AFTER the flood God gave promises to men, and made covenants. We remember that the first declaration of the final overthrow of Satan was announced to the serpent, and not to man; but on his going forth out of the ark Noah built his altar unto the Lord, and the sweet savor of the sacrifice arose to Him, and He said in His heart, He would not again curse the ground for man’s sake. And after that, God blessed Noah and his sons, and established His covenant with them and with the creatures of the earth, to the effect that there should be no more a flood upon the earth to destroy it. The sign of this covenant between God and His creation was His bow in the cloud. It spans the heavens, and rests upon both sea and land; daily is this lovely token before our eyes, and when the storms of heaven roll darkly up over the earth the bow shines across their darkness. Man may forget its meaning, or be blind to its witness, but God never forgets, for He has said “the bow shall be in the cloud; and I will look upon it, that I may remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is upon the earth.”
When God brings His storm-clouds up, and they darken the earth, He displays the varied beauties of His light upon the cloud. The rainbow is light divided, and we see the beauties of the colors that compose light nowhere more typically than in God’s bow. And thus does God display the perfections of His mercies, even when His judgments are abroad upon the earth; surely at such seasons we may ever say, His bow is in the cloud. For 4,000 years and more has the promise spanned the storm, and however heavy have been the divine judgments upon this earth, however terrible the thunders and the lightnings of God’s anger, hope has been inscribed upon the darkest cloud. And when the prophet saw the throne of God in heaven with lightning and thunders proceeding from it, with judgments issuing therefrom, to be poured out upon this rebellious earth, he saw, too, the token of mercy circling the throne, “there was a rainbow round about the throne, in sight like unto an emerald.” (Rev. 4:33And he that sat was to look upon like a jasper and a sardine stone: and there was a rainbow round about the throne, in sight like unto an emerald. (Revelation 4:3).) God’s purpose must stand; the blessing of the earth is sure, and though it will come after judgment, we lift up our eyes, and lo! “the bow is in the cloud.”
Man’s early ways after the judgment of the flood, like his ways in these latter days, have one word stamped upon them— combination! They journeyed west till they came to the Plain of Shinar, where, with one consent, they erected their city and their tower, with the view of keeping the human race together. This was the greatest scheme for reaching to strength and power that the world has known. After Babel came great kingdoms, and great efforts to subdue all peoples to one crown; but in those days all the people themselves were united to hold themselves together by their city and their tower. Then the Lord came down, and looked upon these works, and He said, “Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do”! So He confounded their language, and scattered man over the face of the earth.
Fora short season at Pentecost, the Holy Spirit of God, who came down to earth upon the ascension of Christ, gave power over divided tongues, and He has made all believers one in Christ, and in the glory.
There shall be but one language, and one city for all saints, but the glory thereof shall not be human greatness, but that of God and the Lamb.
So far as it is possible, men will combine and confederate in the latter days; great powers will become greater by their absorbing smaller, and the peoples of the earth will unite together, but even when Antichrist shall have his rule upon the earth, and spiritual Babylon shall arise in its power, there will exist opposition and conflict between men; for in God’s ways with man man’s purposes must eventually lead to confusion and to scattering, even as they have done since the time when with brick and slime men built their city, which, by God’s action, received the name of Babel— Confusion.
After the scattering of men and the division of their interest, the sacred story lead: us to perceive man retrograded from God— spiritually, still journeying from the light from the east! How the world became idolatrous we are not told, but there is ever only a short step between man’s glorifying himself and his servitude to the devil. Man gloried in himself and built Babel, and he betook himself to the worship of demons―put himself under their awful power. Idolatry has prevailed over the greater part of the earth for nearly 4000 years, and the living and the true God is in most parts unknown; and the tendency of the mind of man is to relapse into demon worship, even where the truth of God has been once known.
It was when men were sinking under the degrading influence of idolatry that the Lord called Abraham to get him out of country, kindred, and his father’s house to a country that God would show him, and He promised Abraham that He would make of him a great nation, and bless him and make him a blessing; and that in him all the families of the earth should be blessed. Now all out of the various families or nations of the earth who believe are made one in Christ, and in the day to come, through Christ, the families themselves shall all be blessed by a covenant-keeping God. For the present, God allows man to develop his own purposes.
In the ways of God, an entirely different character of His dealing with man from that which was His pleasure before the flood, is apparent. A man is called out from the rest of the world by God to Himself, and the path marked out is to trust God concerning His promise of an inheritance of future blessing. The rest of the world is left in its idolatry. One special locality, the land of Canaan, on the earth becomes in a peculiar way God’s care, the rest of the earth is left under the covenant of the bow in the cloud. The offspring of the man of faith, and the promised land became henceforth for hundreds of years the solicitude of God.
The lives of the fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and the descent of their children into Egypt, fill up the greater part of the first book of God’s word. What the kingdoms and dominions of the earth in those days were, are touched on incidentally, that is in so far as they may relate to God’s chosen people.
God shows us that His mind is set upon His covenant with Abraham and His promise respecting the land of Canaan, and there His ways are marked and clear up to the advent of His Son upon the earth.