From the Daily Sceptic... Matthew 24:9 is coming true: you will be hated by all nations for My name’s sake...
https://twitter.com/01brain_dead/status/1790607386908201078
"Muslim candidates and elected representatives… need make no excuses for their personal faith. To criticise a Muslim, or any other minority, for the illiberal tenets of their faith would be prejudicial. But Christians? They’re fair game."
Are you SURE about that?
Matthew 13:33-42 --
Here, Jesus is speaking to the "multitudes," which means all the people who have gathered, and NOT only His people. He tells them something, using a parable.
Jesus never told the full truth to the multitudes. He ONLY spoke the FULL TRUTH to His own people. If you don't understand that, then many passages in the Bible will not make sense to you. They will seem to say something the don't.
This means that the Old Testament, going back all the way to Genesis, did NOT tell us everything. Jesus came, in part to reveal more information (thus: Revelation, and all the books of the New Testament).
Nobody can understand the OT without also understanding NT, with both in context of each other. This is why both jews and muslims cannot understand the OT.
Go back to Genesis 1 --
So, Jesus says that He came to reveal things that had not been revealed in the OT.
In the OT, everything that God made was GOOD.
In the NT, Jesus tells that everything that God made was good, BUT THEN the Devil (Satan) came along and sowed the BAD seed.
Now, back to the earlier verses in Matthew 13 --
Jesus spoke the FULL TRUTH to His own people, but to the multitudes He only spoke in parables. He did this because ONLY HIS PEOPLE could/should/would undestand the truth.
So ...
What God created was good, which in the parable is the wheat. But then Satan came along and created the tares. One day, God will separate them, and burn the tares and bring the wheat into the Kingdom of Heaven.
If that is the case, then where did Satan come from and how did he create the tares?
Again, Jesus said that he came to reveal secrets that were kept from the foundation of the world.
Revelation 12:7-12 --
Satan was cast down into the Earth. But he had a short time to do his evil works.
Back to Genesis 5 --
IOW: This is the family tree of Adam, as in the genetic family tree, with is direct descendants.
You can trace his family tree from Adam down to Noah in this chapter:
Adam >> Seth >> Enos >> Cainan >> Mahalaleel >> Jared >> Enoch >> Methuselah >> Lamech >> Noah
So ... Noah was a great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandson of Adam.
Direct genetic lineage.
This is why all the "this man begat that son" is found in the Bible. It is a family tree.
But ...
Genesis 6:4 --
That is the KJV. But, I believe the meaning of this verse has been corrupted and changed, which makes the TRUE story indecipherable to most Christians. This is one of the BIG reasons that Christians and non-Christians find the Bible confusing.
In the Expanded Bible, we see:
The word in Hebrew was Nephilim (our English pronunciation) and it means "fallen ones," not "giants."
These fallen ones are the angels ("messengers") of Satan, which we see in Rev 12:7-12 was kicked out of Heaven, and fell to the Earth.
Putting it all together:
God created everything that was good. But Satan showed up and made things that were evil. Satan's people mixed with some (not all) of God's people.
Jesus came, partly, to tell us this missing piece of the puzzle that was not told (completely) in the OT (it was a secret kept from the foundation).
The wheat and the tares are the good and the bad. At some point, God will separate them and only the wheat will live on.
Wow. Thank you for that extremely thoughtful reply. I feel like I understood every point you made. You are clearly well read on the Bible, I’d go as far as to say you’re a messenger.
So basically how I understand it is God created everything, but Satan rebelled and polluted the human lineage. This allowed bad seed (tares) to become sown into humanity, which have multiplied along with the good seed (wheat). Gods plan is basically to let the crop grow until the bad seed can be properly separated.
My question now is, what is growing? And how does God know when to “harvest”? All very interesting, thank you again.