What Has Religion Done For Mankind?

CHAPTER VI

Apostasy After the Deluge, with Variety

FALSE teachings have been spread by the religious systems inside and outside of Christendom concerning what the end of this world means. Does it mean, as they say, the destruction of the earth, sun, moon and stars, that is, the dissolving of all material things that we see, hear, taste, smell and feel, and leaving only a spiritual realm in which only spirit persons can live? Such a thing is unreasonable in itself. Just think of the countless millenniums of time which the Universal Sovereign was in creating all these visible, material marvels. And then to think that he would destroy all his own creation because of the waywardness of men who have been on this tiny earth only about six thousand years! Such a teaching is not only unreasonable, giving rise to groundless fears, but also unbiblical. God will give a kingdom to the promised Seed of his woman, the Seed who is to crush the head of Satan the Serpent. God's sworn word shows this kingdom will be forever and that heaven, sun, moon and earth will be just as everlasting as that kingdom. Hear God say: "His seed shall endure for ever, and his

throne as the sun before me. It shall be established for ever as the moon, and as the faithful witness In the sky." It is with point that the inspired wise man says: "One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever." —Ecclesiastes 1:4; Psalm 89:36, 37, AS.

² The end of the world of today does not mean the end of the earth under our feet. This is proved by the end of the old world in Noah's day. Men scoff at the fact that this world will end. Peter (he apostle foretold this, and commented: "According to their wish, this fact escapes their notice, that there were heavens in ancient times and an earth standing compactly out of water and in the midst of water by the word of God, and by those means the world of that time suffered destruction when it was deluged with water." (2 Peter 3:5, 6, NW) Mark: The "world of that time" was destroyed, but we are living on the same earthly globe and under the same sun, moon and stars as those which existed before that world was blotted out. From this it is clear that by the end of the world the Bible does not mean the earth created by God, and hence world and earth are not the same. World means an organization or arrangement of things dominating our earthly globe. One such world can end and be succeeded by another, and yet the earth abide forever.

³ The "world of that time" consisted of two

parts to the organization, a heavenly or spiritual part and an earthly or human part. Aside from the fallen "covering cherub" whose influence was plainly evident in the false worship that was promoted in the earth, there were the fallen angels. These disobedient "sons of God" did not keep their original position but forsook their own proper dwelling place in the invisible heavens in order to marry like men and have beautiful wives and indulge in fleshly passion. The incarnated spirit creatures hastened the corruption of mankind and the filling of the earth with violence, especially through their monstrous offspring, the Nephilim. So Satan the Devil and those fallen angels constituted the higher or spiritual part of that antediluvian world. The people, whose thinking was never anything but evil and who hypocritically called upon Jehovah's name, made up the corrupt human or lower part of that ungodly world. That was the world which perished. Being no part of it, Noah and his family survived its end.

⁴ "And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh [outside of your family] is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth." Even the literal earth had to bear the brunt of this destructive work because it had been desecrated by the corruption and violence of men and angels. For a year and ten days it sustained the waters of the global deluge, resulting in vast changes in the appearance of its surface after these waters

had drained off into the sea basins created for them. —Genesis 6:13; 7:11; 8:13.

⁵ An end of a world can be survived by people on this earth under God's protection, and that holds true for the end of this world. Eight persons, including Noah, survived the end of the old world. Since clean religion means obedience and service to God according to his revealed will, Noah and his family showed they had the true religion by obediently building the ark as God commanded and by preaching righteousness as witnesses of Jehovah. Then on notification from him, Noah and his family took specimens of the birds and animals into the ark and went in themselves. "And Jehovah shut him in." (Genesis 7:16, AS) Then suddenly, while everything was going on as usual outside, as people were eating, drinking, building, planting, taking and giving wives in marriage, the deluge broke on that ancient world. That it was a global flood permitting none but those in the ark to survive is proved by the physical evidences that are increasingly being noted in the surface of the earth and in the legends of a flood which are common to nations, tribes and settlements of people in all parts of the earth, no matter how widely separated and inaccessible to one another.

⁶ Jesus Christ, the Founder of Christianity, stamped the Flood as a historic occurrence and as

a part of true religious belief. Recall his prophecy regarding the end of this world: "Just as the days of Noah were, so the presence of the Son of man will be. For as people were in those days before the flood, eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark; and they took no note until the flood came and swept them all away, so the presence of the Son of man will be. ... Keep on the watch, therefore, because you do not know on what day your Master is coming." (Matthew 24:37-42, NW) For these reasons we have interested ourselves in the events of Noah's days, both before and immediately after the Flood. His family's survival of the end of that world gives promise that some will survive the end of this world.

