The History of Restoration Abraham's Family

Every single time it failed anyway, so God's Providence then moved on to Abraham's family. If you look at Abraham's family, we can see it represents Noah's family. Noah had three sons, Shem and Ham, who were supposed to be in the position of Cain and Abel, but Ham didn't establish the position of Abel and didn't inherit the foundation of faith, so Ham failed. From Shem, then 400 years later, another ten generations later, came Abraham. Abraham had two sons, Ishmael and Isaac, so you can see here that Abraham's family was trying to restore Noah's family.

Let's have a look at the world in which Noah grew up and where Abraham grew up. Why do you think life expectancy decreased? It says in the Bible that God reduces people's life expectancy. It also says in the Bible that God told Noah and his family they could eat meat. I don't know if before then they were vegetarians and therefore living a lot longer, and maybe eating meat shortened their life expectancy. People generally speaking don't take these figures for life expectancy literally. In Biblical years, Adam was around 6,000 years ago, but we know that human beings have been around for millions of years, so it's obviously not supposed to be taken literally in that sense.

Once you read these things in the Bible, you have to think, should I take this literally or should I just think, well, maybe it's just there to try to answer that kind of question? So where did Abraham come from? That's right, thank you, Sav. You're answering all the questions before I ask them; you've obviously been here before. Abraham was in modern-day Iraq, where the invasion of Iraq by the Americans and other countries happened. He was ruled by somebody called Nimrod, who was basically a prototype of all the dictators that have ever lived since then. He had this huge personality cult, and his name actually means 'let us revolt.' He was revolting against God and liked to think that he was the king, that he was the god, and he hated the idea that there may be an invisible God that lived in the sky and would judge him one day.

As I said, he was a local dictator, but he didn't have a lot of power because everybody lived in their own little houses and farms and had their own little businesses. Even though he was a dictator, he couldn't actually dictate very much because he didn't have much power over people. So he came up with a cunning plan; he thought, 'Right, I want to attack God and kill God.' In order to do that, he decided to set up a building project to build this huge tower, what's called the Tower of Babel. But in order to do that, he needed people to do it, so he decided to tax all the people in his domain. From his taxation, he started this great big public works building project and employed lots of people to work on building it. Gradually, he inspired them, and after a while, he got everybody working on this, and people weren't allowed to do anything else.

According to the Bible, God saw this going on and decided this was not a good thing for everybody to speak the same language. He disrupted what was going on and gave lots of people different languages. From that time, people had lots and lots of different languages. This one idea that God likes things to be different is important. Nimrod had this personality cult and liked having statues of himself and pictures of himself all over the place. People were supposed to bow down to these statues. Abraham's father was called Terah, and he was an idol maker. An idol is like a little god; it's something you make yourself and bow down and worship. Terah was an idol maker; he used to make these little statues of Nimrod and sell them. People used to have these statues in their living rooms and elsewhere and bow down in front of them.

So that's the world in which Abraham grew up, a dictatorship, a totalitarian kind of world. Why could God choose Abraham? Well, God originally chose Ham, who was the second son, but then because Ham made a mistake, Satan was able to claim Ham. Abraham was the third son of Terah, an idol maker. Being a son of an idol maker means idol worship is one of the worst sins because you're not worshiping God; you're worshiping created things. God was able to claim Abraham. On what basis is God able to claim Abraham? Abraham, in that sense, is of whose lineage? Satan's lineage, the son of an idol maker, very materialistic, not believing there's an invisible God or an invisible reality. He changed his lineage from being on Satan's side to being on God's side.

How did that happen? How is that possible? Could God just decide, 'Right, I'm going to pick Abraham'? Who did Abraham find, God or did God find Abraham? He found God, yes. He had to change his lineage from conceptualizing and thinking of himself as the son of an idol maker and thinking of himself as the subject of Nimrod. By subject, I mean he had to transfer his loyalty and allegiance and sense of identity from 'Nimrod is my God, Nimrod is my leader, Nimrod is the one that I worship' to 'Actually, my identity comes from God. It's God that I believe in, God that I worship, and God that is the source of my identity.' He had to go through this change of lineage, change of identity, change of self-understanding.

Father said this about the change of lineage: where's the change of blood lineage done? On the individual level, man has to go beyond the boundary of life and death. The individual has to go through a life and death situation for the sake of God and the future dignity of man. In order to change your lineage, in order to change your identity, you have to go through a life and death situation; it's something you have to go through at the risk of your life. Abraham went through these kinds of situations at the risk of his life. He changed his identity from being the son of an idol maker, the loyal servant of Nimrod, to being the son of God to whom he offered his allegiance and loyalty. God didn't find Abraham, but Abraham discovered God.

