The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence.
The earth had become morally ruined and defiled in God's sight and full of violent wrongdoing, because all flesh had corrupted God's way and every imagination of the heart was only evil continually. That corruption was inward and outward defilement in body and soul, shown in gross licentiousness and intemperance, in polygamy and seizure of wives and property by force, in murder, robbery, oppression and war, until only a small righteous class remained amid a great majority given over to iniquity. Its root was putting God out of knowledge and thought, rejecting His law, worshiping idols and creatures, and using great gifts for selfish pleasure and exaltation under Satan's rule. God Himself looked upon the earth, declared the end of all flesh had come before Him, yet in mercy gave one hundred and twenty years of probation preached by Noah, and only eight souls heeded and were saved when He washed the polluted earth clean by the Flood. As it was in the days of Noah so shall be the coming of the Son of man, and that same corrupt and violent condition is now fast returning step by step, calling for separation from the world, temperance, honoring of God's commandments including the creation Sabbath, and true conversion while time remains.
Wording and Historical Setting
The earth had become morally ruined, defiled and corrupt in God's sight and full of violent wrongdoing, because all flesh had corrupted God's way upon the earth and every imagination of the thoughts of the heart was only evil continually. Repeated unresisted evil shaped thought and conduct until wickedness became continual, and that universal moral corruption brought the judgment of destruction upon them. Noah was spared because he found grace and did not corrupt his way, just as Lot was afterward saved when fire from heaven destroyed wicked Sodom. That destruction in Noah's day is the pattern for the destruction that will come upon the inhabitants of the world at the coming of the Son of man, when men go on eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, and know not until destruction comes.
Being corrupt before God means inward and outward defilement in body and soul, coming from following imaginations of corrupt minds and dishonoring God by wicked inventions. It means moral defilement joined with gross licentiousness, eating and drinking and rising up to play with leaping, singing and sensual indecent dancing as in heathen worship. It includes a spirit of bold familiar freedom between men and women, flirting, seeking and lingering in each other's society and encouraging intimacy, excused as innocent so long as virtue was preserved, yet leading to every species of corruption, impure habits, unlawful associations, lust, immodesty and licentious indulgence. It means hating God, corrupting the way before Him, and living in licentiousness, indulgence and destructive lusts until the difference between pure God-given affections and lust cannot be discerned and the earth is filled with wicked works. The same Hebrew word rendered corrupt and corrupted describes Israel corrupting themselves in worship of the golden calf, which explains the terrible anger of the Lord and why He desired to consume the people at once.
Being filled with violence means murder, bloodshed, robbery, mob action, war, crime, cruelty and wickedness of every kind, worked by Satan and wicked angels rousing and controlling minds. People had largely lost fear of God and broken His commandments, producing widespread sin, open wickedness and lawlessness, with justice trampled, grave crimes including fraud, bribery, theft and murder become common and treated as ordinary, and human life treated as worthless when wishes were thwarted or passions stirred. The strong trampled rights of the weak and forced them into violence and crime while the oppressed cried to heaven, neighbors' wives, livestock, property and rights were seized by force or murder, and men took pleasure in violence and became astonishingly indifferent to human blood. That ferocity was increased by unchecked desires, multiplying wives contrary to God's original arrangement of one wife, and killing animals for food. Men delighted in destroying life and were determined to rule or ruin those who would not be ruled, and the heart-sickening violence then is compared with killings in modern cities amid increasingly oppressive laws, rapid development of evil, confusion among laboring classes and labor unions quickly stirred to violence.
The earth itself was defiled and morally polluted by human violence and corrupting works springing from selfishness and covetousness. Before the Flood the world was far more beautiful in grandeur and loveliness than now, and God had surrounded people with precious things because He loved them, but they turned blessings into a curse by using them to gratify pride and glorify themselves. Nation rose against nation, watching for advantage, with daring deeds of unholy ambition to gain strength by robbing others. God would no longer bear moral pollution but washed the earth clean of it by a flood, destroying them and the defiled earth and sweeping away men, beasts, abundant vegetation and human arts. The curse of sin still corrupts the earth, and without it the earth would be happy, but every place inhabited by human beings is debased with sin.
Only two classes existed: a small righteous class and a great majority given over to iniquity whose wickedness rose before God in total wickedness of heart and life and bold transgression of law. The righteous such as Enoch, Methuselah, Noah, Seth and others walked with God in uprightness and labored to keep alive the knowledge of God before the people, but truth was despised. Noah lived in a deeply immoral, polluted generation marked by wickedness, crime, intrigue and widespread violence in populous communities, and with his household trusting God's word he remained faithful, stood as a righteous witness in contrast to it and stood against the world around him, surrounded by enemies of truth while Enoch also labored. Secret groups worked in darkness to commit violence, evil filled thoughts, and God destroyed that long-lived generation by a flood while providing an ark for those who desired to be saved.
The corruption grew through Cain's teaching, example and influence after his life was spared, leading multitudes of descendants into sin until crime and pollution flooded the earth through fifteen centuries. The longer the wicked lived the more corrupt they became. It was aggravated among the long-lived race of lofty stature and giant intellect, endowed with perfected mental and moral capabilities, gold and silver in abundance, and inventions of art and human skill greater than the boasted arts of today. They used great gifts to work out human inventions, worship things their hands had made, extol themselves, suppose they improved upon God's plans, constantly seek to exceed one another in devices, forget the Lord, devote skill and knowledge to selfish exaltation, and devise how to make war with the universe of heaven and gain possession of Eden. Their wonderful works led the world to idolize genius, while cruelty and evil inventions defiled the earth and defaced God's image in man, so violence was upon the earth and the end of all flesh came before God in destruction by the Flood in which all those works perished.
The description is an accurate, inspired historical account of a real age, affirming Noah and the Flood as Scripture and historical fact, with human nature without God's Spirit the same as in the present age. That generation serves as a type of the world before Christ's return. Noah's preaching warned and tested the people before the Flood destroyed them with only a few surviving, providing the pattern for truth that warns, tests and proves the world.
Roots and Forms of Corruption
The root of the corruption was putting God out of knowledge and thought, rejecting Him and His law, disobeying His commandments, and casting aside all restraint to gain lawless freedom, with sinful tempers, appetites and attributes arrayed in hostility to God. The violence followed because men perverted the great gifts God had given them, pursued human inventions, forgot God, and used their abilities in opposition to Him. Rebellion against God's law spread until goodness and purity were nearly extinct, wickedness became open and daring, justice was trampled in the dust, and the cries of the oppressed reached unto heaven. Corruption grew as men looked upon evil until God ended their wickedness with the Flood.
