Genesis 6:5, commentary and pictures

God Himself saw that human wickedness had grown great on the earth and that the inner thoughts, purposes and desires of the heart were wholly evil without interruption day after day. This does not mean every person had fallen, for Noah found grace and with Methuselah, Enoch and others kept the knowledge of God alive, until only eight persons were saved in the ark. Grieved to the heart, God bore long with opposition and ingratitude, gave one hundred and twenty years of probation with Noah preaching righteousness while building the ark, then cleansed the moral pollution of the earth by the Flood when repentance failed. As it was in the days of Noah so it will be at the coming of the Son of man, with the same violence, corruption of appetite, pleasure-seeking and disregard of warning now repeating to show the world lives in the last days before sudden destruction. Safety is therefore only in full submission and obedience to God's holy law, in separation from prevailing corruption, temperance of appetite, purity in marriage and honesty in business, choosing the Holy Spirit's control over an imagination that left to itself is evil continually.

Words and Historical Setting

The verse records God's own sight that human wickedness had become great in the earth and that every imagination of the thoughts of the heart was only evil continually. Inner thoughts, purposes, intentions, desires and ideas were wholly corrupt, set only on evil all the time, day after day without interruption, with evil continually shaping thought. It gives the reason God destroyed the inhabitants of the old world, for the earth was corrupt before God and filled with violence and corruption, so He determined to destroy man together with beast and creeping thing and fowl from the earth. That widespread corruption, following Cain's teaching and example until many of his descendants were led into sin, preceded God's destruction of the wicked in Noah's time. If men had not eaten of the tree of knowledge and practiced every kind of wickedness, God would not have destroyed them.

The verse does not mean every person had become corrupt, for faithful people still stood apart amid prevailing and even universal corruption. Noah stood apart and found grace in the eyes of the Lord and was spared, just as Lot did not corrupt his way before God and was saved when fire from heaven destroyed the wicked inhabitants of Sodom. Noah, Methuselah, Enoch and many others still knew the true God and labored to keep that knowledge alive and hold back evil. The descendants of Seth could have remained faithful and exerted a saving influence, but they joined the corruption by uniting with the descendants of Cain, so that only a few repented and heeded Noah's warning. Only Noah and his family, eight persons in all, entered the ark and survived, and even in judgment God distinguished between the righteous and the wicked, remembering mercy in the midst of wrath rather than letting them perish with the wicked.

Its setting is after Adam's fall gave Satan a foothold to sow seeds of evil, when the inhabitants had departed so far from God that the whole earth was corrupt before Him. It shows the fruition, fifteen centuries after the sentence pronounced upon Cain, of Cain's influence and example in crime and pollution flooding the earth so as to call for its destruction. The race was long-lived, with physical strength enduring for more than two thousand years before the effects of violating natural law were sensibly felt, and Adam himself lived nearly a thousand years to witness the general corruption that finally provoked God to destroy the inhabitants by a flood. The earth lay under a double curse from Adam's transgression and Cain's murder yet was still rich and beautiful, enriched with giant forests, majestic trees, fruit-laden vines, Eden-like gardens, garden-like plains, fountains, streams, lakes, minerals, abundant gold, silver and precious stones for the good of men. Men treated them as exclusively their own, and that condition grieved God at His heart and moved Him to destroy man whom He had created from the face of the earth.

As inspired divine truth and God's own explicit sight it draws an accurate portrait of Noah's day and the generation that perished in the Flood. It shows a heart deceitful above all things and desperately wicked, revealing the nature of man unrenewed by grace. Human nature uninfluenced by the Spirit of God is the same now as then, following the imagination of their own hearts with the result of unrestrained crime and wickedness. Genesis is words of inspiration and divine truth, Noah was a literal person who lived, and the Flood was a fact in history, affirmed by Christ with the Old Testament inseparable from the New.

Forms of Ancient Wickedness

Outwardly the great wickedness was corruption and violence filling the earth, with open daring crime, murder, robbery, fraud, oppression of the weak, trampling of justice and of rights of property and life, secret societies working violence in darkness, strife, war and bloodshed, and every conceivable crime. Hatred of God's law, envy and strife corrupted the world, reverence for God nearly disappeared, commandments were broken, and the strong trampled the rights of the weak and compelled them to commit violent crimes. Grave and often senseless crimes became so common that people treated them as ordinary.

It included putting God out of thought, forgetting and disregarding Him while living on His provision without thanks, refusing prayer, pursuing plans without reference to Him, and idolatry in worshiping creatures of imagination, images, trees, groves and works of hands. People lived in God's world and were fed and clothed from His provision yet never thanked Him and were unmindful of His goodness, working continually in opposition to their Creator, with minds engrossed in selfish enjoyment to gratify their own desires and leaving the God of heaven out. Almost all remembrance of the Creator vanished from the earth, God-given gifts were turned to selfish ends, His law was despised, and sacrificial worship was corrupted into cruel laws and even human sacrifice while children were raised without reverence or restraint. By beholding the false gods clothed with human attributes and passions, worshipers degraded their standard of character to the likeness of sinful humanity until they were defiled, minds never uplifted by faith to contemplate infinite wisdom sank lower, and desires ruled until principle and conscience were lost.