How did Abraham discover God? Abraham had parents, a mom and a dad, and he was a very inquisitive little boy. What do inquisitive little children always ask? 'Why?' Abraham was always asking why. He was thinking to himself, 'Did I make myself? Where did I come from?' So he asked his mom and dad, 'Where do I come from?' They told him the story of the birds and the bees, and he wasn't very satisfied with that. He wasn't satisfied with the idea that a stork brought him along either. Eventually, they explained to him, 'Actually, Mommy gave birth to you. Yes, we created you.' Abraham said, 'Wow, that's amazing! You made me, you created me! I'm going to worship you.' He started worshiping his parents.

After a while, he started thinking a bit more and realized, 'Where did Mum and Dad come from?' He asked his mom and dad, 'Where did you come from? Did you make yourself?' They said, 'No, we didn't. Don't be silly, we didn't make ourselves. Grandpa and Grandma gave birth to us.' At that point, Abraham stopped worshiping and bowing in front of his parents and went next door to start bowing and worshiping his grandparents. After a while, he thought, 'They're looking a bit old. Where do they come from?' He asked Grandma and Grandpa, 'Where did you come from?' They said, 'Well, our parents gave birth to us, your great grandparents.' Abraham said, 'Well, where do they live? I want to go meet them and worship them.' His grandparents said, 'Well, they died; they're out in the cemetery.' So he went off to the cemetery and found their gravestones, starting to bow down and worship his great grandparents.

One day, some grave diggers came along and disturbed an old grave. Abraham went to have a look and saw in the ground just white bones, a skull and some bones. He was really shocked and thought, 'Goodness, what's happened? Is that what we're really made of? Is that what's going to happen to us all?' Then he realized that the body had turned into dust. He realized that what we are made of comes from the earth. So Abraham then stopped worshiping his ancestors and started bowing down and worshiping the earth because he realized it's the earth which gave birth to our bodies. After a while, he was doing that, and one morning he got up and wondered why it was so cold. The sun was hidden by clouds, and then Abraham realized that life doesn't come from the earth but actually comes from the sun. If there wasn't any sunshine, there wouldn't be any photosynthesis, and there'd be no plants growing or anything like that. So he started bowing down and worshiping the sun.

But at the end of the day, the sun went down, and he thought, 'Well, the sun's not very strong; it's disappeared.' Then the moon came out, and he thought, 'Oh, what a beautiful moon! I'm going to worship the moon.' But then a cloud came over and covered up the moon. Abraham realized everything in this world is changing; everything changes, nothing is unchanging. But behind this changing reality, there must be an unchanging reality. There must be an invisible God that created everything. He worked it out; he had parents, grandparents, great grandparents, and you keep going backwards. You must come to a first cause. Abraham then worked out, just through logic based upon reason, that there is a God, an invisible unchanging reality behind everything. He also realized there's a first cause that started everything off, and so Abraham's belief in God was based upon reason; it was a very rational faith.

We looked at this before; we looked at C.S. Lewis, who talked about faith being a reasonable belief based upon reason. Abraham discovered God through logic, so Abraham basically was a philosopher. Sometimes I wonder, who came up with these stories in Genesis? I think these stories, like the creation of the universe in six days and about Adam and Eve, are stories that Abraham told to his followers. I think that's where they came from, from Abraham. I think he worked all these stories out for himself through his relationship with God. Anyway, he believed in God. There's another story about Abraham and the idols, and this story you can find in the Talmud and also in the Quran. One day, it was market day, and Terah said to Abraham, 'Look, Abraham, I can't go to the market today; I have to go to the palace to meet Nimrod to show him some of my latest statues. Can you take the idols to the market and sell them today?' Abraham, being a good little boy, said, 'Yeah, sure, Dad, I'll do that.' He loaded up the idols onto the wagon, took them to the market, set up his table, put all the idols on the table with their prices, and waited for customers to come along.

