Pre-Flood Culture

All right, now we're switching out of the history thing where we're just kind of going through stages of biblical history. Now we're going to step through and look at the cultures specifically. History will be secondary, so it's kind of a different slice on this. We're going to look today at pre-flood culture. We'll be looking at a series of cultures, obviously. This is the first one in the sequence, and this is going to be unique. We've had this timeline in front of us in the pre-flood culture. extends from the creation, and notice I just put a box there. The truth is that connecting up, you know, where does this pre-flood culture end?

Well, then that brings up the question of what's the date of the flood? When exactly did the flood happen? If you look at, and I've got this, this is my great-grandmother's King James Bible, and there, which is an American Bible Society edition from 1872, They went ahead and included the dates based on adding up the genealogy times in the book of Genesis and then comes up with a 404 for creation and then it ends up here with a time with a starting clock for the flood of 2469 BC. I say starting clock because it's 120 years after that. that the flood would begin.

That's what it's saying in the text there where it says that the time left for man is 120 years. That's not setting the lifetime, that's the time until the flood. So after this date then, 120 years would be the date if you go by the genealogies directly. As we've spoken about before, there's reason for some extension of time based on some gaps in the genealogies, not infinite or massive. But nonetheless, it could be an earlier time. I think this is reasonable to think that that may be the case. We've seen this before. You have in your appendix this chart, or at least if you don't, see Nancy.

And this extends, of course, from Adam up until the time, and I've included Noah and then Shem, because Shem Look at this, Shem lived a hundred years and then the flood came. What you see there is Shem and he's getting on the ark and then most of his lifetime, even though he's lived before the flood, takes place after the flood. But he's still someone who began in the pre-flood time. Alright, so here was Adam created on the sixth day as we saw earlier. After Adam came the fall of Adam, and all mankind with him.

That's the teaching out of Romans 5.12. And we looked before at this chart of the lifetimes of the patriarchs. Now what I want us to take a look at here, let me back up, look at the ages.

What was the average age of somebody who lived before the flood? Pardon? Somewhere around 900 years. What was a typical lifespan before the flood? Let's think for a minute, how is that going to impact society? What difference is that going to make in how people think, how the culture develops if people live for centuries instead of decades? How long do we have in the human lifetime to learn? We have decades to learn, right? How long do they have to learn?

Centuries to learn. So that's one thing. We usually think of a sort of a learning time as we've got some decades, you know, and then your time is done. And, you know, if you're fortunate, somebody is handing off something they've learned to the next generation. But the bottom line is people only learn so much. And then that's it. If you have a skill, you can only develop it so far.

What you see here is the lifetime that these guys lived allowed centuries of personal learning and development. Now, that's on the positive side. What happens on the negative side? Instead of decades of moral decline in a person's lifetime and things unraveling, what do you get? Centuries of things declining and unraveling. Imagine the impact of that.

Here's something else. Let's look at this one. Look at the overlap. See Adam? By the time Adam died, how many generations do you see? Yeah, there's about seven generations before Adam's death. So you're looking at an overlap of generations that we don't see.

I don't know anybody who's seen that many generations. Real interestingly, I went to high school with a girl who is a great-grandmother now. Within a few years, she could be a great-great-grandmother. But that's unusual. This is instead a situation where you've got better than a half-dozen generations that are recorded there before Adam's life is done. There's an overlap of generations that we don't see. Adam almost lived long enough to overlap the time of Noah. Isn't that something?

Okay. And so I have it, and they're off. Okay? And they're really off. Genesis 4-2, Abel was the keeper of flocks, but Cain was the tiller of the ground. What do you see culturally there? What's coming out of that? Pardon? Yes, that's right. You're seeing the origin of agriculture right here. That's what you see in the early pages. And one of the things to note, when you talk about pre-flood culture, I'll give some examples of things that I think are fairly solidly indicating outside the Bible what the culture is like, but the truth is most of our information comes from the Bible itself. Okay.

Here's Genesis 4.3, so it came about in the course of time that Cain brought an offering to the Lord of the fruit of the ground. Why did you do that? Why did you bring an offering of the fruit of the ground? What's that? Yeah, sure, that's what I grew, right? Okay? And that turned out just hunky-dory, right? Not so much. Yeah, not so much.

Cain slew Abel. Now, so what happens is Genesis 4.12 initially tells Cain that he's going to be a vagrant and a wanderer upon the earth. This isn't even necessarily nomadic, just kind of roaming around, picking as picking gets.

