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The Bible's Hidden Wisdom: God's Reason for Noah's Flood
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368 pages8 hours
Summary
Do You Want to Provoke God's Wrath?
No? Then you had best know God's purpose and how not to cross it. Until now, no one has understood why Noah's Flood was needed.
• Something before Noah's Flood threatened God's purpose.
• It wasn't the ordinary wickedness and violence we've known throughout history, otherwise God would never have made his promise about the Flood.
Hollywood and scholars got it all wrong. And many believe the Flood never happened.
Proof of Noah's Flood?
What if biblical scholars have had the wrong timeline? That's not exactly a news flash. Scientists have known that for over a century.
If we had the right timeline, then we might find a clue in science which confirms it.
Consider it done! We now know the Flood's target—described in Genesis 6 as the "daughters of men." This group had threatened God's purpose with a special kind of wickedness and violence, unknown throughout all of human history.
The Bible's Hidden Wisdom is a detective story with difficult clues. Once those clues are found and understood, everything lines up and new, unexpected discoveries are made, like,
• The Kabbalists' "Tree of Life" matrix embedded in two Genesis chapters.
• The real meaning of the outrageous ages of the early patriarchs.
• The reason why God protected the liar, ingrate and murderer, Cain.
• And God's real reason for Noah's Flood.
Finally, some answers that make sense not only from a spiritual perspective, but also from that of science.
Publisher: Tharsis HighlandsReleased: Oct 24, 2018ISBN: 0463356985Format: book
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The Bible's Hidden Wisdom - Rod Martin, Jr
Love
The Meaning of Noah’s Flood
Imagine the waters rising up around you faster than the rain is falling. Imagine each hour, sea level burgeoning upward another thirty feet¹ and that there is no sign of it slowing. Soon, the tallest buildings are engulfed. What had seemed a freak storm at mid-afternoon is now a nightmare covering the tallest, nearby hills. No refuge can be found in the frenetic, dark currents of midnight.
Why would God do this? This death and destruction outstrips anything witnessed by man before or since. This turns the carnage of two world wars into nothing by comparison.
Yet, Noah’s Flood was an act of love—only this and nothing more.
That is the conclusion of this book, but how did we arrive at that unusual idea?
God exists and He loves us. Yet, throughout history there have been those who have tried to negate that existence and that love.
The year 1966 made us all aware of the rather bizarre view that God is dead.
² Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) may have been the first to imagine this extreme concept, but the theological movement of the 1960’s made the idea somehow, briefly fashionable.
Rabbi Richard Rubenstein, associated with that movement, argued that theistic God died creating the universe, but that it took Auschwitz to awaken humanity to that fact. Rubenstein felt that, to picture humanity’s past as a product of God’s purpose is to sustain the notion that the Heavenly Father wanted Auschwitz to happen³—a concept which Rubenstein rejected as utterly obscene.
Rubenstein’s arguments raise some important concerns. How could an active and personal God be alive and allow the Jewish Holocaust to occur? For that matter, how could God allow any human tragedy to occur? Does allowing cruelty to exist serve a purpose. Some might wager that there is no one up there—no babysitter to hold our hand.
A Problem of Perception
We have in the world many conflicting beliefs, but there is only one Truth. A great many unknowns confront us, but these many problems can be reduced to one of perception.
Some have never seen or felt God. Some have never experienced miracles. What we think and believe are internal perceptions affected by what we have experienced and learned. Our perception of the Bible is affected by these things. Our ability to learn new things is also affected by these. These are limitations, and our goal must include finding the barriers to a more complete perception and exploring the possible ways of finding the Truth behind perception. Let us begin by looking at some of the widely differing belief perceptions.
The non-theist or deist⁴ may believe in God, but for them the Creator went on vacation. To them, supernatural events are impossible. There is no prophecy, miracle or divine revelation. The physical laws of nature remain the only proof of a supreme creator.
Skeptics have offered many alternate explanations for the Bible’s miracles. For example, Moses may merely have walked across a shallow Sea of Reeds. In 2006, Doron Nof, a professor of oceanography, suggested that Jesus may have walked on ice rather than on water.⁵
Science and skepticism have their value, but any idea held too tightly can blind one to greater discovery. Religion can have that effect, certainly, but so can science. Any belief system can be held too forcefully.
