Messiah In The Old Testament Episode 25
Chinese Flood Story
Welcome to Messiah In the Old Testament. We’re continuing to tell you flood stories from around the world. We’ve now told you five different stories from five different continents. We’re going to tell you a sixth story today. It won't come from a new continent but it is from the ancient land of China. So, let's review our story so far.
And I’m going to put up that same graphic you saw before, but I’ve added to it now a canoe over North America. That symbolizes the story that we told of our hero who got into a fight with the water deities and they threw water at him because they're upset because he killed one of the deities. And he was saved by a young maiden in a watercraft. And that is the canoe which would be from the Ottawa culture. And then South America, I’ve got a picture of our llama over Peru, symbolic of our Inca story. The story of the llama herder who had some sad llamas and was foretold of the flood and was saved by going to Mount Vilcoto. And then over to Africa, we've got Tumbainot and his wife there over the country of Kenya. And that's symbolizing the story of Tumbainot and the giant boat that he built and how they were saved in the steppes
of Africa. And then I’ve got a picture over the country of India and that is for the Hindu story. The story of Manu and the giant fish. And we have the fish towing Manu there. And then finally the picture of Tiddalick the frog over Australia. Now [we have] five continents, very diverse cultures, the stories that all fit into our eight elements. Even Tiddalick the frog fit into our eight elements. There was just one element missing.
So, now I put together the entire table so far, so you can kind of take a gander at that. But we’re going to fill in the line for the Native American story. Now, in the Native American story, we’ve got a hero. And it is that very brave warrior which was of some standing within his tribe. The event that happened was that he killed one of the river deities, incurring the wrath of the other ones. The cataclysm was the flood that they sent. The flood that rose and covered the entire world, earth and killed animals and all the people. The means of escape was some form of watercraft. And depending on your culture, in the Ottawa it was a giant canoe, in the Cree culture it was a giant raft, in the Ojibway culture as well and then in the Caddo culture was this giant reed. But these were all being guided by our beautiful young maiden. And then she is one of the companions that goes with him. It's our beautiful maiden plus all the good animals that were saved on whatever watercraft it is. So, the who is saved was man and animals. The rescue came when the brave young black coot drove down, brought up the mud and the mud was then used to make a new earth. And then the restoration was that the vegetation regrew and then all the animals went out and populated the new earth. Then the hero and our beautiful maiden went out and repopulated the earth. Now, if you look at the columns above the Native American row,
you can see all of our heroes: our Shepherd, Tumbainot, King Manu, River Eel, Warrior leader. And you can see the event is pretty much evil: killing, destruction, bad jus jus. The cataclysm in every one of these is a flood except the Aboriginal, there's a drought and then the flood. And then the means of escape is generally some form of a watercraft except for aboriginal story, Tiddalick laughing and releasing the water. Companions are quite variable throughout the stories, but basically there is some remnant of humanity and some remnant of animals [who] are saved. And then the rescue is the flood stopping, rain stopping, the fish towing that the ship. And then finally, the restoration is pretty much the same, whoever is saved from the cataclysm then is able to repopulate.
Now, I’m going to tell you the Chinese story. Now, it would be good to go back and review our Chinese creation story because there's some interesting things that I said during that episode. I’ll will review a little bit. The creation story we learned highly [was] variable depending on what part of China. And we said that is not surprising because there's like 1.2 billion people living in China.
There are six language groups and 300 dialects. And I have listed there the language groups. Of course, the predominant one is the Mandarin, but then you've also got the Cantonese and Hunanese and Taiwanese, Wu and Gan. So, all these variations in language, variations in culture, you would expect for there to be a variety of stories. Now, there is one main story. And if you'll remember, in our creation episode I went and talked to my Chinese colleagues and they said they learned the Pan Gu story. In the case of the flood story, they learned the story of Gun Yu and it's kind of the story of the of the creation of the Chinese Empire and the Chinese dynasties.
