Genesis 6:13-21 - "I am going to put an end to all people ..."

"I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them. I am surely going to destroy both them and the earth. So make yourself an ark of cypress wood; make rooms in it and coat it with pitch inside and out. This is how you are to build it: The ark is to be 450 feet long, 75 feet wide and 45 feet high. Make a roof for it and finish the ark to within 18 inches of the top. Put a door in the side of the ark and make lower, middle and upper decks. I am going to bring floodwaters on the earth to destroy all life under the heavens, every creature that has the breath of life in it. Everything on earth will perish. But I will establish my covenant with you, and you will enter the ark--you and your sons and your wife and your sons' wives with you. You are to bring into the ark two of all living creatures, male and female, to keep them alive with you. Two of every kind of bird, of every kind of animal and of every kind of creature that moves along the ground will come to you to be kept alive. You are to take every kind of food that is to be eaten and store it away as food for you and for them." (Genesis 6:13-21)

Who is Noah?

Here the Supreme Being is communicating with Noah, who was a devoted loving servant of God. Genesis confirms this:

But Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD. This is the account of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked with God. (Genesis 6:8-9)

To find "favor in the eyes of the Lord" means to be pleasing to God. He "walked with God." This means that Noah was loving God and using his life to please God. He was focused upon the Supreme Being as his Best Friend and Companion. God was Noah's true 'soul mate.'

Why do we all look for a soul mate?

Each of us is endlessly looking for that special 'soul mate'. During our younger years, we look high and low, looking for that special person who we can love and care for. We are looking for a companion. Someone to share our life with. We are looking for someone to share intimacy with. Someone who will understand us and love us for who we are not how we look or what kind of job we have or how wealthy or poor we might be.

Many of us get to a point where we think we have found that special 'soul mate' and we 'fall in love' with them and maybe even get married. And certainly, that person may well be a great life partner and husband or wife. But eventually, we realize that they are not the perfect person we imagined them to be. Most of us will soon see that they have many faults, and as time goes on, we realize that they simply do not satisfy our need for our 'soul mate' - that perfect person who always understands us, and is our friend regardless, and who will always be there for us.

And even if we are convinced that our spouse or girlfriend or boyfriend is our 'soul mate' we will find out eventually - one way or another - that they will leave us. Maybe we will get in a fight and break up. And if by chance we never break up - we will ultimately leave each other at the time of death.

In other words, our only real soul mate is the Supreme Being. He will always be there for us. He will never leave us. He will always understand us. He will always take care of us.

All we have to do is reach out to Him and re-connect with Him. This is what Noah did. Noah "walked with God" because God was his soul mate. God was the most important person in Noah's life. Noah loved God.

Does God reciprocate that love?

This is the meaning for God's statement: "But I will establish my covenant with you." The Hebrew word translated to "covenant" is ברית (bĕriyth). This means an "alliance of friendship" according to the lexicon. In other words, a loving relationship. God is confirming His loving relationship with Noah.

All the bona fide spiritual teachers have taught this core teaching - to love God as the center of our lives. Both Moses and Jesus taught this as their central instruction:

"'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind'" (Luke 10:27 and Deut. 6:4)

They wanted us to make God our soul mate. They wanted us to 'fall in love' with the Supreme Being. They weren't teaching us to make our dogs our best friends. They weren't teaching us to make our family members our refuge. They were teaching us to make God our best friend and refuge.

Why did God want to wipe out humans?

As for the Supreme Being wiping out human society - and most of the animal society - the reason for His doing so was related to the degradation of that society at the time.

To summarize, God does not get any pleasure by wiping out people. God is not an angry God as portrayed by the ecclesiastical transcribers and translators over the centuries who sought to use scripture to control the population and increase their followers by scaring people. The Supreme Being is a loving God who has created the physical universe as a place where those of us who want to be away from Him can go and pretend to be someone we are not for awhile while we ignore His existence and chase our self-centered desires around for a while.

In other words, these physical bodies are not us. We are spiritual persons who are temporarily occupying physical bodies. The body is like a car we get in and drive for a while. When the car breaks down, we buy another car and drive it.

In the same way, the physical body is a temporary vehicle which will die within a few decades. So wiping out a society of physical bodies is not the same as killing the person. The person driving the body - the spiritual person - continues to live. That spiritual person, if they are not ready to return to the spiritual realm, will continue existing in the physical world by being born into another physical body.

