Skip to main content

Am I my brother’s keeper?


All of the Jewish Scriptures and the teachings of Yeshua (the real Jesus) focus on answering one question – “Am I my brother’s keeper?”

I have spent a lot of time for over the past thirty years trying to understand those answers. For many of those years, Dr. Ike Tennison and Rabbi Jeffrey Leynor have been involved in that research with me. In this blog, I am going to give you a 21st century reconstruction of the story that is responsible for that famous question.

After Adam failed to guard and protect Eve’s life from a walking, talking religious snake in the Garden of Eden, God evicted them from their luxurious home -- which also cut them off from a life in which God provided everything for them. How many times sitting around the campfire times do you think Adam was reminded of how “he” really messed up a good thing!

Now Adam and Eve had to find water, grow crops, make clothing, find shelter and do all of the things required just to survive. But, somehow, in spite of all of their new responsibilities, they discovered sex. Obviously, it is an indisputable fact that people do not have to understand the biology of sex in order to do it – anymore than other animals require “sex ed.” courses.

Anyway, Eve and Adam experienced the first recorded pregnancy in the Bible together -- apparently without a clue as to what was happening to her body. And then it happened – Eve gave birth to twins! How did she interpret what had just happened to her; she looked at Adam and said, “I created them!”

God didn’t drop in and explain the “birds and bees” to them. Their new reality was Adam got them kicked out of the Garden and Eve creates people.

But, God did drop in to receive His portion of the crops and flocks Eve’s creatures produced. Cain brought God part of his harvest and Abel brought the best animals of his flock. Interestingly, Adam and Eve did not bring God anything. Now the story takes a strange and unexpected turn:

God ignores not only Cain’s gifts, but He ignores Cain!!!

We have no idea about what Adam and Eve had told Cain and Abel about God, but as he stood there completely being ignored – whatever was going on in his mind made him really angry at his twin brother, Abel!

It doesn’t appear that Abel has a clue about it. But it is very clear God saw that Cain was angry when He asked him “why his face had fallen.” God didn’t wait for him to answer. Pay close attention to what God said next:

Surely, if you protect and preserve the lives of your father, mother and brother your face will be lifted up! But if you do not protect and preserve the lives of your father, mother and brother, sin will be like a predatory animal crouching at your door. Its desire shall be for you, but you will be able to master it if you protect and preserve the lives of your father, mother and brother.

 Well we all know the rest of the story!

1. Cain ignored God.

2. Cain murdered Abel.

3. God did not intervene to prevent it; and neither did Adam or Eve.

4. God evicted Cain from his homeland.

5. Lamech, one of Cain’s descendants, out did Cain by committing the first “recreational murder” in the Bible.

The moral of the story: What would happen if people really saw themselves as each other’s keepers!





Let us know if you like this blog and want to see more like it
by “Liking”  the Biblical Heritage Center Facebook Page -- click here.
______________________________________________

Help fund our work by “Donating” -- click here
______________________________________________

Use your Amazon Purchases to Help Too!
Click on the link below when you login to Amazon --
http://smile.amazon.com/ch/75-2842635
Amazon will donate a percentage of what you pay to BHC.
______________________________________________

Please share this blog with others and discuss it!
What would happen if people really saw themselves
as each other’s keepers!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why did they lay their coats at Saul's feet?

The witnesses, laying their coats at the feet of Saul, were the men that would cast the first stones at Stephen in Acts 7. Why did they all lay their coats at Saul’s feet? The Talmud contains a very interesting account of the act of stoning that may provide the answer. “When the trial was over, they take him [the condemned person] out to be stoned. The place of stoning was at a distance from the court, as it is said, ‘Take out the one who has cursed.’ [i] A man stands at the entrance of the court; in his hand is a signaling flag [Hebrew   sudarin = sudar , ‘scarf, sweater’]. A horseman was stationed far away but within sight of him. If one [of the judges] says, ‘I have something [more] to say in his favor,’ he [the signaler] waves the   sudarin , and the horseman runs and stops them [from stoning him]. Even if [the condemned person] himself says, ‘I have something to say in my favor,’ they bring him back, even four of five times, only provided that there is some substance to...
Post a Comment
Read more

Are Saul and Paul the Same Person?

There has always been some confusion over whether Saul and Paul is the same person. The confusion begins in the Book of Acts. ● “Then Barnabas departed for Tarsus to seek Saul . . . he brought him to Antioch . . . for a whole year they taught a great many people. And the disciples were first called ‘ Christians ’ in Antioch .” ( Acts 11:25-26 ) ● “ Then Agrippa said to Paul , `You almost persuade me to become a Christian .’” ( Acts 26:28) ● “ Then Saul , who also  is called   Paul . . . ” ( Acts 13:9a ) Based on the three verses above, we would assume they are references to the same person – but is he the Paul we read about in the Epistles? The name “ Saul ” doesn’t appear in the Epistles. In order to answer that question we must examine the stories of the “ conversion experiences ” of Saul in Acts and Paul in Galatians . Pay close attention to the time periods and places mentioned in both accounts. Saul’s experience is found in Acts 9 and...
Post a Comment
Read more

Rabbi Stephen S. Wise’s Sermon at Synagogue on Jewish Jesus Causes a Storm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Samuel_Wise#/media/File:Stephen_Samuel_Wise.jpg Rabbi Stephen S. Wise gave this sermon in late December 1925 and it set off a storm of protests in Jewish communities.  Before you read the article, it is important for you to be aware of some of the accomplishments of Rabbi Wise. ● a founder of the New York Federation of Zionist Societies in 1897 ● first vice-president of the   Oregon State Conference of Charities and Correction in 1902 ● appointed Commissioner of Child Labor for the State of Oregon in 1903 ● co-founded the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) ● founding of American Jewish Congress (AJCongress) in 1918 ● founded the   Jewish Institute of Religion, an educational center in New York City  in 1922 ● founding president of the World Jewish Congress in 1936 (created to fight Nazism) ● co-chair of the American Zionist Emergency Council in WWII ● hel...
Post a Comment
Read more