“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” (Genesis 1:1) So begins the Bible, and so begins our knowledge of how the world, and we who inhabit it, came into existence.
Without diving in (for now) to the details of Creation provided in the book of Genesis and elsewhere in the Bible, the focus of ANTEDILUVIA is the nature of life on Earth after the Creation between the time of the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden to the time of the worldwide Flood.
According to the Bible, God created all things, including mankind, and God’s creation was “very good.” The first humans – Adam and Eve – had a wonderful world in which to live, with their focal home being a delightful garden in an area called Eden. How to envision that garden is worthy of contemplation. It may have been a vast diverse landscape of intermingled orchards, meadows, towering trees, concentrations of flowers, bubbling springs and streams – and rich with an incredible diversity of peaceful wildlife, including dinosaurs. Adam and Eve (the first parents) would have strolled through this garden secure and joyfully, innocent in their nakedness and without fear of any injury or harm. Perhaps they were always awake – never fatigued, without need to sleep – marveling at the wonders of the stars in the expanse of the heavens and delighting in the changes of the activities, scents and sounds around them that came with night. So it can be imagined they lived – until they disobeyed their Creator, and mankind fell away from its perfect beginning.
Chapter 3 of the book of Genesis gives an account of the Fall of the first parents, and elsewhere in the Bible are given details that help us understand the dramatic elements of the Fall – the tempter (his origin, power, and his own fall and subsequent evil motivations), the surrender to temptation by Eve, and the failure of Adam to stand strong in the battle – and the immediate horrible consequences. Most profoundly – death. Though naked before, now Adam and Eve felt naked. They were exposed, vulnerable. No longer within the spiritual covering of Almighty God. Separated from the true and only life.
Among the other consequences of the Fall, the first parents were expelled from the Garden of Eden, and the Earth was cursed by God. The world Adam and Eve now inhabited, and their very nature of human existence, had suddenly become terrifyingly different than what they had known before. A new daily fatigue from the toils and hurts of life outside of God’s close, protective embrace resulted in the need for the nightly surrender to a hint of physical death, the need for sleep. Thus humanity entered an age herein referred to as the antediluvian era – that is, the era before the Flood (to be discussed briefly as follows). Granted, all of the first parents’ time in the Garden (however many years that might have been) was before the Flood, but the use of “antediluvian,” or Antediluvia, for these discussions principally refers to the era between the Fall and the Flood.
Following their expulsion from the Garden, Adam and Eve pressed on with life, and with the Lord’s appropriately deemed measure of mercy (which ultimately surpasses comprehension). The first parent’s had the first child born on Earth (Cain), who turned out to be the first murderer when he killed his brother Abel. Such was the unfolding consequence of the Fall, and of such evil the descendants of the first parents became ever more guilty in the generationsthat followed. By approximately 1500 years after the Fall, mankind’s evil ways had reached a level about which God stated that “the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” Consequently, the Lord declared, “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them.” (Genesis 6:7). The bible goes on to say, “But Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD.” (Genesis 6:8).
When God said He “will blot out man” (and all other living things) from the face of the land, the Lord was referring to His intention to cause a flood that would cover the entire planet, overtopping all land. When the bible says, “But Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD,” it’s referring to God’s plan to preserve some survivors through the Flood. Those survivors were to be Noah and his family, and a select number of animals, who would ride out the Flood in a special boat – an ark – designed by God and built by Noah and those who assisted him.
There will be more said on Noah – and the ark, and the Flood – as ANTEDILUVIA covers the span of those years leading to God’s judgment against the wickedness of man. I pray these postings will be thought-provoking and edifying. Thanks for your time in reading. May it be that you have, or will have, salvation through Jesus Christ from judgment against sin, the favor of the Lord resting on your life, and His peace ruling in your heart.