Genealogies, why are they important?

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Oh that's ominous. We are being recorded. Continue. Oh my cursor keeps disappearing.

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There we go. Does anybody know how to spell genealogies? Oh we'll get there. It's one of those words.

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G -E -N -E. So gene. A -L -O -G -E -S. A -L -O -G -I -E -S.

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Okay I just threw in an extra O. Or genealogies. Or geologies.

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That's how I know geologies. Yeah that would be the wrong way to spell it. I couldn't say

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G -E -N -L. I was calling it geologies but we're recording so. Okay. Dan this is a perfect time if you brought a joke with you this would be the perfect time to share that joke.

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No the only joke I have is my 49 years of life. There's a lot in there but we don't have time for all that.

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So I'm sorry I'm just totally not funny today. Okay well I hope that doesn't predict your thing because you promised us that this presentation would have some humor to it.

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So we're hoping that, we're praying that you, your funny bone turns on pretty quick.

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Alright. Well I'm Terri Kammerzell here with Creation Fellowship Santee. We're a group of friends bound by our common agreement that the creation account as told in Genesis is a true depiction of how

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God created the universe and all life from nothing in just six days a few thousand years ago.

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We've been meeting here on Zoom most Thursday nights since June of 2020. We've been blessed with presentations by pastors, teachers, doctors, cartoonists, scientists, apologists, and all -around smarty -pants people who love the

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Lord and have a message to share. You can find most of our past videos by searching Creation Fellowship Santee, that's

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S -A -N -T -E -E on YouTube. We've also recently started a channel or page on Rumble and you can find that by looking for CFS 2020, the year that we started our online fellowship.

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So CFS 2020. You can also follow our, like and follow our Creation Fellowship Santee Facebook page and also email creationfellowshipsantee at gmail .com

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so you can get on our speakers list so that we, you don't miss any of our upcoming speakers.

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Tonight we're blessed to have back our friend Dan Kreft. He's the seven -foot apologist, really he is seven foot tall, and he's a cross -generational teacher, itinerant speaker, and author of the three -volume book

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Jesus is not the answer to every Sunday school question. In addition to his own ministry, he also serves as an adjunct instructor for Mike Riddle's Creation Training Initiative and is on the board of directors for the

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Apologetics Forum of Snohomish County. Dan earned a BS in electrical engineering from Northwestern University, played professional basketball, of course he did, for three years and has been developing websites professionally since 1995.

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Dan's passion is to equip and encourage the body of Christ to confidently deliver biblical responses to skeptical assaults on our faith, with a particular emphasis on the sufficiency and authority of the scripture, starting with the very first verse.

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I couldn't have said that better myself. All right Dan, we are happy to turn the reins over to you, go ahead.

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Okay yes, tonight's presentation is entitled Wherefore Art Thou Begat? I'll never forget the first time

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I delivered this to a major audience. I had a friend of mine come up to me and he said, Dan I don't understand the topic of your presentation, of the title, and I said you know what, don't worry about it because I have translated it for you.

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Hang on, I dropped my remote. One moment please. Yeah this doesn't happen in real life.

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Okay well maybe I'll just use the arrow key because I don't need a remote because I'm right next to the computer.

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So why are the genealogies there? Wherefore Art Thou Begat translates roughly into why are the genealogies there?

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And for the younger kids in the audience who like to spend all their time texting, maybe this is a little too wordy for you, so I have a slide here for you, a translation for you.

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So before we get into this, into the meat of the matter, I want to lay down some presuppositions or the ground rules that we're going to be operating under.

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They are, number one, the Bible is the inspired Word of God and is without error in the original manuscripts.

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Number two, every jot and tittle has a purpose. If it's there in the scriptures, it's not an accident.

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God put it there for a reason and if we don't understand what that reason is, it's our job to dig and to study and to figure out what that reason is.

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And three, exegete, don't eisegete. Okay here we are about three, five minutes into the presentation,

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I'm already throwing out big words. The prefix ex - means out of, so when you look at this, normally I would have you in a physical building, you look at the exits, you look at the doors and you see a sign over each door that says exit,

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E -X -I -T, which I jokingly say is, you know, get out of it, to exit is to get out of it, to get out of the room.

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So when you exegete, you look at the text and you pull out of it that which is there. Eisegesis, on the other hand, is the exact opposite, it's taking ideas from your head and putting them into the text.

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So exegete is taking out of and eisegesis is reading into.

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So to the extent possible, with the Lord's help, we are going to exegete and not eisegete the Scriptures.

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We want to know what God's Word is to us, not what our word is to him. Put it another way, very succinctly, my pastor used to say the best commentary on the

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Bible is the Bible, and if you want to know what it has to say, the best thing to do is to read it.

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Okay, so with that said, now we have our ground rules laid, we'll get it right into the genealogies. We're gonna look at the five major genealogies in the

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Bible, laid out from from the right of the book to the left of the book. So we're gonna look at Luke 3,

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Matthew chapter 1, 1st Chronicles 1 through 9, where everybody spends their devotional time, Genesis chapter 10, and Genesis 5 and 11.

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I'm going to lump together into one genealogy for reasons that hopefully you will deem me quite brilliant by the time

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I get done with this presentation. You're gonna think, oh yeah, why didn't I think of that? It's kind of like sliced bread. It's a lot of fun.

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All right, ready? So we're gonna start in Luke chapter 3. Luke chapter 3, starting in verse 23, says,

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When he began his ministry, Jesus himself was about 30 years of age, being as was supposed, the son of Joseph, the son of Eli, the son of Mattath, the son of Levi, the son of Malchi, the son of Jani, the son of Joseph, the son of Matthias, the son of Amos, the son of Nahum, the son of Hesli, the son of Negei.

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Then you get a big list of funny names, and we get down to verse 38, and it says, The son of Enosh, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God.

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Now, a little word about me. I'm a software engineer, have been for a long time, and what

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I do when I'm trying to break down a big problem, trying to solve a big problem, is I try to break it down into smaller bite -sized chunks, and part of that breakdown involves trying to find patterns.

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So when I look at a section of Scripture, and I see things that are repeated, I go, okay, wait a minute, there's a pattern here, and that pattern, remember, it's there for a reason.

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So the pattern we see here is the son of B, the son of C, the son of D, the son of E, and this goes throughout the whole chapter.

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So now there's a comment, there's a refrain, a question I'm going to keep asking you throughout this presentation, and that is,

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Wherefore art this begat? Why is this genealogy here?

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We know it's there for a reason. Why is it there? Well, every gospel writer,

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Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, they all wrote with a particular view of Jesus in mind. When we look at the book of John, we see very easily that the book of John was written to demonstrate that Jesus is the

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Christ, the Son of the Living God. Jesus is God. That's John's whole focus of his gospel.

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When we get here to the book of Luke, Luke gives us a hint right here in the third chapter of what his purpose is when he says the

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Son of Adam. Luke's gospel is written to demonstrate that Jesus is the perfect man, and we see the hint of that right here when he traces his genealogy all the way back to Adam.

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Okay, so wherefore art this begat? To demonstrate that Jesus is the perfect man.

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Then we go over to Matthew chapter 1, the first of the four gospels, and we see, starting in verse 1, it says,

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The record of the genealogy of Jesus, the Messiah, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham. Abraham was the father of Isaac. Isaac was the father of Jacob, and Jacob was the father of Judah and his brothers.

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Judah was the father of Perez and Zerah by Tamar. Perez was the father of Hezron, and Hezron the father of Ram. Ram was the father of Abinadab, and Abinadab the father of Nashon.

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Nashon the father of Salmon. Funny names, funny names, funny names. We go down to verse 16, and we see

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Jacob was the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, by whom Jesus was born, who is called Messiah.

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Okay, software engineering brain kicks in. I start looking for patterns. What is the pattern that we see here?

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We see A was the father of B, B was the father of C, C was the father of D.

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It was all the way through the section, throughout the genealogy. So now you have to ask yourself the question, wherefore art this begat?

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Why is this genealogy here? What is Matthew trying to prove? We already know that John was written to prove that Jesus is

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God. We know that Luke was written so that, to prove that Jesus is the perfect man.

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Oh, notice that John doesn't have a genealogy because God doesn't have a genealogy, right? The Gospel of Mark, which we just skipped over, does not have a genealogy because Mark's purpose in writing his

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Gospel was to demonstrate that Jesus was the perfect servant of God, and nobody cares about the genealogy of the servant, do they?

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Servants are there to serve. When we get to Matthew, however, Matthew does have a genealogy. What's the purpose of his genealogy?

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He gives us a hint right here when he says he was called the Messiah. Messiah means anointed one, or the

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Savior in Greek that's translated as the Christ. So Jesus is the Messiah King, and what

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I didn't read, I don't have time to read, is right here in the middle of Matthew's genealogy, there are all the kings of Israel, starting with David, and the kings that came after him, his descendants.

