The Old Testament describes the Holy Spirit as clothing people. Gideon, Zechariah and Amasai were all clothed with the Holy Spirit. Check out Judges 6:34; 2 Chronicles 24:20 and 1 Chronicles 12:19 in an Interlinear Bible. Although English Bible translations translate the word לָבְשָׁ֗ה as ‘came upon’ that is not an accurate translation of this word. Right click on 3847 which is in blue above the word לָבְשָׁ֗ה to get to the Strong’s Concordance entry for this word.

In Hebrew the root word לָבְשָׁ֗ means: ‘to put on’, ‘wear’, ‘clothe’, or ‘be clothed’. The entry in the Strong’s Concordance for this word reads:

labash or labesh: to put on, wear, clothe, be clothed

Original Word: לָבַשׁ
Part of Speech: Verb
Transliteration: labash or labesh
Phonetic Spelling: (law-bash’)
Definition: to put on, wear, clothe, be clothed

Strong’s Concordance

I think that it is safe to say that as the Priest King, who God placed in the Garden of Eden, Adam was also clothed with the Holy Spirit. After Adam and Eve sinned the clothing of the Holy Spirit was immediately removed from them.

⁷ Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.

Genesis 3:7 NIV

Although Adam and Eve had been physically naked prior to having partaken of the fruit, they were clothed in the Holy Spirit. Their perception of their nakedness was the immediate result of having eaten the fruit because the Holy Spirit departed from them. Sin separates us from God, and the departure of the Holy Spirit from Adam and Eve was the result of their sin. The same thing happened to Jesus on the cross when all sin was laid on Him. The Father departed from Him and He cried out: ‘My God, My God why have You forsaken Me?’

The fig leaves represent their attempt to make something to substitute for the Holy Spirit. However, it is not possible for anything to substitute for the Holy Spirit. There are too many churches that try and use something in place of the Holy Spirit. However, this does not work. These churches have no power. They have a form of Godliness, but deny the Power thereof.

I have learned that one of the biggest mistakes that we can make as a Christian is to think that God does not talk to us because we are not worthy of His doing so because He is the God who created the entire universe and we are merely a human being.

The truth is that God is trying to communicate with us all the time. We have to learn to recognize the way in which He is trying to communicate with us.

For a number of weeks before my wedding in 2002 I kept getting a picture in my head of a needle and thread and along with the picture came a thought that I should take a needle and thread with me to my wedding. I dismissed both the picture and the thought thinking that I was merely being overly anxious and that I wouldn’t possibly have need of those items. My wedding dress was made for me by a competent professional wedding dress designer and so, I couldn’t see that anything would be wrong with it.

However, on the day of my wedding, while zipping up my expensive new wedding dress, the zip on the dress broke. We did not have a needle and thread but someone had pins and, so, my dress was pinned closed at the back. Unfortunately, while walking down the aisle, my Dad accidentally stood on the bottom of my dress and the pins opened up.

Just about everybody I knew, including my new boss was there. They all saw my petticoat and watched in horror or amusement while the wedding photographer pinned the dress together again at the back while the first hymn was being sung. Nobody said anything about it afterwards. I think this was an indication of how much everyone there pitied me for what had happened. I think that my parents-in-law, who had been angry that my husband hadn’t asked his wealthy uncle to his wedding, were suddenly very glad that the wealthy uncle was not there.

I recognized afterwards that God had been trying really hard to tell me to take the needle and thread for a number of weeks, but I did not realize that it was Him. I didn’t think that Someone as important as He is would care about something as insignificant as a needle and thread. I now know, although I have missed recognizing God’s voice on a number of occasions over the years, that it is vitally important for our lives that we learn to recognize when God is communicating something to us and that we act on what He instructs us to do. It could mean the difference between life or death, but that is a story for another day.

