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Genesis: Cooper Found Them All (Part 1)

Is the Bible the true, inerrant Word of God? Can I trust it – miracles and all? One of the world’s oldest, historical, written records is known by historians and archaeologists as “The Table of Nations,” and it is found in Genesis, chapters 10 and 11. These chapters document the lineage of the three sons of Noah.
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Genesis: Cooper Found Them All (Part 1)

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There is a time and a place where all of our words will be called into account.  Matthew 12:36-37:

 

36  But I say unto you, That every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment.

 

37  For by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned.

 

Of the end it is written in Jude 1:14-16:

 

14  And Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these, saying, Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of his saints,

 

15  To execute judgment upon all, and to convince all that are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed, and of all their hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against him.

 

16  These are murmurers, complainers, walking after their own lusts; and their mouth speaketh great swelling words, having men's persons in admiration because of advantage.

 

A lot of words have been spoken publicly, and those spoken in secret will be shouted from the rooftops.  Does that cause you some personal angst?  I’m sure most of us would say yes.  But imagine that all those bad words, those hurtful and ungodly words could be expunged from your record as if you had never said them.  This marvelous expungement happens at a place Jesus calls “born again” (John 3:3), where you die to the world of sin, and are most literally born again, this time of the Spirit of God unto righteousness.  Even after salvation, you may find words you have spoken to be less than spectacular on occasion, but the solution remains the same: repent of them and allow the cleansing blood of Christ to wash you clean.  I John 1:7:

 

But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.

 

Have you been born again?  Do you need a stack of bad words and deeds to be expunged from your record?  Will today be your new beginning where all sin and shame is washed away and all Satan’s bondages broken?  Two doors stand before you.  One door is life and life more abundantly, even eternal life.  The other door is the door of carnal bondage, and finally, eternal damnation.  Choose the door of life and live.  Click onto “Further With Jesus” for childlike instructions and immediate entry into the Kingdom of God. NOW FOR TODAY'S SUBJECT.

 

GOD SAID, Genesis 10:1:

 

Now these are the generations of the sons of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth: and unto them were sons born after the flood.

 

GOD SAID, Genesis 10:25:

 

And unto Eber were born two sons: the name of one was Peleg; for in his days was the earth divided; and his brother's name was Joktan.

 

MAN SAID: Genesis, the first book of the Bible, and all its books that follow have no supernatural root, and its pages are full of contradiction.  It’s valueless at best, and at worst, dangerous.

 

Now THE RECORD:  Welcome to GodSaidManSaid feature article #878 that will, once again, certify the inerrancy of God’s Holy Bible.  All of these faith-building features are archived here in text and streaming audio for the empowerment of the saints, and as single-eyed ammunition in the battle for the souls of the sons of Adam.  Every Thursday eve, God willing, they grow by one.  We’re grateful for your company.  God’s grace and peace be multiplied unto you and your house.

 

The standard set by the Bible concerning its content is out of this world.  It purports to be authored by the inerrant God of creation, and supernaturally penned by God’s holy men.  Imagine that He has preserved it for us for all these thousands of years.  Natural academia has no such equal.  Every book ever written will, by necessity, bow before this book (Romans 14:10-11).

 

Satan’s academic champions have challenged the Bible incessantly.  They have vociferously challenged its supreme authorship and inerrancy.  They challenged the penmen.  They publicly ridicule its miraculous accounts and attempt to discredit its historic accuracy.  But as those with childlike faith should suspect, Satan’s champions have failed time after miserable time.

