'Minds are like parachutes. They only function when they are open' - Sir James Dewar

The purpose of this section is quickly to familiarise the reader with the main characters of the bible in their historical context. The dates and other assertions stated relating to each character are not proved in this section (for the most part), but are proved from the bible in other sections of the site. They are merely included here to help the reader place the characters realistically in a time frame, and quickly get an overview of the bible, which will help him or her in assimilating the information on this site.

The bible dates events using the Biblical Lunar Calendar which is a lunar calendar starting the year in spring. It has 12 months of 30 days each see - BLC. You can download our calendar conversion program from download. This will convert any Biblical Calendar day into the equivalent modern Calendar (The Gregorian Calendar) day and vice versa from 2000 BC until 3000 AD. The BLC has 12 months of 30 days each, making 360 days in the year. The BLC was the Ancient Calendar of most of mankind see - 'Ancient Calendars'.

Biblical Lunar Calendar

The bible is not a novel, it is a collection of short stories. Pitifully, as of this time, mankind has no useful understanding of the majority of these short stories, even in the literal meaning. We do have a very good understanding of how to annihilate ourselves. How could there be a clearer proof that we have been mislead by an agency that wishes for us to be killed rather than gain eternal life? Do not his success at deception was limited to one woman.

9 So down the great dragon was hurled, the original serpent, the one called Devil and Satan, who is misleading the entire inhabited earth; he was hurled down to the earth, and his angels were hurled down with him (Revelation 12).

Since time is short, we have mapped out a quick bible tour for the first time bible reader, or for the reader who has read it in the dim and distant past. This tour covers the basic parts for which mankind and in particular the Lords' Witnesses do have some plausible understanding. Please read the 122 chapters below in the order they are stated.

The total number of chapters in all the 66 books of the bible is 1,188. So the 127 chapters above represent just over 10% of the book.

You can read all 122 chapters of the bible mentioned above and then read this section of the site/book. Or you can read the chapters and read the relevant parts of this section of the site/book as you go along if you like. Or you can just read this section of the site/book for the quickest possible basic introduction. We recommend either of the first two options.

If you are unfamiliar with the bible we recommend that you purchase a bible dictionary or a bible encyclopedia, which will explain the meaning of unfamiliar words. You can download Easton's Bible Dictionary from our [download] page, or visit our [books] section for paper versions which Amazon claim to ship usually within 24 hours.

Adam lived for 930 years. He was born like Jesus, an immaculate conception, to pre-adamic parents - see [244]. Adam was born with an indefinitely long life. Before he sinned he did not age. His body was a prophecy, an archetype for the bodies that humans will have in the Kingdom of God on earth. The whole garden of Eden was an archetype for the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of God is the one that we pray for in the Lord’s prayer:

9 You must pray, then, this way:

Our Father in the heavens, let your name be sanctified.

10 Let your kingdom come.

Let your will take place, as in heaven, also upon earth (Matthew 6:9,10 - NWT).

This is the Kingdom that Jesus preached about in the Gospels. It is important to realise that it is a real Kingdom (you know like the British Empire was for example), it will be worldwide, it lasts for 1,000 years, it begins with Armageddon, it starts soon and it will have citizens who are angels in heaven and citizens who are humans on the earth - see [8]. It is God and mankind’s victory through Jesus over our own failings and over the inherent weakness of our species, which lead to our death through Satan. It is the triumph of love over hate and jealousy through justice, the triumph of good over bad through hard work, the triumph of truth over dishonest abuse through logic and reason, and the triumph of life over death through Jesus and by God and despite Satan. For St. Paul said:

10 Therefore I take pleasure in weaknesses, in insults, in cases of need, in persecutions and difficulties, for Christ. For when I am weak, then I am powerful (2 Corinthians 12).

This is not some kind of philosophical contradiction. Paul is saying that when he is weak in man’s eyes, then he is strong in God’s eyes. And man is blind.

The maximum lifespan of the sons of Adam started as 960 years. Then it dropped to 480 years after the flood. Then it dropped to 240 years in the days of Peleg (a son of Shem the son of Noah), and it finally dropped to the modern limit from God of 120 years in the days of Moses who lived for 120 years - see [235]. There were humans who lived longer than these maxima in these periods, but they were not sons of Adam, they were sons of God, as was Jesus. For example we have Jared the father of Enoch, who lived for 962 years and we have Methuselah, the son of Enoch who lived 969 years.

20 So all the days of Jared amounted to 962 years and he died (Genesis 5).
27 So all the days of Methuselah amounted to 969 years and he died (Genesis 5).

Adam was not the first human born but was the first to be called ‘man’ by God. He was obviously very different from Homo sapiens that had existed in the form of Modern man (Cro magnon man or Homo Sapiens 'Sapiens') for around 100,000 years prior to this. Homo Sapiens or pre-adamic man, had existed for over 1 million years prior to that in the forms of Homo Habilis, Homo Erectus, Archaic Homo Sapiens and Neanderthal man see - Millions of years of human fossils reconciled with Genesis at last.

Adam was initially placed in the closed environment of the Garden of Eden, and remained there until he sinned in 3993 BC Nisan 14 (March/April) by eating the fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and bad. He was then thrown out of the garden and started interacting with the rest of Homo Sapiens.

God did not call Homo Sapiens ‘man’ until he introduced himself to us through Adam. So Adam was the first ‘man’ but not the first Human. 

The Location of the Garden of Eden today

Eden was a real place spanning Northern Iran and Armenia. It was the area containing the sources of the 4 rivers known today as the Euphrates (also called Perath), the Tigris (also called Hiddekel), the Gihon (also called Araxes, Gihon - Aras) and the Pishon (Uizhun also called Pisdeli).

10 Now there was a river issuing out of Eden to water the garden, and from there it began to be parted and it became, four heads.

11 The first one's name is Pishon; it is the one encircling the entire land of Havilah, where there is gold.
12 And the gold of that land is good. There also are the bdellium gum and the onyx stone.
13 And the name of the second river is Gihon; it is the one encircling the entire land of Cush.
14 And the name of the third river is Hiddekel; it is the one going to the east of Assyria. And the fourth river is the Euphrates (Genesis 2).

David Rohl’s book (Legends) explains this beautifully. We know that the Euphrates (Perath) and the Tigris (Hiddekel) are the two great rivers of Mesopotamia. So Eden was an area near to Mesopotamia, and the Garden itself was an area within Eden. Now from Eden we have 4 head waters, or 4 sources of rivers.

David Rohl has shown that both of these rivers have their head waters in the Lake Van and Lake Urmia region in the Iranian highlands between Kurdistan and Armenia. Now just east of this region are two rivers which flow into the caspian sea, the Araxes and the Uizhun. The Araxes (Greek name) is called today the Araks or the Aras. Reginald Walker discovered that during the 8^th Century AD some pieces of this river were called the Gaihun. He then discovered that 19^th Century Persians referred to it as the Jichon - Aras. In fact early Victorian bible dictionaries (Easton's bible dictionary) and commentaries mention the Gihon-Aras. But this crucial data has been overlooked recently. Near the Araxes, North of the modern town of Tabriz, is a mountain ridge called: The Mountain of Cush’. Whereas the Gihon was said to encircle the entire land of Cush. So we now have three of the 4 rivers of Eden

Walker identified the Uizhun as the only possible candidate for the Pishon by a process of elimination (there were no other rivers around). But David Rohl has gone one better. He has pointed out that there is a place on the southern shore of lake Urmia currently called Pisdeli, that used to be called Uishteri. With this linguistic flexibility we get the Puizhun, which is close enough to the Pishon.

Eve

Eve: Born 3997 BC Heshvan 22 (October/November)

She was created by a spiritually complicated method, similar to Jesus' baptism by John - see [244]. She was only 3½ years old (although in the body of an adult woman) when she sinned eating the fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and bad, after Satan lied to her using a serpent (which was probably in the tree). The serpent spoke to her, being possessed in some superficial fashion, by Satan. This was the first lie that Eve had ever heard, and she fell for it, hence the Apostle Paul, Saint Paul, who wrote most of the New Testament other than the Gospels, says:

14 Also, Adam was not deceived, but the woman was thoroughly deceived and came to be in transgression (1 Timothy 2).

So Eve was tricked by Satan using the serpent as a ventriloquist's dummy (Like Rod Hull used to use Emu!) Satan was using Eve to get at Adam.

The tree of knowledge of good and bad represented God’s rulership and was the door to the outside world of Homo Sapiens for Adam and Eve. For in the garden they had a knowledge of Good only. Satan sold Eve on the knowledge of Bad by lying to her! But in truth, a knowledge of Good is incomplete without a knowledge of Bad, and Adam was always going to sin. God not only knew it, but he also prophesied it saying to the pair of them, saying:

17 But as for the tree of the knowledge of good and bad you must not eat from it, for in the day you eat from it dying you will die (Genesis 2).

He did not say: if you eat then you will die. He said: In the day you eat from it dying you will die. He prophesied it again with their food supplies:

29 Here, I have given to you all vegetation bearing seed which is on the surface of the whole earth and every tree on which there is the fruit of a tree bearing seed. To you let it serve as food (Genesis 1).

