We will now take a rapid survey of the period lying between the flood and the call of Abram, By what characteristic title will we speak of it Suppose we term it the Governmental Age or Period. Now we enter upon the dispensational dealings of God, which date as an epoch from the establishment of the world, under the governmental authority of Noah—the first man ever invested with magisterial power.
"The world that was being overflowed with water perished;" plain statement this as to the universality of the flood (see also Gen. 7:19). The preserved remnant of eight souls of which Noah was head and representative, was the new stock to re-people the earth. None of the old responsibilities under which man was placed were, or could be, abrogated; but besides, additional and weighty responsibility was added, because of the new relationships in which men were set. The nature of the relationship determines the character of the responsibility, but the latter exists so long as the former continues. And here it may be well to inquire: Where was the evil lodged which, after the lapse of sixteen centuries and a half, and after the desolating waters of the flood upon the old creation still existed? Was it in the circumstances in which men were placed, or in the mere externals and surroundings of life? Nay, the besom of destruction had swept creation clean and clear of all, save the sheltered few in the ark. The tree itself was bad- irrecoverably so. The roots of evil are tangled and twisted round the very fibers of man's moral being. The source of man's badness and irremediable condition is in his depraved will, in his un-subject mind, which neither can nor will submit to God (Rom. 8:7, 8).
It is said: "Men cannot believe the Gospel—they lack the power." The proposition would be more fully and truthfully stated thus: "Men are responsible to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, but they will not;" you say, "He is bound in fetters of sin, and so he cannot come to the Savior." Why then does your powerless captive not invoke the aid of Him who came to "proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound?" Shall we tell you I It is because he hugs his chains and does not choose nor will to be delivered. The supper of grace—last meal before the midnight of judgment—was refused by all the invited guests. Why I Not because they could not come, but because they would not (Luke 14.) The waters of life are free to whosoever will.
Most touchingly did the Lord say to the Jews of old, "Ye will not come to Me that ye might have life." Instead, therefore, of caviling at the sovereign elective purposes of God in the calling of some who, like the mass that perish, had neither claim upon grace nor the will to be saved, let us each see to it, that life and salvation, full and eternal, are ours in immediate and conscious possession.
Previous to Noah, individual relationship and responsibility as in Abel, Enoch, and others, was the principle which God recognized, and on which He acted; but in Noah household relationship, with its corresponding responsibility attached to the paternal head, was first disclosed: "Come thou and all thy house into the ark, for thee have I seen righteous before me in this generation" (Gen. 7:1). The importance of this principle in the introduction of the household into an external place of blessing and privilege, on the individual faith and responsibility of its head, cannot be too highly estimated and valued. It was a principle established by God for the blessing and good government of families, and one which obtained when mankind at large was the subject of divine dealing, as also under Judaism, and especially so under Christianity (Acts 16, &c). The Bible is full of it. Wherever this household relationship to God is practically owned blessing is the sure result. Where are the mass of professing Christians as to this truth? It has been deliberately abandoned save by a few. The sanctification of our children from earliest years, as Jeremiah, John the Baptist, and might we add Samuel and Timothy, should be the desired blessing—alas! it is now a rare one. Would that the responsibility of the Christian head and parent were more truly felt and lived out before the Lord (Prow. 22:6; Eph. 6:4). The house of God is the sphere, introduction into which is by baptism (Acts 2.), where training of the child and its Christian character are developed.
But there is a third character of responsibility flowing from an entirely new principle in which God set mankind. Civil government, or magisterial authority, was instituted to curb the natural violence of man, and to maintain the authority of God on earth, and which yet (Gen. 9:1-6.) remains in full force. It is not a Jewish truth, but one of universal application. The Christian, however, is not called to the exercise of magisterial or other governmental authority, but is taught cheerful subjection to, and prayer for the governing powers, however tyrannical, or whatever their character may be (Rom. 13:1-7; Titus 3:1; 1 Tim. 2:1, 2). We enjoy a rich boon in the quiet and peaceable life, under the sway of the beloved Queen—the sovereign of these realms—and surely the Christian, who above all should own the Lord's authority in His Word and government of the earth, ought not to sanction the trampling down of the safeguards and bulwarks of society. Capital punishment as part of God's civil government for man on earth has not been repealed by Him who alone has the right to do so. The judicial oath, which even the blessed Lord respected (Matt. 26:63, 64), and other institutions of divine ordering, are being rapidly disowned as obsolete institutions. The barriers are breaking down and soon the storm of anarchy and infidelity will burst upon us; the tide is gathering and will quickly roll in upon an apostate Christendom. What do men or Governments care for the authority of God? Christians above all others should respect the laws of the country under which they live—obedience to these powers and laws is subjection to God and His Word (Rom. 1 Pet. 2:13, 14). Sorrow-fully we have witnessed the marriage laws of this country trampled upon by Christians, and other human appointments practically set at naught. Is this to honor the Word of God? There is abundant evidence that the word to Titus is as needful now as then: "Put them in mind to be subject to principalities and powers, to obey magistrates, to be ready to every good work" (Titus 3)
This was a period too, in which Satan displayed unusual activity. In order to frustrate the plan of God which was to distribute the race throughout the earth by families, Satan brought in the principle of concentration, and effected on the plains of Dura the first general confederacy amongst men. A human center of unity in the "tower" and of concentration on a universal scale in the "city," commenced in Babylonia; but God frowned on the impious attempt, and confounded the one language then spoken, and separated into distinct nationalities the one family of man. The Christian alone can account for the present and irregular distribution of mankind into nations and peoples, the result of the judgment of God upon the Babel attempt.
