Connecting the Dots Via the Scarlet Thread

How many petals do you see?

When I was in kindergarten, I remember the teacher giving us activity sheets whereby there was an incomplete drawing, such as the one shown on the right.  We had to connect the dots by using a coloured pencil to draw a line from 1 to 2, from 2 to 3, and so on, and upon connecting the last pair of dots, the picture would be revealed.

By just glancing at the drawing, we can figure out that it is that of a flower because of the stem and leaves below, and the smiley face representing the centre of the flower.  But we cannot really make out how many petals there are exactly, until we connect the dots sequentially from 1 to 16.

The Bible appears to many of us like that incomplete drawing.  We are able to figure out the big picture, such as that God loves us, that Jesus came to die for our sins, that we will go to heaven after we depart from this earth.

But we struggle to make out certain passages in the Bible.  For example, why did God punish some yet let others get away?  Or why did God choose women of disrepute to be Jesus' genealogy?  These are like the unseen petals in that drawing.

So how do we "connect the dots" for such passages?  For that kindergarten activity, we used a coloured pencil.  For the Bible, we have to use a "scarlet thread".

Bloggers for Christ.  Thanks Terence for the lunch, and Ps Kenny for the photo.

I was having lunch with a couple of good friends I met in blogosphere at Folks Collective just a couple of days ago.  The place is packed during lunchtime and the food is served in 3 cute red containers.

In the course of conversation, we happened to talk about my re-blogging, and how I felt led to share the journey I have personally gone through. How I had many tough questions about passages in the Bible that I did not dare ask, and how everything sudden made sense when one sees it in the light of that first prophecy in the garden of Eden.

BlogPastor then came up with the term "scarlet thread"!

Now, imagine you are watching a game of chess, with God on one side, and the devil on the other.

All of God's moves are to fulfil...

The First Prophecy

Gen 3:15

"And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise you on the head, and you shall bruise him on the heel."

Earlier in that chapter, we read about how Adam and Eve succumbed to the temptation of the devil (who took the form of a serpent). God prophesied that someday, an offspring of Eve would ultimately crush the devil's head and bring about his defeat.

God has revealed His intention and thrown down the gauntlet.  What would Satan's response be?


All of Satan's counter-moves are to...

Stop the Seed!

Satan was told that one of Eve's descendants would cause his downfall, but he did not know who exactly. Hence, he did everything he could to stop the seed, and prevent the champion from coming forth.

Some examples would be:

• inspiring Cain to kill Abel (Gen 4:8)
• Abel's sacifice was pleasing to God, so he thought Abel was the promised seed

• getting his fallen angels to corrupt mankind by cohabiting with the daughters of Eve (Gen 6:2)
• this practice was so widespread that it reached the stage whereby Noah and his family were the only ones on the face of the earth to be pure humans, the rest were giants and freaks

• getting men to be attracted to other men in Sodom and Gomorrah
• because no seed would be able to come forth from homosexual relationships

• getting Onan to spill his seed (Gen 38:9)
• Satan would rather this, than for mankind to populate

When we start to see things that happen in the context of the great spiritual battle through the centuries, we will then realise why in some cases, God spared and yet in others, God judged.

So why the term "scarlet thread"?  "Thread" in the sense that it is the one underlying theme that weaves through the Bible from Genesis to Revelation "connecting the dots", as it were, and "scarlet" because it involves availing the blood of Jesus, going back in time to redeem the patriarchs and going forward into the future so that no one should perish.

Q2. Where Did Adam and Eve's Grandchildren Come From?

OK, let's get down to answering the 1st of the tough questions mentioned in the introductory post, which is "Where did Adam and Eve's grandchildren come from?"

Mom's way of explaining to us the facts of life.

Sometime in the late 1970s, my mom brought my 3 sisters and I into her room one evening, and showed us a book with cartoon illustrations entitled, "Where Did I Come From?"

Basically, that was her way of teaching us about the birds and the bees.

