Hey, welcome to the Methodist Voice. The purpose of our time together is to grow in the knowledge of God revealed in the pages of scripture. 2 Corinthians chapter 3 tells us that when we contemplate the God revealed in scripture, it transforms us into His image. That transformation beautifies our minds and hearts and we then beautify the world together. We think that's time well spent. Thanks for joining us. I hope you enjoy today's episode. Thanks for joining us on today's podcast.
Little late coming out with it this week. We've been having VBS at the church. If you've ever served in a VBS, you know why that's a good excuse. And I will probably miss you next week because I will be on vacation with my family. So we'll pick up our story after that week. But today we're going to be covering Genesis 1 14 and a big topic in that verse is the topic of the constellations.
And so the constellations have figured as an object of adoration and even worship for every human civilization throughout history. Every human civilization has identified the same constellations in the same order. They've developed similar myths surrounding those constellations and that's all completely independently of one another. To this day, no secular source has come up with a plausible explanation for that.
How do all of these disconnected civilizations and cultures identify the same constellations in the same order with same mythologies attached to them? That's a mystery. Same with megalithic structures like pyramids. They've been constructed all over the world in antiquity. No interaction amongst civilizations and they're building these same things and they're all based on the constellation Orion. Why is that?
We're going to tackle those problems today as we cover our text Genesis chapter 1 verses 14 through 15. I'm going to get into reading that right now. It says, and God said, let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night and let them be for signs. Now that word signs, the Hebrew, it means omens promised by prophets as pledges of certain predicted events. So signs means signs in that sense. Let them be for signs and for seasons.
Now again, that Hebrew word means appointed time, place or meeting. So it's like some appointed event that's going to happen at a certain time, at a certain place that is communicated in what God is creating here. And so let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years. So it's also like a clock. Verse 15, and let them be lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth and it was so. Now as we do here, we're going to use scripture to interpret scripture.
So I'm going to read from some other scriptures to shed light on some scriptures that might provide more depth of meaning to what God is communicating here. We're going to go back to Job chapter 38. Again Job is considered by many if not most to be perhaps the oldest book in the Bible so it is ancient. Can't really put a date on it, it's so ancient. But here's what it says in Job 38. It is going to make a reference to the constellations.
Now you'll find that reference many other places in scripture. I've chosen this from this one from Job because it is so ancient and because it is so explicit in referencing the constellations. Job 38 verse 31. Can you bind the chains of the Pleiades or loose the cords of Orion? Can you lead forth the Maseroth in their season? Now that word Maseroth is the Hebrew word for the signs of the zodiac, the 12 signs of the zodiac. Continuing in verse 32. Or can you guide the bear with its children?
Do you know the ordinances of the heavens? Can you establish their rule on the earth? That's an ancient reference to the specific constellations found in the signs of the zodiac in the Hebrew scriptures. And then we're going to read one last passage of scripture from Psalm 19. And you're going to notice an interesting juxtaposition. It's going to talk about speech from God found in the heavens.
And it's going to juxtaposition that idea with the speech found from God, divine revelation found in scripture. So it's an interesting juxtaposition. I'm going to read the entire Psalm. I'm going to start in obviously verse one. The heavens declare the glory of God and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours out speech and night to night reveals knowledge. There is no speech nor are there words whose voice is not heard.
Their voice goes out through all the earth and their words to the end of the world. In them he has set a tent for the sun which comes out like a bridegroom leaving his chamber and like a strong man runs its course with joy. Its rising is from one end of the heavens and its circuit to the end of them and there is nothing hidden from its heat. And then we're going to juxtaposition in verse seven. The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul.
The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple. The precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart. The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes. The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever. The rules of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. More to be desired are they than gold. Even much fine gold, sweeter also than honey and drippings of the honeycomb. Moreover by them is your servant warned, in keeping them there is great reward.
Who can discern his errors? Declare me innocent from hidden faults. Keep back your servant also from presumptuous sins. Let them not have dominion over me. Then I shall be blameless and innocent of great transgression. Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.
