Snakes + God-Inspired Truths (The Genesis Series, Part 21)

It’s the wonder of the world.  The inerrant and supernaturally authored, majority-text Holy Bible is the premier wonder of the world and it’s entire universe.  There is nothing like it under the sun, for the sun itself was created by God’s Words.  Psalm 33:6:

By the word of the LORD were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth.

Philippians 3:8 calls it the excellency of the knowledge of Jesus Christ:

Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ,

Once it dawns on a person that all things are created out of God’s Words, then it becomes clear that the all-encompassing and creating Word of God is, in fact, the ultimate, premier wonder of the world. 

This Holy Text contains:

⯈ The history of how it all began, and describes the fall of man;

⯈ The way of escape, which is clearly defined;

⯈ The very gloriously real portal to eternal life;  

⯈ Constant companionship;

⯈ Instructions on how to be baptized in the Holy Ghost, the supernatural, onboard teacher and tutor of the Holy Scriptures (John 14:26: But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you. );

⯈ Answers to every single one of my questions;

⯈ Solutions to every single one of my problems;

⯈ A glorious, fulfilling purpose, whose product will last forever;

⯈ A peace that surpasses all understanding;

⯈ A formula for living that delivers life and life more abundantly;

⯈ Supernatural promises that swallow all life’s woes, especially the dark and foreboding—even my deathbed in one Holy Ghost gulp (Romans 8:28: And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.); and

⯈ A guide to a life filled with marvelous expectations. 

Now, that was a very short list. 

Dear visitor, have you yet to be BORN AGAIN as Jesus declares in John 3:3?

Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

This Holy Bible, this wonder of the world, is only accessible to the chosen few.  Those chosen few are those who have turned from their sins, believing upon the Christ of Glory and diligently surrendering to the beautiful directives of God’s Word. Today, you can join the ranks of this chosen few.  In just a few moments, I will invite you to follow me in a simple prompt, and if you follow from your heart, everything changes for you today.  Today, all of your sin and shame will be washed away by Christ’s cleansing blood. You will be spotlessly clean.  Today, all of Satan’s bondages in your life will be broken—every single one. You will be entirely free. Today, the wonder of the world will be yours.  Here is the simple prompt I promised: Click onto Further with Jesus for childlike instructions and immediate entry into the Kingdom of God.  NOW FOR TODAY’S SUBJECT.

GOD SAID, Genesis 3:9-15:

9 And the LORD God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou?

10 And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself.

11 And he said, Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat?

12 And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat.

13 And the LORD God said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.

14 And the LORD God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life:

15 And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.

GOD SAID, Proverbs 30:6:

Add thou not unto his words, lest he reprove thee, and thou be found a liar.

GOD SAID, Psalm 19:7-11:

7  The law of the LORD is perfect, converting the soul: the testimony of the LORD is sure, making wise the simple.

8 The statutes of the LORD are right, rejoicing the heart: the commandment of the LORD is pure, enlightening the eyes.

9 The fear of the LORD is clean, enduring for ever: the judgments of the LORD are true and righteous altogether.

10 More to be desired are they than gold, yea, than much fine gold: sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb.

11 Moreover by them is thy servant warned: and in keeping of them there is great reward. 

MAN SAID: There is no God, therefore He authored no Book.  There is no “absolute truth,” no “judgment day,” and no “hell.”  No, no, no. 

Now THE RECORD: Welcome to GodSaidManSaid feature 1241 that will once again contend for the beautiful Book.  All of these faith-building features are archived here in text and streaming audio for your edification and to be used as bait by the fishers of men.  Every Thursday eve, God willing, they grow by one.

Thank you for visiting.  May God’s face shine upon you with Light and Truth. 