By beholding false gods clothed with human attributes and passions, men became debased and defiled and sank lower and lower, for man rises no higher than his conceptions of truth, purity and holiness. They denied and rejected the Creator and worshiped creatures of their own imagination and idols made by their own hands. They misused the good things God had provided to make idols and to adorn places of worship.
Men used their gifts, strength and abilities for selfish ends, unlawful desires, pride, vanity, love of pleasure and self-gratification, and disregarded the rights of others. They placed their own intellect above God's wisdom, separated from Him, fell under Satan's rule, were imbued with his attributes, sold themselves to work wickedness, and oppressed all who did not meet their own measure. Even lawful eating, drinking, dressing, buying, selling, planting, building, marrying and giving in marriage consumed the mind until God was forgotten, what was duty to supply necessity being carried to excess and made the supreme object of life, becoming gluttony, drunkenness and sin and bringing theft, murder, lust, gratification of every base passion and every kind of satanic cruelty. Their disregard for God, lack of moral restraint, enslavement to appetite and passion, violent removal of anything that opposed their wishes, greed and selfish ambition exploiting and harming one another, and boasted progress and enlightenment while the earth was filled with iniquity and violence, reveal how the earth became filled with wickedness and violence. Human skill and knowledge did not preserve them from destruction when they rejected God's ways.
Intemperance in eating and drinking inflamed passions and filled the earth with violence and crime, with indulgence in perverted appetite setting passions on fire until men became violent, basely corrupt, hardened, and evil in thought and act. Gluttony and drunkenness dethroned reason so that men thought little of taking human life and life itself was unsafe. Eating animal food before God had permitted it and to excess, gratifying lusts and following appetite and disobedience until the cup of iniquity was full, made men violent, ferocious, cruel, bloodthirsty and astonishingly indifferent to human blood. Their appetite had become uncontrolled, their iniquity was full, and their moral pollution could no longer be borne, so God cleansed the earth by the Flood.
Contrary to God's original order of one wife, men followed sinful desire into polygamy and multiplying wives and indulgence of corrupt passions and degeneracy. They disregarded marriage and property rights, coveted and seized neighbors' wives and possessions by force or murder, took pleasure and exulted in violence, and disregarded justice until goodness was nearly extinct. The same corruption is now repeated as intense worldliness in eating, drinking, dressing, buying, selling and marrying.
The corruption included the crime of amalgamation of man and beast, which defaced God's image, caused confusion, corrupted their ways, and was singled out as calling for the destruction of the race by the Flood. This corruption led God to destroy the powerful, long-lived race.
Corruption grew by looking upon evil and by training youth to love excitement, glorify self, and follow evil imagination and the imagination of their own evil hearts, producing depravity, cruelty, violence and crime. It grew by secret groups working violence in darkness and by confederating in unions and combinations to gain controlling power and peril the lives of refusers, by corrupt choice of rulers, by political strife, bribery, fraud, coercion and unjust gain, by dishonest speculation and robbery of God and man such as speculation in lands and mines, and by rulers lightly punishing murder and crime. Absorption in excitement and the spectacle of one person overcoming another provides the pattern for the time before the coming of the Son of God, and cities and even country towns are becoming just like that world. Following corrupt desires and practices produces that terrible state.
The whole movement was Satan's violence and his principles of falsehood, rebellion and hostility against God and His law worked out through human agents on the same principles he followed in his revolt in heaven. Men threw off restraint, followed their own pleasure, mocked messages sent from heaven, submitted to Satan's principles, and brought forth crime, misery and murders as their fruit. By working out these corrupting principles he deceives and corrupts the whole world from beginning to ending, and he continues that same policy-working still, increasingly corrupting every earthly empire and the churches. The crimes were so great they were attributed to satanic agencies, with war, bloodshed and rebellion against God's law rooted in deep and increasingly strong enmity and hatred toward God, trampling His holy law under foot, accepting satanic attributes and concentrating vice in all its forms.
Repeated, unresisted evil shaped thoughts and conduct until wickedness became continual and hearts were hardened until conscience became unimpressible. Men sowed seeds of evil, rejected the voice of God for human theories and satanic delusions, resisted and set aside the Holy Spirit, held God's holy commandments in contempt, and exalted themselves above the Spirit's restraining influence until the heart of flesh became a heart of stone. Warnings then lose power, fear of God is lost, he sows to the flesh and reaps corruption, and resistance to truth confirms him in iniquity until the harvest of the seed he himself sowed ripens and brings destruction.
Flood Judgment from God
God Himself looked upon the earth and saw that it was corrupt before Him and filled with violence through men, because all flesh had corrupted His way and the wickedness of man was great with every imagination of the heart only evil continually. Seeing that total moral ruin He said the end of all flesh had come before Him and declared He would destroy them with the earth by a flood of waters that would take man with beast and creeping thing and fowl from its face. That generation had become ripe for destruction by resisting conscience and prophetic warning until patience was exhausted, growing ever more bold in disobedience after Adam's transgression until justice must end the sinful race. He looked down upon the impenitent rebellious world and determined He must give transgressors an exhibition of His power and indignation, causing Noah to know His purpose to send the flood. Noah alone was spared because he found grace as a just and perfect man who walked with God and did not corrupt his way, just as Lot was afterward saved when fire destroyed wicked Sodom. Only eight souls, Noah and his family, lived to enter the ark, while the rebellious who would not keep heaven's commandments drank the flood waters and were swept away with death as their portion, the reward of disobedience and penalty of transgression. That destruction in Noah's day is the pattern for the destruction to come upon the world's inhabitants at the coming of the Son of man, for the same corrupt and violent condition then is seen again now in the last days when men eat and drink and marry and know not until destruction comes.
In determined language against fearful wickedness He clothed Himself with vengeance and arose out of His place to punish the inhabitants for iniquity and to execute judgment against transgressors, for He would no longer bear moral pollution. There were only two classes, a small righteous class such as Enoch and others who walked with God in uprightness against a great majority given over to iniquity whose total wickedness of heart and life and bold transgression rose before God. Through Cain's teaching and example multitudes were led into sin until indulgence of appetite set passions on fire and left men violent, hardened and evil in thought and act, with extraordinary self-importance, swelling pride and universal scorn of law. Yet the Flood that washed the earth of its moral pollution was also mercy to the world, to the universe and to the righteous, blotting out wicked inhabitants as in mercy He destroyed corrupt Sodom and will finally destroy rejecters of grace. Workers of iniquity who obtain sympathy constantly lead others to rebellion, so freeing the world from hardened rebels prevented the leading of others to ruin and did not leave the faithful to perish with the wicked. In mercy He bore long with transgressors and gave a probation of one hundred and twenty years, directing that an immense boat be built on dry land as shelter for the obedient and for all who desired to be saved until the indignation was overpast. Noah and his helpers with employed carpenters, converts, Methuselah and others who kept the faith worked constantly and preached ever more earnestly amid ridicule, with many believers keeping the faith and dying triumphant before the flood and others backsliding, until the obedient were distinguished from the disobedient by the standard of the law as the long probation closed.