Genesis 4.17, however, records that he built a city. Ah, this is interesting. Let's ask this question. That's obviously telling you about a pre-flood culture. They did begin to have cities within that first generation after Adam and Eve. And then there's the infamous, or famous, however you want to call it, question. How did Cain get a wife? How did that happen? The Bible says that Adam and Eve had other sons and daughters, and that's exactly the way it's put. They had other sons and daughters.

Basically, there's no choice at that point but to marry a sibling. Now, some people say, oh, no! A few things. One is obviously, initially, there's not too much choice. If you're going to marry somebody, it's going to be a relative. The other aspect of it, too, is one of the reasons for the prohibition is the inbreeding problem. And that became worse over time because of genetic decay. Initially that decay was not in place so that the hazards to the next generations were not present yet, or at least in great degree. We could go into it, but there was also reasons to believe that there was greater protection from genetic damage as well, both by moisture above the earth in a stronger magnetic field. Okay.

Then here's Genesis 4.19. Lamech took to himself two wives. Ah, this is the first time we see this. Two wives. And so here's this guy Lamech. So here's the beginning of, to use the general term, polygamy. It's really polygyny, technically. Polygamy is not specific as to husbands and wives. Polygyny is multiple wives. So technically it's polygyny, and here you see the introduction of it. Now, we want to get a feel also for what kind of a person was this fellow Lamech. And we see in Genesis 4, 20-21, Adah gave birth to Jabal.

He was the father of those who dwell in tents and have livestock. Ah, dwell in tents and have livestock. What do you call that kind of a person? What's that? Nomadic. Yes, nomadic tribes. It's real interesting. I have a, how do I say, former brother-in-law who worked on an environmental impact report for Sudan. The United States government was going to give Sudan some money. And one of the things they ran into was, of course, most of the people there in the desert areas are nomadic. The United States wanted to pay the money to have a well installed so that they could support farming. Culturally, a farmer was considered the scum of the earth. If you're a nomad, that's good. And so you had to sell people on the idea that you're actually going to stay somewhere and grow something because they just thought that was disgusting. It's interesting, it isn't just a way of living, it's a mindset. Then look at verse 21, what do you see coming up there? Invention of instruments, music. So here's another aspect of culture, and you see the origins of it. Let's revisit a question, the father of those who dwell in tents and have livestock, Does he mean that everybody who does that is descended from that guy? No, he means the originator of that kind of living. That's what he's talking about.

Obviously, all these things are going to get cut off except for Noah and Noah's wife and Noah's three sons and their wives. So it's only what's continued on through them or reinvented that continues into our time. Okay. Metallurgy and character is kind of this next section here.

Genesis 4.22, as for Zilla, she also gave birth to Tubalcain, the forger of all implements of bronze and iron. Okay, now we have metallurgy. Something interesting going on though. Do you get the impression reading that, that you have bronze and iron at the same time? It seems so. It seems so.

This is where we get in a bit of a quandary with sort of the classical archaeological anthropological approach, and that is where they've got first the Bronze Age and then the Iron Age. Let's touch on that here in a minute. Generally speaking, the Bronze Age is thought to have begun around 3300 or 3200 BC. We'll let the anthropologists and archaeologists argue over the specific time, but about then. And the Iron Age, about 1200 BC. Prior to that would have been, they would call it the Stone Age.

Those are kind of the break points in the classical or conventional historical sequence. But general evidence of the development of metal or other technologies in the pre-flood culture would have been lost to us in the flood unless it were taken on the ark. So the sequence that you see them concluding is post-flood sequence. the pre-flood sequence could well be different, and we'll see evidence of that in just a few minutes here. It appears that what was happening prior to the flood was that the, let me back up, bronze and iron don't appear to have had that same sequence, but instead at the same time, and we'll see evidence of that shortly.

Okay, so here's, The next part, here's Genesis 4.23, Lamech said to his wives, Ada and Zillah, listen to my voice, you wives of Lamech. Give heed to my speech, for I have killed a man for wounding me and a boy for striking me. This is the first time we hear of this kind of thing since Cain slew Abel, right?

But what are some of the things you see in what he said? Do you observe anything there? Pardon? It seems like it's like personal punishment. It's retribution, isn't it? Does the response fit the attack? Assuming. No. What he did is he went way overboard with his response. You do something to wound me and I won't just wound you back. But I'll take your life for it. So the sense of justice was way out of whack, wasn't it?

