Although I originally wrote this back in 2015, it seems very appropriate for today…
I don’t know about you but the older I get, the darker the world seems to grow. This may be because the farther along I walk with God, the more discerning of the world and its ways I am becoming. Or it could be just another indication that the long-awaited day of Jesus’ return is rapidly approaching. Certainly, the conditions prevailing in our world today greatly resemble those described by Jesus in Matthew 24:4-8, when He answered His disciples’ request for a sign of His coming by saying…
See that no one leads you astray. For many will come in my name, saying, ‘I am the Christ,’ and will lead many astray. And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not alarmed, for this must take place, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these are but the beginning of birth pains.
If these conditions—the same ones that we are experiencing today—are but the “beginning of birth pains,” what can we expect to follow? Jesus goes on to address this question in verses 9-14, when He declares…
Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and put you to death, and you will be hated by all nations for my name’s sake. And then many will fall away and betray one another and hate one another. And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray. And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold. But the one who endures to the end shall be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.
Undoubtedly, all of these things are taking place in our day and age, but the truth is that much of what has been described here has also taken place throughout most of human history. In fact, with the exception of the gospel being proclaimed throughout the whole world, I think that every generation of believers has looked around at the events taking place in their particular era and seen a world growing darker as a result of sin, thinking surely that the end of the world would soon be upon them.
As an example of this, listen to what Jude, the brother of Jesus and James, had to say about the conditions in his world back in the first century AD…
Beloved, although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints. For certain people have crept in unnoticed who were long ago designated for this condemnation, ungodly people, who pervert the grace of God into sensuality and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ…these people…defile the flesh, reject authority, and blaspheme the glorious ones…blaspheme all that they do not understand, and they are destroyed by all that they, like unreasoning animals, understood instinctively.
While this is a pretty scathing indictment of his own times, Jude goes on to tell us about a time when the same kind of wickedness had saturated another, much earlier, society—and when another godly man arose to address the evils of the world around him then…
It was about these [the people referred to above] that Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied, saying, ‘Behold the Lord comes with ten thousands of his holy ones, to execute judgment on all and to convict all the ungodly of all their deeds of ungodliness that they have committed in such an ungodly way and of all the harsh things that ungodly sinners have spoken against him (Jude 14-15).
Wow—such was the world in which Enoch lived! And when was that? It was, according to Genesis 5, about halfway between the creation of man and the Flood which took place in Noah’s day. And what was the reason for the Flood? It was the judgment upon all of the “ungodly sinners” about whom Enoch had prophesied. Did Enoch live to see the fulfillment of his prophecy? No, because, as we are told in Genesis 5:21-24…
When Enoch had lived 65 years, he fathered Methuselah. Enoch walked with God after he fathered Methuselah 300 years. Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him.
In other words, Enoch, after walking with God in the midst of his sin-saturated world, was “raptured” out of that world before the Tribulation of the Flood came upon it.
It was this very time to which Jesus referred when He continued in His reply to the question His disciples had asked in Matthew 24. Likening it to the time preceding His own return, He said…
For as were the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark, and they were unaware until the flood came and swept them all away, so will be the coming of the Son of Man…Therefore, stay awake, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming…you must also be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect (vv. 39-39, 42, 44).
And how are we to make ourselves ready?
According to Jude, we…
…must remember, beloved, the predictions of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ. They said to you, ‘In the last time, there will be scoffers, following their own ungodly passions.’ It is these who cause divisions, worldly people, devoid of the spirit.
But you, beloved, building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life. And have mercy on those who doubt, save others by snatching them out of the fire; to others show mercy with fear, hating even the garment stained by the flesh.
Or, as Jesus put it in Matthew 5: 14 &16…
You are the light of the world…let your light shine before others, so they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.
…which, in our world of rapidly escalating darkness, is just another way of saying that for us to able to find our way through the darkness, we all need to be walking lightly!
I know it may be hard to believe but, now that our critique of Vignette #9has been completed, Act 1, Scene 1 of God’s One Big Story has finally come to an end. Of course, this means that it’s now time for us to climb back on board the Truth Train, leave the first of the fourteen stages in our production, and move on to Stage #2.
We have spent a considerable amount of time at Stage #1,and that’s because the part of the Bible being presented here, covering the first eleven chapters in Genesis, is one of the most important parts of the entire BibleStory. Some of the reasons for this are…
It introduces us to the sovereign God of the Universe;
It explains how He brought the Earth and Mankind into being, and how it and we got into the mess that we’re in;
It presents, either in literal or figurative form, a number of the Main Characters of the Story; and,
It serves as the Overture for the rest of the Story, set to begin at Stage #2, where Act 1, Scene 2 will soon be getting underway.
