“Genesis: A Deeper Look, Part 2"

“Genesis: A Deeper Look, Part 2:” by Romans

At our last Discussion, we reviewed the Book of Genesis. We focused in on the Account of the Flood as it is found in Genesis, and contrasted it with the Epic of Gilgamesh. In that Flood account, as you may recall, the gods decided, on a whim, to wipe out humanity because it was too noisy, interrupting the gods' rest. I also talked about the building of the Tower of Babel, and how God confused the common language so that mankind would spread out and replenish the earth, as God had intended.

But tonight I would like to share something with all of you that I saw on the 700 Club at least 20 years ago. The amazing thing is that I never heard, again, ever referred to by anyone at any time. And that is not because it is controversial or unfounded. It is a startling confirmation of the events that took place in the Book of Genesis, but from a completely unexpected source. That source is the ancient Chinese language. The Chinese language has been a written language for thousands of years. Rather than use letters to form words, they use symbols called pictographs.


These pictographs are used singly to convey ideas, or they can be combined to make compound new words to describe more detailed ideas. For example, and this is just an example not actual Chinese, the word “duck” might be a combination of the pictographs for bird and water. But here is why I bring this up: ancient Chinese pictographs reveal a surprising reference to themes and occurrences familiar to us in the Book of Genesis, that reveals an unexpected  . The Chinese culture would not have been exposed to these these details thousands of miles from where they took place, and thousands of years before Christ sent out missionaries to preach His Word. These pictographs cannot be written off as mere coincidence.

Now let me share with you some of the details of these amazing pictographs.

Think of this: The ancient Chinese pictograph for the word safety was a layered combination of three seemingly unrelated pictographs. They started out pictograph for the word ship. The second symbol they added was the symbol for the word “people.” And that follows. Unless the ship is mysteriously abandoned and floating in the Bermuda Triangle, you expect to see people on a ship when it is out at see. But think of this: How many ships have been built with safety in mind. They are built to be safe on the water, but not to be safe from the water. Ships are built, exclusively,  to transport people and cargo from points A to B, when water divides those two points. But, remember, I said the ancient Chinese symbol for safety had a third added pictograph. And it's that third symbol that makes this so interesting. It is the symbol for the number 8. You may consider one person traveling safely on the water in that the ship is seaworthy. Maybe two people. But 8 people on a ship? And this pictograph is not the symbol for seaworthiness. The ancient Chinese pictograph for the word “safety” are the combined symbols which would read in sentence form: “8 people on a ship.” How many people were on the Ark? There was Noah and his wife. That's two. Noah's three sons. That's five. And Noah's son's three wives. That's  eight! Eight people on a ship, picturing the ultimate expression of safety... the safety of the Ark, while the entire population of the earth drowned all around them.

As I said last week, The Babylonian “Epic of Gilgamesh” also described a worldwide Flood. Was it just a fictitious Babylonian Myth on which the Genesis Account was based? Some 4,000 years after the Flood is supposed to have taken place, Jesus referred to it as an historical event: Notice His words beginning in  Matthew 24:38: “For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, And knew not until the flood came, and took them all away;”

Noah entered into the Ark. Safety. Eight people on a ship while the entire rest of the population of the earth “knew not until the Flood came, and took them all away.” Jesus was alive when that event took place. He existed as a not only a member of the Godhead, but as THE member Who was the God of the Old Testament!  When we read in 6:6: “And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart,” we are reading the reaction and emotions of the very One Who became Jesus Christ to die for our sins. Jesus knew that the Genesis Account of the Flood was not based on the pre-existing myths of any pagan culture. He knew that the Flood was a genuine historical event because He was the One in His pre-human God in Heaven state of existence Who sent it to wipe out mankind!

