To recap, we have seen the progress of revelation, mostly in the requirements for the Lower Realm. That is not to say revelations for the Spirit Realm did not happen, but were not much recorded. The whole point was to keep in plain sight the path to the higher reality. All commands regarding the Lower Realm point back to the Spiritual Realm. Satan clearly did all he could to keep mankind off track in the Covenant of Noah, substituting anything and everything for the blessings available from obedience. The Flood points out fallen men are utterly incapable of self-direction, and need human government. The Tower shows the greed for power and wealth of human rulers knows no boundaries.
Noah's descendants did not forget all man had discovered before the Flood, but took some time to regain the technologies. We have evidence of civilizations passing through various levels of the Stone Ages, into the Bronze Ages. While mankind did remain scattered and hard to unite, those thousands of different cultural developments also brought thousands of ways to drift away from the truth of God's revelation. There was yet no means to reliably discern among the various mythologies just what reflected reality. From our modern analysis of things hidden in the dim past, we can detect common themes, but we can only guess from the things recorded where we can find them. It is virtually certain much cannot be found, whether it was recorded or not, because the near constant warfare and destruction has forever lost much for us.
It's no surprise, then, those today lacking any spiritual interest at all would hold forth various images of the ancient past at conflict with what seems to be described in Scripture. Even among those who believe, the picture varies widely. We should not imagine this frustrates our God at all. It simply serves to remind us mere human intellect won't find much which truly matters, if anything at all. We can comfortably select the archaeological and historical interpretation which best fits a spiritual understanding of Scripture, but don't make too much of it. It's just a color commentary, as it were, to the main events on the field. In the end, people are only going to keep record of what's on the scoreboard. What matters most is the spiritual lessons, those things which cannot be known without the Spirit of God.
So it's pretty obvious mankind spread abroad, as God intended. At the same time, their understanding of the minimum earthly requirements also drifted far from the truth. This meant the path to spiritual reality was also more and more difficult to see. We have no idea how much time, as humans measure things, passed between the Tower and the birth of Abraham, but such a question is a distraction. Mankind needed a fresh revelation of both realms. Abraham was the chosen instrument.
This man lived in a culture which, near as we can tell, kept track of religious materials. Making sense of the Bible narrative as a whole, we find men in the Mesopotamian Valley were able to accurately track some minimum requirements for the worship of Him who eventually called Himself Jehovah. Please note, that name is simply the common English spelling of something which was pronounced and spelled various ways in various cultural and linguistic contexts, themselves each varying over time. It's just a word, and it will do, since it seems God Himself was not too concerned with the issue, allowing His servants to call Him all sorts of things. Most importantly, Abraham connected with God on a spiritual level, which was apparently rare in his day.
Abraham knew enough of the truth to recognize God's voice in whatever form it reached him. Nothing is said of the actual method, only that Abraham got the message. Looking back, that implies he was at least a scholarly man, probably regarded among his kind as nobility, such as it might have been. Abraham's family had immense property in a world where the vast majority of people were peasants, at best. Such a man was God's choice for a fresh revelation of both the Spirit Realm and Lower Realm.
First, Abraham was called to leave behind his whole world. While he did retain movable wealth, he left the society to which his status was tied, as well as the entire cultural setting in which his expectations of life were framed. He sacrificed all that mattered to him, keeping only so much property as God found useful in this calling. More, Abraham was required to become something his people despised -- tent dwelling nomads. We happen to know, for example, circumcision was regarded with contempt in Mesopotamia, but was a necessity for nomadic life in the ANE. We can say Abraham sacrificed his life at God's command, and this is the fundamental requirement of spiritual birth.
Second, Abraham was called to settle in a land of filthy culture and abominable religion, to insure he and his descendants would see just how bad things were. The Canaanites were the polar opposite in terms of Noah's Covenant of what the Nation of Israel would become. Abraham's mission and calling included a faith assumption God would grant to his descendants the land on which he wandered. They would pass through some horrendous experiences, then arise a hardy nation with nothing to lose, ready to embrace what would amount to the clearest statement ever of what it would mean to observe the requirements of the Covenant of Noah.
That Israel never really fulfilled that purpose should have been expected. We know fundamentally it won't matter how precisely and clearly you reveal to fallen man God's will, he won't embrace it. Even when the revelation clearly states in detail just how it is following such a will is the best of all possible worlds for a fallen mankind, men will reject it. They will always seek some other path to their desires. No one should be surprised by this.
Nor should we be surprised when they reject the spiritual path revealed in full clarity and simplicity, either. The very failure of Israel was the channel in which Christ was to be born, to fulfill not only the lower commands of law, but all the higher redemptive purpose, as well. God knew Israel would fail, even as he revealed to Abraham he would father the nation which would become Israel. God knew the only way to answer the question was to drive down into the very center of human existence the undeniable revelation of Himself and His truth, the gospel of Jesus Christ.
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By Ed Hurst
07 April 2009
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