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In 2 Corinthians 12 the Apostle Paul says the following:

12 I must go on boasting. Although there is nothing to be gained, I will go on to visions and revelations from the Lord. ² I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven. Whether it was in the body or out of the body I do not know—God knows. ³ And I know that this man—whether in the body or apart from the body I do not know, but God knows— ⁴ was caught up to paradise and heard inexpressible things, things that no one is permitted to tell. ⁵ I will boast about a man like that, but I will not boast about myself, except about my weaknesses. ⁶ Even if I should choose to boast, I would not be a fool, because I would be speaking the truth. But I refrain, so no one will think more of me than is warranted by what I do or say, ⁷ or because of these surpassingly great revelations. Therefore, in order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. ⁸ Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. ⁹ But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. ¹⁰ That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

2 Corinthians 12:1-10 NIV

The majority of Bible scholars teach that Paul was speaking about himself when he speaks about a man in 2 Corinthians 12:2-6 who visited Heaven. However, I don’t believe that it was the apostle Paul that went to Heaven for the following reasons:

I have read the epistles many times and the apostle Paul was a plain speaker. He did not speak in riddles in the epistles. Even his metaphors were straightforward and easy to understand. That is something that I appreciate about the apostle Paul. If he had been the man who went to heaven, he would have plainly said: ‘I went to heaven fourteen years ago’ . Bible scholars who have taught that Paul was referring to himself in these verses have not spent sufficient time analysing his writing style and understanding who he was as a person.

It must be remembered that there were also other Christians and that Paul knew many of these other Christians. On the day of Pentecost alone 500 people came to know the Lord. God is not a respecter of persons and, so, Paul would not have been the only Christian at that time who God did something special with. It is not unusual that he would have taken another Christian to see Heaven.

The revelations that Paul refers to in verse 7 have nothing to do with the trip to Heaven mentioned in verses 2-6 but are Paul’s own revelations given to him by Jesus which form the gospel which he has been teaching to the gentiles:

¹¹ I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel I preached is not of human origin. ¹² I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ.

Galatians 1:11-12 NIV

In 2 Corinthians 12:4 Pauls says that the man heard ‘inexpressible things.’ Therefore the revelations that Paul speaks of cannot be the ‘inexpressible things’ that Paul mentions in 2 Corinthians 12:4 because Paul expressed his revelations to the church as the gospel.

The gospel was communicated to Paul while He was reading the Old Testament. While he was reading the Holy Spirit opened up the eyes of his understanding to see what the meaning of the old Testament scriptures actually was. It was not necessary for Paul to be taken to Heaven to get his revelations. His revelations were all grounded in Old Testament scriptures and involved reinterpreting these scriptures to reveal Jesus in them.

It makes no sense that God would have created both Homo Sapiens and Neanderthals. So an explanation for the creation of the Neanderthals must be sought elsewhere. We now know that the Neanderthals were an entirely different species of human. They differed from Homo Sapiens both genetically and in appearance.

The Neanderthals were shorter and stockier than Homo Sapiens, who are lighter in build. If humans were compared to horses, the Neanderthals would be the cart horses and the Homo Sapiens would be the race horses. The build of the Neanderthals seems to suggest that the Neanderthals were built for labour.

I have wondered for some time now if the Epic of Atrahasis describes the creation of the Neanderthals.

The Epic of Atrahasis is a story from ancient Mesopotamia which describes how the Sumerian ‘gods’ created a man to do their work for them after a rebellion by the lower gods who were doing all the work. Neanderthal remains have been found in the geographical area that was ancient Mesopotamian. The partial remains of 10 Neanderthal men, women and children were found during excavations in the 1950s and 1960s in the Shanidar Cave in Iraq.

The Sumerian gods were all fallen angels and the Epic of Atrahasis reveals them as such. They used baptism to cleanse themselves from their sin of killing an angel to create a man:

[205] and said to the great gods:
“On the first, seventh, and fifteenth days of the month,
let me establish a purification, a bath.
Let one god be slaughtered,
then let the gods be cleansed by immersion.

It must remembered that before Jesus became a man He was the Angel of Yahweh, the Holy Spirit. When He healed the blind man in the Gospel of John He spat on the ground and made mud:

⁶ After saying this, he spit on the ground, made some mud with the saliva, and put it on the man’s eyes. 

John 9:6 NIV

In the Epic of Atrahasis the fallen angels spit on the clay in the same way that Jesus spat on the mud:

[230] Lest he be allowed to be forgotten, the spirit remained.
After she had mixed the clay,
she summoned the Anunna, the great gods.
The Igigi, the great gods, spat upon the clay.

There is no doubt in my mind that the ‘great gods’ are a group of fallen angels and that angels can use their spit to create. Jesus seems to have created a new pair of eyes for the blind man in John 9:6 and the fallen angels in the Epic of Atrahasis used their spit when creating a body.

