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Survey of Bible History
A Chronological Bible Curriculum
Cain and Abel through
The Tower of Babel
Written by Dr. Lester Hutson

Lesson 26

Lesson Aim: to reinforce in the student's mind the reality of man's depraved nature, the certainty of god's judgment and how clearly understandable current natural and cultural phenomena are in light of the explanation given in the Bible.

Preparatory Daily Bible Readings:

Monday: Genesis 4
Tuesday: Genesis 5:1-6:8
Wednesday: Genesis 6:9-22
Thursday: Genesis 7
Friday: Genesis 8
Saturday: Genesis 9
Sunday: Genesis 10:1-11:9

LESSON OUTLINE

I. THE FIRST HUMAN BIRTHS. (Genesis 4:1-2)

A. Cain was the first person to be born and he did not grow up to be the godly person his parents expected him to be.

B. Abel was born shortly after the birth of Cain and his name reflects Eve’s disillusionment with life as a result of the reality of sin.

C. Cain and Abel represent two fundamentally different types of people.

1. Cain was at heart a rebel against God.

2. Abel had a heart to do the will of God.

II. THE OFFERING OF SACRIFICES BY CAIN AND ABEL. (Genesis 4:3-7)

A. Abel offered by faith and was accepted by God. (Hebrews 11:4)

B. Cain offered out of self will and was rejected by God.

C. Only that which is done by faith is acceptable to God. (Hebrews 11:6, Romans 14:23)

III. CAIN THE MURDERER AND FATHER OF A PROGRESSIVE PEOPLE. (Genesis 4:8-24)

A. As a result of being rejected by God, Cain murdered Abel.

1. Life is precious to God and He held Cain accountable for his deed, as He does all who murder other people.

2. God punished Cain and made the punishment of capital offenders the duty of the state, not individuals.

B. Cain became the father of a very progressive people.

1. Cain was able to marry one of his sisters without genetic complications to the offsprings of that union because the gene pool was very pure at that point in time.

2. The immediate descendants of Cain soon invented and developed farming, ranching, tentmaking, sophisticated musical instruments, and an iron and brass industry.

IV. SETH AND HIS LINEAGE. (Genesis 4:26-5:7)

A. God gave Seth as a substitute for Abel.

1. Cain and his descendants represent the lost.

2. Seth and his descendants represent the saved.

3. The descendants of Seth soon began the practice of calling on the name of the LORD.

B. Some of the offsprings of Seth were preachers, who spoke against sin and God’s judgment of it. There was a continuous line of these from Seth to the Flood.

V. THE PRE-FLOOD ERA. (Genesis 5:9-6:13)

A. The era from Creation to the Flood was approximately 1656 years.

B. Life spans during the pre-Flood (antediluvian) era were very long.

1. Most people lived more than 900 years.

2. The long life spans were directly attributable to the firmament or water canopy which filtered out the ultraviolet radiation rays of the sun.

3. The long life spans, atmospheric conditions vastly superior to current conditions and other factors contributed to an enormous population explosion.

C. From Creation, the world grew ever more wicked until it reached a saturation point with God just prior to the Flood. (Genesis 6:5)

1. Man turned ever more from God and to self.

2. The pre-occupation of man was with pleasure, comfort, material things, and especially with sex.

3. Extreme violence earmarked the days before the Flood.

4. Sexual promiscuity and deviation were the norm of that day and marriage and the monogamous family meant almost nothing.

D. God determined to destroy all air-breathing life from the earth except a small number for repopulation purposes.

1. From the judgment of the Flood, God determined to save a male and a female of each animal plus seven individuals of each "clean" animal specie.

2. By God’s grace which was appropriated by his faith, Noah and his wife, along with their three sons and their wives, were spared from the destruction of the Flood.

VI. THE ARK AND THE FLOOD. (Genesis 6:14-8:19)

A. As a means of preserving air-breathing life from the destruction of the Flood, God gave instructions and Noah built an Ark.

1. The Ark was a barge-like ocean-going vessel approximately the size of a large modern warship. It was constructed on a 6 to 1 length to width ratio with three separate decks.

2. The construction and configuration of the Ark is rich in spiritual symbolism.

B. The Ark was very large and capable of housing the cargo which Genesis claims was in it.

1. To satisfy the claims made in Genesis, only two of each specie of animal was required in the Ark, plus seven of each "clean" animal. Sub-species were not required.

2. The vast majority of animal species are smaller in size than a sheep. Upon examination of the number of earth’s animal species and their sizes, it becomes clear that the required number of animals, along with a year’s supply of food, could have easily fit into the Ark.

