The Scattering
“So
the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the
face of all the earth, and they ceased building the
city” (Genesis 11:8)
Those who don’t
believe in the Great Flood as it is presented in the
Bible, often are looking it from a merely
naturalistic viewpoint. If the Flood occurred and
it was worldwide, some have wondered, how did the
surviving animals and plants reach their present
locations? What about the marsupials in Australia?
How did they get there? How did the cacti and other
desert plants arrive in their present locations?
Here’s what happened: God brought the Flood, kept
the waters over the highest points on the earth for
several months (Genesis 7:20, 24) and then continued
His intervention until this planet was once again
capable of sustaining life as we know it. Note that
God is ALWAYS involved in our lives, and He is
reaching out right now to flood your life with His
love.
There are quite a
number of Scriptures about the Flood and what came
after, but Genesis 11:1-9 is especially
interesting. For instance, language then was not
like it is now. If you’ve been here on earth for
awhile, you’ve noticed that words and phrases change
over time, even reversing in meaning. “Hot” was
about temperature in 1900, but in the 1920’s, the
same word described appearance and energy. “Cool”
took a similar turn in the 1950’s. “Bad” was
negative, but it recently became something like
“cool.” In the 1890’s, “Gay” meant “happy,” but
100-years or so later, it was something quite
different.
Language wasn’t
always like that. Just because word meanings shift
now, it doesn’t mean they always did. From Creation
to a point after the Flood, every word had a precise
meaning that could not, would not change. When
people considered an object or an idea, a word or
phrase immediately came to mind that was ALWAYS
associated with it. When you saw an apple on a
supermarket shelf, everybody on earth had the same
word for it. “Hidden” innuendoes just did not
exist. There was no French, or Mandarin, or English
or Hebrew; there was just – language! and everybody
understood what was said!
There is an
assumption, by the way, that those who existed
before the Flood were primitive at best, involved as
they were in a life-or-death struggle for survival.
But please note the Scriptural record: Adam and Eve
(the first man and woman) had a grandson who “built
a city” (Genesis 4:17). What kind of city,
we don’t know, but it was more than a rude hut or
life in a cave. Marriage existed from the
beginning, created and instituted by God, but
polygamy came soon after (4:19), invented by man,
and so did tent-making and the keeping of livestock
(4:20). Sophisticated musical instruments were
devised (4:21), and early-on, “bronze”
and “iron” were
manipulated into complicated forms (4:22). It
should be noted that one of our first inventions was
“vengeance”
(4:23-24), still popular to this day.
We do not know how
close our earliest ancestors came toward
“civilization” but they may have gone very far.
AFTER the Flood, they attempted to re-create a
remembered, but ruined technology, using “bricks”
& “asphalt” to build
a “city” and a “tower
whose top is in the heavens” (Genesis
11:3-4). If OUR civilization suddenly collapsed,
survivors would likely NOT be able to re-create TV
sets or computers, but we would certainly do our
best with what we could.
Note the PURPOSE
in building the “city and a
tower” was to “make
a name for ourselves, lest we
be scattered aboard
over the face of the earth” (Genesis 11:4).
The city was a good idea, offering shelter from the
elements, for it was much colder after the Flood.
The tower was something else, for they wanted to DO
something to prevent another flood. They did not
want to be “scattered
abroad” again. God had promised that the
whole earth would NOT be ruined again by “the
waters of the flood” (Genesis 9:11). Local
floods, yes, a universal flood, no. As is so often
the case today, they did not believe God and were
attempting to build a structure high enough so that,
if God “scattered”
everything by a flood, they could simply enter the
tower and be safe! Just like today, they were
frightened by their own unbelief and really did not
WANT God. They made “a
name for our (them)
selves,”
becoming the world’s first recorded humanists. As
Paul would later say about such persons: they were
serving “the creature
rather than the Creator” (Romans 1:25).
These were men and
women who had no excuse for unbelief. Noah, his
wife, his sons and daughters-in-law, were still
alive, or at least SOME of them were. All they had
to do was go knock on his door, and ASK about the
pre-Flood world and the promises of God. Just like
them, you and I have no excuse for unbelief,
either. Here’s how God responded to them, judging
them in TWO separate, but related ways: 1) He
“confuse(d)
their language” so
they did “not understand
one another’s speech,” and 2) He gave
them what they feared and “scattered
them abroad from there over the face of all the
earth” (Genesis 11:7), though it was
different than they feared. Suddenly, one of them
began speaking a pre-European tongue, and the one
next to him was responding in an early Chinese
language. Communication was a mess. Words that had
been static were now fluid in nature, “and
they ceased building the city” (11:8). “And
from there the Lord
(physically)
scattered them…
over the face of all the earth” (11:9). They
weren’t in “Kansas” anymore.
We don’t know all
the methods God used to bring the world to its
present condition, but we DO know that our earliest
ancestors came to new locations SUDDENLY and without
warning. You can see this in other places within
Scripture. Philip was baptizing the Ethiopian
eunuch near Gaza one minute (Acts 8:38), and then “the
Spirit of the Lord caught Philip away”
(8:39), to “Azotus,”
20 miles away. Ezekiel had similar experiences, in
which “the Spirit lifted me
up and took me away” (Ezekiel 3:14), and he
found himself among “the
captives at Tel Abib, who dwelt by the River Chebar”
(Verse 15). God can do anything He wishes.
SUDDENLY the lemurs were in Madagascar; SUDDENLY
Australia contained marsupials and other specific
creatures, along with the plant life they needed for
life to be sustained. God does “miracles” – often
and whenever He wants!
Scripture is so
specific about the events pertaining to early
humanity, and God is so ABLE to perform these
events, that you have only two possible responses:
give yourself utterly to the Lord, trusting Him
fully, or pretend it all isn’t true and continue in
unbelief. Why not BELIEVE in the Lord and
prayerfully ACCEPT His Word? (You’ll be glad you
did).
Father, I
appreciate it that you are greater than what you
have created, and I see that You can not only do
whatever You want, but You actually DO so on many
occasions. Forgive my sin of unbelief, and let me
TRUST in You. In Jesus Name. Amen.