In this Psalm is the sense that there is a divine message that can connect me with God, that can disclose divine information, that will lead me into an eternal hope and future. So it's a profound message. It's an important message and that's why many ancients were led to see divinity in the heavens, in the stars and find or seek from them some message that would connect them with God. Even in later Judaism you found this.
And so a message found in the stars was shown to be found very important to the Jewish people. Around fifteen to seventeen hundred years ago there were seven synagogues found where it was featured prominently. The mosaic of the zodiac was a prominent feature of the synagogue. So even Jewish people found there to be some cosmic divine message or significant found in the constellations that comprise what the Jewish people called the Maseroth.
Now discussing these things makes some fundamentalist types, pseudo conservative, evangelical types nervous. Now I wouldn't necessarily deny some of those labels myself but I'm just pointing out that believers cut from this cloth have alarm bells going off anytime someone strays from the path of comfortable and familiar topics for them. They're afraid somehow people are going to be led astray into the occult or get into astrology or worshiping other gods. Come on.
Let me tell you a bigger problem we have today. A much bigger problem we face than someone getting into reading tarot cards or something like that. It's not the temptation to worship other gods or start making decisions for their life based on astrology. A bigger temptation is an exaggerated skepticism of anything supernatural, of anything of supernatural origins. It's the temptation to embrace unbelief masquerading as intelligence.
It's the brainwashing we've all received being educated at the hands of an educational system that is based on scientific materialism or what I refer to as scientism. The only thing that's real is that which I can taste, touch, hear, see or smell. We've developed a blind faith in scientism being able to function as a grand narrative and explanation for everything that exists or ever did exist which it cannot possibly function to do.
So the discussion of this topic is going to be relevant for us in helping us to understand many other stories in scripture like the story of Nimrod in chapter 10 that we're going to get into and then the Tower of Babel, megalithic structure building in Genesis chapter 11 or like the story of Joseph and his 11 other brothers later on in Genesis.
In that story Jacob blesses his 12 sons and many people see there are 12 sons, 12 months of the year, 12 signs of the zodiac and many people see an association between Jacob's blessing and individual constellations which will come into play when you see Joseph has a dream where he sees 11 stars bowing down to him and his brothers hear that dream and they immediately get offended because it's associated with them because their names are associated with stars.
So the blessing of Joseph and his 11 brothers received from their father Jacob is likely associated with the 12 signs of the zodiac. Furthermore the banners that the 12 tribes of Israel which are based upon the 12 patriarchs that Jacob blessed which they camped under likely contained images of the constellations on their banners. The colors of the banners were likely based upon the 12 stones inlaid on the breastplate of the priestly garments.
The tabernacle consisted of 12 loaves, Leviticus 24.5. Offerings were brought on 12 oxen, Numbers 7.3. Cultic vessels were numbered in 12s, Numbers 7.84. The bronze sea in the temple was supported by 12 oxen, 1 Kings 7.34. Solomon had 12 officials who were responsible for supplying the royal household from their respective districts on a rotating monthly basis, 1 Kings 4. The steps in front of Solomon's throne featured 12 lions, 1 Kings 10.20. Ezekiel envisioned an altar hearth 12 cubits square.
And so on. So the significance of the number 12 probably relates to the 12 months of the year which are based on or associated with the 12 signs of the zodiac. So it will even figure into our understanding of the Magi who come from the east to pay homage to worship the baby or the toddler Jesus. They probably came from Persia. They were Magi meaning they were astronomers. They read the stars professionally. It will help us to understand certain passages from Revelation like chapter 12.
But perhaps more importantly than all of that, it will help us to dismantle certain criticisms of Christianity from unbelievers that have cropped up throughout history who seek to claim that Christianity is nothing more than a hijacking of ancient mythologies that can be found in many cultures about a God born of a virgin who is going to come forth destined to save humanity that the disciples simply hijacked and applied to the historical person of Jesus of Nazareth. Now it's true.
Those mythologies have existed from ancient times that have an uncanny resemblance to the story about Jesus. That's absolutely true. But is it necessarily true that those stories were simply all made up by the ancients, again completely independently of one another and then hijacked by the first disciples of Jesus? I'd like to discuss the work of a woman named Lady Frances Roleston of Keswick. She was born in 1781 in Great Britain to an upper class family.