It included sexual impurity and marriage sins: polygamy, sensual sin, lustful appetite and debased passion, abuse of marriage privileges like Sodom, marrying from mere choice and passion without God or parental and church counsel, and familiarity between men and women excused as innocent. Corruption had spread through the earth and thoughts and desires remained evil, and even those who at first seemed to heed warning failed their probation, joined the corrupt in mocking, and continued in polygamy and corrupt passions. People took wives according to their own choice, departing from God's order, with young hearts filled with thoughts of getting married, disobedience to parents, wantonness, and marrying without counsel of parents or church, not having God in all thoughts nor inquiring His will, but marrying to gratify loose passions and depraved lusts. The same impurity and unrestrained passion that brought destruction then exists in the present, including among some who profess to await Christ's coming.

It included intemperance of appetite: indulgence in eating and drinking to gluttony and drunkenness, eating animal food before God permitted it, which inflamed passions, benumbed sensibilities, defaced the moral image, and produced physical, mental and moral degeneracy and disease. Created appetite was made law and indulged by men and women and children, perverted unnatural appetite under Satan's mastery continuing to the close of earth's history. In Eden there was to be no death and fruit of trees was the food required, yet people gratified lusts and appetite, followed disobedience, violated laws of health, and ran to excess in almost everything until the cup of iniquity was full. Indulgence in food and drink inflamed passions and helped bring the world to moral ruin, accompanied by idolatry, violence, ferocity and corrupt conduct, so that fine sensibilities were benumbed, sacred things were placed on a level with common things, and God cleansed the earth of its moral pollution by the Flood.

It included pride, self-exaltation and misuse of God-given gifts: abundant gold and silver, great inventions, art and skill surpassing today, long life, wisdom and strength used to outdo one another, glorify self, devise ways to contend with heaven and regain Eden, seek many inventions, and make war on heaven. People kept devising ways to outdo one another, trusted supposed power and fancied efficiency, triumphed in their own power and glorified themselves, counted themselves wise apart from God, and turned ability and talents that could have done marvelous things if joined to infinite wisdom to follow Satan's lead. Great physical strength, long life, wisdom and skill did not make people righteous but heightened guilt when turned away from God and used in cruel and oppressive ways, for they were wise only to do evil and skillful in wrongdoing.

It included worldliness and dishonesty: measuring men by wealth, feverish buying and selling and land speculation, mining stocks and city lots sold far above value, robbery of God and unfair dealing, love of pleasure, excitement, amusements and holidays, and ordinary pursuits of eating, drinking, marrying, planting and building carried to excess until they crowded out God. Before the Flood men were measured by wealth instead of integrity, and intense worldliness prevailed among all classes high and low in eating and drinking and dressing, buying and selling, marrying and giving in marriage. Supplying needs is duty and not sinful, but when eating, drinking, dressing, planting and building are made supreme objects of life they become sin, and when carried to extremes they fill the mind, crowd out noble thoughts and regard for God, and produce gluttony, drunkenness, theft, murder, lust, gratification of every base passion and every kind of satanic cruelty. That excess appears as feverish desire to buy and sell and get gain, talk centered on lots and stocks even among ministers, diverting the Lord's money from His cause, with dishonest practices whose counterparts continue today, as also in Sodom.

Roots and Growth of Evil

The corruption grew because after Adam's transgression gave Satan a foothold he sowed seeds of evil and shaped thoughts and imaginations until they were continually evil and would not acknowledge God. He eclipsed God and drew attention to his own power, presenting God falsely as unjust rather than merciful, and when men separated from Jehovah they fell under his jurisdiction, were imbued with his attributes, and worked out his schemes on the same false godless principles of his revolt in heaven. He kept minds engrossed in commerce and inventions, defiled imagination and corrupted morals to obliterate God's image through extravagance in intemperance and pleasure and bewildering plays and scenes mingling the sacred with the spurious, and he worked through most seducing influences that hypnotize minds and through mind upon mind, including impurity, exalting nature as God, unrestrained license of human will and counsel of the ungodly, until men put on a form of godliness without reality and the larger number chose his side.

