What Has Religion Done For Mankind?

CHAPTER V

Development of the False Before the Flood

FALSE religion got its start through selfishness, pride and rebellion against the universal sovereignty of Jehovah God and by means of deception and by contradiction of His word. Till this day all mankind are feeling the effects of it and yet the majority of them are engaged in practicing it. This is because our first human parents adopted it in the paradise of Eden by following the lead of the author of false religion and violating the law of God on a very simple thing.

² Adam and Eve did not die instantaneously after eating the forbidden fruit, but this does not prove God's warning false: "In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." Jehovah God now came for judgment in the garden of Eden. The guilty couple, even though no longer completely naked but with aprons of leaves which they had girded about their loins, hid themselves from him. Their consciences accused them and condemned them. But now how would their Maker and Judge condemn them? Would it be with an immediate execution of the sentence of death?

They tried not to testify against themselves, but Adam passed on the blame to Eve, and Eve passed it on to the serpent. As in the case of all false religion, there was an attempt at self-justification.

³ God began at the root of the trouble. He showed he was the Supreme Judge, and not any one of his creatures. He also showed he was a Prophet, who sets before himself a great purpose and who knows its end from its beginning. He really spoke to the original Serpent, Satan the Devil, and pronounced condemnation upon the fallen "covering cherub" when He said: "Because you have done this, cursed are you among all animals, and among all beasts of the field; on your belly shall you crawl, dust shall you eat, all the days of your life. I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your seed and her seed; he shall crush your head, and you shall lie in wait for his heel." —Genesis 3:14,15, CB.

⁴ By this judgment the great Judge did not glorify the snake or serpent as a symbol of enlightenment, but made it a symbol of sin and of Satan the Devil. According to this the fallen "covering cherub", Satan the Devil, is cursed and declared to be degraded to the level of a snake. With lifeless dust as his food, the doing of his rebellious will cannot be life-sustaining food to him. No natural death awaits him; he is to be destroyed as when a snake has its head crushed. But who is

to do the crushing of his head? "Her seed," the seed of the woman. Who is this seed that does away with the instigator of false religion and its lies and deceptions? That was the sacred secret which God kept within his power to reveal in his own time. The "woman" whose seed this liberator was to be could not be a woman of the human race, a descendant of the now sinful Eve. God said he would put enmity or hostility between Satan the Serpent and the woman whom God meant, and this has not been true with women of the human race. The history of religion discloses that Satan the Serpent has used women most prominently in the system of false worship, even exalting the female element above the male element in his religion. When, at his appointed time, God did uncover who the Promised Seed is, he at the same time revealed who the woman is who produces the Seed.

⁵ What has the adoption of Satan's religion done for mankind? Examine it now as shown in the judgment God pronounced upon Eve and Adam: "To the woman he said: 'I will make great your distress in childbearing; in pain shall you bring forth children; for your husband shall be your longing, though he have dominion over you.' And to Adam he said, 'Because you have listened to your wife, and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat: Cursed be the ground because of you; in toil shall you eat of it all the

days of your life; thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to you, and you shall eat the plants of the field. In the sweat of your brow you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, since out of it you were taken; for dust you are and unto dust you shall return.'" —Genesis 3:16-19, CB.

⁶ In these terms the great Judge pronounced the sentence of death upon Adam and Eve. From that very day they were as dead in God's sight, dead in trespasses and sins, as a later writer expressed it. Eve's bringing forth children showed she would live many years yet with her husband, who would have dominion over her. But this producing of children would be no fulfillment of the divine command given to them in their innocence, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it." It was no more a fulfillment of this than Adam's cultivating the soil outside of paradise was a fulfillment of that part of the same mandate which said, "Fill the earth, and subdue it." Against Adam's subduing of the earth God cursed the ground outside of the paradise of Eden, and sentenced Adam to life-long toil in working it. Instead of Adam's subduing it, the ground was one day to absorb Adam himself when he turned back to the dust from which he had been made. Adam lived long after that sentence of death, about 930 years, in fact; but notice that he did not live a full thousand years, nor a single one of his descendants. He lived less than a day accord-

ing to God's great unit of time: "One day is with Jehovah as a thousand years and a thousand years as one day." "For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past." —2 Peter 3:8, NW; Psalm 90:4.

