Messiah In The Old Testament Episode 21 Flood Stories Introduction

Welcome to Messiah In The Old Testament. This is our 21st episode and in the previous 20 episodes we revealed to you 24 individual Messianic Prophecies.

Now that is just a spit in the bucket, because there are many, many more prophecies to come. Now, in our last two episodes, if you recall, we discussed the conditions that were present on the earth in the time period before the worldwide flood. And then we looked at the sequence of events that happened leading up to the flood. We use the Tanakh as our base Scripture. Of course, all of our prophecies come from the Tanakh. Hence, the name Messiah In The Old Testament. But we found that the Old Testament Scriptures were lacking in detail as far as what life was [like] before the flood. So, we pulled in some other references to help us fill in and get a bigger picture.

Now we know from our base scriptures that all men thought about was evil all the time. And that's from Genesis 6:5. We also know that there were no kings. There were no laws in place. The laws of Moses had not yet been given. So, this was kind of like a Wild West town.

Every man did what was right in his own eyes and what that translated into was: I can have whatever I want. I can do whatever I please. And if you get in my way, I will kill you. And I will cheat and steal and destroy to get what I want. That really does summarize the pre-flood world to a tee. But we also pulled in references. We looked at the sages and said, “Okay, what did the sages have to say about this pre-flood period?”

We looked at Maimonides in Halakah, Mishneh Torah in the HaMaddha and we found in chapter 1 a description of what the world was like.

Maimonides saw it like this: There were false prophets that entered the world. And those false prophets said that they were prophesying stuff that the starry host was telling them. And they were channeling the starry host.

And they said, “The starry host say that you should make images to the starry host, that you should make altars, put these images on the altars and you should bow down and worship the starry host. And not only that, you should bring offerings in. And they developed the temples and this whole system was created that led men astray.

And Maimonides said that after a period of time whole generations were following the starry host and no one called upon the name of the Lord, except for Enoch, Methuselah and Noah. He named those three specifically. And this goes along with what Genesis has to say. It fits perfectly. In fact, we actually have some evidence from another one of our sources, which we’ll get to in a little bit, that there were influences that came from outside the world, entered the world and brought all this evil into the world. And like I said we’ll get into that in a second. So, then we looked at Josephus.

What did the historian Josephus in the first century A.D. have to say about the period before the flood. He wrote a book called The Antiquities of the Jews. And he gives a history of the Jews. And as part of that, he talks about the conditions that were present in the pre-flood world. He specifically discusses Cain. And he described Cain as this person who was willing to cheat and steal and do anything it took to increase the wealth of his household. In fact, he was a leader and he led others astray in the business of cheating and stealing and killing and destroying. So, he was the chief architects of this new world order and he created a system of weights and measures. Not so that everything could be fair but so that he could cheat his fellow man. Josephus said before Cain came up this wicked system, everyone just treated each other generously. And when you traded, you just you gave people more than they deserved or wanted. And Cain then was the chief architect of this evil system.

Then we looked at the book of Enoch. And we spent some time talking about the validity of the book of Enoch. We presented a lot of evidence as to why scholars think that the book of Enoch has credibility. And we decided, we would pull that in because nothing in the book of Enoch really contradicts what the Tanakh says.

So, in the book of Enoch, we learned that there were 200 angels that came down from heaven. Those angels, who were led by a leader called Semjaza, landed on the top of Mount Hermon. And we talked about Mount Hermon meaning, ‘place of dedication.’ And they came down, they swore an oath that they would go down and they would take daughters of men to be their wives. And they would then marry them and have babies with them. So that's what they did, they went down and they took the daughters of men and made them their wives. The book of Enoch says that they then introduced evil into the world. Not just because their actions defiled them and defiled the daughters of men and defiled mankind, but that they actually started teaching the daughters of men and men some evil things.

So, they talked in the book of Enoch about astrology, about charms, about enchantments, about constellations and this kind of conjures up that whole image of the starry host and the false prophets coming in and leading men astray. Then we know that once the Sons of God took the daughters of men, had children with them, the children that were born were the Nephilim. In the book of Enoch, the Nephilim were described as giants, very tall, 3000 ells, whatever an ell is.

And these babies then were just giant babies, who turned into giant toddlers, who turned into giant children, giant adolescents and finally giant adults. And you can imagine the appetite that those children had along the way. They would literally eat their host families out of house and home. And when they ran out of the provisions of men, the book of Enoch says they turned to the wild animals. And they started eating birds and fish and reptiles with their blood still in them and they defiled themselves even further. And they defiled the civilization they were living in. And then they turned on men and they started eating men. And then finally, they turned on each other. And this was a horrific picture of these Nephilim just wreaking havoc on the earth.