And look at this, and a boy for striking me. Wow. I mean, this is wild. Now, do you see this as you read that? Do you see this as the reading of somebody who is lamenting it, sorrowful for what he did or what happened? Or do you see somebody bragging? What do you see there? bragging is what you see.

Yeah, it tends to come across that way, especially, you know, hey, I'm going to tell my wives and it's now here recorded for people thousands of years later to hear it. Something else I'd point out that's interesting is that this is a Hebrew poetry pattern.

And if that pattern has been carried over from the original writings, it would indicate possibly that that's where the Hebrews got their poetry pattern, rhyming, Rhyming not sounds, but rhyming meanings. Listen to my voice, give heed to my speech, see the rhyme. And for I have killed a man for wounding me and a boy for striking me, see the rhyme. There's rhyming meaning, not rhyming sound like we're accustomed in our poetry. So this appears to even be poetry. So here's poetry, add that to the music for the development of the arts.

Now, Genesis 4.26, then men began to call upon the name of the Lord. What does that mean? Did they suddenly start praying after centuries? What do you think that refers to there? What's that? Yeah, it isn't abundantly clear, but let me give you one clue.

You see the Lord is capitalized? That is an indication and the convention is used like the New American Standard Bible and some others. When you see that, that's what we would bring over in English as Yahweh. The Hebrew word is the personal name of God. It's the name that the Jews could write, but were forbidden to speak. I think perhaps it's indicating that they actually began to say the name of the Lord is that, in that way, Yahweh.

So, real interesting. That call upon the name of the Lord is a phrase that's used later in the Bible for praying, but specifically praying to God, not just any gods. So, real interesting. It's like things are developing a little bit. Let's look at some more.

Genesis 5.3, when Adam had lived 130 years, he became the father of a son in his own likeness, according to his image, and named him Seth. Why would it describe it that way? We often times will hear people say, well, mankind was created in God's image. Yes, that was true. But, everybody subsequent to that, Whose image?

Adam's. And that's Paul's point as he writes about the first and the second Adam in Romans and 1 Corinthians. So, as a key point to keep in mind, in a pre-flood culture, you haven't got a bunch of people who are in the image of God. That's a tarnished image now, it's in the image of Adam.

Enoch. Very interesting. A brief statement, but potent. Enoch lived 65 years and became the father of Methuselah. Then Enoch walked with God 300 years after he became the father of Methuselah, and he had other sons and daughters. This is the same kind of statement that was made about Adam and Eve. In other words, he had this one, but that's not all. There were others, unnamed, but they existed. So all the days of Enoch were 365 years. Enoch walked with God and he was not, for God took him.

What do you think that means? What's that? How do we know that he didn't die? Maybe he just died and God decided you're going to die early. Why is that not a good conclusion? What's interesting is, as you look at the rest of the genealogies, it says, and he died. That's not the case here. So it says God took him. Plus, when you look at the lifespan, the last 365 years would be a long time. You're talking somebody that, if that were the case now, somebody that predates the United States as a country. You look at the situation here, he's living something slightly over a third of the normal lifetime, and God took him.

It does not record as all the others, and he died, and he died, and he died. And by the way, when it says, and he died, and he died, and he died, isn't that just what God told him? You eat this, you shall surely die. And that's exactly what's recorded.

The other thing is you see the introduction of this phrase, walked with God. It shows up early in Genesis. It's a Jewish phrase. The people out in the Greek and the Roman cultures, they didn't use this term walking as a spiritual analogy. The Jews did. It came out of the Old Testament in an early, apparently, possibly pre-flood phrase that was passed along through the Jews. Okay. So here's Enoch taken away. a much shorter lifetime. The only one that's closer before the flood is Lamech who lived a short life of 777 years. Noah comes along.

His name means rest. And what was the illusion that brought about his name? What was the illusion that brought about His name? This one will give us rest from our work and the toil of our hands arising from the ground which the Lord has cursed. Now guess what? What did the curse mean to Adam? What did God tell Adam? Toil. with thorns and thistles. And guess what? Noah's not going to lift that. So this is nuts. Think also of something else. If you live 900 years and your job is agricultural, how many centuries are you going to be plowing ground, picking weeds, thrashing the thorns? Can you imagine that? Oh, 500 years? Yeah?

