Picking Up Where I Left Off

I can't even believe me!  I retired so that I would have time to write every day and I am busier than ever!  I have spent so much time with my great grandchildren, grandchildren, and children that I am gone about every other week.  But it is Sunday and I am actually home, so I will try and pick up the thread of where I was in the story of creation.  There is much more to tell.

 

The Book of Abraham ends with the creation of Eve.  The Prophet Joseph told the Saints that there was more and also excerpts from the Book of Joseph in Egypt, but he didn't live long enough to complete the translation.  He was martyred at Carthage Jail in Illinois on June 27, 1844.  Therefore, I will move to the writings of Moses for the rest of the story of our first parents, Adam and Eve, and their family and generations of progeny.

 

First, I must go to a place in time not discussed in the Bible concerning Moses.  Most people know that Joseph, 11th son of the Patriarch Jacob/Israel, was sold as a slave by his older brothers.  He was wrongfully imprisoned and through his ability to interpret dreams, he was freed and taken into the confidence of the pharaoh himself.  He later brought his father and the whole family to live in Egypt because there was famine in other lands.  The family settled in a part of Egypt known as Goshen. 

 

After Joseph's death, the Israelite lost favor with the Egyptians and were made slaves.  Centuries later, a son was born to a Levite family in Goshen.  Pharaoh was so afraid of an Israelite prophecy of a boy child who would challenge the authority of Pharaoh, that he had decreed that all boy children be taken from the birthing stools and thrown into the Nile River for the crocodiles.  Moses' mother knew this law. 

 

The Israelite midwives found favor with God in that they were not carrying out Pharaoh's heinous orders, saying to Pharaoh that Israelite women were stronger than Egyptian women and delivered themselves upon the birthing stools before the midwives came.  This is what Moses' mother did.

 

Knowing that a boy child could not survive on the streets of Goshen, she hid him for as long as she could.  When she knew it was no longer safe to hide him, she wove a basket of reeds and pitched in with tar to make it waterproof.  Lovingly, she place her precious on in the basket and set it adrift upon the Nile, praying that God would deliver him.  She sent her daughter, Miriam, to follow and see where the basket went.

 

On that day, Pharaoh's daughter was bathing in the waters of the Nile where she spotted the basket.  She had recently been widowed and felt barren with an empty womb.  When she saw it was a baby, she sent her attendants away and drew him from the Nile, a gift from the God of the Nile, Hapi.

 

Moses was raised as a prince in Egypt and was favored by his grandfather, to the annoyance of his cousin, the crown prince.  As a young adult, Moses saw and Egyptian overseer beat an Israelite slave to death.  In rage, he killed the Egyptian and buried him in the sand.  When his crime was discovered, he was cast out of Egypt to die in the desert.

 

He didn't die, but found the tent of a Bedouin who sheltered him and allowed Moses to marry the sheik's eldest daughter.  Moses remained a shepherd and fathered children.  One day, while he was out with the sheep, he saw a bush on a nearby mountain.  It appeared to be burning, but was not consumed.  He was curious, so he climbed the mountain.  That is where he met God face-to-face, which is where we pick up the story.

 

Of course, it was a much more complex set of circumstances and political intrigue, but this is the heart of the story in a Reader's Digest version to bring us to where I want to go: The Book of Moses of the Pearl of Great Price

 

 

Mea Culpa

Sorry my posts have been so random lately.  Life is what happens when you had other plans.  I'm paddling as fast as I can.  'Nuff said.

 

 

Bone of My Bone and Flesh of My Flesh

And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him. (Genesis 2:20)

 

In all of creation, there was no living thing which was equal to stand by man's side.  While Genesis puts this in a context that makes it sound as if God was experimenting and created woman when all else failed, we know through a careful and prayerful reading of the text that this was God's plan all of the time. Neither the Book of Moses nor the Book of Abraham present this in such an "oh, by the way" manner.

