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From the time Cain left God’s way of redemption and went his own way of death, to the time of Methuselah, two striking things occurred among the human race. The first was the producing of a culture without God by the man who went the way of death, and the second was the judgment of the deluge, which came from God.
Because Cain refused to take God’s way of redemption and chose to go the way of death, he lost God and all the blessings that come from God. Consequently, he must have been filled with a sense of insecurity. He became a fugitive and a vagabond on the earth, a person who had no goal, no satisfaction, no rest, and no protection. Hence, among the human race, he was the first one to build a city for self-preservation (Gen. 4:17). He named the city Enoch, after the name of his son. The fact that he did not name the city after the name of God was a declaration that man had become independent of God. His descendants invented cattle-raising for making a living, music for amusing themselves, and weapons for self-defense (Gen. 4:20-22). This was a godless culture that was for self-preservation, self-support, self-amusement, and self-defense. It was invented apart from God by the man who lost God and all God’s blessings.
Hence, human culture was produced because man had lost God. Originally, God was everything to man. God was man’s protection, maintenance, supply, joy, amusement, and defense. However, when man lost God and all that God was to him, he had to invent something for his own protection so that he might exist on the earth. This is the reason that human culture was formed. In such a godless culture man indulged in lusts and took many wives. Moreover, man became lawless, godless, murderous, and violent (Gen. 4:23-24). Among Cain’s descendants, there was one named Lamech, who married two wives (Gen. 4:19), thus practicing polygamy. In order to fulfill the lusts of his flesh, Lamech was the first to break the principle of marriage ordained by God for human propagation, that is, the principle of one wife for one husband (Gen. 2:24). He also boasted that he had slain a man and had killed a young man. Thus, he was truly lawless and arrogant. How dreadful and evil was such a godless culture! Consequently, such a culture caused the whole human race to be corrupted. Because every imagination of the thoughts of man’s heart was only evil continually, and because the earth was filled with man’s violence, God repented that He had made man and was grieved in His heart. Thus, He had to destroy the human race completely (Gen. 6:5-7, 11-13), preserving only Noah’s family of eight.
Apparently, such a culture without God was invented by the man who refused to go God’s way and thereby lost God. Actually, its intrinsic factor was the instigation and incitement of Satan, God’s enemy, within the man who departed from God. At the time of man’s fall, Satan, the evil one, injected himself into man and embodied himself in sin to dwell in man’s flesh. This was like an evil seed that was sown into man. This seed developed first into jealousy, then into anger, hatred, murder, and lies (Gen. 4:5-9), and then into lusts and violence (Gen. 4:19, 23). Eventually, it destroyed the entire human race.
This can be proved by Genesis 6:2, where we are told that the fallen angels assumed human bodies to marry the daughters of men. This verse shows us that man, who had left God and had thereby lost God, followed Satan and cooperated with Satan, even to the extent of being united with the angels of Satan. These angels of Satan used the human body to bring confusion into the human race through marriage, making the human race a mixture of human nature and the fallen spirits, thus inviting God’s judgment in order to clear up the human race.
Such a culture, which was without God and was united with Satan, became a model representing all human cultures throughout the ages and signifying that these cultures have departed from God and are without God, and that they have followed Satan and are united with Satan. The godless culture began as a seed in Genesis 4, and it will develop throughout the history of the entire human race until it consummates in Babylon the Great in Revelation 18, which also will be cleared away by God’s judgment. This clearing away by God’s judgment is Christ’s judgment of the world at His coming back. Therefore, in Matthew 24:37-39 the Lord Jesus considered the judgment of the flood as a prefigure of His coming. He said, “For as the days of Noah were, so shall the coming of the Son of Man be. For as they were in those days before the flood, eating and drinking, marrying and being given in marriage...until the flood came and took all away; so also shall the coming of the Son of Man be.” This word shows us that the godless culture at the time of Noah will develop to its uttermost in the period of the Lord’s coming. Hence, when the Lord comes back, He will again clear up and put in order the world and the entire human race.
Satan, the enemy of God, instigated and utilized the man who departed from God, the man who refused to take God’s way but rather took his own way, to produce a godless culture that corrupted the entire human race. As a result, the judgment of the deluge was brought in. This judgment has the following three implications.
In His creation, God used the atmosphere to make rain and to cause the rain to come down on the earth so that the different kinds of life, including the plant life, the animal life, and human life, might exist. Acts 14:17 says that God is “doing good, giving you rain from heaven and fruitful seasons, filling your hearts with food and gladness.” Also, Isaiah 55:10 says, “For as the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater....” These verses clearly indicate that the function of the atmosphere is to send down the rain for the maintaining of all the living creatures on the earth. However, when God used the flood to judge the corrupted human race, He changed the purpose of the function of the atmosphere so that it was no longer for the existence of man and all living creatures, but was for the executing of God’s judgment to destroy mankind and the whole earth (Gen. 6:13).