Cain's teaching and example led many descendants into sin, and though meriting death he was spared for repentance yet only hardened his heart, rebelled against divine authority, and became head of a line of bold abandoned sinners whose example and influence demoralized others until fifteen centuries after his sentence crime and pollution flooded the earth. The descendants of Seth could have remained faithful and exerted a saving influence, but they turned from Jehovah, refused His holy will, united with Cain's descendants, followed unholy imagination and perverted ideas and corrupt desires, so that wickedness became great and universal though a faithful remnant still stood apart. Had they cooperated with God and obeyed His law after Abel's example instead of Cain-worship, they would have worked out His expressed will, found safety and salvation with heaven's help, retained the divine likeness, preserved longevity, and given God delight in His work.

The inward cause was continual transgression of God's commandments given as a rule of life, beginning with Adam's disobedience in Eden and increasing in boldness until with few exceptions the world was given to depravity, walking in the imagination of the heart, corrupting its ways, disregarding all requirements, seeking lawless freedom and casting off restraint. Putting God out of knowledge and worshiping creatures of imagination removed restraint so that every feeling, impulse and imagination opposed divine purity, peace and love, producing open daring sin, trampled justice, and cries of the oppressed reaching heaven. That separation from God grieved Him, placed men under Satan, set them against God and brought wrath and the cleansing flood, while in contrast Enoch and Noah loved God, obeyed His law, and were found righteous when tested, proving disobedience brings destruction and obedience would have brought commendation.

Evil repeatedly indulged and left unresisted became habit and then nature and part of character, as cherished unholy principles put into practice deteriorated character until thoughts were continually evil and there was no real sense of sin. Growing out of lovelessness, self-sufficiency, self-righteousness, self-importance, self-confidence, high self-estimate and buried covetousness, it clouded discernment, defiled conscience, left the mind wholly earthly and sensual under Satan's molding, obscured even the eye to light, and as conviction was resisted desire for ungodliness strengthened until depraved habit prevailed over restraint despite 120 years of probation. By the law that by beholding people become changed, minds never exalted above humanity and never uplifted by faith to contemplate infinite wisdom and love sank lower and lower, worshipers clothing false gods with human passions degraded character to sinful human likeness until defiled, and by continually looking on evil people became like what they saw. Feeding the mind on highly wrought pen-pictures such as Uncle Tom's Cabin sets imagination on a harmful train, crowds out heavenly things, destroys appetite for the Bible and desire for prayer, leaves spiritual things stale, stirs imagination to live over exciting and immoral scenes again and again, and lays foundation for licentiousness, impurity, disobedience, secret planning and deception.

Talented men of skill and knowledge became lifted up in imagination, left God out of plans and counsels, trusted supposed smartness and human philosophy, counted themselves wiser than God and capable of all wisdom, and became wise to do what He never commanded, wise only to do evil. Philosophers and men of science saw nature's laws but would not look beyond them to nature's Lawgiver, reasoning and theorizing while leaving God out of account, resisting warnings because a sinful life cannot harmonize with His moral government, counting reform too hard and seeking to bring His law down to a low standard. They misused rich earthly blessings, letting heaven's favors lead away from obedience and making them objects to separate from God until satanic rather than divine in nature, reckoned without God as did the king of Babylon, devoted probation to ridiculing Noah as a crazy fanatic, reasoning about science and laughing his earnest warning to scorn, and their corrupt unsanctified wisdom, destructive to posterity, could not save them when mercy was exhausted and God cut them off.

God's Grief and Judgment

God saw that human wickedness had grown great on the earth, with the inner thoughts, purposes and intentions of the heart set only on evil all the time, and the earth corrupt before Him and filled with violence, and this is given as the reason He destroyed the inhabitants of the old world. That condition grieved Him at His heart that He had made man, for the people lived in His world on His provision yet never thanked Him, were unmindful of His goodness, worked continually in opposition to their Creator, followed the imagination of their own hearts instead of seeking His counsel or caring to do His will, and wearied Him by ingratitude and rebellion. After bearing patiently for centuries He came out of His place to punish when guilt reached its limit, declaring that the end of all flesh had come and determining to destroy man whom He had created together with beast and creeping thing and fowl from the face of the earth and to cleanse the earth of moral pollution by a flood.

He would not destroy without warning but gave a probation of one hundred and twenty years, declared to Noah by a holy angel and already shown beforehand to Enoch and repeated to his children. During that time He directed that an immense ark be built on dry land, which drew people from every direction to see it so that warnings went steadily forward, while Noah preached righteousness with warning and mercy that all who believed and prepared by repentance and reformation would find pardon and be saved. Methuselah and his sons lived to hear Noah's preaching and assisted in building, with others helping, every blow a warning, while Christ with His angels labored to produce a better state of things and many believers kept the faith and died triumphant. Some who helped build the ark did not believe the warning, turn from wrong principles, or overcome temptations to act against God's will.