This was the state of affairs when God looked down from on high, saw the violence, heard the violence, saw that all men thought about was evil all the time. And he made the executive decision: I am done with man. I'm going to wipe out everything on the face of the earth that has the breath of life in it. Man's destruction was certain. Elohim had decided. Now, we talked about Maimonides identifying Enoch and Methuselah and Noah as being different. They were not led astray by the false prophets. They were what we referred to our previous episodes as the righteous thread or the righteous remnant. They were the remnant that would then have children and then children's children and on down to finally produce Messiah. They were the Messianic Line. God saw that righteous thread. God identified that there was good in man still.

God saw Noah, saw Noah's heart and said, “This is a righteous man. This is a good man.” And Noah found favor in the eyes of Elohim. And Elohim then pivoted from his destruction thing over to redemption thing. And I'm very thankful that he decided to redeem mankind, so that I could be standing here today telling you all these stories. I am very thankful for my redemption. God then gave Noah a plan. That plan was to go and build a giant boat. And that giant boat, he gave the dimensions, he gave the description, he told him to coat it with pitch inside and out. And Noah did every single thing that Elohim commanded him to do. Which brings up a really, really good point. Before, we were talking about Cain and God giving Cain an option of ‘redemption through obedience.’ This was very definitely Noah being rewarded for his obedience. Noah did everything Elohim commanded him to do. And that then gave Noah certainly a modicum if not a huge amount of righteousness. God accounted it to him as righteousness. And we will see this is a thing that happens over and over along our Messianic Line.

So, here we are: Noah, his family, all the animals they’re waiting to get into the ark. So here we are, right at the doorway, ready to enter the ark.

And now I want to kind of back up, just a little bit, and talk about flood stories. We’re just ready for the flood. I mean, the raindrops are just about ready to fall. The thunder, the lightning, the floodgates opening, the oceans overflowing, the whole earth being inundated with this massive worldwide flood. But this isn't the only account of a worldwide flood. When I wrote the original book Messiah in the Old Testament, I went through as many prophecies as I could find. And then I kept adding and adding and adding. But there was a point where I decided that we wanted to embellish the book a little bit and create what I called ‘notes.’ And the first note I wrote for the book was called ‘A Note on the Flood.’ And I went and looked at flood stories. Not just one or two or three or four flood stories, I looked at literally dozens and dozens and dozens of flood stories. So, I am now going to tell you a series of flood stories.

Now, I'm a scientist at heart. My first job, after university, was working in a raw material testing lab. I worked as a research development scientist. I was helping develop enzyme assays and validate those enzyme assays. And I really, really enjoyed that work. I enjoyed bench chemistry. I enjoyed research. And then, in my training, when I was in residency, I worked in a tissue culture lab. And I did a lot of very basic science research. I was one of the first to be able to grow adult heart cells, to treat them with growth factors, and to cause their cultures to expand. And that was something that had not been thought possible. We could certainly easily get embryonic cells and stem cells to do that. But we were able to get adult heart cells to do that.

So, I have two patents. If you ever come to my office, you can look in the back hall and read my patents and see what I was up to in those days. What I'm trying to tell you is that I know my way around research. I know my way about around scientific inquiry and design of studies.

And when you design a study, you understand that the larger the number of data points in your set of things you are looking at, the larger that number, the more powerful your study is. If I do a study that only includes three subjects, not as important as if I do a study that includes a thousand or 5000 and 10,000 subjects. That is a much more powerful study. It’s a statistical thing. I look at flood stories as data points and they are data points in my study. My hypothesis is that the flood story is a real story, the flood story is a valid story. And the evidence I have to validate that hypothesis is that there are flood stories [from] all over the world, not just two or three, but dozens even hundreds of stories.

So that gives me a lot of data points to look at. And then another thing you look at in statistics is, is your data biased? In other words, are all of your data points coming from one specific area and you're not looking at the bigger picture. And this is another thing that all these data points tell me. We have stories from every continent. We have stories from almost every culture. This is something that is spread out throughout the entire earth. There are flood stories from South America. There are flood stories from Africa. And I’m going to tell you these stories. So, here are the stories I'm going to tell you.

First of all, I’m going to tell you the story from the Incan Empire. We’re going to go to South America to the Andes and we’re going to find out what the Incas thought about this whole concept of a worldwide flood. From there, then, we are going to go to the subcontinent of India. And we’re going to go to the Hindu writings, we’re going to go to the Vedic Writings, the commentary on the Vedic Writings, the Puranas. We’re going to look at all of that information and tell the Hindu Flood Story. Then we are going to go to Australia. And we’re going to tell you the Aboriginal Flood Story which includes a very, very large frog by the name of Tiddalick. Then, from there, we’re going to the steppes of Africa, we’re going to tell you the Masai story, which is similar to a lot of the other stories from Northern Africa and Eastern Africa.

