SPEAKER_01: Welcome to the Preaching the Cross Radio Podcast, featuring the radio ministry of Pastor James W.
SPEAKER_01: Knox of the Bible Baptist Church of Delaney, Florida.
SPEAKER_01: Our prayer is that these half-hour Bible study programs will bring the lost to a saving knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ and enable the saved to grow in the grace and knowledge of the Savior.
SPEAKER_01: Now here's your host, Pastor James W.
SPEAKER_01: Knox.
SPEAKER_00: Well, hello again.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you so very much for tuning in today to the Preaching of the Cross Radio Broadcast.
SPEAKER_00: I'm Brother James, and I greet you in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world, and I welcome you to the sixth in our series of broadcasts dealing with the earth as the center of the universe and the great uh theater, the great stage upon which God is acting out uh the eternal drama of salvation.
SPEAKER_00: We had to really hurry along at the close of the last broadcast.
SPEAKER_00: If you were with us, you might remember how we really had to uh shift into a higher gear and talking about the reasons why God uh could have or or would have been justified in offering salvation to the angels, but he did not, and instead offered salvation to mankind.
SPEAKER_00: And we consider just at the close of the program the marvelous, wonderful, amazing grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, who the Bible says in Hebrews 2 16 took not on him the nature of angels, but took on him the seed of Abraham, and how he humbled himself and took on the form and fashion and likeness of a man as children, as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same, that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is the devil.
SPEAKER_00: And we saw the great contrast between the deceiver, the enemy of God, uh Satan, who sought to exalt himself and to ascend, and the Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ, in all his marvelous glory, who descended, humbled himself, took the lowest place in the universe, the place of a sinful fallen man, to redeem us.
SPEAKER_00: And what took place on planet Earth, what took place on the cross at Calvary, what took place when the Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ, laid down his life, was the greatest exhibition of God's loving grace that could ever be shown forth.
SPEAKER_00: God commendeth his love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
SPEAKER_00: On the program today, which will be our sixth in this series, we want to talk about the degeneration of the human race.
SPEAKER_00: We want to talk about the degeneration of the human race.
SPEAKER_00: Now, nothing is clearer in the teaching of history than that God does not execute justice speedily.
SPEAKER_00: He is long suffering, plenteous in mercy and truth.
SPEAKER_00: Yet the very delay of a merciful God to execute justice served to accentuate rather than curb crime.
SPEAKER_00: While judgment lingered, evildoers were to wax worse and worse until the cup of iniquity was filled to overflowing.
SPEAKER_00: Several decades were to pass before Eve and sorrow should bring forth children, perhaps, and centuries were to elapse before Adam would experience physical death.
SPEAKER_00: But because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil.
SPEAKER_00: Ecclesiastes chapter eight and verse eleven.
SPEAKER_00: When Cain was born, his mother said, I have gotten a man from the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps she believed that he was the promised redeemer, who should crush the serpent's head and restore to the human race the lost garden and the earthly dominion.
SPEAKER_00: But the first son of woman proved to be of that wicked one and slew his brother.
SPEAKER_00: From the day that the firstborn of man went out from the presence of his parents a murderer, the wickedness of man was to increase until those awful days of vice, vulgarity, and violence were finally to usher in Earth's second catastrophe.
SPEAKER_00: There are three striking characteristics of the age of degeneracy that preceded the flood.
SPEAKER_00: In the first place, it was an age of longevity.
SPEAKER_00: Out of the nine men whose ages are recorded, one reached nearly a thousand years, and the average life of the entire number was nine hundred and twelve years.
SPEAKER_00: You know it's difficult to appreciate fully all that's entailed in the longevity which men enjoyed before the flood.
SPEAKER_00: Adam's lifetime alone covered more than one seventh of all the period of human existence on the earth from the beginning of the world up to the present time, and the combined lives of Noah and Adam, with a gap of only one hundred and twenty six years between them, covered eighteen hundred and eighty years.
SPEAKER_00: They embraced nearly one third of the whole period of human history.