Soon, an old lady came along and said to Abraham, 'I want to buy one of your gods.' Abraham asked, 'Why? What happened to the other ones you had?' She said, 'Oh, somebody came and stole them.' He replied, 'They can't have been very powerful if a burglar could steal your gods.' She said, 'No, they weren't powerful at all, but I think your gods are much more powerful because you're such a nice young man.' Abraham then asked her, 'How old are you, old woman?' It wasn't very polite to be honest, and she said, 'I'm 85 years old.' He said, 'Look, my dad made this last week and that one last month in his workshop. How can you, an 85-year-old woman, bow down to a statue of wood and stone that was made last week or last month by my dad? They should be bowing down to you!' She thought, 'You're right, Abraham; you're dead right.' So she asked, 'Who do you worship?' Abraham replied, 'I worship the invisible God who created the heavens and the earth.' She said, 'Well, I'm going to start worshiping him too.'

This is how the day went. At the end of the day, Abraham packed up, put all the idols and everything back on the wagon, and went home. He rang the doorbell, and his dad came to the door. Terah said, 'Right, how did you get on today, Abraham? Did you sell out?' Abraham said, 'No, Dad, actually I didn't sell a single idol.' Terah was shocked. 'Was there somebody else selling them for less? What was the matter? They're really good idols; they're the best ones! What happened?' Abraham told him about his sales patter, and Terah thought, 'Oh God, you're a useless salesman; nobody's ever going to buy anything from you.'

Tera said to Abraham, 'Stay at home and look after all the idols. Look after the gods in the temple, make sure that they're protected.' Abraham agreed and went into the temple. He approached the largest idol and said, 'Look, I'll be your messenger. You tell me what to say, and I'll travel all around the city to tell everybody about your message that they should believe in you. Just tell me what to tell people; I'll be your prophet, your messenger.' However, the idol said nothing. Abraham thought perhaps the idol was hungry, so he went into the kitchen, made a meal, and brought it to the idol, saying, 'Right, eat up, and then we can chat.' But the idol remained silent. Abraham then left the temple, saying he would return in an hour. When he came back, the food was untouched. Abraham declared to the idols, 'You are not gods; you have no speech, no power, and no life. You are lifeless pieces of wood and stone. I will not bow down and worship you.' He then went into his father's workshop, took a large sledgehammer, and smashed all the small idols. He placed the sledgehammer in the hands of the largest idol before leaving.

At the end of the day, Tera returned home after a successful day of fundraising. He entered the temple to offer his earnings to the gods, only to find a scene of devastation with all the smashed idols. Tera called out to Abraham, asking what had happened. Abraham replied, 'I did exactly what you said; I was taking really good care of them. After you left, I went to see the idol, and the big one said he was hungry, so I made him a nice lunch. But I left him to eat in private, and I heard the little idols demanding that he share his food. The big idol told them to be quiet, but they wouldn't listen, so he went to your workshop, got a sledgehammer, and smashed them all up. Look, there's the evidence; the sledgehammer is still in his hands.' Tera was incredulous, saying, 'What are you talking about? They're just made of stone and wood; they have no power.' Abraham responded, 'Exactly. So why do you worship them?' Tera was shocked by Abraham's words.

Tera then asked Abraham if he did not worship Nimrod. Abraham replied, 'No, I only worship the invisible God who created the heavens and the Earth.' Tera was petrified and insisted that Abraham come to see Nimrod. When they arrived, Tera bowed down before Nimrod, but Abraham looked him in the eyes and said, 'I only worship the invisible God who created the heavens and the Earth and who stands in judgment upon you and your wicked deeds.' Nimrod threatened Abraham, saying, 'Aren't you afraid of me? If you don't bow down and worship me, I'll put you to death.' Abraham boldly declared, 'I don't care if you put me to death because God is more real to me than anything you can do to me. I know that if you kill me, I'll be with God for eternity in the spiritual world.' This personal experience with God made Abraham realise that God was more real than anything else.

According to the story, Nimrod then put Abraham into a fiery furnace to kill him, but angels came and protected him. At that point, Tera decided it was time to pack up and leave home, moving to Haran. Abraham's faith was evident; he risked his life and logically concluded that God existed. He stood firm in his beliefs, even when threatened with death. His faith was based on truth, and he refused to deny what he knew to be true. This unwavering commitment to truth is reminiscent of dissidents during Communist times, where many Christians refused to deny the existence of God, even when faced with imprisonment or death. Abraham's faith was based upon reason, and he knew God was real.

