2025 Bible Study Group

Genesis 5

Enoch was the first man to be bodily assumed into heaven. He was so pleasing to God that God took him out of the world.

When Noah was born, he was seen by the godly line to be a fulfillment of prophecy: “This one will give us rest from our work and from the pain of our hands arising from the ground which Yahweh has cursed.” In this sense, Noah can be seen as a type of Christ.

Before the Fall, Adam's work was good. After the Fall, men's works were evil, and so rest is the only remedy for evil works. It's the same reason God rejected Cain's sacrifice but accepted Abel's. Cain's offering was offered on the basis of his own works. Abel's was offered on the basis of faith in Christ.

Genesis 6

Satan intended to further corrupt Man by corrupting his seed, not just his spiritual seed as in the case of Cain (who was a forerunner of Antichrist), but now physically. The Book of Enoch presents the giants as sons of fallen angels, and the spirits of the giants going on to become demons.

"Then Yahweh saw that the evil of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually."

The Bible teaching that the heart of Man is not good, not basically good, not neutral, not mostly good, but only evil continually. How many times does God need to say this until Christians believe it?

Like Enoch, Noah walked with God. He was not sinless, but he found favor with God. God tells Noah to prepare the Ark to avoid the coming judgement. Interestingly, God promises to destroy animals with Man, as well as save animals with Noah.

Biblically, water, chaos, entropy, and death are linked together. For God to flood the world is almost like a statement on His part that the world has become chaotic and rejected His order. It's almost a rewinding of the clock back to the Creation, when the world was an abyss of primordial chaos before He began assigning order and giving function to it by separating and making distinction.

The pitch that Noah covers the Ark in can be translated literally as "covering" or "atonement." It is like the covering of animal skins that God gives to Adam and Eve and is a shadow pointing forward to the once for all atonement of Jesus Christ, who's sacrifice covers for us who are being saved.
 
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GodfatherPartTwo said:
"Then Yahweh saw that the evil of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually."

The Bible teaching that the heart of Man is not good, not basically good, not neutral, not mostly good, but only evil continually. How many times does God need to say this until Christians believe it?
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The Bible teaches that we are sinners and guilty of specific sins but I think there is a danger to Calvinist language where everything and anything we do or think is sin, so that there is no meaningful sense of it or need to make distinctions between what we need to confess. But I'm not saying you're wrong.
 
JCSteel said:
The Bible teaches that we are sinners and guilty of specific sins but I think there is a danger to Calvinist language where everything and anything we do or think is sin, so that there is no meaningful sense of it or need to make distinctions between what we need to confess. But I'm not saying you're wrong.
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It's not Calvinist language. It's just Biblical language. The heart of Man only devises evil continually. James says that whoever breaks one Law has broken the entire Law. So we are indeed guilty of all sin, not just a few, specific sins. The works-based religions have a problem with this because it doesn't fit into their system. We ought to confess for sins we do know and even for the ones we don't know, but God knows.
 
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Genesis 7

God is the one who shuts the Ark door behind Noah.

"Then the flood came upon the earth for forty days, and the water multiplied and lifted up the ark, so that it rose above the earth."

There is the language of lifting up and raising. Judgement goes downward, Salvation goes upward. The Ark is lifted up to save those in the Noahic Covenant. The Son of Man is lifted up to save those in the New Covenant.

John 3:14 And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up; 15so that whoever believes will in Him have eternal life.

Isaiah 52:13 Behold, My Servant will prosper; He will be high and lifted up and greatly exalted.

Isaiah uses every Hebrew word there is to describe rising, ascending, in his prophecy of Jesus.
 
JCSteel said:
The language in Genesis 6 portrays God as being disgusted with what he has made. The KJV says it grieved Him in his heart. I imagine that this was a period in human development where violence and man's inhumanity to man had become more widespread than before. Men lived longer, they were populating the Earth, spreading destruction, and God is amazed that even their thoughts were only evil continually.

"The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence."
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Gazza said:
I think 2 things stuck out to me in chapter 6. Things must have been REALLY evil back then for God to want to wipe out humanity completely, and things are going to have to get even MORE evil before the Lord returns again. With all of the vile wickedness that we are aware of that is going on nowadays thanks to the advances in technology, it’s mind blowing to think that things could have been worse then than they are now! However, scripture does say there is nothing new under the sun (Ecclesiastes 1:9). Stay alert, stay in prayer brothers.View attachment 16155View attachment 16156
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What are people's thoughts on Genesis 6:2, 6:4, and 6:5?