You have arrived at the GodSaidManSaid “Genesis Series;” this is Part 21.  Each of these features begins with the following information from the first feature:

According to a 2006 issue of Discover magazine concerning the deceased Carl Sagan: “Sagan approaches religion like any phenomenon.  He isn’t on a quest for life’s meaning, for a comforting philosophy, or even a guide to how we should treat the neighbors.  Sagan seeks truth of a demonstrable kind.  As a puckish example, he wonders why the book of Genesis didn’t include God-inspired truths…” [End of quote]

I recently reviewed an advertisement from a magazine called Free Inquiry that also has a problem with the God of Creation and the first book of the Bible, called Genesis.  Under the heading “Is God Big Enough for the Universe,” Free Inquiry writes:

The authors of Genesis proclaim that God made the heavens and earth in less than a week.  This feat must have amazed these Bronze Age authors, even though they thought the heavens extended only so far as the sky above them.  Of course, they did not know what stars, planets, or galaxies were.  We now know that the universe is so much bigger and so much more complex. [End of quote]

The BORN AGAIN scratch their heads in bewilderment.  Did these folks actually read the book of Genesis? I suppose they did, but God’s revelation is only revealed to the humbled hearts of the children of faith.  This GodSaidManSaid series will be called “The Genesis Series.”  It is our intention to travel through the entire book of Genesis and publish one major God-inspired truth after another.  We will be pulling from previous GodSaidManSaid features and adding the latest information as we go.

The marvelous information in God’s beautiful Book is continually confirmed by credible third-party sources.  What was once considered Sunday School foolishness has been found to be true and righteous altogether, miracles and all.  Archaeology, geology, history, ancient societal records, and today’s latest science confirm God’s Holy Bible. It’s entirely true.

As you absorb the following information, remember the skeptics clamor for God-inspired truths form the Book of Genesis.

Genesis 3:9-15:

9 And the LORD God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou?

10 And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself.

11 And he said, Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat?

12 And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat.

13 And the LORD God said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.

14 And the LORD God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life:

15 And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.

The following excerpts are from the GodSaidManSaid feature, “The Ubiquitous Serpent Eats Dirt:”

This feature addresses the curse that befell the serpent because of the part it played in the fall of man.  Satan chose to possess the serpent to deceive Grandmother Eve.  Not only has God cursed the serpent anatomically, but this Satanic brand has become ubiquitous, infiltrating every stratum of society.  Satan and the serpent are central players to all that befalls the sons of Adam.  We see Satan and his minions from nearly the beginning in Genesis Chapter Three to the final judgement in Revelation Chapter 20—and that’s the end of him. 

In Genesis 3:1-6, Satan takes on the form of the serpent and convinces Eve that God is a liar.  In an act of unbelief and disobedience, she eats the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.  She also gives it to her husband to eat.  That very day, they both died to the spirit of life in Christ Jesus, even though they lived on in the flesh for many years.  They died the second death first.  That was the day the law of sin and death began to reign upon the earth—a concept known in science as the second law of thermodynamics.  Because of the evil that transpired, God’s judgment fell on all of creation.  Of the serpent specifically, God cursed it and said that it shall crawl on its belly, eating the dust all the days of its life.  It shall bruise man’s heel, while man bruises its head.  It fully appears that the snake, a serpent that crawls on its belly, once had legs. 

In Archaeology and Bible History, author J.P. Free writes concerning the “Temptation Seals” unearthed in the 1930s.  The seal was discovered at a level antedating 3000 B.C., or approximately 1,500 years before the first five books of the Bible were written.  The seal depicts a tree with a man to the right.  To the left of the tree is a woman plucking fruit, with a serpent behind her standing erect. 

In the Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh, Gilgamesh is directed to the “plant of life,” which can be found at the bottom of the sea.  Gilgamesh finds it, only to have it stolen by a serpent. 

Famed historian Flavius Josephus, in The Antiquities of the Jews, reviews and reports on the ancient records of the Hebrew people and of historians considered ancient in his time.  Josephus lived and wrote just after the time of Christ.  Concerning the serpent in the Garden of Eden and God’s punishment of it, he wrote: “Besides this, he inserted poison under his tongue and made him an enemy to men; and suggested to them that they should direct their strokes against his head, that being the place wherein lay his mischievous designs towards men, and it being the easiest to take vengeance on him that way; and when he had deprived him of the use of his feet, he made him go rolling all along, and dragging himself upon the ground.”  [End of quote]

Science and academia now support the idea of a snake with legs.  Through biological examination, John Crompton, an evolutionist and snake authority who authored the book Snake Lore, discovered that at one time, the snake that crawls upon its belly once had legs.  As a matter of fact, at this present time, the snake has not completely gotten rid of its legs.  Tiny vestigials remain of what were once legs, and are found in the bodies of many snakes. 

