ULDAH MINISTRY

No,105　　JULY . 2004

【 TRUE PREHISTORIC ACCOUNTS 】

When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God. He created them male and female and blessed them. And when they were created, he called them "Man". …When men began to increase in number on the earth and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose. …The LORD saw how great man's wickedness on the earth had become and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time. The LORD was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain. So the LORD said, "I will wipe mankind, when I have created, from the face of the earth ―men and animals, and creatures that move along the ground, and birds of the air― for I am grieved that I have made them." But Noah found favour in the eyes of the LORD. …Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked with God. Noah had three sons: Shem, Ham and Japheth. Now the earth was corrupt in God's sight and was full of violence. God saw how corrupt the earth had become, for all the people on earth had corrupted their ways. So God said to Noah, "…I am going to bring floodwaters on the earth to destroy all life under the heavens, every creature that has the breath of life in it. Everything on earth will perish. …The LORD then said to Noah, "Go into the ark, you and your whole family, because I have found you righteous in this generation….
The sons of Noah who came out of the ark were Shem, Ham and Japheth …and from them came the people who were scattered over the earth. …The sons of Ham: Cush,…was the father of Nimrod, who grew to be a mighty warrior on the earth. …The first centres of his kingdom were Babylon, …in Shinar. …
Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. As men moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there. They said to each other, "Come, let's make brick and bake them thoroughly." They used brick instead of stone, and bitumen for mortar. Then they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth." But the LORD came down to see the city and the tower that the men were building. The LORD said, "If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do till be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other." So the LORD scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. That is why it was called Babel ―because there the LORD confused the language of the whole world. From there the LORD scattered them over the face of the whole earth.
　　GENESIS 5:1-2,6:1-2,:5-12,:17,7:1,9:18-19,10:6-10,11:1-9.