Because people perverted the great gifts God had given them the destruction swept away not only men but beasts, abundant vegetation and human arts and inventions, leaving the earth desolate. Before the Flood the world was far more beautiful in grandeur and loveliness than now, and God had surrounded people with precious things because He loved them, with gold and silver in abundance. They turned those blessings into a curse by using abilities, inventions, art and skill to gratify pride, glorify self, pursue human devices, forget God and contend with heaven to gain Eden. That long-lived race constantly sought to exceed one another and to use all works in opposition to God until violence filled the earth, so all those works perished in the Flood. The earth itself had been defiled and morally polluted by human violence and corrupting works, and its blotting out proves what follows from permitting the sinner to live on forever in unbridled rebellion. The curse of sin still corrupts the earth, so that without it the earth would be happy, but every place inhabited by human beings is debased with sin.
Probation Warning and Remnant
In mercy the corrupt generation was given a probation of one hundred and twenty years, announced by a holy angel and preached with increasing earnestness, and during that time every blow struck on the ark was a warning. The long probation was to close with the unrepentant swept from the face of the earth by a flood of waters, and as it closed the obedient were distinguished from the disobedient by the standard of God's law in a most critical time. The people were not left without warning, for the coming judgment formed the setting for God's warning through Noah.
By exact directions Noah was instructed to build an immense boat on dry land as shelter where the obedient could find refuge until the indignation was overpast. While building he was to preach the coming flood, that all who believed and prepared by repentance and reformation would find pardon and be saved. He warned by voice and by works, showing his faith by his works with his employed carpenters, with converts and believing carpenters, with Methuselah and his sons who lived to hear his preaching and helped build, and with many others who labored to keep alive the knowledge of the true God and to stay the tide of evil. Enoch had already repeated to his children what God had shown him about the Flood. Noah and those who died in the faith preached all the more earnestly in proportion to the ridicule and scorn heaped upon them, and many of the believing ones kept the faith and died triumphant while some converts died before the flood and others backslided.
The inhabitants did not perish for lack of warnings but because they did not heed the message sent through Noah. They disbelieved, rejected and scorned it as an idle tale, mocked the building, charged Noah with being deluded and fanatic, and talked of science and nature. Stirred daily to contradict it by precept and example, they continued planting and building and marrying and giving in marriage, eating and drinking, regardless of the solemn message. They grew more full of vileness and crime, with reason perverted by appetite and conscience unimpressible, denying the Lord and treating even their violent deeds as grounds for scorn while judgment approached. Even those who first appeared to receive the warning failed probation and joined the corrupt in mocking instead of truly repenting, until the last signs of provisions taken in and beasts and birds by sevens obediently entering the ark could not break their resistance.
Only Noah found grace as a just and perfect man who walked with God and did not corrupt his way. Only eight souls, Noah and his family, heeded, repented, kept the commandments of heaven and were saved in the ark as shelter for the obedient. The righteous on the earth were but few, and the Flood fulfilled the warning that those who refused to obey would perish. The rebellious race who would not keep the commandments drank the waters of the flood and were swept away, death being their portion as the reward of disobedience and the penalty of transgression, which exemplified the truth of God's word concerning obedience and disobedience.
Last Days Parallel Prophecy
Christ's own declaration makes the corrupt and violent state before the Flood the declared picture of the world at the coming of the Son of man and the time when He is revealed, not of a millennial preparation. That condition was total wickedness of heart and life and bold transgression of law, with all flesh having corrupted its way and every imagination of the heart only evil continually, expressed in idolatrous business, vileness, crime, eating and drinking, carnal amusements and every kind of iniquity, while men forgot God and put Him out of thought. Only two classes then existed, a small righteous company who walked with God in uprightness and a great majority given over to iniquity whose wickedness rose before Him, and God in determined language clothed Himself with vengeance, arose out of His place to punish inhabitants for iniquity, declared the end of all flesh had come before Him, and destroyed them with the earth by waters while providing an ark for those desiring salvation. The inhabitants did not perish for lack of warning but because during a probation of one hundred and twenty years they disbelieved the message preached by Noah by voice and works on dry land by exact direction, scorned it as an idle tale, mocked him as deluded and fanatic, talked of science and nature, continued planting and building and eating and drinking and marrying, grew more vile with perverted reason and unimpressible conscience, and remained unmoved even when provisions were taken in and beasts and birds entered by sevens, until the flood took them all away, and so shall it be at His coming.
That same corruption and violence is now repeated and fast returning step by step, with no new evils and the same forms of wickedness then current now. Human iniquity is nearing its limit and the earth is ripe for destruction as before the Flood and as Sodom was by fire, while many whom Christ died to save refuse to return to loyalty though eternal life is within reach of all who will accept Him as personal Saviour. Bible religion is rare amid apostasy in churches, constant amusements and ambitious projects to glorify man, increasing love of pleasure, indulged appetite for unnatural things introduced to deface the moral image of God, perverted appetites and inclinations, and hearing of warning without believing, putting away wrong principles, or overcoming temptations contrary to the divine will. Satan's intended work is to make the inhabitants of today become as those of the Flood, until Christ comes and judgment falls.
Present calamities are warnings that judgments are already falling and the end is at hand. The same war, bloodshed and wicked deeds fill the world today, with increasing earthquakes, floods, disasters by land and sea, fire and flame upon evildoers, destruction of cities, nation rising against nation watching for advantage, daring deeds of unholy ambition to gain strength by robbing others, wars and rumors of wars, broken thrones, distress of nations, war upon war, confusion, shrieks of suffering expiring nations, and burning contents pouring from the earth's bowels to destroy wicked inhabitants who resemble the antediluvians. God looks upon the world today as He looked upon it in Noah's time and sends His messages as then, and because men live as though there were no God, disregard His word, refuse thought of Him, and let wickedness prevail to an alarming extent through selfishness and covetousness, He can no longer bear moral pollution but withdraws restraining power and permits the destroyer his work, leaving the earth morally polluted and ripe for the harvest. Only a direct message from the Lord will arouse men and women now, and chosen sanctified men and women must go forth to warn, for obedience brings blessing in temporal and spiritual things and disobedience brings the curse.
