Rapid Decline after the Flood
The ease with which men fall into evil habits is illustrated in the history of the world after the flood. Upon leaving the ark, four families who had known God, had committed to them the peopling of the earth. But evil tendencies, the result of years of acquaintance with the iniquity of the antediluvian world, gained the ascendency, and the sons of Noah, failing to carry out the principles of true education in their homes, saw their children drifting away from God.
True, the bow of promise appeared often in the heavens as a reminder of the awful results of sin, and telling them also of the God-Father who sought their hearts' service. But again the logic of the evil one was accepted, and men said, "We shall not surely die." As a sign of their confidence in their own strength they built the tower of Babel. They had been scattered in the hill country, where nature and natural scenery tended to elevate their thoughts. They followed the valley, and built cities in the low plains.
Not more than a single century had elapsed since the flood had destroyed all things. The change was a rapid one. The successive steps in degeneration are readily traced. They chose an education of the senses rather than one of faith; they left the country and congregated in cities; a monarchy arose. Schools sprang up which perpetuated these ideas; paganism took the place of the worship of God. The tower was a monument to the sun; idols filled the niches in the structure. Men offered their children as sacrifices.
The slaying of infants and children is but carrying out in the extreme what is always done mentally and spiritually when children are taught false philosophy. That man might not bring upon himself immediate destruction, the language was confused, and education in false philosophy thus rendered more difficult.
Abraham Called from Ur
It was from this influence, as found in the city of Ur of the Chaldees, that Abraham was called. Although the family of Terah knew the true God, and His worship was maintained in the home, it was impossible for him to counteract the influence of the city with its idolatrous practices; so God called Abraham into the country.
He was obliged to go forth by faith. The removal meant the severing of every earthly tie. Wealth and ease were exchanged for a wandering life. How he could make a living Abraham did not know. How he could educate his children he did not understand. But he went forth Terah, his father, and Lot, his nephew, went with him. They halted at Haran, a smaller city, and remained there until the father's death. Then came the command to go forward. Out into a new country he went, a pilgrim and a stranger.
"By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed; and he went out, not knowing whither he went. 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; for he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God." "He staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief; but was strong in faith." (Heb. 11:8-10; Rom. 4:20)
Called To Teach
It was when the patriarch had journeyed into this strange land, and knew not whither he was going, that his work as a teacher began. The commission of Christ to the apostles, "Go ye therefore, and teach all nations," was not more emphatic than the command to Abraham. God called him to teach, and he was to be a teacher of nations. To the disciples it was said, "All power is given unto Me; ... go ye therefore, and teach all nations." A power was to attend their teaching. Power is synonymous with life; there is no power without life, and a teacher has power in proportion as he lives what he wishes to teach.
Abraham was to be a teacher of nations, hence he must have power. Power could come only as the result of a life of faith, and so his whole life was one continual lesson of faith. Each experience made him a more powerful teacher.
God Prepares Abraham to Teach
His faith grew by trial, and only as he mounted round by round the ladder which spanned the gulf twixt heaven and earth, and which had seemed to lengthen with each succeeding generation. A period of not less than twenty-five years--years filled with doubt, fear, anxiety--was necessary to bring him to the place where the name Abraham--the father of nations--could be rightly claimed by him. Another quarter of a century rolled over his head, years in which he watched the growth of the child of promise; then the voice of God called him to raise his hand to take the life of that same son. He who had said that in Isaac should all nations of the earth be blessed, now demanded the sacrifice of that life at the father's hand. But He, the Life-giver in the event of the child's birth, was now believed to be the Life-giver should death rob him of his child, and the father faltered not.
These fifty years, with God and angels as teachers, reveal to us, as no other period does, the results of true education, and merit careful attention. If the workings of the Spirit ever wrought changes in the human heart, those changes came to Abraham. It is not strange that when God called the first time the voice seemed far away, and but partially awoke the slumbering soul. As if in a dream, he, his father, his nephew, and his wife, broke away from earthly ties and from the beautiful Chaldean plains, where luxury and learning were daily things of life, and journeyed toward the hill country.