The people refused to believe, mocked Noah as a crazy fanatic, reasoned about science and nature's laws, rejected the warning sent through him and carried on with ordinary pursuits as though it did not matter. They resisted conscience and infinite love, refused to leave wickedness or obey God, and after rejecting the message plunged into sin with greater abandon until their condition became incurable. Had they cooperated with God and obeyed His law after Abel's example instead of Cain-worship, working out His expressed will, they would have found safety and salvation with God and the heavenly universe helping them retain the divine likeness, with longevity preserved and God delighting in the work of His hands. Repentance and turning to the Lord would have averted the judgment, but they would not repent and reform by faith and works.

When repentance failed and the bounds of long-suffering and grace were exceeded, with men presuming upon mercy, despising all warnings, going decidedly counter to His will and becoming indifferent to His law, it became necessary for God to interfere in wrath. The rebellious race were swept away by the Flood and death was their portion, fulfilling the prophetic warning that all who would not keep the commandments of heaven should drink the waters, demonstrating the truth of God's word. The judgment ended the sinful race and devastated animals, vegetation and the fair earth His gifts had made a blessing, uprooting trees, groves, palaces and idolatry, burying lovely places under rubbish and rocks and leaving seamed rocks, gorges and broken surface as evidence. Only those who repented heeded the warning, only eight persons in all, Noah and his family, entering the ark and surviving.

That destruction was both just and merciful, washing the earth of its moral pollution in retributive justice yet remembering mercy in the midst of wrath. It vindicated the honor of His law, repressed the increase of unrighteousness, limited human life, prevented men spoiling one another in continual disobedience and defiance, and freed the world from hardened rebels whose corrupt wisdom and continued influence and rebellion would have destroyed posterity. Even in that judgment He distinguished between the righteous and the wicked by the standard of His law, acknowledging the few on earth who were righteous and saving Noah and his family rather than letting them perish with the wicked. Cain's teaching and example had led many descendants into sin until thoughts were continually evil, and bringing that corruption to an end was mercy to the world, protecting it from those corrupt beyond willingness to submit.

God keeps a reckoning with nations as with individuals, giving a certain time of probation with light and evidence that will save if received, but when light is refused and darkness chosen, when iniquity becomes full and further evidence vain, indignation and punishment fall. The men before the Flood lived only to blaspheme heaven and defile the earth as rebels against God and foes to man, and both love and justice demanded their prompt execution, as likewise with the Canaanites who had become like them in total corruption and rebellion. Their destruction stands with Sodom, Jerusalem, Johnstown and the final destruction of the whole world as a lesson embracing all time because of transgression and impenitence. The professed Christian world is now repeating the sins of the Noachic world, advancing from degree to degree while refusing warning after warning and rejecting a Thus saith the Lord for fables of men, and God's long forbearance, patience, mercy and long delay do not make the punishment any less severe when it comes, for when His law is fully made void destruction comes with a time of trouble throughout the whole earth.

Prophecy of Last Days

The condition described before the Flood is a picture of the condition at the coming of the Son of man, for the same great wickedness, violence, appetite, pleasure-seeking and disregard of warning is now repeating and rapidly fulfilling prophecy. Inner life was then wholly corrupted, with thoughts, purposes and intents of the heart turned to evil without interruption, following corrupt imagination instead of seeking the counsel of the Creator or caring to do His will. That evil continually shaped thought, filled the earth with corruption and violence, wearied God, grieved Him at the heart, and brought His rebuke and the declaration that the end of all flesh had come. There are no new evils, for the same forms of wickedness then current are current now, with people absorbed in eating and drinking and marrying and pleasure and indulgence, not heeding warning until sudden destruction comes, proving the world lives in the last days.

That parallel shows lawbreaking and unrestrained wrongdoing continuing until Christ is revealed, and therefore there is no temporal millennium of a thousand years in which all prepare for eternity. The inhabitants had turned from Jehovah and refused His holy will, following unholy imagination and perverted ideas, and had they cooperated after Abel's example of obedience instead of Cain-worship they would have worked out His expressed will, found safety and salvation, retained the divine likeness and longevity with heaven's help, and given God delight in His work. The same wickedness now being followed again gives no flattering signs of millennial glory, for transgression of the law fills the earth with wickedness, moral pollution and violence, seen in betting, horse-racing, gambling, dissipation, lustful practices, untamable passions, and bank failures ruining thousands of families and leaving widows and orphans to starve. Lawmakers who themselves transgress the law enforce the first day of the week, which was given as a common working day, while the coming of the Son of man will be as in the days of Noah.