God made this statement in the 6^th creative day of Genesis (these days were not literal days - the 6^th day lasted several millions of years according to current dating techniques). The 7^th creative day, when God rested from his creative works, started when Adam sinned. The last thing that God created or made for the pair of them was clothes:

21 And Jehovah God proceeded to make long garments of skin for Adam and for his wife and to clothe them (Genesis 3).

'Jehovah' is God’s name, it means ‘he who causes to become’ or simply ‘creator’. So before they sinned God was giving them food outside the garden, so he knew that they would sin and leave it.

Adam and Eve were not ashamed to be naked before they sinned, whereas the rest of Homo Sapiens had been wearing clothes for thousands of years, because they had had no interaction with them until then. One must conclude that Adam and Eve had not experienced sexual desire as we know it before they sinned. They had not had sex before they sinned. We know that Cain was conceived after their sin, in fact it is possible to determine from the symbolic code of the bible that they first had sex on the 42^nd day counting inclusively after Adam sinned - see [41].

It was clearly the experience of sexual desire that made them embarrassed before God and each other. One is forced to conclude from this that their first sexual experience, although not actual intercourse, was at the time of their sin. Just as a child with no sexual knowledge has no embarrassment at walking naked, but once he or she realises what can be going on down below the embarrassment starts. One is forced to conclude from this that it was Satan who gave Eve the idea to get sexy with Adam. Satan was after Adam, not Eve. He used Eve to get to Adam, and he opened her eyes to her sexual attractiveness to achieve this. God confirms this by rhetorically asking...

11 Who told you that you were naked ? (Genesis 3)

God knew that Satan had told Eve. Now the scripture says:

6 Consequently the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was something to be longed for to the eyes, yes, the tree was desirable to look upon. So she began taking of its fruit and eating it. Afterward she gave some also to her husband when with her and he began eating it (Genesis 3).

So Satan certainly introduced Eve to desire, the desire of the eyes. It is not unreasonable to deduce in all the circumstances, with Satan himself looking at a gorgeous naked woman, something which the demons found impossible to resist later on, when they came down to the earth before the flood and took them as wives (whether they were married to someone else already or not):

1 Now it came about that when men started to grow in numbers on the surface of the ground and daughters were born to them, 
2 then the sons of the [true] God began to notice the daughters of men, that they were good-looking; and they went taking wives for themselves, namely, all whom they chose (Genesis 6).

6 And the angels that did not keep their original position but forsook their own proper dwelling place he has reserved with eternal bonds under dense darkness for the judgment of the great day (Jude).

... that Satan not only persuaded her that the fruit from the tree was good looking but he also persuaded her that she was pretty good looking herself. And that in fact her naked body was just as desirable to Adam’s eyes as any fruit of any tree was to her eyes. He showed her by example how to use this desire on her husband, by using it himself on her in the first place to get her to eat from the tree.

God created the heavens and the earth. So he created time and space and all the angels and all the humans. His name, Jehovah, means: ‘He who causes to become’ or ‘creator’. Since he created time, it is difficult to understand anything about the ‘beginning’ of God. There may not have been such a beginning in his case, or he may have self created in some way. He himself says in the book of Revelation:

6 They have come to pass! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To anyone thirsting I will give from the fountain of the water of life free.

7 Anyone conquering will inherit these things, and I shall be his God and he will be my son (Revelation 21).

But being 'the beginning' does mean that he himself had a beginning. However we can be certain that God was not created by anyone else. He has no father or mother. Whereas Jesus was created by God, who is his father and his God, because St. Paul who wrote most of the new testament after the Gospels says of him:

15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation (Colossians 1).

Since God made the angels first, Jesus was the firstborn angel, the first angel that God created, one might naively think. But an examination of the Modus Operandi of the true God - see [Intro19], reveals that Satan was actually the firstborn angel, but he lost his birthright to Michael who was born later (and before Gabriel). Adam was the first indefinitely living man that God created, the first human that God called ‘man’, who was also made in the image of the invisible God, but he was not the first man that God created. Jesus himself said to Mary Magdalene:

17 Jesus said to her: Stop clinging to me. For I have not yet ascended to the Father. But be on your way to my brothers and say to them: I am ascending to my Father and your Father and to my God and your God (John 20).

And when he died he said the famous words:

46 Eli, Eli, Lama Sabachthani, that is: My God, my God, why have you foresaken me (Matthew 27)

The words of a man who worshipped God. Sir Isaac Newton deduced from this and other scriptures that the Father was God of the Son. From this and from the fact that the ‘Holy Trinity’ is defined in such a way that it can not logically exist, he deduced that the ‘Holy Trinity’ was a deception designed by the early church to baffle their followers and prevent them from having the courage to research the bible. In this way the church itself would be seen as the source of God’s word, rather than the bible, which actually is God’s word, being seen as such by the congregation. He was unable to publish his findings during his lifetime for fear of being labeled a heretic. But he did use these arguments on the King of England to procure a waiver for him and for every future Lucasian professor of Mathematics at Trinity College Cambridge releasing him from the requirement of the college to sign an attestation stating that he believed in the Trinity. Sir Isaac Newton believed that the bible was written in a code, and he died trying to decode it and deduce the date of Armageddon. He spent as much of his life on bible research as he did on Physics and Mathematics.

Jesus whose angelic name is Michael see - Who was Jesus, and ‘the word’, only became 'Jesus' when he came down to the earth as Joseph’s son. But we can call him Jesus, Michael or ‘the word’ interchangeably now. But God knows how to handle power. He devolves it as much as possible. He therefore involved his firstborn (Satan and later Michael) in all of his subsequent works:

1 In [the] beginning the Word was, and the Word was with God, and the Word was [a] god.
2 This one was in [the] beginning with God.
3 All things came into existence through him, and apart from him not even one thing came into existence. (John 1).

But the same pattern is used again as regards the creation of Homo Sapiens and of Adam. The angels were used in this design process. They designed the animals and Homo Sapiens for God said:

26 Let us make man in our image according to our likeness (Genesis 1).

Jesus is called God’s only begotten son, because although he was the only angel created directly by God himself without the help of any third party, he took the rights of the one that was (Satan). Jesus earned the position by his love, Satan lost it by his hate. All of the other angels were created by God and Satan, except Michael who may have been not only resurrected but also recreated as an angel after his death in Jesus.

Satan was the first angelic son of God - see [Intro19], born before Michael and Gabriel. Before humans were created Satan had already expressed his desire for a degree of autonomy. One can deduce this from the symbolic meaning of Genesis 1. God was having problems with his angelic children before humans were created. Dinosaurs were created to show the demons what they were like physically. But humans appear to have done a better job in this regard. We are all prototype angels. Do not be misled, we have an everlasting human and angelic inheritance awaiting for us if we wish to accept it. This is why Satan is so interested in us, and why God’s angelic son Michael was sent to us.

God is restricted by neither space nor time, angels are restricted by time but not by space, humans are restricted by both. But angels and God himself have characters similar to ours and to that shown to us by Jesus Christ and by Satan. They are emotional reasoning beings:

8 He that does not love has not come to know God, because God is love (1 John 4).

18 And it must occur in that day, in the day when Gog (yes Gog) comes in upon the soil of Israel, is the utterance of the Sovereign Lord Jehovah, that my rage will come up into my nose (Ezekiel 38).

11 According to the glorious good news of the happy God, with which I was entrusted (1 Timothy 1).

33 Jesus, therefore, when he saw her weeping and the Jews that came with her weeping, groaned in the spirit and became troubled (John 11).

2 And, look! a leprous man came up and began doing obeisance to him, saying: Lord, if you just want to, you can make me clean. 
3 And so, stretching out [his] hand, he touched him, saying: I want to. Be made clean. And immediately his leprosy was cleansed away (Matthew 8).

3 And Jehovah went on to say to Satan: Have you set your heart upon my servant Job, that there is no one like him in the earth, a man blameless and upright, fearing God and turning aside from bad? Even yet he is holding fast his integrity, although you incite me against him to swallow him up without cause.
4 But Satan answered Jehovah and said: Skin in behalf of skin, and everything that a man has he will give in behalf of his soul.
5 For a change, thrust out your hand, please, and touch as far as his bone and his flesh [and see] whether he will not curse you to your very face.
6 Accordingly Jehovah said to Satan: There he is in your hand! Only watch out for his soul itself!
7 So Satan went out away from the person of Jehovah and struck Job with a malignant boil from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head (Job 2).

Humans are the physical realisation of abstract emotions that God and the angels all have such as love, fear, anger, hate, happiness, sadness, surprise etc.

These two were the first children of Adam and Eve after they were evicted from Eden on 3993Nisan16 (3993 BC March/April). The account of their attempts to worship God is as follows:

2 And Abel came to be a herder of sheep, but Cain became a cultivator of the ground.
3 And it came about at the expiration of some time that Cain proceeded to bring some fruits of the ground as an offering to Jehovah.
4 But as for Abel, he too brought some firstlings of his flock, even their fatty pieces. Now while Jehovah was looking with favor upon Abel and his offering, 
5 he did not look with any favor upon Cain and upon his offering. And Cain grew hot with great anger, and his countenance began to fall.
6 At this Jehovah said to Cain: Why are you hot with anger and why has your countenance fallen?
7 If you turn to doing good, will there not be an exaltation? But if you do not turn to doing good, there is sin crouching at the entrance, and for you is its craving; and will you, for your part, get the mastery over it?
8 After that Cain said to Abel his brother: Let us go over into the field. So it came about that while they were in the field Cain proceeded to assault Abel his brother and kill him.
(Genesis 4).