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So if you're wanting to demonstrate that somebody has the right to the throne, you have to do what?

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You have to show that he's related to the line of kings, because kingdoms are passed down from father to son, okay?

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So Jesus is the Messiah King. The book of Matthew, and in Matthew's genealogy, we see that the whole point of the genealogy and the point of his gospel is to demonstrate that Jesus is the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy.

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He's the rightful heir to the throne of Israel, okay? So Jesus is the

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Messiah King. Now we get to the really fun one. We go over to 1

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Chronicles 1 through 9. I'm not going to read all nine chapters, so fret not.

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Let not your heart be troubled. Here we go. 1 Chronicles 1, starting in verse 1.

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Not even a verb, right? It's like the author of the 1 Chronicles knew that he had nine whole chapters of genealogies to write, and he was not going to waste time making a whole bunch of noise about guys that everybody knew about.

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So we have a list of names, and then he continues on. The sons of Japheth were Gomer, Magog, Madai, Javon, Tubal, Meshach, and Tiras.

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The sons of Gomer were Ashkenaz, Diphthah, and Torgamah. Skipping down a little bit, we got verse 10.

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Cush became the father of Nimrod, and he began to be a mighty one in the earth. Mizraim became the father of the people of Lod, Anam, Lehab, Naphtuph, Pethras, Kethluh, from which the

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Philistines came, and Kaphtor came and became the father of Sidon, his firstborn, Heth, and the

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Jebusites, the Amorites, and the Girgashites. And then later on we have the sons of Abraham, or Isaac, and Ishmael.

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These were their genealogies. The firstborn Ishmael was Nebihoth, Hedar, Abdeel, Nibsem, Mishma, Duma, Masa, Hadad, Tema.

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This is hard, folks. Tema, and a whole bunch of other funny names. Okay, so when you read all the way through 1

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Chronicles 1 through 9, there is no one single pattern that weaves its way throughout the entire nine chapters of genealogies.

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So we have actually several patterns that I've recognized, and a few of them are

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A, B, C, D, right? Adam, Seth, Enosh, Kenan, Mahalal, Jared. We just have a list of names with no frills.

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Then we have the sons of A were B, C, and D, and then we also have A became the father of B, etc.,

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etc., etc. So now we have to ask ourselves, what is the purpose, wherefore art this begat?

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What is the purpose of the genealogy of 1 Chronicles 1 through 9? Well, you don't really get this picture until you read all the way through it and you kind of take it all in, but 1

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Chronicles 1 through 9 is really the genealogy of the nation of Israel. You want to know where Israel comes from, where all the tribes are, who's related to whom.

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This is where you go, 1 Chronicles 1 through 9. Okay, so now the next genealogy we go to, we're getting closer to our target, so stay with me,

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Genesis chapter 10. We're gonna start having fun here in a minute. Genesis chapter 10, here we go, starting in verse 2.

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The sons of Japheth were Gomer, and Magog, and Madai, and Javan, and Tubal, and Meshach, and Teres. The sons of Gomer were Ashkenaz, and Rephthah, and Torgamah.

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The sons of Javan were Elisha, Tarshish, Kitchum, and Dodonim. For these the coastlands of the nations were separated into their lands, every one according to his language, according to their families, into their nations.

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The sons of Ham were Cush, Mizraim, Put, and Canaan, and then it goes on and on and on.

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So we ask ourselves, wherefore art this begat? What is the purpose of this genealogy?

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Why is it here? Well, the guys who like to give titles to sections of Scripture call this the

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Table of Nations. The patterns we see here are the sons of A were B, C, and D, and A became the father of B.

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Those are the two predominant patterns we see in Genesis chapter 10, and as I've mentioned, it's called the

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Table of Nations. You want to find out where all the nations come from? You go to Genesis chapter 10, and also

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First Chronicles chapter 1, and you can get an idea that everybody traces their ancestry back to one man.

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So it kind of makes you, when you when you read this, and you consider it, and you think about it, kind of makes the whole idea of racism rather silly, right?

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Because we all trace our ancestry back to one man. So it's really rather rather ridiculous.

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Okay, now, now here's where we start having fun. Genesis chapter 5. We're gonna start reading in verse 3.

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Okay, are you ready? I am. When Adam had lived 130 years, he became the father of a son in his own likeness, according to his image, and named him

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Seth. Then the days of Adam, after he became the father of Seth, were 800 years, and he had other sons and daughters. So all the days that Adam lived were 930 years, and he died.

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Seth lived 105 years, and became the father of Enosh. Then Seth lived 800 years, and 707 years, after he became the father of Enosh, and he had other sons and daughters.

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So all the days of Seth were 912 years, and he died. Enosh lived 90 years, became the father of Kenan.

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Then Enosh lived 815 years, after he became the father of Kenan, and he had other sons and daughters. So all the days of Enosh were 905 years, and he died.

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Okay, so here we go. The pattern here is very, very simple. Even adults can get this.

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Check this out. The pattern we see here is A lived X years, and he begat B. A lived after he begat

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B, Y years, and he begat sons and daughters. And finally, all the days of A were

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X plus Y years, and he died. So over and over again, and he died. And he died, and he died, and he died.

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All right, now head on over to Genesis chapter 11. Just a few pages to the right. We'll start reading in verse 10.

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These are the records of the generations of Shem. Shem was 100 years old, and became the father of Arphaxad, two years after the flood.

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And Shem lived 500 years, after he became the father of Arphaxad, and he had other sons and daughters. Arphaxad lived 35 years, and became the father of Shelah.

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And Arphaxad lived 403 years, after he became the father of Shelah, and had other sons and daughters. Shelah lived 30 years, and became the father of Eber, and Eber lived 403 years, after he became the father of Eber, and he had other sons and daughters.

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Okay, we have enough to go to detect our pattern now. So let's lay it out. First is

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A lived X years, and he begat B. You might notice this sounding a little bit familiar. A lived after he begat

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B, Y years, and begat sons and daughters. And finally, and all the days of A were

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X plus Y years, and he died. Right? Some of you nodded your head.

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Some of you said yes, but unfortunately, you are incorrect. I tripped you, because there are no anti -dides in Genesis chapter 11.

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So wait a minute. How can there be no anti -dides? Does that mean that everybody listed here in the book of Genesis chapter 11 is still alive today?

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Well, obviously not. But here's what you need to know. I said, when you see a pattern, you know, what's going on here?

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What you need to ask yourself. I see a pattern. I see very, very, you know, it's very, very similar to Genesis chapter 5, but there's this glaring difference.

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There are no anti -dides in Genesis chapter 11. What's with this? Why all the anti -dides back in Genesis chapter 5?

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Well, the answer, I think, is pretty simple. I didn't get a chance to read it, but if you go back to Genesis chapter 5, there's one guy right in the middle of it all who didn't anti -died.

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Do you know who that is? It's Enoch. Enoch is the only one in Genesis chapter 5 who didn't anti -died.

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So when you have all these anti -died, anti -died, anti -died, and then suddenly you have this guy right in the middle, and it says, and he was, he walked with God, and then he was no more because God took him.

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The pattern is completely broken. It's almost like God is shining a great big spotlight on Enoch saying, hey, look at this.

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Look at my man Enoch. This guy's important. I want you to take notice of him. I got this pattern before him and a pattern after him, but he breaks the pattern.

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Now figure out why. We'll come back to this. I think you're gonna find it very interesting. So now that we've gone through the five major genealogies of the

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Bible, from the back to the front of the Bible, you should have an old song ringing in your head right about now.

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And the song goes a little something like this. One of these things is not like the others.

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Which one is it? Do you know? One of these genealogies is not like the others.

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Which one is it? Do you know? Well, if you haven't figured it out yet, little things make a big difference, and those little things are numbers.

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Genesis chapter 5 and Genesis chapter 11 are the only genealogies in the entirety of Scripture that mentioned the ages of each patriarch when his son was born.

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The only ones that have numbers like this. Hmm. Is it an accident?

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No. Every jot and tittle has a purpose. Remember rule number two. Every jot and tittle has a purpose.

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This is not an accident. So I don't know about you, but when I look at something that has a bunch of numbers in it,

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I start looking at, okay, what's God trying to communicate to us with all these numbers? And the easiest thing you can do with numbers, other than perhaps sort them, is to add them up.

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Let's add them up and see what we get. In Genesis chapter 5, we learn that when

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Adam was 130 years old, he had a son named Seth. When Seth was 105, he had Enosh.

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When Enosh was 90, he had a son named Kenan. When Kenan was 70 years old, he had a son named

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Mahalalel. When Mahalalel was 65 years old, he had a son named Jared. Jared was 162 when

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Enoch was born. Enoch was 65 when Methuselah was born. Methuselah was 187 when his son

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Lamech was born, and Lamech was 182 when Noah was born. And when Noah was born, excuse me, and when

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Noah was 500 years old, he had Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Now, if you take all these numbers and you add them up, what do you get?