SPEAKER_00: According to Sidney Collet, C O L L E T T, during the lifetime of Adam, the population of the earth might well have reached twenty million, while before Cain and Seth passed away it might have been more than one hundred and thirty six millions.
SPEAKER_00: Rapidly increasing population seems to be exactly what was intended in God's decree to Adam be fruitful and multiply.
SPEAKER_00: It was his gracious purpose to make of one blood all nations of men that dwelt upon the face of the earth, and thus he decreed that the length of life should be many times that of the threescore and ten years to which the world has long since been accustomed.
SPEAKER_00: The longevity of the Antedeluvians, that is, those who lived before the great flood in Noah's day, deluve deluge, uh similar wording there, has been considered incredible, and many efforts have been made to explain it away.
SPEAKER_00: Some have contended that these years were in fact only months, but the inconsistency of this argument is quickly seen when we recognize that according to this computation, the patriarchs would have been mere children when their sons were born.
SPEAKER_00: One of the strongest arguments in favor of recognizing the ancient year as of equal length to the present is that the reduction in the length of life took place subsequent to the universal judgments of God.
SPEAKER_00: After the flood, the average drops below five hundred, while in the period between the confusion of tongues at Babel and the birth of Abraham, the average life is not more than two hundred and twenty five.
SPEAKER_00: This gradual reduction throughout the early centuries and even down to the present time, when viewed in connection with the divine law of longevity and universal judgment, does not permit any other explanation of ancient longevity except that the ravages of sin had not yet shown their effect upon the race.
SPEAKER_00: There were undoubtedly influences in the earth and air at that period, which combined with the superior vitality of a newly created race, produced results in the physical nature of man impossible at the present time.
SPEAKER_00: We may also remember in this connection that the use of animal food and intoxicating drink is not mentioned until after the flood.
SPEAKER_00: The undue stimulus to the nerves and the increase of arterial action consequent upon the use of meat, together with disease engendered by taking into the system the flesh of animals themselves imperfect in health, and still more the use of narcotic stimulants may have greatly facilitated the process of decay and dissolution.
SPEAKER_00: The longevity of primeval generations is corroborated by many ancient traditions.
SPEAKER_00: Josephus, the Jewish historian, could appeal to them.
SPEAKER_00: After stating the particulars in conformity with the Mosaic account, he says I have for witnesses to what I have said, all who have written antiquities both among the Greeks and barbarians, Manetho, who wrote the Egyptian history, Barosus, who collected the Chaldean monuments, Much and Hysthius, besides these, Hieronemus, the Egyptian, and those who composed the Phoenician history assent to what I here say.
SPEAKER_00: Hesiod also, and Hacactius, Hellenatius, and Acusillenus, and besides these Ephorus and Nicolaus relate that the ancients lived nearly a thousand years.
SPEAKER_00: This appeal shows that such accounts were actually possessed, although most of them have been lost to us.
SPEAKER_00: The Chaldeans believed there were ten Antediluvian kings whose lives prolonged thousands of years.
SPEAKER_00: The Hindu writings mention ten wonderful men as the ten fathers whose lives were of incredible length.
SPEAKER_00: The Persian sacred books state that the Aryan race began with a reign of ten men of the ancient law who lived on Homa, the pure water of life, and preserved their sanctity.
SPEAKER_00: The Chinese begin their history with the lives of ten divine men who were the first emperors.
SPEAKER_00: The Scandinavians believed in the ten ancestors of Odin, while the Arabs say that ten kings ruled over the Edites, the primordial people of their country.
SPEAKER_00: All these records substantiate the account of the ten patriarchs mentioned in Genesis.
SPEAKER_00: The second characteristic of this pre-flood age was the marvelous development of civilization.
SPEAKER_00: We read of the firstborn that when he went into exile he builded a city and called the name of the city after the name of his son Enoch.
SPEAKER_00: In considering this fact, we must not forget the important evidence it affords that houses were earlier than tents, that towns were earlier than encampments.
