Clough Genesis Lesson 36

The table of nations; the sons of Shem – Genesis 10:22-32

Genesis 10, the table of nations; we’ve studied so far two of the three sons of Noah. We’ve studied Japheth and his sons, and we have studied Ham and his sons. Before concentrating on some of the details let me remind you that you are being exposed to the proper way of looking at history, and many of you have grown up being taught history in a very lousy way and this is why, frankly, I think many of you probably despise history. You were taught to hate it in school and I think the reason you were taught to hate history in school was because of the poor methods that were used. History is usually taught as though chronology was the major issue and so many of you will think back as to how it was in school and you will think back and oh yeah, I had to remember this date, this date, this date and this date and then we vomited it all up on the exam and passed the course and I haven’t remembered it since. And that’s most of our views of history and that’s the way we were all taught and I contend that that’s the wrong way.

The Bible never presents history in terms of dates; it’s very interesting. Very rarely does the Bible mention anything to even help us with dates. What the Bible does is present history genealogically. That is, the major theme of the Scriptures is who descended from whom? Who is the father, who is the grandfather, who is the great-grandfather and where did they come from? That’s the overwhelming question that the Bible keeps asking and asking and asking and asking. It doesn’t ask questions about dates and I suggest the reason for this is that genealogy is far, far more important. You see, in order to live the Christian life one of the things that all of us have to cope with is our sin nature. Now of course there are those few deluded souls who don’t believe in the sin nature but they must be living in a dream world somewhere.

Martin Luther suggested that the reason why the Pope started coming up with the idea that he was almost infallible was the fact that he wasn’t married and he suggested that if the Pope had been married he would never have thought of the doctrine. Most of us have very close observers to our own sin natures able and willing to point them out and because of this we want to come to grips with certain learned behavior patterns that we have and when we come into a marriage situation we are coming in with the learned behavior patterns of our fathers, of our mothers, of our grandparents and it’s important in living the Christian life to learn where these –R patterns come from so you can see them more clearly. And I still am of the contention, firm contention, that if one were to study his family tree back two, three generations, it would help you immeasurably in your Christian life because you would see in your own family the same kind of sin patterns repeated and repeated and repeated over and over and over again. And it would give you far tighter control over the kinds of problems that you have to face. And on a large, large scale, going up from the immediate family, there are learned behavior patterns that are passed down through what we will call tribes. There are tribal learned behavior patterns.

For example, there are certain learned behavior patterns that you have because we’re Americans; it’s just part of living in America that we’ve inherited certain learned behavior patterns. Some of these behavior patterns are fine; others are not fine. One of the weaknesses of the American character is that we are egalitarians, that is, we want to level everything out and we have an inherent bias… Americans have always had this in our history; we don’t like people who excel. There’s always a part of a tendency, on the part of Americans particularly, to pull down high achievers because we just don’t like the concept; everybody should be just about the same. And for that reason our country has had a long history of debunking geniuses; it starts with the debunking of George Washington, it goes on in our own generation to the debunking of General MacArthur. And more recently the debunking of men like Singlaub, who are very astute critics of our foreign policy situation. It goes for both political parties, the leadership of both the Democrat and Republican parties; when they select candidates for President, inevitably they always pick some vanilla individual and the reason they do so is because they’re afraid of high achievers. The party leadership are basically the vanilla type and they can’t stand the achiever, they’re egalitarian, and the result is you have a very colorless political environment in America, very colorless. So since the party machinery and since the academic machinery is always against the colorful achiever, you suffer, and this is one of our weak points in our American character. We have many, many fine points also, for which we should not be ashamed. But learned behavior patterns root in families and they take root in tribes; if you know your family and your tribe you’ll be better off.

Now we studied so far two sons of Noah; we’ve studied Japheth and we’ve studied Ham. Japheth and his sons, wherever they have gone on the earth, manifest certain traits, certain behavior patterns; whether these are inherited or whether they’re trained I’m not equipped to say, but we just observe these. Japheth seems to be a very aggressive type and this can be bad or it can be good; in a godly way the Japhetic peoples make excellent missionaries, and if you stop and think, in the last 2000 years of Christianity, where have most missionaries come from? England and the United States. Where have the sons of Japheth basically lived? England and the United States, and northern Europe also. So you’ve had Japheth in a godly way be spiritually aggressive and be the missionary type person.

But yet on the other hand, when Japheth goes negative and rebels against the Word of God, then we have aggressiveness in a horrible way; Japheth is a bloody conqueror when he’s aggressive, he’s proud, he’s arrogant, and he’s a conqueror. And he will eliminate whole peoples and whole civilizations: Example, the Spaniards in Central America, just go in and just eliminate all the Indian cultures, just destroy it for the sake of a little gold here and there. So we have that quality of Japheth and that’s part of his nature. So as people who follow in the line of Japheth, we develop this in very fine tones and so on, but mainly Japhetic peoples have these characteristics. Again, it’s nothing to be ashamed of but it’s good to know t this and good to realize that if I have this as my background I am going to have certain kinds of spiritual problems; I’m going to also have certain achievements too, but I’ve got to see that I’m Japhetic and therefore I think this way. Japhetic peoples also think theoretically and abstractly; Japhetic peoples make good scientists, they make good theologians, they make good administrators; take for example, Rome. They are organizers and systematizers so therefore people with striking Japhetic characteristics can almost pick their vocation on the basis of these traits.

