OP-ED: TWENTY FIVE HUNDRED YEARS WITH NO RULES?

1 John 5: 3 “For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments: and his commandments are not grievous.”

By Van Yandell

From the creation of Adam (Genesis 2: 7) until Moses came down from Mt. Saini with the Ten Commandments (Exodus 34: 29), twenty-five hundred years had passed.

Mankind had existed for those 2500 years with no rules with which to govern or control themselves.

Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden had only one commandment and that was to not eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil; and they broke that rule.

During that 2500 years God stated He regretted creating man. Genesis 6: 6 KJV “And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.”

We cannot imagine God doing anything He would regret; Him being omniscient. The only feasible explanation is that man was such a disastrous creation, God could not fathom humanity becoming so evil and depraved.

During those 2500 years, Noah built an ark and a global cataclysmic flood destroyed all life except those on the ark (Genesis 7: 11-12).

Also soon after that time, God established a special race of people (the Jews) to provide the world with a Savior (Genesis 12: 1-3).

The Patriarch Jacob’s eleventh son, Joseph, was sold into slavery into Egypt. The Hebrew people were subjected to a famine that caused the King of Egypt (Pharaoh) and Joseph to move Jacob and his family of sixty-seven people to Egypt to survive (Genesis 46: 6).

In Egypt the Jews were enslaved for which a rescuer Moses was sent to deliver them (Exodus 3: 4). They were sentenced to a wilderness for forty years before being allowed to re-enter their promised land.

In the entire scheme of things, the Hebrew people had to be in Canaan for the Savior to be born so their deliverance and homecoming had an extended and very special purpose.

All in all, the 2500 years were very eventful and Jewish history was written during a time of two and one half millennia in which they had no confirmed set of rules to live by.

Interestingly enough, after the giving of the Ten Commandments, mankind made it obvious to God that “he” had no intention of following those rules.

The prophesy of the scriptures (those today’s Christian calls the Old Testament) had to be fulfilled in order for mankind to be reconciled to God for eternal life.

Only 1500 years elapsed between the giving of the commandments and Jesus’ coming. Second Peter 3: 8b “one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.” That time period to us is a long time but to our eternal God, it is not.

Are there connections we can make to the 4000 years between Adam and Christ to our lives and America today? Absolutely!

We have been given a beautiful and once firmly established nation. At one time I believed The United States of America was God’s chosen nation just as much as was Israel.

That choosing was for the purpose of evangelizing the world. We were given the financial resources, the incentive/motivation, the transportation and communication abilities to reach “the uttermost parts” (Acts 1: 8) for our Jesus.

Powerful, bold and vocal evangelists were called by God to deliver that imperative to the world. Writers, speakers and other courageous Christians were empowered with the spirit and the Holy Bible’s directive to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

The internet gives us an ability to evangelize the world in a faster and more efficient way than ever before. So, what’s the problem? The rules listed in Exodus twenty (Ten Commandments) have been relegated by the masses as unimportant.

With that, the proclivity to disregard God has become a mostly unconscious mindset! Even among Christians, to consider the Ten Commandments as “suggestions” is apparent.

When humanity designates the Word of God as politically incorrect, divisive and prejudiced, mankind’s right to choose and have an opinion has been drastically perverted.

Where are we today? Are we in the next 2500 years of depravity even with God’s rules published in Exodus and available to all? Sodom was destroyed (Genesis 19) for less than the level of decadence observed in America today.

The prophetic characteristics of mankind listed in 2 Timothy 3: 1-5 are all around us and casually practiced by many including Christians.

We are being warned by history and Bible prophecies. While we may heed the warnings on posted signs, why do we ignore the future actions of our Creator? We have seen His revelations happen before our very eyes, so “obvious” and “certain” are the applicable words.

Perhaps this developing series of all so observable conditions and events in our world are a warning of which we can take heed. As we read in Daniel 5: 5-6, as Belshazzar saw “the writing on the wall,” are we there today?

Is there a solution? As we witness chaos developing at an unprecedented rate do Christians hold a solution for the problem? Of course we do! Perhaps we could begin to obey God’s commandments and the Jesus commandment of telling the world about Him.

The Bible teaches there is only one eternal salvation. That is by a faith based belief (Ephesians 2: 8) that Christ Jesus was crucified (Matthew 27: 35) for the remission of sin (Romans 4: 25), resurrected (Matthew 28: 6) and ascended alive into Heaven (Acts 1: 9).

Van Yandell is a retired Industrial Arts teacher, an ordained gospel evangelist and missionary. His email is vmy3451@gmail.com