The Truth Shall Make You Free

CHAPTER XI

THE COUNT OF TIME

THE King of Eternity set a limit upon the old world of the ungodly and brought it to an end exactly 120 years after he had expressed his judgment. (Genesis 6:3) With the exhibition of his almighty power in the deluge Jehovah God wiped out the wicked creatures who filled the earth with violence. By the raging floodwaters he not only rendered the earth clean of them, but cleansed the earth itself which had been defiled by the blood unrighteously spilled by the ungodly. The defiled earth could justly be cleansed only by the blood of those who shed blood. — Numbers 35: 33.

The heavenly spirit creatures who had materialized in bodies of flesh and exercised a direct control in earth's affairs were required to return to the spirit world. In that way such manner of direct meddling by spirits from heaven in human matters was brought to an end. The spirit "sons of God" who had disobediently married the daughters of men were not permitted to return to the holy courts of God's presence, but God delivered them over to the custody of Satan, who brought them into a virtual imprisonment. Being so dealt with, they became "the spirits in prison; which sometime were dis-

obedient, when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water". — 1 Peter 3:19, 20.

The Nephilim, however, who had rebelled openly with Satan, joined again the ranks of the devils and demons under Satan their prince, and all these Satan now arranged according to a new pattern, symbolized in Bible prophecy as "another wonder in heaven". "And behold a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads. And his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven." — Revelation 12:3, 4.

The evidence is clear, then, that the symbolic pre-Flood heavens and earth passed out of existence, but our globe, the earth, remained. Religion had been cleared off the face of the earth, by the destruction of all religionists. Into the cleansed earth Noah and all other occupants of the ark came forth at God's command. The first thing that was done outside the ark was to institute the worship of Jehovah God by Noah, who is a prophetic picture of the woman's "seed" destined to bruise the Serpent's head. "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. And Jehovah smelled the sweet savor; and Jehovah said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake, for that the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth; neither will I again smite any more

everything living, as I have done." — Genesis 8:20,21, A.R.V.

Besides being prophetic of greater things yet to come, this transaction was a small-scale or miniature fulfillment of Lamech's words at Noah's birth: "This same shall comfort us concerning our work and toil of our hands, because of the ground which the LORD hath cursed." Jehovah had cursed the earth at the time of Eden because a perfect man had gone wicked; but now, all his descendants being born sinners and hence their heart imaginings being inclined to evil from youth on, Jehovah God did not curse the earth because of the condition in which they were helplessly born. Only, thereafter when the human race showed a choice of wickedness deliberately and defiled the earth with innocent blood would God bring upon them a curse. — Isaiah 24: 3-6; Malachi 4: 6.

For the time being, to serve the prophetic picture here made, the earth was clean, undefiled and uncursed. Its sole inhabitants were righteous in God's sight through their faith and obedience, and the worship of Jehovah prevailed to the exclusion of all demonism or religion. True, the invisible demons under Satan had not been destroyed, but were permitted to reorganize. However, at this point of time Jehovah God was dealing through the Word, his heavenly representative, direct with Noah and his righteous household. Righteous heavens were then in touch with a righteous earth. Under such conditions, which were prophetic of the conditions

of the new world now near at hand, God restated the divine mandate. "And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply . . .; bring forth abundantly in the earth, and multiply therein."  — Genesis 9:1, 7.

About a year later, or two years after the flood began, the first child was born in fulfillment of this restated divine mandate. (Genesis 11:10) In course of time the mandate was fulfilled, not in a complete sense, but in a typical or pictorial sense, when the seventy generations from Noah and his descendants were brought forth, as named in Genesis, chapter ten. Seventy (or seven times ten, both numbers symbolizing completeness) represents fulfillment or accomplishment as respects the mandate. Nimrod, due to wickedness and childlessness, is not reckoned in, because he does not picture any having part in the real, permanent fulfillment of the divine mandate in the new world. (Genesis 10:8-10; 10:32) Living for 350 years after the flood, Noah saw the divine mandate typically carried out. Though the mandate was restated primarily to him, he had no more children. His sons and daughters-in-law did the multiplying. So it will be under the Greater Noah.

To show that the carrying out of the divine mandate was not meant to breed babies under totalitarian rule for purposes of selfish warfare and to pollute the earth with blood, Jehovah God established with Noah and his sons, hence with all their descendants to this day, the

everlasting covenant respecting the sanctity of blood, the basis of life. By this covenant or solemn declaration of the Life-giver's will, man might kill animals for his needed food, but might not engage in robbing animals of their life or soul. Also, the blood of a manslayer could be shed only by the one whom God delegated to act in His image, that is, as God's representative and executioner. Said God to those worshiping Him: "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, Roth., marginal reading according to the Hebrew.