⁷ Adam was no longer to look after Eden's paradise. There was a good reason, for God now disclosed that there was a "tree of life also in the midst of the garden", and Adam had not proved worthy of eating of this tree. Eating of that tree was a sign of the eater's right to live forever, and this would not fit in with God's sentence of destruction pronounced upon Adam and Eve. "And he said, 'Indeed! the man has become like one of us [Jehovah and his only-begotten Son, the Word], knowing good and evil! And now perhaps he will put forth his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever!' Therefore the LORD* God put him out of the garden of Eden to till the ground from which he was taken. He drove out the man; and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the Cherubim, and the flaming sword, which turned every way, to guard the way to the tree of life." —Genesis 3:22-24, CB.

⁸ God's words, "The man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil," may have been spoken sarcastically, but at any rate they indicate

that man had moved himself out from under theocratic rule, the Theocracy. He had chosen to set up his own standards of what was good and evil, according to the religion he had adopted. But for this God did not sentence Adam and Eve to an eternity in a hell of fire and sulphur to be tormented endlessly, did he? How could that be possible, since God drove them out of paradise that they might not eat of the tree of life and live forever? To suffer eternal torment a creature has to live forever. The sentence was death for Adam and Eve, and death does not mean life after death. It was Satan the Serpent who said they would not die if they ate the forbidden fruit. God's Word states plainly: "The first man Adam was made into a living soul." "The soul that sinneth, the same shall die." (1 Corinthians 15:45 and Ezechiel 18:20, Dy) So when Adam died 930 years old the soul died. There was no intelligent, conscious, sentient soul that survived Adam's death to go anywhere. A religion that teaches otherwise is the Devil's religion.

⁹ To prevent Adam's return to paradise the cherubim, together with a revolving flaming sword, were stationed at the entrance into the garden. All of us his descendants were born outside, all of us offspring of a sinner condemned to death. With what result to us all? Inborn sin, imperfection, disease, and death. How simple the true Bible explanation of the existence of evil in the earth for these past six thousand years!

"Through one man sin entered into the world and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men because they had all sinned." (Romans 5:12, NW) The man Adam was the responsible one, because Eve of herself could not bring forth children and if Adam had not sinned and then had intercourse with her she could not have produced sinful, dying children. "Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? not one." —Job 14:4.

¹⁰ Eve's words at the birth of her first son showed she was not correctly applying Jehovah's Edenic prophecy concerning the seed of the woman. Under false religion Eve could not be a true prophetess and explain Scripture aright. "And the man knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain, and said, I have gotten a man with the help of Jehovah." (Genesis 4:1, AS; CB; Da) Instead of proving to be the promised seed of the woman, Cain turned out to be a religious persecutor and a murderer, a killer of worshipers of Jehovah. He proved himself a son of the Devil. "The children of God and the children of the Devil are evident by this fact: . . . We should have love for one another; not like Cain, who originated with the wicked one and slaughtered his brother. And for the sake of what did he slaughter him? Because his own works were wicked, but those of his brother were righteous." (1 John 3:10-12, NW) This is evidence that the fallen "covering cherub", Satan the Devil, was left in control of the fallen human race. For Adam's offspring it was now a

question of whether to serve the Devil through false religion or to serve Jehovah God the Universal Sovereign. Cain's younger brother, Abel, chose the latter service.

¹¹ Adam did not act as God's priest for his family. How could he? When he was about 129 years old, his sons Cain and Abel brought offerings to be presented to Jehovah God. Likely it was at Eden's entrance where the guardian cherubim were stationed. Cain as the firstborn evidently imagined he had the right to be the woman's seed and so was the one to be favored of the great Prophet Jehovah. He brought a farmer's produce as his offering. The shepherd Abel killed some firstlings of his flock and offered fatty pieces of them; they represented the sacrifice of life. It is reasonable that Abel built an altar. God indicated

his acceptance of Abel's offering, no doubt by miraculous fire from heaven or from the revolving fiery sword at paradise's entrance. Cain burned with anger. God now for the first time mentioned sin to mankind and warned Cain that sin was lying at his door ready to devour him. Cain did not choose to do well and offer the right sacrifice with real faith in God. Like a serpent he lay in wait to dig his poisonous fangs into the heel of the one who might be the promised seed instead of himself. So he chose to serve Satan the Serpent. He did not humble himself to shed the blood of an animal, a lamb, in sacrifice, but chose to shed the blood of his own godly brother to whom God showed favor. Adam had plunged the whole human family into death, but God let him live on till 930 years of age. So God did not execute Cain or authorize Adam or any other human to put Cain to death, but sentenced him to a fugitive's life. —Genesis 4:3-15.