This account is typical of the way in which the bible is written. Please therefore listen to the classroom lesson from God:

Cain was a cultivator of the ground, so he brought some fruits of the ground. Abel was a herder of sheep so he brought a sheep. The question that the reader is supposed to ask is: What on earth was wrong with Cain’s sacrifice?

The account is written so that at first sight it looks like God favoured Abel over Cain out of partiality, having no good reason in justice. If that were the case then there would be no point in serving him, so if you like you can just write God off in Genesis chapter 4 (if you haven’t already done so as a result of his claims in Genesis 1 and 2 that is).

But look! The spiritual man or woman looks behind the physical things, he (even she) looks with his/her mind, with her/his power of reason. He/She actually reads Genesis Chapter 3, the previous chapter, as well where one finds:

17 And to Adam he said: Because you listened to your wife's voice and took to eating from the tree concerning which I gave you this command, 'You must not eat from it,' cursed is the ground on your account. In pain you will eat its produce all the days of your life (Genesis 3).

One might also have a look at Genesis 5, the subsequent chapter, in one's attempts to understand Genesis 4. If so then she/he will find:

29 And he proceeded to call his name Noah, saying: This one will bring us comfort from our work and from the pain of our hands resulting from the ground which Jehovah has cursed (Genesis 5).

So Cain offered fruits of the ‘cursed’ ground to be precise. This does not mean that the fruits themselves were cursed. For sons of Adam were all vegetarians, eating these very fruits, until after the flood when God said to Noah (since there wasn’t much vegetation around):

3 Every moving animal that is alive may serve as food for you. As in the case of green vegetation, I do give it all to you (Genesis 9).

When Noah came out of the ark he made a sacrifice of some of the clean beasts to God, who responded as follows:

21 And Jehovah began to smell a restful odour, and so Jehovah said in his heart: Never again shall I call down evil upon the ground on man's account, because the inclination of the heart of man is bad from his youth up; and never again shall I deal every living thing a blow just as I have done (Genesis 8).

At this point sons of Adam became carnivorous. After the flood the earth was no longer cursed, the flood baptised the earth as it were. The pre flood ground must have been less fertile than the post flood ground when the curse was lifted. Adam’s generation had much more efficient bodies however, living 960 years - see [235].

So Cain’s sacrifice was not cursed but it was seriously substandard, for the poor quality of the produce of the ground was in fact a punishment on men, and a cause of suffering and pain for them, and here Cain is offering what God was using to punish him personally, back to God!!

That is a deliberate lack of respect and rejection of discipline from God. Now Abel on the other hand offered to God the firstlings of the flock, the best things that he had. He also showed a spiritual understanding offering a firstborn blood sacrifice, which indicates that Adam had been teaching him about the possibility of his future redemption. Now since Cain was older than Abel, it is inconceivable that Cain did not also have the opportunity to take on board this level of spiritual knowledge. So Cain’s sacrifice shows that he has rejected both God’s discipline and his teaching whereas Abel has accepted them both.

But all the above, though true, is not the reason why God rejected Cain's sacrifice. To understand that we must understand what a sacrifice to God is...

There is no example in the Law of Moses, which is the final word on sacrifices, of two different sacrifices being acceptable to God, except in circumstances of poverty, when a choice of two differing blood sacrifices was available:

7 If though he cannot afford enough for a sheep, then he must bring as his guilt offering for the sin that he has committed, two turtledoves or two young pigeons to Jehovah, one for a sin offering and one for a burnt offering (Leviticus 5).

But it is inconceivable that Cain was poorer than Abel, since he was the firstborn in a Patriarchal family. The point is that God defines the sacrifice that he requires and the day upon which he requires it. The worshipper then brings not what he wants to bring or what he happens to be cultivating at the time, but rather what God has asked him for.

When the Law of Moses stipulated a kid of the goats for example, it did absolutely no good whatsoever to bring along a half pound of potatoes or a couple of prize turnips to the high priest. Actually this really is the point of the account. Sacrifice is about bringing not what is convenient for you, or what you are good at making, or what you think you should turn up with, it is about bringing what God requires. It is also about understanding why God requires that particular sacrifice. One does not bring one's piece de resistance to the altar, in order to receive an Oscar nomination. One humbly brings the sacrifice stipulated by God in order to please him and in order to accept that it will be God himself, who will eventually bring his piece de resistance, Jesus Christ to that same altar, and it is he who will be getting the Academy awards, and he who will be choosing cast of the next big picture which he directs called: The 1,000 year Kingdom of God. 

This sort of reasoning process is what the God, who inspired the entire bible:

16 All Scripture is inspired [by] God and beneficial for teaching, for reproving, for setting things straight, for disciplining in righteousness (2 Timothy 3).

… wishes the reader to go through. For Paul says of the scriptures:

12 For the word of God is alive and exerts power and is sharper than any two-edged sword and pierces even to the dividing of soul and spirit, and of joints and [their] marrow, and [is] able to discern thoughts and intentions of [the] heart (Hebrews 4).

The account of Cain and Abel is a prime example of the way that the bible separates those who love God from those who do not. It is easy at first sight to write God off as being unjust and partial, making arbitrary and ill thought-out snap judgements in his dealing with these two brothers. This is the result of the one step thought process, which is an animal thought process, and which has no spirituality. You hurt me so I'll hurt you. But just look one level deeper, think one step further, and you see the true God. That is all that it takes in this account, and that is all that it takes in the rest of the book and in life. For this defines spirituality: The seeing of the invisible, with the eyes of reason, due to the desire to know the truth. If you can walk two steps with your mind, you are human. You hurt me but if I hurt you back then you will be in the pain that I am in now, do I want that for you? Am I to return evil for evil. If everyone takes this view where will it end? Can I see further than the next step?

This particular aspect of the bible code, wherein an account is missing one or more crucial pieces of information which one can find elsewhere in the bible, we call the Jigsaw Principle of the code.

Seth was a son of Adam and Eve who was born after Cain and Abel and who replaced Abel as the line through which Jesus was to come. A fundamental bible theme is the protection of the physical Genetic line from Adam to Jesus from death and corruption.

25 And Adam proceeded to have intercourse again with his wife and so she gave birth to a son and called his name Seth, because, as she said: God has appointed another seed in place of Abel, because Cain killed him (Genesis 4).

We should point out here that Adam and Eve had many more sons than Cain Abel and Seth, and they had many daughters too, but the bible only deals with the seed in the line through Noah, eventually to Jesus. And Abel was the first seed, killed by Cain, and Seth was the replacement for that seed. These children would have interbred initially. This would not create genetic problems because their lifespans were 8 times longer than ours and their genes were more 'concentrated' one presumes, more efficient, since we are their descendents.

Noah was the father of 3 sons: Shem, Ham and Japheth. In fact Ham was the firstborn, born in 2471 BC - see [Intro19]. These 4 men and their 4 wives were the only adamic people to survive the flood in the Ark (but we believe that 7 pre-adamic couples came through with them - see [238]. The ark was 300 cubits long by 50 cubits wide by 30 cubits high with three stories in it:

15 And this is how you will make it: 300 cubits the length of the ark, 50 cubits its width, and 30 cubits its height.
16 You will make a tsohar [roof; or, window] for the ark, and you will complete it to the extent of a cubit upward, and the entrance of the ark you will put in its side; you will make it with a lower [storey], a second [storey] and a third [storey] (Genesis 6).

The cubit was about a forearm long it was around 20 inches in Noah’s day and around 18 inches later on. So the ark was:

500 feet long by 83 feet wide by 50 feet high, with three stories in it.

Modern warships are built with the ratio of length to width at 6:1, it is optimal from some hydrodynamic standpoint. The internal square footage of the ark was: 125,000 square feet. A football pitch is around 77,000 sq ft. So it was over 1½ football pitches in floor space. Put another way you could fit around 400 double decker buses inside it!

So there was certainly enough space to house all of the animals, and all of their food. The ark was man enough for the job it had. But how did Noah get all of the animals into the ark?

Well the account is in Genesis chapters 6 & 7. God made the statement that the ‘man’ of that time had only 120 years left, actually 118 years before the flood in 2488 BC Sivan (May/June) - The proof of this is rather technical  - see [235] . So Noah may have had this amount of time to build the ark and gather all of the animals. The flood started on 2371 BC Heshvan 17 (October/November)

1 Now it came about that when men started to grow in numbers on the surface of the ground and daughters were born to them, then the sons of the [true] God began to notice the daughters
2 of men, that they were good-looking; and they went taking wives for themselves, namely, all whom they chose.
3 After that Jehovah said: My spirit shall not act toward man indefinitely in that he is also flesh. Accordingly his days shall amount to a hundred and twenty years (Genesis 6).