So, it is a common story and it is basically the government approved story. In fact, the governments in China, in the various provinces, they put up murals, they put up statues and they the honor these ancient emperors and ancient gods. So, I’m going to tell you first, the Gun Yu story. It is called the Gun Yu Myth. And then after that, I'm going to tell you one of the regional variation stories. But that story parallels our creation [flood] story much better than the Gun Yu Myth. And it fits in all of our eight categories. So, I’m going to tell you that the official story
from China. There was an Emperor that lived back in the 24th century B.C.E. That Emperor's name was Emperor Yao.
I'm going to put up a picture that shows you an artist's conception of what Yao looked like. Obviously in 24 centuries BCE you’re not to have any portraits hanging on the wall of Yao. And then the other one is Shu and then the other one is Yu. these are basically the first three emperors of the Chinese nation the Chinese Empire. So, Yao. Yao was Emperor and he had a problem with flooding. The flooding came and just inundated the land.
There are stories of people at that time that had to leave their homes and go up on the mountains to be safe from all these floods. So, Emperor Yao decided he needed to do something about this flooding. So, he sought the advice of the four mountains. Now to understand the four mountains, you have to know that there are five sacred mountains in China. They are located one north, one south, one east, one west and one central. And the four mountains, when you say the four mountains you are talking about the spirits of those four mountains.
The North Mountain was called Mount Heng in Shanxi Province. The South Great Mountain with mount Heng in Hunan Province. The East Mountain was Mount Tai and the West Great Mountain was Mount Hua. And these are located in the four corners of the of the Empire. So, Yao consulted these spirits, the spirits of the mountain. And they told him that he should hire for the job his distant cousin whose name was Gun. So, Gun or Gun (goon) depending on how you pronounce it.
Gun accepted the job and he went, snuck up, like stealing fire on Mount Olympus. He went up and he stole this magic soil from the chief god. And he took that and used it for his Emperor Yao. And he started building levees and he started building dams and he did all these earthen projects. And his self-expanding soil just kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And he tried to hold back the floods. Well, this did not work at all. The floods came. And they just overran his embankments, his levees - they did not work. And it was such a disaster that Yao decided he would step down as Emperor. So, he went and consulted the four mountains again. And the four mountains said that you need to appoint your other distant cousin Shu as the next Emperor. So then, Shun takes over and now he consults with his chief engineer, who tries to keep the
floods at bay, Gun or Gun (goon). And he decides to build bigger and better levees and bigger and better dams. And so, they went about building and building and building. And for 13 years they tried to hold back these floods. Finally, utter failure, the floods came, the inundation continued. So now, in disgrace, Gun resigns and is banished from the country of China.
Now, fortunately, his son was paying attention and his son who was hailed as this genius engineer said, “No, the answer is not trying to hold back the flood. The answer is diverting the floods.” And with the help of some magical spirits, like some river spirits. Maybe like our Cherokee Uktena. These river spirits guided him and told him where to dig channels and how deep to dig the channels and gave him all this guidance and assisted him in the work.
And so, he created the diversion channels. And so, the floods came and they just washed right out into the ocean and bypassed all the fields and bypassed all the towns and bypassed all the cities and bypassed the Emperor's Palace. And the country was then saved from the inundation. Now, in honor of this achievement, all the people decided they would
have Yu as their next Emperor. He was elevated to the status of a demigod. And so, then he became the first official dynastic Emperor of China and established the first dynasty. And then all the dynasties went on from there. So, this is back 24 centuries, they don't have any direct writing from that time. or any like pictographs from that time.
What they do have are the oracle bones which we covered in our sacrificial system talking about China. The Oracle Bones that had the primitive Chinese writing and the name of Yu is there. The name of Yao and Shun, they're all there in those oracle bones. So, this story basically comes from oracle bones. So now Yu is the first Emperor and then Yu establishes the dynasties that reach all the way up into the 18th and 19th centuries. Now there's another story which I would like to tell you from China.