3. The assembling of the animals into the Ark was a great miracle of God.

C. As judgment against man’s sins, God destroyed the earth by means of a great, universal Flood.

1. The Flood was initiated by God’s breaking up of the world-wide underground water system. The eruption of the underground water system triggered the fall of the great water canopy which surrounded the earth. Enormous rains and underground eruptions continued uninterrupted for forty days and nights. Flood waters continued to rise to a depth of 22 feet above the highest mountain. The entire earth was flooded.

2. The Flood completely reshaped the earth.

a. The bringing of the underground waters, plus the firmament waters, to the surface of the earth covered vast regions which had previously been dry land areas. After the Flood, dry land mass was greatly decreased.

b. To accommodate the additional water on the surface of the earth, God lowered the seas and oceans and raised the heights of land areas and mountains. (Psalm 104:5-9)

c. The dismantling of the water canopy destroyed the green-house effect from the earth. The polar caps formed immediately, deserts began to form and the temperature differentials generated great storms.

d. As great mountain ranges rose quickly and enormous seismic and volcanic activity took place, great tidal waves pounded the surface of the earth, oceans of water churned and ran off, creating the gorges, canyons and valleys of today. Siltation was rampant and areas which had previously been mountains and land areas became sea beds, and sea beds became mountains and high plateaus. Fossil graveyards were created within hours as animals and plants were uprooted, washed along, then deposited and covered with thick layers of silt. This sudden covering, along with intense heat and pressure generated by these catastrophic conditions, accounts for the existence of fossil fuels. The enormous natural catastrophic action of the Flood accounts for geologic formations, land/water configurations and much other current physical phenomena.

3. No other physical event in the history of the world, short of the Creation itself, has come even close to the magnitude and impact of the Flood.

VII. THE POST-FLOOD ERA TO BABEL. (Genesis 8:20-9:29)

A. As a result of the loss of the water canopy at the beginning of the Flood, life spans began a steady decrease.

1. Within a few hundred years, most men were living to be less than 100 years old.

2. The loss of the green-house effect from the earth dramatically changed climatic conditions. Much habitat necessary to the survival of many animals was lost. Many extinctions occurred including the extinction of large dinosaurs.

B. Immediately following the Flood, God promised never to destroy the earth again by water.

1. God did not promise to never again destroy the world. He will again destroy the world; not with water, but with fire.

2. Immediately following the Flood, God also added meat to man’s diet and formally instituted capital punishment, which necessitated formal government.

C. Noah lived for 174 years after the Flood.

1. Noah’s captivity to sin’s nature is reflected by his failure in becoming drunken. He is a prophetic picture of the weakness that is latent in all people.

2. All people on earth originated from Noah through one of his three sons: Shem, Ham or Japheth.

VIII.THE EMPIRE OF NIMROD AND THE TOWER OF BABEL. (Genesis 10:1-11:9)

A. The rebellious nature of Ham reached maturity in his grandson, Nimrod.

1. For approximately 175 years following the Flood, most of the people on earth did not disperse. Even as they migrated from Ararat to the vast Mesopotamia valley area between the lower Tigris and Euphrates rivers, they stayed together as a unit.

2. Nimrod emerged as a great leader and set forth to establish central control over all of earth’s people. He established the world’s first great empire. Nimrod was particularly rebellious against God and sought to change man’s affections from God to himself.

B. Nimrod established Babel as the political and religious center of the world.

1. Under Nimrod’s direction, a great city with a tower to heaven was built.

2. This city called Babel became the mother of all of the world’s false and paganistic religions. These religions bear the common thread of exaltation and worship of nature and the supposed spirit beings which supposedly control nature. All of the pagan religions of the world can trace their lineage to Babel.

3. The tower of Babel was initially a memorial to the true God of heaven and was engraved with the signs of the zodiac in remembrance of Him and certain of His promises; however, soon the people of that era ascribed and attached other meanings to these symbols and began false worship.

C. To stop man’s efforts to create a one-world system, along with selfsufficiency and control, God confounded man’s language and dispersed him forth to the entire earth.

1. By creating several languages and limiting the speaking and under standing of each one to small families and tribes, God made it impossible for the people of earth to communicate on a global scale. Men were consequently forced to function on a nationalistic rather than on an internationalistic basis.

2. Small units began a steady migration away from Babel to all parts of the earth. As they migrated, individual features and cultural characteristics quickly formed, as represented by the many different types of people currently on earth.

