BlueRiverTributaries wrote:
Does anyone know where Adam and Eve's children got their wives? I could imagine an answer, but does somebody KNOW? The neighborhood kid right next to me asked me. Then he wanted to know, if Cain and Abel and Seth and their brothers were marrying their sisters, would this be incest? Then his third question was, does this make valid incest for our generation?
Smart kid........
Wish I had those brains at 16.
God Bless,
BlueRiverTributaries
Hi BlueRiver,
Yes, the boys did marry their sisters. Where else would they get them?? Adam and Eve had very many children in 600 years, but only a few were named.
Incest?? By today's standard, and laws, it would be. But at that time, there had not been given any Laws by God against it, So it was NOT Incest by those standards at that time.
Just as there had not been given any laws against having multiple wives, so many of them had multiple wives, yet they did not sin for God did not yet say that it was a sin to do so, and it was not bigamy, or they could have even multiple husbands. There was not even any laws by God against only having to be married to have sex. Does that sound strange?? It is not!
While there was not sin involved, there were consequences which was far reaching. Such as the two children of Abraham. One of which is the father of the Israelites, or the Jews, and the other the father of all the Arabs, or Palestinians. Had Abraham not had Ishmael by the slave woman, the Jews would not have the troubles that they do have now with the Palestinians, for there would not be any peoples called Palestinians, or Arabs. And Lot's two daughters who had children by their raping their father, led to two nations which later attacked the Israelites as they came out of Egypt.
Those laws was not given to man until Mosaic Law, which was given to men so that man would know what was sin, and what was not sin. Until then, since God never told man that they were not to do certain things, there was NO sin in having done them.
We are going from one dispensation to another dispensation, to another dispensation. And now we are in a dispensation different from all the others.
From the Zondervan Pictorial Bible Dictionary on Dispensation
The modern theological use of the term "dispensation" as a "period of time during which man is tested in respect to obedience to some specific revelation of the will of God." That time is not found in the Bible, but man has divided the whole of time from the creation to the judgment into seven dispensations. The Scriptures do indeed make a distinction between the way God manifested His Grace in what may be called the "Old Covenant" and the way His grace has been manifested since the death of Christ in what may be called the "New Covenant".
The following are how the Dispensations are viewed:
From "Willmington's Guide to the Bible" page 469
1. The dispensation of innocence: from the creation of man to the fall of man (Gen. 1:26-3:6)
2. The dispensation of conscience: from the fall of man to the flood (Gen. 3:7 - 6:7)
3. The dispensation of civil government: from the flood to the dispersion of Babel ( Gen. 6:8 - 11:9)
4. The dispensation of promise, or, patriarchal rule: From Babel to Mt. Sinai (Gen. 11:10 - Ex. 18:27.)
5. The dispensation of Mosaic Law: from Mt. Sinai to Pentecost (Ex. 19:1 - Acts 1:26.)
6. The dispensation of the bride of the Lamb -- the church: from Pentecost to the rapture (Acts 2:1 - Rev. 5:14)
7. The dispensation of the wrath of the Lamb -- Tribulation: from the rapture to the Second Coming. (Rev. 6:1 - 20:3)
8. The dispensation of the rule of the Lamb -- the millennium: from the Second Coming to the great white throne judgment (Rev. 20:4 - 15)
9. The dispensation of the new creation of the Lamb -- the world without end: from the great white throne judgment throughout all eternity (Rev. 21:1 - 22:21)
You will note that in each dispensation there were new laws laid down by God that man was required to obey. And it may be noted that as man moved from one dispensation to the next dispensation, that some requirements were dropped while others were added. So that there were always some things that remained from each dispensation that were carried through to this day, and at the same time there were some which were dropped. Any place where it told us that it is an abomination before God to do this or that, it still remains an Abomination before God.