Genesis 2:8-6:13 depicts the account of the ten generations (from Adam to Noah) after the creation of man. More precisely, however, it is understood that by the time Abel was killed (the first murder), there may already have been a considerable number of descendants of Adam and Eve. It would make up several more generations though the Bible does not record all of them. According to the biblical description of the location and topography of the Garden of Eden, it was situated in the headwaters of the four rivers; Pison, Gihon, Tigris and Euphrates, i.e., on the plateau ('Eden') highlands of Eastern Turkey (Ge.2:10-14). Interestingly, archaeology has traced the geographical centre of the origin of farming to that place.
After Cain moved eastwards to the land of Nod with his wife he started building a 'city,' which instead of suggesting a huge metropolis, rather simply meant a place guarded by a watch in Hebrew. He might have been desperate to find such a guarded place partly because he was very fearful of people taking his life due to a sense of guilt after his murder. It speaks for itself that without doubt Cain already knew advanced technology, enough to build a city at that time in New Stone Age. Technology developed continually, as seen in Scripture: Jubal made musical instruments such as pipes, harp and organ and Tubal-Cain worked with copper and iron. Actually, evidence of cities established before the Bronze Age has been discovered in Catal Huyuk on the Turkish Plateau. Thinking of the fact that man has suffered under the curse as a result of the Fall of the first man and consequently continues to degenerate across generations down from Adam, contemporary human-beings could hardly be said to be 'superior'. Rather, the earlier generations of men, whose genes would have been closer to those of the first two perfect man and woman, Adam and Eve, may have been more inventive, creative and intellectual. All negative things; death, violence, bloodshed, disease, conflict, distorted relationship, pain and suffering of the created beings came into existence after the first couple rebelled against God, i.e., after they sinned. Even the findings of fossil bones on which diseases are traced today, prove the suffering history of man and creatures. Thus, before the Flood, Genesis informs us about the existence of sufficient technology to construct cities and build a sea vessel.
All men should have ideally have been descended from the first perfect couple, who were created with the best possible combination of genes. However, man's wickedness on earth increased, being tempted and influenced by evil thoughts and evil powers, leading to utter corruption. All this unstoppable degeneration only proved the complete and fatal difference between the sovereign Creator, God and mere created beings even if it is a fact that man was especially created in God's own image, His breath of life being breathed into his nostrils so as to be a member of God's family and to rule over the whole earth. As the Lord declared, '(E)very inclination of his (man's) heart is evil from childhood' (Ge.8:21), man's ingenious potential would continue to create ever-increasing wickedness. The days of Noah were characterised by utter sinfulness of man, in that the mighty but fallen ones called "Nephilim" that were supernatural, monstrous beings produced by the fallen angels (the 'sons of God' Ge.6:2,:4 cf. Jude 6) had filled the entire earth and the earth had completely been contaminated by them except eight members of Noah's family. God had to use an extreme remedy, the flood to wipe unnatural beings out of the earth. Genesis 6:14-9:17 illustrates the account of the universal Flood, in which the earth was completely covered with cataclysmic upheavals as the deep oceans rushed over the continents and swept away the technologically advanced first world's inhabitants and vegetation (Ge.7:11-12, :19-23). Thus, the first city-building era and its legacy completely perished. The evidence of unearthed Neolithic stage of elevated cities proves that the Flood was vast enough to cover the Turkish plateau 4,000 feet up.
Genesis 9:18-10:32 depicts post Diluvian description of men and the first half of Genesis 11 illustrates the start of second city-building era in South Mesopotamia. After the Flood Noah and his family members had to struggle to re-establish a new era in a desolate and devastated land. It meant that the new world had 'one language and a common speech' and was repopulated from a common ancestry and from a common geographical area. For the few centuries until the incident in Babel there was really only one people and culture group on earth. The survivors of the Flood migrated from 'Ararat' and started reoccupying the site with a new culture. It seems that the theory of the Flood catastrophe alone would solve scientists' problems about the mysterious gap or "hiatus," the sudden disappearance of culture and life in the first world between the Copper Stone Age and the Bronze age. According to an archaeological interpretation, when they dispersed from the Iranian mountain plateau on to the flood-plain of Sumer ('Shinar') of South Mesopotamia, they made their own artificial stone, instead of mountain-stone. In other words, they baked 'bricks' on the mud flats and they used fat clay nails for copper nails. They also started to use 'bitumen for mortar,' which enabled them to walk over marshy areas and according to Sumerian testimony, they wove reed mats and stamped them down to make a building raft on which huts made of reed and clay could be built. Even after enough time elapsed, as the area they moved to was still marshy, they had to invent new technical and material substitutions. The making of reed boats is thought to have started here to eventually reach Egypt and seems to have continued for many centuries up to Moses' time.
'Nimrod' was one of those charismatic pioneers in the founding and building of several city states, which were autonomous communities. He also won renown as a 'mighty hunter before the LORD.' The first city he founded was 'Babel' in South Mesopotamia called 'Shinar,' whose population called the Sumerians is known as superb mathematician by archaeologists. Among many, Nimrod also built 'Nineveh,' which much later developed to be the capital city of Assyria. It was from these first cities in the mountains that men migrated down, descending from the Iranian plateau to the fertile crescent in Palestine and Mesopotamia and settled down there (Ge.11:2). The Sumerians' building projects became larger, higher and more ambitious. Their artificial mountain-like towering projects called "ziggurats" ('the Hill of Heaven' or 'the Mountain of God,') made of solid bricks, joined with bitumen, terraced with trees and plants, and whose summits were crowned with temples are understood to have been a reflection of their previous mountain environment. The tower of 'Babel,' i.e., 'Babylon' might have been the most phenomenal ziggurat if God had not interfered and 'scattered them from there over all the earth' by causing confusion in their language.