A literal reading of the Bible tells us that Noah’s Flood swept the Earth 2348 BC. This comes from the timeline derived by Archbishop Ussher in his groundbreaking work of scholarship, first published 1650 AD. Science has not yet found any evidence of the Flood in the geological record for that early date before Christ. Evidence proves to be tricky, though. The effects of nature may have destroyed or altered such evidence.
Also, prejudiced eyes and minds can force researchers to overlook such evidence, as with North American anthropology and the Clovis first
doctrine.⁶ For years, scientists had been afraid to dig below the Clovis
layer, because of what they might find. Below Clovis
lurked things that could have jeopardized careers, because they threatened the Clovis dogma.⁷ Today, Clovis first
is dead, but the ego which gave it life thrives.
Biblical interpretation also proves to be tricky. Holding only to a literal interpretation leads to many contradictions and problems. A greater wisdom seems to reside in the Bible than a superficial, or literal reading would reveal. As 2 Corinthians 3:6 tells us, we need to move beyond the literal, because following only the letter leads to death.⁸ Jesus seemed to emphasize this when he repeatedly used enigmatic parables to teach his audience.⁹
The writers of the Bible had good reason to hide some of their wisdom. The simplest reason reminds us that anything of value achieved too easily will not be valued as much.
A more important reason tells us that the very act of humility in the search for the Bible’s hidden wisdom serves the purpose behind the Bible. Humility is the price of admission. Humility is the fine raiment required at the party to which we are all invited; the dirty rags of this world will not fit through the gate.
There are many passages which obviously cannot be taken literally. For instance, every example in the Bible of God’s wrath needs to be tempered with the idea of God’s love. As Jesus said, the first law is love. Everything else is subordinate to this.
Could it be that negative labels such as wrath
are merely human reactions to that misunderstood love. A concrete example may help illustrate this.
God allows tragedy to occur. This does not mean He hates us or doesn’t care. The literal apparency of God’s indifference remains only that—an apparency or illusion.
On a simple, mechanistic level, we see this illusion in the condemnation of a suicide perpetrator. God does not want them to jump off the building, but His laws of gravity, solidity and momentum collide with the perpetrator’s decision. You might say that it’s like God is hating
them at the velocity of impact, but the hate
is not a human emotion directed at the person; it is a metaphor for the direct result of God’s laws of physical reality bumping into the person’s self-destructive, free-will decision. It may look like hate because of the end result, but even the inaction of God is a part of His everlasting love. A baby cannot learn to walk if their every move is shielded from harm or failure.
A more specific example of non-literal meaning can be found in Genesis. Adam and Eve were told that they would surely die on the day they ate the forbidden fruit. But did they literally, physically die? No, they did not. In fact, they were escorted out of the Garden, and Adam lived to the ripe old age of 930 years, begetting many sons and daughters. Adam and his mate had died spiritually. They had lost their connection to God. They had entered the long sleep
of spiritual death.
Many things remain hidden in the Bible.¹⁰ God wants us to find what is hidden. He knows that the humility required to learn will heal us of the disease which traps us. There is a great deal more to learn and we’ve received an explicit invitation:
Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool
(Isaiah 1:18). (Note: All quoted scripture is from the King James version, unless otherwise stated.)
A Tale of Two Waters
Was Noah’s Flood a real event, or merely a symbolic, morality tale? Whatever its past reality, with Noah’s Flood one water cleansed the world, literally or figuratively. It brought death, but it also kept alive the hope of another water—that of everlasting life.
This other water cleanses the soul and sacrifices the mortal, selfish self so that the immortal self may reawaken from its long sleep.
It washes away the poison of the forbidden fruit taken so long ago. This truly is a Sleeping Beauty
tale.
The water of everlasting life was used by Moses when he lifted his arm above the sea. It was used by Peter, if only for a moment, when he stepped out of his storm-tossed boat to join his master on the Sea of Galilee.
When Yehoshua of Nazareth told his followers that they could do the miracles he did and even greater ones, he was speaking of this water. When he told Nicodemus that we need to be born again, he was talking of this water. In fact, Yehoshua, or Jesus, had come to Earth on a rescue mission—a mission to bring us this water so that each of us could awaken again their spiritual half.
