September 2023

On Genesis, Part 31: The Seed of Inheritance

At the beginning of our last presentation, The Consequences of Covetousness, I had recounted many aspects of my own personal perspective of recent historical events, and then mentioned some of the earlier circumstances which helped to facilitate those events, in order to show that when a society falls, it is typically a long process which has many inducements. There are several old adages which are relevant to this discussion. The first one that comes to mind is the saying that “Rome wasn’t built in a day”, as the empire peaked nearly 900 years from the traditional date of the founding of the city, from 752 BC to the time of Trajan at the beginning of the 2nd century AD. Likewise, our modern Christian society also took nearly as many centuries to develop following the spread of the Gospel of Christ. But it is also said that “Rome didn’t fall in a day”, and just as the Roman empire was hundreds of years in the making, its slide into oblivion at the hands of the Huns, Goths and Vandals also took several centuries, and there were many significant earlier events which helped facilitate its fall.

So perhaps an older Roman of the time of Caracalla may have noticed the decay of the empire which was already evident, and lamented the days of Marcus Aurelius or Commodus. But perhaps an older Roman in the days of Aurelius had lamented the time of Hadrian or even of Trajan. Every century had its own peculiar troubles, and in hindsight perhaps it is sometimes easier to look back and see why they had developed. Yet centuries after Rome fell, there were Europeans who upheld its traditions and its values, and clung to them in their everyday lives. While this was especially evident in the Roman Catholic Church, and not always for the better, it is even evident outside of the Church, until the time that Church itself had adopted and perpetuated many of its aspects.

On Genesis, Part 30: The Consequences of Covetousness

Most modern White Europeans, whom today are often led to believe that they live in a post-Christian society, still take for granted the Christian values with which they were raised, or at least, with which their grandparents and great-grandparents were raised, without any conception of the degree of depravity which was prevalent throughout much of the pre-Christian or non-Christian worlds. Yet those Christian values, which had been shared by Europeans for well over a thousand years, have become ingrained within us through generations of childhood education and practice and they remain in us and in our laws even if we may no longer consider ourselves to be Christians. Then, with the advent of colonialism from about the 15th century, Europeans brought those values with them, by which they had governed all of their colonies abroad, as well as having transmitted them to the non-White races whom they had also come to govern. The non-White races, however, and especially the negro races, do not maintain them very well in post-colonial modern society, and in fact, they never really submitted to Christian values even when they were governed by them. Today, any Negros in Africa who maintain any semblance of Christian values do so only as long as there is wave after wave of White missionaries or international church officials dispensing rewards for their good behavior.

When I was a child, before 1970, there were no pickup bars because women were not permitted in most bars. Some bars had a back room with dining tables, even if they did not serve food, in which women were permitted if they had a man to escort them. Those rooms had separate entrances, and signs above or near the back door would explicitly label it a “Ladies Entrance”. Otherwise any ladies entering through the bar door or without an escort would never be served. My father could take me, even at five or six years old, through the front door to sit at the bar, but he could not take my mother. Back then, my father had also taught me not to even speak to a girl unless I had been introduced to her by her parents. And I would never think of making a sexual advance towards any girl. At least most, if not all, of the other boys I knew were raised with those same values. But then, of course, we were also instilled with other basic Christian values, such as not to steal or lie or abuse those weaker than ourselves. At least most of the other boys disdained perverts, and especially Sodomites, and if they did not disdain them they dare not make any mention of it or they would also become the targets of the same chastisement which the Sodomites had been.

On Genesis, Part 29: The End of Sodom

As it is first recorded in Genesis chapter 18, Yahweh God had purposed to destroy Sodom for its sins, and when Abraham learned of that purpose, he plead for the Sodomites, having imagined that at least some of them were righteous, and he petitioned God on that basis, that the righteous not suffer for the sins of the wicked. So Abraham bargained with God, and asked him not to destroy the place for the benefit of fifty righteous men. When Yahweh agreed, he continued to bargain, all the way down to ten men, and Yahweh had nevertheless agreed, where it is recorded that He had said “I will not destroy it for ten’s sake.” With that the record of the exchange ends, and now here in Genesis chapter 19, we see that Yahweh did indeed destroy Sodom, permitting only Lot and his family any opportunity to escape. So evidently, there were not even ten righteous men among the Sodomites, and for that reason we described the altruism of Abraham as having been merely speculative, because Abraham imagined that a portion of them were righteous, but he had little direct experience to make any judgement in the matter.

The famous geographer of the early 1st century AD, Strabo of Cappadocia, did not work exclusively from first-hand accounts, but relied on the reports of others, especially of sailors and other travelers, since he probably could not have traveled by himself the entire broad world which he had labored to describe in writing, which had stretched from Britain and Ireland in the west to the Indus River in the east. He also frequently cited older writers, verifying or amending their descriptions of diverse places, and he mentioned many of those writers whose works are not lost. So, pertaining to Sodom, in the 16th book of his Geography he confused the Dead Sea with what the Greeks had called Lake Sirbonis, the Serbonian Bog on the Mediterranean coast west of Gaza which appeared to be more of a lake to early travelers. [1] But aside from that misidentification, which is evident where he named places such as Masada, he was clearly speaking of the Dead Sea. So he had described the asphalt produced by the lake, or sea, and the fires below the water which produced it [2], and then he wrote that:

On Genesis, Part 28: Speculative Altruism

In our last presentation of this commentary on Genesis, which was titled A Father of Nations, we hope to have illustrated at least some of the cohesion between the promises of Yahweh God to Abraham which Moses had recorded in Genesis, and the interpretation and application of those promises in the ministry of Paul of Tarsus which are recorded in at least several of his epistles. Paul, having professed that his struggle was for the twelve tribes of Israel and the promises which Yahweh God had made to the fathers, which he interpreted “as it is written”, referencing the very promises to Abraham which are found in these chapters of Genesis, had clearly taught that the Gospel messages of the promises of redemption and mercy and eternal life in Christ were pertinent to the children of Israel alone [1]. Then, in relation to the covenants of God, Paul also explained that they too were exclusively for the children of Israel, an Israel which he himself had described as his “kinsmen according to the flesh” [2].

So Paul is certainly a witness to the exclusivity of the New Covenant with the children of Israel, and he had told the Romans, in an epistle which was demonstrably written before his arrest in 58 AD, “that your faith is spoken of throughout the whole world”, and later in that epistle, concerning the Gospel of Christ, he asked a rhetorical question and made another profession where we read: “17 So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. 18 But I say, Have they not heard? Yes verily, their sound went into all the earth, and their words unto the ends of the world.” [3] Here are two professions from Paul’s epistle to the Romans, that in his time the Gospel of Christ had already been disseminated throughout what he had perceived was the entire world. Yet at this time, there is absolutely no evidence of any Christians outside of the Roman world, and the other apostles, those who were not with Paul, were still in Antioch or with James in Jerusalem [4].