 

SUMMARY

It is doubtful that very many people grasp the magnitude of the events which occurred in the approximately 1,831 years of time from the Creation through the Tower of Babel. During that somewhat short period of time, one society grew from two people to several billion and was destroyed because of gross wickedness, and another society grew from the eight survivors of that destruction to another relatively large population which rivaled the wickedness of the first group. To stop the second population from establishing a totally wicked, one-world system in full rejection of God and given wholly to the worship of nature and the supposed spirit rulers of various aspects of the natural world, God brought a second great judgment on the world. He confused the language of man making it impossible for him to communicate effectively and thus making it very difficult for men to co-operate successfully in global efforts. This judgment has successfully retarded man’s one-world ambitions, although man has never lost his vision of a global system of self-sufficiency void of God. As time has progressed, man has gradually recovered his communication skills to a great degree of efficiency, and the day will come when he will temporarily succeed in a one-world system under a great global leader named Antichrist.

Shortly after the initial sin of Adam and Eve and their expulsion from the Garden in Eden, they had a baby. They greatly rejoiced at this first of all births and anticipated this son, whom they named Cain, to grow up to be a very honorable person. Such was not to be the case. Shortly after Cain, Eve gave birth to a second son, whom she named Abel. Though both these boys had the same parents and were reared in the same way, Cain had a rebellious heart against God and was filled with self will, while Abel had a tender heart toward God and sought to do the will of God. Cain represents men who are lost and without God; Abel represents men who know Christ as their personal Savior. Both Cain and Abel were religious and worshipped God. Cain imposed his own ideas into his worship of God, while Abel worshipped in strict accord with God’s instructions as to how to do so. Such obedience to God’s instructions is considered faith. Because Abel offered in faith, his offering to God was accepted. Because Cain offered in self will, his offering was rejected. Such has been the unvarying pattern of worship and service down through the ages to the current.

Because God accepted Abel and rejected Cain’s presumptuous offering, Cain was jealous of and resented Abel even to the point of murdering him. Though he denied responsibility for what he did, Cain could not deceive God, as no man can. God condemned Cain for his crime and imposed the death penalty for murder. Later, at the end of the Flood, society was made responsible to take the life of murderers, a responsibility which demanded the formation of human political government.

Cain took one of his sisters to be his wife and soon a large number of offspring resulted from this union. In those days, the earth was fully surrounded by a water canopy which filtered out harmful radiation from the sun and created a green-house effect. This green-house effect resulted in a nearly perfect physical environment. Temperatures were uniform world-wide, preventing polar regions, deserts and storms. Habitat for human and animal life was optimum. People lived to be very old, nearly 1,000 years, and were able to have children annually for hundreds of years. Sickness under pre-Flood conditions was minimal and recovery from injury or illness was much more likely and rapid than is currently the case. The earth’s population exploded, reaching several billion at the time of the Flood. These pre-Flood or antediluvian people were not a backward, unsophisticated people at all. Within just a few years, while Adam yet lived, men had already begun farming and ranching, iron and brass works had been invented as well as music and musical instruments.

Abel was the godly son of Adam and Eve. After his death, God gave Seth in Abel’s place. The lineage of Jesus Christ was established through the line of Seth. It was the offspring of Seth, who spiritually represent believers in Christ, who initiated the practice of calling upon the name of the LORD, a practice of the saved made possible only by the intercessory work of Christ on their behalf.

The era from the Creation to the Flood was noted for its continual spiritual decay. Like a seed growing into a mature plant, wickedness steadily progressed right up to the Flood. In those pre-Flood years, almost the entire population was turned to pleasure, the satisfying of physical appetites, lust for material goods and sexual sins of every sort. Respect for marriage and the family was almost totally gone. Violence was everywhere. Society was truly corrupt.

As a result of a world matured in sin, God determined to destroy the world by means of a universal Flood of unparalleled magnitude. Though some marine life was to survive the Flood, all air-breathing animals and all people were to die except those inside a special Ark, which God instructed Noah to make. The Ark was very large, much the size of a modern warship. Its three decks were ideally constructed to house a male and a female of each animal specie on earth, seven of certain animals and Noah, along with his family. A study of the number of animal species on earth, both those currently living, along with those represented in the fossil record, coupled with a study of their sizes, will prove that the Ark was more than ample to house earth’s animals along with sufficient food for the duration of the Flood, which was just over a year.