And the children of the survivors of the Flood, whose languages were confused by God to spread them out over the face of the earth, took that knowledge of the Flood with them in all the various languages that spoke in. And that is why sociologists have never encountered any culture, no matter how remote, that did not have an awareness that there was a Flood, a worldwide Flood. And that is also why and how we can see, recorded in the ancient Chinese language when they were developing written language, the unexpected and completely incompatible layer of symbols for the word “safety,” combined into a pictograph that reads, “Eight people on a ship.”

We will come back to the Flood Account, again, shortly, but I want to continue to share with you a few other amazing ancient Chinese pictographs. How about this one? The word is “create.” The pictograph for the word create is a combination of four pictographs: First there is the symbol for clay, added to the symbol for breath, added to the symbol for walking, added to the symbol for alive. If this were a sentence, the pictograph for “create” would read “Clay man received breath, and walked alive.” The very name, “Adam,” means “red clay.”This pictograph is the very scene portrayed in 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.” Is this also just another bizarre coincidence? Is this another accidental reflection of an event described in Genesis, but portrayed in an ancient Chinese pictograph? No. The knowledge that the children of the survivors of the Flood had, went out with them. Those who spread to Asia also developed written language. They were able to put their knowledge into writing, and incorporate what they knew into pictograph characters that comprised their language. These are not coincidences.

Here's another one: The pictograph for word temptation is a combination of the pictographs for a woman, added to the pictograph for tree, and the pictograph for serpent.

The pictograph for the word, “flood” are the pictographs for “eight,” “united,” “one earth,” and  “water.” Certainly the pictographs  for “water” and “one earth” might be expected to represent a flood.
But there's that number “eight” again, this time merged with the symbol for “united.” There was   knowledge among those who migrated to Asia when language was confounded, knowledge that there was a Flood, and that only eight people survived.

Here is one last pictograph that refers back to the Tower of Babel. The Genesis account tells us in Genesis 11:3: “And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them throughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for morter. And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower,” The ancient Chinese pictograph for “tower” is a combination of the pictographs for “bricks” “clay,” “grass,” “mankind,” and “mouth.” The first three, bricks, clay and grass easily point to a tower. But mankind and mouth add the element of speech being associated with a tower. And the Tower of Babel, of course, is where the language of mankind was confounded.

These pictographs are amazing. Their existence in ancient Chinese writings, before they had any contact with the West, really makes one stop to think about the veracity of the Bible, and the stories that are conveyed there.

There are other truly amazing pictures that the Book of Genesis presents as foreshadows of Jesus Christ that, can be easily read over and missed. I would like to review some of these with you now. These are the things that I have read from various authors who took the time let the Word of God speak to their hearts and minds on a deeper level. One of these authors is one whom I regularly quote, namely Matthew Henry. But there is another I would like to quote, tonight, whose name is likely new to all of you: Ada Habershon. She wrote a book that a friend of mine from the Church I was attending in Philadelphia told me about. The book is titled, “Study of the Types.” A type is a foreshadow of Christ found in the Old Testament which A type could be portrayed by a person or an event that highlights a facet of Christ, or something to do with Messianic events, or His Ministry.

Jesus, Himself, acknowledged and endorsed their existence. Notice, for example, Jesus' own words beginning in Matthew 12:38: :Then certain of the scribes and of the Pharisees answered, saying, Master, we would see a sign from thee. But he answered and said unto them, An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas: For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale's belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.” Most people, believers and unbelievers alike, are aware of the story of Jonah being swallowed by a whale, or as it says in the Book of Jonah, a “great fish.” But few are aware of Jonah's having spent three days and nights in the fish's belly is actually a type of Christ's burial, and resurrection three days later.
 
In the book, Study of the Types,  the author displays keen perception and insight as she brings to light some amazing Messianic foreshadows. I would also like to bring to your attention something else about this author: She was born in 1861... yes, that's not a typographical error... 1861... in London. Abraham Lincoln was President when she was born. She died in 1918, so her book was written at a time when such a Bible Study reference was the exclusive domain of men. Her work, nonetheless, is a marvelous and edifying piece of writing. She was also a prolific author, as demonstrated by the page from Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss/191-9470092-9182051?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Ada+Habershon
Let me share with you from her book, how somwthing we have been reviewing for several weeks was a type of Christ, namely, Noah's Ark.