Hey, you've still got a century or two to do that stuff. Oh, man! No wonder they got tired of it. That's something else about the lifetimes, is the dread of, you know, hey, this isn't just a few decades, I've got to fight these thorns and thistles and weeds. I've got to do it for centuries! What? Oh, man! You know, we've been through this before. Centuries go by and you're not done. So the dread, yeah, Craig? Yes, the first cruise ship. Yes, good point. The offer was open to everybody, right? The door was open. Now we get to the fun part. Genesis 6, we encounter sons of God, daughters of men, and Nephilim.

Anybody ever looked at that one before? Tried to figure that one out? Three different interpretations have been presented of who are these sons of God. One interpretation is these are despotic chieftains who called themselves sons of God and they married commoners.

So they would pick commoners and that's what that means. That's interpretation number one. Interpretation number two is the line of Seth as the sons of God marrying into the lines of Cain as the daughters of men. Lines of Seth were godly according to this approach and the line of Cain was ungodly. The third view is that sons of God are fallen angels who have left their domain, having intercourse with the daughters of men, resulting in these Nephilim. Those are the three views.

I was hoping I'd get a write-up on this. I still hope to do so, but it may take me a little longer. This week's been a little busy. While it isn't a major doctrine or an open-and-shut case, my own view is that it tends to lean towards the third view. And I'll do a write-up on that eventually here so you get an idea of why. But fascinating.

But think of the pre-flood culture impact. You have somehow these Nephilim, different creatures of some kind. And it's in that chapter that you begin to see the description that the earth was filled with violence. Even the description, the thoughts of men were only evil continually.

I mean, this is really a wild thing. I think there's more to it. We can go into that later. Just no way do we have time to go into it now. But a real fascinating thing to ponder. Was it perhaps the character of these beings and what was going on here that made the choice of, hey, I've got to clean this thing up with the flood? Basically, this is the only logical way to do it. Anyway. All right.

Regardless of the view, the Lord set a time of 120 years before the flood. That's in Genesis 6-3. The wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that of every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continued. Can you imagine that? What an absolute statement. Every. Only. Continually. Those are incredible statements. Only of Noah in his day does it say that he walked with God. Here's that phrase again. There was Enoch, the Lord took him. There was Noah, and the Lord preserved him. Only of those two men, prior to the floods, say they walked with God. That phrase only used of them. And additionally, it says that Noah was righteous.

The earth was corrupt in the sight of God, and the earth was filled with violence. So chapter six is full of intense, rather kind of absolute statements, superlatives. So it's an amazing chapter when you look at the description. We have this Genesis genealogy, which you have in your appendix, and that, interestingly enough, just covers that top little portion of the page there that gives the genealogy of those people.

Finally, you get this world-changing event, which was called the Flood of Noah's time, taking place just after the death of Methuselah. Do you remember what we said Methuselah means? Methuselah means when he dies it comes Can you imagine everybody's looking at this guy, you know Wake up wake up. Okay, because I mean when he dies it comes and you're wondering what comes you know And you look at the chart. It's that year But he died and it came.

Okay, amazing That's one of the more phenomenal names in the Bible We went over this tablet theory, and I just want to kind of review it real quickly, and that is the idea that a lot of the places where it says this is the, you know, these are the generations of Adam, these are the generations of this one, that those what we call Toledoth tags are account for records of generations before the flood.

This was an earlier presentation we did, and so I'm just drawing a few slides from it. Wiseman and Wiseman, the father-son team, they noticed that there were these side notes on the clay tablets, and those would be like we would have on a book, where you look at the edge of the book and you see the book, there's the book title, so that you know what's in it. What it appears may have happened is those same kind of notes, the colophons that are written on the side, they're called in the Hebrew text Toledoth, that's the generations, the Toledoth tags, that those would indicate documents that may have come from before the flood. Now, this is a record of what would be written on the colophon, that is the edge writing, or actually the colophon sometimes was used on the bottom or some other standard location, but frequently on the edge.

And we have this chart, and we distributed this earlier, so I didn't include it today. But this is where exactly those places end up and who would have been the possible authors. So those writings prior to the flood would then have been some of the earlier ones that you see there with, you know, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, you know, kind of chapter 10 and earlier, may well have been from before the flood, if that's the case. And that also indicates writing from before the flood.