That story is called the Miao story. Now, the Miao people are different from your rank-and-file Chinese people. The Miao people have a lighter complexion. They have hair color which is anywhere from blonde to brunette even some redheads. They have a totally different look from your average Chinese person. So, through the centuries and millennia
they have been persecuted. We think that they started way up north because their songs, which is the way they preserve their oral tradition, their songs talk about days lasting all day for six months of the year and then night lasting all night for six months of the year. So obviously [they were] up above the Arctic Circle. And then they talk about snow. So, they think they were up north first and then through the persecution they were driven south to their current location in basically the country of Laos. So, they are still a people group and they still have their songs. It is very interesting if you read their songs. I mean their songs are beautiful and if you listen to any of their music. You can go to YouTube and look up Miao songs and you can listen to the music. It’s actually wonderful. Now, in the Miao story I went to a resource. I promised that I would give you sources on the story.
So, my source is the book called Chinese Mythology A-to-Z and is written by Jeremy Robertson. I will up a picture of up so you can see what it looks like. In that Mythology A-to-Z this story is found. And they attributed to the Miao. So, here it is: One day there was a farmer who was out in his field working and his two children were there with him, a boy and a girl. And the farmer hears off in the distance a rumble of thunder. So, the farmer knows that the thunder is coming. So, he takes his children and they hurry into the house and the barn and he gets them out of the storm that is coming.
Turns out, he had a grudge against the god of thunder. The god of thunder, in the story, it says that he had a very bad disposition, kind of a grumpy not very good guy. So, this farmer decided he would trap and put in a cage the Thunder God. And then he would kill him and then he would preserve him for posterity after he was killed. So, he waits for the thunder to come and he waits and waits. He grabs his pitchfork and when the thunder god shows up with his thunder axe.
Now I’m going to put up a graphic here which shows you the three gods of weather. The first god is Lei Gong and you can see him there wielding his thunder axe. And each character in mythology has some identifying thing. So, if you see a picture on a mural or on the wall you can just look and see what thing they’re wielding. And you'll know what god they are. So, Lei Gong it's his thunder axe. And Yu Shi who is the god of rain and you'll notice he's got an earthen pot there he’s holding. And that's his symbol, the earthen pot, which is full of water that he pours out on the earth when it rains. And then finally the third god which really doesn't play into this story as much, but I mean he's there. Its Feng Bo. And Feng Bo was symbolized by a giant goatskin bag which is full of wind. And he lets the wind out of that bag. So, if you see a character
that has that that bag, that's symbolic of Feng Bo. So Lee Gong, thunder god, shows up, thunder axe in his hand and the farmer rushes out with his pitchfork and he stabs Lei Gong with the pitchfork. So, he crumples to the ground.
The farmer drags him and puts him in this giant iron cage that he had made. And so, he decides he would go off to town to get the spices he needed to basically pickle Lee Gong after he killed him. Now, his children were there. And he told his children, “Don't you touch him, don't give him anything, don't even listen to what he has to say. Just leave him be and I'll deal with him when I get back.” So, the farmer gets back and he finds out while he was gone that his children had pity on Lei Gong. So, he was pleading and begging, “I'm so thirsty. I need some water. Just give me some water.”
Finally, they agreed to give him one single drop of water. So, they had compassion on him, gave him the drop of water. But that was enough for him to revive and with his thunder axe he was able to destroy the iron bars and break out of his cage. And then he leaps up into heaven as the farmer is getting back. So, now the farmer knows that he's in deep
trouble. So, he gets a boat to try to save them. Now it turns out Lei Gong was a compassionate god even though he had this reputation of being very, very grumpy and had a bad disposition. He gave the children a tooth. And he said, “If you plant this in the ground, it will grow and provide you your means of salvation.”
So, they immediately went out and planted in the ground and this thing grew so fast. It turns out that it was a gourd. It was a bottle gourd. And I’ll put up a picture of a bottle board so you can see that. So, the thunder god is on his way up and he meets his co-god which is the rain god which we just showed you was Yu Shi with his earthen bucket. He says, “Rain down on the humans to punish them.” So, then he starts pouring out water, pouring out water. The rain is coming down, coming down and is filling the earth very rapidly.
