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the doctrines, taken from the “mouth” of those who could still speak about
it. (De Verbo 7:3.5, 18:7.3) A resulting manuscript incorporating Cain’s and
Enoch’s records was the Word of God during the flood, and was preserved to
serve the coming church after the flood. (Apocalypse Explained 728.2)
It was preserved from the last of the human race from pre-deluge times,
who were seeking to destroy it. (Ibid.) Noah, who had the manuscript, actually
had to run away and hide from those who were bent on destroying it. This
escape is essentially the story of the ark. Where did they run to? I will come
back to this later.
But what would that actual destruction – described in the flood and Noah’s
Ark – look like? It must be like an extermination. The only example we know
of is the end of the Neanderthal peoples, around 40,000 years ago, down to
19,000 years, when Cro-Magnon man had taken over. There are several cave
finds in the Holy Land where both kinds of skulls are preserved – in fact some
which seem to be in between. (Tabun cave, Qafzeh cave, the Skhul cemetery1)
Neanderthal died out, no more of their skulls were found.
But how this destruction took place takes us into a very different story
from an ark floating on water. It has to do with how the mind worked with the
people inhabiting Eden.
Paradise, or the Garden of Eden, was a tract of land located from the Nile
to Euphrates, modeled after heaven. (Arcana Coelestia 3686, 4447, 4516, 4517,
5135, 6516) But it could well have included the whole Sahara, a fertile plain
10,000s of years ago but “laid waste” with the end of the Most Ancient Church.
The most ancient