"the sons of God saw that the daughters of humans were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose."

"The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God went to the daughters of humans and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown."

"The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time."

I have heard people say the sons of God were the fallen angels, and the Nephilim were their offspring. The giants such as Goliath were Nephilim. This was the cause of the evil and corruption mentioned in Genesis 6:11 and 6:12.

"Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight and was full of violence. 12 God saw how corrupt the earth had become, for all the people on earth had corrupted their ways."

The claim is these reasons are why God flooded the Earth. I have always found this to be an interesting interpretation.
 
@WaveMechanic I think that's a good interpretation. It seems to be the Apostle Paul's: 1 Corinthians 11:10 Therefore the woman ought to have a symbol of authority on her head, because of the angels.

Genesis 8

Noah functions in a priestly role after the deluge waters had abated. He makes burnt offerings to God who accepts his worship. There is a pattern here of water followed by fire that gets picked up throughout the Bible, such as in the story of Elijah, then again in the Apostle Peter's commentary of Noah's story.

I don't know if there is a deeper meaning to the story of the raven and the dove. I'm curious if anyone has any thoughts on that.

Lastly, God promises not to flood the earth again. The Noahic Covenant comes with a promise to maintain the natural seasons of the world, even a law of uniformity.

“I will never again curse the ground because of man, for the intent of man’s heart is evil from his youth; and I will never again strike down every living thing as I have done. 22 While all the days of the earth remain, Seedtime and harvest, And cold and heat, And summer and winter, And day and night Shall not cease.”

While the flood was successful in what God had set it out to accomplish, it still remained true that Man is evil from his youth. The Flood was not the spiritual remedy for Man's spiritual deadness.
 
Thoughts on Genesis 7-8:

Here is an intriguing passage:

And the Lord smelled a sweet savour; and the Lord said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake; for the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth; neither will I again smite any more every thing living, as I have done.

Is another case where God's choices are changed by human behaviour. So we do indeed have the power to change God's mind/plans based on our deeds?

I also find it somewhat interesting that the rain fell for forty days an forty nights when we also have Jesus spending the same length of time in the wilderness, Israelites spending 40 years in the desert and Jesus spending 40 days with the disciples after the resurrection. What exactly does this number 40 mean? Not sure.
 
Tippy said:
Thoughts on Genesis 7-8:

Here is an intriguing passage:

And the Lord smelled a sweet savour; and the Lord said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake; for the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth; neither will I again smite any more every thing living, as I have done.

Is another case where God's choices are changed by human behaviour. So we do indeed have the power to change God's mind/plans based on our deeds?

I also find it somewhat interesting that the rain fell for forty days an forty nights when we also have Jesus spending the same length of time in the wilderness, Israelites spending 40 years in the desert and Jesus spending 40 days with the disciples after the resurrection. What exactly does this number 40 mean? Not sure.
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Your best bet would probably be to just google search “biblical significance of number 40”. It gives a whole bunch of examples, the main one being completion. Numerology has always fascinated me, like the number 7 for example. God commands us to let our soil “rest” on the 7th year. Bit of a side story…. I remember a time years ago I grew some vegetables in my little backyard patch, the first 6 years were great, and I’m pretty sure it was in the 7th year that I had a lousy crop. It’s always nice to see Gods word working in real life situations.
 
While reading Genesis 8:20 this evening which states,

"Then Noah built an altar to the Lord and, taking some of all the clean animals and clean birds, he sacrificed burnt offerings on it."

I decided to look up burnt offerings because I really didn't know much about this practice.

Looking into it I found an interesting fact which may be well known to others, but I had no idea.

The definition of the word, holocaust is the same as a burnt offering.

Both are a sacrifice consumed by fire. This was new information to me, and I found it quite interesting.
 
WaveMechanic said:
The definition of the word, holocaust is the same as a burnt offering.

Both are a sacrifice consumed by fire. This was new information to me, and I found it quite interesting.
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Not to derail the thread but that is why I refuse to call it the Holocaust. There's too much religious import. What they are saying by naming it that is that the 6 "million" were sacrificed to be a pleasing offering to God for the sake of the Gentiles. Basically, they are claiming to be Jesus.
 