Crompton’s record is supported by Klaus Griehl’s book, Snakes.  Griehl points out that “primitive” snakes, such as boas and pythons, still show vestigial pelvic bones and anal spurs that represent the remnants of hind legs. 

From the October 11, 1997 edition of The International Jerusalem Post is the following excerpt:

A midrash about Adam and Eve now has scientific support: Hebrew University researchers have found evidence that prehistoric snakes had tiny legs.

According to Jewish tradition, the snake that tempted Eve to disobey God was punished by being forced to crawl on its belly forever.

The researchers also concluded from a close re-examination of snake fossils that they originated in the sea, rather than underground. 

A team from the Silberman Institute of Life Sciences, headed by Professor Eitan Tchernov, found that the fossils had two small, but anatomically complete, hind legs.  Tchernov will present his findings this month at the international conference of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology in Chicago. 

Could Genesis be accurate?  The latest discovery concerning the snake and its legs is making the news once again.  The headline in the National Geographic, July 23, 2015, release reads, “Phenomena: Not Exactly Rocket Science.”  A few paragraphs follow:

Snakes can famously disarticulate their jaws, and open their mouths to extreme widths.  David Martill from the University of Portsmouth did his best impression of this trick while walking through the Bürgermeister Müller Museum in Solnhofen, Germany.  He was pointing out the museum’s fossils to a group of students. “And then my jaw dropped,” he recalls. 

He saw a little specimen with a long, sinuous body, packed with ribs and 15 centimeters from nose to tail.  It looked like a snake.  But it was stuck in an unusual rock, with the distinctive characteristics of the Brazilian Crato Formation, a fossil site that dates to the early Cretaceous period.  Snake fossils had been found in that period but never that location, and in South America, but never that early.  The combination of place and time was unusual.

“And then, if my jaw hadn’t already dropped enough, it dropped right to the floor,” says Martill.  The little creature had a pair of hind legs. “I thought: bloody hell!  And I looked closer and the little label said: Unknown fossil.  Understatement!” [End of quotes]

Fox Newsheadline, July 24, 2015, “Unexpected Step: Snake ancestor had four feet.”  A paragraph follows:

The oldest snake fossil on record looks almost like a modern snake, except for one glaring difference: It has four feet, each with five digits, a new study finds. 

Finally, from Inquisitr.com:

Fully developed snake feet have been found on the oldest snake fossil, a discovery which is said to have been “unexpected” and “stunning” to science.  But some creationists are already taking those snake legs and running with them, saying the discovery proves the Bible’s claim about snakes in the Garden of Eden. 

For decades, skeptics questioned the Biblical account.  But when it comes to the snake, the only evolution is the evolving view of the evolutionists.  Now no one can deny the Biblical account: Snakes had legs.  According to them, the legs “disappeared” as a result of “natural selection” while the Bible says these legs disappeared because God cursed this creature for being possessed by Satan when he deceived Eve.  [End of quote]

God’s Word is true and righteous altogether.  This is the place to build a life that will last forever. 

God’s curse upon the serpent was to eat and lick dirt.  The article from the September 1988 issue of Creation magazine headlined with “Snakes Do Eat Dust!” Carl Wieland writes:

In Genesis 3:14 we read, “And the Lord God said unto the serpent… ‘upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life:’” Since snakes do not really appear to eat dust, this has been taken as an example of either obvious metaphor (which seems reasonable) or an example of the Bible’s propensity to error, depending upon one’s bias. 

In Micah 7:17 we read, “They shall lick the dust like a serpent.”

Once again, we have the situation where, as more information has come to light, the Bible has been shown to not only be accurate, but accurate in minute detail.  Snakes do deliberately and purposely eat and lick dust. 

There is an organ in the roof of a snake’s mouth called the “Jacobson organ.”  This helps the snake to smell in addition to its nose.  Its darting, forked tongue samples bits of dust by picking them up on the points of the fork, which it then presents to its matching pair of sensory organs inside its mouth.  Once it has “smelt” them in this way, the tongue must be cleaned so the process can be repeated immediately. 