She's best known for her book published in or around 1862 called Maseroth or the Constellations. Here is what her biographer Jane S. Poole had to say about her. She's going to kind of say in a concise way the life and the character about the woman who came up with this work. So here's what Jane Poole says about Lady Roleston's life. A group of young scholars stood in the British Museum absorbed by a newly arrived object.
The Rosetta Stone promised to be the key to the heretofore unreadable Egyptian hieroglyphs. The steel had been discovered in 1799 during Napoleon's expedition to Egypt and surrendered to the British upon his defeat in 1801. One of that group of scholars was Frances Roleston. She would learn to read hieroglyphs 50 years later. But now as a student of astronomy, she was asking herself this question.
If God created the heavens for his own glory, as the scriptures say, why is the celestial planisphere covered with pagan images of heroes, gods, little g, and goddesses? The discussion at the Rosetta Stone that day began for Frances, who claimed a love for astronomy almost since infancy, a search for the original star names and constellation figures. Finding that the science of astronomy never existed apart from the constellations, she felt that her search might turn up their original purpose.
Already a linguist, a gift found elsewhere in her family, Frances traced those names and meanings back to their earliest use, developing a theory, supporting it with 10 years of research at the British Museum, and preparing for publication turned into a 50-year endeavor. One has to ask, what kind of person would put that much time and effort into one book? What kind indeed?
One motivated by her love of both astronomy and the Bible, who kept current on discoveries and theories in both science and religion, and who spoke out her convictions in newspapers and journals. Here's what Frances said, Newspapers educate the people and sway public opinion. Therefore, I am indefatigable just now in sending articles right and left, comforting myself for people not reading my book. With finding, they do read my paragraphs.
But there is much more to this woman than is guessed by those who know Frances Roleston only as the writer of Maseroth, the constellations. In late 18th and early 19th century England, polarization in religion, politics, and morals dramatically increased. Sound familiar? Theories within the new science of geology, and later astronomy, challenged the traditional understanding of Genesis. Since up to that time, many scientists were also clergymen.
Division marked the educated classes, those in the church particularly. Again, sound familiar? John Wesley's Methodism brought moral improvement to the lower classes, while the upper classes were morally degenerated. There was foment for more rights for the lower classes and demand for freedom for women. Sometimes one led to violence, and the upper classes who controlled the government pushed back.
Sometimes the demand for women's rights led to the flagrant practice of free love, which assaulted traditional values. Into the fray stepped a small group of upper class Anglicans who sought to improve society through social and political means. They wanted to abolish slavery, help people get out of debt, raise the moral consciousness of the upper classes, and educate the poor. They were sniffed at in Parliament as the Saints.
Many of them lived in or near Clapham, a community southwest of London. Its main leaders, John Thornton and William Wilberforce, were relatives of Frances Roleston on her mother's side, hailing from Yorkshire. Frances herself aligned with the group for anti-slavery and education of the poor, sharing both its adulation and ridicule. Entering her 40s, Frances pioneered infant schools, that just means elementary schools in England.
She began this work near London, ten years later relocated to continue that work among her father's people in Nottinghamshire, and her mother's people in Yorkshire. This work entailed building sites, finding people to underwrite the costs, preparing curricula and training teachers. It required diplomacy as well as time, for she worked with people from differing religious denominations and political persuasions.
She also promoted infant schools in Sierra Leone and among Native Americans and Blacks. At age 67, Frances ended her work with infant schools and relocated to Keswick, where she gave herself an earnest to organizing and printing her notes for Maseroth. She also spent long hours exploring the Lakes District, serving as an unofficial guide to tourists and painting effects. Her writing included numerous tracks, fables, ballads, sonnets, letters to newspapers and journals, and at least four books.
Meagled with these pursuits, she nursed the sick and collected for those suffering famine. Although Rolestons were upper class and Frances rubbed shoulders with men of science and letters, her life was not devoid of trouble. She experienced threat of financial ruin, sickness, and loneliness. She triumphed through prayer and perseverance. She continued writing and painting until confined to bed three days before passing peaceably from this life.