 

What all three of the accounts have in common are the following facts:

• The Gods caused Adam to fall asleep
• While Adam slept, the Gods took a rib from his side and then closed his side back up.
• From that rib, they created a woman.

Adam, according to scripture, called her Woman for she was taken "out of man" and was "bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh."  Whether or not God literally created Eve from Adam's rib is, to me, a moot point.  What is more to point is that Adam could not progress from a state of eternal innocence by himself and the whole purpose of Creation would be thwarted.  It is also important to me that Eve was not taken from his head to rule over him nor from his feet to be trodden upon.  She was taken from his side, the "other side" of man; the yin and the yang; equal in value to God as His sons and daughters are equal.  Equal, but different. 

 

The story of the creation of Eve is the perfect genesis for the term "one flesh" and underscores Gods' affirmation of marriage:

 

And Adam said: This was bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh; now she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of man; Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife, and they shall be one flesh.  (Abraham 5: 15-18)

 

 

During Jesus' ministry, a group of his critics challenged him on the bill of divorcement allowed by the Law of Moses.  Jesus taught them that this was the lesser law, given to them because of the hardness of their hearts.  Then he went on to reaffirm the sanctity of marriage by quoting from this scripture:

 

But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female.  For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and cleave to his wife;  And they twain shall be one flesh: so then they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder. (Mark 10: 6-9)

 

In Hebrew, Adam means man.  In the Creation account, we are told that Eve was called Woman because she was taken from man.  However, modern-day revelation teaches us that the woman's name, Eve in Hebrew means mother.  Once Gods' creations were finished and Adam and Eve were married by God in the Garden, the next part of the plan was ready to go forward as planned.

 

The Crowning Event in All Creation - Mother of All Living

The last and greatest creation of the Gods was to create an help meet for Adam, for the Gods realized that it is not good for man to be alone.

 

And the Gods said: Let us make an help meet for the man, for it is not good that the man should be alone, therefore we will form an help meet for him. (Abraham 5: 14)

 

In the Book of Abraham, the text goes right into the creation process for woman, but the Book of Genesis inserts this information:

 

And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.

And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.

And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him. (Genesis 2: 18-20)

 

In these verses, God brings the animals He has created to Adam so that Adam won't be alone.  Adam names them all, but despite the abundance of life forms, Adam realizes that an help meet who can be his equal and his companion was not among them.  He need a human being, a woman, with whom he can fulfill the measure of his creation, i.e., to multiply and replenish the earth.  He needed an equal, not a duplicate.

 

For centuries, men and women have read the term help meet (or helpmeet) to mean that Eve was subservient to Adam, and for centuries, if not millennia, woman have been treated as subservient and of less importance and stature than men.  The Oxford Dictionary states that this misleading reading even effected the way we use the word: Late 17th century(as helpmeet): from an erroneous reading of Gen. 2:18, 20, where Adam's future wife is described as “an help meet for him” (i.e., a suitable helper for him). The variant helpmate came into use in the early 18th century.

 

According to Oxford, among other sources, the word really means: A . . . companion or partner, especially one’s husband or wife.

 

How different the lot of women would have been if these part of the creation story were understood the way God intended it to be.  Eve came for Adam's rib, so she was taken from his side and was thus the complement creation, not a lesser creation.  Women have suffered Eve's so-called shame for thousands of years and male clergy misread and miss-taught the creation story.

 

Even today in some parts of the world, woman are brutally mistreated.  Female babies are aborted at a geometrically higher rate than male babies.  Female babies are more likely to be abandoned to die than male babies. 

