If We Were to Take the Flood Account Literally..

by Yan Bibiyan 92 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  Open mind

  Mark Twain, in Letters From the Earth, had a similar take to Billy's. Only he zeroed in on the housefly. Enjoy!!

  Letter VI

  On the third day, about noon, it was found that a fly and been left behind. The return voyage turned out to be long and difficult, on account of the lack of chart and compass, and because of the changed aspects of all coasts, the steadily rising water having submerged some of the lower landmarks and given to higher ones an unfamiliar look; but after sixteen days of earnest and faithful seeking, the fly was found at last, and received on board with hymns of praise and gratitude, the Family standing meanwhile uncovered, our of reverence for its divine origin. It was weary and worn, and had suffered somewhat from the weather, but was otherwise in good estate. Men and their families had died of hunger on barren mountain tops, but it had not lacked for food, the multitudinous corpses furnishing it in rank and rotten richness. Thus was the sacred bird providentially preserved.

  Providentially. That is the word. For the fly had not been left behind by accident. No, the hand of Providence was in it. There are no accidents. All things that happen, happen for a purpose. They are foreseen from the beginning of time, they are ordained from the beginning of time. From the dawn of Creation the Lord had foreseen that Noah, being alarmed and confused by the invasion of the prodigious brevet fossils, would prematurely fly to sea unprovided with a certain invaluable disease. He would have all the other diseases, and could distribute them among the new races of men as they appeared in the world, but he would lack one of the very best -- typhoid fever; a malady which, when the circumstances are especially favorable, is able to utterly wreck a patient without killing him; for it can restore him to his feet with a long life in him, and yet deaf, dumb, blind, crippled, and idiotic. The housefly is its main disseminator, and is more competent and more calamitously effective than all the other distributors of the dreaded scourge put together. And so, by foreordination from the beginning of time, this fly was left behind to seek out a typhoid corpse and feed upon its corruptions and gaum its legs with germs and transmit them to the re-peopled world for permanent business. From that one housefly, in the ages that have since elapsed, billions of sickbeds have been stocked, billions of wrecked bodies sent tottering about the earth, and billions of cemeteries recruited with the dead.

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  Wouldn't it be a hoot if Sam Clemens were alive to post on JWN?

  Oh well. Between Farkel, OUTLAW & Billy the Ex I think we're pretty fortunate.

  om
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  truthseeker

  This is an interesting discussion.

  I think the problem is most of you are looking at the ark design from a human perspective. So what if it wasn't big enough for all animal life or wouldn't withstand the water pressure? Don't you think the Creator took that into account? Would it not be impossible for God to reseed the planet with new animal and plant life?

  The flood served two purposes - it forced the angels who had sinned to return to heaven and it was a judgement of those on the planet. The demons that returned to heaven were stripped of their powers to materialize as humans. Had they not first dissoved their flesh and blood containers, they would have perished.
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  notverylikely

  For instance, it is my understanding that in the deep past there have been multiple die offs and geologically speaking "sudden" resurgence of many species.

  Well, they would have to be rocks or soil or water for a geologist to study them since geology is concerned with the planet, the oceans, vulcanism, tectonic movement, etc.

  I'm not saying the flood story is literal only that we do not know the genetic makeup of species who long ago were yet to have, let us say, evolved, to the various finite species we have today.

  What do you mean, that there were more or less species in the past? I am not sure what you mean by "finite" species we have today?

  Is it so off the mark for a Christian to believe that perhaps in the deep past the species were not as differentiated as they are today?

  We have a pretty good record that shows that they were.
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  truthseeker

  Billy,

  You said:

  It's all very simple to understand the literal account of Noah's flood. After angels disobediently come down and married women, God's solution was to destroy all the dinosaurs and most of the humans in a global flood. God's righteousness required that he let the disobedient angels survive... along with 3500 species of mosquitoes.

  Satan knew that sinning carried a death sentence, not only for him but Adam and Eve. Since God did not immediately execute anyone, some angels noticed this. After a few centuries when the human population had grown and Satan and Adam and Eve were still living, some angels decided that God was not going to do anything.
  