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Okay, nobody's talking, so I'll just go ahead and tell you. It's 1 ,556 years. Now, normally

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I would ask people to memorize this number. Maybe you want to jot it down, but you don't have to. Don't go scrambling for a piece of paper and a pencil.

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I'll tell you what, we'll just store it in my calculator here and we'll bring it back later. Okay, so 1 ,556.

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Take that in the calculator and then we'll kind of push it up off the top of the desktop there, and then we'll move on to Genesis chapter 11, and we will lather, rinse, and repeat.

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In Genesis chapter 11, we see Shem was 100 years old when Arphaxad was born. Arphaxad was 35 years old when

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Sheolah was born. Sheolah was 30 years old when Eber was born. Eber was 34 years old when Peleg was born.

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Peleg was 30 years old, oh my goodness, when Rehu was born. Rehu was 32 years old when

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Sareg was born. Sareg was 30 when Nahor was born. And Nahor, you know what?

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Nahor brought shame upon the family. He was 29 years old. Couldn't even wait till he was 30.

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Kids having kids. What is this world coming to? Nahor, yep, you've earned it.

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You must wear the cone of shame. Nahor wears the cone of shame. We don't like to talk about Nahor, but we have to because he's in Scripture.

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Now, when we get down to Terah, something very interesting happens here. And this is where my friend and one of our attendees here,

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I won't mention his name because I don't want to embarrass him, but I had a guy come up to me after my first big presentation of this, and he says, you know what?

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I think you made a little boo -boo on the age of Terah when Abram was born. And I said, oh really? So I went home and I went and dug into it, and this is what

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I found. See, you can teach a seven -footer new tricks. Check this out. So when you read Genesis 11, chapter 11, verse 26, it says, after Terah had lived 70 years, he became the father of Abram, Nahor, and Haran.

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Okay, so what I had done before is I said, okay, clearly, yeah, we just, the answer is simple here.

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All we have to do is take a line and drop it on my head.

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Why isn't this working? There we go. And you just drop it, drop a line, when Terah was 70, Abram was born, right?

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Seems pretty simple. We move along and the presentation proceeds as normal. Well, that's not what really happens here.

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We talk about patterns, right? And when a pattern is broken, the pattern up to this point has been, after X lived

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Y, you know, A lived X years, he became the father of B, etc., etc., right?

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But now we have, he became the father of B, C, and D. There are three guys here.

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So the pattern is broken. So we should have alarm bells going off in your head, going danger, danger, danger.

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There is something very different about Terah here in Genesis chapter 11, and that difference is the two additional names.

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You got Nahor and Haran. So we have to be on our toes. And this is where my brother was, just blessed me with the, you know, with open eyes.

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He kind of slapped me upside the head, you know, politely and said, you need to look into this a little more. I'm like, all right. So here's what we found.

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When we continue reading in Genesis 11, verse 32, it says the days of Terah were 205 years, and Terah died in Haran.

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Okay, so we know that Terah lived 205 years, so let's drop a line over here at 205 years, and we know

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Terah died in Haran. When we continue reading in Genesis chapter 12, verse 4, it says now

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Abram was 75 years old when he departed from Haran. Okay, so let's take a line and drop it on Abram's timeline.

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When he was 75 years old, we know that Abram left Haran. Looks pretty good so far. Everything seems to be, you know, copacetic.

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It looks like Abram, you know, was about, what, 145?

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And then some years later, you know, Terah died. But is that what happened? No, because when we get over to Acts chapter 7, verse 4, we read

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Abram settled in Haran. From there, after his father died, God had him move to Canaan.

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Uh -oh. Wait a minute. The timeline we have here has Abram leaving Haran and going to Canaan way before Terah dies.

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So clearly, we have a misalignment in our timeline. So we have to take this and move it over a few years, 40 years to be exact, and now we see, in order for this to line up, we have to have

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Abram leaving Haran after his father Terah dies, and that can't happen unless Terah was 130 years old when

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Abram was born. So Abram was clearly not the firstborn. Okay, now there is a simplifying assumption that I'm making here.

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I don't know exactly when or how long after Terah's death, Abram left Haran.

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We don't know that. It could have been the day of, it could have been the week after, it could have been two years after, we don't know.

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So the best we can do here is to say that at earliest, Terah was 130.

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Terah was no younger than 130 when Abram was born. Alright, everybody? Everybody clear with that?

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Okay, no objections? We're gonna move on. And if there aren't objections, you can just rewind this later, and you can go through it again a little more slowly.

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So let's take this 130, and we'll take it back to our list of numbers here, and we'll plop it in here where the stop sign was.

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We know that Terah was 130 years old when Abram was born. Now, Abram's age, when he started having kids, is not important to our genealogy right now, because we can stop here, because both secular scholars and biblical scholars alike all agree that Abram lived around the late 1900s or early 2000s

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BC. There doesn't seem to be much argument about when Abram lived, so we don't need to waste, we don't need to spend a whole lot of time on Abram's, on his lifespan.

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So when you add all these ages up, what do you get? You get 450 years. So let's take

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Genesis chapter 5 and Genesis chapter 11 and put it all together. What do we get? So you see here it says

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Adam Seth. That should be Shem. I have a slightly older copy of my presentation. Oops.

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And believe it or not, I presented this for years, and it wasn't until I was in Denver just, what, last week or two weeks ago that this was pointed out to me.

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So my bad, yo. So from Adam to Shem, we have, what, 1556 years.

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From Shem to Abram, we have 450 years. Now, math is hard, so let's do some math.

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1556 plus 450 equals 2006, right? It's a little bit too late in the day to be doing math, so we'll let the calculator do it for us.

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2006, that's not a very round number, so we'll just round it down, call it an even 2000. So we have approximately 2 ,000 years from Adam to Abram.

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Now, as I mentioned previously, Abram lived approximately 2 ,000 years BC. 2 ,000

28:18

BC. BC is before Christ, that's before Jesus. So clearly that puts around 2 ,000 years between Abram and Jesus.

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And of course, this is the year 2021, which puts us 2 ,021 years after Jesus. So again, math is hard.

28:35

We'll keep the numbers nice and round. We'll call it an even 2 ,000 years from Jesus to us. So when you add 2 ,000 plus 2 ,000 plus 2 ,000, even

28:43

I can tell you that is about 6 ,000 years. So now here's the question. Here's where I normally get interactive, but we won't take time to do that right now.

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Can you tell the age of the earth based upon what we've studied so far? Oh, time's up.

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Sorry. Actually, no, you cannot. What? No. So in order to tell the age of the earth, you need to have the genealogies, but we don't have enough information yet because the genealogies concern themselves with people.

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We have studied people, and the only question we can answer at this point is, how long has man been on the planet?

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Now, knowing what we have here in Genesis chapter 5 and Genesis chapter 11 is necessary for determining the age of the earth, but it is not sufficient.

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You need more information. You need to go back to Genesis chapter 1 because even if you seal up this area right here and you say, okay, fine, man has been on the planet for 6 ,000 years, it doesn't keep you—it still allows the old earthers to come in and say, okay, what about the gap theory, and what about the day -age theory, right?

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They can still try to put all kinds of long epochs in Genesis chapter 1. So you need to take

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Genesis chapter 1 and Genesis chapter 5 and Genesis chapter 11 and put them all together, but we're not doing

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Genesis chapter 1 today, so we can't answer the question, how old is the earth? That's a different presentation.

30:12

You'll have to bring me back for that one. Okay, so now that we've done all this number juggling, all this number crunching, there's invariably going to be a naysayer in the crowd, and the naysayers, as they do, they like to do the nay -nay.

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The naysayers, they do the nay -nay. They say, no, no, no, you see, Dan, this is all great, but father and son can mean ancestor or descendant.

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So really what you're doing here sounds great, but you're ignoring the fact that, you know, the Hebrews reckon the word son differently than we do.

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Okay, let's take a look at a few examples. Let's take blind Bartimaeus, for example. When Bartimaeus heard that Jesus was passing by in Luke chapter 18, verse 38, he exclaimed at the top of his voice,

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Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me. Okay, so now wait a minute. David lived, as best

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I can remember, about 1000 BC. Does Bartimaeus really think that Jesus' daddy is

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David? No, clearly not. He's blind Bartimaeus, not dumb Bartimaeus.

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The Jews reckon the word father or son differently. So just because somebody says father, it doesn't mean daddy, right?

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So we see a clear example of that. Abram was called the father of Jacob in Genesis chapter 28, verse 13, but he wasn't the father as we reckon the word.

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He was the grandfather of Jacob. He was the forefather, if you will. Laban, likewise, was also called the son of Nahor, but he wasn't the son.

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He was the grandson of Nahor in Genesis 29, verse 5. So the point of this is that can mean does not mean always means.

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And the way we find out whether it is or it isn't meaning daddy or ancestor is we have to look at context.