Large modern cities are fast reaching that pre-Flood condition, with great wickedness and thoughts continually bent toward evil, including God-dishonoring sins practiced by people living in lordly homes. That condition represents the cities now, which step by step through satanic agencies are becoming like the earth before the Flood and like Sodom, and as that wickedness prepared the old world and Sodom for destruction so the cities are preparing for the fate of Sodom. Every conceivable crime is committed and called life: confusion, strife and discord between labor and capital, hypocrisy in the churches, gaiety and pleasure-seeking and eating and drinking that banish meditation, ambition for self-exalting display, lust of the flesh, pride of the eyes, selfishness, misuse of power, cruelty, and force to cause men to unite with confederacies and unions, binding themselves in bundles for the burning of the great fires of the last days, with binding unions as in Noah's day when society was deplorable. Yet even there some of those very sinners will be convicted and converted under the preaching of the last testing message, for from inexhaustible grace all who come can be endowed, and looking on fallen degraded humanity it is declared that the Holy Spirit shall be poured upon all flesh so that many who never heard the special truths will feel conviction as they hear the message of startling importance.

God would not destroy without warning but gave a probation of one hundred and twenty years while the ark was built, in which Noah's message at first startled many then lost power over the careless and world-loving who forgot peril and mocked building on dry land, while Noah by faith and works condemned the world. The same past is repeating today, with plain warnings sent through men and through judgments in earthquake, flood and flame, and with servants sent as the time of the second appearing draws near to call multitudes living in transgression to repentance toward God and faith in Christ, pardon, and obedience to sacred precepts. As Noah warned, so God's people now are to warn a corrupt world by faith and works, condemn transgressors, contend earnestly for the faith, and meet the same wicked resistance and bitter opposition to gospel reform without failing or becoming discouraged, though many feel it too great a sacrifice to put away sin and reject warnings because life does not harmonize with pure principles of moral government. Human probation is thus closing a second time, when men are lovers of pleasure more than of God, growing worse and unaware until judgment takes them, and all who refuse to repent will perish as the ungodly then perished.

Sin has continued to increase in volume and prevalence since then, with deliberate choice to follow wicked ways and transgress the law after opportunity to choose between evil and good, yet God has spared a second universal flood because of the covenant made with Noah, showing divine compassion, mercy and love continue despite iniquity. The same state returns before the great destruction of the world by fire, when men are again granted a period of test and trial to show whether they will be loyal and obey the law instead of following unsanctified plans and believing a fallen angel rather than God. The earth is nearing its final purification by fire, and the destruction of the old world by the Flood stands with Sodom, Jerusalem and the final destruction in the closing period of history as a lesson embracing all time that transgression and impenitence bring sure destruction.

Doctrinal and Cosmic Lessons

The verse reveals the awful moral ruin that follows when the restraint of the holy law is removed, with every feeling, impulse and imagination of the heart set against purity, peace and love under Satan's rule. After disobedience entered through Adam, men grew more disobedient until, with few exceptions, the whole world was given to depravity, walking in the imagination of their own hearts, corrupting their way, disregarding all requirements, separated from God and ripening for cleansing by the flood. Disobedience therefore brings destruction, while obedience would have brought righteousness and commendation, as seen in Enoch and Noah who loved God, kept His way and were found righteous when tested, and the greatest issues turn on such seemingly small choices, so that full salvation depends on entire obedience gained only by studying the living oracles.

That condition was permitted to unfold before the holy inhabitants of other worlds as a visible illustration of the outcome of the rule Lucifer attempted to establish by rejecting the authority of Christ and casting aside the law. The purpose was not merely to put down rebellion but to demonstrate its true nature to the whole universe, thereby unfolding justice and mercy and vindicating wisdom and righteousness in dealing with evil.

The same history manifests that the sentence of death upon the fallen race for transgression was both just and merciful. Forbearance alone did not restrain persistent sinners but made them bolder and more defiant, and long life became no blessing, for the longer men lived in sin the more abandoned they became, until corruption spread through successive generations and filled the earth with violence calling for destruction. Cutting short a career of unbridled iniquity and freeing the world from those hardened in rebellion was therefore a blessing rather than a curse, and Adam, who lived nearly a thousand years witnessing the spreading results of sin, came to see that what had once seemed terrible was merciful in ending a life of suffering and sorrow. Fifteen centuries after the sentence on Cain showed the fruition of his spared yet hardened influence, for though given opportunity for repentance he rebelled against divine authority and became head of a line of bold sinners whose example demoralized others, illustrating before the universe what would result from permitting the sinner to live forever in rebellion.

Rejection of divine warning brings withdrawal of the Spirit, leaving men without God and without hope and ending in destruction by the flood. That apostasy can begin from seemingly small self-indulgence, as when the marriages of the sons of God with the daughters of men set in motion a chain of far-reaching consequences to the flood. As sin accumulates from generation to generation depravity increases, the earth becomes morally polluted, and the withdrawal of the Spirit accompanies the growing corruption.