So, the farmer he takes this gourd and puts it in the boat. He takes his children and puts them in this magical gourd. And then he rides out the storm. And then the waters rise and rise and rise and rise and cover everything and finally the farmer is right at the gates of heaven. So, he
knocks on the gates of heaven and he calls out to the god. And the god's name is Shangdi.
Shangdi was the ultimate deity. So, he asks Shangdi if he could stop the water. Shangdi looks out and sees that the world is being inundated and all the humans were dying. So, he told Yu Shi, ordered him, “You take that water back immediately and put it back in your earthen jar. ” So, he takes all the water and puts it back in the jar. Well then that suddenly means that the flood is over. So, all these, all these boats, all these people that are floating, everything that was floating in the air suddenly comes crashing down to the ground. And the farmer is killed, but the two children are saved by hiding in their magical gourd.
So, the gourd rolls out of the boat, the smashed boat bits and comes to rest on the top of a little hill. And so, they climb out of the gourd and they see now that they are the only humans left. There's nobody else left. So, they decide they are going to have to you repopulate the earth. Now the sister was older, the brother was younger. And the sister did not want to marry her brother and bear children because she knew that it was inappropriate for brothers and sisters to marry. But the boy whose name
was A-Zie knew that was the only way to repopulate the earth. So, they argued and discussed and finally they came up with a plan.
They would take two halves of a millstone and they would throw them down into a valley. There would be one on one hill, one on the other hill. And if the millstone at the bottom just magically came together and made a complete millstone then she would agree to marry him. So, AZie he cheated and he got a millstone that was broken and put it together so that it was in one piece. And so, then he and his sister went up on each hill and threw the millstones down. When they went down to the bottom of the valley there it was completely back together. So, he said it's time to get married and bear children. She still refused and said one more test. So, she came up with another test.
In this test she took a knife. He took the sheath of the knife and she said, “You throw yours down and I throw mine down. If the knife is in the sheath at the bottom of the hill, then I will agree to marry you. Well, he gamed that one as well and had a knife in a sheath, a duplicate knife. And so, they found the knife in the sheath. So, she finally agreed. So, they consummated the marriage and then she got pregnant. And when
she bore the first baby, the baby was not a baby at all, it was a gourd shaped mass of something. Different stories call it different things. But A-Zie is so angry he cuts up the gourd and he throws all the pieces out on the hill. And the next morning when he and his sister wake up all those little pieces turned into human beings and men and women. And that is how the earth was repopulated according to the Miao story. Now in some versions the sister is unable to bear children so they had to improvise. And so, they made little clay figures and then put them out on the hill and then overnight the next night they were all human. So different variations on the same story. So, this second story I told you fits in very well. We’ll go over, at the beginning of the next episode, filling our next line on our table there. But now we have six stories that we have told. And it's getting harder and harder for skeptics to conclude that these are just random stories from random sources from random cultures and they all just happened to be coincidentally the same story. I think that's hogwash. I think they all had to come from the same source. So, keep that in mind as we continue telling our stories. We’re working our way up to the biblical story. This is all a means of introduction a) to build your faith to believe that the story I’m going to tell you is a true story. To give you evidence. To give you data points along the way. So that you can believe that the story I’m going to tell you is not some allegorical, spiritual thing that was designed for my betterment, spiritual enhancement, spiritual enlightenment. No, it's a literal story that that really happened. A story that yes, does build my faith. Yes, does have spiritual significance. Yes, does foretell the coming of Messiah. But I believe that when the Bible says it was a literal event, it happened literally. So, join me next time as we continue telling you stories from around the world, flood stories that are remarkably similar. And think about the single source that came from Noah and his three sons as we continue to go through.
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
you believe Dr. Smith is talking about? And Messiah will become real to you if you look at all the information presented and come to your conclusions. So, join us as we continue our journey through the Old Testament Scriptures looking for all the Messianic Prophecies. And join us next time as we reveal those to you.