The last conflict will exceed the old world in opposition to Christ, when Satan the originator of evil reveals his power in the children of men in his hour and the power of darkness moves the world to greater and still greater opposition to Christ and His message in the final contest between good and evil. Being corrupt before God means war against Heaven, with human beings confederated with satanic agencies and led by a power from beneath to make void the law of God and declare the divine standard of righteousness of no effect. Being filled with violence means murder, robbery, mob action and wickedness of every kind worked through minds roused and controlled by Satan and wicked angels, with seducing hypnotic corruptions taking minds captive, rapid development of evil, confusion among laboring classes, unions and confederacies quickly stirred to violence and using force to compel union, cruelty, misuse of power, hypocrisy in churches, a round of gaiety and pleasure-seeking, eating and drinking, ambition for self-exhibiting display, every conceivable crime, lust of the flesh, pride of the eyes and display of selfishness, until men act as though there were no God, absorbed in selfish pursuits, dancing and carousing, drinking and smoking, indulging animal passions until disgusted with life, marching blindly onward as an ox to slaughter by Satan's art and enchantments with no time to meditate. Human perversity and cruelty will reach such height that wickedness reaches its limit, with oppressive laws and labor strife showing men rapidly taking sides out of harmony with God, and then as in Noah's days God will reveal Himself in majesty to vindicate His honor, arise out of His place to punish inhabitants for iniquities, pour out judgments, disclose the earth's blood and no more cover her slain, bringing sudden destruction none shall escape and eternal death to all rejecting Christ, as the Flood swept the old world and fire consumed Sodom.
Modern cities and towns are becoming like the old world and Sodom and preparing for Sodom's fate. The world in Noah's days had become full of depravity, cruelty, violence and crime because youth were trained to love excitement, glorify self and follow evil imagination, and the same training now produces the same results in cities and even country towns. The violence then was heart-sickening, and the same state exists today acted out constantly in the cities, where men kill women and women kill men and girls of fifteen or sixteen are killed for refusing marriage, with evil worse nearer the large centers. The corruption is beyond what human pen can trace, seen in political strife, bribery and fraud on every hand, intense worldliness in eating, drinking, dressing, buying, selling and marrying carried to gluttony and drunkenness, theft, lust, cruelty, amusements and pleasure-seeking that keep men from meditation, and a determination to rule or ruin, ready to ill-treat and even kill those who will not be ruled. Laws of the land will become more and more oppressive as in Noah's days.
Present Application and Duty
Because the warning given to a corrupt and violent world was scorned, a message from God must still be given now to a world steeped in the same corruption even though it will not be received, and church members must not hide it by selfish unfaithfulness. The condition then proves there are no new evils and the same forms of wickedness are current now, marking the moral state before Christ's coming and the near end of earth's history when violence and crime prevail. Only a message direct from the Lord will arouse men and women now, so chosen men and women sanctified by grace must go forth with all energy through house-to-house labor, while Bible believers stand for righteousness and truth. Ministers are to carry forward a decided reform and lead God's people to a higher plane of action, and those who walk in the great light given will see salvation.
God's people are to be separated in practice from all the people upon the earth because the earth today is just as corrupt as in Noah's day. Faithful sentinels will guard their charge as a shepherd guards his flock, earnestly seeking the Lord with all the heart, educating households connected with them to render undivided service to God, practicing right principles with greatest care, betraying no sacred trusts, and not leading them into close connection with the world by encouraging selfish gratification, practicing worldly customs, or bringing earthly and selfish principles into God's work. Deliverance requires the new life formed within, likeness to Christ in character, contending for the faith once delivered to the saints, and living godly in Christ Jesus, for not one who decides to continue in the worldly course of working out own plans and following imagination of evil hearts will enter heaven.
The pre-flood condition carries a lesson on temperance applicable to the present world, for excessive indulgence of appetites and passions corrupted soul and body and filled the earth with selfishness, violence and crime, and the same condition prevails as history closes. This requires reform in habits of life, with brain clear and body as free as possible from disease, to fit a people for Christ's coming. Those truly on the Lord's side answer by self-denial and self-sacrifice in every family, eating and drinking to God's glory and refusing intemperance, and when the church does this her condition testifies her light has not been removed. If church members refuse their assigned part and refuse to receive and practice the light, the health reform movement will go on without them, God will remove their candlestick out of its place, and they will be left in the background.
The violence comes from disregard of God's law, which produced rebellion and corruption before the Flood and now again fills the earth with wickedness and moral pollution. That disregard is seen in honor given to a false sabbath while laws protect evils such as the liquor traffic that takes away reason, brutalizes beings made in God's image, and leads to crime and murder, making the world a second Sodom with betting, horse-racing, gambling, dissipation, lustful practices and untamable passions. False shepherds make God's Word of no effect by opposing His law, rejecting His Word, putting their own words in its place, teaching commandments of men as doctrines while claiming wisdom, and by that apostasy encouraging the wickedness that fills the earth. Declaring God's law abrogated and the Bible not authentic brings an overwhelming flood of lawlessness, dissipation, extravagance and corruption seldom seen since Noah and apostate Israel, where nobility, gentleness and piety are bartered to gratify lust for forbidden things, taking of human life becomes daily, judgment is turned backward, justice stands afar off, truth is fallen in the street and equity cannot enter. God's commandments, controlled by love to God and fellow men and including the creation Sabbath memorial, remain the life and prosperity of the pure in heart, and honoring His Sabbath shows loyalty while His word and covenant stand fast bringing life for obedience and death for transgression.
The only remedy for a world polluted and corrupted as in Noah's time, living as though there were no God and refusing thought of Him, is belief in the truth and acceptance of the light. Refusing truth spoken in demonstration of the Spirit, hating light, trampling God's Word and doing despite to His Spirit defiles the soul, interposes between heaven-sent light and the people, and shares in ruin of souls. There must be true conversion every day as vessels unto honor, renewal of covenant with God, and removal of all stubbornness of heart, for the Lord is in earnest. Those who do appointed daily work in strict accordance with God's principles need feel no fear of defilement even while working among corruption, but God cannot bless unfaithful stewards and withdraws restraining power and permits the destroyer to accomplish destroying work, so calamities come and obedience brings blessing in temporal and spiritual things while disobedience brings curse, leaving the earth ripe for harvest.
Familiarity with vice through popular display of sin dulls consciences in a world rapidly filling with sin and crime as before. Violence is the spirit of Satan manifested when men follow own imagination, flying into passion when disturbed, making innocent people suffer, and a husband acting out anger and violence upon his wife destroys confidence of children and others in Christianity and bars their receiving truth. Unless such a course is turned from by repentance and doing duty it adds to guilt already charged and shuts one out of the city of God at judgment. The crimes then were so great they were attributed to satanic agencies, warning against turning from righteousness and calling to walk in light while there is time. As strife, war, bloodshed and wickedness return because the end rapidly nears, Christians must not war among themselves but be perfectly joined in same mind and judgment to advance God's kingdom, revealing Christ's purity and love in dealings with one another.