 

The mistreatment of woman among many very traditional Muslims has come to light with such things as honor killings, female circumcision (which God never commanded) and the blaming of women for men's lustful thoughts to the point of completely covering them when in public so only the eyes are seen.  And yet, this is what the Prophet said in the Koran concerning the creation of women (translated):

 

“And God said: ‘O Mankind!  Be dutiful to your Lord, Who created you from a single person (Adam) and from Him (Adam) He created his wife (Eve), and from them both He created many men and women.’” (Quran 4:1)

 

Adam opened his eyes and looked into the beautiful face of a woman gazing down at him.  Adam was surprised and asked the woman why she had been created.  She revealed that she was to ease his loneliness and bring tranquility to him.  The Angels questioned Adam.  They knew that Adam possessed knowledge of things they did not know about and the knowledge mankind would need to occupy the earth.  They said ‘who is this?’  and Adam replied ‘this is Eve’.

Eve is Hawwa in Arabic; it comes from the root word hay, meaning living.  Eve is also an English variant of the old Hebrew word Havva, also deriving from hay.  Adam informed the Angels that Eve was so named because she was made from a part of him and he, Adam, was a living being.

 

Both Jewish and Christian traditions also maintain that Eve was created from Adam’s rib, although in a literal translation of the Jewish tradition, rib is sometimes referred to as side.

 

The traditions of Prophet Muhammad relate that Eve was created while Adam was sleeping from his shortest left rib and that, after sometime, she was clothed with flesh.  He (Prophet Muhammad) used the story of Eve’s creation from Adam’s rib as a basis for imploring people to be gentle and kind to women.  “O Muslims!  I advise you to be gentle with women, for they are created from a rib, and the most crooked portion of the rib is its upper part.  If you try to straighten it, it will break, and if you leave it, it will remain crooked; so I urge you to take care of the women.” (Saheeh Al-Bukhari) [1]

 

I imagine that is not what you would have thought. How far have they drifted from their scriptural bases?   How far have we drifted? We can rationalize and misinterpret ourselves from truth into lies so easily.  That is why the companionship of the Spirit is so important.

 

 [1] http://www.islamreligion.com/articles/1193/story-of-adam-part-2

Hurried Season; Hurried Child

According to the calendar, August is past; September is hear.  It must be true because it the temperature dropped to a cool 99 degrees today.

 

In many parts of the country, leaves are already beginning to turn.  Sunflowers grow as high as the barn roof and crispy apples are ready to fall from the trees.  Not so where I live.  Here we are still swimming, shopping early to avoid the heat, and spending time in an air conditioned inside.

 

Things have really changed for this time of year.  Time was in my childhood and even the childhoods of my children, back-to-school occurred the day after Labor Day.  In most states, school children return at leas t by early August if no late July!  It's one of those iconic markers of life that has blurred into tedium. It seems as if we are losing more and more of these life event markers that divide time into manageable bites.

 

 

Here it is too hot for sunflowers or apples.  The stores are already selling candy and costumes for Halloween!  I love the season of pumpkin flavored everything, but that is not in September.

 

While I'm at it, we seem to rush everything.  We expect children to read before they leave kindergarten.  We send school work home with primary school-aged children who should be spending their afternoons playing in the late summer sunshine, using their imaginations, and connecting with their families.  They "reinvented" math so that children are supposed to understand the why of numerical equations when they should be mastering simple arithmetic first.  The wonderful curricula in art, music, drama, P.E. have become throw-aways to make room for more kill and drill math and incomprehensible common core objectives. Children are so stressed, the frequently melt-down and grow to hate school.

 

I think we need to slow down and reconsider our priorities.  Start school the day after Labor Day.  Give children the time to be children before they have to become adults.  They'll get there much faster if was allow a pace that is child-friendly.  Let their imaginations run free.  Don't do massive state and federal high stakes tests.  Simplify.  Trust teachers as the professionals they are.  Don't micro-manage them either.

 

Then let the barefoot boy with cheeks of tan put on his shoes after Labor Day and bring a ripe, crispy apple to his teacher.

In the Day Thou Eatest Thereof, Thou Shalt Surely Die

And the Gods formed man from the dust of the ground, and took his spirit (that is, the man’s spirit), and put it into him; and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul.