Our Purpose
We want to know the real reason for Noah’s Flood. There is compelling evidence that the current theories are all wrong.
There is also compelling evidence that the current interpretation of the biblical timeline is all wrong. A great deal of evidence from multiple sources supports the idea that the universe, Earth and humanity are very old.¹¹ It’s like 300 witnesses are corroborating a very old universe, but one witness is claiming a very young universe.
Of course, in any research, majority does not win. Popularity is never a guiding principle when facts and truth are concerned.¹² If that one witness was God, then we would have to take His word for it. After all, it’s His universe; He created it. But it’s not His word. It’s the word of one group of interpreters. They are not the Heavenly Father. And they are not the only interpreters.
Again, it’s a problem of perception. Again, there are many barriers to perception, especially in changing our perceptions (beliefs) when we attempt to discover new things. Attitudes can block our ability to learn. We see attitude clouding the perceptions of some believers.
One group of interpreters—biblical literalists¹³—is at war with science.
Why a war? While it remains true that some scientists are anti-God, science is not. At its most benign, science merely studies the products of God’s creation—what we call reality
or nature.
Every day, we have proof of their excellence in the interpretation of God’s creation. The technology we enjoy comes from that excellence.
Some believers confuse their beliefs about the Bible with Truth, just as some scientists confuse their track record of discovery with their belief in atheism. Both groups are suffering confusion. Both need more humility.
Because the Bible is Truth does not mean that any interpretation of that Truth is true. Some interpretations are better than others, but none of them are Truth. The Bible is Truth, but so many conflicting beliefs about it are not. Yet, this is not a fatal flaw.
The Need to Remain Flexible
Humility and a hunger to learn more can cure the flaws in each of us. If we are willing to let go of all that is imperfect in us, and to move ever closer to God’s Truth, then our current beliefs are good, because we are on our way. But if we hold onto our current beliefs as if we have already arrived at our destination, then we are merely sitting on the path, blocking the way; our beliefs become an abomination.
To any believer, it should be obvious that they do not already possess all of God’s Truth. That fact, if nothing else, should make them humble to learn more. It should make them willing to let go of what is imperfect and to learn new things that are closer to God’s Truth. This flexibility does not mean that they should be willing to accept any new idea that may lead them away from God’s Truth, but they won’t know if a new idea is good or bad unless they look at it objectively and spiritually, first.
Science studies reality. The results of science are not perfect, but they’re close. This is our reality with a high degree of confidence. To entirely ignore science is to ignore reality and suffer delusion. Yet, to ignore God is to ignore creation—the foundation of all reality.
Our purpose is to find answers by using humility, hard work and a righteous hunger. In support of that purpose, we will use science, logic, mathematics, religion, inspiration, spirituality and the Holy Spirit.
The Love of God
How is suffering and tragedy compatible with God’s love? This question and similar continue to be asked, and all too often, inadequately answered. Sometimes, the right answers to our most compelling questions prove difficult to understand. The logic and reasoning behind those answers reside beyond our normal, everyday experience.
In order to understand such answers, we need to learn new things to establish a foundation of understanding where the seeds of new wisdom can grow. For instance, any high school or college student being introduced to calculus can overcome a great deal of confusion simply by knowing that this topic of advanced mathematics is all about studying rates of change. That one distinction blew away all of the barriers for this one student of mathematics. Suddenly, it all made sense.
Learning God’s Truth can be aided by finding the right distinctions.
Learning any new thing challenges us. Sometimes, we need to tear down the walls of prior misunderstanding or wrong understanding in order to grapple with a new paradigm—a new way of looking at things. The old way served its purpose and stands as a valuable stepping stone. But like a young bird nudged out of its nest, we need to move beyond such things and capture a more mature worldview.
History remains overflowing with examples of this kind of transition or failed transition. One hundred fifty years ago, some (most? all?) scientists felt that Homer’s Iliad was nothing more than creative Greek fantasy. One man proved them wrong. Shy and awkward, Frank Calvert, an Englishman, did not have such preconceived notions. He simply followed his research to the obvious¹⁴ conclusion that Homer’s ancient Troy was at or near Hisarlik, Turkey. That is why he purchased half of the hill which later attracted the attention of the unscrupulous and infamous Heinrich Schliemann.