The same evil state is what Satan seeks to reproduce now before the Lord of life and glory comes the second time without sin unto salvation, cherishing in the heart hatred against the law, spreading injustice, fraud and confederated evil, resuming hostility after the repeopling of the earth and transmitting enmity to posterity until at Christ's first advent every friend of God who advocated the law was counted a traitor and those departing from evil made themselves a prey. Yet the verse also proves purity is possible when iniquity abounds, for Enoch walked with God three hundred years in an age when thoughts were continually evil and moral darkness was exceptionally dense, an age no more favorable to Christlike character than the present. His righteousness came from walking with God in contrast to the wickedness that came from walking with the deceiver, showing that men today can walk with God when perils thicken, receiving power through Christ who came to announce eternal life and give power to become sons of God to all who receive Him.

Call to Present Obedience

Safety is found only in submission to the principles of God's law, for the present world is following in the steps of the Noachian world and is in great need of the preserving salt of Christian precept and practice. Neglect to bring purity and truth into practice grieves the Spirit of God, weakens His people because He is not in their midst to bless, and at last forsakes Him until He forsakes them, while outward opposition cannot dim the faith of those keeping His commandments. Salvation depends on full and entire obedience, which requires spiritual knowledge and understanding obtained only by studying the living oracles of God, since the greatest events in history turn on apparently small things and disobedience destroyed the old world by a flood. The difference between obedience and disobedience decides eternal destiny, with souls to save or souls to lose, so men enslaved by perverted appetite and transgression must flee to refuge and lay hold on eternal life in Christ to be freed from bondage. Those still on probation under God's great standard of righteousness must be lovers of righteousness and haters of every evil practice, proving themselves true men who venture something to carry out the precious principles laid down in the Word, for the same evil practices that made the old world what it was are making the world today the same.

Parents and teachers must not train youth to love excitement, to glorify themselves, and to follow their own evil hearts, for that training in Noah's day brought depravity, cruelty, violence, and crime, and modern cities and even country towns are becoming like that world because children are now educated and trained in the same way with the same result. Intensely absorbing exercises, games, and amusements that strengthen the lower powers and create appetites and passions unfit the mind for contemplation and meditation and serious thought and for earnest, contrite prayer from hearts subdued by the Holy Spirit, bringing teachers and students into the evil-imagination condition that counteracts and grieves Him, a condition that will exist again when the Son of Man is revealed. Holidays that train young people to love demoralizing things condemned by God exert an influence that is evil and only evil continually. Children must instead be taught to love, fear, and obey God, lest idle pursuits and self-glory reproduce the corruption of Noah's time.

Believers must practice temperance and reform, for the uncontrolled indulgence that filled the thoughts of Noah's generation continually, with its resulting disease and degradation, will recur with even greater intensity before Christ's second coming. The condition prior to the flood provides a warning that applies to temperance now, likening present appetite and intemperance to that beyond-remedy wickedness that ended when God swept the people away by a flood. God's ministers are to call people to reform and self-denial, including refusing intemperance that corrupts body and soul, since the sins of Noah's day also exist in the present. Being fitted for the coming of Christ requires reform in habits of life, with the brain clear and the body as free as possible from disease, because excessive indulgence of appetites and passions caused the selfishness, violence, and crime of Noah's day and the same cause produces the same evil condition as earth's history closes, so hygienic reform must have a prominent place as preparation for events close upon us.

In business and stewardship believers must reject feverish desire to buy and sell and get gain, land speculation and worldly enterprise, talk centered on lots and stocks, dealing in mining stocks and buying and selling city lots far above real value, and every dreamlike prospect of great gain and untrue representation, for these crowd out eternal things, engross men with the world, divert the Lord's money from His cause, and are robbery and unlawful business by God's standard and Satan's traps. Professed believers with great light and truth who let the world captivate their senses are swept downward in its current, losing unselfish witness, as was also seen in Sodom. Those who spend God's money to gratify selfish wants instead of supporting mission work follow the evil desires of their hearts as did the people in Noah's days. Dishonest stewardship makes the poor suffer while greed for money and possessions drives falsehood and crime of every kind, with selfishness, deceit, robbery, and bloodshed making the world like Sodom and like the old world in transgression of God's law, creating a force of evil that cannot be repressed and bringing certain retribution that riches cannot stop to save from perdition and death. Those who know God yet let love of the world harden their hearts and refuse to yield their possessions to Him misuse His blessings and turn them into a curse, as did the people of Noah's time who used God's gifts for themselves rather than serving Him.

In marriage and social life believers must have God in all their thoughts and inquire whether marriage is according to His will and pleasure, for the great wickedness that brought destruction upon the old world was seen in eating and drinking and in marrying and giving in marriage without God until the flood came and took them all away. Young hearts filled with thoughts of getting married, marrying to glorify loose passions and depraved lusts instead of to glorify God, disobedience to parents, wanton conduct, and marrying without consent of parents or counsel of parents or the church of God made the old world ripe for destruction, destroyed sinners who would not bear God in their thoughts, and the same awful sins even among some who profess the truth leave the world now almost ripe for destruction and will bring the unmingled fury of God upon the world in these last days. Excusing familiar freedoms as innocent carries the same spirit of the days of Noah, remaining just as dangerous and fatal in corrupting the heart.