The earth had become morally ruined and defiled in God's sight and full of violent wrongdoing, because all flesh had corrupted God's way and every imagination of the heart was only evil continually. That corruption was inward and outward defilement in body and soul, shown in gross licentiousness and intemperance, in polygamy and seizure of wives and property by force, in murder, robbery, oppression and war, until only a small righteous class remained amid a great majority given over to iniquity. Its root was putting God out of knowledge and thought, rejecting His law, worshiping idols and creatures, and using great gifts for selfish pleasure and exaltation under Satan's rule. God Himself looked upon the earth, declared the end of all flesh had come before Him, yet in mercy gave one hundred and twenty years of probation preached by Noah, and only eight souls heeded and were saved when He washed the polluted earth clean by the Flood. As it was in the days of Noah so shall be the coming of the Son of man, and that same corrupt and violent condition is now fast returning step by step, calling for separation from the world, temperance, honoring of God's commandments including the creation Sabbath, and true conversion while time remains.
Wording and Historical Setting
The earth had become morally ruined, defiled and corrupt in God's sight and full of violent wrongdoing, because all flesh had corrupted God's way upon the earth and every imagination of the thoughts of the heart was only evil continually. Repeated unresisted evil shaped thought and conduct until wickedness became continual, and that universal moral corruption brought the judgment of destruction upon them. Noah was spared because he found grace and did not corrupt his way, just as Lot was afterward saved when fire from heaven destroyed wicked Sodom. That destruction in Noah's day is the pattern for the destruction that will come upon the inhabitants of the world at the coming of the Son of man, when men go on eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, and know not until destruction comes.
Being corrupt before God means inward and outward defilement in body and soul, coming from following imaginations of corrupt minds and dishonoring God by wicked inventions. It means moral defilement joined with gross licentiousness, eating and drinking and rising up to play with leaping, singing and sensual indecent dancing as in heathen worship. It includes a spirit of bold familiar freedom between men and women, flirting, seeking and lingering in each other's society and encouraging intimacy, excused as innocent so long as virtue was preserved, yet leading to every species of corruption, impure habits, unlawful associations, lust, immodesty and licentious indulgence. It means hating God, corrupting the way before Him, and living in licentiousness, indulgence and destructive lusts until the difference between pure God-given affections and lust cannot be discerned and the earth is filled with wicked works. The same Hebrew word rendered corrupt and corrupted describes Israel corrupting themselves in worship of the golden calf, which explains the terrible anger of the Lord and why He desired to consume the people at once.
Being filled with violence means murder, bloodshed, robbery, mob action, war, crime, cruelty and wickedness of every kind, worked by Satan and wicked angels rousing and controlling minds. People had largely lost fear of God and broken His commandments, producing widespread sin, open wickedness and lawlessness, with justice trampled, grave crimes including fraud, bribery, theft and murder become common and treated as ordinary, and human life treated as worthless when wishes were thwarted or passions stirred. The strong trampled rights of the weak and forced them into violence and crime while the oppressed cried to heaven, neighbors' wives, livestock, property and rights were seized by force or murder, and men took pleasure in violence and became astonishingly indifferent to human blood. That ferocity was increased by unchecked desires, multiplying wives contrary to God's original arrangement of one wife, and killing animals for food. Men delighted in destroying life and were determined to rule or ruin those who would not be ruled, and the heart-sickening violence then is compared with killings in modern cities amid increasingly oppressive laws, rapid development of evil, confusion among laboring classes and labor unions quickly stirred to violence.
The earth itself was defiled and morally polluted by human violence and corrupting works springing from selfishness and covetousness. Before the Flood the world was far more beautiful in grandeur and loveliness than now, and God had surrounded people with precious things because He loved them, but they turned blessings into a curse by using them to gratify pride and glorify themselves. Nation rose against nation, watching for advantage, with daring deeds of unholy ambition to gain strength by robbing others. God would no longer bear moral pollution but washed the earth clean of it by a flood, destroying them and the defiled earth and sweeping away men, beasts, abundant vegetation and human arts. The curse of sin still corrupts the earth, and without it the earth would be happy, but every place inhabited by human beings is debased with sin.
Only two classes existed: a small righteous class and a great majority given over to iniquity whose wickedness rose before God in total wickedness of heart and life and bold transgression of law. The righteous such as Enoch, Methuselah, Noah, Seth and others walked with God in uprightness and labored to keep alive the knowledge of God before the people, but truth was despised. Noah lived in a deeply immoral, polluted generation marked by wickedness, crime, intrigue and widespread violence in populous communities, and with his household trusting God's word he remained faithful, stood as a righteous witness in contrast to it and stood against the world around him, surrounded by enemies of truth while Enoch also labored. Secret groups worked in darkness to commit violence, evil filled thoughts, and God destroyed that long-lived generation by a flood while providing an ark for those who desired to be saved.
The corruption grew through Cain's teaching, example and influence after his life was spared, leading multitudes of descendants into sin until crime and pollution flooded the earth through fifteen centuries. The longer the wicked lived the more corrupt they became. It was aggravated among the long-lived race of lofty stature and giant intellect, endowed with perfected mental and moral capabilities, gold and silver in abundance, and inventions of art and human skill greater than the boasted arts of today. They used great gifts to work out human inventions, worship things their hands had made, extol themselves, suppose they improved upon God's plans, constantly seek to exceed one another in devices, forget the Lord, devote skill and knowledge to selfish exaltation, and devise how to make war with the universe of heaven and gain possession of Eden. Their wonderful works led the world to idolize genius, while cruelty and evil inventions defiled the earth and defaced God's image in man, so violence was upon the earth and the end of all flesh came before God in destruction by the Flood in which all those works perished.
The description is an accurate, inspired historical account of a real age, affirming Noah and the Flood as Scripture and historical fact, with human nature without God's Spirit the same as in the present age. That generation serves as a type of the world before Christ's return. Noah's preaching warned and tested the people before the Flood destroyed them with only a few surviving, providing the pattern for truth that warns, tests and proves the world.
Roots and Forms of Corruption
The root of the corruption was putting God out of knowledge and thought, rejecting Him and His law, disobeying His commandments, and casting aside all restraint to gain lawless freedom, with sinful tempers, appetites and attributes arrayed in hostility to God. The violence followed because men perverted the great gifts God had given them, pursued human inventions, forgot God, and used their abilities in opposition to Him. Rebellion against God's law spread until goodness and purity were nearly extinct, wickedness became open and daring, justice was trampled in the dust, and the cries of the oppressed reached unto heaven. Corruption grew as men looked upon evil until God ended their wickedness with the Flood.