Now Ham; Ham is a tremendous inventor. Ham, historically, has been responsible for every major basic invention on the face of the earth in postdiluvian culture. And therefore the Hamite is an explorer, he’s always thinking of something new; a tremendously creative kind of person. But unfortunately he doesn’t have the persistence to pursue it systematically so if you could get the Hamitic inventiveness and the Hamitic genius and you could combine it with Japhetic perseverance and organizing, you would have a powerful unbeatable combination. And in fact, that’s what the Bible is arguing, that where all three sons of Noah are redeemed and work together you will have the strongest human civilization. This is one reason, one of the key reasons why nations that are mixing-pot nations oftentimes tend to come up with striking strength and it sort of amazes you how a diverse country with diverse family backgrounds can produce something and I suggest one reason is because of the interaction of these kinds of people. So Ham has this, but Ham also has other problems. A Hamite, when he is godly, will show loyalty far more than the other racial traits; it is part of his strength to be exceedingly loyal to authority and therefore very submissive, and can be a tremendous demonstration of a godly submissive character, a deep devotional attachment to Jesus Christ will be shown by a Hamite. But then when the Hamite goes on negative volition he can also become terribly subjected to demonic forces and hence we have a lot of the witchcraft and a lot of this kind of thing being stimulated by Hamitic type background culture.

Today we start with Genesis 10:21 and study the last third of the human race as it existed prior to the time of Abraham, and that is the sons of Shem. Beginning in verse 21, “Unto Shem also, the father of all the children of Eber, the brother of Japheth, the elder, even to him were children born.” And we go on, [22] “The children of Shem: [Elam, and Asshur, and Arpachshad, and Lud, and Aram. [23] And the children of Aram: Uz, and Hul, and Gether, and Mash. [24] And Arpachshad begot Shelah; and Shelah begot Eber.]” And it describes the list, notice verse 25, “And unto Eber were born two sons: the name of one was Peleg; for in his days was the earth divided; and his brother’s name was Joktan.” [26] And Joktan begot Almodad, and Sheleph, and Hazarmaveth, and Jerah, [27] And Hadoram, and Uzal, and Diklah, [28] And Obal, and Abimael, and Sheba, [29] And Ophir, and Havilah, and Jobab; all these were the sons of Joktan. [30] And their dwelling was from Mesha, as thou goest unto Sephar, a mount of the east.”] And then verse 31 -21 conclude the section [“These are the sons of Shem, after their families, after their tongues, in their lands, after their nations. [32] These are the families of the sons of Noah, after their generations, in their nations: and by these were the nations divided in the earth after the flood.”]

Now let’s look at the sons of Shem. We said last week that the Hamites, from the point of Mount Ararat, moved east and they moved south and then finally southwest; this was the Hamitic dispersion pattern and direction. On the other hand, the Japhetics moved north and primarily west; that’s their dispersion pattern. Now the dispersion pattern of the Shemites. They localized around the Mediterranean area, some of them came here and there were minor spin-offs.

There is recent evidence accumulated through a man by the name of John Philip Cohane, who’s written a book called The Key in which he argues that the Semites, at one time, or at least twice in history, were involved in a tremendous migration across the face of the earth and everywhere they went they left their evidences. What evidences? We said when we studied the Japhetics that where Japheth went we can preserve some of the names, Gomar, the son of Gomer, the word in Germany. We studied how the word “Scandinavia” comes from one of the sons of Japheth, and the names are present in proper nouns that exist today of places, the rule being that people names convert to place names; place names usually do not convert to people names. For example, city of Lubbock, named after a man, but nobody is named “Lubbock” because he lives in Lubbock; at least that I have heard. Cities and rivers and regions are usually named for people. This works with Japheth. But we said last week we’ve got a problem with Ham because the Hamitic language is so diverse, that it’s so confusing that Ham basically is lost; the evidence is there, we have to deduce what isn’t of Japheth and what isn’t of Shem must be of Ham.

Now when we come today to Shem we’ve got another story; fortunately in the case of Shem we believe that Shem carries a language that is the most conservative of any portion of the human race. In studying recently by tape a course on spoken Hebrew my Israeli tutor pointed out to me that a young girl on a kibbutzim in Israel growing up, say she’s only six or seven years old, could very easily carry on a conversation with Moses. If Moses, so to speak, could come back from the dead, living 3,000 years ago, Moses and this little girl could sit down and carry on a conversation; the girl with modern spoken Hebrew and Moses with Biblical Hebrew. Now that’s a tremendous testimony to a highly, highly conservative language that doesn’t change, absolutely almost constant with time.

So this is a characteristic of Shem; Shemitic languages are strongly, strongly conservative. They vary less than even Japheth’s languages. For example, most of you who have read the King James Version, you don’t like the King James as much as you like a modern translation, unless you happen to be a real bug on language. And therefore you figure well, this just isn’t my language. But it was 300 years ago; your forbearers, if you come from England, the British Isles, your forbearers all spoke that language. Well why is it you have a problem? Because in the 300 years the English language has undergone this shift. That’s not true of Hebrew. In Hebrew the very word today in modern Israel for car is the simple word for chariot in the Old Testament. There’s been no change. The word for plaza in the Old Testament is the word for plaza and street in modern Israel. You go on the King George Rachab [sp?] and that’s the plaza, and it would have been called that in the time of Moses.