This statement that ‘man’ was also flesh proves that there was another type of human flesh around at the time, namely Homo Sapiens, pre-adamic man (whom God never actually called 'man' literally - although in the symbolic meaning 'man' stands for them). The ones that took millions of years to reach this point see - Genesis reconciled with millions of years of human fossils.

Noah had to get the animals into the ark himself because the scripture says:

19 And of every living creature of every sort of flesh, two of each, you will bring into the ark to preserve them alive with you. Male and female they will be.
20 Of the flying creatures according to their kinds and of the domestic animals according to their kinds, of all moving animals of the ground according to their kinds, two of each will go in there to you to preserve them alive.
21 And as for you, take for yourself every sort of food that is eaten; and you must gather it to yourself, and it must serve as food for you and for them (Genesis 6).

Basically Noah became a Zoo Keeper, and the Ark was his Zoo. The naïve concept that God’s Holy Spirit lead all of the animals into the ark and that they all behaved themselves in the ark and did not eat each other for a year is not very likely. It is more likely that the Ark was built like London Zoo or Central Park Zoo. And over many years Noah learned how to look after all of the animals, and build the necessary cages for them in the ark, and that he had a fully operational Zoo going for many years, possibly 100 years before the flood came. By the time that the flood arrived he had managed to collect all of the species of animal and bird required by God. He was a kind of biblical David Attenborough only without the unquestioning belief in evolution ! He was given a 120 year Zoological project by God. He would have taken two of each unclean beast and 7 of each clean beast into the ark when instructed by God, just before the flood, and left the rest of them behind, presumably. The flood lasted 40 days and 40 nights, as regards the rain, but Noah spent 370 Hebrew days in the ark in total, actually from 2371Heshvan17 (October/November) to 2370Heshvan27 (October/November) BC.

Josephus, a Jewish Historian in Jesus’ day, has covered this well in his works, which are available online or as a download from: www.ccel.org/j/josephus/josephus.htm . We quote Chapter 6 of his first book of antiquities see - How the Nations descended from Noah. In that section we quote Josephus' explanation as to which nations came from which of Noah's sons and Grandsons. Josephus wasn’t much good at dates, and gets quite a few things wrong. But he knew more about the races that descended from the ark back in the first century than we do today (living only 2400 years after the flood). The Flood of Noah was also a fact to the Babylonian historian Berossus, who lived around 250 BC. Berossus' works are accepted by historians as the basis of Ancient Egyptian and Babylonian Chronology.

Berossus said of Abraham: In the 10^th generation after the flood, there was among the Chaldeans, a man righteous and great and skilful in the Celestial Science (Josephus Book 1 Chapter 7. Antiquities of the Jews). Actually we may not have all descended from Noah - see [238].

Abraham was chosen by God to be the physical progenitor of the race of people to whom his son Jesus would be born. This race of people is known as the Jews today although this properly term relates only to the 3 tribes that were resident in the Kingdom of Judah (Judah, Benjamin and some Levites). The sons of Israel, the Israelites, is a more precise term for Abraham's true physical seed. The term 'Hebrew', comes from the Patriarch Eber (Heber), the great grandson of Shem.

Abraham was also chosen by God to be the mediator of the covenant (the biblical name for a binding agreement) between God and mankind through which all people in all true religions are granted entrance into the Kingdom of God . It is important to stress here, that contrary to the convenient 'beliefs' of most religions, more people gain entrance into the Kingdom of God unofficially, without having ever been in a 'true religion', than do officially, having been in one of the 7 true religions of Abraham's true children (Abraham's, Jacobs, Moses, FDS1/2/3/4 - see [32]. 

A mediator of a covenant with God is an intermediary in the covenant. God makes an agreement not with mankind, but with for example Abraham, who then makes an agreement with mankind. It is a multi-stage agreement. This entrance into the Kingdom of God is through a resurrection for God’s true people who die before the Kingdom commences and it is through being spared, saved, passed over, at Armageddon for God’s true people who are alive at that time. The covenant is called the First Abrahamic Covenant and it is stated in Genesis 12:

1 And Jehovah proceeded to say to Abram: Go your way out of your country and from your relatives and from the house of your father to the country that I shall show you; 
2 and I shall make a great nation out of you and I shall bless you and I will make your name great; and prove yourself a blessing.
3 And I will bless those who bless you, and him that calls down evil upon you I shall curse, and all the families of the ground will certainly bless themselves by means of you (Genesis 12).

This is an ambiguously written scripture. Obviously the ‘great nation’ was the Jews. The country that Abraham left was actually Mesopotamia. The country that God showed him was Canaan, the promised land. This land is defined in Genesis 15 as running from the River Euphrates to the River Nile:

18 On that day Jehovah concluded with Abram a covenant, saying: To your seed I will give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates (Genesis 15).

The account is very similar to the account of Cain and Abel in Genesis 4. It just looks like God, for no apparent reason at all, decided that he was going to bless this chap Abraham to the limit. There are two questions therefore that are begging to be asked:

[1] Why did God choose Abraham in particular ?
[2] What was this blessing that all the families of the ground would get through him ?

The answer to the first question is seen by Abraham’s actions after he was chosen. He was a very spiritual man. When he was asked by God to kill his firstborn son Isaac, he reasoned that God could raise him from the dead so he went ahead with the request (although God stopped him at the last minute).

17 By faith Abraham, when he was tested, as good as offered up Isaac, and the man that had gladly received the promises attempted to offer up [his] only-begotten [son], 
18 although it had been said to him: What will be called 'your seed' will be through Isaac.
19 But he reckoned that God was able to raise him up even from the dead; and from there he did receive him also in an illustrative way (Hebrews 11).

Abraham used his powers of reason to see, with the eyes of his mind, things that were invisible. He was not a fanatic, he was a man with faith and reason. St. Paul described Abraham as follows:

10 For he was awaiting the city having real foundations, the builder and maker of which [city] is God (Hebrews 11).

The answer to the second question is found by the application of the Jigsaw Principle.

The significance of God’s first covenant (sometimes called his first promise) with Abraham (he also made a second one and a third one) is described by St. Paul in Galatians 3:3-29. We only need to look at a few aspects of his explanation at this point:

14 The purpose was that the blessing of Abraham might come to be by means of Jesus Christ for the nations, that we might receive the promised spirit through our faith (Galatians 3).

Now the blessing that came by means of Jesus Christ, came by virtue of his death, his sacrificial death and was an inheritance (from Jesus’ will if you like) for everyone who put faith in him:

18 For if the inheritance is due to law, it is no longer due to promise; whereas God has kindly given it to Abraham through a promise (Galatians 3).

34 Then the king will say to those on his right: Come, you who have been blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the founding of the world (Matthew 25).

This inheritance is citizenship of the Kingdom of God. Put another way:

7 Surely you know that those who adhere to faith are the ones who are sons of Abraham.
8 Now the Scripture, seeing in advance that God would declare people of the nations righteous due to faith, declared the good news beforehand to Abraham, namely: By means of you all the nations will be blessed.
9 Consequently those who adhere to faith are being blessed together with faithful Abraham (Galatians 3).

So the blessing of Abraham leads to a righteous declaration from God. Those declared righteous by God cannot then be judged, his declaration is the end of the matter. So they are resurrected.

30 Moreover, those whom he foreordained are the ones he also called; and those whom he called are the ones he also declared to be righteous. Finally those whom he declared righteous are the ones he also glorified (Romans 8).

Those called become Abraham’s sons. Those declared righteous cannot then be judged as so must be glorified by God. This glorification is the resurrection.

5 So now you, Father, glorify me alongside yourself with the glory that I had alongside you before the world was (John 17).

Jesus was obviously referring here to his resurrection (in his case as an angel). So now we can understand what St. Paul meant when he said:

29 Moreover, if you belong to Christ, you are really Abraham's seed, heirs with reference to a promise (Galatians 3).

Heirs of Jesus’ sacrifice are in Jesus’ will if you like, having the inheritance from his death which is of course life, the second life, in the Kingdom of God. The promise is the third abrahamic covenant. Heirs of Jesus’ angelic sacrifice certainly get a resurrection. The expression ‘Heirs with reference to a promise’ shows how Abraham, the Father, who received the promise, and Jesus, the Son, who gave his life as a ransom for Adam, combine in God’s plan to give entrance into the Kingdom of God. For more on God’s promises to Abraham see - The 1st, 2nd and 3rd Abrahamic Covenants. For more on how Jesus and Abraham combine to do this - see [15].

The Biblical Lunar Calendar measures the year from Nisan to Adar see - BLC, which is Spring to Spring. Hence Moses died on 1^st March 1473 in our Gregorian Calendar which was Adar 1^st 1474 in the Biblical Lunar Calendar.

Moses is born at the time when the Pharaoh of Egypt was ordering that all the new born male babies of the Hebrews should be drowned in the Nile. Physically this was because the Hebrews were multiplying very fast, because God was blessing them, and the Egyptians were being outbred by them. God was preparing to ‘give birth’ to the Jewish nation out of Egypt.