SPEAKER_00: You see, the Bible is very plain in its teaching that cities and civilization proceeded the nomad life and the so-called cavemen.
SPEAKER_00: Tent dwelling is ascribed to a later period.
SPEAKER_00: Now this is not the course which an evolutionist would take in regarding the progress of mankind.
SPEAKER_00: No, he would have man advance progressively from country to city, from savage to civilized, from cave to house.
SPEAKER_00: But in the true record, the firstborn man builds a city and the tent comes later.
SPEAKER_00: It was not until thirteen centuries later that we are told of the birth of Jabel, who was the father of such as dwell in tents and of such as have cattle.
SPEAKER_00: Undoubtedly there had been shepherds before, but it was not until the time of Jabel that large portions of land were set aside for the purpose of breeding and feeding cattle and sheep.
SPEAKER_00: Hurning became a favorite occupation, and the care that it required drew men out from the cities, so that a portion of the year at least they dwelt in tents and movable structures.
SPEAKER_00: This is a mode of later life frequently brought to our attention in the scriptures, it being essentially that of the patriarchs, whose history occupies the greater portion of the book of Genesis.
SPEAKER_00: But it must not be forgotten that Abraham was called from the city of Ur, and by faith he sojourned in a land of promise.
SPEAKER_00: And the Bible says of his sojourn and of his journey after he left a city.
SPEAKER_00: In Hebrews chapter eleven, let me read that for you.
SPEAKER_00: Hebrews chapter eleven and verse nine, uh let's start at verse eight.
SPEAKER_00: By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obey.
SPEAKER_00: And he went out, not knowing whither he went.
SPEAKER_00: By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise.
SPEAKER_00: For he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God.
SPEAKER_00: Abraham left the city, became a wanderer, and his posterity were to follow in his footsteps until such a time as they would conquer the cities of Canaan for their possession, and the metropolis of Jerusalem for their capital.
SPEAKER_00: And it must not be overlooked that as shepherds and herdsmen they were an abomination to the Egyptians, who lived in cities, and in that day had reached a high order of civilization that is even now reflected in the pyramids and the excavations of the royal tombs of Egypt.
SPEAKER_00: Cain's city quite probably had little in common with the modern metropolis that we know.
SPEAKER_00: It may have been nothing more than a collection of low cottages or hovels.
SPEAKER_00: But even at that, we see a stage of development in the first family far in advance of the caveman and the forest savage that the evolutionist associates with Earth's earliest ages.
SPEAKER_00: Besides the mention of a city, there were other evidences of a high order of civilization in this age before the flood.
SPEAKER_00: Jabel had a brother named Jubal.
SPEAKER_00: This all you'll read about in Genesis four, Genesis five, and he was the father of all such as handled the harp and organ.
SPEAKER_00: Not that the world had been without music for a thousand years, but that through the experiments of this scientist instruments were contrived to give vent to musical sounds of greater compass and power.
SPEAKER_00: Again, we must not imagine that these musical instruments were as highly perfected as those with which we are accustomed in this day.
SPEAKER_00: The harp was something like a lyra, the form and character of which is better known to us from scripture than from actual knowledge.
SPEAKER_00: The organ perhaps was just a simple instrument played with the mouth.
SPEAKER_00: It is sufficient for us to notice that here were the beginnings of these musical instruments, which were to be perfected as time went on and are still being improved upon to this very day, and that even their beginnings in their beginnings the instruments were in advance of what we find among the savage tribes of this day, and far superior to anything the evolutionist vainly imagines could be attained by man when the human race was but a thousand years old.
SPEAKER_00: Another son of Lamech was Tubulcane.
SPEAKER_00: He was an instructor of every artificer of brass and iron, or in brass and iron, the Bible text reads.
SPEAKER_00: This would do away with the Stone Age altogether.
SPEAKER_00: This Stone Age, through which the evolutionists insist the human race is past, is non existent in history.
SPEAKER_00: The use of metals was known in the earliest days.
