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by Frederick Hoehn, copyright 2013, all rights reserved. It's been a question I've heard since I was a boy, "Which came first, the chicken or the egg?" We get eggs from chickens, but we get chickens from eggs. Which came first? What about dogs? We get puppies from adult dogs, but adult dogs grow from puppies. Which came first? What about humans? The first man was Adam. Did Adam start out as a baby that grew into an adult, or did Adam start out an adult who later fathered children? But if Adam had started out as a little newborn baby, those little people don't know how to feed themselves. And it takes time for them to learn to crawl. And with no nourishment, the little baby would have died. If the chicken had started out as an egg, it would not have hatched. For eggs to hatch, the mother hen sits on them to keep them warm. Of course, now we have incubators, but at the beginning of the world, the hen had to sit over the egg. Little puppies can't do much for themselves until they've sucked milk from their mothers for a while, and grown stronger. The answer is quite simple if you look at the right reference book, and that would be the Bible. From Genesis chapter 2, verses 7 And the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul. 8 And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden, and he put the man whom he had formed there. 9 And out of the ground, the Lord God made every tree to grow that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food, the tree of life also in the middle of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Adam's food was the fruit of trees. But little babies can't reach up and pluck fruit from trees, and they don't yet have teeth for chewing. Little babies start off with milk, and where would the milk have come from? God did create cows, but a cow doesn't give milk until it has given birth to a calf. The baby Adam would have died waiting for the milk. Genesis chapter 2, verses 18 And the Lord God said, "It is not good for the man to be alone, I'll make him a helper appropriate for him." 19 And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field, and every bird of the air, and brought them to Adam to see what he would call them, and whatever Adam called every living creature, that was the name of it. 20 And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the birds of the air, and to every beast of the field, but for Adam there was not found a helper right for him. 21 And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall on Adam, and he slept, and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead of it, 22 And the rib, that the Lord God had taken from man, he made into a woman, and brought her to the man. 23 And Adam said, "This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh, she shall be called woman, because she was taken out of Man." 24 Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother, and shall stick with his wife, and they'll be one flesh. But Adam couldn't have named all the animals and birds and fish if he had just been a little baby. First you have to learn to talk. If Adam had just been a baby, he wouldn't have been ready for a wife for probably a decade and a half. No, God created Adam as an adult man who was able to understand when God told about the fruit, and which fruit must not be eaten. Look at Genesis 1:11,12 And God said, "Let the earth bring forth grass, the plant yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after its kind, whose seed is in itself, on the earth," and it was so. And the earth brought forth grass, and plant yielding seed after its kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after its kind, and God saw that it was good. The seed was in the thing that God created. God didn't first create seeds that grew into something. God created the plant that had the seed inside the plant. In the case of chickens, the egg is the fertilized seed, but first there were male and female chickens that produced fertilized eggs. The chicken came before the egg. God created an adult Adam, and then an adult Eve, and the couple produced little babies. But a lot of people have questions that seem difficult to answer that wouldn't be so difficult if they would read the Bible. We see right there in the Garden of Eden where sin originated. The first sin was the eating of the fruit that God said not to eat. So God put Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden. The first murder was Cain killing his brother Abel. And why did Cain do that? Because Abel's sacrifice was acceptable to God, but Cain's was not. So Cain hated Abel, and killed him. Genesis is the book of beginnings in the Bible. Genesis is where Abram pleased God by believing God's promise that Abram's descendants would be as numerous as the sand of the sea. And God changed Abram's name to Abraham. Abraham was a friend of God. Abraham’s grandson, Jacob, got his name changed by God to Israel. Then you have your Joseph in Egypt who interpreted Pharaoh's dreams and got promoted to second in command of Egypt. Much of world history is wrapped around the history of Israel because of God's covenant with Abraham. We are seeing conflict in the Middle East on a regular basis. The war in Kuwait. The war we fought in Iraq. The Afghanistan war. Civil war in Syria. Iran moving toward nuclear weapons. Israel trying to stay alive. The Middle East problems began very long ago in the Old Testament part of the Bible. To have a good understanding of the present conflicts it is best to go back and read the history of them in the Bible. If Iran does get nuclear weapons, we could soon have World War 3, with widespread destruction. If we don't know history, we are likely to repeat the many mistakes that have been made. A knowledge of history will help us avoid some very serious mistakes. After World War 1, the allies were quite tough on Germany. Then pretty soon, Germany came roaring back under Hitler causing great destruction. So, after World War 2, we instead helped rebuild Germany with the Marshall Plan. And we helped rebuild Japan. Through Moses, God gave laws about what to do for sin. They sacrificed animals for the sins of the people. God accepted the animal sacrifices. "Without the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sin." (Lev 17:11) But the sacrificing of animals is an Old Testament thing. In the New Testament, Christians don't sacrifice animals. But what about that principle in Lev 17:11, "Without the shedding of blood there's no remission of sin"? This principle still holds. But now, instead of the blood of animals, we have the blood of Jesus, the ultimate, once and for all sacrifice for the sins of the world. So that's why animal sacrifice is no longer needed. Unfortunately for the Jews, they mostly are not aware that Jesus is their prophesied Messiah (savior). So I guess they'll have to continue with animal sacrifices. Having rejected Jesus as Messiah, a counterfeit Messiah will come along, called the Antichrist, and the Beast. (Book of Daniel, and Book of Revelation) He'll make a pact with the Jews, but after a while they'll see that he's not their Messiah. The Antichrist will rule the world during a period of time called "The Great Tribulation," spoken of by Jesus in Matthew chapter 24. But though Jesus paid for the sins of the world, it doesn't count unless a person accepts the free offer of salvation from God. You pray a simple prayer asking Jesus to be your savior. You confess Jesus with your mouth and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead. (Romans 10:9,10) Jesus said in John 6:37 "Everyone that the Father (God) gives me shall come to me, and him that comes to me I will in no way throw out." Jesus won't say no when you ask him to be your savior. Though he's in heaven, he will hear your prayer to him. But Jesus said, "Why do you call me Lord, Lord, and not do the things I say?" (Luke 6:46) But how can we do what Jesus said until we know what those things are? So Christians must read the Bible and do what Jesus said. But in recent years, I don't so much read the Bible as listen to it being read on compact disks. You can do it either way. People who have vision problems can ask someone to read the Bible to them. After becoming a Christian, the Lord wants you to be baptized in water. I got that at an Assembly of God church. Jesus also wants his people to be baptized with the Holy Ghost, with the speaking in unknown tongues (languages). In Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, John the Baptist tells us that Jesus is the baptizer with the Holy Ghost. So, if you're a Christian, ask Jesus to baptize you with the Holy Ghost. The way that you'll know you've received it is you'll pray in a language you never learned. The Holy Ghost gives you words to speak in a strange language that you don't understand, and then you add your voice and speak those words out. Scriptures quoted are from the Holy Bible, Hoehn Version and the New Testament, Hoehn Version, copyright 2011, both available as ebooks for the Kindle readers from Amazon.com.
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