All Aboard!
That being said, let’s all return to our seats on the Train and get comfy; for, as we journey from Stage #1 to Stage #2, we will again be Making the Most of Our Travel Timeby reviewing the first three of these reasons, which will lead us into a preview of the Overture that follows.
…In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth…
…and, from this very brief but powerful verse, we learned some key pieces of information about the Being who is both the Author and the Main Character of the Book…
From Elohim, the name used for Him here, we learned that God is a Trinity of Three Unique Persons who are united in One Divine Purpose;
From His appearance in our Story before the existence of anyone or anything else, we learned that God is Pre-existent and Eternal—that He was Before all Things, Over all Things, and the Originator of all Things; and,
From the things that He does, we learned that God is All-Powerful, All-Knowing, and Present Everywhere at All Times.
Then, during the rest of this chapter, we learned that…
God created everything from nothing;
He executes His will through His spoken Word;
He evaluates or makes judgments about everything He makes;
He orders, organizes, and controls everything—even the darkness and chaos; and,
He has the power and will to bless the things that He makes.
The Creation of Earth and Man
As for God’sCreation of the Earth, we learned that this was accomplished in a very orderly and systematic way over the course of six days; with Him, during the first three days, calling into being the Kingdoms of Light and Darkness,Sky and the Sea, and the Land;and, during the last three days, making and creating the Rulers over those Kingdoms in the forms of the Sun, Moon, Stars, Fish, Fowl, and Animals. In Between the Vignettes, we learned that this massive undertaking—done with such precision and attention to detail—was for the sole purpose of providingMan, The Capstone of God’s Creation, with an ideal place to live.
In Another Learning Interlude, we learned that once He had their earthly home ready, God set about the task of Creating the Man and Woman who would be living there; fashioning them into male and female beings so much like Himself that they could readily be adopted as His children. However, when we got to the Fundamentals of the Fall,we discovered that just looking like God was not going to be enough to guarantee their adoption into His Family. Before that could take place, the Man and Womanwould have to be Holy, like God—something that would be proven if only they could maintain their innocence in the face of testing. Unfortunately for them, for the earth, and for us—they failed, with disastrous results.
God’s Orderly Creation
3. The Characters Presented
Up to this point in our Story, our Cast of Characters has consisted of…
God, the Father; God, the Word who, according to John 1:1 and 1:14, is the Son, Jesus Christ; God, the Holy Spirit; and, Man and Woman.
But, with the testing of Adam and Eve, another very shadowy Character made his way onto our Stage. Initially appearing in the guise of the serpent who tempted the first Man and Woman into sinning, he was none other than Satan—aka Lucifer, the Devil, and the dragon mentioned in Revelation 20:2.
Although he has remained largely invisible, Satan’s activity in and influence upon our Story has been evident throughout it. For, as we learned in…
…he was no doubt instrumental in inciting Cain to murder his righteous brother, Abel, and in Cain’s refusal to repent.
As a result, Patterns of Generational Sin and Patterns of ConflictBetween the Righteous and the Wicked, which would go on to wreak havoc in all future generations, became established—something which was made evident to us in…
…we witnessed Satan’s reappearance on our Stage, initially in the person of Nimrod—the first incarnation of the Antichrist in our Story—and then, as the power behind the creation of Mystery Babylon—the spiritual Harlot of false religion who would eventually lure the nations of the world away from the worship of the one true God, and into the worship of the Devil.
4. The Overture of the Story
Before our production of God’s One Big Story began, we learned from All the World’s a Stage—and Life Its Cosmic Dramathat the device used in its presentation was going to be the same type of “story-within-a story” device so often used in the works of William Shakespeare. For our purposes, this meant that the stories of real people recorded in the Bible were going to be used by God to tell more than one story—that is, in addition to the Earthly Level Story being recounted, elements from each individual story were going to be used to help tell the Prophetic Story taking place on a Heavenly Level. In Act 1, Scene 1, this meant that every event from the Creation of the World to the Rebellion at Babel, and the subsequent division of the people into Nations, would have its spiritual level parallel; a parallel forming a theme or motif that would reappear later in the Story.
This concept will become easier for us to grasp if we think of the first eleven chapters of Genesis as the Overture to the entire Bible. In much the same way that an overture introduces to the audience the musical themes which will be running throughout an opera or play, Genesis 1-11 introduces us to the spiritual themes which will be played out in the rest of the Bible Story.
For example…
The story of Creation becomes a picture to us of the spiritual process of Re-creation or Rebirth, where we go from darkness to light, chaos to order, and from death to life in response to the Word of God and the “hovering” work of the Spirit.