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We have to use scripture to compare, to use scripture to interpret scripture. Okay, with that objection covered, we move on to our second objection.

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The naysayers nay -nay some more. And they say the biblical genealogies are routinely telescoped, like an old school telescope, right?

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Like the pirates used to use. They purposely omit names. Therefore, genealogies cannot be used as chronologies.

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Okay, let me take a step back just a little bit. The word genealogy comes from two

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Greek words, genea meaning race or generation, and logos meaning the study of.

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Okay, so when you put it together, a genealogies or a genealogy is the study of races or genealogies.

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Likewise, a chronology, if you've ever had a Timex watch, like I did when I was a younger man,

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I had a Timex watch. On the bottom of the watch, it said chronograph. And I'm like, man, that's a big fancy word.

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What is a chronograph? Well, that comes from two Greek words, chronos meaning time and logos meaning the study of.

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So, chronology is the study of time. So really, if you have a watch that says chronograph on it, it's just a fancy way of saying watch, right?

33:19

It's just marketing. Oh man, I got a chronograph on my hand. Wow. All right.

33:25

So we have genealogies, which are basically counting heads or counting noses. And then you have chronologies, which are counting the passage of time, right?

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So genealogies count noses, chronologies count time. So yes, are they routinely telescoped?

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They are. I'm going to take you through a few of them. But I need to warn you, you need to mind the gap, because some of these gaps are substantial.

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When we get to 1 Chronicles 3, 11, and 12, here's what we see. We see Jehoram, Ahaziah, Joash, Amaziah, Azariah, or Uzziah, as some people called him, and his close friends just called him

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Uzi. When we get over to Matthew 1, 8, we see Jehoram. And then finally,

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Uzziah shows up. Okay. So we have three people missing in Matthew's genealogy.

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Now, remember the question that I kept repeating at the beginning of this presentation.

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Wherefore art this begat? What is the purpose of Matthew's genealogy?

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Well, if you remember, the purpose of Matthew's gospel is to demonstrate that Jesus is the rightful heir to the throne of Israel.

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He is the promised Messiah. There are more Old Testament quotations in the book of Matthew than there are in the other three gospels.

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So what's Matthew's point? He wants to show you that Jesus Christ is the rightful heir to the throne of Israel.

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And to do that, does he need to connect all the kings together in a row, or can he just hit some of the higher players and say, yeah, y 'all know that Jehoram was the great -great -grandfather of Uzziah, so I don't need to mention the three guys in the middle.

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Right? It's kind of like, you know, like connect the dots. So it's not a problem here.

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Matthew's purpose is still served. I mean, ultimately it's the Holy Spirit's purpose, right? The Holy Spirit's purpose is still served through Matthew, even though Matthew eliminated some of the generations.

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Incidentally, Matthew's genealogy is broken up into 14 generations, three groups of 14 generations.

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We think this is probably used in terms of helping early

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Christians to memorize the genealogies. Right? You don't need all the heads to get the full picture.

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All right. So we have some gaps. We have three generations right here. But sometimes there are huge gaps.

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For example, First Chronicles 1. Sorry, First Chronicles 6, 9 through 11.

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Had a blind moment there for a minute. Zerahiah, Merioth, Amariah, Ahitab, and Zadok.

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But when you get over to Ezra, chapter 7, verses 3 and 4, here are the names you see. You see Zerahiah, Merioth, Ahimaaz?

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No. Azariah? No. Johanna? No. And then finally, Azariah and Amariah show up.

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Okay. So is this a problem? What's going on here? Wherefore art the genealogy in the book of Ezra?

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Well, when you look at Ezra, chapter 7, 3 and 4, and then you also compare that to Nehemiah 8 and 9,

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Nehemiah says Ezra was a priest. So what

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Ezra is doing here is he's giving you his credentials. Because if you remember from your Old Testament history, in order for you to be a priest in the

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Old Testament, you had to be related to a specific guy in history. And that specific guy was

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Aaron. So what he does is he traces his ancestry back to Aaron. This is what allows him to say, hey,

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I'm a scribe and I am a priest. And here's a very, very brief genealogy so you can connect the dots.

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And by the way, if you want to fill in the dots, y 'all can go over and read First Chronicles chapter 6, 9 through 11, because the rest of my genealogy is in there.

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Go look it up on your own time. I got some stuff to write here. Okay. So yes, sometimes there are gaps.

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Sometimes there are huge gaps. Okay, this is where you're supposed to laugh or groan or whatever.

37:33

I don't know if it's too soon or not. I can't see your reactions, but we'll just roll with it. So basically what we have here, it's a classic, it's the classic, the game of connect the dots, right?

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You've all seen this and you've all seen kids go through this, right? You got some gaps in between the dots.

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And so you just pretend that each one of these is a name. Well, and some genealogies are like this. All the dots are represented and the path between each one is crystal clear.

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It's completely unambiguous, but then you get in some genealogies and some of the dots are missing. And to listen to some people, when you hear that, when you see the missing dots, suddenly you're supposed to go, oh no,

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I have no idea what this picture could be. Maybe it's a, maybe it's a kitty cat. Maybe it's a

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Tyrannosaurus Rex. I don't know. Well, no, clearly not because you can still connect the dots well enough because you've got context here.

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So it's just like connect the dots. Sometimes we have, or as a software engineer,

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I like to put it in terms of graphics resolution. So sometimes your genealogies are high def, you know, they're 1080p, 16 by 9.

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And sometimes you just got all the way down to Apple II graphics or even Pong, right? So that sometimes the resolution is a little lacking, but the author's purpose is still served in the genealogy.

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We don't have to panic because there are quote unquote missing names in the genealogy. So you're probably wondering, okay, so how do we know when there is a gap versus when there isn't?

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Well, I think the answer is pretty simple here. As my pastor used to say, the only way we can read between the lines in one verse is if we can see it on the lines in another verse, which gets us back to rule number three, exegete, don't eisegete.

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Remember, let the text speak to you. Don't you take your ideas and put them into the text.

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Remember God, the Bible is God's word to you, not your word to him. He didn't ask your opinion or mine, frankly, when he wrote it.

39:30

All right. So are there any gaps in Genesis chapter five? Let's take a look at who we've got here so far.

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In Genesis chapter five, we have represented these names, Adam, Seth, Enos, Kenan, Mahaloel, Jared, Enoch, Methuselah, Lamech, and Noah.

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Now, if we back up just one chapter, the tail end of Genesis chapter four, we look at verse 25, and here's what we see.

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Adam had relations with his wife again, and she gave birth to a son and named him Seth.

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For she said, God has appointed me another offspring in place of Abel for King killed him.

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Okay. We've got a lot of clues right here. First of all, are there any men or women existing before Adam and Eve?

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So is it possible that there is some progenitor before Adam and Eve who is actually somehow responsible for Seth's birth?

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No, clearly not, because Adam was the first man and Eve was the first woman. She's called the mother of all the living.

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Okay. So we have that little clue. And then it says Adam had relations with his wife again. Okay. Husband, wife, children.

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It's as natural as the day is long. There's no ambiguity here who Seth's parents are.

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Adam is his daddy. Eve is his mommy. And she gave birth to a son.

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You notice the redundancy here? Isn't this amazing? Right? Adam had relations with his wife again, and she gave birth to a son.

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Why does God feel the need to tell us both of these things? Wouldn't it be pretty obvious that if she just said,

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Oh, he could have just said, Eve had another son. And that'd be the end of it, right? Because it's pretty obvious there are no other men on the planet.

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So of course, Adam is the dad. But God went out of his way to say Adam had relations with his wife again.

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And then he adds on top of that, and she gave birth to a son. She gave birth. Mommy's not ambiguous.

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And named him Seth. This is an important one too. Who names the kids? I don't know about you.

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But if my in -laws started saying, No, no, no, no, your kid's name is going to be such and such. It would not go well.

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This would be an argument. This would be a guaranteed way to start an argument. You try telling your kids, when they start having kids, what your grandkids names are going to be.

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You're going to have a fight on your hands. I guarantee you. Because the parents are the ones who are responsible for naming the children.

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It's pretty clear. Okay. For she said, God has appointed me another offspring.

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Right? So this is her direct offspring. We got like five clues here. Five clues. Five big obvious clues that tell us that there is no possible way that we have a gap between Adam and Seth.

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There's no way you're getting anybody in there. Okay. The very next verse has a similar set of clues.

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To Seth, to him also a son was born, and he called his name

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Enosh. Again, look at the redundancy here. To Seth, to him. As if we, like, to Seth, to him.

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No. To Seth, to somebody else. No. To Seth, to him, a son was born.

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And not only do we have that, but it says he called his name. It wasn't, he didn't just say

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Seth had a son and his name was Enosh. No. He said he called his name

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Enosh. So clearly, Seth is Enosh's daddy. Because the daddies, and sometimes the mommies, give the kids the names.