SPEAKER_00: Why it's hard to conceive that extensive agriculture could have been carried on, that cities could have been built, or the useful and elegant arts brought into use without this knowledge, but under the discoveries and inventions of Tubalcane, metals were to become of great use and service to mankind so much so as to render him famous in his day and attach honorable distinction to his name in all succeeding generations.
SPEAKER_00: Through his experiments, undoubtedly, the metals were brought into common use.
SPEAKER_00: In this connection, Dr.
SPEAKER_00: Kito, that we've cited earlier in another lesson, points out that in the name and character of Vulcan, V-U-L-C-A-N, the blacksmith god of the Greeks and Romans, we have the original word to Bulcane.
SPEAKER_00: T U B A L C A I N Vulcan.
SPEAKER_00: All that is necessary is to omit the T U, which was likely regarded as a prefix, make the common change of B to V, which is a pronunciation distinction in the English language, not so much spelling, but simply pronunciation.
SPEAKER_00: And Dr.
SPEAKER_00: Kiddo also says that the Bible is not the only ancient record which ascribes the invention or improvement of metallurgy to the seventh generation of mankind.
SPEAKER_00: The Phoenician analyst Senko Nia, let me spell that for you, S A N C H O N I A T H O Sancho Nia, says of this generation, of these were begotten two brothers who discovered iron and the forging thereof in the seventh generation, just as the Bible has it.
SPEAKER_00: There is sufficient evidence from the Bible and from the contemporary records that the pre flood civilizations made high improvement in the arts and attained to a state of considerable civilization.
SPEAKER_00: There is not even so much as a suggestion that man progressed from the state of a savage to that of civilized condition.
SPEAKER_00: From what the Bible teaches about the early development of the human race, we can fully understand how Noah was able to complete a large and spacious vessel which only in the last century has been exceeded in size.
SPEAKER_00: The Ark is an unanswerable argument against those who plead a progressive development of marine architecture among the ancients.
SPEAKER_00: But the question may be asked, if the original condition of mankind was civilized, why are there so many forms of savage life in existence today?
SPEAKER_00: And our reply is that they have retrogressed from civilized ancestry and lost much that their primeval fathers knew, painful as it may be, to those who hold the doctrine of human progress, this is the only truthful explanation of the nations that have gone back in civilization, have lost the arts which were known in their former times, and become heathen, pagan savages.
SPEAKER_00: As we shall see in just a few minutes, science, art, and civilization can be explained from the centralization and longevity of the antediluvian race, but from the confusion of tongues at Babel, the consequent dispersion in Peleg's day, as well as the change in climate, the separate nations in the course of their migrations under stress of circumstances or absence of competition and inspiration, were to neglect and finally forget the arts cultivated by the original family.
SPEAKER_00: The useful arts of life which were lost in the process of dispersion are known to have been recovered in the course of time, either by reinvention under the same conditions as those in which they were first discovered, or by renewed communication with those branches of the human family which still retain possession of them.
SPEAKER_00: The latter process is indicated by the numerous traditions of various ancient nations who trace the origin of their arts and civilizations to some stranger who came to them from the sea and imparted instruction to them.
SPEAKER_00: Upon the whole, therefore, it seems evident that the civilization, knowledge, and art of the men living before the flood have been greatly underrated by our modernists in their desire to applaud a progressive civilization instead of lamenting the degeneracy from the earliest ages.
SPEAKER_00: Indeed, when we consider the advantages which length of days afforded to the earliest generations of mankind, giving to one man in his own person the accumulated knowledge and experience of a thousand years, it seems difficult to overestimate the development which may have been made and the knowledge in art which may have been acquired.
SPEAKER_00: Our advantage from other men's work lies largely in books, but in the Antediluvians the fathers could impart by living voice and living practice the knowledge of a thousand years to sons who might build up the experience of another thousand years upon that large foundation.
SPEAKER_00: To the special advantages of longevity, we must add that of equitable and favorable climate, which was not to be experienced by the human race after the second great catastrophe of the earth, Noah's flood.
