Week 4
November 25, 2023

1. I had a non-believer ask me if the Bible was true, and how I explain Dinosaurs. I had never been asked that and I didn’t have an answer for them. Does the Bible explain and/or talk about dinosaurs?

“Look now at the behemoth, which I made along with you; He eats grass like an ox. See now, his strength is in his hips, And his power is in his stomach muscles. He moves his tail like a cedar; The sinews of his thighs are tightly knit. His bones are like beams of bronze, His ribs like bars of iron.
Job 40:15-18

Cambodia
The magnificent jungle temples of Cambodia were produced by the Khmer civilization, beginning as early as the eighth and extending through the fourteenth century A.D. One of, if not the greatest monarchs and monument builders of this empire was Jayavarman VII, crowned supreme king in 1181. He built the beautiful temple monastery Ta Prohm in honor of his mother, dedicating it in 1186. Here are some of the photos of this site.

Peru
The Pachachuti people lived in Peru from 500 to 1500 AD. The Pachachuti liked to carve stones which they placed in their tombs. This carved stone found in the Kingdom of Chperu-tomb shows a man being attacked by two dinosaurs.

Here is another one showing a man riding a dinosaur. There are thousands of carved stones and almost one third show specific types of dinosaurs including Triceratops, Stegosaurus and Pterosaurs. Some dinosaurs appear to have been domesticated, others definitely were not domesticated.

Dinosaurs With Man
Photo is enhanced to show the dinosaur.
This wall was made by the Anasazis, who inhabited southeastern Utah from A.D. 500 to 1450, who carved such an accurate picture of an Apatosaurus onto the side of a rock wall.

2. Can you explain the Pre-Incarnation of Christ in the Old Testament, the fiery furnace, and how he is the same person throughout the Bible?

The Theological Name For These Appearances
“theophanies” (Greek: theos = “God” + phaino = “appear”)
“Christophanies

Then the Lord appeared to him by the terebinth trees of Mamre, as he was sitting in the tent door in the heat of the day. So he lifted his eyes and looked, and behold, three men were standing by him; and when he saw them, he ran from the tent door to meet them, and bowed himself to the ground, and said, “My Lord, if I have now found favor in Your sight, do not pass on by Your servant.
Genesis 18:1-3

Then Jacob was left alone; and a Man wrestled with him until the breaking of day. Now when He saw that He did not prevail against him, He touched the socket of his hip; and the socket of Jacob’s hip was out of joint as He wrestled with him. And He said, “Let Me go, for the day breaks.” But he said, “I will not let You go unless You bless me!”
Genesis 32:24-26

So Jacob called the name of the place Peniel: “For I have seen God face to face, and life is preserved.”
Genesis 32:30

Also Called “The Angel of the Lord”

Then he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the Angel of the Lord, and Satan standing at his right hand to oppose him. And the Lord said to Satan, “The Lord rebuke you, Satan! The Lord who has chosen Jerusalem rebuke you! Is this not a brand plucked from the fire?”
Zechariah 3:1-2

No one has seen (Understands or Comprehends) God at any time. The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him.
John 1:18

Why Jesus Became A Man
To Fulfill Prophecy – Genesis 3:15
To Sympathize With Humanity – Hebrews 4:15
To Save Us From Our Sin – Hebrews 10:4

3. “Once saved, always saved!” Can we make the case for eternal security, and assurance of our salvation from the scripture? And what about those scary passages about, “names being blotted out of the Book of Life” and “depart from me I never knew you”?

“Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’
Matthew 7:21-23

He who overcomes shall be clothed in white garments, and I will not blot out his name from the Book of Life; but I will confess his name before My Father and before His angels.
Revelation 3:5

My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me. And I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; neither shall anyone snatch them out of My hand. My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch them out of My Father’s hand. I and My Father are one.”
John 10:27-30

4. In First Samuel, it says that “an evil spirit came from the Lord” over Saul and he tried to kill David. I don’t understand how an evil spirit can come from the Lord? Can you explain this?

With that in mind, Bullinger’s fourth list of idiomatic verbs deals with active verbs that “were used by the Hebrews to express, not the doing of the thing, but the permission of the thing which the agent is said to do” (p. 823, emp. in orig.). To illustrate, in commenting on Exodus 4:21, Bullinger stated: “ ‘I will harden his heart (i.e., I will permit or suffer his heart to be hardened), that he shall not let the people go.’ So in all the passages which speak of the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart.

As is clear from the common use of the same Idiom in the following passages” (1968, p. 823). He then listed Jeremiah 4:10, “ ‘Lord God, surely thou hast greatly deceived this people’: i.e., thou hast suffered this People to be greatly deceived, by the false prophets….’ ” Ezekiel 14:9 is also given as an example of this type of usage: “ ‘If the prophet be deceived when he hath spoken a thing, I the Lord have deceived that prophet’: i.e., I have permitted him to deceive himself.”

James MacKnight, in a lengthy section on biblical idioms, agrees with Bullinger’s assessment that in Hebrew active verbs can express permission and not direct action. This explanation unquestionably clarifies the question of God hardening Pharaoh’s heart. When the text says that God hardened Pharaoh’s heart, it means that God would permit or allow Pharaoh’s heart to be hardened.

A second equally legitimate explanation for the Exodus text is that the allusions to God hardening Pharaoh’s heart are a form of figurative speech, very closely associated with metaphor, known as “metonymy,” where one name or word is employed for another. For example, when we speak of “reading Shakespeare,” we mean that we read his writings or plays.

God hardening Pharaoh’s heart would be “metonymy of the subject,” that is, the subject is announced, while some property or circumstance belonging to it is meant. Specifically, under this form of the figure, “[a]n action is sometimes said to have been accomplished, when all that is meant by it is that an occasion was given” (Dungan, 1888, p. 287; cf. Bullinger, 1898, p. 570).

5. Who were the Nephilim?
What is the origin of demons? Are they fallen angels or something else entirely? I know some people believe that they are the disembodied souls of the Nephilim?

Now it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born to them, that the sons of God saw the daughters of men, that they were beautiful; and they took wives for themselves of all whom they chose. And the Lord said, “My Spirit shall not strive with man forever, for he is indeed flesh; yet his days shall be one hundred and twenty years.” There were giants (Nephilim, fallen or mighty ones) on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men and they bore children to them. Those were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown.
Genesis 6:1-4

And the angels who did not keep their proper domain, but left their own abode, He has reserved in everlasting chains under darkness for the judgment of the great day; as Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities around them in a similar manner to these, having given themselves over to sexual immorality and gone after strange flesh, are set forth as an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire.
Jude 6-7

6. During the thousand year reign of Christ, on the Earth will all those saved in Christ past and present return with the son of God on this earth, before living eternity in our new prepared place? If so, what will our role be?