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So there is no possibility of a gap between Genesis chapter, between Seth and Enosh. Okay.

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The next verse we're going to look at is way over on the other side of the Bible. Oh, not just yet.

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Genesis 529. It's on the next page. Way over on the other side of the Bible. Here we go.

43:18

Talking about Lamech, it says, Now he, Lamech, called his name Noah, saying, This one will give us rest from the work and the toil of our hands arising from the ground which

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Yahweh has cursed. Again, Lamech called his name Noah. Who names the children?

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The parents name the children. So is there any possibility of a gap between Lamech and Noah? No, I don't think so.

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Genesis 5 chapter 29 seals that up nicely. Okay. Now is when we take our

43:47

Bible and we turn it upside down, flip over to the other side, and head for the book of Jude.

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Right before Revelation, the last book of the Bible. I should have a footnote or a post -it note there.

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Yep. All right. Check this out. It says, It was about these men that Enoch in the seventh generation from Adam prophesied, saying, and then he goes on to give his prophesy.

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Well, wait a minute. That's a big clue there. Enoch was in the seventh generation from Adam. Well, let's count noses here.

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You ready? One, Adam, Seth, Enosh, Canaan, Mahaloel, Jared, and Enoch.

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So we have seven generations from Adam to Enoch, inclusive. Is there any possibility of a gap between Adam, a generational gap between Adam and Enoch?

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Absolutely not. Not unless you're willing to accuse the Holy Spirit of either lying or making a mistake in his counting.

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Last time I checked, God doesn't suffer from off by one errors like human software engineers do. Not that I would ever have a problem with that, but I've heard that some software engineers have a problem with off by one errors.

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So what do we see from Jude verse 14? We see that there's no possibility of a gap at all between Adam and Enoch.

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Okay. Now we have this little white area over here between Adam, excuse me, between Enoch, Methuselah, and Methuselah and Lamech.

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What's going on here? Well, unfortunately, this one requires a little more digging, but sometimes

45:19

I shouldn't say unfortunately, because the digging is actually the fun part. When you actually dig and dig and dig and you unearth a diamond, it's really rewarding.

45:27

It's a lot, it's a whole lot of fun. So what do we get when we start digging? Well, let's take a look at who Enoch and Methuselah were.

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Enoch, as we learned from extra biblical sources, his name means dedicated.

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Okay. Well, what else do we know? We know from Jude verse 14, excuse me, that Enoch was a prophet and he's one of two men who never died.

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Remember that? Remember I skipped over him initially in Genesis chapter five. He was one of two men who never died. And I believe he's coming back with Elijah in Revelation chapter 11, but that's a whole nother presentation.

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We won't spend much time there. The thing I really want you to hone in on here is that he was a prophet.

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Okay. That's really, really super important. All right. Who is his son? His son's name is

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Methuselah. Now Methuselah was the son of Enoch and his name means when he is dead, it shall be sent.

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Now you see I have there in parentheses disputed because not everybody agrees that this is what

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Methuselah's name means. I've read some interpretations that say, well, we think his name might mean something more along the lines of man of the spear or something like this.

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But you know, I don't really think that fits because not based upon who

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Enoch is and who Methuselah is and his lifetime. And we'll get into this in just a second. I think you'll find this fascinating.

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I just don't think it fits. I think that the best explanation is when he is dead, it shall be sent.

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And remember that Methuselah lived 969 years. He lived longer than anyone in recorded history.

47:08

Now here's another thing I want to point out to you. You know, in our Western culture, when we name our kids, sometimes we don't put a whole lot of thought into it.

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A lot of times I've seen parents just, you know, just kind of pick names that, well, you know, they just, they pick the names because it sounds good.

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Right. For example, my name, my middle name, my first name is Daniel, means God is my judge.

47:32

My last name is Kraft, which is a variant of the German word Kraft, which means strength. My middle name, however, is

47:39

Lee, L -E -E. And I asked my mom and I said, mom, why did you choose the middle name

47:45

Lee for me? What does it mean? It's the, it's the opposite. So if when wind blows on an island, it's the side opposite of that, which the wind is hitting, right?

47:53

The leeward side of an island. Like, why did you choose that for my name? What does that even mean? She goes,

47:59

I don't know. It just sounded kind of nice. You know, Daniel Lee just kind of rolls off the tongue. I'm like, well, thanks mom.

48:04

Sushi rolls off the tongue too, but that doesn't mean, you know, blah. So we don't, sometimes we don't put a whole lot of, you know, like we don't invest a whole lot of time into thinking, okay,

48:14

I got to come up with just the right name for my kids, but that's not the way the ancient Hebrews were. That's not the way they operated at all.

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And as a matter of fact, it gets even worse if you're a Hebrew prophet, because a lot of times with the

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Hebrew prophets, we see from throughout scripture, the Hebrew prophets didn't even get to choose their kids' names because God told them what to name their kids.

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Take Hosea, for example. Hosea had a son named Jezreel. Jezreel? Hey, Jezreel, why did your daddy name you

48:43

Jezreel? Well, here's what it says. Call him Jezreel, God says, because I will soon punish the house of Jehu for the massacre at Jezreel, and I will put an end to the kingdom of Israel.

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That's in Hosea 1 .4. Wait a minute. Why did your daddy name you Jezreel? Because judgment is coming.

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Whoa, that's pretty heavy. I'm sorry I asked, Jezreel. Hey, no problem, man. And then how about, but it gets worse, right?

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If you've read the book of Hosea, you know that he had a daughter named Lo -Ruhamah. Ruhamah means no compassion or in the

49:17

NIV, not loved. Can you imagine naming your daughter not loved? Oh, come on here.

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Come over here, not loved. I love you, not loved. What kind of psychological damage are we inflicting on our kids here when we name them things like this, but this is exactly what

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God says you will name your daughter. He says, name her Lo -Ruhamah, for I will no longer have compassion on the house of Israel that I would ever forgive them.

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Why did your daddy name you such an awful name? Because God has turned his back on the people of Israel. You need to repent.

49:50

Object lesson. How about her brother, Lo -Ammi? Lo -Ammi means not my people.

49:56

Man, Lo -Ammi, your daddy's just terrible with the name picking. Why did he give you the name Lo -Ammi?

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Well, because God says name him Lo -Ammi, for you are not my people and I am not your God. Israel has been rejected by God.

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That's why my daddy named me Lo -Ammi, not my people. You didn't want to be the son or the daughter of a

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Hebrew prophet. Or how about my personal favorite? Isaiah had a son named Maher Shalom Hashbaz.

50:24

How you like that one? Say that five times fast. Maher Shalom Hashbaz means hurry to the spoils.

50:31

Then the Lord said to me, in Isaiah 8, 3 and 4, then the Lord said to me, name him Maher Shalom Hashbaz, for before the boy knows how to cry out my father or my mother, the wealth of Damascus and the spoil of Samaria will be carried away before the king of Assyria.

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Why did your dad name you such a goofy name? Because judgment is coming upon Assyria. So there's a very definite reason.

50:55

How about some others? You will call his name John, right? How about this one? You will call his name

51:01

Jesus or Yeshua. Yahweh saves, for he will save his people from their sins.

51:07

There's no accidents. There are no accidents. How about Jacob? Grasp the heel or deceiver, right?

51:15

The names that are chosen for the kids in the Old Testament are not on accident. So this is why

51:21

I think when he is dead, it shall be sent makes a whole lot more sense than man of the spear. And let's take a closer look at this, and I think you'll see why.

51:29

Come on. When Enoch was 365 years,

51:35

Enoch was a prophet. His name means dedicated. Matter of fact, he was so dedicated to the Lord that when he was 365 years old, the

51:42

Lord took him, did not allow him to taste death. But that was before he had a son at the age of 65 named

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Methuselah. Methuselah lived 969 years, the longest of anybody in recorded history.

51:54

When Methuselah was 187 years old, he had a son named Lamech. Lamech lived 777 years old, to be 770 years old.

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When Lamech was 182, he had a son named Noah. And Noah lived, and when he was, when

52:09

Noah was 600 years old, something very interesting happened. Do you know what happened when Noah was 600 years old?

52:16

Well, a few years prior to that, Noah and his sons, Noah and co, contracted with Can -Ham in Answers in Genesis, and they built an ark, and the flood came.

52:29

So interesting. So I want you to take a good hard look at this timeline. I spent a more time on this than I care to admit.

52:35

I was counting pixels and doing math on this to get it just right. So we're within like a pixel or two of accuracy, the greatest accuracy that PowerPoint would allow me.

52:47

Do you think it's an accident that the flood line goes right through Methuselah's death date, death year?

52:55

And notice also the small gap between Lamech's death at 777 and the floods coming five years later.

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So Lamech died before his father did. Hmm, interesting.

53:09

So what does Methuselah's name mean, we say? After he is dead, it shall be sent.