No one appears to know which Pharaoh it was, because Egyptian Chronology for that time is not very accurate. Historians are unaware of our (the Lords' Witnesses) precise Biblical chronology for this period - see [101]. We think maybe it was Ahmose I, Amenhotep I, or Tuthmoses I, because the Pharoah who drowned in the Red Sea looks like having been Tuthmoses III, since he was succeeded by a woman, Queen Hatshepsut, which was very unusual in Egypt. According to the bible his firstborn son would have been killed by the Passover angel in the last plague, and he would have been killed in the Red Sea leaving his wife for the throne. Also all the Pharaoh’s during Moses’ lifetime were called ‘something or other …Moses’, which is a bit of a giveaway, considering Moses was raised by Pharaoh’s daughter. Bernard Desbleds (a Jehovah's Witness who is forbidden from speaking to us as we write) first did this research in 1994/5

So when Moses was born his mother hid him for three months and then made an ark and floated him in the Nile river. Aaron, his brother, was born three years earlier. Stephen the Martyr describes the life of Moses very well in Acts 7:

17 Just as the time was approaching for [fulfillment of] the promise (the Land and Circumcision Covenant) that God had openly declared to Abraham, the people grew and multiplied in Egypt, 
18 until there rose a different king over Egypt, who did not know of Joseph.
19 This one used statecraft against our race and wrongfully forced the fathers to expose their infants, that they might not be preserved alive.
20 In that particular time Moses was born, and he was divinely beautiful. And he was nursed three months in [his] father's home. 
21 But when he was exposed, the daughter of Pharaoh picked him up and brought him up as her own son.
22 Consequently Moses was instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians. In fact, he was powerful in his words and deeds.
23 Now when the time of his fortieth year was being fulfilled, it came into his heart to make an inspection of his brothers, the sons of Israel.
24 And when he caught sight of a certain one being unjustly treated, he defended him and executed vengeance for the one being abused by striking the Egyptian down.
25 He was supposing his brothers would grasp that God was giving them salvation by his hand, but they did not grasp [it].
26 And the next day he appeared to them as they were fighting, and he tried to bring them together again in peace, saying: Men, you are brothers. Why do you treat each other unjustly?
27 But the one that was treating his neighbor unjustly thrust him away, saying: Who appointed you ruler and judge over us?
28 You do not want to do away with me in the same manner that you did away with the Egyptian yesterday, do you?
29 At this speech Moses took to flight and became an alien resident in the land of Midian, where he became the father of two sons.
30 And when forty years were fulfilled, there appeared to him in the wilderness of Mount Sinai an angel in the fiery flame of a thornbush.
31 Now when Moses saw it he marvelled at the sight. But as he was approaching to investigate, Jehovah's voice came: I am the God of your forefathers, the God of Abraham and of Isaac and of Jacob. Seized with trembling, Moses did not dare to investigate further.
33 Jehovah said to him: Take the sandals off your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.
34 I have certainly seen the wrongful treatment of my people who are in Egypt, and I have heard their groaning and I have come down to deliver them. And now come, I will send you off to Egypt.
35 This Moses, whom they disowned, saying, 'Who appointed you ruler and judge?' this man God sent off as both ruler and deliverer by the hand of the angel that appeared to him in the thornbush.
36  This man led them out after doing portents and signs in Egypt and in the Red Sea and in the wilderness for forty years.
37 This is the Moses that said to the sons of Israel: God will raise up for you from among your brothers a prophet like me (Acts 7).

The Order of Events in Egypt and the wilderness was:

When Aaron and Moses had died, Joshua took over. He was one of the 12 spies that Moses had sent to spy out the promised land in the second year in the wilderness (1512). Of these 12 spies, who spied out the land for 40 days, only 2, Joshua and Caleb, brought back a good report from the land, they had courage due to their faith in God, saying:

6 And Joshua the son of Nun and Caleb the son of Jephunneh, who were of those who spied out the land, ripped their garments apart, 
7 and they proceeded to say this to all the assembly of the sons of Israel: The land that we passed through to spy it out is a very, very good land.
8 If Jehovah has found delight in us, then he will certainly bring us into this land and give it to us, a land that is flowing with milk and honey.
9 Only against Jehovah do not rebel; and you, do not you fear the people of the land, for they are bread to us. Their shelter has turned away from over them, and Jehovah is with us. Do not fear them (Numbers 14).

Joshua led the Jews into the promised land crossing the Jordan at Jericho. The first city they took was Jericho. After 6 years of fighting, they had conquered most of Israel. Just before the start of the 7^th agricultural year (which began on 1467 Tishri1 - 16^th September), which was a land Sabbath year under law, i.e. a year in which the Jews were to rest from their agricultural works, Joshua split the promised land up and gave each of the 12 tribes a piece of it.

The ten plagues of Egypt were:

The first three plagues affected both the Hebrews and the Egyptians, the last 7 only affected the Egyptians. Learn them well because they are having fulfillment at a year for a plague right now. Armageddon is the greater Exodus.

The people reached the Wilderness of Sinai on the third day of the third month (a Tuesday/Wednesday) in 1513 BC:

1 In the third month after the sons of Israel came out of the land of Egypt, on the same day, they came into the wilderness of Sinai (Exodus 19).

"on the same day" refers to the same Hebrew day of the week, a Tuesday/Wednesday, the first in the month, which was 1513Sivan3. By then the Jews had by then spent 7 full weeks of travelling and wandering about since their journeying began on 1513Nisan14. Moses was then called up the moutain on Sivan4...

3 And Moses went up to the [true] God, and Jehovah began to call to him out of the mountain, saying: This is what you are to say to the house of Jacob and to tell the sons of Israel... (Exodus19)

God ordered the Israelites to cleanse themselves for 3 days inclusive...

10 And Jehovah went on to say to Moses: Go to the people, and you must sanctify them today and tomorrow, and they must wash their mantles.
11 And they must prove ready for the 3rd day, because on the 3rd day Jehovah will come down before the eyes of all the people upon Mount Sinai. (Exodus19)

Then on 1513Sivan6 - see U356, Moses went up Mount Sinai and was given the ten commandments:

2 I am Jehovah your God, who have brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slaves.

[1st] 3 You must not have any other Gods against my face

[2nd] 4 You must not make for yourself a carved image or a form like anything that is in the heavens above or that is on the earth underneath or that is in the waters under the earth. 
5 You must not bow down to them nor be induced to serve them, because I Jehovah your God am a God exacting exclusive devotion, bringing punishment for the error of fathers upon sons, upon the third generation and upon the fourth generation, in the case of those who hate me. 
6 But exercising loving-kindness toward the thousandth generation in the case of those who love me and keep my commandments.

[3rd] 7 You must not take up the name of Jehovah your God in a worthless way, for Jehovah will not leave the one unpunished who takes up his name in a worthless way.

[4th] 8 Remembering the Sabbath day to hold it sacred, 
9 you are to render service and you must do all your work six days. 
10 But the seventh day is a Sabbath to Jehovah your God. You must not do any work, you nor your son nor your daughter, your slave man nor your slave girl nor your domestic animal nor your alien resident who is inside your gates. 11 For in six days Jehovah made the heavens and the earth, the sea and everything that is in them, and he proceeded to rest on the seventh day. That is why Jehovah blessed the Sabbath day and proceeded to make it sacred.

[5th] 12 Honour your father and your mother in order that your days may prove long upon the ground that Jehovah your God is giving you.

[6th] 13 You must not murder.

[7th] 14 You must not commit adultery.

[8th] 15 You must not steal.

[9th]16 You must not testify falsely as a witness against your fellowman.

[10th] 17 You must not desire your fellowman's house. You must not desire your fellowman's wife, nor his slave man nor his slave girl nor his bull nor his ass nor anything that belongs to your fellowman (Exodus 20).

It is important to realise that these laws were an agreement between God and the sons of Israel through Moses. They never applied to Gentiles, and they ceased applying to Jews at the death of Jesus in 33 AD, 1967 years before 2000. So in particular no human being today, whether a physical Jew or not is bound by these commandments. However behind these laws are God's principles of respect and justice that apply to all men and women indefinitely. The very same day that God gave to Moses the 10 commandments, the sons of Israel agreed to obey them and to abide by various other laws spoken to Moses on that day:

3 Then Moses came and related to the people all the words of Jehovah and all the judicial decisions, and all the people answered with one voice and said: All the words that Jehovah has spoken we are willing to do (Exodus 24).

At this time Moses made the law covenant with the sons of Israel. A Covenant is an agreement. The law covenant is also called the Law of Moses.

7 years after Joshua died in 1442, Othneil became the first judge of Israel in 1435. Samuel was the last judge of Israel and was also a prophet. Then there was a series of Judges, who were not kings, ending with the last judge, Samuel, who was also a prophet. Israel’s first King was Saul, from the tribe of Benjamin, the 12^th son of Jacob. Saul acceded to the throne in 1116 BC. The second King of Israel and Judah (all Israel) was David, from the tribe of Judah, the 4^th son of Jacob (Israel). God made a covenant (agreement) with David as follows:

5 Is it not for you to know that Jehovah the God of Israel himself gave a kingdom to David over Israel to time indefinite, to him and to his sons, by a covenant of salt? (2 Chronicles 13).

