WE purpose this year occasionally devoting a few of our pages to the consideration of God’s ways with man from the beginning to the end of time. Our object will be rather to lead the mind to ponder over the dealings of God with man, and man’s ways toward God, than to show the length of the periods that are past or to come into which the history of man in relation to God may be divided.
It has pleased God to reveal Himself to our race in varied ways, and God has tried or tested man under different conditions, until this present day, when He is revealing Himself in the face of Jesus Christ, His Son, risen from the dead, and in glory above.
The accompanying diagram will enable the eye to take in at a glance the great eras or ages in man’s history which are to occupy us. They are as follows:—
Eternity.
We live in the sixth of these eras. How long this age will continue we know not, but we do know that Christ, who shall come, will come, and will not tarry. The latter part of the world’s history is reached, and the end is near.
MAN INNOCENT.
The record of the day of man’s innocence is short. We learn of his wisdom, and his relation to God, and how he fell from his first estate; we learn, too, the purpose of God in man’s creation, which great end God maintains in view, be man’s failure and sin what they may, and this purpose will be fulfilled in divine abundance in Christ.
God made man in His image, and after His likeness. In the glory, God’s children shall bear the image of the heavenly, and be forever like Christ. Such is the destiny of the people of God, and in view thereof, even the history of this world and the development of fallen man’s history seem but as little things.
FALLEN, AND WITHOUT LAW.
Fallen from his original state, a sinner, and subject to death, man’s history begins with a long period, during which he was without law. From Adam to Moses he was without law, and was left by God, to a considerable extent, to work out his own will. In those times man allied himself with Satan in a verb definite manner; his wickedness increased exceedingly, and at length God sent the flood, and swept the human race from the face of the earth, with the exception of eight souls. As God has His great end in the creation of man, so has Satan his object in marring that purpose, and in attracting man to himself. Satan has from the first, to this hour, sought the sway over human beings. As he gained an alliance with man at the beginning, so will he at the end; and, as that beginning concluded in the judgment of God; so will the end terminate in divine judgment, for, in the day that is at hand, Satan will once more gain direct power over man, and he will set up his kingdom on the earth, which God will overthrow by fire, and in judgment. Therefore, in a certain sense, the dark scene: of the days of the flood will be repeated or the earth.
The union agreed upon among men in order to work out a common end, as is seen in the story of Babel, will also in effect be repeated when spiritual Babylon rears up itself, as we read in the book of the Revelation. For human combination to affect a common end, and surrender to Satan, are principles belonging to the fallen state of man.
We may ask, “If the history of man, as told in those centuries, when, without law, he was left to himself, be so dark and terrible, what light does the Scripture throw upon the lives of those who walked with God, and God’s ways with them, in those early times?” This record is simple. What works these men of faith wrought on the earth we are not told―we read merely that they lived so many years, and died. Their character of stranger-ship in the world, which had cast off God, is thus clearly marked, and thus do those holy men of old become an example and a witness to ourselves.
Enoch’s walking with God is recounted, and his end— “he was not, for God took him”; and in Enoch we behold a type of the Christian, whose path on earth is walking with God, and whom God will take away out of the earth, before His judgment falls upon it. In Noah, who built an ark to the saving of his house, we see another type of the Christian, whose life and testimony have the effect, through grace, of bringing his household to Christ for safety, and of warning those around him of the judgment that is about to fall upon the earth. Stranger-ship, walking with God, and testimony to coming judgment, are the excellent things we see in the lives of the saints of the early days, and which we, in these latter times, should earnestly desire to have fulfilled in our own lives.
THE SUBJECT OF PROMISE.
The judgment of the flood being passed, man essayed to establish himself with a name that could not be destroyed, and to form a great union for himself upon the earth; to carry out this purpose, he began to build Babel, afterward Babylon. Then God scattered the human race by dividing their language, and, according to the dialects and tongues forced upon them, arose the tribes and nations which now people the earth.
Very shortly after the flood, the human race lapsed into idolatry, which is the outward form of demon-worship, and one of Satan’s great means of bringing man into subjection to himself.
Then it was that God called out from the mass of men one man to follow Him, and to him, “the father of the faithful,” God gave promises. While Satan held men in thrall, worshipping and serving demons and idols, God gave Abraham His word that He would be his shield and his exceeding great reward. God promised that the Seed should come, in whom all the nations of the earth should be blessed. And thus the human race, under the misery and terror of demon worship, were to be peaceful and happy through the Seed. Abraham, up to old age a childless man, was assured that his offspring should be as the sand of the sea shore, and as the stars of heaven in multitude. He, through the Seed, which is Christ, was to be the progenitor of the race that should overcome, and that should possess earth and heaven. As time went on, for some hundreds of years, the subjects of divine promise walked with God in the expectation of its fulfillment, and their lives are characterized by their faith and hope in God’s word.
Now, as we consider these holy men separated from idolatry, dwelling in tents and shunning the organized world-systems of their day, we can but see in them what Christians should be in this our own time. For to us are given exceeding great and precious promises. Our future rests solely upon God’s faithful word, and according to our faith in His word are our lives those of pilgrims on earth seeking a better country, even an heavenly. Our hope is in God, and in the coming of His Son, whose reign has not yet commenced on the earth. Promise creates expectation, and hope in God is one of the greatest powers within the heart of man for true godly living, and for disregarding the glory and honor of the hour in which we live upon the earth.
UNDER THE LAW.
After the promise, God gave the law, and we see herein God’s different ways of dealing with man. The children of Abraham had risen to be a nation, and God had called this nation to be His peculiar people. He gave Israel His law, and Israel accepted its responsibilities, and thus God and man entered into covenant. So long as Israel obeyed God’s law, blessings were theirs, but upon disobedience, the curses attached to their disobedience fell upon them.
Unlike promise which is made in grace, the law imposed solemn responsibility upon man to carry out its commands. “It was added because of transgressions, till the Seed should come, to whom the promise was made.”
For some hundreds of years man, as represented by God’s nation, Israel, lived under the law. Left to himself, without law, man had utterly rejected God, and had instead allied himself with Satan; now, with the holy law of God to show him right and wrong, what would he do? Either disobey the commands of God and serve his own will―as did Israel, whom God drove out from their land because of their transgressions―or, retaining the words of the commands, use the letter of the law and his religiousness to exalt self and to reject the Seed, Jesus the Messiah, as did the Jews to whom Christ came!
Thus some four thousand years of the history of man passed by, and God records the history in His word, not to teach us of the rise and fall of nations, nor to explain to us the growth of science, nor the loss of wisdom on the earth, but to teach us concerning Himself, and to show us what man really is.
When we consider in some detail the record the Bible gives of man in the distant ages to which we have referred, we shall find profit to our souls in the present day, and obtain principles to assist our faith in this nineteenth century. In the next number we shall speak of the last three periods we have indicated.