Therefore, serpents really do lick dust and eat it.  [End of quote]

And finally, consider these paragraphs from the GodSaidManSaid feature, “Snake Legs and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil:”

What happened to the snakes’ legs?  Evolutionists are flummoxed, but not God’s children of faith!  The headline on the cover of the January 2018 issue of Scientific American reads, “How Snakes Came to Slither.”  The following excerpts will certify, once again, that the snake once had legs:

● A Chinese riddle invites one to guess the identity of runners without a leg, swimmers without a flipper, gliders without a wing.  The answer, of course, is snakes.  Today more than 3,000 species share a long, limbless body that can negotiate land, water, and even the air between trees.  Their ancient ancestors, however, had limbs of various shapes.  How, scientists have wondered, did snakes lose their legs? 

● Meanwhile studies of developmental biology have elucidated the genetic mechanisms underlying the loss of limbs as well as the gain of vertebrae. 

● Snakes did not lose functional limbs in one fell swoop. 

● Yet, other snakes of this time-period retained legs. 

● Other Late Cretaceous snakes with legs lived in the ocean.  Fossils from marine deposits near what is now Jerusalem reveal sea snakes that swam alongside sharks.  Two such creatures, Pachyrhachis and Haasiophis, display almost complete hind limbs made up of bones from the thigh, shin, and foot.  The function of these legs remains unclear. 

●Dinilysia was not among the first lineages to split off from lizards.  Instead it is closely related to the ancestor of today’s snakes—more advanced than Najash, with its functional hind limbs, but more ancestral than modern species.  The revelation that Dinilysia was a burrower strengthens the hypothesis that the lineages leading to modern snakes lost their limbs while adapting to life underground. 

● The ZRS variants found in snakes are consistent with the morphological diversity of their limb development.  Primitive modern snakes, including the python and boa, retain a ZRS limb-enhancer sequence, albeit one that is shorter than that in other limbed vertebrates.  Correspondingly, both species possess rudimentary, spur-like hind limbs. 

● New clues to the origins of snakes continue to surface.  In 2015, researchers led by David M. Martill of the University of Portsmouth in England announced their discovery of a 120-million-year-old four-legged snake from Brazil. 

● The Biblical account of snakes holds that God cursed the serpent to crawl on its belly for leading Adam and Eve to eat the apple in the Garden of Eden.  In Chinese legend, the heavenly Jade Emperor punished the snake for hurting humans by ordering its legs to be cut off and given to the frog.  [End of quotes]

The curse of God that fell upon the serpent is recorded in Genesis 3:14-15:

14 And the LORD God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life:

15 And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.

From the very first verse, Genesis 1:1 (In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth) to the very last, Revelation 22:21 (The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen.), God’s Word is true and righteous altogether, a place to build a life that will last forever.

GOD SAID, Genesis 3:9-15:

9 And the LORD God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou?

10 And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself.

11 And he said, Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat?

12 And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat.

13 And the LORD God said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.

14 And the LORD God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life:

15 And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.

GOD SAID, Proverbs 30:6:

Add thou not unto his words, lest he reprove thee, and thou be found a liar.

GOD SAID, Psalm 19:7-11:

7 The law of the LORD is perfect, converting the soul: the testimony of the LORD is sure, making wise the simple.

8 The statutes of the LORD are right, rejoicing the heart: the commandment of the LORD is pure, enlightening the eyes.

9 The fear of the LORD is clean, enduring for ever: the judgments of the LORD are true and righteous altogether.

10 More to be desired are they than gold, yea, than much fine gold: sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb.

11 Moreover by them is thy servant warned: and in keeping of them there is great reward. 

MAN SAID: There is no God, therefore He authored no Book.  There is no “absolute truth,” no “judgment day,” and no “hell.”  No, no, no. 

 

Now you have THE RECORD.

 

 

References:

Authorized King James Version

Blumner, R., Free Inquiry

GodSaidManSaid, “Snake Legs and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil”

GodSaidManSaid, “The Ubiquitous Serpent Eats Dirt”

 

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