53:15

I wonder what that it is. Do you think it might be the flood? So why would this be the case?

53:21

Think about this. Our God is slow. He's slow to anger, abounding in love.

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He does not rejoice in the death of the wicked. Enoch was a prophet. He told the people to repent.

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He gave his son a name that reminded people that they need to repent. People had 969 years to repent of their evil, wicked acts, and they didn't do it.

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God gave them 969 years, the longest of any recorded lifetime in history, to repent, and they didn't.

53:51

In all, only eight were saved, them and all the animals. So what do we have here is our verdict for Genesis chapter 5.

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Do we have any gaps? I don't think so. I think we have no gaps. We don't have any gaps in the chronology, and we don't have any gaps in the genealogy.

54:08

What about in Genesis chapter 11? Take a look at this. In Genesis chapter 11, we see Shem, Arphaxad, Shelah, Heber, Peleg, Reu, Sereg, Nehor, Terah, and Abram.

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Okay, do we have any gaps? Well, in Genesis chapter 10, we see Shem, Arphaxad, Shelah, Eber, and Peleg, so there are no gaps possible there because the two line up.

54:27

Genesis chapter 10, Genesis chapter 11 line up perfectly for those names. How about when we get to 1

54:32

Chronicles 1, 24 through 27? We see all these names represented with no gaps and no names added.

54:40

Air tight. But things get a little complicated when you get over to the

54:46

Book of Luke, because as you see here, Luke mentions all these names, but there's a little problem over here on the left side of your screen.

54:53

There's a little white zone. The white zone is for loading and unloading only. There's never any parking in a white zone.

54:59

And we reserve the white zone for our friend Jumbo. And you know who this is?

55:06

Yep, you guessed it. This is the elephant in the room. Luke 3 .36 is the elephant in the room.

55:13

It kind of throws a wrench into the whole works, but let's take a closer look at this and see if there's anything to this. In Luke 3 .35

55:19

through 36, here's what we see. We see Shem, Arphaxad, Canaan, Shelah, and Heber.

55:26

But then when we get over to 1 Chronicles 1 and Genesis 11, here are the names that we see.

55:32

Shem, Arphaxad, Shelah, and Heber.

55:39

Well, isn't this interesting? So we thought we had an airtight genealogy here, but now

55:45

Luke 3 .36 is kind of throwing some mud in the water, making things a little difficult for us.

55:53

So what does this mean for us? How do we explain this? Well, there are two common explanations used to explain

55:58

Canaan, son of Arphaxad. The first is that Shelah and Canaan are not father -son.

56:04

They are actually brothers. I reject this out of hand because this is plainly eisegesis.

56:09

There is no other example in scripture where somebody has said A is the father of B or B is the son of A, where it means a brother -sister sibling relationship.

56:21

It's nowhere to be found in scripture. This is an idea that's made up out of whole cloth. It's straight eisegesis.

56:28

We reject that. The other explanation is that it's a copyist mistake, that Canaan was a later addition to the text.

56:39

So this sounds like it's an interesting theory. So I did some digging on this, and behold, the late, great

56:45

Dr. Geisler disagreed. When I consulted the Baker Encyclopedia of Apologetics on page 228, here's what

56:53

Dr. Geisler had to say. The attempt to explain away Luke 336 as no gap seems highly implausible.

56:59

There was no real manuscript authority for omitting Canaan from Luke 336. That sequence is in all major and virtually all minor manuscripts.

57:10

Interesting. The emphasis I've the bold text is my styling. But this is interesting because when

57:18

I get down to the end of this, there are no footnotes. So I'm thinking to myself, okay,

57:24

Dr. Geisler, otherwise the Baker Encyclopedia of Apologetics is a pretty solid book.

57:30

Where are your footnotes? Point me to these manuscripts that Canaan's son of Arphaxad exists in. I couldn't find any, so I had to go digging because Dr.

57:38

Geisler didn't provide that information for me. So I went digging and I've got to warn you folks,

57:44

I'm about to geek out on you on some manuscript stuff, but I need you to hang in there for just about three or four minutes.

57:51

I'll try to make this as painless as possible. And at the end, I'll give you a little treat. Okay? So this is basically for the

57:57

Bible nerds, everybody else, just try to grab the bottom of your seat and try not to fall asleep. Okay? Three or four minutes.

58:03

Bear with me. Here we go. Ready? Where's Canaan? Started looking for Canaan. Did not find him in the

58:09

Samaritan Pentateuch, around 100 BC. He is not in any of the works of Josephus, late first century.

58:16

He's not in the Targum Onkelos. The Targa are the Arabic translations of the

58:22

Hebrew Old Testament. They date to about the first or second century AD. Canaan's son of Arphaxad ain't in there.

58:29

How about Theophilus of Antioch? Nope, second century AD. He's not in there either. He's not in Julius Africanus, dates to around the second to third century

58:38

AD. He's not in the Seder Ulam Rabah, dates around 160 AD.

58:45

He's not in the Bodmer Papyrus, P75 in Luke 336. He's not there.

58:51

That dates to around 175 to 225 AD, depending upon who you're talking to. He's not in the

58:57

Codex Vaticanus, this manuscript B, the Septuagint manuscript B, for those of you who are technically inclined in that way.

59:05

That dates to around the early fourth century AD, and he's not in Jerome's Latin Vulgate, late fourth century.

59:12

Where is he? Well, he's not in the Targum Pseudo -Jonathan, which dates to around the fifth century AD, and he's not in the

59:18

Codex Beze, the D document in Luke 336. He's not there either, and he's not in the

59:25

Hebrew Masoretic text. Now, this is the big one for me, folks, because if you remember, the Old Testament was originally written in Hebrew.

59:32

Every other document that I've mentioned prior to this was either Greek, Latin, or Arabic, so they're translations of the originals.

59:40

He's not in the best Hebrew, in the Hebrew Masoretic texts. Interesting.

59:46

So what conclusion do we come to? Well, he's not in any manuscript before the fourth century

59:52

AD, as far as we can tell. Not in any of them. Okay, well, Dr. Geisler is a smart guy, and he surely is not lying to us.

01:00:00

So really, where's Canaan? Well, you will find Canaan, son of Arphaxad, in most accounts of the

01:00:07

Septuagint, in the Codex Vaticanus, for example, which dates to around the first half of the fourth century

01:00:14

AD. You will find him in the Codex Vaticanus, and you will find him in the Codex Alexandrinus.

01:00:20

The Alexandrinus dates to about the early half of the fifth century. And you will find him in Augustine's City of God, but again, that's not scripture.

01:00:28

That dates to the early fifth century. So where you will find Canaan is in manuscripts after the fourth century

01:00:38

AD. Well, that's interesting. Does anybody else, you know, concur with my, with this analysis? Sure.

01:00:43

Andrew E. Steinman, the distinguished professor of Hebrew at Concordia University, says, before the fourth century

01:00:48

AD Codex Vaticanus, there is no evidence conclusively pointing to the inclusion of Canaan as a son of Arphaxad and the father of Shelah.

01:00:57

And if you have your smartphones handy, and if you are so inclined, you can scan that little QR code there, and you can go read the article that I read to get this quote out of, so you can see for yourself in full context what

01:01:08

Dr. Steinman is saying there. Okay, you ready?

01:01:14

That's it. That's my, that's my geek out session. Took about three or four minutes, right? So everything that I just said in the last three or four minutes, if you're, if manuscript evidence and dates and all that stuff just bores you to tears, congratulations.

01:01:28

You can throw it all away. You don't need it. You know why? It's a trap. You don't need it.

01:01:36

You don't need to geek out on manuscript evidence. You don't need to memorize the dates or any of this stuff. You don't need to go there.

01:01:42

Why? Well, let's just stick with what the Bible says. Let's assume for a moment that there were missing generations.

01:01:50

What would this look like? Let's take Enoch and Methuselah here, and let's say Enoch had a son named,

01:01:55

I don't know, Larry. Larry had a son named Moe, and Moe had a son named,

01:02:00

I don't know, Curly. You might call him Three Stooges. Does it change anything? Does it change the, does it, does it make a dent in the genealogy or in the chronology?

01:02:10

Well, absolutely not. You know why? Because of these little things called numbers. What do we see?

01:02:16

We see in scripture that when Enoch was 65 years old, Methuselah was born. So it doesn't matter if Larry, Moe, and Curly are in there.

01:02:24

You could throw Shemp in there. You could throw the little rascals in there if you want to. It doesn't make a lick of difference.

01:02:31

Even just because there are missing heads does not mean that there is missing time.

01:02:37

So a genealogical gap does not equate to a chronological gap. Are we solid?

01:02:44

So the verdict on Genesis chapter 11 is no gaps. No gaps in the chronology, counting time.

01:02:52

No gaps in the genealogy, counting noses. So to wrap this all up, to put a nice pretty bow on it, what do we have?