Such a paradigm shift happens in science often enough. One of the more potent examples came to us when Newtonian physics was improved by Einsteinian Relativity. Newton’s laws work very well up until one gets close to the velocity of light; then they fall apart. Relativity took care of many of those earlier shortcomings.
From a Christian perspective, we have the Old Covenant laws being improved by the New Covenant of grace from Christ’s sacrifice. This does not mean that the laws are worthless or no longer valid. It does mean, however, that one’s motivation in obeying the laws have changed. Instead of attempting to obey the laws to become righteous, one obeys the laws because it is the expected thing to do. One puts love of God first, and the laws naturally follow.
But does God really love us? Is there a God up there who cares? Returning to Rubenstein’s concern regarding God wanting Auschwitz to happen, we must ask if there is another alternative to his dismissal of an apparent obscenity. To this we must answer emphatically, Yes!
And there is a ready analogy to help us understand.
In nature, we see that giving birth can be painful to the mother. The doctor or midwife in attendance understands this. They do their best to comfort the expectant mother, but they cannot remove the pain, for it is a part of the process.
The advancement or maturation of humanity is a birthing process. The reawakening of God’s children is the goal of this process. God does not want to remove tragedy, any more than doctors and midwives can remove the pain of labor. Those in attendance do not want the mother to suffer, but they want a successful delivery despite that pain.
There are many steps to God’s plan. Was prophecy fulfilled with the birth of modern Israel? And would modern Israel have been possible without the Holocaust?
What may be important to the individual human does not necessarily coincide with what is important to God. Physical reality is a harsh master—sometimes seductive and frequently brutal. God has left us to decide which master we will follow. Only with that freedom can we ever hope to reawaken, but we can only serve one master.
If God were to intervene with powerful miracles to dazzle our egos, we could appear to move toward the Father, but only to follow our physical master, the ego, instead.
By ego,
we mean the false self which stands apart from the whole. Ego is the essence of separateness and selfishness. This is the poison taken in the Garden.
God can create anything. Such a display of power, though, easily seduces the ego. Some skeptics have claimed that it would help if God showed us His presence with a display of power. By such an attempt to help, God would be defeating His own purpose. Why? Tempting God only strengthens ego, the burden we are attempting to eliminate.
Despite the protestations of atheists for God to show Himself,
we have to realize that such an act would prove counterproductive.
Like the expectant mother, suddenly endowed with the power of creation, we could wish away the pain of deliverance, only to wish away the birth of reawakening, as well.
With that reawakening, God’s love shines on us, entirely realized. With that rebirth, the original purpose for our physical form has been fulfilled.
Our Path Ahead
As we’ve already stated, our primary goal is to find God’s reason for Noah’s Flood.
Our secondary goal is to find a biblical timeline compatible with those of mainstream science. This second goal will help us achieve the first, but it will also help us heal a false rift between science and religion. Why false? Because science studies the products of God’s creation (reality); and spirituality (the core of religion) studies the sources of creation. Both science and religion complement each other, because—between the two of them—they cover all of existence.
Along the way, we will attempt to understand,
Who were the sons of God in Genesis 6? The answers given by past scholars are flawed.
Who were the daughters of men?
How and why was wisdom hidden in the Bible?
What were the elements of the Flood story and does the story offer any clues for our quest?
What is God’s purpose and how did something before the Flood threaten that purpose?
What kinds of barriers do we have to overcome?
What tools do we have to help us in our quest?
How do we find the factors needed to give us the right timeline?
Once we have the right timeline, how do we use it to discover the real reason behind Noah’s Flood?
Humility in the Search for Answers
Any good researcher knows that humility and restraint are important attitudes to have. Too many people confuse these with skepticism—an attitude which includes the bias of doubt. Skepticism also too frequently includes other attitudes such as unsupported dismissiveness or even self-indulgent ridicule. These do not belong in an investigation. Not only are they biased, but they are inherently subjective and lack the restraint valued so much by scientists and non-scientists, alike.
This research has discovered a biblical timeline compatible with those of mainstream science. Of course, the proof of any discovery can sometimes require other discoveries. Einstein’s relativity, for instance, had to wait until other experiments could be devised and carried out. The time dilation experienced by astronauts in orbit had to wait more than half a century, because rockets that were powerful enough did not yet exist when Einstein wrote his breakthrough papers at the beginning of the twentieth century.