This kind of judgment, a judgment for the purpose of destruction, also became a model, signifying that when man has been corrupted to the uttermost, God will again alter the function of the heavens and the earth, which He created, causing that function to be for man’s destruction rather than for man’s existence. In that day the earth and the heavens will shake, the sun will become black, the moon will become as blood, the stars of heaven will fall to the earth, and every mountain and island will be moved out of its place (Rev. 6:12-14). These supernatural calamities will cause the people on the earth to lose their safe dwelling places. Then God will go one step further to judge the earth, the sea, and the rivers, and the sun, moon, and stars (Rev. 8:7-12). These intensified, supernatural calamities will damage the earth, the sea, and the rivers, and the third part of the heavenly hosts, thus causing the earth, which was created by God for man’s existence, to be no longer good for man’s living. Eventually, God will use the most severe calamities, the calamities of the seven bowls, which signify God’s wrath, to give full vent to His wrath, causing the sea, the rivers, and the springs to become blood, the sun to burn men, and the kingdom of Antichrist on the earth to become darkened (Rev. 16:3-10). Moreover, there will be the greatest earthquake and the greatest hail in human history (Rev. 16:18, 21). The heavens and the earth, instead of working for men, will become calamities that damage men. However, for the fulfillment of His eternal purpose, God will exercise restraint in His ultimate fury; otherwise, the entire earth with its inhabitants would be destroyed.
As we have mentioned before, in the human culture that was without God and was united with Satan, man and the angels of Satan, the fallen angels, became mixed as one through human marriage. This caused the human race created by God to become mixed with the race of the evil spirits. Therefore, God used the judgment of the flood to destroy the entire human race, except Noah’s family of eight. One of His intentions was to destroy the mixed human race, to clear up the human race and put it in order, thus restoring and preserving the purity of the human race, that He might still carry out His eternal economy through man according to His purpose in creating man.
This point also is a model, signifying that God’s subsequent judgments are for clearing up the human race to preserve it for the accomplishing of His eternal purpose. For example, at His coming Christ will judge the people living on the earth to clear away the evil ones, the “goats,” separating them from the righteous ones, the “sheep,” and casting them into the lake of fire for perdition (Matt. 25:41, 46), after Antichrist and the false prophet are cast there (Rev. 19:20). Also, at the end of the millennium, God will judge and destroy the last group of people who follow Satan and rebel against God. He will clear them away from the rest of the nations, devouring them by fire, and will cast the devil, who deceived them, into the lake of fire and brimstone, where Antichrist and the false prophet will have been cast (Rev. 20:7-10). By so doing He will purge away the rebellious nature in mankind. Finally, after the millennium, at the judgment of the great white throne, God will cast all the dead, including all the dead people imprisoned in Hades and all the demons confined in the sea, and death and Hades into the lake of fire (Rev. 20:13-15). In this way God will clear up the universe completely.
God had a positive intention in judging the human race by the flood. His intention was to rescue out of the corrupted age those who took His way of redemption and life, that they might live for Him on the new earth, which came out of the judgment of the deluge. Therefore, 1 Peter 3:20-21 considers the judgment of the deluge a prefigure of the water of baptism in the New Testament. In this aspect also the judgment of the deluge is a model of the three judgments mentioned previously. On the positive side, the first of the three aforementioned judgments is to separate the righteous ones from the evil ones, that the righteous may enter into the millennium and live on the restored earth to be God’s people for the fulfillment of God’s kingdom (Matt. 25:31-34). The second judgment is to separate the purified people, whom God desires, from the rebellious ones, thus clearing away the poison of rebellion against God, which was injected by Satan into people. Thus the purified human beings may enter into the new heaven and new earth and live on the new earth to be God’s people forever for God’s eternal kingdom, so that God and His redeemed and transformed people may carry out His kingship, and so that His glory may be manifested in them (Rev. 21:24; 22:5b). Finally, in the third judgment, the judgment of the great white throne, the positive purpose is to separate out the new people of the New Jerusalem and the purified people on the new earth, both of whom God will have obtained by then, for the accomplishing of God’s eternal economy. At that time, the old heaven and old earth will be consumed by fire and will be renewed to be the new heaven and new earth (2 Pet. 3:10-13), in which will be the New Jerusalem as God’s eternal expression.
When man lost God and all the blessings that come from God, he became a fugitive and a vagabond on the earth, a person who had no goal, no satisfaction, no rest, and no protection. Hence, man invented a godless culture apart from God for self-preservation, self-support, self-amusement, and self-defense. The intrinsic factor that caused the formation of the godless culture was Satan’s instigation and incitement within the man who had left God. Man, who had left God and thereby lost God, followed Satan and cooperated with Satan, even to the extent of being united with the angels of Satan. This brought confusion into the human race through marriage, thus inviting God’s judgment for the purpose of clearing up the human race. Such a culture, which was without God and was united with Satan, became a model representing all human cultures throughout the ages and signifying that these cultures have departed from God and are without God and that they have followed Satan and are united with Satan. Consequently, they will be cleared away and judged by God.
The man who departed from God and refused to take God’s way produced a culture that corrupted the entire human race. As a result, the judgment of the deluge was brought in. In this judgment God changed the function of the atmosphere that He had created, so that it was no longer for the existence of man and all living creatures, but was for the executing of God’s judgment to destroy mankind and the whole earth. God also used the judgment of the deluge to destroy the mixed human race so that the purity of the human race might be restored and preserved. God even used the flood to rescue out of the corrupted age those who took His way of redemption and life, that they might live for Him on the new earth, which came out of the judgment of the deluge.