The story of the First Adam and his wife, Eve, becomes a spiritual picture of the Second Adam, Jesus, and His Bride, the Church—who, like Eve, was fashioned from a “rib” (the disciples) taken from the Second Adam as He slept in death.
The story of the Two Trees in the Garden serves as a picture of the two “salvation” alternatives available to mankind—either the counterfeit system of works or the genuine system of salvation through faith in Christ.
In the story of Cain and Abel–where God’s acceptance of Abel’s offering by faith and His rejection of Cain’s self-righteous offering provoke Cain to envy, anger, and the murder of his brother–we are provided with a spiritual illustration of the wicked’s rebellion against and persecution of the righteous; as well as, a picture of Cain as a type of Israel—the brother who, after his slaying of the righteous Son, is marked for protection as he begins his wanderings in the wilderness of the world.
In the long “Reign of Death” taking place between the stories of Cain and the Flood, we are shown how living life in the power of the flesh has affected all men, and ultimately led to their Deaths.
In the translation of Enoch before the judgment of the flood, we are given a picture of the Rapture which will take place prior to the Great Tribulation, when those who are “walking with God” will be translated to heaven without dying.
In the lawlessness and demonic activity preceding the Flood, we are given a picture of the conditions existing before the Tribulation, as self-absorbed humanity abandons faith in God, violence increases, and doors are opened to ever-increasing satanic activity.
In the story of the Flood, where the wrath of God is being poured out from heaven against the unrighteousness of men, and a small righteous remnant in the Ark are being spared, we have a picture of the Tribulation, when the wrath of God will be poured out from heaven against the unrighteousness of men, while a righteous remnant is preserved.
In the story of Noah after the Flood, when those in the Ark come out to a new earth and enter into a new covenant with God, we are given a picture of the “new world” which will exist when Christ sets up His Millennial Kingdom following the Tribulation–where the righteous remnant will live on a cleansed earth, under a new covenant with God, for a thousand years.
In the rebellion at Babel, we are given a prophetic picture of Satan’s final act of rebellion—when, at the end of the Millennium, he is released from his thousand year imprisonment to test those who are born on the earth during that time.
And, in the Judgment of the Nations at the Tower of Babel, we are given a picture of the final Judgment of the Nations—when the Lord gathers the nations and judges them according to the way they have treated His “brethren;” separating the “sheep” nations from the “goat” nations, and giving each one its due reward.
In the event that this concept still proves to be a little difficult to understand, perhaps this graphic will help show how the events in Scene #1prefiguresome of the most important future episodes in the Story…
Now that we have an idea of the real meaning and significance of the opening scene of our Story, we can move forward to Stage#2, better prepared to appreciate what Act 1, Scene 2 is all about.
Whenever I think of an “overture,” the Bugs Bunny Theme always comes to mind–so I just had to include it at this point in our Story. I hope you enjoy this brief bit of levity…
In our recent critique of Vignette #5of Act 1, Scene 1 of God’s One Big Story, we spent quite a bit of time poking around in the first genealogy of the Bible, which is found in Genesis 5. There, we discovered some valuable information concerning the line of righteous People who lived from the time of Adam to the time of Noah; the Patterns of life that began to develop during this period; and, the Precedents that were established by these godly people as they sought to live out their lives in a world of ever-increasing wickedness. Our analysis ended with a brief introduction to Noah, the tenth in line from Adam, and the one whom his father, Lamech, predicted would “…give us rest from our work and from the toil of our hands arising from the ground which the Lord has cursed.”
Since the name Noah means “rest”, it is likely that Lamech believed this son to be the long-awaited Redeemer; the one whom God promised to Eve that He would send. And, that the “rest” he had in mind was one in which mankind’s bondage to sin and death would be ended, and earth’s sin-caused curse would be removed. It is doubtful that a world-wide flood, wiping our nearly all of the earth’s inhabitants, was the kind of “rest” he had envisioned when he named his son as he did.
As for our exploration into the flood and its earth-altering consequences, before we can dive headlong into those turbulent waters, there are still at least three things that we need to take into consideration—that is, if we are going to understand why a disaster of this magnitude had become necessary in the first place. For, it was these three factors, working in tandem, which helped to make the Antediluvian civilization such a dark and dangerous one that it had to be erased off the face of the map. They are:
The Planet, in its pre-flood condition;
The Population, and the effects of its explosion on society; and,
The Powers and their influence on life during this era.