The Apostle Peter writes about Noah's Ark. Breaking into a thought, we read  in 1 Peter 3:20: “when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water.” Peter, here, tells us that “few... were saved.” Of those eight who were saved, it was their faith in God's Provision of the Ark, and their being on board that kept them alive, while everyone else perished. Christ is so pictured in a strikingly similar way. The Apostle John wrote in his first epistle in 1 John 5:12: “He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life.”
Peter added to that thought in his first public sermon, delivered on the Day of Pentecost, after being filled and empowered with the Holy Spirit. We read beginning in Acts 4:10: “Be it known unto you all, and to all the people of Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom ye crucified, whom God raised from the dead, even by him doth this man stand here before you whole. This is the stone which was set at nought of you builders, which is become the head of the corner. Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.”

Just as there was no other way outside the Ark for any of the pre-Flood world to be able to saved, so Jesus Christ is the only Way to Eternal Life, and to the Father. The Ark had but one door. Notice God's instruction to Noah on the Ark's specifications in Genesis 6:16: “A window shalt thou make to the ark, and in a cubit shalt thou finish it above; and the door {singular} of the ark shalt thou set in the side thereof;” Jesus identified Himself as “the only door” in John 10:9: “I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture.”

Let's go to “Study of the Types” so I can give you an example of the author's insights. On the first page of the chapter titled, “Types of the Resurrection,” Ms. Habershon refers to the reference in Genesis where the waters of Flood have receded, and the Ark comes to rest. But Genesis tells us not only where the Ark came to a rest, but also a specific date. The average reader would simply look at this specific date and just move on to the next verse. Instead, Ms. Habershon writes, “It is remarkable that the date is given on which the ark rested upon the mountains of Ararat... We are told that the Ark rested on the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month. The seventh month was the month Abib; but from the time of the first Passover, it became the beginning of months, and the “first month of the year.”

Let me interrupt the text for a bit of clarification. Before the observance of the Passover, Abib was the seventh month. Notice in Exodus 12:1: “And the LORD spake unto Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, saying, This month shall be unto you the beginning of months: it shall be the first month of the year to you.” Later in that same chapter, details about observing the Passover during the month of Abib, are given. Exodus 12:5: “Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male of the first year: ye shall take it out from the sheep, or from the goats: And ye shall keep it up until the fourteenth day of the same month: and the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it in the evening.”

Back to Ms. Habershon's comments: “The lamb was killed on the fourteenth day of the same month; and the third day after this was the seventeenth, the day on which the ark rested.” Do you see what she is saying? Jesus was crucified on the daylight portion of the fourteenth of Abib. As He said He would, fulfilling the type established by Jonah, Jesus rose from the dead three days later... on the seventeenth, the same day that the Ark rested. Ms. Habershon continues, “The resting of the ark on Mount Ararat, and Noah stepping forth on to the new earth, would prefigure resurrection life.”

There are many other details and references in the Book of Genesis that can easily be missed as either types or powerful direct references of Jesus. Take this one pointed out by Matthew Henry. It is in reference to something most of us are familiar with. When Adam and Eve sinned, God imposed a number of penalties because they had sinned: One of the penalties that I never gave a second thought to was when God cursed the ground.  We read in Genesis 3:17: “And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee... ”

