PART FIVE

Satan infected and corrupted the first humans God had placed on this planet, and thereby brought death into the world. Then Cain, the first human ever born on earth, became the seed of Satan and the first murderer.  The human race was not off to a good start.

For the next 1600 years or so, God did not interfere with the way Satan was running things on earth.  God had given Satan a certain amount of time as ruler of the planet, and left him (Satan) to get on with it.

But Satan is a murderer and hates human beings. So the way Satan was getting on with things was to make life for humans as miserable as possible.  In fact he wanted to murder all the humans under his control but he was not permitted to do that directly.

So he infected humans with his hatred, and hoped they would kill each other to extinction.  They were making good progress in that direction when God called a halt to the carnage:

“The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence. And God looked upon the earth. And, behold, it was corrupted! For all flesh had corrupted its way upon the earth. And God said to Noah, The end of all flesh has 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)

Then came the deluge to cleanse the earth of Satan's hatred and violence, then a new world through Noah.

The violent ways of the old world had been obliterated in the flood. They remained only in the dark festering ambition of Satan. The Serpent would have to start all over again.

Noah brought God's ways into the new world and civilisation began anew. For at least a hundred years people were at peace, living safely in the fertile areas close to Mount Ararat.

When the populations of the families had grown sufficiently large, God encouraged the different groups to migrate to the areas of the Earth He had allotted to each of them. This was the probable dispersion:

Most likely Noah and his immediate family stayed where they were, in the area around the Mount of Descent.

Shem expanded out from Noah's portion, but also remained in that area of the earth, in Asia.  Japheth received the area of Europe toward the Atlantic Ocean, and Ham was assigned the south, the land of Africa.

Sometime after this dispersion, some of the descendants of Ham, mostly the family of Cush, became dissatisfied with their allotted place on the earth and went back to the area from which they had originally migrated.

The land to which they returned was not theirs of course, it had been given to the family of Shem.  But, coming from the East, the Cushites attacked and overcame the rightful owners of the land and established themselves in Shem's land:

“And it happened, as they traveled from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar. And they lived there.” (Genesis 11:12)

When was this?  Most likely about seventy years or so after the dispersion of Peleg's time, and about a hundred and seventy years or so after the flood.  Why that figure? Because of this:

“And Joshua said to all the people, So says Jehovah, the God of Israel, Your fathers lived Beyond the River in times past, Terah the father of Abraham, and the father of Nahor, and they served other gods.” (Joshua 24:2)

Terah was born around 220 years after the flood. He had been born into the pagan Cushite religion, so the religion must have existed for some time before Terah appeared on the planet.

So if the Cushite religion was thriving in the time of Terah, about a hundred and twenty years or so after the dispersion, it means the Cushites must have brought it back with them from Africa (Egypt) to Shinar, sometime between the dispersion of Peleg's time and the time of Terah. And a plausable estimate of the time of that invasion of the Cushites would be about fifty years before the birth of Terah.

But the timing of the invasion of the Cushites, while of some interest, is not that important for us. What is important is the Cushites themselves and the rise of their power.

Ancient histories, which are mostly histories of religions, revere the time of Noah as one of benevolence.  A time without rules and laws and without penalties.  In other words, a time without government.

Because there was sufficient authority already built in to the natural structure of human society without needing to add any higher government.

In order to maintain peace and order among people, God had authorised people to themselves avenge the shedding of blood. Because if it was accepted that whoever shed blood would have their own blood shed, then fear would mostly restrain any wanton violence. Without the need for anyone outside the injured parties to intervene.

And that same principle applied to all aspects of life. Problems and frictions were addressed and resolved among people themselves, without outside interference.

But such freedom, a society functioning perfectly well without government, did not suit Satan at all. Where was the opportunity to divide and damage people if they refused to be divided? If they resolved their problems with each other with good will? How could Satan impose his evil on people's lives if there was no authority-power to do the imposing?

So enter the Cushites, the seed of Satan.

Cush was the first son of Ham, and the father of Nimrod. Between them, Cush and Nimrod brought about a complete departure from the way of God which Noah had brought into the new world. They imposed the iron heel of Satan's regime on the people of earth, and the freedom of Noah's rule disappeared forever. (Well, not forever, because it will shortly return in the Kingdom of God.)

Noah's benign, light-handed rule had God's complete approval.  Within the bounds of goodness - treating God and other humans with respect and consideration - people were free to conduct their lives an any way they chose.