What a flood of light is thrown upon these questions in the first nine verses of the eleventh chapter of the book of Genesis. It may here be observed that chapter 10 shows the general result of the dispersion of the race; it affords a satisfactory answer to the notion which has gained credence with many to their exceeding loss, that we Gentiles are descendants of the scattered and lost ten tribes. Our progenitor is Japheth, eldest son of Noah, whose descendants were the Scythian races, the Greeks, Romans, Britons, and generally those who were to inhabit the Isles (verses 1-5); Ham, the youngest, was prophetically appointed as the father of the various African races and nations, also the Canaanites, Philistines, and generally the more subject races (verses 6-20). Shan, the second of the three brothers, has the Persians, certain Arabic nations, and all Israel-Judah as well as Ephraim, and the Messiah according to the flesh, as his descendants (verses 21-31). The chapter also is invaluable to the historian and student of the prophetic Word. The interesting fact that all the nations whose names are here recorded, although difficult to identify in some instances, are yet to re-appear representatively or in their descendants, in the future Jewish crisis, has been much forgotten; a little attention given to the subject would have saved historians from the rash assertion that many nations are totally extinct, and have forever passed off the scene of responsibility. There are national or collective responsibilities, as well as individual ones, and both will be inquired of by Christ in a day not far distant.
Satan suffered a total defeat in his effort to unite the race against God. The distribution of mankind into nations and tongues, having distinct and independent interests is an effectual check upon any general gathering of men as such, until allowed in the last development of evil at the close of the future era of glory (Rev. 20:7-9); then the promise to the woman's seed, the Second Man in the bruising of Satan's head will be fully accomplished (Gen. 3:15). It will be remembered that God linked Himself to the fallen creation, establishing a covenant of goodness with it—the rainbow in the cloud being the token (Genesis 9:9-17). Now Satan determined, if possible, to break up the relations of the Creator with "all flesh," to snap the link and separate man governmentally from God; hence after the flood-judgment, and after the dispersion of the race at Babel, Satan introduced into the world the most fearful and degrading of all evils—Idolatry. He first lowered the character of and conception of God in the mind of man to what was merely human, then lower still "to birds," and yet again, "to four-footed beasts;" is there a step yet lower in the scale of moral degradation? Yes, the heathen and philosophers of the ancient world "changed the glory of the un-corruptible God into an image made like to... creeping things" (Rona. 1:23). Ah! the point is reached at length. The thought of God is shut out completely from the conscience and mind of man, and Satan himself is deified and worshipped as the serpent, the most abject of "creeping things." Serpent worship was at one time universal over the whole earth. Its traces are everywhere found; in the British Isles, France, China, Africa, Russia, India, all over Asia. Frequently the serpent was associated with the sun in joint worship.
Sometimes serpent-idolatry gave place to sun-worship. Rapidly idolatry spread, so that even the highly favored Shemitic race was surely sinking into the awful abyss (Jos. 24:2). Satan gained his point. Demon-worship became universal, and the external governmental link with God on man's side was lost. All again is universal ruin and wreck. Adam deliberately chose Satan instead of God in the garden, and now the world has banished God from its thoughts and conscience, and worships as divine the declared enemy of God and man. This period, which, like the foregoing, commenced with sacrifice, closed up in an idolatrous and rejected world, hence Abram is called out to head a public witness against it—an event fraught with the gravest consequences to both Jew and Gentile—to the world at large.
Did men learn during this first of the dispensational periods to unite the two principles of life and responsibility? Was life and acceptance with God reached as a result? O what a terrible answer to the general responsibility of man, is furnished by God in the close of the age of conscience, by the judgment-flood, and in the governmental period, which at its end was divinely rejected, and only spared from immediate judgment on the ground of Noah's sacrifice. The old world left to itself perished, and the new world dealt with by God went right off into idolatry. The tree of responsibility spread its roots more firmly, covering with its ample shade individuals, families, nations, and the world at large, who all partook of its fruit; all produced was moral death.