So the language hasn’t changed. This means that when we go to trace where the Shemites went we ought to be able to pick out their nouns and their names. But more than this, as we’ll explain further in Genesis 11, it’s been long, long believed by scholars, up until our own century, that the language spoken by all men before the tower of Babel was a Hebrew-like language, a Semitic-like language. The reason for believing this is because names before the tower of Babel, depend on Hebrew pronunciation. For example, the word for man and woman, ish and isha, this is the only language, a Semitic type language is the only place where the word or noun for man and the noun for woman, where the noun for woman is the feminine of the noun for man. That’s not true of Spanish; it is not true of English, it is not true of other languages. It is true only here in the Semitic languages. Another example: Adam looks over and he calls his wife chavah, now why does he call her chavah or Eve, Evah, or it comes down to us in English as Eve. Why does he call her that? Because she is the mother of all life and the word for life is havah. Well, this doesn’t make sense in any other language. Certainly he didn’t call Eve “Eve” in the English language because the English word “live” doesn’t have much to do with the English word “Eve.” So you see that whole point of the naming of Eve doesn’t make sense unless the language spoken by Adam in the garden was a Hebrew-like language.

This and many other reasons have led people to suggest that the original language on the face of the earth was a Semitic language. This is double significant because who of the three sons of Noah was to be the custodian of the Word of God? Shem, and it was with Shem that the covenant was made and the covenant is contracted in language. So the Shemites, then, have this tremendously and fiercely conservative language.

Now in Genesis 10:21, it says, after speaking of Shem, it says: “Shem,” (comma) “the father of all the children of Eber,” now if you look down the list at the sequence of grandson, father, grandson, son, father, grandfather and so on, you’ll notice it’s not until you get to verse 24 where Eber shows up. Now the question is: why in verse 21, when the author introduces the last third of the human race does he quickly pick over all the sons, picking out one who is, as it were, seems to be the cardinal representative of the line, and that’s what happened in verse 21, Eber is pulled out of the line as one of the key descendants of Shem.

Let’s look at the word Eber. Up until recently, when men have thought that the word “Hebrew” comes from the verb to cross over, it was almost universally accepted that Hebrew is nothing but a derivative of this and I’m convinced it’s right. The 19^th century people were right and the 20^th century people are wrong. The 19^th century people had a far better feel of history than 20^th century scholars. In Genesis 14:13 Abraham is called “Abram, the Hebrew,” the first time the word “Hebrew” occurs in the Bible. Notice the word Hebrew: e-b-r, there’s the stem, Eber, preserved in the very word Hebrew. So Abraham is called a Hebrew because he’s one of the children of Eber.

Now these people traveled widely and left this stem in many nouns that you know. For example, take the name of the Spanish peninsula, Spain and Portugal, what is it called but the Iberian Peninsula; and what is the center of that noun but Eber, showing therefore that even in Spain and Portugal there was some sort of Semitic influence, either by language or by early settlers the children of Eber. Moreover, not only this but when we ask why Spain and Portugal and that peninsula is called Iberia we find it’s because there’s a river called the Ebro River, still existing, dumps into the Mediterranean south of Barcelona. And so we have the Ebro River, named as such by the first settlers in the area, and this would tend to suggest Semites settled early in Spain.

That’s not just true of Spain but we can also say it’s true for Ireland. Here’s the old name of Ireland, Hibernia, and again we have this peculiar formation occurring in an ancient name of an ancient country; since renamed by later settlers but the first settlers into the area, that evidently had some affect on the name, were Semites or people influenced by Semites.

There was a province in Greece at the time called Ibritania. And we have, of course, from the British Isles Britannia, and the question comes, is this another signal, left in history as a silent monument to the widespread influence of these mighty children of Eber. And then in Russia, in the Georgian province of Russia, in ancient times the historians referred to the Iberian Kingdom. So now look at what we’ve got: Britain, Ireland, Spain, Portugal and Russia, all showing influences of the children of Eber. And for those of you from Scotland, Aberdeen, there’s the same word, recurring again in a major area. So obviously there was a wide Semitic spread and we take this as place names derivative of people names who in turn come from Genesis 10.

Now in Genesis 10:22, in listing these specific children of Shem and the branches, we have: Elam, Asshur, Arpachshad, Lud, and Aram. Some of these we have no information on; some others we do. For example, let’s take the first one, Elam. We know where Elam came from; here’s the eastern end of the Mediterranean, here’s the Arabian Peninsula and the Persian Gulf, and located south of what is now called Iran was an ancient country known as Elam. Elam, obviously named for this man that you see here; geographical place name being named from people names.

Now Elam provides a serious Christian with an interesting point about history, archeology and the Bible because it was first found, when archeologists began to dig around Elam, that it didn’t look like it was Semitic in its origin. Then later archeological evidence discovered oh yes it is; so we inject at this point just a footnote just to those of you who are interested in archeology and the Bible and you read articles about it and you wonder about the interrelationship. Let me caution you about some things. Don’t say you believe the Bible because archeology proves it. Repeat: Don’t say you believe the Bible because archeology proves it! The reason you’re in trouble by that statement is that it’s in essence saying I refuse to believe the Word of God when there’s no evidence, and only when the evidence comes in from an autonomous source, the archeologist, only then will I believe the Bible, in which case you are not a believer. That is not an expression of faith in the Word of God; that is an expression of empiricism and it’s a pagan philosophy. So we don’t want to say that.

What we do say is that the Bible can be fitted to archeological data in a non-contradictory way; they can mesh together. Keep in mind what I point out in the third Framework pamphlet when I say on page 136 that archeological data, such as these finds at Elam are extremely limited. Reading on page 136 by a man by the name of Yamauchi, who has done some work in archeology for the evangelicals, he points out this: “There are actually five problems in archeology before you can come to get hold of anything tight.” Here’s the first one. “Only a fraction of the artifacts from ancient times have survived erosion, decay, souvenir hunting and other human destruction.” So of all the cities in the world, of all the artifacts left, there’s only a small fraction that have survived, mostly in dry climates where there hasn’t been rotting occurring. Second: “Of the fraction that survive only a fraction has been surveyed. Israeli teams, for example, recently surveyed 2,000 archeological sites and 800 had been previously unknown.” So of those that survive, even in a small nation like Israel, we’re still finding new sites, so all those that survive aren’t known yet.