Then, we’re going to start telling you stories from our pet civilizations. Remember, we looked at creation stories, we looked at sacrificial systems and we looked at those five cultures. We looked at the North American Indian Culture. We looked at the Chinese, Babylonian, Greek and then Egyptian. And we’re going to tell you each of those stories.

Now, if you're keeping track, we've now hit data points from every continent and from many different civilizations. So, I like to be as accurate and informative as possible. And when I'm telling you these flood stories, know that I went to the source to try to find where the stories came from and then refer to that source. I will tell you what the sources are for each of the stories.

For example, in our first story, which is the Incan story, I will tell you exactly where the story comes from. Now, as we go through these stories, I want to put you into a certain mindset as we look at them. Every story I’m going to tell has a common theme. The details are different. They are actually quite interesting and exciting. I love these flood stories, but there is a general theme. And I'm going to put up a table after we’ve looked at all of these stories that compares them. And as were going through, think about these things.

Number one, there's always some sort of hero that is lifted up. And that hero generally is recognized as being righteous, pious, somebody above other people. Then there is some event that happens that angers the deities. And the deities vary amongst all the stories.

The deities get angry at mankind and the deities decide to send some form of punishment. And then there's the description of the punishment. And then the hero is provided a means of escape from that judgment. It varies in the different stories as to what the means of that judgment is.

There's always some sort of companionship with the hero. And the hero saves a portion of mankind, animals and even in some stories plant life.

And then they are carried through the disaster. And then after the disaster is over then there is a means by which the earth is put back to its normal state.

And this is pretty universal in all the flood stories. Now, there are some that are exceptions. The Aboriginal story and the Chinese story are a little bit different. The Egyptian story is a little bit out there. But they do generally follow the same theme. So, the first story I'm going to tell you, is the story of the Incans.

Thank you for watching our show today. We hope that you enjoyed watching it as much as we enjoyed bringing it to you. Now, after watching this episode you might be saying to yourself, “Who is this Messiah that Dr. Smith is talking about?

Is he talking about the Christian Messiah? Is he talking about Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who was born of the Virgin Mary. And then lived a blameless and holy life on the earth, And then was tortured and crucified. And after he died he then was resurrected from the dead after three days. Then after people witnessed this, he was then taken up bodily by Elohim into heaven from the Mount of Olives.

Or is Dr. Smith talking about the Muslim prophet Isa. Isa Ibn Maryam, the messenger, who was sent by Allah to bring a message to the people. The Quran says he that lived a holy and blameless life, was born of the virgin Mary. He fulfilled all the Jewish prophecies in exact accordance. But one difference, instead of being crucified, he then was taken up by Allah into heaven before the Romans laid hands on him. And he awaits there now in the fourth heaven where at the end of days at the day of judgment he will be revealed to all.

Or is Dr. Smith talking about the Jewish Messiah? The Messiah who has not yet been revealed, that the entire Jewish world is waiting for his revelation. Now, the beautiful thing is that you can hold to any of these beliefs. And we can all still learn together about Messiah. We can learn about our Christian Messiah. We can learn about our Jewish Messiah. We can learn about our Muslim prophet Isa who will be revealed. It doesn't matter what you believe. You can even be an atheist or agnostic and still learn from this program about Messiah. Now, I have to admit I am a Christian so I approach things, obviously, from a Christian point of view. And I promise you, as we reveal these prophecies, which I believe have all been fulfilled through Jesus Christ. Or will be fulfilled when he comes back, returning in the clouds in the same way he was taken up. I believe that all of this is true, but I promise you I will do my very best to present these prophecies from a neutral point of view. And try to keep my Christian bias to a minimum. Obviously, it will pop up from time to time but I will try to stay only in the Tanakh and try not to get into the New Testament very often. Now, if you want more information about Messiah, we have resources for you.

We have a website which is findingmessiah.org. Now, on that website you are going to find several resources. You will find links to all the videos, all the episodes that we have created so far. You will find links to download the transcripts of any of these episodes. And then you will find a section where you can get more information about Messiah through frequently asked questions. And then there is a section for donation. If you want to come alongside our ministry at Finding Messiah.

Now, there’s going to come a time in this series where you are going to be confronted with the question: What are you going to do with Messiah? Who do you believe Messiah is? Which of these Messiahs do