Q & A

No, man did. Enoch 99:4 I have sworn unto you, ye sinners, as a mountain has not become a slave, And a hill does not become the handmaid of a woman, Even so sin has not been sent upon the earth, But man of himself has created it, And under a great curse shall they fall who commit it. 99:1 And now I swear unto you, to the wise and to the foolish, For ye shall have manifold experiences on the earth. 99:2 For ye men shall put on more adornments than a woman, And coloured garments more than a virgin: In royalty and in grandeur and in power, And in silver and in gold and in purple, And in splendour and in food they shall be poured out as water. 99:3 Therefore they shall be wanting in doctrine and wisdom, And they shall perish thereby together with their possessions; And with all their glory and their splendour, And in shame and in slaughter and in great destitution, Their spirits shall be cast into the furnace of fire. 99:4 I have sworn unto you, ye sinners, as a mountain has not become a slave, And a hill does not become the handmaid of a woman, Even so sin has not been sent upon the earth, But man of himself has created it, And under a great curse shall they fall who commit it. 99:5 And barrenness has not been given to the woman, But on account of the deeds of her own hands she dies without children. 99:6 I have sworn unto you, ye sinners, by the Holy Great One, That all your evil deeds are revealed in the heavens, And that none of your deeds of oppression are covered and hidden.

I believe that reincarnation is not a natural phenomena, and that it really cannot or does not occur. I believe that the "knowledge of past lives" is generally the work of spirits in the mind/life of a person and are not real memories of past lives. I have seen material on past lives before, testimonies. I also dug into the asian texts that reincarnationists hold up like the Baghavad Gita, etc. And I could not find good evidence of reincarnation there.

In Deuteronomy 27 and 28, the context is in the middle of a bunch of warnings about what will happen if Israel "does not hearken to the voice of the LORD thy God". So within that context, verse 23 says, "Deut 28:23 And thy heaven that is over thy head shall be brass, and the earth that is under thee shall be iron." This must be another curse that God is saying would come upon them if they did not obey Him. So based on that, I think this is a euphemism. The heaven (or sky) being brass, meaning that it would be softer, giving forth like rain. And the earth being iron, meaning the soil would be hard and dusty, not suitable for crops. Verse 24 pretty much confirms this... "28:24 The LORD shall make the rain of thy land powder and dust: from heaven shall it come down upon thee, until thou be destroyed." He says there that it would rain dust from heaven and the ground would be hard like rock, destroying all their crops, if they were disobedient. Then in Daniel 2:39-40, brass and iron again are used to represent a soft (brass) and a hard (iron) kingdom. The brass/soft kingdom being Greece, and the iron/hard kingdom being Rome. Iron is a much harder and stronger metal than brass. But those verses are not related in any other way.

I often try to consider - or rather ascertain - the reasoning behind the translations that we have in English. The problem is the translators usually don't give you the why. That is why I have worked hard to understand enough Greek and Hebrew to make some determinations on that, and what the best meanings of the ancient words are. In your example... Spanish is "I have 43 years" ... "yo tengo 43 anos" English is "I am 43 years old" So this gets deep but here goes. In a general sense, the way to say that you are 43 years old in English is "I am 43 years old". But it is obviously "I have 43 years" in Spanish. So a translator who is translating that from Spanish to English would choose to say in English "I am 43 years old". However, if we use a literal translation of "I have 43 years"... trying to literally represent the Spanish words, we get some bonus information. We start to understand how Spanish people say it, and more importantly how they feel about the statement, like "intent". In Spanish, the statement "I have 43 years" is a possessive statement. In English it is not. In English it is a statement of being... "I am". So there is a nuance of difference there that is lost if we do not use a literal rendering in the English. It also changes the meaning slightly, because of the possessive aspect. Now, granted, in the case of this particular phrase about one's age, this is not a big problem... in both languages, the meaning is similar enough that it causes no issue, and is accepted as a correct interpretation. But... think how important this gets with ancient Greek or ancient Hebrew... neither of which are spoken in the present time. That's right. Both languages are not spoken the way that the ancient ones were, and no scholar knows how they were spoken. Interesting fact. Add to that the fact that in the Bible, we are reading about some of the most fundamental, important topics in life. For instance, the nature of God the Father and Christ His Son. Also note that for some words and phrases in the ancient languages, there are simply zero English words/phrases that will perfectly represent them. That is the case even with modern languages like Spanish vs. English. One example is "elohim" in Hebrew... it has NO English equivalent, so to explain it, you have to use a phrase like "spiritual being". In Greek "theos" is the same... it does not mean God, it means "god" or "divine being". So, with that long explanation,... I believe that very literal readings of the ancient texts help us understand the languages better, and the intent behind the words that are written in ancient Greek and Hebrew. The meanings are different in those languages than in English. The more we understand them, the better. And I have found that understanding them in this way does not reduce my understanding of or trust in God, but enhances it greatly.