⁷ When Noah and his family and the birds and animals came out of the ark on a mountain of the Ararat chain, what was the first thing Noah did? He engaged in worshiping the God with whom he walked. "And Noah builded an altar unto Jehovah, and took of every clean beast, and of every clean bird, and offered burnt-offerings on the altar." That was a right start, and Jehovah was pleased. He tells us: "I have sworn that the waters of Noah shall no more go over the earth." (Genesis 8:20 and Isaiah 54:9, AS) This sworn promise is a part of the true religious faith and is contained in the rainbow covenant that Jehovah established with Noah and his family as rep-

resentatives of all the human family. With them God could give a righteous, though not perfect, new start to the human family. So to them he repeated what he had said to Adam and Eve in Eden: "And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said to them, Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth." As it was in those days of Noah, we may expect it to be in the early days after the end of this world. That is, the survivors of its end will receive a similar mandate to marry, multiply and spread their children over all the face of the globe. —Genesis 9:1, Da.

⁸ One important thing that false religion ignores today: Jehovah included in his rainbow covenant with those representatives of the human family the sanctity of human and animal blood. He said: "As for every moving thing that hath life yours shall it be for food, —like the green herb have I given you all things. Yet flesh with the soul thereof, the blood thereof, shall ye not eat; and surely your blood of your souls will I require, from the hand of every living creature will I require it,  —and from the hand of man, from the hand of each one's brother, will I require the soul of man: he that sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed, —for in the image of God made he man." (Genesis 9:3-6, Ro, margin) This was a change from Cain's case, for God authorized no man's hand to shed Cain's blood because he had murdered his godly brother Abel.

⁹ But now man who would bear God's image, standing as His theocratic representative, would be authorized to exact the blood of a criminal for a murder. And, of course, every living creature that killed a man or woman would be required to pay for this with its life. About twenty-four centuries later the governing body of the Christian congregation recognized that this law of the sacredness of blood applied to Christ's followers also. Hence they wrote to Christians who before becoming believers had eaten or drunk blood from another creature: "Keep yourselves free from things sacrificed to idols and from blood and from things killed without draining their blood and from fornication. If you carefully keep yourselves from these things, you will prosper." (Acts 15:19-29; 21:25, NW) How few religionists in Christendom keep this rule today!

¹⁰ The rainbow should remind us of this rule, rather than of a so-called "pot of gold" at its end. The first rainbow that man ever saw was after the Flood when Jehovah made this covenant with humankind. He said: "The bow shall be in the cloud; and I will look upon it, that I may remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living soul of all flesh that is upon the earth. . . . This the sign of the covenant which I have established between me and all flesh that is upon the

earth." (Genesis 9:12-17, Da) One of the reasons for the universal war of Armageddon with which the present world will end in the near future is mankind's failure to observe this rainbow covenant which requires respect for the blood of living creatures. For grossly ignoring it and for befouling the earth with creature blood unrighteously spilled the covenant-keeping Jehovah will exact the blood of mankind at that universal war of Armageddon. That will be one of the things that false religion does for mankind. —Revelation 16:4-7; 6:9,10; Numbers 35:33,34.

¹¹ The eight flood-survivors took up life again on terra firma with the clean worship of the living, true God and with a fresh covenant and revelations from him. There were no mighty Nephilim in the earth. Those terrifying hybrids from the union of incarnated "sons of God" with women had been exterminated in the Flood. Neither were there any incarnated angels to make improper advances to the four women surviving the Flood. Those disobedient spirits lost their human wives in the Flood and were forced to quit their unnatural life with them in the flesh. They had to dematerialize the human bodies and return to the invisible spirit realm. They became the demons who have played an invisible part in the course of this world till now and who are responsible for the practice of spiritualism. Satan became their ruler and came to be called "Beelzebub, the ruler of the demons". In Jesus' days on earth he ex-

pelled many demons from people possessed with them. (Matthew 12:24, NW; 9:34; Mark 1:32-34, 39) The "eternal bonds under dense darkness" with which God has reserved the demons for judgment day have placed bars upon their activities. Peter tells us: "God did not hold back from punishing the angels that sinned, but, by throwing them into Tartarus [or a humiliated position], delivered them to pits of dense darkness to be reserved for judgment; and he did not hold back from punishing an ancient world, but kept Noah, a preacher of righteousness, safe with seven others when he brought a deluge upon a world of ungodly people." (2 Peter 2:4,5, NW) How, then, did false religion get started again after the Flood?