By beholding false gods clothed with human attributes and passions, men became debased and defiled and sank lower and lower, for man rises no higher than his conceptions of truth, purity and holiness. They denied and rejected the Creator and worshiped creatures of their own imagination and idols made by their own hands. They misused the good things God had provided to make idols and to adorn places of worship.
Men used their gifts, strength and abilities for selfish ends, unlawful desires, pride, vanity, love of pleasure and self-gratification, and disregarded the rights of others. They placed their own intellect above God's wisdom, separated from Him, fell under Satan's rule, were imbued with his attributes, sold themselves to work wickedness, and oppressed all who did not meet their own measure. Even lawful eating, drinking, dressing, buying, selling, planting, building, marrying and giving in marriage consumed the mind until God was forgotten, what was duty to supply necessity being carried to excess and made the supreme object of life, becoming gluttony, drunkenness and sin and bringing theft, murder, lust, gratification of every base passion and every kind of satanic cruelty. Their disregard for God, lack of moral restraint, enslavement to appetite and passion, violent removal of anything that opposed their wishes, greed and selfish ambition exploiting and harming one another, and boasted progress and enlightenment while the earth was filled with iniquity and violence, reveal how the earth became filled with wickedness and violence. Human skill and knowledge did not preserve them from destruction when they rejected God's ways.
Intemperance in eating and drinking inflamed passions and filled the earth with violence and crime, with indulgence in perverted appetite setting passions on fire until men became violent, basely corrupt, hardened, and evil in thought and act. Gluttony and drunkenness dethroned reason so that men thought little of taking human life and life itself was unsafe. Eating animal food before God had permitted it and to excess, gratifying lusts and following appetite and disobedience until the cup of iniquity was full, made men violent, ferocious, cruel, bloodthirsty and astonishingly indifferent to human blood. Their appetite had become uncontrolled, their iniquity was full, and their moral pollution could no longer be borne, so God cleansed the earth by the Flood.
Contrary to God's original order of one wife, men followed sinful desire into polygamy and multiplying wives and indulgence of corrupt passions and degeneracy. They disregarded marriage and property rights, coveted and seized neighbors' wives and possessions by force or murder, took pleasure and exulted in violence, and disregarded justice until goodness was nearly extinct. The same corruption is now repeated as intense worldliness in eating, drinking, dressing, buying, selling and marrying.
The corruption included the crime of amalgamation of man and beast, which defaced God's image, caused confusion, corrupted their ways, and was singled out as calling for the destruction of the race by the Flood. This corruption led God to destroy the powerful, long-lived race.
Corruption grew by looking upon evil and by training youth to love excitement, glorify self, and follow evil imagination and the imagination of their own evil hearts, producing depravity, cruelty, violence and crime. It grew by secret groups working violence in darkness and by confederating in unions and combinations to gain controlling power and peril the lives of refusers, by corrupt choice of rulers, by political strife, bribery, fraud, coercion and unjust gain, by dishonest speculation and robbery of God and man such as speculation in lands and mines, and by rulers lightly punishing murder and crime. Absorption in excitement and the spectacle of one person overcoming another provides the pattern for the time before the coming of the Son of God, and cities and even country towns are becoming just like that world. Following corrupt desires and practices produces that terrible state.
The whole movement was Satan's violence and his principles of falsehood, rebellion and hostility against God and His law worked out through human agents on the same principles he followed in his revolt in heaven. Men threw off restraint, followed their own pleasure, mocked messages sent from heaven, submitted to Satan's principles, and brought forth crime, misery and murders as their fruit. By working out these corrupting principles he deceives and corrupts the whole world from beginning to ending, and he continues that same policy-working still, increasingly corrupting every earthly empire and the churches. The crimes were so great they were attributed to satanic agencies, with war, bloodshed and rebellion against God's law rooted in deep and increasingly strong enmity and hatred toward God, trampling His holy law under foot, accepting satanic attributes and concentrating vice in all its forms.
Repeated, unresisted evil shaped thoughts and conduct until wickedness became continual and hearts were hardened until conscience became unimpressible. Men sowed seeds of evil, rejected the voice of God for human theories and satanic delusions, resisted and set aside the Holy Spirit, held God's holy commandments in contempt, and exalted themselves above the Spirit's restraining influence until the heart of flesh became a heart of stone. Warnings then lose power, fear of God is lost, he sows to the flesh and reaps corruption, and resistance to truth confirms him in iniquity until the harvest of the seed he himself sowed ripens and brings destruction.
Flood Judgment from God
God Himself looked upon the earth and saw that it was corrupt before Him and filled with violence through men, because all flesh had corrupted His way and the wickedness of man was great with every imagination of the heart only evil continually. Seeing that total moral ruin He said the end of all flesh had come before Him and declared He would destroy them with the earth by a flood of waters that would take man with beast and creeping thing and fowl from its face. That generation had become ripe for destruction by resisting conscience and prophetic warning until patience was exhausted, growing ever more bold in disobedience after Adam's transgression until justice must end the sinful race. He looked down upon the impenitent rebellious world and determined He must give transgressors an exhibition of His power and indignation, causing Noah to know His purpose to send the flood. Noah alone was spared because he found grace as a just and perfect man who walked with God and did not corrupt his way, just as Lot was afterward saved when fire destroyed wicked Sodom. Only eight souls, Noah and his family, lived to enter the ark, while the rebellious who would not keep heaven's commandments drank the flood waters and were swept away with death as their portion, the reward of disobedience and penalty of transgression. That destruction in Noah's day is the pattern for the destruction to come upon the world's inhabitants at the coming of the Son of man, for the same corrupt and violent condition then is seen again now in the last days when men eat and drink and marry and know not until destruction comes.
In determined language against fearful wickedness He clothed Himself with vengeance and arose out of His place to punish the inhabitants for iniquity and to execute judgment against transgressors, for He would no longer bear moral pollution. There were only two classes, a small righteous class such as Enoch and others who walked with God in uprightness against a great majority given over to iniquity whose total wickedness of heart and life and bold transgression rose before God. Through Cain's teaching and example multitudes were led into sin until indulgence of appetite set passions on fire and left men violent, hardened and evil in thought and act, with extraordinary self-importance, swelling pride and universal scorn of law. Yet the Flood that washed the earth of its moral pollution was also mercy to the world, to the universe and to the righteous, blotting out wicked inhabitants as in mercy He destroyed corrupt Sodom and will finally destroy rejecters of grace. Workers of iniquity who obtain sympathy constantly lead others to rebellion, so freeing the world from hardened rebels prevented the leading of others to ruin and did not leave the faithful to perish with the wicked. In mercy He bore long with transgressors and gave a probation of one hundred and twenty years, directing that an immense boat be built on dry land as shelter for the obedient and for all who desired to be saved until the indignation was overpast. Noah and his helpers with employed carpenters, converts, Methuselah and others who kept the faith worked constantly and preached ever more earnestly amid ridicule, with many believers keeping the faith and dying triumphant before the flood and others backsliding, until the obedient were distinguished from the disobedient by the standard of the law as the long probation closed.