 

Is the Bible the true, inerrant Word of God?  Can I trust it – miracles and all?  One of the world’s oldest, historical, written records is known by historians and archaeologists as “The Table of Nations,” and it is found in Genesis, chapters 10 and 11.  These chapters document the lineage of the three sons of Noah.  Genesis 9:18-19:

 

18  And the sons of Noah, that went forth of the ark, were Shem, and Ham, and Japheth: and Ham is the father of Canaan.

 

19  These are the three sons of Noah: and of them was the whole earth overspread.

 

Keep in mind the number three as you read the following excerpts from the May 2008 feature from Acts & Facts called “Mitochondrial DNA and a Recent Human Origin:”

 

A team of scientists that includes Dr. Daniel Criswell of ICR has recently completed a study of mitochondrial DNA and will be presenting its work at this summer’s International Conference on Creationism.  A mitochondrion is a cellular power plant that generates most of the chemical energy the cell needs to support its functions.  Although most of a cell’s DNA is contained in the nucleus, the mitochondrion has its own small DNA molecule and this DNA is passed down from mother to child.  The study has revealed an unexpected lack of diversity within worldwide human mitochondrial lineages, despite high mutation rates, and this supports the idea that humanity is only a few thousand years old.

 

Mitochondrial DNA has been used to develop several models of human origins.  The Recent African Origins hypothesis (RAO) is currently the most popular model for human evolution.  Although the RAO model has a number of significant technical problems and makes some assumptions that conflict with a biblical perspective, it contains several interesting tenets: 1) there was a single dispersal of mankind with three main mitochondrial lineages interspersed within clans; 2) the dispersion was centered in the Middle East in the recent past; 3) the dispersion was essentially tribal in nature, with small groups pushing deeply into previously uninhabited territory;  [End of quote]

 

The number you remembered was three.

 

B. Cooper, in his book, After the Flood, had this to say about the Genesis, chapters 10 and 11, “Table of Nations:”

 

Having constructed the Table of Nations into a  simple genealogy, I wanted to see how many of its names were attested in the records of other nations in the Middle East, which included for my purposes all the nations of Mesopotamia, Arabia, Egypt, Turkey and even Greece.  It was an obvious procedure, but one that had not, as far as I was aware, been conducted before and the results published.  I had already found certain individual names that were mentioned in scattered works of varying merit, often Victorian, but the whole had never been gathered together into one cohesive study.  And so my research began.  Over the years, little by little, pieces of corroborative evidence came together and a picture began to build up that revealed the tenth and eleventh chapters of Genesis to be an astonishingly accurate record of events.  The Table of Nations had listed all the families and tribes of mankind in their correct groupings, whether those groupings were ethnological, linguistic or geographical.  All the names, without exception, were accurate, and in more than twenty-five years of searching and analysing, I uncovered not one mistake or false statement of fact in the Table of Nations.

 

It has to be said here that such a result could simply not be expected or obtained from any comparable historical document, especially one as ancient as this.  The Table of Nations embraces a sweeping panorama of history that is not only truly vast in its content but unique.  Its like simply does not exist.  [End of quote]

 

Cooper traces 112 names listed in the Table of Nations and tracks them through ancient history.  It’s shocking to see how they play out in today’s world, and as you’ll see, many in a very deadly way actually moving us to the battle of Armageddon and the end of the world as we know it.  Powerful excerpts from After the Flood and GodSaidManSaid follow.

 

How reliable is the book of Genesis?  The first son of Noah was Shem, of which the Bible lists 64 souls in his lineage, and history shouts yes!  After the Flood highlights each of them.  Several noteworthy names and their history follow:

 

Eber: Known to Josephus as Heber, he gave his name to the Hebrew race. 

 

Joktan: The progenitor of no less than thirteen southern Arabian tribes, he is remembered amongst modern Arabs as Yaqtan.  Only the purest Arabs, it is still maintained, are those Semitic Arabs descended from Joktan; whilst Hamitic Arabs are referred to somewhat disdainfully as Musta ‘rabs, pretended Arabs.  Joktan’s name is preserved in that of the ancient town of Jectan near present-day Mecca.  Josephus knew him as Joctan.  [End of quote]

 

Genesis 10:25 records the name of the man Peleg.  Cooper reports:

 

Peleg: Genesis tells us that in his day the earth was divided.  The meaning of his name, as rendered in Hebrew, corresponds exactly with the Akkadian noun pulukku, which means a dividing up of territory by means of boundaries and borders (the Akkadian verb for ‘to divide’ is palaku).  Likewise, the Assyrian word, palgu, refers to the dividing up of land by canals and irrigation systems.  It is in this sense that the Hebrew word peleg is used in Job 29:6 and 38:5.  The man named Peleg, (whose name appears as Phaleg in Josephus), was so named, however, after the division and scattering of the nations from Babel.  [End of quote]