Tera had three sons: Haran, Nahor, and Abraham. Haran had a son named Lot, who later went off with Abraham, and Lot had two daughters, from whom two tribes in the Middle East descended. Nahor had a son named Bethuel, who had two daughters, Laban and Rebecca. Rebecca later became Isaac's wife. Tera's third son was Abraham, who had a daughter named Sarah. Abraham and Sarah were half-brother and half-sister, as they had different mothers. Abraham and Sarah had a son named Isaac, who married Rebecca. Isaac and Rebecca had two sons, Jacob and Esau. Jacob married his cousins, and from them came the Jewish people. Esau married a Canaanite, and from him came the Edomites. Abraham also had a child with Sarah's maid, Hagar, named Ishmael, who became the ancestor of the Ishmaelites, the Arabs. This family tree is quite complex.

Abraham's place in God's Providence is significant. When you consider history, Abraham is arguably the most important person who ever lived, as he changed the world more than any other single human being. From Abraham came the Jews, Christians, and Muslims, which account for more than half of the world's population today. His discovery that God exists transformed human history and culture. Abraham taught that there is one God, and this belief was foundational to the new religion he started. The Lord said to Abraham, 'Go forth from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you.' God instructed him to leave everything behind after his father's death and go to a new land.

This calling resonates with many people today who have parents that came from another land, feeling God's calling to leave their home and family. God promised Abraham that he would make of him a great nation and bless him, stating, 'In you all the families of the Earth shall be blessed.' This blessing traces back to Abraham, who changed his lineage from Satan's lineage to God's lineage. It is through Abraham that we are all blessed. It is also crucial to speak of figures like Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, and Jesus with respect. If we bless them, we will be blessed; if we curse them, we will face judgment. After the confrontation with Nimrod, Tera and his family moved to Haran. After Tera died, God instructed Abraham to go down into Canaan, the land we now call Israel and Palestine.

When they arrived in Canaan, a famine struck the land, prompting Abraham to go down to Egypt. Upon arriving, he encountered immigration officials who wanted to see his passport. When they saw Sarah, despite her age, they recognised her extraordinary beauty. Abraham, fearing for his life, told Sarah to say they were siblings to protect him from being killed so that someone could marry her. This was not a lie, as they were indeed half-siblings. They were taken to Pharaoh, who invited them for tea. After their visit, Pharaoh expressed interest in Sarah, wanting her to stay the night. This situation mirrored the story of Adam and Eve, where Eve was tempted by Lucifer, a powerful being. In this case, Sarah was in a position of luxury, being courted by the most powerful man in the world, which must have been overwhelming for her.

Pharaoh sat down on the chair and started chatting her up. In the story, it says that God sent an angel along to protect Sarah. This angel wouldn't do anything unless Sarah told him to. When Pharaoh started chatting Sarah up, she had a choice: she could either allow herself to be seduced and become the queen of the Pharaoh, the most powerful man in the world, living a life of complete luxury, or she could resist his temptation at the risk of her life and remain faithful to Abraham. If she was able to escape, she would spend the rest of her life living on a camp bed in a tent. Those were the choices she faced.

When Pharaoh put out his hand to stroke her beautiful hair, she told the angel to give him a slap. According to the story, the angel gave Pharaoh a big slap, and he felt it. Once he recovered his presence of mind, he started chatting her up again and put his hand out to stroke her hair once more. Again, she instructed the angel to give him a slap. By the time night was over, he was all black and blue. He thought to himself that he would go back to his bed, and he fell asleep. In his dream, God appeared to him and told him that Abraham was his prophet and Sarah was his wife.

Waking up in a start, he realised the seriousness of what he had attempted. He gave Sarah back to Abraham and also returned a lot of wealth to him. Additionally, he gave Sarah a maid called Hagar, who was actually his daughter, a princess. Here, we see what Sarah is doing: she is restoring the position of Eve. She has been placed in the same position Eve was in, facing the same kind of temptation. She had to decide whether to become the wife of the most powerful man in the world or remain faithful to Abraham. Eve gave in to temptation and allowed herself to be seduced by Lucifer, while Sarah overcame that temptation and remained faithful to Abraham.

By facing this kind of temptation and overcoming it, Sarah is purifying herself. She is purifying her womb so that when she gives birth to a child, this child would be born with less original sin, with less evil inclination. This is how restoration takes place: people are put in the same position as Adam or Eve and must go through the same sort of temptations. Instead of giving in, they must overcome those temptations. Through overcoming them, they become purified. This is how the purification of the blood lineage takes place over generations. Many people have been put in this kind of position and have overcome temptation, purifying themselves and their lineage so that their children can be born better than they were.

Over generations, the lineage was purified so that Jesus could be born without original sin. This was possible because people had gone through these kinds of positions, overcome temptation, and purified themselves and their lineage. Their children could then be born better than they were. Does that make sense?