Of this Matthew Henry writes, “God put marks of displeasure on Adam. 1. His habitation is cursed. God gave the earth to the children of men, to be a comfortable dwelling; but it is now cursed for man's sin. Yet Adam is not himself cursed, as the serpent was, but only the ground for his sake. 2. His employments and enjoyments are imbittered to him. Labour is our duty, which we must faithfully perform; it is part of man's sentence, which idleness daringly defies. Uneasiness and weariness with labour are our just punishment, which we must patiently submit to, since they are less than our iniquity deserves. Man's food shall become unpleasant to him. Yet man is not sentenced to eat dust as the serpent, only to eat the herb of the field. 3. His life also is but short; considering how full of trouble his days are, it is in favour to him that they are few. Yet death being dreadful to nature, even when life is unpleasant, that concludes the punishment. Sin brought death into the world: if Adam had not sinned, he had not died. He gave way to temptation, but the Saviour withstood it. And how admirably the satisfaction of our Lord Jesus, by his death and sufferings, answered the sentence passed on our first parents! … Did thorns come in with sin? He was crowned with thorns for us. Did sweat come in with sin? He sweat for us, as it had been great drops of blood. Did sorrow come in with sin? He was a man of sorrows; his soul was, in his agony, exceeding sorrowful. Did death come in with sin? He became obedient unto death. Blessed be God for his Son our Lord Jesus Christ.”

I had not previously realized that the very thorns that appeared as a curse in response to our first  parents' disobedience, became the crown used used by the Roman soldiers to mock Jesus as a king. The thorns were a curse for sin, and Jesus, Himself, became a curse when He accepted the punishment of death that Adam brought on all of mankind. We read in Galatians 3:13: “Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree:”

Only God could have know the day and date that the Ark rested on the mountains of Ararat. Noah could not have been keeping track of the passage of time on the Ark. But God knew the significance of that date. And that is why the Holy Spirit inspired Moses to record it. After all, Jesus, the Lamb of God is said to have been “slain from the foundation of the world,” (Revelation 13:8)  All of these foreshadows can be seen as being woven into the picture by God, Himself.

The Church is pictured as being the Bride of Christ. Under what circumstances did God present a bride to the first Adam.  We read in Genesis 2:21: “And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof;” Sleep is a symbolic way that the Bible refers to death. Paul speaks of Jesus' resurrection with this symbolism in 1 Corinthians 15:20 “But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept.” After Adam was asleep, God open Adam's side to take a rib. In like manner, after it was known that Jesus was dead, or asleep, we read in John 19:33: “But when they came to Jesus, and saw that he was dead already, they brake not his legs: But one of the soldiers with a spear pierced his side...” The Bride that Christ will take as His wife at the Marriage Feast of the Lamb, was given Him by the Father after He caused Him also to “sleep,” and then be awakened, or raised, from that “sleep.” The Second Adam, as the first Adam, was awakened with a scar on his side, a scar necessary in order for Him to receive a Bride.  After His resurrection, Jesus said to Thomas in John 20:27: “Then saith he to Thomas, Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands; and reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side: and be not faithless, but believing.”

The rich foreshadowing symbolism is simply too significant and meaningful to be coincidental. It is written for us by a God Who knows the end from the beginning. The events of Genesis are not the product of an ancient writer with nothing more than a vivid imagination. Neither is the Bible a homogenized re-write of pagan myths. The Bible is like no other Book that has ever been, or can ever be written, where man is both the source and the author of what is written. Today, some of the most brilliant minds on the planet have rejected God's Word as myth, giving it no more respect than than stories from Greek Mythology. Yet, impossible details regarding the Creation and Flood Accounts found in the Book of Genesis, have been found, recorded in within the very picture-alphabet of ancient Chinese writing. God left us these wonderful little pieces of evidence to uncover and be uplifted by, and they defy the taunting doubt of the critics. Equally amazing and unmistakable Messianic foreshadows prove beyond any doubt that the Bible IS the inspired Word of the Living God Who Created us, Who loves us with an everlasting love, and Who longs to establish a relationship with us that will last into Eternity. It is the only Book on Earth that has revealed that Good News to mankind. And it is the only Book on Earth that could reveal to us the otherwise unknowable Truths of God.

This concludes this evening's Discussion, “Genesis – A Deeper Look”
Originally delivered "live" on December 5th, 2013