 

And the Gods planted a garden, eastward in Eden, and there they put the man, whose spirit they had put into the body which they had formed.  And out of the ground made the Gods to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food; the tree of life, also, in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

 

And the Gods took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden, to dress it and to keep it. And the Gods commanded the man, saying: Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat,  But of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it; for in the time that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die. Now I, Abraham, saw that it was after the Lord’s time, which was after the time of Kolob [1]; for as yet the Gods had not appointed unto Adam his reckoning. (Abraham 5: 7-13)

 

And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

 

And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

 

And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. (Genesis 2: 7-10; 15-17)

 

Many people wonder why God would:

1. Put the tree where they had easy access
2. Tell them not to eat the fruit
3. Banish them from the Garden when they succumbed to temptation which, He knew they would.

Sounds a little Machiavellian of God to create such a no-win scenario.  In order to understand it, you have to go back to the pre-earth Council in Heaven and the two-fold purpose of the creation. The first purpose was to provide a home where God's spirit children could be born and gain mortal bodies.  This part was all done before God created Adam out of the dust;

 

And the Gods planted a garden, eastward in Eden, and there they put the man, whose spirit they had put into the body which they had formed. And out of the ground made the Gods to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food; the tree of life, also, in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.  And the Gods took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden, to dress it and to keep it. (Abraham 5: 8, 9, 11)

 

 

The second purpose of creation was to prove them herewith, to see if they would do all things whatsoever the Lord, their God, shall command them (Abraham 3:25.) This life is a time of probation; a time to make mistakes; a time to repent; a time to test ourselves with God's will.

 

Therefore: Man had to have a knowledge of good and evil in order to use his agency to make those choices necessary from him to learn and grow.  BUT God would never coerce him.  Man had to make that choice himself and enter into a mortal and fallen world of his own free will.  Hence:

 

(1) the tree was there because it had to be there. 

 

(2) God had to warn Adam of the consequences of partaking of the fruit - mortality and the ability to become a father - and ultimate death.  They had to eat, they had to fall. 

 

(3) Once Adam and his wife, Eve, had fallen, they had to leave the garden for their own protection, for in the Garden were two significant trees: the tree of which we have spoken and the Tree of Life.  Had Adam and Eve partaken of the Tree of Knowledge and become fallen and then partaken of the Tree of Life, they would have lived forever in their sins and the entire purpose of the Creation would have been thwarted.  Banishment was not a punishment: it was a protection, even though it may have felt like a punishment at the time.  But life is like that, right?

 

[1] i.e., 1,000 years

 

© Gebara Education, 2016

On the Seventh Day, God Rested

 

And thus we will finish the heavens and the earth, and all the hosts of them.  And the Gods said among themselves: On the seventh time we will end our work, which we have counseled; and we will rest on the seventh time from all our work which we have counseled.  And the Gods concluded upon the seventh time, because that on the seventh time they would rest from all their works which they (the Gods) counseled among themselves to form; and sanctified it. And thus were their decisions at the time that they counseled among themselves to form the heavens and the earth. (Abraham 5: 1-3)

 

Steven Covey gained international fame with his 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.  One of those habits was that a man should regularly rest from his normal work/routine, what Covey called "sharpen the saw."  If you don't take time to do that you will soon burn out and become locked into a life that is no longer fulfilling.  Covey didn't invent that idea.  He learned it as a universal truth from God.

 

God later taught Moses that this 7th day was hallowed because He rested on the 7th day.  It is the 4th of the 10 commandments:

 

Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: But the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates:

 

For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it. (Exodus 20: 8-11)

 

It is important that we keep this commandment not only because God commanded it but because it is in our best interest to do so.

 

Have a blessed Sabbath everyone!

Created in the Image of the Gods - Dominion

According to Mirriam Webster, dominion means "the right to govern or rule or determine." [1]  We usually equate this to mean the "Power to direct, control, use and dispose of at pleasure; right of possession and use without being accountable;" [2]  I believe this is short sighted and misses the mark of God's intent completely. With power comes great responsibility.