WaveMechanic said:
While reading Genesis 8:20 this evening which states,

"Then Noah built an altar to the Lord and, taking some of all the clean animals and clean birds, he sacrificed burnt offerings on it."

I decided to look up burnt offerings because I really didn't know much about this practice.

Looking into it I found an interesting fact which may be well known to others, but I had no idea.

The definition of the word, holocaust is the same as a burnt offering.

Both are a sacrifice consumed by fire. This was new information to me, and I found it quite interesting.
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Stone choir podcast talk about it on one of their episodes, it’s intriguing. Just can’t recall which one is was though.
 
I also want to add that there is a theme in the Bible of Israel being the ones to succeed where Adam failed. Adam, the one man, failed in the Garden. Israel, the many people, failed over and over again and even killed God. Jesus, as the true Adam and true Israel, succeeds where they failed. The Jews today see themselves as still trying to succeed, not already having failed, and so they act in a way that seeks to usurp the throne of Christ. If Christ has the right to rule over the world, then they have the right to rule over the world because they believe they are Christ. Many Messianic prophecies they say are fulfilled in the state of Israel, and so they twist the Scriptures to their own destruction.
 
Some people here have pointed out what seems to be inconsistency in the character of God, that He seems to change, revise, replan. On a foundational level, the Bible is clear that God does not change. Indeed, He cannot change. He is immutable. However, one can forgive this perception as it can be easily explained by the Bible itself. Although God in His nature does not change, the way He relates to men via the Covenants does change. The Covenants are distinct from each other, some overlap, but some are wholly distinct.

The first Covenant, the Adamic Covenant, is how God relates to Adam and everyone who is under Adam's representation. The covenant was conditional, depending on if Adam ate from the tree or not. Because Adam did eat from the tree, he becomes liable to the curses of the covenant and so does everyone who is born under his headship. This is why the natural man cannot escape death, spiritual death, futile works, pain in childbirth, etc, because they all are born under Adam's covenant.

The second Covenant, the Noahic Covenant, is unconditional on the part of God. Everyone who is in Noah, which includes all of us, enjoy the benefits of the Noahic Covenant, which include God's promise to uphold the uniformity of nature, giving meat for Man to eat, no global flood, etc. However, because there is overlap between the Noahic Covenant and the Adamic Covenant, men are still under the curses of the Adamic Covenant even though they enjoy the benefits of the Noahic Covenant.

The question at the back of our mind then is how were men like Adam, Abel, Enoch, and Noah saved? The answer lies in Genesis 3: the promised seed. Throughout all of human history, God has never left men without witness of His Son and so these men of faith were able to look forward in faith to this promised seed and thus enjoy the benefits of the New Covenant, namely eternal life. These men, by faith in Christ, were taken out of the Adamic Covenant and were made members of the New Covenant. We will cover one more covenant in our time in Genesis, the Abrahamic Covenant.
 
God never changes and He sees everything, but the Bible describes Him reacting in real time as if He is surprised by our behavior and by events, like in texts that read "and when God saw that Leah was unloved, He enabled her to conceive", ect. I think the Bible is written like that was so we could relate to God as a person, like as a father who is grieved by the foolishness of his children, and responds accordingly. And we're not outside time as He is.
 
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Genesis 9 -

I found this interesting - 'And the bow shall be in the cloud; and I will look upon it, that I may remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is upon the earth.'

Considering that nowadays the rainbow has been co-opeted by the LGBTQ

Not sure what to make of the curse to Canaan. Would current geopolitical conflicts represent this curse in some way?

Genesis 10 - just a list of names. Hard to engage with this book here.
 
GodfatherPartTwo said:
Some people here have pointed out what seems to be inconsistency in the character of God, that He seems to change, revise, replan. On a foundational level, the Bible is clear that God does not change. Indeed, He cannot change. He is immutable. However, one can forgive this perception as it can be easily explained by the Bible itself. Although God in His nature does not change, the way He relates to men via the Covenants does change. The Covenants are distinct from each other, some overlap, but some are wholly distinct.