So it would be, if this were true, and I believe it is, but it's again something that would, unless you found the tablets, you'd have a hard time proving it, absolutely. Nonetheless, it would indicate that writing was invented before the flood and then carried through Noah and his family and then into the next generations.

Now, we're going to take a turn here and I want to preface this with, this has two characteristics. One, what I'm going to present to you is a very small sampling. It is, two, extremely controversial because there are people who most certainly don't like this sort of information to get presented. Welcome to Thomas, Oklahoma, and there it is located on kind of the central part of Oklahoma.

You see in the lower right corner what looks sort of like a pot. Here's the story behind it. There was this iron pot discovered in a massive lump of coal. The pot's about eight and a half inches across at the top. It's made of iron. You know, it's just iron like we have. It's one of the indications, assuming this is valid, and I think some indications are there that it is, that there was iron before the flood. But let's take a further look at it. This coal has been dated at 312 million years old. So, that gets to be a little bit of a head-scratcher, doesn't it? What's an iron pot doing in coal that's 312 million years old? This iron pot was discovered, there it is, held in a fellow's hand.

Did I give it eight and a half inches across? That's too big. Smaller number. That's not right. That guy isn't a giant. Okay. Anyway, it's a small pot. And I don't recall exactly what the number is, There was a letter that was written. Let me show you the contents of that letter.

This fellow writing from Sulphur Springs, Arkansas, November 27, 1948, says that while he was working in this electric plant in 1912, he came across a large chunk of coal. It was too large to use, and so he went to hit it with a sledgehammer. When he did so, And one of his co-workers, Jim Stull, says here, witnessed the breaking of the coal. He saw this little pot fall out, and the coal broke open in a shape that matched the pot. So here's this pot. And he traced the source of the coal and found that it came from the Wilburton, Oklahoma mine.

So anyway, this guy, Frank J. Cunard, signed this. It was sworn before a notary. I would remind you that a notary does not verify that the contents are true. A notary only says this person signed this in front of me and based on the evidence that I have, I believe it's the person who they claim to be. So realize that the notary does not prove the contents.

But nonetheless, that's the evidence that we have. We have the coal, the pot, the letter. The fellow, some decades later, decided to commit it to letter in order to document how this had taken place. So anyway, there's one instance. All it would take is that one little piece there, and you've got a major question. Are there reasons to question the validity of this? Let's just ask this. Are there reasons to question the validity of this?

At the face of it, does anything smell fishy? It appears to be an honest statement. You might like to have something more current. This is decades later, so it's not absolutely foolproof, hope-proof, but it does seem to have some sense of validity and you can actually look at the iron now and the coal pieces that are embedded in it and that sort of thing. Let's take a look at another one. Again, just a caution that this is highly controversial.

London, Texas. Nancy and I were down there in the Fort Worth area. That's where the rectangle is there. To the east and slightly to the south in the direction of Shreveport, that's where Margaret Eckel is from and her mom. And London, Texas is just a small town. But this guy, Max Hahn, was fishing with his family near London, Texas in June 1936. Just fishing away, all right?

Now, he discovers there's a piece of wood sticking out of this stone. That's kind of strange. So he breaks the stone open and that's what he sees. He sees this, what looks like an iron hammer and the way it broke open, it's still got the wood embedded in the stone and the hammer laying on the side of it. They took a sample of the metal and analyzed it at Battelle Laboratory and came up with this composition here of iron, chlorine, and sulfur. Interestingly, today most common steel has carbon in it.

This didn't appear to have any. So a different sort of mixture. And here's another picture. If I had my druthers, I'd have the lights off so you could see it even better. But nonetheless, you see the hammer? It's kind of an octagon shape. And it appears to be embedded in wood. Here is a special photographic method where they go and look at the wooden handle and the hammer and the rock matrix, can look at it inside. And then here's the edge of the wooden handle that he saw sticking out. And so very interesting, very interesting piece here.

The fact that it's unlike the pot, it's actually embedded in the stone still. and still there, that makes it a little more credible than the prior one. Not that the prior one was somehow suspect by nature, but this is even more credible. The rock matches the adjacent rock material in the area in terms of type, and that has been dated 140 million years old. So here you get a couple of real head-scratchers This is actually just a sampling of a number of different things that have been found. Most of those findings in the 1800s and 1900s that indicate some human culture prior to the flood seems to be the best explanation. Examples of some of the other things have been, here are these people, they broke open a piece of coal and there was a small chain that continued to connect those end pieces of coal. Things of that sort have been found. There have been human remains found deep inside rock that just doesn't match any explanation that fits anything other than something other than the conventional model of things. You've heard of Calaveras County in California? That was named after Calaveras' skull. And so here is this skull found deep in the mountain. That's the reason for the name Calaveras. A human skull. Okay.

