The Good Shepherd

Part 1

We begin by lifting the veil on some of the great secrets of the Bible. I draw your attention to the fact that the early part of the Bible is about the history of God’s people. It is also important to realize that at the time of Abraham there were other people on the earth but God chose Abraham to be the originator of His own people. The Bible talks about the Egyptians yet they were not God’s people. Although religions teach that God loves everyone this is not true as will be revealed as we go on our journey through the Bible.

In the story of Cain and Able and other characters in the Bible we notice that there are deeper meanings to them and their names.

With Cain and Able as a starting point we see the process of “natural selection” which originated in God’s promise that the race deliverance would come through the seed of the Woman (Eve) as distinguished from the seed of the serpent. “I will put enmity between thy seed and her seed”.

We see the same selection process in the gifts or offerings in the preference of the gifts of Abel over that of Cain. Also carefully note that the same selection is repeated when Seth took the place of Abel after his slaying by Cain.

We see the same demonstrated in the story of Cain and Abel where Cain was a tiller of the soil and Abel was a shepherd. So here is a demonstration of Biblical symbolism.

 The Sheep symbolizes the emotional factors of man while the vegetable represents the unemotional qualities of logical process. We know that creative actions start with some emotion or feeling not mere logical reasoning which is why God chose the Sheep as the emotional symbol.

The use of the Sheep and Shepherd metaphor is that the relationship between them is a particular one of Guidance, Provision and Protection remembering that in the time of the Bible there were no paddocks or fences.