 

 

God taught Abraham that there were levels of intelligences from the least to the greatest, with God, Himself, being the greatest of all.  It is He who holds absolute dominion.  He does not have to be accountable to anyone, for His motives are always loving and focused on providing what is best for His children and all of His creations.  I believe that when the Gods gave mankind "dominion" over the beasts of the earth, it was giving man power and authority to determine and direct, but with accountability.  To whom? To God, of course, whose intelligence and power are the greatest of all.  God oversees man's dominion because mankind does not always exercise dominion from pure and loving motives.  Man has dominion but with a caveat of accountability.  Another word for that is stewardship.

 

Jesus shared many parables regarding the stewardship that accompanies God's gifts (such as the parable of the talents or the Lord of the Vineyard) so it must be an eternal principle from before the world was.  How different would be our attitude toward the earth and all that inhabit her (including plants as well as animals, to say nothing of other human beings) if we understood the dominion of Genesis 1 to really mean stewardship.

 

Both Moses and Abraham spoke of this stewardship of dominion as it relates to the creation.  Note that all three versions state that there was more than one God involved.  The Book of Moses explains that two of those Gods were the Father and the Son, but all three versions imply it.  Abraham tells us that the Gods took counsel one with another in every step of creation.  I am not sure how other Jewish, Christian, and Islamic scholars can miss the implication of the plural pronouns in Genesis 1:26.

 

 

And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. (Genesis 1: 26-27)

 

And I, God, said unto mine Only Begotten, which was with me from the beginning: Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and it was so. And I, God, said: Let them have dominion over the fishes of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. And I, God, created man in mine own image, in the image of mine Only Begotten created I him; male and female created I them. (Moses 2: 26-27)

 

And the Gods took counsel among themselves and said: Let us go down and form man in our image, after our likeness; and we will give them dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.  So the Gods went down to organize man in their own image, in the image of the Gods to form they him, male and female to form they them. (Abraham 4: 26-27)

 

God trusts us with His every creation.  What will we say when we report our stewardship?

 

[1] http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/dominion

 

[2] http://av1611.com/kjbp/kjv-dictionary/dominion.html

The Rest of Creation

And the Gods prepared the earth to bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle and creeping things, and beasts of the earth after their kind; and it was so, as they had said.

And the Gods organized the earth to bring forth the beasts after their kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after its kind; and the Gods saw they would obey.  (Abraham 4: 24-25)

From single cells to multiple cells; from invertebrates to vertebrates; from things with gills to things with lungs; from creeping things to flying things; from eggs to live birth; from things with scales or feathers to things with hair - God filled the earth with the living creatures of the animal kingdom and commanded that they obey, each being fruitful and filling the earth after its own kind.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Only one thing was missing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Be Fruitful and Multiply - Day 5 Continued

This past spring, I had the opportunity to teach our junior high students a unit in cellular biology.  The teacher was nervous to teach it because it dealt with reproduction and heredity.

 

Why is that we seem to have gone crazy on the subject of reproduction?  Is it because we have demeaned the act of human reproduction from a method - both created by God and ordained by Him according to his commandments - into a series of "gymnastic" events driven by the prurient nature of the flesh?  I know that we have because sexual acts outside of the marriage of a man and woman and sexual deviations never ordained - in fact strictly forbidden - by God are thrown in our faces every day from entertainment to advertising.  As a result of the blatant attack on morality, pornography has become a billion dollar a year industry, with an addictive potential to that of heroin and cocaine.

 

Let us return for now to God's plans regarding His creations.  All living things must do seven basic things:

1. Eat (animals) or produce (plants) food
2. Breathe
3. Eliminate waste
4. React to stimuli
5. Move
6. Grow
7. Reproduce

God provided for them all, from the individual cell to the most complex mammals, every living thing must do these seven things in order to live.  God provided us with life and in abundance!