If humankind kept this everlasting covenant of the sanctity of creature life, they would not defile the earth, but would escape the bringing of a curse from God upon them, with destruction to follow the curse. As a visible sign of this covenant of blood the great Life-giver set the rainbow in the sky, the rainbow never having been visible to man before the flood. "And God said, This is the sign of the covenant, which I am granting betwixt me and you, and every living soul [nephesh chayyah] that is with you,

to age-abiding generations. . . . This is the sign of the covenant which I have established between me and all flesh that is on the earth." (Genesis 9:12-17, Roth.) The truth of this rainbow covenant, being duly applied by God's power in his own time, will free the earth of unrighteous wars which have plagued humankind.

MEASURING TIME TO OUR DAY

As to human relations, God is an accurate Timekeeper in the fulfillment of his purposes. Until God reveals it to his devoted servants, it is impossible for creatures to "know the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in his own power". He appoints the time for each of his purposes to mature, and at the fullness of the time he acts. "When the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons." (Galatians 4:4,5) "To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven." — Ecclesiastes 3:1.

The Divine Word of truth shows up as foolish those teachers of "science falsely so called", who teach that man has been upon this planet and in a state of development toward perfection for millions of years, the exact number of which these so-called "scientists" cannot agree upon among themselves. After the Flood God's Word counts the time through the generations of Noah's son Shem. Before the Flood the time

was counted from Adam through the line of Seth. By this it is easy and simple to prove that the time from Adam's creation to the Flood was 1,656 years, as follows:

Exodus 12:40-43 and Galatians 3:17 are in agreement that from the Abrahamic covenant to Jehovah's law covenant with the nation of Israel at the time of their exodus from Egypt was 430 years. Thereafter there was a trek of the Israelites through the wilderness to the land of Canaan for 40 years, followed by 6 years of fighting with the Canaanites before apportioning out all the land to the Israelites by Judge Joshua. (Joshua 14: 5-10; Numbers 1:1; 10:11, 12; 12:16; 13:1-30) After Joshua's death there was a broken period of judges, on the time length of which the Bible is not definite. Concerning this the apostle Paul says, at Acts 13:19-22 (A.R.V.): "And when he had destroyed seven nations in the land of Canaan, he gave them their land for an inheritance, for about four hundred and fifty years: and after these things he gave them judges until Samuel the prophet. And afterward they asked for a king: and God gave unto them Saul the son of Kish, a man of the tribe of Benjamin, for the space of forty years. And when he had removed him, he raised up David to be their king." After David's reign of forty years, his son Solomon became king, and in the fourth year of his reign he began building the temple at Jerusalem.

In the record concerning the temple's construction the great Timekeeper supplies that which fills the gap between the Israelites' exodus from Egypt to beginning work on the temple. "And it came to pass in the four hundred and eightieth year after the children of Israel

were come out of the land of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon's reign over Israel, in the month Ziv, which is the second month, that he began to build the house of Jehovah." Thereafter Solomon reigned thirty-six years. (1 Kings 6:1,2, A.R.V.; 11:42) In the original Hebrew text of these verses the numbers of years are written spelled out in full. It was first hundreds of years after Christ that alphabetic letters began to be used as symbols of numbers, and then these were used merely to number the chapters and verses, but NOT to change the original Hebrew text. Without any other definite Scripture time statement we accept 1 Kings 6:1, 2, and proceed with measuring the time.

The above figures are based upon the record of Israel's kings as given in 2 Chronicles, chapters 12 to 36. Both 2 Chronicles 36:19-23 and Ezra 1:1-6, and Daniel 5:28-31, agree that it was in the first year of Cyrus' reign that he permitted the Jews to depart from Babylon and return to Jerusalem to build the temple, thus ending the seventy years' desolation of the land of Judea. It is well established that two years after the overthrow of Babylon in 538 B.C. by Darius the Mede and his nephew, Cyrus the Persian, the first year of Cyrus' exclusive rule began, which year was 536 B.C. So, putting

together the three great periods of time from Adam's creation onward, we get the following table:

Thereafter the so-called Anno Domini or A.D. period began.

From the beginning of A.D. 1, or Year of the Lord 1, to the beginning of A.D. 1944 is 1,943 full years, which, being added to the above table, give the time measurement from Adam's creation to date:

We are therefore near the end of six thousand years of human history, with conditions upon us and tremendous events at hand foreshadowed by those of Noah's day. — Luke 17:26-30.