God's people are to separate from unrighteous practices, seek pure thoughts and obedience to God, and remain faithful without adopting the world's customs, for the same kind of corruption that prevailed before the Flood will prevail in the last days as people pursue corrupt desires, embrace deceptive philosophies, and rebel against God's authority. Believers are called to stand for righteousness and truth near the close of earth's history, showing greater refinement and delicacy in thought, association, words, and conduct amid a world like Noah's time and Sodom. The cross of Calvary and the atoning sacrifice must be lifted up and kept before people, so that men behold sin in its true hateful character and lay hold upon the righteousness of Christ, which alone can subdue prevailing iniquity that pollutes the world today and exists also in the church and restore the moral image of God in man. Each remains free to place inherited and cultivated tendencies under the Holy Spirit's guidance or to follow imaginations that are continually evil, for God provides the help needed to overcome but does not compel obedience.

The cities as fields of missionary toil call for warning with Christ's counsel to avoid surfeiting and drunkenness and cares of this life and to watch and pray always, for as the days of Noah were so the coming of the Son of man will be, and that corrupt condition of hearts set only on evil all the time is now rapidly fulfilling, showing fearful destruction soon to come upon inhabitants caught unprepared. Modern large cities are fast reaching a similar condition, being as Sodom for wickedness, yet even in that condition many honest souls will feel conviction of the Spirit as they listen to the startling truths of the advent message, so the message is to go forth as a lamp that burneth with power, with laborers raised up, angels going before them, and experienced workers and means called to carry it forward in Greater New York and other large cities of America. Those reproved yet refusing to be warned, counseled, or reformed but justifying their own course follow the imagination of their own hearts with persistent zeal like inhabitants of the old world, left to their own ways to be filled with their own doings, and they will perish in their sins when the great day of the Lord comes. Watchfulness and vigilance are needed now against Satan's constant, untiring work to make the world as wicked and licentious as before the flood and as Sodom and Gomorrah, turning the lustful eye from vanity, rebuking boldness and immodesty, refusing self-confidence, guarding affections, and praying daily for God to preserve the heart from evil desires and strengthen the soul to resist temptation, lest lack of prayer and watchfulness lead to humiliating fall and captivity to ensnaring sin. No life is safe except by God's protection in a world wholly given over to evil as in Noah's days, so readiness requires being as wholly consecrated to Christ and His service as the world is wholly given to evil, living pure and holy, discerning truth from error, and putting on Christ's righteousness against theories that the Lord delays His coming.

Human imagination left to itself is evil continually, and weakening faith in God is dangerous because faith is the soul's safeguard against temptation and sin to which the heart is inclined. The same deterioration of character that marked inhabitants of the old world comes upon those who cherish unholy principles and bring them into life practice, growing out of being devoid of the love of Christ, out of self-sufficiency, self-righteousness, self-importance, self-confidence, high estimate of self, and deeply buried covetousness, with self-esteem bringing hidden roots to the surface. God allows such self-sufficient ones to be sorely tempted so they may understand their helplessness, with trial and test bringing undiscovered traits to light so cherished evil is made known in many ways. A person's own imaginations left to follow themselves are evil all the time, yet God forces no one to obey but gives each all help needed to become an overcomer over inherited and cultivated tendencies to sin, leaving each free to place himself with those tendencies under control and guidance of the Holy Spirit or to follow his own evil imaginations, and free to choose associates from the pure and righteous or from among others. Hearts fully set to do evil, with infernal enmity and hatred to God striking deep roots, turn away from God, accept satanic attributes, cooperate with evil angels, trample the law, make human laws supreme, and unite only in hatred to God and transgression, a condition exactly repeated when vast numbers pass boundaries of forbearance, exhaust mercy, and ripen the harvest for judgment when God comes out of His place to punish inhabitants for iniquity and vindicate His honor with the plagues.

