Ends of the world happen periodically in creation. When the Garden of Eden deportation order was executed Adam and Eve experienced the end of the world as they knew it and the rest is history...
A special issue of Adam and Eve in the garden seems to have been created in Chapter Two of Genesis. Chapter One has a general creation of humanity roughly in the order of natural history. Chapter One and Chapter Two of Genesis duplicate yet differ on points of creation. Chapter One is like the general theory of relativity where chapter Two is like the special theory.
It is useful to remember Wittgenstein's theory of the indeterminacy of translation in interpreting the meaning of Genesis. Most people don't read the book very well, and don't consider what it might mean and might have meant to the people of the era that read it, not are they adequately instructed in Biblical criticism and history of how the book was put together. There are believed to have been four or five major contributors to the book of Genesis, and it is hard to say what sources the earliest known author, the J writer got his or her material from when writing in the court of Rehoboam probably about 975 B.C. Some parchments or scrolls or fragmentary or oral tradition material from the priesthood may have been written down then going back to Moses a half a millenium before.
I also want to point out that if Peter's concept that one day to God is equal to a thousand years to a man is given to the creation of Adam time spans down to the flood it adds up to about 2.6 billion years B.C. which is a time era comparable to when m ulti-cellular life is believed to have developed on Earth.
When Cain complains in chapter two about becoming a target if he is cast out into global society for murdering his brother Abel God placed a mark of Cain upon him to effect punative sanctions upon anyone that assaulted him with mal-intent. Global society already existed outside the garden of special creation apparently.
In Chapter One God creates everything perhaps in a theistic evolution paradigm, and in Chapter Two Adam and then Eve are created and put into a development and examination phase in a select environment to discern there nature and abilities, and when they have gone though the basic training and education course of naming things, moral philosophy education and so forth and properly adapted to Earth conditions they are kicked out of paradise and must thereafter mingle with the dregs of humanity probably evolved from the most vile of australopithecines.
The garden of Eden was guarded after the expulsion by four Cherubim. That seems congruent with the four dimensions of space-time requiring protection from humanity seeking to become eternal by exiting space-time for some better non-temporal place of easy living like Eden.
On the subject of interpreting Genesis the theistic evolution parameters if used permit end times interpretations as well a little non-conventionally...
I learned something else about Harold Camping's day the rapture happens and end of the world formulas for 2001, and why 22 Russians abandoned their village and went to live in a remote mine-shaft cave because they believe the world ends next May. I'll write a little about the most prevalent current active end-of-the-world prediction broadcast widely.
Camping thinks the Biblical flood happened in the year 4911 B.C. and with some other calculating finds May 21st the day of rapture and beginning of five months of hell on Earth before its destruction on October 20th. The Russians might be old believers that have made similar calculations on the old calender.
In Quincy Washington where I grew up the whole region is called the channeled scabland for all of the tremendous volcanic flows that happened there 15 million years ago and Bonneville flood much more recently.
http://www.whitman.edu/geology/LocalGeo.html
A tremendous rift opened in the Earth's crust and lava and sulphur dioxide poured out for years creating a darkening of the Earth's skies and causing one of the five great mass extinctions in world history. The end times Biblical scenarios of tremendous earthquakes and a darkening of the skies have a somewhat similar account of the apocalypse. I think that interesting.
No I don't have confidence in end-of-the world predictions, yet there probably was a local flood that covered the 'world' of the lowlands of ancient Iraq about 5000 b.c., and there was another great volcanic rift in the crust in India's Deccan rift.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deccan_Traps that lasted maybe 30,000 years around 60 million years before present.
The hot spot in the Earth's mantle that caused the volcanism in Eastern Washington is not under Yellowstone Park (the Earth's crust in the North American plate is drifting slowly east). Old faithful has been irregular lately, and maybe human faith too-perhaps another volcanic rift will start in 2011 with five months of darkening skies and sulphur dioxide build-up until everyone is extinct-who knows? The rapture sounds good anyway.
So much for analysis of the theory-I am not very technical on the subject.
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