Triangular

Genesis 1-11 covers roughly 2,000 years in 11 chapters. From Genesis 12 to Malachi 4 is the next 2,000 years. Of course, skeptics ask, “Why so much information about this time and so little about that?” The answer, of course, is the issues back in early Genesis are principle operating “ingredients.”

One of the principles in the operation of the nations and of man is there are some directions in which history is destined to move. In Genesis 3, for example, you understand that the original birth of civilization began in the Middle East. The Garden of Eden is over the Euphrates and down the Tigris to around where modern Kuwait is.

Jordan explains, “It would be eastward in Eden. That fertile crescent, if you take the word Eden in the Bible, and look up the references to where Eden is described in the Bible, you’ll find that one leg of it is over in Egypt, one leg is over where the Tigris and Euphrates are, where modern-day Kuwait is, and another leg is up north, and if you take a line and connect the dots, you’ll have a triangle that will match the fertile crescent.

Genesis 4:16 says, “And Cain went out from the presence of the LORD, and dwelt in the land of Nod, on the east of Eden.”

 Jordan asks, “Did Cain go toward God or away from God? That’s going away from God. When God told Israel to set up the tabernacle in the wilderness, He gave them very clear instructions. When you come in, if you’re going to go the way God wants you to go, you’re going to go east to west.

“That’s a pattern in the Scripture. When Joshua was going to take Israel into the Promised Land, what did they do? They went over on the east side of the Jordan River and they went into it from east to west. When Jesus Christ comes back to land on the Mount of Olives, and goes into Jerusalem, what does He do? He comes into the east. He goes into the eastern gate, which means He was going east to west.

“In the Scripture, when you go against this, you’re going in the wrong direction and it doesn’t matter if you’re going east, you can go south. In Genesis 12, God calls Abraham out of Ur to go west into the land of Canaan. When Abraham’s there a while and got all upset, he went south. Was that a good idea?

“It’s fascinating to see how the course of history is designed to operate.  Look at Genesis 12:4-6. God said, ‘This is your land Abraham!’ Verse 10 reads, ‘And there was a famine in the land: and Abram went down into Egypt to sojourn there; for the famine was grievous in the land.’

“Abraham went down into Egypt. You know what direction that is? Wrong way! You say, ‘But if he had gone west, he’d have gotten wet in the Mediterranean Sea!’ That’s right; he ought to have stayed put! He was in the land God put him in! You say, ‘But the Canaanites were there!’ Yeah, they didn’t belong there!

"They’d had warning that God was going to give that land to Abraham so they went up there and took it over. They weren’t where they were supposed to be and that’s why later on God tells Israel, ‘They’re to wipe them all out because that isn’t there land.’  That was God’s land deeded to the land of Israel.

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“The direction God designed to be His direction is east to west. That’s why the course of history has functioned that way and as you go through the Word of God, you’ll see it go that way. When Israel is carried off in the east in the Babylonian captivity, that was a bad thing. But when God began to move into the Gentile nations, He began to move west with them.

“When He went to the Media-Persian Empire, He went west. The Greek empire was west. Then comes Rome and into the Western world; Western hemisphere. The extension of America west into Asia. So the idea of the kings of the east, what you really have going on there is you have history going back to where it originated in.

“Now there are two great nations, by the way, in Asia. China and India. There’s some things about the Chino-Indian relationships that sometime you don’t hear a lot about. We hear about all the jobs going to China. China has become the great manufacturing engine of the world. India has become the great service economy.

“We’re seeing culture move back to where civilization began. Ultimately it’s going back to the Middle East. In Daniel 8, for example, you get some detailed information about the kingdom of the Antichrist in the last days . . . “

(Editor’s Note: To be continued . . . )