Because people perverted the great gifts God had given them the destruction swept away not only men but beasts, abundant vegetation and human arts and inventions, leaving the earth desolate. Before the Flood the world was far more beautiful in grandeur and loveliness than now, and God had surrounded people with precious things because He loved them, with gold and silver in abundance. They turned those blessings into a curse by using abilities, inventions, art and skill to gratify pride, glorify self, pursue human devices, forget God and contend with heaven to gain Eden. That long-lived race constantly sought to exceed one another and to use all works in opposition to God until violence filled the earth, so all those works perished in the Flood. The earth itself had been defiled and morally polluted by human violence and corrupting works, and its blotting out proves what follows from permitting the sinner to live on forever in unbridled rebellion. The curse of sin still corrupts the earth, so that without it the earth would be happy, but every place inhabited by human beings is debased with sin.
Probation Warning and Remnant
In mercy the corrupt generation was given a probation of one hundred and twenty years, announced by a holy angel and preached with increasing earnestness, and during that time every blow struck on the ark was a warning. The long probation was to close with the unrepentant swept from the face of the earth by a flood of waters, and as it closed the obedient were distinguished from the disobedient by the standard of God's law in a most critical time. The people were not left without warning, for the coming judgment formed the setting for God's warning through Noah.
By exact directions Noah was instructed to build an immense boat on dry land as shelter where the obedient could find refuge until the indignation was overpast. While building he was to preach the coming flood, that all who believed and prepared by repentance and reformation would find pardon and be saved. He warned by voice and by works, showing his faith by his works with his employed carpenters, with converts and believing carpenters, with Methuselah and his sons who lived to hear his preaching and helped build, and with many others who labored to keep alive the knowledge of the true God and to stay the tide of evil. Enoch had already repeated to his children what God had shown him about the Flood. Noah and those who died in the faith preached all the more earnestly in proportion to the ridicule and scorn heaped upon them, and many of the believing ones kept the faith and died triumphant while some converts died before the flood and others backslided.
The inhabitants did not perish for lack of warnings but because they did not heed the message sent through Noah. They disbelieved, rejected and scorned it as an idle tale, mocked the building, charged Noah with being deluded and fanatic, and talked of science and nature. Stirred daily to contradict it by precept and example, they continued planting and building and marrying and giving in marriage, eating and drinking, regardless of the solemn message. They grew more full of vileness and crime, with reason perverted by appetite and conscience unimpressible, denying the Lord and treating even their violent deeds as grounds for scorn while judgment approached. Even those who first appeared to receive the warning failed probation and joined the corrupt in mocking instead of truly repenting, until the last signs of provisions taken in and beasts and birds by sevens obediently entering the ark could not break their resistance.
Only Noah found grace as a just and perfect man who walked with God and did not corrupt his way. Only eight souls, Noah and his family, heeded, repented, kept the commandments of heaven and were saved in the ark as shelter for the obedient. The righteous on the earth were but few, and the Flood fulfilled the warning that those who refused to obey would perish. The rebellious race who would not keep the commandments drank the waters of the flood and were swept away, death being their portion as the reward of disobedience and the penalty of transgression, which exemplified the truth of God's word concerning obedience and disobedience.
Last Days Parallel Prophecy
Christ's own declaration makes the corrupt and violent state before the Flood the declared picture of the world at the coming of the Son of man and the time when He is revealed, not of a millennial preparation. That condition was total wickedness of heart and life and bold transgression of law, with all flesh having corrupted its way and every imagination of the heart only evil continually, expressed in idolatrous business, vileness, crime, eating and drinking, carnal amusements and every kind of iniquity, while men forgot God and put Him out of thought. Only two classes then existed, a small righteous company who walked with God in uprightness and a great majority given over to iniquity whose wickedness rose before Him, and God in determined language clothed Himself with vengeance, arose out of His place to punish inhabitants for iniquity, declared the end of all flesh had come before Him, and destroyed them with the earth by waters while providing an ark for those desiring salvation. The inhabitants did not perish for lack of warning but because during a probation of one hundred and twenty years they disbelieved the message preached by Noah by voice and works on dry land by exact direction, scorned it as an idle tale, mocked him as deluded and fanatic, talked of science and nature, continued planting and building and eating and drinking and marrying, grew more vile with perverted reason and unimpressible conscience, and remained unmoved even when provisions were taken in and beasts and birds entered by sevens, until the flood took them all away, and so shall it be at His coming.
That same corruption and violence is now repeated and fast returning step by step, with no new evils and the same forms of wickedness then current now. Human iniquity is nearing its limit and the earth is ripe for destruction as before the Flood and as Sodom was by fire, while many whom Christ died to save refuse to return to loyalty though eternal life is within reach of all who will accept Him as personal Saviour. Bible religion is rare amid apostasy in churches, constant amusements and ambitious projects to glorify man, increasing love of pleasure, indulged appetite for unnatural things introduced to deface the moral image of God, perverted appetites and inclinations, and hearing of warning without believing, putting away wrong principles, or overcoming temptations contrary to the divine will. Satan's intended work is to make the inhabitants of today become as those of the Flood, until Christ comes and judgment falls.
Present calamities are warnings that judgments are already falling and the end is at hand. The same war, bloodshed and wicked deeds fill the world today, with increasing earthquakes, floods, disasters by land and sea, fire and flame upon evildoers, destruction of cities, nation rising against nation watching for advantage, daring deeds of unholy ambition to gain strength by robbing others, wars and rumors of wars, broken thrones, distress of nations, war upon war, confusion, shrieks of suffering expiring nations, and burning contents pouring from the earth's bowels to destroy wicked inhabitants who resemble the antediluvians. God looks upon the world today as He looked upon it in Noah's time and sends His messages as then, and because men live as though there were no God, disregard His word, refuse thought of Him, and let wickedness prevail to an alarming extent through selfishness and covetousness, He can no longer bear moral pollution but withdraws restraining power and permits the destroyer his work, leaving the earth morally polluted and ripe for the harvest. Only a direct message from the Lord will arouse men and women now, and chosen sanctified men and women must go forth to warn, for obedience brings blessing in temporal and spiritual things and disobedience brings the curse.