  What they didn't know was that 1,000 years is but a day to God. Adam did eventually die, at 930 years and so did his wife. They died within the timeframe that God said they would if they ate the forbidden fruit. In God's mind, they were both dead in less than a day.
  
  If God had permitted the angels to go about their way, copulating with women then the entire human line would have been corrupted, thus preventing the birth of the Messiah. God could have simply destroyed the entire human race but he made a way out. After all, Christ was his master worker and he found joy in the creation of humanity.
  
  When the fallen angels materizlied and took on flesh, it did not come under the Adamic line of descent. It was a counterfeit flesh. This spelt doom for the children of these fallen angelic fathers. They had no covenant with God and were considered outcasts in his eyes.

  The angels that disobeyed God and left their natural home were outcasts. They misused their powers. God did not want them to become human, if he had he would have given them the right to do so. They lowered themselves in stature.
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  notverylikely

  Truthseeker, your rampant speculation with JW overtones is entirely amusing.
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  truthseeker

  it's good to look at things with a fresh approach...

  The angels that came to Earth could not rid themselves of all of their spiritual attributes that they were created with. They could not alter their internal makeup which is why their children were giants. This is in stark contrast to Jesus, who had a prehuman existence in heaven but was born completely human.
  
  Perhaps this is why God said at Genesis 6:3, "My Spirit will not remain with mankind forever, because they are corrupt. Their days will be 120 years."
  
  By coming down to Earth and mating with women the angels violated God's law of marriage, that a man would leave his father and his mother and he would stick to his wife and become one flesh. In a sense, the materialized angels who married and coupulated with women stole what rightfully belonged to man in the normal course of events.

  Violating the one flesh standard was unacceptable to God, this is why the human line became contaminated and polluted by Satan's way of thining. Think of it this way. Leviticus 19:19 says "You must not crossbreed two different kinds of your livestock, sow your fields with two kinds of seed, or put on a garment made of two kinds of material." Those angels that came to Earth crossbred two different kinds of flesh; that of the spirit realm and a human which produced the Nephilim. The Mosaic law provided penalties for cross breeding two different spieces. Sexual perversions resulted in the death penalty. The angels left their natural home and came to earth. They were created in God's image and had both male and female attributes but looked upon mankind with curiosity and cultivated a desire from within their mind and figurative heart.

  At the time of the flood, the angels that materialized had to revert back to their spiritual form in order to keep living. They gambled that by dematerializing, God would allow them back into the spirit realm, but once you fall from perfection there is no going back in God's eyes, so they were punished.
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  notverylikely

  it's good to look at things with a fresh approach...

  It is. Let me know when you do, please.
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  exwhyzee

  The ark having been too small to carry any more repentant humans if there happened to have been more, is much like the inevitability of Jesus death. Jesus was sent to die for mankinds sins and whether or not people listened to him and repented, he would have had to die anyway in order to "buy back" the life that Adam and Eve lost for us. Why was it such a shock that he died since it was all planned? The trubulation and Armegedon would have to come and Satan and the demons would have to be thrown out of heaven. The thousand year reign would have to happen...it was all fortold in the beginning.
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  Yan Bibiyan

  I think the thread veered off to (equally facinating) side discussions.

  My initial point was to bring attention to the glaring conclusion that the Creator had already decided who makes it onboard and who doesn't.

  Disturbing detail is that no child, no baby, no matter how innocent, was good enough to be saved. It is beyond comprehension that the innocent creatures made by God, in God's image were as corrupt and unrighteous as the Nephilym...to the point that this is given as an example today by JWs for the precedent of God killing children in a calamity.
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  WTWizard

  This simply underscores how lousy a God Jehovah really is--as if he needs any more embarrassment. Jehovah knew that only 8 would make it, yet he had Noah wasting his time preaching to people that Jehovah knew wouldn't respond. That time could have been better spent on building the ark better, shortening the waiting time, or living better in the present before the flood came. Or, if there could have been some way for Jehovah to ensure many would be saved, then why in hell didn't he send the angels to help Noah with the preaching while Noah could focus on building his ark bigger? Or, maybe building more than one ark.

  And, no I do NOT take the account literally. That would mean we are all descended from a limited lineage of people that Noah came from, and that sounds totally unreasonable. (Like the witlesses do.)