PURPOSE OF GOD REFUSED by C. L. Emerson

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · May 5, 1898

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 24, No. 18.

PURPOSE OF GOD REFUSED.

By C. L. Emerson

Babylon the First.

“IN the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” For six days He wrought, at the end of which creation was complete. Man was the last created work, and was in truth the Creator’s masterpiece in this world. Looking out on creation with that divine eye which could detect the smallest flaw, God was constrained to say, “It is very good.”

Peace and joy reigned. Man received from the lips of His Creator, instructions which tended to give him perpetual joy and peace if followed. The animals of all kinds were obedient to His commands. A home was prepared for the first pair, beautiful beyond description. Here everything that was pleasant to the eye and good for food was supplied by the same Master Hand that supplied the home. This, with life, was all a free gift to man. The only restraint laid upon him was to accept with confidence the Word of the One who had freely given all this as a token of His regard. Properly viewed, this was rather a privilege than a restraint; for what God had done in creating him testified of His superior wisdom to guide; while life, with all its most pleasant surroundings, was enough assurance of His good-will.

Into this paradise of love and order came the tempter. He approached man as a friend, but not as a friend of his Creator. With the goodness of God before them, this should have given immediate rise to suspicion. But it did not.

The first attack was against that which procured to man all his blessings, his liberty, and his safety,—God’s Word. Satan well knew that so long as man had respect for that, he was as an impregnable fortress. So his first words were, “Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?” When answered in the affirmative, with the reason attached, “lest we die,” his immediate response was, “Ye shall not surely die; for God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.” It is said by good scholars that the word translated “yea” denotes a sneer. Thus we see that he first made light of God’s Word, then denied it flatly, and then placed instead of that Word, man’s ambition.

It is unnecessary to say that the device of Satan was successful. From this time man went from bad to worse. He had refused in one particular to listen to the voice of God, and Satan had him in his grasp. Had it not been for the interposition of the One whom he had refused to believe, he could never have been extricated from the snare into which he had walked with open eyes. But his Creator became his Benefactor and offered redemption and salvation to him if he would trust His Word. Few were willing to accept it, and so we read that Cain rose up and slew his brother because this brother did right—trusted God—contrary to his own evil works—trusting his own way.

The blessings which God gave men with which to glorify Him, they used to glorify self. This continued until every purpose, desire, and thought of the heart of man was only evil continually. When the time came that they no more thought a good thought, it pleased the Lord to cut them off, after giving them a warning by Noah, the only one whom He found righteous on the earth. As we view the terrible corruption of the earth at that time, and see the retribution it received in the Deluge, we are led to ask again, “And what caused all this?” It was all the result of one misstep,—man left God’s way.

The ark landed among the mountains. Noah and his family went forth to make homes in the earth. The command came from God to them, “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth.” Very soon after this we read: “And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there. And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar. And they said, Go to, . . . let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.” Gen. 11:2–4.

In three short verses we have the history of this people for future time portrayed. The Lord had said to them, “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish [fill] the earth.” Gen. 9:1. They could not fill the earth unless they should scatter abroad, and when we hear them saying, Let us do so “lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth,” we see that they had already rejected God’s way and were preparing to resist it. As they had rejected God’s way, they must have taken their own in its place. This we see they had done by the expression, “Let us make us a name.” He who knows the character of Satan, therefore, can read ahead the history of this people. It is true they did not succeed in their design, not because they changed their minds in any way, but because they were foiled in their work by the Lord.

He confounded their language and “scattered them abroad upon the face of all the earth.” The Lord named this place Babel (confusion) and it afterward became Babylon.

It would seem that such a defeat would have taught these people and all connected with them that it was best to do according to the Word of the Lord. Yet we read that Nimrod, the grandson of Ham, established a kingdom at Babel (Babylon); and not only so, but that this kingdom honored this first rebellious work by naming the site of the tower “Bab-il,” which in the Chaldean language signifies “the gate of god.” And after the Lord had, by lightning and earthquakes, torn it down, the king, Nebuchadnezzar, presumed to build it again, giving as a reason that the god Merodach excited his mind to do so. He says concerning it:—

We say for the other, i. e., this edifice, the house of the Seven Lights of the earth, the most ancient monument of Borsippa: A former king built it (they reckon forty-two ages), but did not finish its head. Since a remote time people had abandoned it, without order, expressing their words. Since that time earthquake and thunder had dispersed its sun-dried clay; the brick of the casing had been split, and the earth of the interior had been scattered in heaps. Merodach, the great lord, excited my mind to repair this building. I did not change the site, nor take away the foundation stone. As it had been in former times so I founded, I made it; as it had been in ancient days so I exalted its summit.—Smith’s Dict. of Bible, art. Babel, Tower of.

Thus we have a kingdom which was established shortly after the Flood, which maintained the part of the Babel-builders. This kingdom had rejected God’s way and were tenacious of their own. God’s way was all for harmony and union, because it is His plan to put His Spirit in every one who chooses His way. The rejection of this brings confusion. Should we not expect that this first great apostasy from God after the Deluge would, in the providence of the One who overrules, be designated “Babylon”—Confusion? C. L. EMERSON.