¹² Cain fled with one of his sisters as his wife, far from the entrance of paradise and its cherubim. He built the first city and named it, not in honor of Jehovah, but in honor of his son Enoch. His descendants developed the arts of tentmaking, herding, music and working in metals, brass and iron. Whether it was with a weapon of brass or iron that his great grandson Lamech killed a young man we are not told. As a son of the Devil Cain, together with his offspring, furthered the false religion. —Genesis 4:16-24.

¹³ Shortly after Cain's murder of Abel, Eve had another son, whom she named Seth, to mark him as a substitute for Abel. Seth became the father of Enosh. In his days something worthy of Bible mention took place; in these words: "Then people began to call on the name of Jehovah." (Genesis 4:26, Da; AS) Or, to render the Hebrew text more literally: "It was then begun to call with or by means of the name of Jahveh."* This was evidently done in false worship, to bring reproach upon God's holy name, to degrade him in human eyes. Why is that the right understanding? For this reason:

¹⁴ When Enosh was 387 years old, Enoch his great-grandson was born; and when Enosh was 821 years old his descendant Noah was born and after that he lived 84 years. And yet out of all those generations during Enosh's 905 years, the great chapter on faith, Hebrews 11, mentions only Enoch and Noah as outstanding men of faith: "By faith Enoch was transferred so as not to see death, and he was nowhere to be found because God had transferred him; for before his transference he had the witness that he had pleased God well. Moreover, without faith it is impossible to win his good pleasure, for he that approaches God must believe that he is and that he becomes the rewarder of those earnestly seeking him. By faith Noah, after being given divine warning of things

not yet beheld, showed godly fear and constructed an ark for the saving of his household, and through this faith he condemned the world, and he became an heir of the righteousness which is according to faith." Also more than 105 years before Enosh was born, Abel had begun to offer sacrifice to Jehovah with true faith in the invisible God and was accepted. So the calling with or by means of Jehovah's name which began in Enosh's time must have been without the true faith. It was false religion. —Hebrews 11:5-7, NW.

¹⁵ The correct worship back there was based upon faith in Jehovah's promise, his covenant in Eden to raise up the seed of his woman to bruise the Serpent's head. God's acceptance of Abel's sacrifice gave a further revelation of God's will on the proper manner of making offerings to him. The sacrifice of the firstlings of Abel's flock pictured the sacrifice of the promised Seed of God's woman, which sacrifice was hinted at in the heel wound that the Serpent lying in wait for the Seed would inflict. (Genesis 3:15) The correct worship also avoided the company of those who became part of that wicked world outside of Eden, for it is written concerning the men of genuine faith: "Enoch walked with God. . . . Noah walked with God." —Genesis 5:22,24; 6:9.

¹⁶ To add to the revealed religion from God, Jehovah gave Enoch a vision of a coming judgment

day to warn those who were hypocritically using the name of Jehovah. We read: "Yes, the seventh man in line from Adam, Enoch, prophesied also regarding them, when he said: 'Look! Jehovah came with his holy myriads, to execute judgment against all and to convict all the ungodly concerning all their ungodly deeds that they did in an ungodly way and concerning all the shocking things that ungodly sinners spoke against him.' " (Jude 14,15, NW) A remarkable further revelation of God's purpose was that made to Noah, that there would be a global flood to wipe out all the ungodly but some humans would survive it, that is, Noah's immediate family. Noah did not then know that such flood would be typical, a prophetic picture of the great trouble with which this present world will end, but with Jehovah's faithful servants surviving as Noah's family did into a righteous new world for our earth. Noah was a "preacher of righteousness". Such preaching was a part of clean religion. —2 Peter 2:5; 3:5, 6.

¹⁷ What, then, did false religion do for that pre-flood world? It filled it with violence and led to its destruction. In Noah's day supernatural forces appeared on the scene to promote more religion of the false kind. Both the "sons of God" and Nephilim appeared. The Hebrew term Nephilim means "fellers", that is, those who cause others to fall by attacking them. The Scriptures indicate they were giantlike in size; in fact, some translations render the Hebrew word Nephilim as

"giants", and Moffatt's translation says 'Nephilim giants'. (Genesis 6:4; Numbers 13:33) How did these come into existence in Noah's days? By marriage of these "sons of God" with the beautiful daughters of mankind. "The sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all that they chose. And Jehovah said, My spirit shall not strive with man for ever, for that he also is flesh: yet shall his days [till the flood] be a hundred and twenty years. The Nephilim were in the earth in those days, and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them: the same were the mighty men that were of old, the men of renown." —Genesis 6:2-4, AS.