All that's to say, this was a woman of means, well connected, functioning from sincere and authentic faith, working to improve the lives of those beneath her. She is not a flake or a person of insincere motives. She mentions him in her book Maseroth, a man by the name of Charles Francois Dupuy. Keep in mind, this would be in an age when what is called the Enlightenment is coming to fruition. It is maturing.
The Enlightenment is that age where man is the measure of all things and human men and serious thinkers are beginning to eschew the supernatural realm and just focus on explaining reality through natural means and explanations. So according to his Wikipedia entry, Dupuy was a French savant, a professor of rhetoric at the College de l'Issue Paris who studied for the law in his spare time and was received as avocat in 1770.
He also ventured into the field of mathematics and served on the committees that developed the French Republican calendar. Dupuy was known for developing what is known as the Christ myth theory, which argued that Christianity was an amalgamation of various ancient mythologies and that Jesus was a mythical character.
Mythicists variously argue that the accounts of Jesus are completely or mostly of a mythical nature questioning the mainstream paradigm of a historical Jesus in the beginning of the first century who is subsequently deified. Most mythicists note that Christianity developed within Hellenistic Judaism, which was influenced by Hellenism, that is Greco-Roman thinking, philosophy and mythology, and that early Christianity and the accounts of Jesus are to be understood in this context.
Most radical mythicists hold that Jesus never existed at all. They hold that he was a made-up character developed out of a syncretistic fusion of Jewish, Hellenistic, and Eastern religious thought. This character was then put forward by a man named the Apostle Paul and historicized in the Gospels, which are also syncretistic.
Some other mythicists argue for an agnostic Jesus viewpoint, that is, there might have been a historical person named Jesus, there probably was, but we don't know anything about him because the only thing we have about him are clearly based on ancient myths that have been hijacked and applied to this person. Now, all of that thinking is based on the idea, based upon scientism, the only thing that is real is that which is made of the material world we deny the supernatural realm.
All of that thinking is based on the idea that those ancient myths were created by those early human civilizations. Where else could they have come from? Humans had to create them. So it's not hard to see why various thinkers came to the conclusions they did about the Jesus myth.
But again, what are the chances, think about it, that those myths all associated with the exact same twelve signs of the zodiac, with the same story lines, and they were created completely by completely disconnected civilizations just by coincidence? So on the contrary, what Lady Rolleston uncovered in her fifty years of research, to me, I think to a reasonable person, was a far superior explanation about the origin, the original origin of those mythologies from the ancients.
So I'm going to quote from her book, Maseroth, Maseroth, however you say it. She writes, and again, you can go get the book yourself, it's only a dollar ninety-nine on Amazon.com, and she makes an extensive case through extensive citations of very important thinkers throughout history, we're talking pagan thinkers as well as religious thinkers, who cannot trace the origin of these stories. They say they've just always existed. They all consistently say this.
And so here's what she is going to write about the origin of these myths. That the line of the family of Noah, the Noah from the Bible, the book of Genesis, of which Abraham came, would be Chaldean. So some of the oldest zodiacal signs and myths are Chaldean in nature. That's the ancient Near East. That the traditions of the Chaldean astronomy seem fragments of a mighty system fallen into ruin. That's according to Sir W. Drummond.
Astronomy is found highly cultivated in Egypt in the very earliest times of its history. In other words, there's no evidence of a process of development. It just shows up in ancient Egypt. Noet, a French astronomer, infers from that that Egyptian astronomy must have arisen in 5400 BC.
This date accords with the assertion of Josephus, the great Jewish historian from around the time of Jesus, that astronomy originated with the family of Seth and with the traditions of the ancient Persians and Arabs, also attributing its invention to Adam, Seth and Enoch. In the notes of Gill's commentary on Genesis, this is a very old and celebrated commentary on the Bible. You can find that again for free online.