How God Taught Faith
It has been stated before that God teaches by the enunciation of principles, or universal laws, and the spirit which comes by faith enlightens the senses that they may grasp the illustrations of these laws in the physical world. That is heaven's method of teaching the angelic throng, and it was the method applied before the fall. With Abraham the case was at the beginning far from ideal. Here was a pupil, lacking faith. How should he be taught the wisdom of the Eternal? God leads in a mysterious way. As Christ lived His visible life, because the eye of faith was blind in Israel, so, in the time of Abraham, God taught inductively, as He now says the heathen are to be taught. To him who had no faith, God came visibly at first, and, leading step by step, developed a faith which before his death enabled Abraham to grasp eternal principles of truth if God but spoke.
In Ur, God said, "I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and will make thy name great." Years passed, age crept on, and still there was no heir. Could he have mistaken the voice which bade him turn his face toward Canaan, and promised to him and his descendants all the land from the "great river, the river Euphrates, ... unto the great sea toward the going down of the sun"? "And Abraham said, Lord God, what wilt Thou give me, seeing I go childless? Shall it be that my steward, Eliezer, shall become my heir? Shall he be the child of promise? Behold, to me Thou hast given no seed: and, lo, one born in my house is mine heir." (Gen. 15 2:3)
This was man's way of working out a promise made by the Maker of the universe. Have we passed beyond this elementary lesson of faith? Can we grasp God's promise of faith, and, with no fear or thought, leave results with Him who knows?
No, Abraham; think not that heaven is limited by the line which bounds thy horizon. "This shall not be thine heir; but he that shall come forth out of thine own bowels shall be thine heir." And, standing under the starry canopy of heaven, Abraham's soul grasped the power of the Creator. He himself to be a father! His face lighted with a holy joy as he related to Sarai his experience with God.
But Sarai bare him no children; and that she might help heaven fulfill its promise, she forsook the divine law of marriage, and gave to Abraham her handmaid, Hagar, to be his wife. Would that man could grasp at least the beginnings of the possibilities of God! Untold suffering was the outgrowth of that one step of unbelief. Not one, not two people, but generations then unborn, had their destinies marred by this lack of faith. Hagar, sitting over against her dying child, and weeping because of the bitterness of her fate, is a constant portrayal of an attempt to live by sight. (Gal. 4:22, 25) Again, the approach of the angel and the rescue of the child records in burning characters the longing of Him who pities our blindness, and awards us far above what we can ask or think.
Birth of Isaac
Ninety-nine years passed over the patriarch's head, and still the voice of heaven's messenger was greeted with a laugh when the promise was repeated. Sarah turned within the tent door when the angel guest, whom they had fed, repeated to Abraham the promise concerning his wife. But she bare to Abraham a son whom God named Isaac, in whom the nations of the earth were blessed. Joy untold filled the heart of the mother and father as they beheld the babe.
This was the joy of sight. Twenty-five years before, the thing was just as true, and Abraham might lawfully have worked upon the basis of its truth; but the stubborn human heart requires many lessons. Twenty-five years after this, the strength of Abraham's faith was tested at the altar of sacrifice. Leaving home early one morning, he carried fire, laid wood upon the young man's shoulders, and journeyed toward Mount Moriah. "Behold the fire and the wood; but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?" asked the son. "God will provide himself a lamb," answered the man who had at last learned to believe God. It is but the simple story of an ancient patriarch; but the word of God bears record that "Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him for righteousness."
And "if ye be Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed and heirs according to the promise." Herein lies the value of this lesson to us. We are his heirs if we link ourselves to the power of the Infinite by that cord of faith. Only by a life and an education such as his can the kingdom of Christ be set up within. Such lessons made Abraham a successful teacher.