¹⁸ Such marriage resulted in Nephilim or giant fellers because those "sons of God" were not men descended from the fallen Adam. Adam by sinning had ceased to be a "son of God". It was not till Jesus Christ came more than twenty-three centuries after the Flood that men received the opportunity to become the "sons of God" again. (Luke 3:38; John 1:12; 1 John 3:1) So those on earth in Noah's day must have been some of the angelic "sons of God" that had witnessed the creation of our earth and shouted for joy over it. (Job 38:7) In fact, the Alexandrine manuscript of the Greek Septuagint translation of Genesis says "angels" instead of "sons of God". It is doubtless for this reason that Moffatt's translation reads: "The angels noticed that the 'daughters of men

were beautiful, and they married any one of them that they chose. ... (It was in these days that the Nephilim giants arose on earth, as well as afterwards whenever angels had intercourse with the daughters of men and had children born to them; these were the heroes who were famous in the days of old.)" —Genesis 6:2-4, Mo.

¹⁹ This means that these angelic sons of God did not materialize human bodies and appear now and then to the daughters of men but that they kept their materialized bodies and took up residence on earth in order to be with their wives continually. This was improper for them, for the creatures of God's universe are meant to stay each to its own kind and realm. Even on earth, creatures must stay to their kind: "Not all flesh is the same flesh, . . . And there are heavenly bodies, and earthly bodies." So the marriage of these materialized angels with women was contrary to God's law and was a disobedience to him. The faithful materialized cherubim at Eden's entrance did not do such a thing, and so were not an improper example to such angels. Just as, long afterward, the men of Sodom desired sexual intercourse with the bodies of materialized angels at Lot's home, so here the materialized angels desired sex connections with the daughters of men. The inspired writer Jude shows this: "And the angels that did not keep their original position but forsook their own proper dwelling-place he has reserved with eternal bonds under dense dark-

ness for the judgment of the great day. So, too, Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities about them, after they IN THE SAME MANNER AS THE FOREGOING ONES had committed fornication excessively and gone out after flesh for unnatural use, are placed before us as a warning example by undergoing the judicial punishment of everlasting fire." Jude warns us that there are hypocritical religionists like that today who sneak in and try to defile the morals of Christian congregations.  —Jude 6-10, NW; Genesis 19:1-11.

²⁰ The Christian apostle Peter also testifies that these "sons of God" were spirit creatures who had materialized in flesh for disobedient purposes. After telling that Jesus Christ was made alive from the dead as a spirit, Peter adds: "In this state also he went his way and preached to the spirits in prison [those eternal bonds under dense darkness], which had once been disobedient when the patience of God was waiting in Noah's days, while the ark was being constructed, in which a few people, that is, eight souls, were carried safely through the water." —1 Peter 3:18-20, NW.

²¹ Since these "sons of God" were incarnated spirits, that is, spirit persons clothed with flesh, they had superior life forces. The natural outcome was that their offspring by the daughters of men were extraordinary, unusual in size, freaks, unlawful hybrids. They could not reproduce children. In Hebrew they were called Gib-

borím, which means "mighty ones". Offspring of passion, they helped to fill the earth with violence, us is indicated by their other name Nephilím, fellers. For this they made a name for themselves, "men of renown," to the reproach of God. From this preflood intermarriage of angels and women and their having superhuman offspring there originated all the religious myths of the ancient Greeks and Romans about the love affairs their gods had with women on earth. In this way false religion again perverted the facts. Those fallen angels, together with the fallen "covering cherub" Satan the Devil, became demons and later influenced men to twist the truth.

²² Amid all this violence and debasement of the human race Noah walked with God, that is to say, in harmony with his will, and Jehovah made him a prophet. Among all the generations that grew up during Noah's six hundred years before the flood Noah was a clean and blameless man, not defiled by that ungodly ancient world. He brought up his three sons with faith in God. (Genesis 6:9, 10, AT) God determined to drown that violent, wicked world in a global flood, but to preserve Noah and his godly family through the world destruction. That way he would wipe out the false religion and its practice from the earth, and would preserve the pure, clean, truthful kind as far as it had then been revealed.