The opposite to Noah's way, Satan's first attempt at imposing government on people, met with God's adamant rejection:

“And Cush fathered Nimrod. He began to be a mighty one in the earth...And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar...And they said, Come, let us build us a city and a tower, and its top in the heavens. And let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered upon the face of the whole earth...And Jehovah said, Behold! The people is one and they all have one language. And this they begin to do. And now nothing which they have imagined to do will be restrained from them... So Jehovah scattered them abroad from that place upon the face of all the earth. And they quit building the city.” (Genesis 10:8,10; 11:4,6,8)

This was the first rebellion against God's way of doing things. It ended in failure of course, but that was by no means the end of Satan's regime:

“Therefore the name of it is called Babel; because Jehovah confused the language of all the earth there. And from there Jehovah scattered them abroad on the face of all the earth.” (Genesis 11:9)

The Cushites were scattered, but they carried their ambitions of government with them.

We should interrupt things here and explain why God is against government. He explained His objections when later, the Israelites wanted to be governed like the nations around them:

“And Samuel told all the Words of Jehovah to the people who asked a king of him.
And he said, This will be the privilege of the king who shall reign over you. He shall take your sons and appoint them for himself, for his chariots, and his horsemen. And they shall run before his chariots. And he will appoint commanders over thousands, and commanders over fifties, and some to plow his ground and reap his harvest, and make his weapons of war and weapons for his chariots.  And he will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers.  And he will take your fields and your vineyards and your olive-yards, the best, and give them to his servants.  And he will take the tenth of your seed and of your vineyards, and give it to his eunuchs and to his servants.  And he will take your male slaves and your slave girls, and your finest young men, and your asses, and put them to his work. He will take the tenth of your sheep, and you shall be his servants.  And you shall cry out in that day because of your king whom you have chosen for yourselves, and Jehovah will not answer you in that day.” (1 Samuel 8:10-18)

God explained that a government - any government - would take away people's wealth and freedom.  And what God had warned about would come to pass and be clearly evident later, in Solomon's time:

“Your father (Solomon) made our yoke hard. And now lighten the hard service of your father, and the heavy yoke which he put on us, and we will serve you.” (1 Kings 12:4)

Solomon's son answered:

“My little finger shall be thicker than my father's loins. And now my father loaded you with a heavy yoke, and I will add to your yoke. My father has whipped you with whips, but I will chastise you with scorpions.” (1 Kings 12:10-11)

That's how governments behave. It's a long way from the freedom of Noah, the freedom which God wanted for people.

In Noah's time, people supported themselves in any way they chose, with no restrictions on their activity except good sense and good manners.  What they produced was their own, and they shared it only at their own discretion. Even God did not demand any of it.

Then Satan and his human tools entered Noah's world and demanded part of what people produced.

Cush and Nimrod wanted an empire.  Who would pay for their ambition?  The ordinary people would pay for the Cushite empire. Who would support Nimrod and his lifestyle? The ordinary people.  Who would pay for Nimrod's soldiers? Who would pay the wages of the workers on Nimrod's tower?  The ordinary people.

All the wealth to build Nimrod's empire would come from the labour of ordinary people.

Did the people need an empire? Did they want an empire?  Of course not. The ordinary people just wanted to get on with their lives and to be left alone. The desire for an empire arose only in the dark ambition festering in the heart of Nimrod. A heart infected with the evil of Satan.

The ordinary people were not ambitious. They just wanted to live their lives simply and peacefully, in the way they chose.

But Nimrod was ambitious and wanted more than he was entitled to.  And Nimrod's more would have to come from someone else's less.  That's what ambition is.

Nimrod's ambition spurred him to build an empire. At the expense of ordinary people.  And Nimrod began a system in which ambition is considered to be a good thing.  But there has to be a lie involved if ambition is to be considered a good thing.

The lie is in the omission of the negative part of the equation. That is, that one person's gain requires another person's loss.

Ambition has infested the world since the time of Nimrod. The world has been, and still is, ruled by people who want to get ahead. People who want more than what they're entitled to.

Satan says that ambition is good. That it is good to get ahead of everyone else.
But Satan is a liar. As Jesus said:

“He was a murderer from the beginning, and did not abide in the truth because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks of his own, for he is a liar and the father of it.” (John 8:44)

The opposite of ambition is just being an ordinary human being, not wanting anything more than what one is entitled to. Jesus termed such people the meek, and prophesied that they now, in our time, will at last receive what the ambitious have always denied them:

“Blessed are the meek! For they shall inherit the earth.” (Matthew 5:5)