In the notes of Gill's commentary on Genesis will be found the names of ancient writers, Jewish, Persian and Arabic, by whom these trends traditions have been transmitted. So Lady Rolleston in her book also cites from her research, a man by the name of Giovanni Cassini. He's a great Italian astronomer and intellectual born in 1625. He discovered four satellites of the planet Saturn. He also noted the division of the rings that surrounded Saturn. And so he's a famous astronomer and thinker.
The divisions of the rings of Saturn are named after him, the Cassini division. There was a probe launched in 1997 called the Cassini space probe and it was the first probe to orbit the planet Saturn. So he's a very celebrated astronomer and thinker. Here's what he writes in his history of astronomy. It is impossible to doubt that astronomy was invented from the beginning of the world. History, profane as well as sacred, testifies to this truth.
He refers to Philo of Alexandria that was a Jewish thinker from around the time of Jesus. For the assertion that Terah, who was the father of Abraham, he lived more than a hundred years with Noah and had studied much astronomy and taught it to Abraham, who is further said again by Josephus to have taught it to the Egyptians. Now you can read more about that in the book Maseroth.
There's much more evidence to cite where these stories are attributed in many places to the anti-deluvian ancients followers of the one true God. So to wind things up when we get to the story of Nimrod, Genesis chapter 10, we'll touch on the constellation Orion with its original story with more detail. So we'll get into more of this and see how you can see the story of God's plan of redemption told in the oldest names of the stars and the constellations themselves.
But it is likely that the constellation constellations originally even had prophetic significance based on the mother prophecy found in Genesis 3 15. The very first prophecy noted in scripture is found in Genesis chapter three, verse 15. Genesis chapter three documents the fall of human beings, the fall of created and uncreated beings of God. And so you see Satan, Adam and Eve all sentenced by God for their disobedience in Genesis chapter three.
In Genesis chapter three, verse 15, God is making a promise in the midst of this tragedy, God is making a promise. Here's what he says. He's saying this to Satan in particular or the serpent serpent figure in particular. I will put enmity between you and the woman between your offspring and her offspring. He shall bruise your head. Other translations say crush your head and you shall bruise his heel.
Now that is identified by almost everyone as God's promise, future promise of remedying the problem of the fall by sending forth his son to destroy the works of the devil. The constellations in all likelihood originally told the story of God's plan of redemption to fall in humanity. You can read about this in more detail in both Francis Rolleston's book or you can read it for free in a book called Witness of the Stars.
If you just Google that, Witness of the Stars, you'll find a book by a man named Bullinger that also does a very good job documenting and explaining this. It was a message to humanity as a consequence of the fall that as bad as things are getting, as bad as they're going to get, you are going to see some really dark things. The message found in the stars tells humanity there is hope. Someone one day soon will come on the scene who will crush evil and save fallen humanity.
It was God's promise written in the heavens for everyone, everywhere, all over the planet to witness. The message was embedded in the original followers of God. It was retained by Noah and subsequently Abraham. It was transmitted throughout the entire planet as a consequence of what happens at the Tower of Babel and the dispersion of people across the world and the development of the nations.
But the original information was transmitted through the first followers of God, transmitted to the nations as a consequence of the dispersion of the nations at the Tower of Babel and later corrupted by disobedient human beings. This knowledge has been largely lost by the Church because we have the written word of God found in the pages of scripture which according to the first chapter of 2nd Peter is more fully confirmed. We have a clearer revelation.
The revelation found in the stars is opaque. The revelation found in scripture is much more clear. It's far superior. So here's what it says in the first chapter of 2nd Peter verse 19. We have the prophetic word more fully confirmed to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts. Knowing this first of all that no prophecy of scripture comes from someone's own interpretation.
It wasn't made up by human beings. It was revealed by God. Verse 21, for no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. Now that is true of the ancient message given by God to the original human beings found in the story of the Maseroth. It's even more true of the word of God. We will discuss this again with more detail in future episodes. I think that's enough for now.
And again, I'll miss you next week, but we'll pick up the story from Genesis chapter 1 again the week after that. Hope you guys have a blessed day. Thanks for joining us. We'll catch you next time. Bye bye.