The Flood was the most cataclysmic event to ever occur on earth. Prior to the Flood there was an enormous, world-wide underground watering system. God initiated the Flood by rupturing that system, sending great gushes of water, much of which was doubtlessly very hot, to the surface of the earth. These massive eruptions seem to have triggered the second wave of water to earth’s surface, the waters which had previously been stored in the firmament above the earth. It took 40 days of uninterrupted eruptions of the fountains of the deep coupled with the falling of the waters of the canopy above to bring the waters on earth’s surface to a maximum depth of 22 feet above the highest mountain. The pounding of these waters, as they rushed back and forth in mighty tidal waves, storms and run-offs literally reshaped the surface of the earth. As the crust of the earth fractured, volcanos spewed forth and white-hot magma flowed to the surface from earth’s mantle. Some waters boiled while others turned to ice as a result of the instantly forming polar caps. Mountains were washed away and became sea beds as oceans and seas sank to great depths, while sea beds rose to miles above sea level as mountain ranges and lofty mountains formed. By this means God was able to redistribute the waters which had come to earth’s surface and create new, but smaller, land areas. As God deepened the seas and heightened the mountains to create land areas, the run-off was beyond adequate description. As waters poured off the rising areas into the lowering areas, canyons, gorges, valleys and enormous rifts were cut. The rushing waters suspended enormous volumes of silt and other cargo which it redeposited in other areas as it slowed or converged with other currents. Millions of square miles of forest were uprooted and buried under hundreds and thousands of feet of silt. Animals and people were quickly swept away and deeply covered, often with intense pressure and heat. Fossils were formed and fossil fuels, diamonds and other gems were forged within hours or days. All of the physical phenomena of the earth can be successfully and reasonably interpreted and explained in light of the divine Creation and the Flood.

After the Flood, God promised that He would never again destroy the earth with water. The Bible later explains that in the future, when sin sufficiently again matures in the world, God will destroy the earth by fire. The destruction of the world by the Flood did not put an end to sin. Shortly after the Flood, sin began to reassert itself as the spiritual infection of all mankind that it is. Noah, in spite of being the man of faith and grace that he was, planted a vineyard and made himself drunken on the wine which he made from the grapes. His offspring, especially those through his son Ham, accelerated his sinful direction. Noah had three sons from whom all of the peoples of the world have come.

From Ham came Noah’s great-grandson, Nimrod. For the first 174 years after the Flood, the offspring of Noah stayed closely together. Most of them migrated to the fertile area between the lower Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Nimrod emerged as the chief leader of these people. He organized them into an empire with power, both politically and religiously, centered in himself. His intent was to dethrone God and establish himself as the head of a religious system which worshipped nature and the supposed spirits of the various aspects of nature. Nimrod is a prophetic foreview of man’s attempt to establish a humanistic, one-world system, which will ultimately reach its culmination in Antichrist at the end of time.

Nimrod and his empire of followers set forth to build a great urban headquarters city at Babel with a mighty tower to heaven in its center. The tower seems to have contained great engraved figures of the signs of the zodiac. The people soon were worshipping these signs and the spirits which they represented. Romans 1 is a historical look at what happened at Babel as well as a history of mankind’s degeneration into pantheism or nature worship down through the ages. Every false religion on earth can trace its roots to Babel.

God frustrated man’s efforts to establish a one-world, humanistic system at Babel by confounding man’s language. Prior to Babel, all men spoke the same language. At Babel God established several languages. Only those within small units could understand each other. The confusion which resulted from the language barrier caused the bands with the same language to migrate away from Babel to the various parts of the earth. As these small groups became isolated and intermarried repeatedly within their own ranks, distinctive ethnic and cultural features began to rapidly develop, accounting for the different nationalities known in today’s world.

The era of time from the Creation to the Tower of Babel provides sobering insight and warnings about sin, its power over men and of God’s judgment against it. There is no way to understand the natural world all around us and interpret accurately its multitudes of phenomena apart from an understanding of the events of this era.

QUESTIONS

1. Explain the two fundamentally different types of people represented by Cain and Abel.

2. Why was Cain’s offering rejected while Abel’s was accepted by the Lord?

3. What is God’s position on murder?

4. Cite proofs from the Bible that the earliest men on earth were very intelligent and progressive; not a backward people.

5. Explain the rapid population explosion of the pre-Flood era.

6. Discuss the Biblical reasons for believing that the era between the Creation and the Flood was a relatively short period of probably no more than 2,000 years.

7. Describe the wickedness which characterized the pre-Flood era.

8. What was God’s purpose in causing the Flood?

9. Describe the Ark.

10. Discuss the Ark’s cargo.

11. Why must the Flood be regarded as having been universal?

12. Explain the mechanisms which God used to completely cover the earth with water.

13. How did God bring land masses to be amid the Flood waters without diminishing the quantity of water which exists?

14. Discuss the movements of water and the siltation which occurred during the Flood and how it explains much of today’s phenomena including canyons, valleys, soil strata and fossils.

15. Explain the origin and formation of fossil fuels.

16. Explain the change in weather patterns which occurred with the Flood.

17. Explain the connection between habitat and extinctions following the Flood.

18. How is Nimrod and the system which he sought to establish a prophetic foreshadow of Antichrist and the world system over which he will rule?

19. Explain how Babel is the mother of all false religions.

20. Explain how God’s confusion of man’s language forced dispersion and the development of the ethnic diversities of mankind.

"It Does Make a Difference What You Believe"