Let’s take all those that are known; so we’ve limited it down from all those to all those that survive; we’ve limited from all those that survived to all those that are discovered and surveyed. Now, only the fraction surveyed have been excavated. “In Israel, due to modern obstructions, buildings, roads and high cost, only,” get a load of this now, this is an archeologically very active country, “of the 5,000 sites known in Israel,” guess how many ever have been dug at all: 150. Only 150 sites out of 5,000 sites have even been touched. So when someone pronounces and pontificates on the basis that archeology proves or disproves you’d better be careful. “Of those that have been dug, only a fraction have been examined. When a tel is excavated, only small parts are dug up. One scholar estimates to examine completely one site, the Hazor site, would take 800 years at the present rate of digging.” Some of you may have gone out to the Lubbock lake site here; you’ve seen what a dig looks like. If you haven’t, you ought to go out and see it when it’s active, and you see the people digging. If you haven’t seen one, understand that every shovel full that’s dug has to be sieved through screens and every piece that comes out of that sieve has to be logged on a piece of paper by the square it came out of on the site, and there are thousands and thousands and thousands of square on every site. That’s why it takes a whole summer to excavate, sometimes only a few cubic yards of dirt; that’s how slow this kind of work is.

Of those that have been excavated, examined, known and so on, and we’ve retrieved artifactual material, only a fraction of that has been published. For example, there are some Dead Sea Scrolls discovered in 1947 that still haven’t been published. This is 30 years later and where are the scrolls? They’re sitting in a library in a professor’s office waiting for a graduate student to do his thesis on it so it can be published; just sitting there, been sitting there for 30 years. And so this is where all the data is so be careful about archeology, it’s very limited and tenuous. So when you think of something like Elam here, just remember, better to go by the Scriptures and then later on hopefully get filled in from archeology.

The Bible says is Genesis 10:22, besides Elam there was Asshur. Some may be confused because Asshur shows up under the sons of Ham but he only shows up there as an associate to Nimrod, not a relative. Asshur is the father of the Assyrians, a very cruel people in history. When the Assyrians went into conquer people they’d tie them down on the ground, spread-eagle them and peel their skin off. That’s what the Assyrians did and that’s how they took care of the northern kingdom of Israel; that’s what Jeremiah and Isaiah and all the prophets are worried about, invasion of their country. Would you like to sit down, get tied down on the ground and have someone with a knife peel your skin off, then go ahead and thicken your apostasy, but if you don’t like that then get with the Word; that’s what Isaiah and these other men are talking about. So the Assyrians were cruel and they were tough.

After that, “Arpachshad,” now you can tell from Genesis 10:24-29, that whole section that lists the sons of Arpachshad that Arpachshad is the Messianic son. See, this is the Messianic line now being traced; it doesn’t come through Japheth, it doesn’t come through Ham, it comes through Shem, and Arpachshad is the leader. Let’s look at some of his sons. In Genesis 10:24 he begat “Shelah,” now this word also occurs around the world in many, many different ways. For example in Arabia there’s a hill called the Salah hill; there’s also a region in Arabia called Salah. There is also Salah Tel in Jordan today. Salayah which is a district in Bombay, India. There is the Salwal District in India. There is the Salak, with a “k” here as an alternate for a hard “ch,” the Salak district or the Salak Mountain in Indonesia. There is the Solwati Islands in New Guinea. There is the area called Sala in Czechoslovakia; there is also one in Kenya, and there is a Salah in Somalia. So here we have evidence of this name occurring around the world in various place names. So don’t say the Genesis 10 table doesn’t have adequate modern confirmation.

Then, “Shelah begot Eber,” whom we have already seen, and this places verse 24 at the time of Babel. Now for one of the most controversial verses in all of Genesis 10. Genesis 10:25, “And unto Eber were born two sons: the name of one was Peleg; for in his days was the earth divided; and his brother’s name was Joktan.” Peleg: what does this Peleg mean? Now here’s the controversy that has erupted over this verse. The controversy is: does this verse say only that the nations were fractured in their languages and driven north, south, east and west from Ararat because of linguistic confusion and pressure? Or, does this verse intend to teach beside that, that the nations and the continents were fractured; that is the North American and Southern American continents were ruptured and spread across from the mid-Atlantic rift westward and the European and African continents spread eastward from this rifting process.

So this is one of the things we have to go to the Scriptures and look carefully for and the primary meaning of Peleg, this is the man’s name, P-e-l-e-g, comes from a Hebrew verb similarly constructed, and this verb means to dig a canal or dig a ditch or divide the land. So its basic meaning is to divide the earth. But there’s an metonymy operating here, since man is of the earth and we’ve seen already that, for example, Genesis 11:1, “the whole earth was of one speech,” you see, in the context the word “earth” or eretz is referring to the human race, not the literal earth; the literal earth isn’t speaking one language, it’s the people who come from the earth that are speaking the language. So in the context we do see metonymy operating in the text.