Afternote: I just checked and found that the book is available on Amazon!

http://www.amazon.com/Where-Did-Come-Peter-Mayle/dp/0818402539

Now with the advent of the Internet, we as parents do not need to bring up this topic because our kids find out about it online or via their peers.

Anyway, back to those days of growing up.  It was impressed upon me that science and the Bible were supposed to be kept separate, and never the twain shall meet. For example, science tells us that the universe came into being via a big bang millions of years ago; the Bible describes how God created everything in 6 days, just over 6,000 years ago, in 4,004 B.C.  Science tells us that we evolved from monkeys; the Bible tells us that we are all descendants of Adam and Eve.

After learning from that book my mom showed me about how humans procreate, and also being told that incest is a crime (even till today), I had a burning question but did not dare to ask anyone about it...

Given that Adam and Eve were the original and only pair of humans on earth, their sons Cain, Abel and Seth, and other children must have come forth from them. No problem with that. But what about the next generation, ie. their grandkids? How did they come about?

There was only one logical answer -- that Adam and Eve's children must have procreated among themselves!  I quickly perished that thought and asked the Lord to forgive me for even harbouring it.

In recent years, I have come to realise that science and the Bible should support each other, or rather, science should support the Bible.  If that is to be so, we should not and cannot run away from tough and difficult questions, but rather seek the answers out fervently so that we can have a settled peace of mind.

For the answer to this (and all other burning questions for that matter), we have to go back to Genesis, in particular chapter 3, whereby Adam and Eve had just partaken of the forbidden fruit, and God kick-started His redemption plan by declaring to Adam, Eve and the devil that a day will come when Jesus (as Eve's seed) would defeat the devil.

If you were the devil, what would you do upon hearing this? Try your utmost to prevent the prophesy from coming to pass!

And so we see him going to work on this straightaway.  In just the next chapter, Gen 4, we read the famous story about the very first murder -- where Cain killed his brother Abel.  When the devil saw that God had accepted Abel's sacrifice and rejected Cain's, he must have mistaken Abel to be the promised one, and thus inspired Cain to kill Abel.

This view is supported in the New Testament, where John, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, recorded in 1 John 3:12 "Do not be like Cain, who belonged to the evil one and murdered his brother..."

Thankfully, God was always at least one step ahead of the devil, because Adam and Eve produced another son, Seth (Gen 4:25), and it was through this son that the line continued.

We read in Gen 5:4, "After Seth was born, Adam lived 800 years and had other sons and daughters".  Adam's sons and daughters would have had to marry one another in order to have children. In particular, his sons Cain and Seth would have had to marry either their sister or niece.

Before one gets nauseated, do remember that God had commanded Adam and Eve to be fruitful and multiply. Also back then, the only command that God told man *not* to do was to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  It was thus perfectly acceptable for a person to marry his own sister, or cousin, or niece, because the effect of the fall would take time to manifest in terms of genetic abnormalities. Hence, we find that Abraham married his half-sister Sarah, while Jacob married his cousins Leah and Rachel.

For that matter, after the flood (which took place in 2,348 B.C.), Noah's grandsons had to marry his granddaughters since everyone else besides his family had perished. It was only many generations later years during the time of Moses (circa 1,450 B.C.) that God said specifically that one could not have sexual relations with his sister (Lev 18:9). By then, the effect of the fall would have been of significance, and marrying a close relative would increase the chances of duplicating a particular gene mutation (which is the medical grounds upon which secular societies forbid incestuous relationships).

So there you have it.  Adam and Eve's grandchildren came as a result of their children marrying among themselves.  And so did Noah's grandchildren, from whom all of us are descendants of.

And it was part of God's command to be fruitful and multiply, and also steps taken towards fulfilling that first prophesy whereby one day, Jesus would come in human form to redeem mankind back to God.

Afternote:  A sister sent me the following link, 
"Who Was Cain's Wife?", 
Thanks Pearly!