The Supreme Being was wiping out human society at that moment in time because human society had become increasingly violent and decadent. Because the human life is a bridge back to the spiritual realm - unlike the bodies of animals, plants, fish and so on - it is critical that our society is conducive for making spiritual progress.

Therefore, periodically, as human society degrades to the point where there is little opportunity for people to make progress spiritually, the Supreme Being's mechanisms may partially or fully wipe out - or cleanse - the earth of prominent human societies in order to give those persons who currently or will inhabit the human form in the future a better foundation to progress spiritually.

The human form is a bridge back to the spiritual realm. The human form offers those who occupy a human body the intelligence to search for the answers to the problems of existence and determine in that search, the existence of God. When a person makes a realization that God exists, their path back to the spiritual realm can begin.

The fact that the Supreme Being wanted to cleanse the earth to provide for a better human society - to be initially led by Noah, His loving servant - clarifies that the Supreme Being is not an angry God who seeks vengeance. He is a loving God, who wants us to return home to Him. He obviously did not "put an end to all people" as Noah and his companions survived. So this is a mistranslation and misconstruence of God's statement to Noah.

Doesn't God offer second chances?

The reality that many people lost their physical bodies during the Great Flood is of little consequence because those persons who were eligible to take on a human form would again be born into human form. In that state, in this new society, they could resume their progress towards the spiritual realm without a decadent society's barriers to spiritual progress. This equates to giving them a second chance to grow spiritually.

We must wonder whether this is our current society is approaching this condition. The current condition of our climate and environment given the destruction of our atmosphere and oceans is bringing our world to the brink of natural disaster.

This is ultimately our choice as individuals, but there are also cyclical renewal periods as well. Just as the solar systems and galaxies are all running with periodicity, there will also be renewal cycles that will end lives followed by a period of renewal.

The Supreme Being operates a gigantic mechanism - the physical dimension - using a multitude of tools and beings who assist Him. All of these have periodicity because the physical universe operates with time. There are so many interwoven cycles, including those of human society.

Ultimately, however, each of us chooses our own personal destiny by the life we choose to live. The focus of our personal life will direct us towards our next destination. Our consciousness determines where we go. We don't have to go in the direction most others in our society are going. Today, for example, most of human society is in a mad race for the attractions of the physical world: Wealth, fame, sexual pleasure, over-eating, and so on. These attractions only lead us towards continued existence within the physical world - the world of pain, disease, old age, and death.

But if one uses the human form of life to develop our natural love for the Supreme Being, our consciousness will direct us back home to the spiritual realm, where we can live eternally. The spiritual realm has no death, disease or old age. The spiritual realm is not governed by time. The spiritual realm is governed by love, and by the Supreme Being, a kind, fun and loving person that everyone in the spiritual realm is attached to.

It is our choice: Each of us decides our own personal fate by where we put our day-to-day, moment-to-moment focus upon: Ourselves - and the attractions of this temporary physical world - or the Supreme Being and His loving nature. We can each decide for ourselves whether we want to continue walking alone, or decide to walk with God.

Genesis 15:7 - "I am the LORD, who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans ..."

"I am the LORD, who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to take possession of it." (Genesis 15:7)

Is this translated correctly?

As we have shown with previous verses, this text is a mistranslation and misrepresentation of the communication between God and His loving servant Abraham.

The Supreme Being does not give land away. If He was giving land to Abraham, why couldn't Abraham and his descendants control the land? Why over the many centuries since - including now - are so many people struggling for possession of the lands of Judea if God gave those lands to Abraham's descendants? Does God give land away and then snatch it back? Or was God simply being deceptive? No.

These are manipulations of the original manuscripts. These manipulations also suppose these lands were taken away from Abraham's descendants when they were enslaved by the Egyptians but then given back to them centuries later when Moses was guided to the "promised land."

But what kind of "promised land" is a bunch of desert, where crops are difficult to grow, herding is challenging and water is scarce? If God was giving them "promised lands," why wouldn't He have given them some good lands? How about the lands that are now Thailand, which is lush with forests that produce many fruits and vegetables with plenty of water to drink and swim in? Why would God give Abraham's descendants such harsh and barren lands?

Furthermore, if God gave Abraham these supposed promised lands, why would Abraham's descendants still have to fight over the lands again and again? If God gave it to them why would they still have to fight for it?

That makes absolutely no sense. If we accept that God has control, then there is no question that if God gave something to someone, they would have absolute control over what was given to them. If there is no control over what was given, that would mean that God did not give it - since God has complete control.

