and Abel.)

Finally we have the uninspired Book of Jubilees, sections of which were found in the Dead Sea Scrolls, dating to the first century AD, chapter 4:1: And in the third week in the second jubilee (50 year period) she (Eve) gave birth to Cain, and in the fourth she gave birth to Abel, and in the fifth she gave birth to her daughter, Awan.

4:9: And Cain took Awan his sister to be his wife and she bare him Enoch at the close of the fourth jubilee.

William Jennings Bryan had no answer for Clarence Darrow, but his question can easily be answered with a little knowledge. Also, most people consider the movie Inherit the Wind the true history of the Scopes Monkey Trial. Nothing could be further from the truth. The play is revisionist history at its best, a liberal’s delight, but sadly lacking in truth.

I like to watch the History Channel’s Ancient Aliens on my Friday night cable. The spokesmen for the show believe certain structures such as pyramids, which have been found in Egypt and Mexico, but also China and Southeast Asia and other places on earth, were built by these extraterrestrials whose scientific knowledge goes far beyond ours. These spokesmen also believe the ancient aliens may soon return. Does this correspond with the prophecies of the Bible? Curiously, it does.

Matthew 24:37 (Christ speaking) “But as the days of Noah were, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be.”

So what were the days of Noah like? ? Genesis 6:1 Now it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born to them, 2 that the sons of God saw the daughters of men, that they were beautiful; and they took wives for themselves of all whom they chose… 4 There were giants on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown.

The Jewish rabbis and Christian theologians agreed that the sons of God referred to a direct creation of God up until about 400 AD when St. Augustine changed the thinking on this. Adam was the only human who qualified as a direct creation of God per Luke 3:38. All other human males are sons of Adam. Angels are all direct creations of God. Fallen angels had intercourse with earthly females. This union produced the Nephilim who were the sons of the fallen angels. In other words, one of Satan’s schemes was to adulterate the human DNA by admixing it with angel DNA. These were the giants (the descendants of Anak came from the giants) who made the twelve spies who went into Canaan feel that “we were like grasshoppers in our own sight, and so we were in their sight.” Numbers 13:33

Goliath, David’s nemesis of 1 Samuel 17, was likely a Nephilim along with his four brothers from the end of 2 Samuel 21.

According to Scripture these giants must reappear as in the days of Noah, hopefully after the rapture of the church. Remember in Daniel 2:43 when getting down to the ten toes or final ten nations, “As you saw iron mixed with ceramic clay, they will mingle with the seed of men; but they will not adhere to one another, just as iron does not mix with clay.”

In other words, something other than the seed of men must be the they noted above. Likely it refers to the fallen angels who are removed from heaven in Revelation 12:7-8. They will come to the earth with their offspring, the Nephilim, proclaiming they are extraterrestrials who came to earth vast ages ago, thus beginning the evolutionary process. They are here to help us reach our evolutionary potential.

It seems likely that men were not only manipulating human DNA, but also animal DNA. From the uninspired book of Jasher 4:18 “…and the sons of men in those days took from the cattle of the earth, the beasts of the field and the fowls of the air, and taught the mixture of animals of one species with the other, in order therewith to provoke the Lord; and God saw the whole earth and it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted its ways upon earth, all men and all animals.”

In Jasher 36:31-33, there is a reference to an animal whose lower portion was like a man and whose upper portion was like a bear. It had a tail reaching down to the earth. This was during the days of Jacob. In Jasher 61:15, Esau’s grandson, Zepho, slew a large animal that resembled a man from the middle upward and an animal from the middle downward. I recall the stories in Greek mythology of the minotaur, centaurs, and Pan with the goat’s hind quarters and horns. I also remember from pictures on the walls of structures in Egypt human bodies with the heads of falcons and other animals. Perhaps that really occurred, and it may occur again when Satan comes per 2 Thessalonians 2:9 “with all power, signs, and lying wonders.” It appears mankind was involved with this, and I recall newspaper and magazine articles about putting human genes in animals. That too would fit with the End Times and the days of Noah. Man is manipulating human and animal DNA now.

Finally, there is a potentially interesting point regarding pyramids being the concept and construct of extraterrestrials. In Revelation 21:10 the prophet John sees the holy Jerusalem descending out of heaven. Per Revelation 21:16 The city is laid out as a square; its length is as great as its breadth. And he measured the city with the reed; twelve thousand furlongs (about 1,380 miles). Its length, breadth, and height are equal.

Most of the commentaries I have read refer to this as a cube, but, occasionally, one notes it could be a pyramid. I suspect it is. Satan is not very original, but a mimic of the Almighty. Did he take the concept of a pyramid from God and run with it? Time will tell.

-Gentry