But sometimes, discoveries can predict other effects or phenomena, or they can lead to new discoveries that had previously remained hidden and unsuspected.
Indeed, within this book we make new discoveries, like the identity of the culprit behind God’s need for Noah’s Flood, like the real meaning of the seemingly outrageous longevity of the early patriarchs, and like the discovery of the Jewish mystics’ Kabbalistic¹⁵ Tree of Life
embedded in Genesis.
Within this book, we will look at how a new biblical timeline reveals to us, through science, the identity of the Flood’s target—a target whose description matches that found in Genesis 6.
This book contains many lessons. The most important lesson is not how to interpret the Bible or what actually happened leading up to the Flood. The most important lesson of this book is that we need to maintain humility and a hunger for answers. Like the joy at finding a pearl of great price, these are the attitudes we must always hold.
Too many have stopped on the road to salvation thinking that they have it all figured out. They imply that their knowledge is equivalent to that of God, though when cornered on this point, they will deny it. Yet, even though they deny it, they will then persist in holding onto their current biblical worldview as if it were the end of their journey.
When I go on a long journey, I’m always concerned that I will forget something. I’m constantly humble to let inspiration guide me. Did I forget my house keys? Did I pack my toothbrush? Do I have my itinerary? When I leave a hotel room, I check it thoroughly for items I may have left. Yes, I even check under the bed. I don’t assume anything is done. On something as important as salvation, I always assume that I have more to learn.
So, even with all of the research, here, there is still a great deal more to do. This is not the final word on the subject.
With so many prophecies from the Bible’s book of Revelation already accomplished, it seems that the next great disaster is about to strike humanity. We need to understand Noah’s Flood. We need to understand God’s purpose behind it, because that purpose is not yet done.
These discoveries hold a degree of internal consistency with the Bible and with reality (the findings of science). They are at odds with some interpretations of the Bible, but that is nothing new. There have been conflicting interpretations for more than two thousand years.
The details in this book are the result of a lifetime’s work. This alone does not make right those details, or the conclusions derived from them. This body of work may prove valuable if only in stimulating further investigation. Perhaps the reader will find something more.
Rod Martin, Jr.
December 2013
Cebu, Philippines
Note to the 2018 Edition
A number of minor corrections and additions have been made to help clarify the wording of the 2013 edition. The bulk of the information has remained unchanged.
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Part 1: The Noah Mystery
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Chapter 1: The Water of Death
Many problems fill Noah’s Flood story. God tells this six hundred year old patriarch to build a big boat, because He wants to destroy, with a massive flood, all land borne life on Earth. And yet, He wants to retain breeding stock for the purpose of starting all over again. Man had done something very, very bad.
Did the Flood really happen? Was it really a worldwide event? From where did all of the extra water come? Where did all of that extra water go when the deed was done?
Genesis 7:20 states that the Flood exceeded the height of the tallest mountain by at least 23 feet (15 cubits or ~6.8 meters). If this means Everest, then we have, in the added water, a volume far greater than that in our current oceans. Not only would the oceans be covered by another 29,052 feet, but all of the continents would be covered by this extra water, too. Today, the average ocean depth stands at about 12,000 feet (roughly 3,500 meters). During the Flood, the average ocean depth would have been closer to 41,000 feet.
From where did all of those extra millions of cubic miles of water come? Nothing on Earth could have supplied that extra water. It certainly did not come from melting polar ice caps. For one thing, ice cores from Greenland prove that over 100,000 years of ice have been laid down on that northerly island. Antarctica holds a similarly ancient blanket of ice. If melting polar glaciers had resulted in the Flood, then the Flood could only have occurred more than 100 millennia ago, prior to the current ice sheets. Could the Flood have occurred that long ago?
One far more compelling reason why melting polar ice could not have been the source of the extra water concerns the quantity of ice available. Even if all of the ice on Earth were to melt, sea levels would rise only about 220 feet (about 68 meters). This proves to be more than 28,000 feet short of the needed sea level rise. Two hundred and twenty feet would cover only small and medium-sized hills—no mountains—and only along the coast. Inland, where elevation is far higher, no hills would be covered, and no valleys either. In fact, better than 90% of the planet’s land is above 220 feet elevation.
If the Flood really did happen, and if it was
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