I showed earlier this initial paths of population of the earth. These would be post-flood patterns. The pre-flood patterns would have been all erased basically. So that is one one thing is we don't have you know information either in scripture or on the ground to tell us what was the direction of movement out from the Garden of Eden prior to the flood. Not a lot to work with there. It's largely been chopped up.

Something else to think about too, in a flood situation, human beings would be most likely to find some way of floating around for a while. Yes, some would be deluged, but there would also be a number who would find some way of floating around for a while. They would be less likely then to get buried and then fossilized. Does that mean totally? No. I'm talking about just likelihood, so they would tend to make less human. In the way of human remains, it would be fossilized.

Here is the area, of course, where the Ararat Mountain is. From that area, you'd see the distribution. taking place, and that's what anthropologists basically found. Okay, summary points on the pre-flood culture. Historical records from the pre-flood culture limited to Genesis 1 through 7 with some details in the Bible after that point. That is, we get some details in the New Testament about guys like Noah, Enoch, Adam. Some details on those, but not a lot. Most of the record is in those first seven chapters of Genesis.

Archaeological finds are rare since the pre-flood cultures were destroyed. It's not a minor flood which would tend to bury things and make good record. It is instead a major cataclysmic event which would tend to erase the records of prior cultures. Archaeologists, when they go and excavate a site, they've got something there and they're looking at being able to piece together what happened. But when everything gets all, you know, ground up and washed away, That's not something they're able to do very easily. The development of technology, including metallurgy, musical instruments, both pneumatic and fixed location agriculture, we see those things. Some evidence of perhaps poetry. Those are things that come out of that culture.

Other technology developments are not mentioned. It is a mistake to think of these people as being very low-end in terms of intelligent and social development, because they did seem to develop various things, is it possible that there are other technologies that aren't mentioned? It could be. We're stepping into a realm of speculation, but I think it's a mistake to just look at them as some sort of a low-end Neanderthal caveman type thing.

That's not the picture we get here. Interactions with God, interestingly, appear to be direct. Cain's talking to God directly. You don't have, okay, here's your Bible, read it. What you see is direct interaction. And you see the same thing with Noah. What indications we have are that God talked directly to the people. Very interesting.

The currently revealed details on those spiritual interactions are limited. We don't know, for example, what did Enoch do in his relationship with the Lord. We don't know what did the Lord tell him. We know that it seems like it was probably direct interaction, but we really don't know the character of it. Not much is written other than, Enoch walked with God.

The comparative longevity of people allowed for lengthy periods of learning and skill development within a person's lifetime. So you don't just get a few decades of, okay, this person's done it for a few decades and they're a master. No. This person's done it for a few centuries and then they're a master. So a whole different perspective of time span. Someone who'd only done something for a few decades is still a beginner. How about that?

Our sense of craftsmanship and learning and the longevity of it very different. The other is the child-bearing years were much longer than ours. You imagine, you know, it'd be a little tough, you imagine being pregnant at 500 years old, you know, it's a little hard for us to conceive of, and yet the child-bearing years continued on for a great many of these people, okay? Next, we'll move on to the post-flood and the patriarchal cultures, okay?

Right after that, from the time of Noah, And then into the time of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, into that time frame. So we'll step into there, looking not so much at the history, but what about the culture? And again, what does that tell us about what we read? And the archaeological finds. By the time of Abraham, we begin to see some general agreement between the conventional archaeological methods and approaches and scripture. Up until that point, as we mentioned before, there is indeed some conflict, and it's important to recognize that. Okay. We'll next go into these other cultures here, from the Assyrian all the way to the other biblical cultures, the ones that are kind of lesser known but still evident in Scripture. Now, questions? Bafflings? Yeah?

The dating on the coal is based on looking at the geological mapping and their geological reports for the coal that's there in Oklahoma. And that data was at 312 million years, I think is the figure. In fact, I think, do you have that on your handout? Yeah. 312, I think is the figure there. And I don't know that there's been, and maybe there is, but I don't know that there's been any attempt to try to date the pot outside of that. So, yeah, and that's a good question. There are some means of attempting to do that.