The last conflict will exceed the old world in opposition to Christ, when Satan the originator of evil reveals his power in the children of men in his hour and the power of darkness moves the world to greater and still greater opposition to Christ and His message in the final contest between good and evil. Being corrupt before God means war against Heaven, with human beings confederated with satanic agencies and led by a power from beneath to make void the law of God and declare the divine standard of righteousness of no effect. Being filled with violence means murder, robbery, mob action and wickedness of every kind worked through minds roused and controlled by Satan and wicked angels, with seducing hypnotic corruptions taking minds captive, rapid development of evil, confusion among laboring classes, unions and confederacies quickly stirred to violence and using force to compel union, cruelty, misuse of power, hypocrisy in churches, a round of gaiety and pleasure-seeking, eating and drinking, ambition for self-exhibiting display, every conceivable crime, lust of the flesh, pride of the eyes and display of selfishness, until men act as though there were no God, absorbed in selfish pursuits, dancing and carousing, drinking and smoking, indulging animal passions until disgusted with life, marching blindly onward as an ox to slaughter by Satan's art and enchantments with no time to meditate. Human perversity and cruelty will reach such height that wickedness reaches its limit, with oppressive laws and labor strife showing men rapidly taking sides out of harmony with God, and then as in Noah's days God will reveal Himself in majesty to vindicate His honor, arise out of His place to punish inhabitants for iniquities, pour out judgments, disclose the earth's blood and no more cover her slain, bringing sudden destruction none shall escape and eternal death to all rejecting Christ, as the Flood swept the old world and fire consumed Sodom.
Modern cities and towns are becoming like the old world and Sodom and preparing for Sodom's fate. The world in Noah's days had become full of depravity, cruelty, violence and crime because youth were trained to love excitement, glorify self and follow evil imagination, and the same training now produces the same results in cities and even country towns. The violence then was heart-sickening, and the same state exists today acted out constantly in the cities, where men kill women and women kill men and girls of fifteen or sixteen are killed for refusing marriage, with evil worse nearer the large centers. The corruption is beyond what human pen can trace, seen in political strife, bribery and fraud on every hand, intense worldliness in eating, drinking, dressing, buying, selling and marrying carried to gluttony and drunkenness, theft, lust, cruelty, amusements and pleasure-seeking that keep men from meditation, and a determination to rule or ruin, ready to ill-treat and even kill those who will not be ruled. Laws of the land will become more and more oppressive as in Noah's days.
Present Application and Duty
Because the warning given to a corrupt and violent world was scorned, a message from God must still be given now to a world steeped in the same corruption even though it will not be received, and church members must not hide it by selfish unfaithfulness. The condition then proves there are no new evils and the same forms of wickedness are current now, marking the moral state before Christ's coming and the near end of earth's history when violence and crime prevail. Only a message direct from the Lord will arouse men and women now, so chosen men and women sanctified by grace must go forth with all energy through house-to-house labor, while Bible believers stand for righteousness and truth. Ministers are to carry forward a decided reform and lead God's people to a higher plane of action, and those who walk in the great light given will see salvation.
God's people are to be separated in practice from all the people upon the earth because the earth today is just as corrupt as in Noah's day. Faithful sentinels will guard their charge as a shepherd guards his flock, earnestly seeking the Lord with all the heart, educating households connected with them to render undivided service to God, practicing right principles with greatest care, betraying no sacred trusts, and not leading them into close connection with the world by encouraging selfish gratification, practicing worldly customs, or bringing earthly and selfish principles into God's work. Deliverance requires the new life formed within, likeness to Christ in character, contending for the faith once delivered to the saints, and living godly in Christ Jesus, for not one who decides to continue in the worldly course of working out own plans and following imagination of evil hearts will enter heaven.
The pre-flood condition carries a lesson on temperance applicable to the present world, for excessive indulgence of appetites and passions corrupted soul and body and filled the earth with selfishness, violence and crime, and the same condition prevails as history closes. This requires reform in habits of life, with brain clear and body as free as possible from disease, to fit a people for Christ's coming. Those truly on the Lord's side answer by self-denial and self-sacrifice in every family, eating and drinking to God's glory and refusing intemperance, and when the church does this her condition testifies her light has not been removed. If church members refuse their assigned part and refuse to receive and practice the light, the health reform movement will go on without them, God will remove their candlestick out of its place, and they will be left in the background.
The violence comes from disregard of God's law, which produced rebellion and corruption before the Flood and now again fills the earth with wickedness and moral pollution. That disregard is seen in honor given to a false sabbath while laws protect evils such as the liquor traffic that takes away reason, brutalizes beings made in God's image, and leads to crime and murder, making the world a second Sodom with betting, horse-racing, gambling, dissipation, lustful practices and untamable passions. False shepherds make God's Word of no effect by opposing His law, rejecting His Word, putting their own words in its place, teaching commandments of men as doctrines while claiming wisdom, and by that apostasy encouraging the wickedness that fills the earth. Declaring God's law abrogated and the Bible not authentic brings an overwhelming flood of lawlessness, dissipation, extravagance and corruption seldom seen since Noah and apostate Israel, where nobility, gentleness and piety are bartered to gratify lust for forbidden things, taking of human life becomes daily, judgment is turned backward, justice stands afar off, truth is fallen in the street and equity cannot enter. God's commandments, controlled by love to God and fellow men and including the creation Sabbath memorial, remain the life and prosperity of the pure in heart, and honoring His Sabbath shows loyalty while His word and covenant stand fast bringing life for obedience and death for transgression.
The only remedy for a world polluted and corrupted as in Noah's time, living as though there were no God and refusing thought of Him, is belief in the truth and acceptance of the light. Refusing truth spoken in demonstration of the Spirit, hating light, trampling God's Word and doing despite to His Spirit defiles the soul, interposes between heaven-sent light and the people, and shares in ruin of souls. There must be true conversion every day as vessels unto honor, renewal of covenant with God, and removal of all stubbornness of heart, for the Lord is in earnest. Those who do appointed daily work in strict accordance with God's principles need feel no fear of defilement even while working among corruption, but God cannot bless unfaithful stewards and withdraws restraining power and permits the destroyer to accomplish destroying work, so calamities come and obedience brings blessing in temporal and spiritual things while disobedience brings curse, leaving the earth ripe for harvest.
Familiarity with vice through popular display of sin dulls consciences in a world rapidly filling with sin and crime as before. Violence is the spirit of Satan manifested when men follow own imagination, flying into passion when disturbed, making innocent people suffer, and a husband acting out anger and violence upon his wife destroys confidence of children and others in Christianity and bars their receiving truth. Unless such a course is turned from by repentance and doing duty it adds to guilt already charged and shuts one out of the city of God at judgment. The crimes then were so great they were attributed to satanic agencies, warning against turning from righteousness and calling to walk in light while there is time. As strife, war, bloodshed and wickedness return because the end rapidly nears, Christians must not war among themselves but be perfectly joined in same mind and judgment to advance God's kingdom, revealing Christ's purity and love in dealings with one another.