So the question is, does the word “earth” in Genesis 10:25 mean the people of the earth or does it mean the literal earth. We take it to mean the people of the earth were divided. This is not to say that the continental division could not have occurred here. This is just to say if it does occur here we have to prove it by historical geology; we can’t prove it on the basis of the text of Scripture, and once proven on the basis of geology we can say here would be a likely place for it to have happened. We know something titanic happened here; we’re going to go into the details of that next time, but one of the titanic things that happened at precisely this point in the text, this division, was confirmation of a drop in longevity. I want to show you one of the pieces of evidence; you can find this out by yourself by simply taking a piece of graph paper and looking at the data that you get in Genesis 5 and Genesis 11. If we take a piece of graph paper and on the abscissa of that graph plot the patriarchs and on the ordinate of the graph plot his age at death, and put dots here for every piece of data we’re getting from Genesis 5, and then from Genesis 11 we watch this line that gradually asymptotes down to 70 years. We see there, recorded for us with complete clarity, the tremendous shock, physically, to the human race after the flood. Something radical happened to the human body. Before we were able to live 930 years and now we can only live 70, a titanic decrease in the viability of our bodies. If someone could crack why this happened, crack the code, so to speak, of what’s going on here; you’d have tremendous insight into what is known as aging. Obviously human aging has spread very catastrophically after this flood. But the interesting thing is, if you notice the line going down there’s a break in it. This can be proved mathematically by certain curve fitting techniques, and right here you have these curves split. There are two curves split; the question is, why is Genesis 11 giving us this information, and Genesis 10, at precisely the same point giving us the same information.

In other words, Genesis 10 says at this point, in his days the earth was divided; then when we go to the next chapter and objectively study statistical evidences we find, lo and behold, the curve breaks and it breaks precisely at this point. All we know is that something catastrophic happened in the days of Peleg that further reduced human longevity by at least a century. So this verse, Genesis 10:25, though it’s just a little verse, is recording something deeply profound about the human race.

Peleg himself was an interesting person and he survived in history and his descendants went around as pirates in the Mediterranean for a long time and they were called the Pelasgians. It is presumed that these people were largely responsible for the Piri Re’is map which I’ll show you in a little bit. The Pelasgians lived in southern Greece, of all places, and interestingly, now that you’re onto this little thing, here’s the name of a river in Southern Greece that they lived next to. Notice something, the Hebrus River. What’s named for? It’s named for Eber. So it shows Semites living in southern Greece, driven out eventually be the Thracians. In fact, Modern Greek has this as the word for “sea” (pelagos) so obviously the Greek language has borrowed its name for sea from Peleg because Peleg and his sons roamed the sea. So it gets you a feel for how names and geography and history took place. I think if history were taught this way it would be a fascinating subject for students in school. Extra biblical tradition tells us that it was Peleg who first invented the hedge and the ditch, the wall and the bulwark, and who by lot divided the land among his brethren; he was associated with whatever this was in verse 25.

Now Genesis 10:22, we studied Elam, we studied Asshur, we studied Arpachshad, we’ve gone through… to finish verse 25, his other brother, Joktan, and his sons, verses 226, 27, 28 and 29 are all Arabian tribes, we can trace those. So that shows you where the Semites settled, largely in the Arabian Peninsula, plus the Pelasgians who went all across the earth in their boats.

Then the next man in verse 22 is Lud, and we think he may be the father of some of the people in Lydia or Turkey, Asia Minor. And Aram is Aramea and Aramea is the old ancient name of Syria; the Arameans of Damascus are referred to often in Kings. So Aram, then, becomes Assyrians. So all these people are Semites.

And then Genesis 10:31-32 summarize that they split up, they went into these various areas according to their generations, “and by these were the nations divided in the earth after the flood.” Now as they did this they brought their culture with them, and because you all tend to be brainwashed by evolution and so on, we always try to continue our propaganda war from this pulpit against it so I want to show you some slides of ancient artwork, just to knock out the idea that some of you have that these people were stupid, they lived in caves because they hadn’t thought of houses yet. Our thesis has been they lived in caves because of the tremendous climatic upheaval that was occurring after the flood and the problem of the cave caused a lot of their bone structures to deform. Interesting, a very poignant picture in National Geographic a while back of the famous cave paintings in France; some of you have seen these paintings, now closed to the public because of the bacteria brought in by the tourists who have begun to eat away the pigmentation on the caves, but just as a very poignant, one of the pictures here shows an animal on the cave and it shows hand prints that were held up, some little child had his hand held up on the cave and his father or his mother took a blow tube and blew pigment across the child’s hand, leaving the imprint of his hand on the cave. It shows you just kind of a little playful thing in their art. But it shows you once again they were real people who thought and made real things.

Let’s look at some of this art form and make some comments. This is the Piri Re’is map that we mentioned earlier, it’s one of the most astounding documents in human history because if you look closely you will see the continent of Africa all outlined, you will see Cuba and South America, and it goes all the way down and even maps Antarctica before the ice cap. This map existed prior to the time of Columbus and shows very carefully and very clearly that navigators mapped all the islands of the North and South Atlantic very accurately long before Columbus. There was no excuse, incidentally, in Columbus’ day for confusing America with India.

Here is one of the maps, the Oronteus Finaeus map, that we showed you before. The Oronteus Finaeus map shows you Antarctica. The key thing about that map is the rivers. Antarctica is now frozen under an ice cap and there are no rivers. Whoever made this map was there before the ice cap and mapped it. The question is, who did it and when did they do it? The answer is they did it right after the flood before the glaciations, the Pleistocene epic came on strong. Here are some of the map-making abilities and shows you, incidentally when people say that people in Bible times believed in a flat earth don’t you believe it. Egypt had already measured the circumference of the earth in the time of Moses. So when someone says a flat earth, they are the ones that probably are the flat-earthers, but Moses and their people knew exactly the earth, they had measured it to within several miles.