Abraham's School
Those who wished to worship the true God gathered about the tents of Abraham, and became pupils in his school. God's word was the basis of all instruction, as it is written, "These are the commandments, ... which the Lord your God commanded to teach you, that ye might do them in the land whither ye go to possess it."
This word was the basis for the study of political science, and Abraham's "methods of government" were "carried out in the households over which they [his students] should preside." The equality of all men was a lesson first learned in the home. "Abraham's affection for his children and his household led him ... to impart to them a knowledge of the divine statutes, as the most precious legacy he could transmit to them, and through them to the world. All were taught that they were under the rule of the God of heaven. There was to be no oppression on the part of parents, and no disobedience on the part of children." His was not a school where theory alone was taught, but the practical was emphasized. In studying political science they formed the nucleus of a divine government; in the study of finances, they actually made the money and raised the flocks which brought recognition from surrounding nations. "The unswerving integrity, the benevolence and unselfish courtesy, which had won the admiration of kings, were displayed in the home."
This School Was the Beginning of a Nation
The influence of country life and direct contact with nature, in contrast with the enervating influence of the city with its idolatrous teaching and artificial methods, developed a hardy race, a people of faith whom God could use to lay the foundation for the Israelitish nation. We see, then, that when God founds a nation, he lays that foundation in a school. The nation of which Abraham and his followers formed the beginning, prefigured the earth redeemed, where Christ will reign as King of kings. The education of the school of Abraham symbolized Christian education.
"If ye be Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise," not only of the kingdom, but of the education which prepares the inhabitants for that kingdom.
As faith was the method employed in teaching in the days of the patriarch, so in the schools of to-day faith must be the motive for work, the avenue to the fountain of wisdom. There are to-day those who cannot harmonize their feelings and their ideas of education with the plan which God has committed to his people. Likewise in the days of Abraham there was at least one family which withdrew from the influence of the school.
Lot Chose a Worldly School
Lot had felt the effects of the teaching of Abraham, but through the influence of his wife, "a selfish, irreligious woman, "he left the altar where they once worshiped together, and moved into the city of Sodom." The marriage of Lot, and his choice of Sodom for a home, were the first links in a chain of events fraught with evil to the world for many generations." Had he alone suffered, we would not need to follow the history; but the choice of a new home threw his children into the schools of the heathen; pride and love of display were fostered, marriage with Sodomites was a natural consequence, and their final destruction in the burning city was the terrible but inevitable result.
"When Lot entered Sodom, he fully intended to keep himself free from iniquity, and to command his household after him. But he signally failed. The corrupting influences about him had an effect upon his own faith, and his children's connection with the inhabitants of Sodom bound up his interests in a measure with theirs."
The statement is a familiar one, that schools should be established where an education differing from that of the world can be given, because parents are unable to counteract the influence of the schools of the world. The experience of Lot is a forcible reminder of the truth of the statement. And the injunction to "remember Lot's wife," should serve as a warning to Christians against flocking into the cities to give children an education. The words of Spalding are true: "Live not in a great city, for a great city is a mill which grinds all grain into flour. Go there to get money or to preach repentance, but go not there to make thyself a nobler man."
Education in the Cities
The two systems of education are nowhere more vividly portrayed than in the experiences of Abraham and Lot. Education in the tents of Abraham, under the guidance of The Spirit of Jehovah, brought eternal life? Education in the schools of Sodom brought eternal death? This was not an unnatural thing. You cannot find here any arbitrary work on the part of God. To partake of the fruit of the tree of life, imparts life. But of the tree of knowledge of good and evil it has been said, "In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die."
The system of education revealed to Abraham, would, if fully carried out, have placed Israel on a plane of existence above the nations of the world. It was a spiritual education, reaching the soul by a direct appeal to faith, and would have placed the people of God as teachers of nations. Not a few only were intended to teach, but the nation as a whole was to teach other nations. The second Israel will occupy a similar position, and they will be brought to that position by means of Christian education.