¹² It was by an apostasy, a falling away from the true faith and practice, as in the paradise of pleasure. Noah's three sons who survived the flood with their wives were Japheth, Shem and Ham. From these the three great branches of the human family today developed. It was when Ham had become the father of his fourth son, Canaan, that this apostasy began to shape up. Instead of honoring his father as a son should Ham shamed Noah. Expressing disapproval of what Ham, the father of Canaan, had done, Noah uttered a prophecy: "Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren." "And he said, Blessed be Jehovah, the God of Shem; and let Canaan be his servant. God enlarge Japheth, and let him dwell in the tents of Shem; and let Canaan

be his servant." (Genesis 9:20-27, AS) God did not thus curse all of Ham's descendants, but only the Canaanites. This curse was especially fulfilled when Shem's descendants, the Israelites or Jews, were brought into the Promised Land, the land of Canaan, and Jehovah God ordered them to destroy the Canaanite inhabitants and their false religion. God's curse did not turn Canaan apostate, but his father Ham had set him a bad example. Ham's grandson Nimrod became outright apostate.

¹³ The evidence is that Noah carried written documents with him into the ark and these gave a brief history of mankind from the beginning and an inspired account of the creation. One of these three documents or histories Noah himself had been inspired to write. "This is the history of Noah." (Genesis 2:4; 5:1; 6:9, Da) Thus the remembrance of Jehovah's Edenic covenant that the Seed of the woman was to bruise the head of the original Serpent Satan was carried through the Flood and Noah taught it to his sons and grandsons. Noah was not that promised seed. The fact that apostasy broke out in his own day in the time of his grandchildren proves he was not the seed, for the original Serpent was thus proved to be still alive and at work to foist the false religion upon mankind despite its righteous new start. To get ahead of the real Seed and block him, the Serpent Satan could tempt one of Noah's offspring, as he did Cain, with selfish ambitions

to be that promised seed and set himself up as such to draw followers after himself. The original Serpent Satan is a sly deceiver and counterfeiter. Trace now his slimy, sinuous trail in the earth.

¹⁴ Noah's words of blessing, "Blessed be Jehovah, the God of Shem," strongly hinted that the promised seed would come through Shem's line and that the true worship of Jehovah would be kept alive through his line. So Satan the Serpent got control of one of the descendants of the shameless Ham. Cush, whose name is understood to mean "chaos, confusion", is named first among Ham's sons. One of Cush's six sons came in for special mention: "And Cush begat Nimrod: he began to be a mighty one in the earth. He was a mighty hunter before Jehovah: wherefore it is said, Like Nimrod a mighty hunter before Jehovah. And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar. Out of that land he went forth into Assyria, and builded Nineveh, and Rehoboth-Ir, and Calah, and Resen between Nineveh and Calah (the same is the great city)." —Genesis 10:6-12, AS; Da.

¹⁵ How much respect for the rainbow covenant regarding the sacredness of blood did Nimrod the mighty hunter have? His description as a mighty hunter "before Jehovah" does not mean

he was "bold, too, by God's grace, at the hunt". (Kx) Here "before Jehovah" means "in defiance of Jehovah", as does the same expression at Genesis 6:11. The Jewish writer Josephus* and the Chaldee Targums† of the Jews so present the matter. The Chaldee paraphrase of 1 Chronicles 1:10 says: "Cush begat Nimrod, who began to prevail in wickedness, for he shed innocent blood, and rebelled against Jehovah." One modern translator has rendered Genesis 10:8-10 as follows: "And Cush begot Nimrod; he began to be a mighty tyrant in the land. He was a terrible subjugator, defiant before the face of Jehovah; wherefore it is said, Even as Nimrod, the giant hunter, presumptuous in the presence of Jehovah. And the original seats of his empire were Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh in the land of Shinar."‡ According to one interpretation his name "Nimrod" means "subduer of the leopard", which meaning is in keeping with his hunting prowess. "Merodach," another name applied to him as a god, means "the great rebel". This names him as a defier of Jehovah God.

¹⁶ Have you ever wondered where man-made kings got their start? Not with Noah or Shem, whose God was Jehovah, but with Nimrod, the

founder of a religion in defiance of Jehovah. He is the first king named in human history. By his hunting prowess he made a name for himself and got the people to trust in him more than in Jehovah, the God of Noah and Shem. He became the standard of comparison. Even today people call huntsmen Nimrods. He put himself in power as king or mélech (Hebrew), from which the names of the false gods Molech, Milcom and Malcam are drawn. He set up his own kingdom in rebellion against the universal sovereignty of Jehovah the Most High God. Thus again, as in Eden's paradise, the prime question for settlement was posed before all creation, Is Jehovah God the rightful Sovereign of all the universe, heaven and earth? Nimrod's kingdom challenged Jehovah's sovereignty and reproached his holy name. The nucleus or chief seat of his kingdom was Babylon. In the Babylonian tongue that name (Bab-ilu) was interpreted to mean "Gate of God". By exalting himself as king and also posing as the people's savior and the one to be worshiped, served and obeyed, Nimrod united in himself religion and the political state. As he was both god and king, his government was a mimic theocracy or god-rule. His mimic theocracy operated for the oppression of the people.

