(Genesis 4 until c. 1275 B.C.)
After people began to sin, God would no longer walk freely among His children as He did in the Garden of Eden. Rather, He would relate to His faithful children through mediators or priests. The first of these mediators were the fathers of the families, sometimes known as the Patriarchs. Adam was the first of these Patriarchs. God spoke His will to the families, though the fathers chose to disobey God’s purpose for us to live as His faithful children. In fact, people began to fashion new practices of worship. In history, this is the beginning of religions that man created.
For although they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks to Him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things (Romans 1:21–23).
With religions that sought for answers separate from Creator God, the earth became filled with violence. This started as early as Genesis, when Cain chose his own way of worshiping God. Abel, Cain’s brother worshipped in faith, which is always obedient to God. As God rejected Cain’s approach, Cain responded in jealousy and killed his brother.
The violence became so widespread that God decided to make a fresh start by destroying all the living with a great flood. But He still loved us and made a way for us to escape this punishment. A faithful father during this time was named Noah.
Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight, and the earth was filled with violence. And God saw the earth, and behold, it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth. And God said to Noah, “I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence through them. Behold, I will destroy them with the earth. Make yourself an ark of gopher wood” (Genesis 6:11–14).
The Bible would later explain:
By faith Noah, being warned by God concerning events as yet unseen, in reverent fear constructed an ark for the saving of his household. By this he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith (Hebrews 11:7).
Noah chose to be faithful to his Heavenly Father. Noah’s belief, trust and obedience enabled God to guide Noah’s family to safety via the ark. God will not guide us where we are unwilling to go.
As we will see in our further study, Noah’s experience in being delivered from the flood will help us to understand our own salvation.
… when God’s patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through water. Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers having been subjected to him (1 Peter 3:20–22).
Though disciplined on a global scale, people continued to create religions in the image of man rather than after God’s revealed will. Idols, made by the hands of people, were worshipped as gods. Animism, the belief that the spirit world “animates” the physical world, became prevalent. The belief that powerful spirits inhabited things that God created (trees, rocks, animals, statues) led to the worship of these things instead of the Creator. The worship of dead ancestors developed. Ancient world religions like Shintoism and Hinduism, often having priesthoods and sacred writings, emerged from these beliefs.
Zoroastrianism looked to the movement of the stars and the planets as a means to guide oneself through life’s troubles. Around 600 B.C., philosophical religions emerged as people searched their thoughts for meaning, guidance and purpose. Taoism, Jainism, Buddhism and Confucianism all seek for answers within the wisdom of man rather than the wisdom of God.