The Ancient Concept of the Cosmos
The Planet
Although the Bible doesn’t give us much in the way of specifics about the physical conditions of the earth before the flood, it does give us enough clues to lead us to believe that it must have been a vastly different place than the earth that we are familiar with today. Of course, the one we know is still the same size, same shape, and in the same position in its orbit around the sun that it has always been; but, from what we can gather from the Biblical clues, and from recent scientific findings, it is likely that both today’s climate and the earth’s topography are completely different from that of the original earth.
As for changes in its climate, these would seem to be attributable to differences in the distribution and storage of the earth’s waters. Back in Genesis 1:1, 1:7, and 1:9, while studying the Creation Story, we learned that…
The earth started out as a formless mass of waters—meaning that there was water, water everywhere, but where was it to go? Therefore…
God separated the waters by making an “expanse” (a firmament, or “thin stretched-out space”) and inserting it between the waters, and then calling this expanse “Heaven”—meaning that part of the waters were stored above earth, with these most likely being in the form of water vapor; and,
God gathered the waters under the expanse together in one place and commanded dry land to come forth out of the waters; calling the dry land “Earth” and the gathered waters “Seas”—meaning that the rest of the waters were contained either around the land or beneath it in underground “chambers” or rivers.
So, what effect might this pre-flood arrangement of waters have had on the climate? Well, a layer of water vapor situated above the earth’s atmosphere and acting as a layer of insulation between it and the sun…
Would have provided the earth with nearly uniform temperatures everywhere;
These uniform temperatures would have limited the movement of air, thus preventing windstorms of any kind;
Without any air circulating, dust particles from the earth would not have been moved to the upper atmosphere, thus eliminating the condensation which would have resulted in precipitation;
In lieu of precipitation, the moisture on the earth would have been provided regularly, rather than intermittently, by dew or ground fog—something confirmed in Genesis 2:5-6 with these words… “…for the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the land…and a mist was going up from the land and was watering the whole surface of the ground”;
This regular misting of the earth, in conjunction with the uniformly warm temperatures, would have contributed to the world-wide growth of abundant and rich vegetation; and,
A vapor shield surrounding the earth would have led to an increase in the atmospheric pressure which, according to some modern research, could have resulted in an increase in health and longevity.[1]
The Super Continent of Pangaea
When it comes to the topographical differences in the earth, it is now believed that the land mass of the early earth was formed into one super continent called Pangaea, rather than being broken up into the seven continents that we are familiar with today. According to the US Geological Survey, although…
The belief that continents have not always been fixed in their present positions was suspected long before the 20th century…it was not until 1912 that the idea of moving continents was seriously considered as a full-blown scientific theory — called Continental Drift — introduced in two articles published by a 32-year-old German meteorologist named Alfred Lothar Wegener.
Wegener’s theory was based in part on what appeared to him to be the remarkable fit of the South American and African continents, first noted by Abraham Ortelius three centuries earlier. Wegener was also intrigued by the occurrences of unusual geologic structures and of plant and animal fossils found on the matching coastlines of South America and Africa, which are now widely separated by the Atlantic Ocean. He reasoned that it was physically impossible for most of these organisms to have swum or have been transported across the vast oceans. To him, the presence of identical fossil species along the coastal parts of Africa and South America was the most compelling evidence that the two continents were once joined.
…But at the time Wegener introduced his theory, the scientific community firmly believed the continents and oceans to be permanent features on the Earth’s surface. Not surprisingly, his proposal was not well received, even though it seemed to agree with the scientific information available at the time. A fatal weakness in Wegener’s theory was that it could not satisfactorily answer the most fundamental question raised by his critics: What kind of forces could be strong enough to move such large masses of solid rock over such great distances?[2]
What forces indeed! As for a reason why God may have decided on one super continent for the early earth, just think how much easier it would have been, with all of the earth’s land surfaces joined together, for the descendants of Adam to fulfill the commission that God had given him to…
Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth (Genesis 1:28).
And, as they did this, it wouldn’t have taken long for…
…the earth [to] be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea (Habakkuk 2:14).
But, as we shall see, while the people of this period succeeded in fulfilling God’s command to “multiply and fill the earth,” the vast majority of them failed miserably at doing it in a way which would bring any kind of glory to God.
The Population
When we get to this part of the Bible—that is, to the story of Noah and the Flood—I believe there is a tendency on our parts to think that the population of the earth at the time must have been a relatively small one. Perhaps, this is because, having only read five chapters and having only been introduced to a fairly small group of people so far, we get the impression that not a lot of time has passed and that not much has happened in the course of these five chapters. But, nothing could be farther from the truth.