01:03:02

In sum, there are no demonstrable gaps in Genesis chapter 5, airtight like Tupperware.

01:03:08

It's great. Evidence of a gap in Genesis chapter 11 is tenuous at best.

01:03:13

It's hinged all on Luke 336, and it's just not the oldest and best manuscripts.

01:03:19

And finally, even if there were gaps, the chronologies in Genesis 5 and Genesis chapter 11 are completely unaffected.

01:03:28

We have an unbroken chain of about 6 ,000 years of man on this planet.

01:03:35

The word of God can be trusted. You can squeeze it extremely hard, and the only thing that ever comes dripping out is the truth.

01:03:43

And that is the end of the begats. Thank you very much for your time. I suppose

01:03:48

I stand open for cross -examination and questioning and all that good stuff. That was really great.

01:03:55

That was interesting, but also entertaining. You did a good job engaging us,

01:04:01

I felt. So I'm not seeing any questions, but I'm going to announce this is the time for questions, people.

01:04:10

So if you guys, people, there's a few people watching along on Facebook, and those of you here in Zoom with us, if you have any questions,

01:04:20

Robin wants to know what kind of gaps would you think that there are?

01:04:28

Yeah, I was, that was really good. Very, very interesting. But when you started out with gaps, now there's gap theory, and then there's, you know, gap, what kind of gap were you talking about?

01:04:42

Right, so the gap would be missing heads or gaps in time, right? Because they say that the genealogies are condensed, right?

01:04:50

They'll take a long genealogy, and like Matthew did, right? He took three generations out right in the middle to make it easier to memorize, right?

01:04:56

So instead of having 14, then 17 names, and then 14 names, he just made it 14, 14, 14. So a gap refers to either an absence of an individual, an absence of a nose, or the insertion, which would then allow you to insert variable amounts of time to get you up to the, to an old earth is ultimately the goal, right?

01:05:16

To help reconcile the Bible to science, rather than what should be happening is taking science and reconciling it to the

01:05:23

Bible. Okay, because the gap that people usually use is between Genesis 1 and 2, where they stick in the billions of years.

01:05:31

Well, it depends upon your context, right? So if you're talking about the context of how old the earth is, then yes, you talk about the gap theory, that would be what you're talking about,

01:05:41

Genesis 1, 1, and 2. But when you're talking about genealogies, you know, the term gap is also commonly used there.

01:05:49

So you have to, you know, it's all context Okay. And then, um, at the end,

01:05:54

I have to say you were talking pretty fast. So where was I went 63 minutes.

01:06:00

So I was trying to keep it under an hour. Well, I missed plus,

01:06:05

Terry texted me. So I missed where what was the Canaan thing?

01:06:11

Terry no texting in class. She was passing notes. The Canaan thing is that there's

01:06:20

Luke 336 includes a name that is not found anywhere else in the Bible. It's not found in Genesis chapter five, or Genesis chapter 11.

01:06:28

And the genealogies that have the beginning ages in them. And so this is what older there's typically used to say, hey, you know, there are gaps in the genealogies.

01:06:38

And this is why you can't use the genealogy as a, as a chronology to tell time. And they use this to cast doubt upon the genealogies and say, well, you see, you can't really trust it.

01:06:48

You can't, you can't use it the way you're using it. And I think I've demonstrated here that you absolutely can. I think that was

01:06:53

God's intention for putting the numbers in there, because you know what, I think God saw us coming. And he knew what we were going to do with his word.

01:07:00

And he knew we were going to try to put long ages to suit our fanciful ideas of how the universe works.

01:07:07

And you know, when it was all created. So God saw us coming and he put in safeguards in there. People choose to ignore them.

01:07:14

With the confusion about Canaan that Jeff is saying that there's two

01:07:20

Canaan's listed. Right. There's Canaan and then there's Canaan. So if you go to Luke chapter three.

01:07:29

But like one of the, one of the things that you had said is that it could be even a copy error. Right. That's what we think would happen.

01:07:36

Because when you look down at verse 37, so verses 36 and 37,

01:07:41

I'll read them in their entirety. It says the son of Canaan, the son of Arphexad, the son of Shem, the son of Noah, the son of Lamech, the son of Methuselah, the son of Enoch, the son of Jared, the son of Mahalaleel, and the son of Canaan.

01:07:53

So they've got another Canaan there. And I believe Andrew Steinman's article, the one that I pointed out with the

01:07:59

QR code, I believe he has an explanation in there of that. Probably the most common explanation of that is it's probably a scribal error.

01:08:07

Like when you're, when you go to copy a line, right, there are no spaces in between the Hebrew letters. So it's all jammed together.

01:08:13

When you're going to copy a line, it's very easy as you're going back and forth from the source document to your destination document to accidentally copy a name over again.

01:08:22

Right. If you've ever sat in detention in school, you've done this. Right. If you ever had to copy stuff as part of a book report out of one book to another before, you know, before the advent of photocopiers, then you know what

01:08:34

I'm talking about. It's very easy to accidentally repeat words. And this is probably, this is likely what happened.

01:08:41

I don't think we know for absolute certainty, but just the fact that Canaan doesn't show up in any early manuscript before the fourth century

01:08:48

AD is a pretty, is a pretty big tell. What seems to have happened was that when

01:08:56

Luke was transcribed, there was a document that somebody was transcribing, making a copy of the gospel of Luke, and the second

01:09:05

Canaan was inserted accidentally. And then what happened is, you know, somebody else came along and says, oh, wait a minute,

01:09:11

I'm making a copy of the Old Testament. I'm going to use the New Testament for cross -reference. I remember reading about there's a Canaan son of Arphaxad, but he's not here in the

01:09:17

Old Testament. So what I'll do is I'll backport it from Luke back into the Hebrew text.

01:09:24

And then it'll start to be propagated that way. But that doesn't start happening until like the fifth century AD. Again, if you want to get into the nitty gritty details of this, read

01:09:33

Andrew Steinman's article. It's been a while since I've read it, but I remember it being a pretty good article and fairly accessible.

01:09:40

And that's not the only example. There's other things that tell us that sometimes there were copy errors. Like even

01:09:46

Dr. Lyle's book about the faith in an age of reason, I think is what it's called, about the 420 supposed

01:09:54

Bible contradictions, some of them he points out are probably copy errors.

01:10:00

Right. And there were also cases where it looks like you had a scribe who had made a footnote on the side or a comment in the margin.

01:10:08

And then a later copyist came along and mistook that for text that should have been in the text rather than next to the text as an explanation.

01:10:17

We think that perhaps that's how 1 John 5, 7 through 9, it's called the Comma Johannium, that's probably how that came into being.

01:10:25

It was accidentally inserted into the text. I mean, that happens, right? But the great thing about textual criticism and the men and women who devote their lives to putting all these little paper fragments together and coming up with the word of God, is that God has given us such a volume of manuscript evidence.

01:10:45

So manuscripts in multiple languages coming from multiple areas of the world and dating all the way back to several hundred years before Christ.

01:10:54

It's incredible what we have at our disposal. And we don't need to worry about what we have today is not somehow what was originally written.

01:11:05

Because once you put all the pieces of the puzzle together, for the most part, it becomes pretty easy to put it all together and see what the original said.

01:11:13

Okay. So one other question from Joy. She says, when it says Noah was 500 years old when

01:11:19

Shem, Ham and Japheth were born, were they triplets? No, I don't believe they were.

01:11:27

Although the last time I looked at this, I don't recall seeing any really good indication of the birth order.

01:11:34

Matter of fact, there is one verse that talks about Japheth. And I can't remember the reference off the top of my head, my apologies.

01:11:41

But depending upon which English translation you're reading, it will say either Japheth the elder or Japheth the older brother of Japheth.

01:11:51

So apparently the Hebrew is such that it can be reckoned either way, rightly so.

01:11:57

And the New American Standard, which is the Bible that I teach and it uses my study Bible, it actually has a footnote that specifies that, hey, you know, it says

01:12:06

Japheth the elder, but it can also mean the elder brother of Japheth. So there's some ambiguity, but there's no ambiguity in things of major doctrines like sin and salvation and all that stuff.

01:12:20

I never thought of that so that they were triplets. I just assumed that he was just saying he had them.

01:12:27

Yeah. So I would think my inclination is to believe that they are not triplets because whenever you do see twins born, like Jacob and Esau, they're explicitly called out, like, hey, had twins, because, you know, it's not every day that somebody has twins.

01:12:42

And it's not every day that somebody has triplets either. Right. So you would think that they were, if they were triplets, that would be called out.

01:12:50

That may be an argument from silence, but I'm just thinking, you know, it may have been triplets, but I don't think that there's any evidence to say that they were, is basically what

01:13:00

I'm coming down on. Which one do you think is the oldest? Probably Japheth. I don't know.

01:13:06

Maybe I kind of get the sense from the scriptures that maybe it's not really important because what was important was not who was the oldest.