SPEAKER_00: Extremes of heat and cold, droughts, floods, and frosts, as we shall see later, were unknown in that sunny, hospitable temperature which prevailed before the flood.
SPEAKER_00: Again, the unity of the race, congregated in civic centers with an absence of national war and turmoil, was a great asset to civilization.
SPEAKER_00: Wars have probably done more than anything else to retard the progress of civilization.
SPEAKER_00: But in Earth's earliest ages there was an absence, for the most part, of those elements most calculated to divide the people in bloody warfare.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, there's no record of such prior to the flood.
SPEAKER_00: Individual crime prevailed, but divisional conflict was unknown.
SPEAKER_00: The race was one.
SPEAKER_00: You know, we're apt to overrate the present civilization because we know it so much better than the past.
SPEAKER_00: But ancient history, and monuments older than history, disclose to us how advanced the antideluvians were in material civilization and in the arts of social life.
SPEAKER_00: They possessed arts that we do not, and it has been proved that many of our discoveries are but revival of old things.
SPEAKER_00: Give a man a thousand years of mature strength, under the most favorable conditions, to perfect his inventions, and who can calculate his achievements?
SPEAKER_00: In our little span of seventy years we labor, toil, scheme, and plan, but with ideas half developed and designs half formed and work half accomplished, we passed into the land of silence and pervert forgetfulness, and our great interests perish unless men can be found and favorable conditions prevail for their furtherance.
SPEAKER_00: How much more might be accomplished by a few master men who could, with unbroken health, direct their energies to one object for eight or nine hundred years?
SPEAKER_00: They can be, by the ill-matched fragmentary efforts of inharmonious uh minds, they can't be compared with.
SPEAKER_00: There's no comparison with what these men could have accomplished with what men are accomplishing today.
SPEAKER_00: Kiddo declares it not improbable that under such favorable conditions, the pre-flood civilization may have approached or even been an advanced of our own, and I believe he's absolutely right.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, the one thing that may have prevented the perfection of this early civilization was the prevalence and rapid progress of crime.
SPEAKER_00: And this is the third great characteristic of that period.
SPEAKER_00: Already we've observed that the firstborn of men went out from the presence of his parents a murderer.
SPEAKER_00: He was not put to death for his crime.
SPEAKER_00: Indeed, we have no record that capital punishment was inflicted upon any murderer in this.
SPEAKER_00: It was not until after the flood that God committed to man the judicial functions with this stipulation Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed.
SPEAKER_00: The earliest uh statement regarding these matters in Scripture is Lamech's boast to his wives that he had murdered two men, and there was no vengeance to overtake him.
SPEAKER_00: But it was the sixteenth century BC, in the days of Noah, that we have a very explicit account of the extraordinary wickedness that prevailed all over the habitable earth.
SPEAKER_00: The fact that through these years crime was to go unpunished and justice was to be set aside would lead us to expect a moral degeneracy of the race.
SPEAKER_00: But that in itself was not sufficient for such universal sin and such extremes of evil as would introduce the greatest judgment this earth had ever seen.
SPEAKER_00: The most dreadful calamity recorded in the annals of the human race is now impending.
SPEAKER_00: A cataclysm of extraordinary extent is to sweep away the vast population that we've been talking about, and all their wonderful works must perish with them.
SPEAKER_00: What could have moved a gracious, kind, loving God to inflict such tremendous punishment?
SPEAKER_00: Well, we're not without explanation.
SPEAKER_00: The pages of the scripture, the Bible, as always, gives the answer.
SPEAKER_00: The superhuman crime and iniquity that prevailed upon the earth was the result of the sons of God marrying the daughters of men.
SPEAKER_00: Genesis chapter six.
SPEAKER_00: And the Bible says in Psalm 78 verse 49, He cast upon them the fierceness of his anger, wrath, and indignation and trouble by sending evil angels among them.
SPEAKER_00: Now the Bible talks about these sons of God, and we've mentioned them before.
SPEAKER_00: Job suggests the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan came also in Job 1 6.
SPEAKER_00: These sons of God were the fallen angels.