The verse unmasks perverted, unnatural appetite under Satan's mastery, with created appetite as law indulged by men and women and children corrupting their ways before God and continuing to the close of earth's history, until the boundary line is reached and the Lord speaks from His exalted throne in judgment that will not return void as He determined to destroy man, beast, creeping thing, fowl, and violence-filled earth with the Flood, a condition marking the last days when eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage go on in ignorance until sudden destruction at the coming of the Son of man, requiring watchfulness and readiness. It also exposes misuse of God-given reasoning powers by putting human ideas first and climbing above the Source from which reason flows, seeking many inventions and becoming skilled only in doing evil with hearts constantly bent toward evil, powers not used for God's glory for which God swept that generation away, proving reason was never given to make man independent or exalt human wisdom above Christ. It reveals national apostasy in which the law of God was thrown off and transgression legalized, with the Sabbath sanctified in Eden set aside and polluted and a rival first-day sabbath exalted while sins of cities and towns reached heaven, the same evil fast coming again and calling for turning to God with fasting, weeping, mourning, and humble prayer, for failure to rightly appreciate talents brings destruction still. Disloyalty to the Maker made men the worst sinners perpetuating iniquity until God commanded Noah to build the ark and granted 120 years of probation with warning of destruction unless they repented, yet hearts fully set to do evil spent probation in violence and were destroyed impenitent to its close, and enforcing a human sabbath law against the Maker repeats that defiance.

Present evils reveal why judgments fall, for corruption filling the earth with wickedness, dishonesty, conniving, vileness, pride, falsehood, profanity, crime, murder, and robbery practiced continually required God to destroy the world by a flood, and the same filling is happening again in cities and among rulers and people from city to city until guilt of the whole world is manifest, with God designing exposure through investigation and courts so readers understand sins have reached unto heaven and the time is near when He will come out of His place to punish the earth and blot out iniquity. That returning condition appears in iniquity and crime of every order in high places, gambling and robbery becoming common, railroad accidents caused by intoxicating liquors from saloons, Satan ruling, and cruelty and corruption a hundred times greater than made plain, some revealed that men may understand why God sends judgments, with wickedness almost reaching its limit and the Lord soon making destruction complete. The present world fast becoming as before the flood will soon be ripe for destruction, so those who believe Christ is soon coming must now take their stand fully on the Lord's side with His loyal people. The evil seen in San Francisco and Oakland in carrying out human plans and will regardless of others, in striking for higher wages with destruction of property and attempts on life, and in failure to stand for order, brings social perplexities to notice to expose self-will and self-sufficiency, showing the natural man needs conversion with the Spirit operating on the heart to bring dependence on God instead of self, for church members also grow weak when depending on self. Judgments falling in terrible calamities and destruction of cities warn of greater destruction when thrones are broken, nations suffer distress with perplexity, Satan works intensely, war is everywhere, the earth fills with shrieks of suffering expiring nations, and confusion and burning contents pour from its bowels. Continual evil imagined and practiced in every city, seen in horse racing, gambling, betting, drunkenness, and lasciviousness almost without limit, means the world reaches the boundary line in impenitence and disregard for God's government, so its sure ruin must be proclaimed and the last message of mercy warn all to make ready, for the great day of God is right upon them and hastens greatly.

The pre-Flood misuse of forests, gardens, minerals, and buried relics warns against turning benefits into a curse by wrong use, the same error repeated when men use buried relics of that perished race as reason against inspired history. Ingratitude and forgetfulness of God, disobedience to His law, and deliberate devising of ways to indulge sin marked a world enriched with giant forests, Eden-like gardens, fountains, streams, lakes, minerals, gold, silver, and precious stones given for good and remembrance of Him, yet men treated them as exclusively their own, idolized trees and groves, worshiped works of their hands, and gave themselves to pleasure and costly works. After a 120-year message by Noah that God would send a flood upon the impenitent, which repentance would have averted, God destroyed the old world with rain from heaven and breaking up of the fountains of the great deep, sweeping away inhabitants, uprooted trees, groves, palaces, and places of idolatry, burying lovely places under rubbish, earth, and upthrown rocks, and turning the lovely home into broken, uneven, frightful solitude whose seamed and cleft rocks, deep gorges, and channels remain as evidence that the law was not observed.

Enoch, Noah, and faithful witnesses amid populous wicked communities show that living for Christ under severe test is possible, for Noah surrounded by enemies of God and truth faced the same surrounding as those on Christ's side now, requiring youth and mature age to use advantages and privileges to be stored with Bible truth so they can give reason for hope with meekness and fear. Enoch stood as representative just man amid moral corruption of a degenerate age, and with Abel, Seth, Methuselah, Noah, and many others kept the fear of the Lord, having received instruction from Adam and repeating it to children and children's children even while schools cultivated sharp intelligence in so-called science, worshiped nature above nature's God, spread infidel sentiments, left ideas of God cloudy, disowned God's words for human philosophy, and drank iniquity as water while warnings sounded. Intellect, knowledge, valuable ideas, wisdom, tact, and judgment given to carry out God's plan were perverted to glorify self with imagination evil continually, so by the flood He blotted the long-lived race from the earth and with them perished knowledge and arts used only for evil, more lost in many ways than is now known, and when the earth was repeopled He trusted wisdom more sparingly, giving only ability needed to carry out His great plan.