25 This is what Jehovah has said: If it was not a fact that I had appointed my own covenant of the day and night, the statutes of heaven and earth, 
26 so too I would reject even the seed of Jacob and of David my servant, so that I should not take from his seed rulers over the seed of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. For I shall gather their captives and will have pity upon them (Jeremiah 33).

So his sons would be the Royal line of Israel always.

The third king was Solomon, David’s son. After Solomon the 12 tribe kingdom of ‘All Israel’ was split into two kingdoms called rather confusingly ‘Israel’ and ‘Judah’. Rehoboam the son of Solomon became King of Judah and Jeroboam the son of Nebat, became king of Israel. Judah consisted of the tribes of Judah and Benjamin (and most of the Levite priests who were chucked out of Israel by Jeroboam). Israel was the other 10 tribes of Reuben, Simeon, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Asher, Issachar, Zebulun, Ephraim, Manasseh.

Now a judge is the final arbiter of the law, but he himself does not have any subjects and cannot tax the people of the land. Whereas a King is a judge who has subjects, he is the master of the people, he can tax them and take their sons and daughters for his service etc. God explains this to Samuel saying:

9 And now listen to their voice. Only this, that you should solemnly warn them, and you must tell them the rightful due of the king who will reign over them.
10 So Samuel said all the words of Jehovah to the people who were asking a king of him.
11 And he proceeded to say: This will become the rightful due of the king that will reign over you:
Your sons he will take and put them as his in his chariots and among his horsemen, and some will have to run before his chariots, 
12 and to appoint for himself chiefs over thousands and chiefs over fifties, and [some] to do his plowing and to reap his harvest and to make his war instruments and his chariot instruments.
13 And your daughters he will take for ointment mixers and cooks and bakers.
14 And your fields and your vineyards and your olive groves, the best ones, he will take and actually give to his servants.
15 And of your fields of seed and of your vineyards he will take the tenth, and he will certainly give [them] to his court officials and his servants.
16 And your menservants and your maidservants and your best herds, and your asses he will take, and he will have to use them for his work.
17 Of your flocks he will take the tenth, and you yourselves will become his as servants.
18 And you will certainly cry out in that day by reason of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves, but Jehovah will not answer you in that day.
19 However, the people refused to listen to the voice of Samuel and said: No, but a king is what will come to be over us. 20 And we must become, we also, like all the nations, and our king must judge us and go out before us and fight our battles (1 Samuel 8).

Solomon, King David’s Son became coregent with David in his last regnal year (1036 BC). Solomon built the first non mobile physical temple of the Jews, which was called the house of Jehovah. Today a Mosque stands on that site, which was purchased by King David from Ornan the Jebusite for 600 Shekels of gold. It was inaugurated in 1026 Tishri (September/October) at the Jewish festival of Booths.

Hoshea was the last King of Israel before the Capital City of Samaria fell to the Assyrian King Shalmanezer in the year from 723 Nisan (March/April) to 723 Adar (722 February March). Some of the people of Israel were led off into exile at that time. This was the end of the Kingdom of Israel, the Northern Kingdom. However the Kingdom of Judah, the Southern Kingdom, did not fall until Pharaoh Nechoh killed King Josiah in 608 BC, and then appointed his son Jehoiakim as his vassal king in 607 BC. Jerusalem was fully destroyed and the temple burnt by King Nebuchadnezzar in his 19^th year 586 BC.

We know from the history books and the Eponym Chronicle (a stone tablet recording the exploits of Shalmanezer) that Samaria did indeed fall in the Hebrew year starting 723Nisan. So we know that this year (723) was the 9^th year of Hoshea:

5 And the king of Assyria proceeded to come up against all the land and to come up to Samaria and lay siege against it for three years.
6 In the 9^th year of Hoshea, the king of Assyria captured Samaria and then led Israel into exile in Assyria and kept them dwelling in Halah and in Habor at the river Gozan and in the cities of the Medes (2 Kings 17).

One can count back through the kings of Israel and Judah from Hoshea to Solomon see - The Chronology from Solomon to Zedekiah.

Josiah, Nechoh, Jehoiakim, Zedekiah & Nebuchadnezzar

Josiah was a good king, but at the end of his reign he went out to fight Pharaoh Nechoh, who was actually on his way to do battle with the Assyrians. Pharaoh Nechoh warned Josiah not to interfere with him:

21 At that he sent messengers to him, saying: What do I have to do with you, O king of Judah? It is not against you that I am coming today, but it is against another house that my fight is and that God himself said that I should cause disturbance. Refrain for your own sake because of God, who is with me, and do not let him bring you to ruin.
22 And Josiah did not turn his face away from him, but to fight against him he disguised himself and did not listen to the words of Necho from the mouth of God. So he came to fight in the valley plain of Megiddo.
23 And the shooters got to shoot at King Josiah, so that the king said to his servants: Take me down, for I have been very severely wounded.
24 Accordingly his servants took him down from the chariot and had him ride in the second war chariot that was his and brought him to Jerusalem. Thus he died and was buried in the graveyard of his forefathers; and all Judah and Jerusalem were mourning over Josiah (2 Chronicles 35).

From this one deduces that God was actually abandoning Judah at this point, as we read in the parallel account in 2 Kings:

24 And also the spirit mediums and the professional foretellers of events and the teraphim and the dungy idols and all the disgusting things that had appeared in the land of Judah and in Jerusalem Josiah cleared out, in order that he might actually carry out the words of the law that were written in the book that Hilkiah the priest had found at the house of Jehovah.
25 And like him there did not prove to be a king prior to him who returned to Jehovah with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his vital force, according to all the law of Moses; neither after him has there risen up one like him.
26 Nevertheless, Jehovah did not turn back from the great burning of his anger, with which his anger burned against Judah over all the offensive things with which Manasseh had made them offend.
27 But Jehovah said: Judah, too, I shall remove from my sight, just as I have removed Israel; and I shall certainly reject this city that I have chosen, even Jerusalem, and the house of which I have said: My name will continue there (2 Kings 23).

Josiah was the son of the previous King Amon who was the son of the previous king Manasseh. So God abandoned Jerusalem to Pharaoh Nechoh because of the idolatry of Judah itself under King Manasseh during the bad part of his reign. Manasseh himself repented at the end of his reign (in fact 15 years before the end), we read:

11 Finally Jehovah brought against them the chiefs of the army that belonged to the king of Assyria, and so they captured Manasseh in the hollows and bound him with two fetters of copper and took him to Babylon.
12 And as soon as it caused him distress, he softened the face of Jehovah his God and kept humbling himself greatly because of the God of his forefathers.
13 And he kept praying to Him, so that He let himself be entreated by him and He heard his request for favor and restored him to Jerusalem to his kingship; and Manasseh came to know that Jehovah is the [true] God (2 Chronicles 33).

God had been protecting Jerusalem, the Capital of Judah, from everyone prior to the arrival of Pharaoh Nechoh. When Josiah was killed, the people made Jehoahaz, one of his sons, King. But Pharaoh Nechoh stopped him reigning and put him in prison after 3 months, and appointed instead Jehoiakim, as his vassal (representative king). At this point God ceased being king over his people, through a vassal king of his, who was always a son of David. Jehoiakim, although still a son of David, was a vassal king of Pharaoh Nechoh.

After Jehoiakim (who ruled from 608Chislev10 until 597), Jehoichain reigned for 3 months in Jerusalem in 597 BC. Then Zedekiah, the last king of Judah took over. He was deposed by Nebuchadnezzar in his 11^th regnal year which was the 19^th regnal year of Nebuchdnezzar, which was 586 BC. On 586Ab10 (13^th August 586 BC) Nebuchadn(r)ezzar burnt down Solomon’s temple (the House of Jehovah).

12 And in the 5th month, on the 10th day of the month, that is, [in] the 19nth year of King Nebuchadrezzar, the king of Babylon, Nebuzaradan the chief of the bodyguard, who was standing before the king of Babylon, came into Jerusalem.
13 And he proceeded to burn the house of Jehovah and the house of the king and all the houses of Jerusalem; and every great house he burned with fire (Jeremiah 52).

So Jerusalem was destroyed and the inhabitants were taken captive to Bablyon. At this time the Jews were unable to obey the law of Moses, which required a functioning temple. So they had a Sabbath (a release) from the law of works, the law of Moses (which involved various physical works). But Cyrus captured Bablyon in 539Tishri. And the Jews were released from their prison and allowed to rebuild Jerusalem and their temple. It was Zerubbabel who rebuilt the second physical non mobile temple for the Jews in Jerusalem, which was the third temple in Israel. Zerubbabel’s temple was inaugurated in 516Adar/Veadar. But true worship was not restored in this temple properly until over 60 years later in 455Tishri:

28 As for the rest of the people, the priests, the Levites, the gatekeepers, the singers, the Nethinim and everyone separating himself from the peoples of the lands to the law of the [true] God, their wives, their sons and their daughters, everyone having knowledge [and] understanding, 
29 they were adhering to their brothers, their majestic ones, and coming into [liability to] a curse and into an oath, to walk in the law of the [true] God, which had been given by the hand of Moses the servant of the [true] God, and to keep and to perform all the commandments of Jehovah our Lord and his judicial decisions and his regulations (Nehemiah 10).