 

The most basic forms of reproduction are asexual via mitosis.  Plants and animals at a cellular level "split" into two parts, each having the exact same genetic make up.  Some multicellular organisms reproduce via such processes as spores or "budding" (think of potato eyes.) 

However, for the variety of organisms to appear on the earth, God introduced sexual reproduction from the male pollen on the female pistil in plants to the complex sexual reproduction of animals via a cellular process called meiosis.  Through this process, each offspring is a genetically unique individual.  That keeps species vibrant and full of variety.

 

This was absolutely necessary for the fulfillment of God's plan for his creations, including His own children, created in His likeness.  Without it, all creation would be for naught.  Thus He taught Abraham and Moses:

 

And the Gods said: We will bless them, and cause them to be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas or great waters; and cause the fowl to multiply in the earth.

And it came to pass that it was from evening until morning that they called night; and it came to pass that it was from morning until evening that they called day; and it was the fifth time. (Abraham 4: 22-23)

 

As we study the next day of creation, we will hear this theme repeated: multiply and replenish the earth.  From the grass of the field to the sons and daughters of God, this must have been important to Him, for the commandment was given to every form of life upon the earth.

 

© Gebara Education, 2016

Moving Creatures that Have Life

And the Gods said: Let us prepare the waters to bring forth abundantly the moving creatures that have life; and the fowl, that they may fly above the earth in the open expanse of heaven.

And the Gods prepared the waters that they might bring forth great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters were to bring forth abundantly after their kind; and every winged fowl after their kind. And the Gods saw that they would be obeyed, and that their plan was good.(Abraham 4: 20-21)

 

Many people see a great discrepancy between the theories of evolution and the story of creation.  I don't, insofar as by evolution we mean the order in which things were created upon the earth.  For the most part, these things seem to align quite well.  Where I differ from Darwin is that I believe each creature to have been created to multiply after its own kind.  How God did this technically, I don't know and I feel no need to know.  He said He created it by the power of His Word, even Christ, and that when He said, "Let there be. . .," He was obeyed.  That, once created, creatures can over time be modified within their own species is something I believe.  For example, if you were to allow a population of a variety of exotic pigeons to breed freely over several generations, you would eventually return to a basic brown or grey pigeon.

 

 

God tells us through both Moses and Abraham that He first prepared the waters to receive life.  In 1924, Soviet biologist, Alexander Oparin, proposed the theory that life originated through gradual chemical evolution of particles of carbon.  He called the resulting concoction, "Primordial soup." [1] What Oparin, and later other scientists stumbled upon could have been what God called the preparation of the waters to a condition conducive to the production and support of life.  Whether He did it through carbon compounds or not, I know that He did it.  I believe that God, both the Father and the Son, are the greatest of all biologists and even the best of we humans just infants stumbling in the dark, trying to figure out how They did it.

 

Amongst all the creeping things next in creation included the amphibians;

reptiles;

 

 

insects and other creeping things;

 

and, ultimately, the birds.

 

The reference to the whale in both the Abrahamic account and the Mosaic account certainly did not represent modern whales or dolphins, which are mammals and came later on the "creation ladder."  The writers could have been referencing very large fish using the only wording they had to represent such things.  The Book of Jonah tells us that Jonah was swallowed by a "big fish" which is often retold to mean a whale.  However, many scientists who study the Bible have come to believe that Jonah may have been swallowed by a whale shark, a truly big fish indeed.  The picture on the left illustrates the size of a modern-day whale shark alongside a modern diver for size comparison.

 

The "war" between science and religion is one we have created in our own minds due to lack of faith.  God told the early saints to "seek learning even by study and also by faith."  God wants us to seek out answers, but with prayer, faith, and inspiration.  Joseph Smith once said that there is no conflict between true science and true religion.  When there appears to be, one of them - either the science or the religion - is not true.

 

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primordial_soup

 

 © Gebara Education, 2016