Here is some of the artwork left by these early people; this is not later Mesopotamian civilization, these are artworks left early. Notice here a catalog of animals according to their kind. They are astute observers of nature. These are some sort of mythological motif we don’t know about. Here is some of the artwork, in this case these have deeply sexual connotations but notice the abstractness of them, highly detailed artwork. This is not done by some half-man half-ape eating his banana. Again more artwork, in this case of a primitive battle. Here is some more very elegant detailed artwork on pottery. This was done in the earliest levels of the cities of the Mesopotamia, and the sons of Shem and probably the sons of Ham were involved in these designs. Take a good look at them; next time someone tells you that these are just primitive hokey people. Here is a figurine. Incidentally, one of the mysteries of all this art is why we have this cross; this cross appears again and again and again. In this case a female figurine and she has this on her left shoulder. What it means no one really knows except this and a swastika occur again and again in ancient art. Here is a bowl from China showing the various animals on it and some sort of a calendar device. Another from earliest levels of occupation in China of a quite sophisticated statue, the use of exaggerated feminine statue, largely emphasizing fertility.

These are some of the art forms left by the sons that you’re reading about here in Genesis 10. Don’t ever visualize them as stupid; they may have lived in caves but it was for physical survival, not because they were stupid.

Now when we finish in Genesis 10:32 and we tally up the number of names in the list we come out, depending on how we do it, to plus or minus 70. What’s the significance of this? Let’s turn to Deuteronomy 32, for Moses believed in the table of nations, he believed it was an accurate story, it was not a fairy tale or a myth, he believed that history could be explained in terms of this. While Moses believed this very few authors of 20^th century textbooks believe it, but for those of you who are Christian parents and would like to buy a textbook for your children to read at Jr. High level there is a new one that just came out from a very famous historian at the University of Michigan, Albert Hyma, Streams of Civilization. I would suggest… you’ll wait until hell freezes over for the schools to buy it, you might as well buy it yourself and have it on your home bookshelf for your children to read at their leisure at home: Streams of Civilization by Albert Hyma, available from ICR, the Institute for Creation Research.

Now the 70 figure in Deuteronomy 32:8 recurs indirectly. Verse 7 for the context: Moses has just finished his swan song to the nation; he’s leaving, he’s going to shortly die and here’s his last words. He has exhorted the nation to follow the Law and then he concludes in verse 7, “Remember the days of old,” now what would be the “days of old” to you if you were living in Moses’ day? It would be precisely that age between the flood and your generation, “the days of old,” [“consider] the years of many generations. Ask thy father, and he will show thee; thy elders, and they will tell thee. [8] When the Most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when He separated the sons of Adam, He set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel.” The number of the children of Israel was 70; they were the number of people that came out with Jacob down into Egypt for the exile.

So now isn’t this an interesting thing. Here we have stated that the entire human race has 70 divisions in it; that Israel is picked out as a chosen nation and it starts out with 70 people, as though there is a one to one correspondence between the nation Israel and all nations on the face of the earth. Deuteronomy 32:8 goes on to state that He gives to each nation “their inheritance,” now what would be the inheritance of a nation? It would be land and here is one of those things which many Christians forget; that is, that Israel wasn’t the only nation in history to have her own land given to her by God. Other nations, in fact, I would suspect that all 70 sons of Noah at one time had allocations of land given to them. We have several of them mentioned; if you look at Deuteronomy 2 I’ll prove to you that non-Jacobites had land given to them.

In Deuteronomy 2:4, where the Jews are commanded to go through the area of Edom, God says “You are to pass through the coasts” the borders “of your brethren, the children of Esau, who dwell in Seir,” that’s the western side of the Saudi Arabian Peninsula, “and they shall be afraid of you; take ye good heed to yourselves therefore.” Notice the instruction of verse 5, “Meddle not with them; for I will not give you of their land, no, not so much as a foot breadth, because I have given Mount Seir unto Esau for a possession.” So Edom and his children have the right to occupy that territory.

You can go down to Deuteronomy 2:9, “And the LORD said unto me, Distress not the Moabites, neither contend with them in battle; for I will not give thee of their land for a possession, because I have given Ar unto the children of Lot for a possession.” So you see, the Jews weren’t the only people to get their inheritance.

So we find, then, the human race split up into 70 parts; the Bible just views all humans as part of the 70 parts, and He has constructed Israel to start with 70 people. Now why is this? Here is where you have your deep missionary theology of the Bible. What was the goal of the nation Israel? The goal of the nation Israel was to provide divine viewpoint to the entire human race. And so therefore she is made almost structurally parallel to the human race itself.

Now if you’ll turn to Numbers 11, you’ll see this theme of 70 reappear. In Numbers 11:16 we find Moses having an administration of management problem. This is true whether you’re in the military, whether you’re in industry or a business, as our life becomes more and more technological we get more and more problems with management. Moses had a problem with management and God said in verse 16, “Gather unto me seventy men of the elders of Israel, whom thou knowest to be the elders of the people,” that is qualified men, male leaders, He wants seventy of them. This later on came to be known in history as the Sanhedrin, or The Seventy.

So now we have seventy nations, we have seventy people that found the nation, we have seventy administrators, and now turn to the New Testament and watch an evangelistic tactic of the Lord Jesus Christ. Luke 10; the Lord Jesus Christ was given the assignment by His Father to present Himself to the nation Israel first; not to the nations around Israel, but the nation Israel, and the issue would be: would the Jews respond to their Messiah or would they reject Him, and the means that Jesus Christ used to present Himself are given in Luke 10:1, “After these things the Lord appointed seventy, and sent them two by two before His face into every city and place, where He Himself would come.” So the Lord Jesus Christ used a team of seventy to reach the nation.

