"And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually." (Genesis 6:5)
Genesis 6 lays gives the background of the world at the time leading up to Noah and the Great Flood. In order to understand why God sent the Flood, it is important to consider the circumstances that preceded it – including the actions of mankind and the actions of God.
“And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” (Genesis 6:5, emphasis added)
Mankind’s depravity had reached a level that evil entirely permeated every part of his being. His wickedness was great- that is, his actions were wicked. Every imagination was evil - his mind was wholly corrupted. Every thought of his heart – his will, his desires, his emotions, his passions, had all become so sin stained that there remained nothing within them that was not evil. These people upon whom God poured out the Flood were not merely dabbling in sin here and there, everything that they were doing was an horrific abomination!
“The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence. And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth. And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth.” (Genesis 6:11-13, emphasis added)
Lest we have any doubts, let me say that the Earth was corrupted and filled with violence! There is a linguistic device employed in Hebrew that we see throughout the Old Testament, and that is emphasis through repetition. Whenever a word or phrased is used repetitively, it indicates a stronger or greater degree of the expression. The evil depths that the people who lived before the Flood had sunk to is strongly emphasized and amplified here in verses 5, and 11-13.
In considering why God sent the Flood, we must first realize that those living upon the Earth were completely and utterly wicked beyond the hope of changing. There were no innocent bystanders caught up in the Flood; everyone was guilty of the most deplorable sinfulness. The rebellion against God that we saw taking root in Cain and his descendants had now reached a fruition that God could not overlook.
Can a one day old baby sin? Did all the one day old babies sin the day of the flood, the day they were born? What was the sin? (please no original sin answers – since we were all were supposedly born with that, and god allowed Noah and his family to survive with that sin, what other sin required their death? Was that sin so terrible that the baby deserved to be drowned in a flood? DROWNED!!! Do you have children? Should they have been drowned on their first day? If someone tried to drown your one day old baby for commiting that same sin, what would be your response to that?
Hi, thanks for reading this and taking the time to share your thoughts.
In the movie “The Dead Zone”, Christopher Walken plays the role of a man who suffers a coma following an accident. After awakening from the coma, he discovers that he has the ability to see into the future of any person with whom he makes physical contact. One such person is a politician (played by Martin Sheen) who shakes hands with the man while campaigning for office. Upon contact, Walken’s character has a horrific vision of this politician and the terrible death and destruction that results from a war he will cause after he is elected President of the United States. Haunted by the vision and unable to shake the feeling that he must do something to pre-empt the tragedy to come, he consults a medical doctor friend for advice as to what he should do.
“If you had the opportunity to go back in time and kill Adolph Hitler before he became Chancellor of Germany, would you do it?”, he asks. “I am a man of medicine who has dedicated his life to relieving human suffering”, the doctor responds, ” in light of that, I would have no choice but to kill the [explitive].” This is a fictional story, but it does raise an interesting prospect: If a person had knowledge of what would happen in the future, would he be justified in preventing a tragedy such as the one in the movie? Would he be irresponsible if he chose to do nothing? Now, let us say that the person with such knowledge was in a particular position of authority (a judge or police officer, for example), would he be justified to act in the prevention of a particular crime? If a police officer could see into the future and knew beyond any doubt that a person was about to go on a murderous rampage, would he be justified in stopping that person; even with deadly force?
All of these examples are, as we know, imperfect because no human being is privy to such knowledge. None of us really knows the future, but God does. God has the ability to know what will happen, as well as what might or could happen if certain variables were changed. God knows exactly what the world would have been like in 1940 if Hitler had not survived to become Chancellor of Germany. If we knew what God knows, if we had all of the facts as He does, would we find fault with God if He had chosen to end the life of Adolph Hitler in 1920? I don’t think anyone would dispute that. Would it, however, become more objectionable if God chose to end His life, say, when he was 20? 15? 10? Remember, we KNOW beyond any doubt the terrible evil that Hitler will commit if he is permitted to survive until he takes control of Germany, so when exactly would be an acceptable time in his life for judgment to come?
Two problems exist with your argument: 1.) You pre-suppose that God is only justified in judging sin which has actually occured already. You are suggesting that God must wait idly by for a person to carry out a sin before He is justified in judging it. Even the Laws of man are not so binding. If it can be proven in a court of law that a criminal was conspiring to commit a crime, he is convicted. A police officer is perfectly justified in using deadly force on a criminal pointing a gun at another person, it would be a gross dereliction of duty for him to wait to act until the trigger was pulled. As I mentioned in this post, EVERYONE in the world at the time of the Flood was involved in sin of the most severe nature. What do you suppose those “innocent” babies would have done had they reached adulthood? 2.) You pre-suppose that the babies killed in the Flood might have not done as everyone else in the world; that there was a chance that they would not follow in the footsteps of every other living person besides Noah and his family. Again, with man’s limited knowledge, we are morally inclined to presume that every individual is innocent until they behave otherwise, but is an omniscient God? God knew exactly how each and every one of those babies would behave if they reached adulthood, and that was exactly as their parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents had been for generations.
Thanks again for reading and sharing your comments.
In Christ,
Loren
I wouldn’t lean so heavily on explaining away God or making excuses for Him. The fact is, God doesn’t always operate in ways that we think are just or right, but that doesn’t mean He is lesser or more of God. He is God. He does and judges and acts and says what He wants to say and when He wants to say it, even if that means a 1-day old baby must die. God is the author of creation and He also can destroy. He .. is .. God. He may not be the God that we want – we want a God that will always make us happy, but, God is not our servant, He is our master who has spared us from the misery of the flood and send His only Son to serve and die for us so that we no longer know suffering.
Hi, thanks for visiting and taking the time to share your thoughts and comments
I am not really sure how you interpreted this post as “explaining away God or making excuses for Him”, that certainly wasn’t my intention. The purpose of this website is to reflect on the Word of God and find His Message for us from it. Obviously, for those of us who trust in Jesus Christ, no explanation of God’s actions are ever necessary; we trust Him and know that everything He does is right. Although a great percentage of what I write on “Answers From The Book” is intended for Christians, it is not exclusively addressed to those who already believe.
God certainly owes no explanation, He is not obligated to justify His actions to man. But we live in an age where the Bible is heavily scrutinized by skeptics and attacked by hardened atheists with their own “evangelizing” agenda. These people thoroughly enjoy calling God’s character into question and love to present Him as a cosmic tyrant who is both vindictive and capricious. They seek to sow seeds of doubt by drawing a false disparity between the caricatures they draw of the “cruel” and “opressive despot” of the Old Testament and the “peace-loving”, “milk-toast”, “pacifist” of the New. While I recognize that many people simply want to believe that these parodies are accurate so that they will feel justified in rejecting Jesus Christ, there are also those who are not as adamant, yet they have been heavily influenced by these erroneous portraits of God.
If the idea that God is an illogical, uncompassionate, sadistic dictator who is all too eager to annihilate the human race for no reason is preventing someone from seriously looking into the claims of the Gospel, are we wrong to want to dispel such confusion? I readily admit that I do not understand all of God’s motives for everything He does, nobody has such perfect insight. None of us are able to explain everything, and I think that there is a good reason for this. The time must come for each of us to decide whether we are going to trust God or not. But I believe that God’s purposes for destroying the world by the Flood are given to us in Scripture and they are worthy of our consideration.
For us, no explanation is really necessary. For some, no explanation is adequate because they choose to reject God. But for others, seeing the bigger picture might be the breakthrough needed for them to reconsider the Gospel Message. My mission is to offer answers from the Book for all who will listen.
Thanks again for reading this and taking the time to share your comments. God bless you,
Loren