Otherwise, it would be a joke to say that God gave him these lands - if they could not control them.

Can the human body own land?

And how could Abraham or his descendants even enjoy such a promised land, when they (and we) occupy physical bodies bound to death, disease, and suffering? These bodies are born to suffer. Whatever land our bodies dwell within, the human body cannot own anything material - because the body is temporary, and ownership is a permanent faculty.

Even in nice locations, these bodies suffer from birth through the elderly years, and then they die. The body suffers from so many maladies. These include old age, pain, and many medical conditions.

What is the 'promised land?'?

What kind of promised land can bring us true happiness when we have to toil away at any land to eek out the body's survival, only to have the body die within a few decades? What kind of inheritance is that? Or did God just make a bunch of mistakes and create a dysfunctional planet? Did God mess up and give away some of the worst lands in the world to His servant Abraham?

God was not giving away land, and He certainly didn't give away the deserts of Judea to Abraham's descendants. As will be shown in later verses, the true "promised land" that God promised to Moses is the spiritual realm. The spiritual realm is the only real promised land. This temporary planet and these temporary bodies are doomed to suffer and die. There is no 'promised land' in the material world.

What did God say?

What, then, was God saying to Abraham in the verse above? The transcribers and translators of these verses - drawn originally from a manuscript about Abraham - simply did not understand what God was saying to Abraham because the discussions between God an Abraham were on a spiritual level.

Because the transcribers and translators (and their employers, power-hungry emperors) were more interested in owning land and grabbing resources from their neighbors, they were looking through self-centered lenses of the physical world. They could not see the wonderful spiritual relationship that existed between God and Abraham.

First, God is reminding Abraham that He has been guiding Him.

The key word in this verse is יצא (yatsa'), which means "to go forth" but also "to lead out" and "to deliver."

The Supreme Being guided Abraham out not only of a particular land, but out of a situation that He saw was not favorable for Abraham. He protected Abraham from the society of the Chaldeans, which were a warring people who came to control much of Babylonia at times. It is obvious from this and other verses that the Chaldean society was not conducive to Abraham's spiritual life and his spreading of the teachings of love for God.

The Supreme Being wanted Abraham to set out and preach to others who were ready and more receptive to return to their relationship with the Supreme Being. This type of travel is often described as a mission - and those who travel, being led by the Supreme Being to teach on His behalf, are referred to as missionaries (not to be confused with ecclesiastical missions). Abraham was thus a missionary.

This mission of Abraham continues to be described in the verses ahead, as they have in the verses past.

This is first illustrated in the next part of the verse with the word נתן (nathan). This word has been translated to "give" yet it also means, according to the lexicon, to "be assigned," "be issued," "designated" or "entrusted." In other words, it is not simply a giveaway: Abraham is being entrusted with something.

The next Hebrew word is ארץ ('erets). This may be translated to "land" but not necessarily specific land as though it was a commodity. It can be translated to "lands" or "region" and also to "earth."

What God is communicating to Abraham is a responsibility to travel through the land and preach on His behalf - a service for Abraham that will please Him. A responsibility to travel the land and spread the message of love for God.

Consider the next word: ירש (yarash). While this word has been translated to "possess," it also means to "disinherit," "impoverish" "be dispossessed" "come into poverty" and "to destroy."

For example, in Genesis 45:11, another statement by God uses the word ירש (yarash), which here is being translated to "will become destitute."

So does the word mean to possess something or become impoverished - quite the opposite?

The problem, again, is that the focus of the translators was physical possession. God does not descend to the earth to grant or take away physical possessions from people. Why? Because temporary human bodies cannot possess anything. Everything we think we possess we lose, either when our bodies die or they otherwise get taken from us. Since everything gets taken away, we can never possess them in the first place, because possession requires control.

In both verses, the Supreme Being is talking about spiritual realization. The benediction of spiritual realization - which renders becoming rich spiritually, whilst maintaining a humble consciousness. So it can mean becoming rich and poor (humble) at the same time.

Why does God appear?

The Supreme Being appears in the physical world for one purpose only: To grant spiritual realization. He doesn't give away land or take possessions from people.

The physical world is designed in such a way that it automatically lends and takes things away from us, depending upon our past activities. These are called consequences - they are symbolic to enable learning.

Thus we can now properly translate the full verse above:

"I am the LORD, who guided you out of Ur of the Chaldeans and am entrusting you with My mission of giving [spiritual] realization throughout the land."

Consider another translation of this verse in Chapter 15 of the New Book of Genesis.