but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect. 1^st Peter 3:15 (English Standard Version)

From Burgers to Where Did Cain Get His Wife?

Recently at my local burger joint I happened to hear a rather intense discussion between two gentlemen, one a Christian and the other an antagonistic unbeliever. The unbeliever was hammering the Christian man on the first seven books of Genesis with standard questions of opposition; “If Cain killed Abel, and Cain and Adam and Eve were the only people left alive on Earth, the Bible says Cain went down to the land of Nod and got himself a wife. If there were only three people alive on the Earth, how was he able to get a wife?” “And Noah's ark; he couldn't have gotten all those animals on it!” “And where is the Land of Nod anyway?” It seemed the poor Christian man was apparently only armed with John 3:16. He struggled to answer the man's questions but could not. It was sad to see as the answers to this disbelieving man's questions are available, relevant, and many.

First, the Bible does not say, or even suggest, after Abel's murder Adam, Eve, and Cain were the only people left on earth. Eve had already born children (Cain and Abel) and the likelihood she and Adam had other sons and daughters who were not spoken of here because they were not relevant to the account is very plausible. The Bible does not dispute it. In fact Genesis 5:4 says after Adam's son, Seth, was born Adam lived for 800 more years and had other sons and daughters. Adam died at the age of 930 years old (Genesis 5:5). How and why did he live that long? I'll touch on that shortly. Returning to the account of Cain and Abel: as I said there is no time frame given in their story that states there were only 4 persons living at the time Cain murdered his brother. Cain and Abel are mentioned solely in reference to the first murder in recorded history and how God dealt with it. The content does in no way reject the concept there were other offspring of Adam and Eve alive at this time. So who was the wife Cain found in the land of Nod and where did she come from? There can only be one answer; she was his sister.

OK, now before you blow an incest gasket where else could she have come from except our two original parents? When God created Adam and Eve they had perfect bodies, ageless and eternal and would have lived forever. That ended when they rebelled against God and sinned. Death entered the human experience. They and the entire Earth were put under a curse (Genesis 3:16-19) and became subject to the Second Law of Thermodynamics that says things run down and eventually wear out. But because Adam and Eve's bodies had been perfect when they were put out of the Garden of Eden it took many years for them to wear down to the point of death. The strength of the human gene pool at that time was potent and is the reason early people lived to such extensive ages and why God allowed intermarriage in order to populate the Earth. Adam and Eve's gene pool was such that they could have had many children that could have intermarried and issued healthy and strong children. As generations passed the ages of people declined and the human gene pool grew weaker. It had weakened so much by the time of the Hebrew Exodus that God gave Moses the commandments in the Mosaic Law prohibiting the practice of incest. (Leviticus Chapters 18 and 20).

And what about Noah's Ark? Is it only a myth about a funny little man on a small boat with animals on it like in nurseries? If you believe that in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth (Genesis 1:1) then yes, the Ark was a historical fact. It was an amazing vessel, built in cubits (ancient lengths). Basing the cubit used on the ark at 18 inches it would have been a massive vessel at 450 feet in length, 50 feet high (nearly five stories) from the ground, and 75 feet wide. It is thought to have been the largest vessel ever built in history up to the 19^th century. The internal volume was 1,518,750 cubic feet with a floor space of 101,000 square feet. That's more floor space than 21 standard college basketball courts. It had three decks with the same storage capacity of about 569 modern railroad stock cars. The standard size for a stock car is 44 feet long and a volume of 2670 cubic feet. This would make a train more than 5 ½ miles long! A standard livestock railroad car holds about 240 sheep, so the ark had the capacity to hold at least 120,000 sheep. Having 40,000 animals on the ark is considered to be a conservative estimate. Given the space of the interior area of the ark 40,000 animals could have only taken up 30% of one of the three decks. And God could have brought smaller juvenile animals to Noah as opposed to fully grown ones for greater space. This would have left 70% of the space in the ark for Noah's family, food, and baggage (search 'arnold c. mendez sr, the size of the ark'). You can also search www.amendez.com, and www.creation.com. On Creation.com click on 'Article' at the top of the page then 'Topics' for many of the answers you'll ever need). A replica ark built to the Genesis specifications used over 1.5 million board feet of lumber. A skeptic might ask how Noah and his three sons were able to complete such a monumental task? The ark was not built in a few months. It probably took over 120 years and there is nothing in the Bible that says Noah did not hire workmen to help! Men need to work to support themselves and their families in every generation and building the ark was a major undertaking. And then there is the questions inevitably asked; “Where did the dinosaurs come from? Were they on the ark?  And where did they go?” Genesis 1:20-25 says God created all animals, those that swarm, live in the sea, and livestock and creeping things and beasts of the earth. Dinosaurs were created by God and would have been on the ark. What happened to them? After the Great Flood it is thought the climate of the earth radically shifted from a warm equatorial climate to much colder conditions. It could be dinosaurs died out due to climate extremes. And the last question; “Where was the land of Nod?” The Bible doesn't seem to think it was necessary for us to know and does not say. No one knows but it would have been destroyed in the Great Flood along with everything else on Earth (Genesis 7:18-20).

It would be appropriate here to mention that Jesus believed in the most unbelievable incidents recorded in the Jewish Bible.  And, I might add, the most mocked and ridiculed. It pains me to say that includes many Christians who reject the historical accounts of the Genesis record to assent to the theories of theistic evolution, or the fully undocked theory of Darwinian evolution. As a well taught Jewish boy it is evident Jesus had learned His Torah (Luke 4:16-20) and throughout His ministry spoke with complete authority on every issue, even Noah and the Great Flood (Matthew 24:37, Luke 17:27), Jonah and his three days in the belly of a great fish (Matthew 12:40), it wasn't a whale, the Bible says God prepared a great fish (Jonah 1:17), and Adam and Eve (Mark 10:6, Matthew 19:4-5) explaining that creation was young and God created Adam and Eve from the beginning not billions of years after the earth was created.

In conclusion Paul tells us in 2^nd Timothy 2:15 to “Be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, accurately handling the word of truth.” I like the King James version that begins with “Study to show yourself approved unto God...” Learning the words of God and His interaction within His creation does take study giving you answers in defense of your faith. Study to show yourself approved unto God. It can keep you from being armed with only John 3:16, and scratching for answers when an inquiring mind asks you over burgers where Cain got his wife.

Ken

For more information on scientific and other Biblical questions about the Genesis record search www.answersingenesis.org. You can also search 'Ken Ham' for more information on the Genesis Creation.