On 455Tishri24 this oath was taken to obey the law a second time. The previous occasion being on mount Sinai in 1512Sivan3. At this time the law came back into force after 132 years of Sabbath (rest) from it.

The bible actually stipulates that John was a full term baby:

57 The time now became due for Elizabeth to give birth. And she became mother to a son (Luke 1).

This incredible scripture, is telling us to use the standard length of pregnancy in the case of John, i.e. 38 weeks from conception to birth (Babydata.com). This is 266 solar days. No other character in the bible, that we are aware of, is described as being a full term baby! We deduce from the fact that the bible mentions this detail that the holy spirit requires us to use this information. We are also told that Mary became pregnant when Elizabeth was in her 6^th month. A further piece of the Jigsaw which relates the birth of Jesus to the birth of John. All of this information can be used to deduce the date of Jesus’ birth to within a month see - The Dates of Jesus’ Birth and Death. From this we deduce that the holy spirit wants us to make such a calculation, which is why we are given the various pieces of the jigsaw, and yet we are not given Jesus’ date of birth, which is the full picture in this case. This is another example of the Jigsaw Principle of the Bible Code. It demonstrates to us that God wants us to think about his book, not just to read it in a mock deferential manner. If we really love God we will hang on every word and we will put in the effort to work out what he is saying. It is a question of motivation.

Imagine that 100 years ago, someone had offered 10 million pounds/15 million dollars to the first person to work out the precise day Jesus was born. Do you think that mankind wouldn’t have known that it was 2 BC Tishri 10 for the last one hundred years ? As it is, a Lord’s Witness first worked out this date in 1992, from the Midst Prophecy.

What was the role of John the Baptist in God’s Plan ?

The Angel Gabriel said of John:

17 Also, he will go before him with Elijah's spirit and power, to turn back the hearts of fathers to children and the disobedient ones to the practical wisdom of righteous ones, to get ready for [the] Lord a prepared people (Luke 1).

The ‘him’ was Jesus. The prepared people were those whom John baptised in the river Jordan. Zechariah, John’s dad, prophesied about his son saying:

70 Just as he, through the mouth of his holy prophets from of old, has spoken
71 of a salvation from our enemies and from the hand of all those hating us.
72 To perform the mercy in connection with our forefathers and to call to mind his holy covenant, 
73 the oath that he swore to Abraham our forefather, 
74 to grant us, after we have been rescued from the hands of enemies, the privilege of fearlessly rendering sacred service to him 
75 with loyalty and righteousness before him all our days (Luke 1).

The holy covenant sworn to Abraham referred to here must involve 'forefathers' plural. It was the Second Abrahamic Covenant for a priesthood in the Kingdom of God (rendering sacred service fearlessly), through Isaac - U9. One cannot fearlessly render service to God in this system, because becoming a true Christian involves persecution which will of necessity involve an element of fear. Jesus confirms this saying:

38 And whoever does not accept his torture stake and follow after me is not worthy of me (Matthew 10).

Therefore this fearless service is occurring in the Kingdom of God after we have been rescued from the hands of our enemies, the chief one of whom is Satan. Our rescue from him is the battle of Armageddon, wherein Satan tries to kill us all because if he can't rule us then no one will rule us as far as he is concerned. This battle is the entrance into God’s kingdom which last’s 1,000 years during which time Satan is dead! Thank God one might say.

4 And I saw thrones, and there were those who sat down on them, and power of judging was given them. Yes, I saw the souls of those executed with the ax for the witness they bore to Jesus and for speaking about God, and those who had worshiped neither the wild beast nor its image and who had not received the mark upon their forehead and upon their hand. And they came to life and ruled as kings with the Christ for 1,000 years (Revelation 20).

So the ‘salvation from our enemies’ is the entrance into the 1,000 year kingdom and this is through the Abrahamic covenant. So John must be providing this salvation, so he must be baptising people into this covenant. Hence we read:

5 Then Jerusalem and all Judea and all the country around the Jordan made their way out to him, 
6 and people were baptized by him in the Jordan River, openly confessing their sins.
7 When he caught sight of many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to the baptism, he said to them: You offspring of vipers, who has intimated to you to flee from the coming wrath?
8 So then produce fruit that befits repentance. 
9 And do not presume to say to yourselves: As a father we have Abraham. For I say to you that God is able to raise up children to Abraham from these stones (Matthew 3).

God was raising up children to Abraham through the second abrahamic covenant. These kids were judicially dead stones in the temple of the first true Christian religion. John was warning the Pharisees that although they were physical sons of Abraham, they were not the real sons of Abraham, who are none other than the ‘sons’ through the 1AC. Peter said to the men of Israel at the temple:

25 You are the sons of the prophets and of the covenant which God covenanted with your forefathers, saying to Abraham: And in your seed all the families of the earth will be blessed.
26 To you first God, after raising up his Servant, sent him forth to bless you by turning each one away from your wicked deeds (Acts 3).

But the men of Israel, the physical sons of Abraham had Jesus sent to them first to turn them from their wicked deeds. These physical sons, all of whom were born into the Land and Circumcision Covenant see - The 1st 2nd and 3rd and Abrahamic Covenants, had an exclusive on entrance into the First Abrahamic Covenant, until the Land and Circumcision Covenant ended. It ended in 36 CE (AD) Tishri 14 (Sunday 24^th September), 3½ years after Jesus died, at the Conversion of Cornelius, a Roman, (Acts 10). He was the first Gentile to be baptised into the First Abrahamic covenant. His baptism marked the end of the Land and Circumcision covenant, the LCC, which gave exclusivity to the sons of Israel as regards entrance into the First Abrahamic Covenant, the 1AC, the covenant of the blessing. This blessing being citizenship of the Kingdom of God, the greater Promised Land.

Luke describes John’s activities as follows:

‘Listen! Someone is crying out in the wilderness:
Prepare the way of [the] Lord, you people, make his roads straight.
Every gully must be filled up, and every mountain and hill levelled down, and the curves must become straight ways and the rough places smooth ways.
And all flesh will see the saving means of God.’

7 Therefore he began to say to the crowds coming out to be baptized by him: You offspring of vipers, who has intimated to you to flee from the coming wrath? 
8 Therefore produce fruits that befit repentance. And do not start saying within yourselves: As a father we have Abraham. For I say to you that God has power to raise up children to Abraham from these stones (Luke 3).

Again John is baptising people to become Abraham’s children, in a new sense. They were obviously genetically Abraham’s physical children, and parties to the Land and Circumcision Covenant which was exclusively for his genetic kids, promising them possession of the promised land, and requiring them to be circumcised. But John was constituting those whom he baptised to be Abraham’s Children in another way. This way was that they were not genetic sons of the Land and Circumcision Covenant but sons of the First Abrahamic covenant through their faith. Also by citing a plurality of stones, John was bearing witness that he would have several successors with the same power to rasie up kids to Abraham.

So this was John the Baptist’s role. It was to create a new true people of God. A new set of children to Abraham. He was baptised ‘from heaven’ to baptise physical sons of Israel, sons of the Covenant of the Circumcision, the covenant validated God, through a smoking furnace and a fiery torch as a result of by Abraham’s blood sacrifice in Genesis 15, into sons of the First Abrahamic covenant, the promise validated by Jesus. Such sons are baptised into the name of the father Abraham - see [12], [13]. Hence we read of him:

5 Look! I am sending to you people Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and fear-inspiring day of Jehovah.
6 And he must turn the heart of fathers back toward sons, and the heart of sons back toward fathers; in order that I may not come and actually strike the earth with a devoting [of it] to destruction (Malachi 4).

John the Baptist came in Elijah’s spirit and power as we saw at the start of this section. But he was in one sense ‘Elijah’ himself according to Jesus:

13 For all, the Prophets and the Law, prophesied until John. 
14 And if you want to accept it, He himself is: Elijah who is destined to come (Matthew 11).

And the Fathers whose hearts he turns back towards their sons are God and Abraham, and the sons whose hearts he turns back towards their fathers are the next or succeeding true people of God, the next or succeeding true Religion, who will have both Abraham and God as their fathers. We will find out that every true Christian Religion has had an Elijah figure who is cleaned from heaven to start a new group of Abraham’s sons by baptism, a new group of God’s true people. Just as in the case of the first true Christian Religion and John. 

Please just read the book of Matthew and John 1,2,3. You will see God’s love for us in action. Here are some important things that Jesus did:

[1] Resurrected Lazarus (John 11), The Widow of Nain’s Son (Luke 7), Jairus’ daughter (Mark 5)

[2] Explained various features of the Kingdom of God to the Jews

[3] He made the New Covenant with his disciples at the last supper on the night before he died. A covenant is an agreement between two parties. The New covenant is an agreement between God and those who are true members of this covenant, the new covenant saints, that they will be resurrected as angels in heaven after they die, and they will both Judge us and Rule as Kings over us from heaven in the Kingdom of God. By ‘us’ we mean the subjects, the earthly citizens of the Kingdom of God, the people on earth after Armageddon.

[4] He gave his life as a ransom for Adam.