SPEAKER_00: And the great extent of evil, irreligion, apostasy, violence, and wrongdoing resulted from the incongruous unions between these two classes, distinguished, separated by the titles sons of God and daughters of men, from whom sprang giants, who became mighty men which were of old, men of renown, Genesis 6, four.
SPEAKER_00: The New Testament throws light upon this subject in Jude verses 6 and 7.
SPEAKER_00: The angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness, under the judgment of the great dagge.
SPEAKER_00: Even as Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication and going after strange flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire.
SPEAKER_00: A similar passage in Second Peter chapter two, verse four, also clearly indicates that the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah was the sin of the angels who left their own habitation and went after strange flesh, and that the consequences of this unnatural union was wiped out by the flood.
SPEAKER_00: Numerous traditions confirm the fact that these supernatural creatures married earth's mortals, and their offspring were men of gigantic stature and strength.
SPEAKER_00: The demigods of the Greek and Roman mythology no longer appear impossibilities.
SPEAKER_00: It was the love of Jupiter for the beautiful women of the earth that gave birth to such stalwart heroes as Hercules, arousing the wrath of Juno.
SPEAKER_00: The oldest Persian books describe the base iniquity of the children of the wicked one, who lived in the early ages of the world and who perished in an extraordinary rainstorm sent for their destruction.
SPEAKER_00: The Aztec tradition is that a race of giants lived on the earth before the flood who were exceedingly wicked.
SPEAKER_00: The reputed writings of Seth still existing in Asia contain the story of the love of star spirits for the women of this world by which a race of Geni was produced.
SPEAKER_00: Fragments of the lost book of Enoch, translated into Greek, relate that two hundred angels came down to reside near Mount Hermon, lured from heaven by the love for beautiful human women.
SPEAKER_00: A race of giants was the fruit of these marriages.
SPEAKER_00: The apocryphal book of Tobit contains a similar story of the love of Asmodeus, an evil spirit, for Sarah, a beautiful and pious woman.
SPEAKER_00: Josephus, the Jewish historian, says, quote, Many angels of God accompanied with women, and begat sons that proved unjust and despisers of all that was good, on account of the confidence they had in their own strength, for the tradition is that these men did what resembled acts of those whom the Grecians call giants.
SPEAKER_00: Now, my friends, we can hardly conceive of the appalling condition on the earth while under this perverted angelic sway.
SPEAKER_00: We shudder at the thought of their terrible capacity and power for evil, the monstrous crimes and cruelties introduced into the world by the unnatural beings who possessed it at this momentous era have never been approximated even in the worst days of Sodom and Gomorrah, of decadent Rome, of revolutionary France, or pagan America of the twentieth century.
SPEAKER_00: Powerful in will and intelligence, giants in physical strength, relying upon the aid of their immortal sires, abandoned to iniquity, with what intolerable tyranny would they oppress human uh common humanity?
SPEAKER_00: How soon would all earthly power be subjected to their control?
SPEAKER_00: How easily could they crush the pious worshippers of God?
SPEAKER_00: Man gave up the unequal strife and drifted with a stream of ungodliness, but he forgot that in the execution of God's eternal affairs there is no haste to satisfy man's impatience, and yet no delay to plunge him into despair.
SPEAKER_00: The machinery of the universe moved on.
SPEAKER_00: There were a few more years of triumphant and confident sin, but then the terrible, unalterable decree was passed.
SPEAKER_00: The end of all flesh has come before me, and behold, I will destroy them with the earth.
SPEAKER_01: Thanks for tuning in today.
SPEAKER_01: Join us every weekday for another episode of the Preaching of the Cross Radio Podcast.
SPEAKER_01: For hundreds of hours of in-depth expository Bible teaching, please visit our YouTube channel, James W.
SPEAKER_01: Knox Sermons, our sermon audio page, Bible Baptistoland, or our website, Bible BaptistTeland.com.
SPEAKER_01: Until next time and throughout eternity, may Jesus Christ be praised.