Using the figures given to us in Genesis 5, when we total up the years from the beginning of Adam’s life to the birth of Noah, we learn that 1,056 years had elapsed. Then, by adding the 600 years that Noah lived before the flood to that number, we find that men and women had been living—and multiplying—on the earth for at least 1,656 years. This is a lot of time for populations to expand and for cultures to shift and deteriorate. For example, just think how much our world has changed in the past 1,056 or 1,656 years, respectively. If we subtract the former figure from 2015, we would find ourselves in the year 959 AD, and by doing the same to the latter figure, we would be taken back to the year 359 AD—and, without a doubt, a lot of change has taken place in our world since either one of these dates, hasn’t it?
Take the population, for instance. In the same length of time that passed between Adam and the birth of Noah, the population of our present world grew from an estimated 300 million to over 7 billion; while the population from 359 AD to today has increased from an estimated 198 million to well past the same 7 billion mark[3]. This is all the more remarkable when you consider that this increase was produced by men and women who were living greatly reduced life spans and having considerably fewer children than those who were alive during the years preceding the flood. As for the population at the time of the flood, if I had to wager a guess as to its size, I think a very conservative estimate would put that at a minimum of 2 billion—which is to say, 2,000,000,000 people! How did I arrive at that figure?
Well, by going back to the genealogy listed in Genesis 5, I learned that in addition to each of the sons listed there, the fathers were said to have “had other sons and daughters.” Although no numbers were recorded for us, given that the average life span for these men was about 850 years, it stands to reason that the number of their offspring would have been considerable (for, as noted by the Jewish historian, Josephus, “The number of Adam’s children, as says the old tradition, was thirty-three sons and twenty-three daughters.”)[4] With this in mind, it doesn’t require a huge stretch of the imagination to suppose that Adam and Eve could have had at least ten sons and ten daughters, who would have made up the first set of ten couples. If each of these couples had at least ten sons and ten daughters, who would, in turn, have another ten sons and ten daughters, etc.—at the end of ten generations (and not allowing for any deaths), this would have produced a population of 2,000,000,000 people. Roughly speaking, this would be about the same as today’s total population of China added to about half of the population of India—and, no matter how you look at it, that is a lot of people!
The Powers
Now, in order to put these things into perspective, let’s try to imagine what our world would be like today if all of the people in China and half of the people in India were living together, spread out over a single land mass. Given its temperate climate and regulated underground hydraulic system, this land would be one that was filled with lush green vegetation, and one where hurricanes, tornadoes, and earthquakes were unknown events. Something else that would be unknown is any kind of institutional structure, such as governments, laws, police, armies, churches, or schools, to dictate codes of conduct or to help control the actions of the people. In fact, there would only be three forces around with the power to influence human behavior, and these would be the Power of God, the Power of the Human Conscience, and the Power of Demonic Spirits. However, because most of these people would eventually choose to reject God and go through life on their own terms, His power is something that would no longer be available to them; and, as for their consciences, due to their continuous sinning, these would become so seared that they would be rendered useless as a means of curbing their actions. This, then, would leave them open and vulnerable to any kind of influence or interference that the demonic spirits might throw at them which, from what we can gather from Genesis 6:1,2,4 could have included demon possession or sexual cohabitation…
When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive. And they took as their wives any they chose… and…when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown.
So, the picture that we’re presented with here is one in which at least 2,000,000,000 people with fallen human natures—having denied God and His power, and whose consciences are so calloused that they no longer know the difference between right and wrong—are running around doing whatever they please—and, whatever the demonic forces at work in the world want them to do. What a bleak and seemingly hopeless picture of humanity this is—and yet, this is what life would have been like in the years leading up to the Flood. Is it any wonder that when…
…the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually…
That…
…the Lord was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart?
Or, that He would say…
…‘I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land…for I am sorry that I have made them’? (Gen. 5-7)
At this low point in our Story, it would seem that all is lost, and humanity is a goner—but fortunately for us, this is not the case. For, it was into this very dark and doomed world that God shined one wonderful ray of redemptive light when He recorded…
But Noah… found favor [grace] in the eyes of the Lord (Gen. 6:8)…
…an acknowledgement which lets us know that it is now time our next Vignette–Vignette #6 to begin.
As Phillips Craig and Dean remind us, God’s Grace is still an amazing thing…
[1] Henry M. Morris, The Genesis Record (San Diego, California: Creation-Life Publishers, 1976) p.60.
[2] US Geological Survey, This Dynamic Earth: Historical Perspective, http://wwwusgs.gov, (August 7, 2012).
[3] US Census Bureau, Historical Estimates of World Population, https://www.census.gov, (December 19, 2013).
[4] Josephus, The Works of Josephus, as translated by William Whiston (Lynn, Mass.: Hendrickson Publishers, 1981) p. 27.