01:13:16

It was who had the blessing. Wait, doesn't, when Noah was drinking and got drunk, didn't they say the youngest brother,

01:13:28

Ham? Didn't they call Ham the youngest brother? Yeah, so Ham was the youngest. The question is whether Shem and Japheth, what's their order?

01:13:35

So yeah, Ham is the youngest. Thank you for reminding me of that. Yeah, I just happened to think of that too. Yeah, it must be a

01:13:41

Holy Spirit thing. Well, I like to think I have the spirit, so. One of our past speakers,

01:13:48

Pastor Robert Chamberlain, he does 59 -second sermons every day on his social media, and right now he's going through the book of Jude, and this morning he talked about triplets and how

01:13:58

Jude writes in triplets a lot in his book. He lists things of three, and Pastor Morgan speculated that maybe he was the father of triplets also, and so it was special to him.

01:14:12

Well, we have to make sure we're exegeting, not eisegeting, right? Oh, right. And if you are reading into the text,

01:14:18

I mean, you notice that the whole thing about Methuselah's name, you're not going to find that explicitly called out in Scripture, so what

01:14:23

I like to say is, you know, I'm not going to die on this hill. I think his name really does mean after he is dead when it will come, because I think it fits, right?

01:14:34

It just makes sense. Now, if somebody comes along and is able to prove to me conclusively that that's not what his name means,

01:14:41

I'm not going to lose any sleep over it, right? So this is not an issue that I think we need to fight over, but I think the story fits.

01:14:53

So, now, when one of our friends here pointed out to you the mistake that you had made with Terah, and the phrasing of that was that,

01:15:01

I think it was like, by the time he was a certain age, he had become the father of those three. It was clear that those three were not his, were not triplets, but something about the phrasing of Noah and his three sons is a little bit unclear, because like Nate right now is asking, because it does say that he was 500 and the three were born.

01:15:25

So if they're not triplets, what's your take on why it's listed that they were all born in the same year?

01:15:32

Well, it doesn't necessarily say they were born in the same year, right? It just says the son of Noah really was, notice that Shem is usually mentioned, usually, if not always mentioned first, because Shem is the one who is the blessing.

01:15:43

He's the father of the Semitic peoples through whom Christ came, right? So that's the reason why he's mentioned first.

01:15:49

So I don't think it's clear enough to say that, okay, they were born in the same year and they were all mentioned together.

01:15:54

It could just be a simple matter of, you know, when he was that age, then he had, you know, he started, you know, he had one of the kids, right?

01:16:02

He started having kids. So whether, let's say it was Japheth. That was the year Japheth was born and the other two came shortly thereafter.

01:16:09

That could be what it is. But we know that we know from the Bible that the Ham is youngest and Shem and Japheth are, you know, you could go either way depending upon your

01:16:18

English translation. So I'm kind of inclined to think that Japheth is the older, just knowing what, you know,

01:16:24

God doesn't often in scripture give the blessing to the firstborn. It's usually man who gives the blessing to the firstborn.

01:16:31

You notice that firstborn David was called God's firstborn. God called him my firstborn, though clearly he was not.

01:16:38

He was the youngest of, what, eight kids, right? Jacob and Esau. And they sound like the second ones, didn't he?

01:16:44

He's like the passive type. He seems to have something for the second birth. You think maybe there's a theme that's running through scripture, right?

01:16:50

Jacob and Esau, right? Esau was the elder, Jacob was the younger, but Jacob got the blessing.

01:16:57

So that's why, you know, again, I don't want to, you know, spend too much time on, you know, who was older, you know,

01:17:03

Japheth or Shem, but I think it kind of fits the entirety of scripture. It seems to fit

01:17:09

God's modus operandi, the pattern that we see laid out in other areas of scripture.

01:17:16

Overall, if you insert three times the number of people we've been talking about, you still don't have the millions of years that are needed to keep the old earthers happy.

01:17:30

Yeah, I think this is the reason why they tend not to focus so much on the genealogies as they do on the days of creation and on the, you know, the alleged gap between Genesis 1 .1

01:17:41

and 1 .2. And so, Dan, when you add up the genealogies from Adam to Christ, how many years do we get?

01:17:50

You get roughly 6 ,000. I could flip back to that side and we could add it up a little more precisely.

01:17:55

Wait, from Adam to Christ? Oh, from Adam to Christ, that'd be 4 ,000 years. Yeah, so I think it's, you know,

01:18:03

I will not, you know, you notice that up until about five seconds from now, I never once mentioned

01:18:08

Bishop Usher. Okay, so I have read very, very little of Usher and I only did so after I put all of this together.

01:18:19

I read some of what Usher did. I respect his work, but I would never go so far as to say, here's precisely how old the earth is, here's the date on which it was created, because, you know, there's wiggle room with the genealogies, right?

01:18:36

When somebody was 500 years old, let's say Noah had his first son when he was 500.

01:18:42

Well, he could have been the day before his 501st birthday, right? So there's wiggle room in there.

01:18:48

So I'm not going to get down to the precision of days and months or even a specific year.

01:18:53

This is why I feel more comfortable saying approximately 6 ,000 years, because we don't know the precise date when each kid was born.

01:19:01

Yeah, and then another question from our Facebook watcher. Who was the mother of Enosh?

01:19:09

Was it a sister of Seth? Who was the mother of Enosh? I'll have to go back here and take a look.

01:19:17

This sounds a little bit like, where did Cain get his wife? Yeah. Is that basically what we're asking?

01:19:23

Maybe. Okay. I don't see that. I don't see that correlation. Okay. Well, I have not looked into who

01:19:32

Enosh's mama is, so I don't think you probably want to sit here and stare at the top of my head while I'm pouring through my

01:19:38

Bible looking at this. So what I can do is, if you wanted to, let's see, what's the best way to do follow -up questions?

01:19:46

You're going to have this video posted somewhere on your Facebook page, right? Yes. Can people send a message to you on Facebook at your page?

01:19:53

Yeah, they can. I'm at 7footapologist. You can look me up on Facebook. I also have my website.

01:19:59

The URL, obviously, is right here in front of you. If you, again, take out your newfangled cell phone and you scan the

01:20:05

QR code there, that'll give you all my contact information. I think. I think that's what that is. Either it's my

01:20:11

URL. Well, but I did post into our Facebook comments your website, 7footapologist .com.

01:20:18

Okay. Yeah. So if you have, if anybody has a question that I'm, I just, you know,

01:20:23

I have a blonde moment or I just, you know, I'm not able to answer it for you, then please feel free to drop a question on one of the

01:20:31

Facebook pages. Yeah. The QR code goes to 7footapologist .com. Feel free to leave a question on CFS.

01:20:40

Is it CFS? Creation Fellowship Santee. Yeah. Leave a question on CFS's Facebook page and I'll follow up on it and I'll try to answer it for you.

01:20:48

And then Nate also wants to know, are there gaps in the genealogies of Levi to Kohath to Amram to Moses?

01:20:55

Again, I'll have to follow, I'll have to follow up on that one. Okay. They're very well, maybe. All right.

01:21:02

Dan, well, once again, tell everybody where they can find you. I know you kind of just said it, but, but go ahead and do that again.

01:21:08

Yeah. I'm, I am unfortunately on the Twitters. I don't spend a whole lot of time on Twitter because it's just basically a fight fest there.

01:21:13

Every once in a while I'll post something. I'm on Gab. I have zero followers. So if you're on Gab, go be my first follower, right?

01:21:21

I'm on Facebook, 7footapologist. I have a YouTube channel, 7footapologist. And all of this stuff is linked to from my, from my website, aside from Gab, because Squarespace doesn't want to send people to Gab, I guess.

01:21:32

So they don't provide a little icon for that. Go figure. Have you, have you watched any of Nathaniel Jensen's presentations on how all of this genealogy shows up in the present day?

01:21:51

I don't believe so. His name does not ring a bell. He's with the Answers in Genesis.

01:21:56

No. Yeah. The Answers in Genesis. And basically he's put out about a series of 30 or 35 videos where he looks at different people groups and traces them back to basically two or three people that came together at some point in time.

01:22:17

That sounds familiar. I wonder if we had that before. I'm not familiar with his work.

01:22:25

Anyway, that's a good series to watch to get an interesting perspective about how things have showed up in the current.

01:22:34

If there's an article in particular you'd like to have me look at, then go ahead and either email it to me or, you know, drop it, you know, drop it on one of the, the, the social media places and I'll probably run into it.

01:22:47

Okay. Or, or Rob, if you're not on social media, then you could email it to us at our creationfellowshipsantee at gmail .com

01:22:55

and we can forward it onto him as well. So, and so signing off for us again, we are

01:23:02

Creation Fellowship Santee and people can find most of our past videos on our YouTube channel,

01:23:08

Creation Fellowship Santee like and follow us on our Facebook page, Creation Fellowship Santee and also look for our new