So we have this, not accidental, repetition of the number 70. Now 70 seems to be associated, then, with the rule of the human race, both spiritually, in this part, and physically. Let’s turn to the great commission and see, Matthew 28, many Christians know this by heart but let’s look at the great commission again to see if this doesn’t help us get a better handle on what the Lord’s talking about in the great commission. This is often used in missionary conferences, rightfully so. But let’s see if we can get another look at the great commission, see if we don’t see some more things that we don’t normally see there. First let’s look at Matthew 28:19-20 just quickly, “Go ye, therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. [20] Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you; and, lo, I am with you always, unto the end” literally “of the age.”

Let’s look at it now in fine detail. Verse 19, “Go ye, therefore,” go where? Go in among the 70 sons of Noah, the table of nations, go visit these nations. What I am saying is that the word “nations” in verse 19 must be understood the way an Old Testament person would view it. How would an Old Testament person view “nations?” Not like we do, political entities, the United States, Canada, Mexico, Guatemala, those are political subdivisions. That’s not the way Bible authors view nations, by looking at political subdivisions. We know this because the prophets don’t; the prophets speak in terms of the table of nations. The Bible authors view nations as tribes. So for example, does America for example ever appear in Bible prophecy? Well probably but we couldn’t recognize it because you’re not going to find the United States of America in a prophecy; that is a political entity. But who lives in the United States of America? Certain sons of Noah. So if we have prophecies directed to these sons of Noah, then the United States is included in those prophecies. So therefore the United States is implicitly included in the prophecies, but not explicitly.

And when we come here to the word “nations” we mean all the seventy sons of Noah. Now let’s look what he says: “Go,” the word “teach” means discipline, disciple, disciple these nations. The way you and I usually read this is we usually read it this way: “Go ye, therefore, and teach every person,” we read it individualistically as though this just has to do with personal witnessing one on one. But that’s not what verse 19 says, it says: “Go ye, therefore, and disciple national entities,” go discipline and disciple tribes, the whole corporate group, not just individuals in the group. In other words, don’t be satisfied that the great commission has been fulfilled unless the Word of God dominates the tribal culture; until that point is reached the great commission has not been fulfilled in its strict term.

Jesus says “Go therefore, and disciple all these nations,” then there are two participles. The word “baptize” in verse 19, and the verb to “teach” in verse 20. The verb to “baptize” in verse 19 and the word to “teach” in verse 20 are the means by which the main verb, which is “disciple” or “discipline,” is carried out. Two things, the first way it’s carried out, “baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” Notice the Trinitarian theology. That is the first way and that refers to evangelism. And it ties water baptism in with Spirit baptism and says water baptism is very important. When we get facilities you’ll see much more emphasis on ritual baptism. Ritual baptism is a public confession of faith in Jesus Christ and it’s extremely important.

After evangelism, verse 20, there is follow up, and the follow up here is follow up, thick follow up, detailed follow up, comprehensive follow up; look what he says: “Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you,” and that includes the Old Testament because Christ wrote the Old Testament. “Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you,” you see. Now I can hear it, some people are going to say are you turning postmill? Are you trying to say that the job of the Church is to go out and convert all the nations and set up the kingdom of God here and now and then later Christ is going to come? No! What I am saying is that verses 19-20 is pitched to that end for a reason. The Church is to be mighty in conquest and imperial in spirit, contrary to the hand-wringing anthropologists that are so terribly worried about the missionary butting into the culture of the Hottentots. The Bible says we are to interfere, and there’s the mandate; it’s an absolute, it has nothing to do with our anthropological theories, it says you go out and you interfere, and interfere, and interfere in every culture on the face of the earth until every culture is dominated by the Word of God.

Be conquerors; this is an imperial decree; the Church is to interfere with every culture. Now this just rubs, I know, deliberately rubs the wrong way all of our relativist friends who think that this culture… we have to preserve all these nice Indian traditions. The Indians have some fine traditions and they have some awful ones and what this is saying is that in the case of the Indian, this is to be subdued by the Word of God and driven out—not the Indians and not the many beautiful things of their culture but the degenerate things, yes, you are to interfere with Indian culture because some of it is gross. Just like as Christian citizens we are to interfere with our American culture because some of it is gross, and yet what happens in our circles. Oh well, we don’t think we should do that, we’re just going to witness to so and so. The great commission says disciple the nations, and that means you thrust the Word of God against every community, against every group. Interfere, interfere, interfere, interfere in every area with the Word of God.

Now the results of this: Matthew 23:39. We have a malady, particularly in this, our own fundamental pretrib, premill circles. One of the maladies we have today is Christ is going to come back tomorrow and therefore we do one of two equally foolish things. The first thing, certain missionary organizations, though thank the Lord not many any more, but 10 or 15 years ago we had things like world evangelism crusades and a few other things that were notorious for taking some young guy out of college and say hey, Christ is going to come tomorrow, you’ve got to get out on the mission field, right now, today, never mind training, just get out there. And this is a panicky reaction and it is very unscriptural. First of all, you don’t know whether Christ is coming back tomorrow but the implication is because He’s coming back, therefore let’s be as sloppy and slipshod as we can just to get the gospel out. That is not Scriptural.