The first Covenant, the Adamic Covenant, is how God relates to Adam and everyone who is under Adam's representation. The covenant was conditional, depending on if Adam ate from the tree or not. Because Adam did eat from the tree, he becomes liable to the curses of the covenant and so does everyone who is born under his headship. This is why the natural man cannot escape death, spiritual death, futile works, pain in childbirth, etc, because they all are born under Adam's covenant.

The second Covenant, the Noahic Covenant, is unconditional on the part of God. Everyone who is in Noah, which includes all of us, enjoy the benefits of the Noahic Covenant, which include God's promise to uphold the uniformity of nature, giving meat for Man to eat, no global flood, etc. However, because there is overlap between the Noahic Covenant and the Adamic Covenant, men are still under the curses of the Adamic Covenant even though they enjoy the benefits of the Noahic Covenant.

The question at the back of our mind then is how were men like Adam, Abel, Enoch, and Noah saved? The answer lies in Genesis 3: the promised seed. Throughout all of human history, God has never left men without witness of His Son and so these men of faith were able to look forward in faith to this promised seed and thus enjoy the benefits of the New Covenant, namely eternal life. These men, by faith in Christ, were taken out of the Adamic Covenant and were made members of the New Covenant. We will cover one more covenant in our time in Genesis, the Abrahamic Covenant.
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It seems to me from the way the Bible is written that God is revising and reacting to human behaviours and in some cases disappointed or surprised by them.

Look at this:

'
11The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence. 12And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth.

Noah Builds the Ark

13And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth.'

It appears here that God is looking at the corrupt earth and responding to this. He is reactive in this sense.

Here is God earlier in Genesis with another observation:

5And GOD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. 6And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart. 7And the LORD said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them.

Here God is repenting - regretting his creation and then making a decision to destroy what he had built (which he later takes back once Noah does the sacrifice later.
 
Tippy said:
Here God is repenting - regretting his creation and then making a decision to destroy what he had built (which he later takes back once Noah does the sacrifice later.
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Like JCSteel pointed out, it's analogous language. God doesn't regret in the same sense that you and I regret. We regret because we make real mistakes, but God doesn't make mistakes.

Because God is transcendent and outside of His own creation, we have no way of comprehending Him. If we could comprehend Him then He wouldn't be God. But we can apprehend Him, and the Bible uses this kind of language so that we can. John Calvin calls it baby talk. You wouldn't see a father talk to his infant the same way he would talk to a professor, but you would see the father babble to an infant for the infant's sake.
 
Genesis 9

God enumerates the benefits of the Noahic Covenant. He then gives a sign, a symbol, of the covenant, the rainbow. When people get married, they form a covenant, then they wear a wedding ring as a symbol of their covenant. Covenants often have signs, something that someone can point to be reminded of the covenant.

Between Noah's three sons, Shem is the most blessed. It is from the line of Shem that Christ would come to be born. All of the semitic peoples are descended from Shem, that is why they are called Semitic. There are few things more hypocritical than for Jews to call anyone antisemitic when they are so genocidal against other semitic people groups, like Arabs.

Genesis 10

Noah's sons begin to repopulate the earth. God had told them to be fruitful and multiply just as he told Adam. There is a sense of new beginning. From the cursed line of Canaan, Nimrod was born. Nimrod, like Cain, was a type of Antichrist. He was a mighty man and his kingdom included Babel in the land of Shinar, which would go on to become Babylon.
 
GodfatherPartTwo said:
Genesis 10

Noah's sons begin to repopulate the earth. God had told them to be fruitful and multiply just as he told Adam. There is a sense of new beginning. From the cursed line of Canaan, Nimrod was born. Nimrod, like Cain, was a type of Antichrist. He was a mighty man and his kingdom included Babel in the land of Shinar, which would go on to become Babylon.
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Genesis 11-12

As I've mentioned earlier, the Tower of Babel serves as a warning against man's pride. The tower was likely built to reach the heavens and connect with spiritual powers. In response, God intervened by confusing their languages and scattering them, ultimately breaking their plans and restoring order.

This story demonstrates God's sovereignty and sets the stage for His greater plan to unite humanity through Jesus Christ. I remember an old stream where Roosh (humorously) suggested that this story serves as a warning against multiculturalism, haha I miss him.

After the scattering at Babel, we are introduced to Abram. The beginning of his story highlights how God often calls us to step out of our comfort zones to grow in faith. Abram’s journey shows that true faith involves surrendering control and trusting God in the unknown.
 
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