It is clear from the Epic of Atrahasis that the man that is being created is not the first man in existence because the fallen angels mix the flesh and blood of the angel that they slaughter with a man:

[225] Nintu mixed clay with his flesh and blood.
That same god and man were thoroughly mixed in the clay.
For the rest of the time they would hear the drum.
From the flesh of the god the spirit remained.
It would make the living know its sign.

The result is a new kind of man who the fallen angels use to do their labour:

235] Mami made rady to speak,
and said to the great gods:
“You ordered me the task and I have completed it!
You have slaughtered the god, along with his inspiration.

[240] I have done away with your heavy forced labor,
I have imposed your drudgery on man.
You have bestowed clamor upon mankind.
I have released the yoke, I have made restoration.”
They heard this speech of hers,

[245] they ran, free of care, and kissed her feet, saying:
“Formerly we used to call you Mami,
now let your name be Belet-kala-ili:”

If the Neanderthals were created by the fallen angels of Mesopotamia as slave labourers it must have been the flood that freed them from the fallen angels and allowed them to escape northwards into Europe. Therefore, the flood served more than one purpose. It wiped sin from the face of the earth and also freed a slave race from their evil masters.

Bibliography:

Livius.org: Articles on Ancient History: The Epic of Atrahasis https://www.livius.org/sources/content/anet/104-106-the-epic-of-atrahasis/

¹⁷ Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.

Ephesians 6:17

For quite some time I mistakenly thought that Ephesians 6:17 should be translated as:

And take the helmet of salvation and the Sword of the Spirit, Who is the Word of God.

This was because I understand that Jesus is the incarnate Holy Spirit and, as He is called the Word of God by the apostle John in the first chapter of his gospel, I thought that He must also be the Word of God in Ephesians 6:17. What cemented the belief is that 3739, the Strong’s reference for the word ὅ used in Ephesians 6:17, indicates that the first choice for ὅ is the word ‘Who’.

However, after further study I have recognized that the sword of the spirit is actually the word of God. In Revelation 2:12 we see that the Holy Spirit has the sword:

¹² “To the angel of the church in Pergamum write:

These are the words of him who has the sharp, double-edged sword.

Revelation 2:12

Clearly, the Holy Spirit is not Himself the sword, because He possesses the sword.

The Holy Spirit speaking in Revelation 2:16 says:

¹⁶ Repent therefore! Otherwise, I will soon come to you and will fight against them with the sword of my mouth.

¹⁷ Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches.

Revelation 2:16-17a

Clearly, the Holy Spirit uses the sword and using it involves fighting with the mouth. In Isaiah 49:2a He says:

² He made my mouth like a sharpened sword,  

Isaiah 49:2a

What does it mean that the Holy Spirit has a mouth like a sword and that He uses this sword to fight? How exactly does He use His mouth as a sharpened sword? The best example occurred at the temptation of Jesus when He used scriptures to fight against the temptations and erroneous misinterpretation of scripture that the devil uses to fight against Him.

4 Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted^[a] by the devil. ² After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. ³ The tempter came to him and said, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.”

⁴ Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’^[b]”

⁵ Then the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. ⁶ “If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down. For it is written:

“‘He will command his angels concerning you,
    and they will lift you up in their hands,
    so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’^[c]”

⁷ Jesus answered him, “It is also written: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’^[d]”

⁸ Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. ⁹ “All this I will give you,” he said, “if you will bow down and worship me.”

¹⁰ Jesus said to him, “Away from me, Satan! For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.’^[e]”

¹¹ Then the devil left him, and angels came and attended him.

Matthew 4:1-11

In the above verses we see how Jesus sliced through all of the temptations of Satan with scriptures which effectively negated and destroyed every lie and temptation that Satan used against Him.

In Ephesians 6:17 the apostle Paul is urging the church to use the scriptures as a weapon against Satan in the same way as they are used by Jesus, the incarnate Holy Spirit, to defeat Satan in Matthew 4.

The scriptures are His sword and He is familiar with how to use them to fight the enemy. Clearly to use the sword of the spirit effectively, we must know the scriptures thoroughly, as He did, and we must allow Him to guide us when it comes to knowing how to wield them.

For further information regarding the relationship between the Holy Spirit and the Word of God see the following article by James Rosenquist: The Connection between the Holy Spirit and the Word of God.