The other, equally foolish response is well, Christ is coming tomorrow so let’s shut down, wait it out, just relax, do nothing, the world is getting worse and worse, too bad, days are evil, can’t do anything more. Now both of those responses are goofy, poor responses. The proper response and mental attitude is given here and I think the easiest way to see it is to think back; if you were among the 70 who had gone out to the nation Israel between, say whatever the dates you want to pick for Christ’s thing, let’s say two years, from 28-30, let’s pretend you and I are part of those seventy disciples sent out to the nation Israel. What would we have been told to do? Just witness? Well, yes, witness one on one, but out objective was what? Just to save individual souls? Huh-un, our objective was to create a new Israel under Messiah, wasn’t it? Wasn’t that the objective of the seventy? Yes, win people to Christ, but after you’ve won them what are they to become? The loyal remnant that will reign and project the new Israel. That was what the call was, not just to win individuals to Christ but win them to Christ corporately into a group that could be identified as Israel the faithful; during this period of time that was the commission.

Now you know the story; the seventy went out, and the nation didn’t respond, turned them off. There were some individuals that came out, a small, small remnant on positive volition, the rest stayed on negative volition. Now if those disciples were to react, and Christ were to react the way we would react in our circles, well, can’t do anything until Christ comes back so let’s just sit. But notice what He says in Matthew 23:39, Christ said, “You will not see Me henceforth, till you shall say, Blessed is he that comes in the name of the Lord.” In other words, Christ says you can sit around all you want but until this nation asks for Me to come back I’m not coming back. In other words, what verse 39 is saying is Christ’s return is not fatalistically determined. Christ’s return is not going to be automatic; Christ’s return is going to be deeply related to the spiritual condition of the human race prior to His return. Now this means in verse 39 that the nation Israel is going to have to get its stuff together theologically, at least a representative group within the nation Israel, and they are going to have to ask God to bring Christ back and when they do that He’ll come back, and not until. So it’s far from this fatalism of just, well, we’re just kind of waiting until Christ returns, that kind of thing. Go to the movies and watch The Late Great Planet Earth get later.

Well now the nations obviously are going to have the same kind of response because there is going to be a judgment among the nations too, and in a large sense then there’s a parallel between Matthew 23:39 and the same great commission given to the Gentile nations: Christ will not return until there is a sizeable hunger for Him in the hearts of tribes around the world. The book of Revelation says the gospel of the kingdom must be totally preached. Yes, some of this goes on in the tribulation after the rapture, but the point remains that Jesus Christ’s physical return is contingent… contingent upon human response to the Word of God, under the sovereignty, yes, but on a linear horizontal scale Christ does not come back automatically. So maybe this will motivate some to get off this prophecy kick where we just kind of sit around and doze because Jesus is coming tomorrow. Nonsense; we have to be in our place, carrying out the orders of the Chief.

The last order handed down from the right hand of the Father was the great commission and it said to us to go and to disciple the nations. We didn’t get any order back down from heaven since that order saying okay, cut if off. Where do we find that in the New Testament? It’s not in the New Testament. The last order is to go and subdue.

How can we subdue, let’s be very practical for a moment, how do we subdue. One way every one of us in this local congregation can subdue is you have area three on your prayer list, you know that Arnold Fruchtenbaum, ICR, the Christian Servicemen’s Center, many of you know missionaries on your own, your families have supported these missionaries for some time, maybe you support your own private missionaries, we encourage that, but that’s one way, prayer and giving to the missionary, and to ones that we pick who are proven and who are competent. But then there are other things; some of you may work for companies where you go around the world. Have you ever thought when you’re going around the world of just seeing how maybe you could edify some of the believers in the poverty stricken areas of the world, or in the persecuted areas of the world where your firm might have offices, and you can have a ministry of taking the Word of God to them. This is part of specific things you can do to carry out the great commission. The other thing, you can pray, as the Bible says, that God would thrust out laborers into the field, and by this we don’t mean panicky reaction, we mean trained, hardcore professionals, people who have all the training, people who know what they’re doing, where they’re going and the procedures involved, the language involved and so on.

A third or fourth specific that you can do; down the street less than half a mile is concentrated more students from countries from one end of the world to the other, foreign students going to Texas Tech, we’ve got a missionary field right in our backyard. Have we asked some of the students… got to be friends with them, invited them into our home, got to know them, because many of these students are going to be tremendous leaders when they go back to their own country because they will have had the American degree, the American education. Do we try to influence them for the Lord or are we busy spending $30,000 to $40,000 expeditions over to the Hottentots 4,500 miles away when six of them might be right here in a dorm at Tech. Now which is the easiest to reach. These are the leaders of their country. They are the intelligentsia of their nation. They already know the English language because they’re learning it in English here; no language barrier and what do the evangelical churches do. I was amazed when I first came to Lubbock Bible Church and this wasn’t my criticism, it was the criticism of somebody that was on the staff at Dallas Seminary who had come here before I had and he pointed out something interesting about Lubbock Bible Church. Lubbock Bible Church had a very interesting outreach to missionaries, a very good one. But he pointed out something very conspicuous about this particular congregation; he says there they are, supporting 40 or 45 missionaries, little amounts but still there was that interest in missionary activity, all over the world and absolutely no contact with a mission field right smack dab a mile away. Now what kind of logistics and common sense is that? We have Reese [Air Force Base], where men come to train from Iran, from the other countries. There are a lot of resources around and I’m glad that some of you know this and are doing your thing and I encourage you to keep on because it’s great. So it can be done, individuals just quietly doing their own thing and those who can’t just praying.

We’ll finish by turning to one of the great missionary hymns….