 

Lot was Abraham’s nephew, and it was Lot, his wife, and daughters who were delivered from Sodom just prior to its destruction by fire and brimstone by an angry God.  Bible students remember that Lot’s wife looked back on Sodom contrary to God’s commandment.  She was turned into a pillar of salt.  Archaeologists unearthed what they know as Sodom and Gomorrah on the banks of the Dead Sea – appropriately named, as no fish swim in its waters, at it is laden with sulfur, salt, and minerals.  Cooper writes:

 

Lot: I have not yet noticed any secular reference to him, save that the Dead Sea has always been known to the Arabs as the Sea of Lot.

 

Nahor: The name Nahor is known from Babylonian inscriptions, and from the clay tablets of Mari, which render the name Nahur.  Nahor settled in Haran which was later to become known as the Town of Nahor.  This appears in inscriptions from the reign of Ashurbanipal, as Nahuru, the city’s later ruins being known to the Assyrians as til-Nahiri, the mound or hill of Nahor.  [End of quote]

 

To this day, Abraham’s 4,000-plus year-old remains are buried in the cave of Machpelah in Israel’s city of Hebron.  He is the father of Israel.  He is the father of all the children of faith.  He is the Abraham of Abraham’s bosom spoken of by Jesus Christ.  After the Flood records the following:

 

Abraham: The well-known founder of the Jewish people.  There exists from Babylonia an early clay tablet that bears the name of a man called Abi-ramu, which is rendered Abarama in the Eblaite tablets.  Another bears the name of Sarai.  Josephus quotes the Babylonian historian, Berosus, as saying, ‘In the tenth generation after the Flood, there was a man among the Chaldeans who was righteous and great…’  Josephus, rightly in my opinion, regarded this remark as a direct reference to Abraham, even though Berosus didn’t name him.  Josephus tells us also that Hecataeus and Nicholas of Damascus both mention Abraham in their own histories.  [End of quote]

 

Cooper reports:

 

Ishmael: Among the Babylonian documents that have come down to us from the days of Hammurabi, there is a list of witnesses to certain documents.  One of these witnesses is registered as ‘Abuha, son of Ishmael’.  [End of quote]

 

The following prophetic words were spoken by God over the first son of Abraham, who was called Ishmael.  Genesis 16:11-12:

 

11  And the angel of the LORD said unto her, Behold, thou art with child, and shalt bear a son, and shalt call his name Ishmael; because the LORD hath heard thy affliction.

 

12  And he will be a wild man; his hand will be against every man, and every man's hand against him; and he shall dwell in the presence of all his brethren.

 

How historically and supernaturally accurate is the much maligned book of Genesis?  Muslims call themselves Ishmaelites.  This Ishmael – this wild man – will lead the world to the very battle of Armageddon.

 

The Table of Nations records them and history confirms them – every single one.  We need to know that God’s Bible is “true and righteous altogether.”  Everything depends upon it – everything.

 

GOD SAID, Genesis 10:1:

 

Now these are the generations of the sons of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth: and unto them were sons born after the flood.

 

GOD SAID, Genesis 10:25:

 

And unto Eber were born two sons: the name of one was Peleg; for in his days was the earth divided; and his brother's name was Joktan.

 

MAN SAID: Genesis, the first book of the Bible, and all its books that follow have no supernatural root, and its pages are full of contradiction.  It’s valueless at best, and at worst, dangerous.

 

Now you have THE RECORD.

 

 

 

 

 

References:

 

Authorized King James Version

 

Cooper, B., After the Flood, pp38-39,174,177,179,180,183, West Sussex, New Wine Press, 1995

 

Vardiman, L., Ph.D., “Mitochondrial DNA and a Recent Human Origin,” p6, Acts & Facts, May 2008

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