[5] He showed the superiority of Love over one’s rights in Justice and he condemned

hypocrites: Let he who is without sin cast the first stone (John 8:7). 

The Catholic celebration of this covenant is ‘holy communion’. Now the bible shows that there are only 144,000 New covenant saints, those who are baptised into the new covenant, and should therefore celebrate it, whereas there are around 750,000,000 Catholics. 

1 And I saw, and, look! the Lamb standing upon the Mount Zion, and with him 144,000 having his name and the name of his Father written on their foreheads.
2 And I heard a sound out of heaven as the sound of many waters and as the sound of loud thunder; and the sound that I heard was as of singers who accompany themselves on the harp playing on their harps.
3 And they are singing as if a new song before the throne and before the 4 living creatures and the elders; and no one was able to master that song but the 144,000, who have been bought from the earth.
4 These are the ones that did not defile themselves with women; in fact, they are virgins. These are the ones that keep following the Lamb no matter where he goes. These were bought from among mankind as firstfruits to God and to the Lamb, (Revelation 14 NWT)

In fact the reader may or may not be surprised to learn that no Catholic today is a new covenant saint, not even the Pope. Jesus said at the last supper:

29 And I make a covenant with you, just as my Father has made a covenant with me, for a kingdom, 
30 that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom, and sit on thrones to judge the twelve tribes of Israel (Luke 22).

So the new covenanters are to sit on thrones, and therefore be kings, and they are to judge not the literal 12 tribes of Israel, but God’s people in general, who are Abraham’s seed in this system at this time. The apostle John sees the fulfilment of this covenant in his visions in the book of Revelation:

And I saw thrones, and there were those who sat down on them, and power of judging was given them. Yes, I saw the souls of those executed with the axe for the witness they bore to Jesus and for speaking about God, and those who had worshiped neither the wild beast nor its image and who had not received the mark upon their forehead and upon their hand. And they came to life and ruled as kings with the Christ for 1,000 years (Revelation 20:4).

Now we cannot all be kings sitting on thrones judging people. Some of us, in fact most of us, have to be the people being judged. So it is a daft idea for everyone in a church to drink the cup of the first New Covenant.

See U7 and I28.

Peter, whose name was originally Simon was introduced to Jesus by Andrew, his brother, who was a disciple of John the Baptist initially. Andrew said to Simon: We have found the Messiah. Jesus when he first saw Simon said to him:

42 You are Simon the son of John, you will be called Cephas - which is translated Peter (John 1).

There was a wonderful conversation that Jesus had with him later:

The Greek for this is:

su ei PetroV kai epi tauth th petra oikodomhsw mou thn ekklhsian (Matthew 16:18 - Greek).

(PetroV) Petros in Greek is masculine and means 'Stone' (i.e. moveable rock), whereas petra petra is feminine and means 'rock mass' (i.e. unmoveable rock), or foundation upon which a stone is to be put. The symbolism is of course that the male puts things on or in the female. Jesus is saying that he is the rock mass, and the Peter is a stone to be placed upon that rock mass. This is not an easy scripture to understand (we have got it wrong before now).

So Jesus renamed Simon as ‘Peter’, which means 'Stone' and not ‘Rock mass’ in Greek, because Jesus was to be the foundation of the Christian Church not Peter. So the Catholics who claim a lineage from Peter are mislead. The last Temple under the Law of Moses, which was Zerubbabel’s temple (although rebuilt by Herod) was built on a rock mass, on Mount Moriah in Jerusalem. This site was originally a stone threshing floor, which had been purchased by King David from Ornan the Jebusite (2 Samuel 24, 1 Chronicles 21).

Paul, whose name was originally Saul, was born a Pharisee, a Jewish religious leader, but also a Roman citizen. He had dual nationality. Paul was from the strictest sect of Pharisees. He was trained at the feet of Gamaliel, the ‘Big Cheese’ amongst religious teachers in the Law of Moses. Paul was sincere, but sincerely wrong. He started persecuting Christians, believing that they were enemies of God and of Moses and of the Law in which he had been thoroughly trained. He was given authority from the high priest to go to Damascus and root out Christians, who belonged to ‘the way’, as the congregation was then called, to arrest them and bring them back to Jerusalem to put them in prison. But on the road to Damascus Jesus appeared to him. The account says:

3 Now as he was travelling he approached Damascus, when suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him, 
4 and he fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him: Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?
5 He said: Who are you, Lord? He said: I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.
6 Nevertheless, rise and enter into the city, and what you must do will be told you.
7 Now the men that were journeying with him were standing speechless, hearing, indeed, the sound of a voice, but not beholding any man.
8 But Saul got up from the ground, and though his eyes were opened he was seeing nothing. So they led him by the hand and conducted him into Damascus.
9 And for three days he did not see anything, and he neither ate nor drank (Acts 9).

He was then baptised, his name was changed to Paul, and he became a Christian, and was persecuted himself more that he had persecuted. And what was worse, he was appointed an apostle not to the Jews, but to Gentiles, whom, all his training taught him were unclean barbarians. Now here is the finesse, the irony, and the wisdom of God. This man, Paul, who was an intellectual, more accustomed to using his brain than using his heart was chosen by the holy spirit to give to mankind God’s definition of Love:

1 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels but do not have love, I have become a sounding brass or a clashing cymbal.
2 And if I have the gift of prophesying and am acquainted with all the sacred secrets and all knowledge, and if I have all the faith so as to transplant mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.
3 And if I give all my belongings to feed others, and if I hand over my body, that I may boast, but do not have love, I am not profited at all.
4 Love is long-suffering and kind. Love is not jealous, it does not brag, does not get puffed up, 
5 does not behave indecently, does not look for its own interests, does not become provoked. It does not keep account of the injury.
6 It does not rejoice over unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth.
7 It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
8 Love never fails (1 Corinthians 13).

Just the choice of Paul over John for this definition is wisdom itself. A wisdom imitated with Spock in Star Trek, and the Lion, the Tin man and the Scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz. 

For this is the God that chose the youngest of the 11 sons of Jacob at the time (Joseph) to save his whole family, all the people of Egypt, and most of the rest of the world from the 7 year famine, between 1724Tishri and 1731Tishri. The same Joseph, the dreamer, that had been rejected by his brothers out of jealousy and sold as a slave to passing traders. This is the God that chose the youngest of the 8 sons of Jesse, David, a boy too small and too weak even to move in King Saul’s armour, to be the King over all Israel, and to defeat an entire Philistine army with one stone from a sling. The God that chose the smelly fisherman of Galilee to deliver his divinely elegant wisdom to the perfumed Pharisee of Jerusalem. The God who chose a fanatical Jew from the strictest sect of Pharisees (Paul) to deliver salvation to every Gentile in every nation. The God that has made a King for all mankind out of a baby born in a cattle shed, for whom no room was found at the Inn. So now:

20 Where is the wise man? Where the scribe? Where the debater of this system of things? Did not God make the wisdom of the world foolish? (1 Corinthians 1)

Is there one chapter of the Holy book that they really understand?

John was the apostle that Jesus loved. Just before he died on the stake he made sure his Mum was going to be looked after by John:

26 Therefore Jesus, seeing his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing by, said to his mother: Woman, see! Your son!
27 Next he said to the disciple: See! Your mother! And from that hour on the disciple took her to his own home (John 19).

This is part of the apostle John’s account of the last supper:

21 After saying these things, Jesus became troubled in spirit, and he bore witness and said: Most truly I say to you, One of you will betray me.
22 The disciples began to look at one another, being at a loss as to which one he was saying [it] about.
23 There was reclining in front of Jesus' bosom one of his disciples, and Jesus loved him.
24 Therefore Simon Peter nodded to this one and said to him: Tell who it is about whom he is saying [it].
25 So the latter leaned back upon the breast of Jesus and said to him: Lord, who is it?
26 Therefore Jesus answered: It is that one to whom I shall give the morsel that I dip. And so, having dipped the morsel, he took and gave it to Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot.
27 And after the morsel then Satan entered into the latter. Jesus therefore, said to him: What you are doing get done more quickly (John 13).

John himself confirms that this disciple, whom Jesus loved, was him, in the last two verses of his Gospel:

20 Upon turning about Peter saw the disciple whom Jesus used to love following, the one who at the evening meal had also leaned back upon his breast and said: Lord, who is the one betraying you?
21 Accordingly, when he caught sight of him, Peter said to Jesus: Lord, what will this [man do]?
22 Jesus said to him: If it is my will for him to remain until I come, of what concern is that to you? You continue following me.
23 In consequence, this saying went out among the brothers, that that disciple would not die. However, Jesus did not say to him that he would not die, but: If it is my will for him to remain until I come, of what concern is that to you?
24 This is the disciple that bears witness about these things and that wrote these things, and we know that the witness he gives is true (John 21).

And John did live to see him come again. For his second coming in the first presence was in fact to appoint Paul as the head of the second true Christian Church in 59 AD after the first true Christian Church which Peter was the first head of, and John, James, Timothy and Epaphras were the other 4 presidents of (see - The 7 FDS presidents of the first presence), had become corrupt and compromised with Rome becoming the Roman Catholic Church in 67 AD - see U42.