¹⁷ While Noah was still alive Nimrod's city of Babylon was built, not on a mountain, but in the plains of Shinar. Nimrod's propaganda could spread among all the people, because they all

spoke one language with one accent or the "same speech". When a migration of people reached those plains of Shinar they hit upon an idea like Cain's, that of building a city. This proved to be Babylon or Babel. Here Nimrod set up his mimic theocracy. We read: "And they said one to another, Come on, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and they had asphalt for mortar. And they said, Come on, let us build ourselves a city and a tower, the top of which may reach to the heavens; and let us make ourselves a name, lest we be scattered over the face of the whole earth." (Genesis 11:1-4, Da) So the tower was not to be a tall monument honoring God's name, but to be one to honor man.

¹⁸ Their proposed heaven-high tower showed lack of faith in God's sworn covenant that there would be no second global flood. Their proposing to make it reach to heaven may also mean that the tower would be surmounted with a temple, which would be a place for their god or gods to dwell. So its top level and its temple shrine would be azure blue, to represent the celestial ocean of the sky. The purpose of the city and tower was not in harmony with the divine command to Noah and his sons, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth," but was to hold the people to that locality in Shinar and prevent them from being "scattered over the face of the whole earth". It was to provide a world capital, and to hold the

people to it in a common political and religious allegiance, in a strong spirit of nationalism and patriotism, and to allow for the concentration of power in the hands of a dictator. It worked in well with Nimrod's scheme to be an absolute monarch, a religious, political dictator.

¹⁹ These city-minded men had quickly forgotten that Jehovah God was the universal sovereign, as he had demonstrated by inundating the ancient world with destruction. Thus about 150 years after the Deluge, in the days of Peleg, whose name means "division", the time had again come for the Universal Sovereign to teach false worshipers on earth who is Supreme and who has absolute control over the earthly part of his universe. By means of powers greater than those of modern television he saw what these religious apostates were scheming in defiance of him. He visited them by turning his attention and irresistible power down toward them. "And Jehovah came down to see the city and the tower which the children of men built. And Jehovah said, Behold, the people is one, and have all one language; and this have they begun to do. And now will they be hindered in nothing that they meditate doing. Come, let us [Jehovah and his only-begotten Son the Word] go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech. And Jehovah scattered them thence over the face of the whole earth. And they left off building the city. Therefore was its name called Babel; be-

cause Jehovah there confounded the language of the whole earth. And Jehovah scattered them thence over the face of the whole earth." —Genesis 10:25; 11:5-9,16-19, Da.

²⁰ By this Jehovah showed his power to break up any world unification of mankind for a purpose against his will. The United Nations, which has its skyscraper capital in New York city and which glorifies man's assumed ability to make world peace, is no exception to this. By a means simple to him, that is, by affecting their brains and their lips, Almighty God wrecked their oneness of speech and their ability to understand one another. Suddenly he made it impossible for them to understand one another. He gifted none of them with the ability to translate or interpret. That was no Christian Pentecost for those apostates. The city became filled with strife and confusion. What they had schemed to prevent by building the city and monumental tower they now found it compulsory to do under the miraculous change of conditions. So scatter they did, over all the earth. Jehovah caused the city to be called, not Bab-ilu, meaning "Gate of God", but Babel or Babylon, meaning "confusion". This strange act of God was meant, not to convert those apostates, but to balk their united purpose. Wherever they scattered they carried their false religion with them, to be practiced under new terms in their new language and new location. Thus varieties began.

²¹ In the Bible's very first book Babel or Babylon became a symbol of a mimic theocracy, or rebellion against the universal sovereignty of Jehovah, and of apostasy from the clean religion, and so a symbol of organized false religion. Since false religion has spread out from Babylon to the ends of the earth, she became the mother of false religion. As such, she was a good symbol of Satan the Devil's woman, for he is the father of all impure religion. The last book of the Bible uses her in the same style as symbolizing organized false religion which mothers all forms of apostasy unclean and disgusting to God. It says: "Upon her forehead was written a name, a mystery, 'Babylon the Great, the mother of the harlots and of the disgusting things of the earth.' " (Revelation 17:5, NW) In its infancy Jehovah showed his superior power over Babylon. Even when it reached the zenith of its earthly power seventeen centuries later, Jehovah again showed his superiority over it, in 539 B.C. In the last book of his inspired Word Jehovah foretells how he will make his greatest demonstration of power over the greater mysterious Babylon which has affected all nations and peoples for millenniums till this day. She plays a prominent role in all wrong religion. Do you see the many nations in difficulty today because of the language barriers? Then know that this is one of the things false religion has caused for mankind.