The tower was clearly a religious enterprise, the means of reaching heaven, i.e., God's level, as the builders stated, 'Let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth.' Accordingly, their energy and effort represent man's religious effort. They were obsessed by the attempts to accomplish one united world with one government and one religion. Babylon was actually the place where a religious system first started. The political structure and idolatrous religious system of "Magism" (Babylonian caste) originated with Nimrod's wife, the first high priestess of pagan idolatry, Semiramis, whose name is recorded in Jeremiah 44 as the 'queen of heaven.' The Tower of Babel set the pattern of the unholy alliance between civil state and a religion and this unity has continued for thousands of years in human history. In Scripture, the woman represents a worldwide religious system and a false religion, as God identified a 'woman sitting on a scarlet beast' with the title: Mystery Babylon the Great, The Mother of Prostitutes and of the Abominations of Earth, in John's Revelation 17. John's vision indicates this ancient Babylon will come to be very much alive in the last days. This is a warning of the revived paganism rooted in Babel. Some state that the woman in Revelation represents an embodiment of the "paganised Christianity," rather than pure paganism.
The Bible made it clear that after the Flood the survivors' culture began with the knowledge of the only one God, sufficient technology to build a boat, a united language and biologically only one race of humans. Thus, all people on earth today descended from Noah, his wife, his three sons, Ham, Shem, and Japheth and their wives and needless to say, previously before the Flood, from Adam and Eve. However, due to disobedience to God of the inhabitants on the newly emerged earth again, by attempts to build a great tower as the focal point of rebellious worship, the population was dispersed into smaller groups all over the earth. People became unable to relate to one another and to work together against God since separate languages became instantaneous barriers. They would be forced to move away from each other into different environments, which might have helped them to develop different culture and different characteristics. The Bible distinguishes people by tribal or national groupings. Anthropologists interpret that as these different groups interbred only within their own language group, encountered new and different climate zones, in time, after natural selection acted on the characteristics already present within them, the balance of genes within a group could have been affected. This, to a large extent, could cause the development of characteristics most fitted to their environment for survival. Reconstructing the history of the people groups according to the Bible, some Christian anthropologists believe that Noah and his family were probably mid-brown skinned with genes for both dark and light skin, in other words, they were dark enough to protect against skin cancer, yet light enough to allow vitamin D production.
Anthropologists generally classify people into four racial groups: the Negroid (the black Africans), the Mongoloid (Chinese and American Indians), the Australoid (the Australian Aborigines) and the Caucasoid ( European). Computer-analysed blood group gene frequencies of racial family trees stemmed from one origin indicate the classification of the three main groups: 1. the three African groups ―Tigre (Ethiopia), Bantu, and Ghanaian, 2. Asiatic, American Indian and Oceanian representatives ―Veddah (Ceylon), Gurkha (Nepal), Maori, Korean, and others, 3. the three European groups ―Swedish Lapp, English, and South Turk. These groupings could correspond to the three sons of Noah; 1. Ham, 2. Shem and 3. Japheth. According to the biblical account, the sons of Ham moved to South into Mesopotamia, Canaan and towards Egypt. The sons of Shem moved South first and then eastwards into the land of Ur of the Caldeans where Abraham later lived. The sons of Japheth went west into Turkey, towards the Mediterranean and then on into Europe.
The evidence for the biblical account of human origins is surprisingly able to be traced back in several ways; archaeological findings of ancient sites, records, tablets and culture, the theories of anthropology, global folklore of the Flood and most fascinatingly, the Chinese characters themselves as well. There is an overwhelming number of cultures holding such accounts of a worldwide catastrophic flood, which usually have startling parallels to some crucial factors of the biblical account such as eight survivors, a boat, a rainbow and the birds. This is the case with Chinese characters as well. It is the undoubted fact that the ancient picture writing of the Chinese language embodies memories of the biblical accounts recorded up to Genesis chapter 11, i.e., the folklore of man's earliest days. Crucial elements of the accounts are all there, astonishingly reflected in each of the tiny drawings and strokes that make up the Chinese characters.
The history of the written Chinese language is thought to have its origins around 2500 BCE. This points to a time far before the day of Abraham. Accordingly, it is supposed that after the dispersion, the group of people that migrated eastwards carried with them a newly and suddenly acquired spoken language. While their knowledge of historical events from man's early days was still vivid in their image, sense and hearts they probably found a way to communicate with a written language and invented a unique calligraphy. The early simple graphic symbols were gradually combined to convey more complicated ideas and concepts of the historical accounts with which all community was already familiar by oral tradition. This reasonably explains how the written Chinese language is composed of characters seemingly containing the stories of Genesis. These picturesque and graphic, relic writings are still used today with very little change despite the duration of the thousands years among Chinese and Japanese though some of the original Chinese characters have been simplified into Japanised writings. If the Chinese characters could be taken as supporting witness to the Hebrew Scriptures, it would be attributed to be God's preservation, along with fossil remains. If even more than 1000 years before Moses wrote the first page of the Hebrew Scriptures, the Chinese had conveyed this true historical knowledge in their written language, the significance of the study of their characters would be enormous.

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　 This month a money gift has been sent to MARY JANE in the Philippines. She is currently regularly looking after fifty children in Junji area. Her prayer request is about proper meeting places ―a spacious roofed compound especially this rainy season, or freely leased compound― in Junji area and in Powerline area. She also needs assistants in her work. Pray for the Lord's guidance and protection for her and all her voluntary activities to help the poor, the weak, and the sick.