Obviously it doesn't fit the 312 million years, but for example, what about a radiocarbon date on the coal? You know, obviously radiocarbon, by the way, once you get beyond about 10,000 years, it's just not a chance of getting any sort of a decent reading because radiocarbon decays too rapidly for that to take place. But that would be a possibility, is even just doing a radiocarbon date on the coal. I don't know about the iron.

Possibly some methods of trying to date the iron. I don't know that that's been done. On the hammer, again, the 140 million years is based on the surrounding geology and the geology reports that have been done. A lot of Texas, I mean, you can see maps of Texas geology that map the whole state. So it's based on that. Again, you could do a radiocarbon date on the handle, on the carbon that's in the handle. But I don't know that that's been done. I obviously did some kind of non-destructive testing with that one image there. I don't know whether that's some sort of special colored X-ray or what. I really don't know. Yeah. Right. Right. Right. Okay, a few different thoughts.

The Bible does not explicitly make any statement about that and what's termed plate tectonics and continental drift. Some try to date after the flood, and we'll see it later, a Peleg. It says during the time of Peleg, that was when the earth was divided. And some try to pin it to that time. I think more likely that dividing is not the physical earth, but the Tower of Babel populations and everybody's scattered is more likely. That's a personal opinion.

Some time ago here, a fellow spoke to the RMCF group that was here. I was very impressed with what he did because we did very elementary stuff when I was still going through geology. He did a three-dimensional dynamic finite element analysis in which he got funding, a million dollar funding from NASA to do it right, basically. He modeled a continental drift He went and got consultants on all the different phase changes and the physics and meteorology involved. And what he concluded based on his model is that you could account for a continental drift over a period of three weeks.

Basically, have you seen pictures of the mid-Atlantic ridge, the ocean floor? He says that ridge would be explained by this model that he had developed, and the model ends up with escape velocity speed jets, a wall of escape velocity speed jets shooting up into the air from that ridge during this process. phenomenal stuff, and I was impressed with the level of detail that he went through in checking all the different physical and chemical processes, getting experts at each appropriate phase.

Now, does the Bible say that? No. So I think you have to remember this is science without the ability to confirm some things that you'd like to. And I think that's one of the things that's important to remember when we're talking about stepping into history, and especially if it's not recorded by human beings, that we're stepping into assumptions. And so we have to remember the level of confidence that we can have and what we've got, even as carefully as this one fellow did his work. You are limited by the fact that you can't go back and Recheck it and have somebody sit there and okay run that again. You know you just can't go there So anyway, that's that's a real quick answer the bottom line is there's there's some models and and we have to leave them in the area maybe even of You know well attested speculation and leave it at that the Bible doesn't really address the issue There's nothing in scripture that would conflict with it there's nothing that's a problem, but but One of the reasons why I wouldn't see a conflict, the scripture just doesn't even mention it so far as I can tell. Yes. Yes. Yes, let's let's take I'll take a quick look at that, even though we're completely run out of time.

The only place that you see the sons of God otherwise mentioned is in the book of Job. And that's where you'll see the sons of God. in Job, that's their angels. The Septuagint in Genesis 6 says huyas, sons, but in Job the same Hebrew is translated angelos, angel.

So very interesting. Plus, Job is the oldest book that we have aside from Genesis. So the use of that phrase in that time frame would also match. So anyway, that seems to match up. The sons of God, in order to behave the way they did and to be described the way they did, would have to be fallen angels. So that would be meeting that description.

And there are other reasons going into the New Testament where I think it connects up and makes some sense, but this is one that people have gone around and around and around on. I don't think it's a matter of critical doctrinal importance, but in personal opinion, I think the evidence leans in favor of the sons of God being angels, and the evidence I've given you is just a brief summary of some of the reasons why. I think there's a lot more in the New Testament.

Other questions? It's enough for today? Can't stand anymore? Please stop! Okay, let's pray. Lord, thank you. As we look at this, certainly we could have lots of questions that we probably won't get the answers to until we walk through heaven's gate. And yet, Lord, as we look at these things, how marvelous to see your faithfulness and to know that indeed in evil and wicked and lawless times there were those who walked with you. Someday we will see them as well and walk with them as well. Thank you for all you've given us. In Jesus' name, Amen.