Flood a result of wrong education
The controversy was an educational problem. Christian education was almost wiped from the earth. Worldly wisdom seemed about to triumph. In point of numbers its adherents vastly exceeded those in the schools of the Christians. Was this seeming triumph of evil over good a sign that evil was stronger than truth?—By no means. Only in the matter of scheming and deceiving does the devil have the advantage; for God can work only in a straightforward manner.
The tree of life was still upon the earth, an emblem of the wisdom of God. Man, however, had turned his back upon it. Eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil brought death, and this the inhabitants of the earth were about to realize, although their worldly wisdom taught them the contrary.
Wrong methods of education cause the withdrawal of God’s Spirit
The tree of life was taken to heaven before the flood,[12] thus symbolizing the departure of true wisdom from the earth. The flood came. Deep rumblings of thunder shook the very earth. Man and beast fled terrified from the flashes of lightning. The heavens opened; the rain fell,—at first in great drops. The earth reeled and cracked open; the fountains of the great deep were broken up; water came from above, water from beneath. A cry went up to heaven, as parents clasped their children in the agony of death; but the Spirit of the Life-giver was withdrawn. Does this seem cruel? God had pleaded with each generation, with each individual, saying, “Why will ye, why will ye?” But only a deaf ear was turned to Him. Man, satisfied with schooling his senses, with depending upon his own reasoning powers, closed, one by one, every avenue through which the Spirit of God could work; and nature, responding to the loss, was broken to her very heart, and wept floods of tears.
One family, and only one, bound heaven and earth together. Upon the bosom of the waters rocked the ark in safety. God’s Spirit rested there, and in the midst of greater turmoil than angels had ever witnessed, a peace which passeth all understanding filled the minds and hearts of that faithful company.
Faith the basis of the new education
The waters subsided; the earth lay a desolate mass. Mountains stood bleak and barren where once stretched plains of living green. Trees, magnificent in their towering strength, lay dying as the waters left the earth. Great masses of rock covered places hitherto inhabited. This family came forth as strangers in a strange land. The plan of education must start anew. Each successive step away from God rendered more difficult man’s access to his throne; it had lengthened, as it were, the ladder one more round. There was at first this one lesson to be taken by faith,—that God was true in saying, “In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” It was a lesson of faith versus reason. Next came two lessons of faith: first, faith opposed by reason; and, second, the plan of redemption through Christ. Then came the third lesson,—the flood. Would that man could have grasped the first, or, missing that, he had taken the second, or even losing hold of that, he could have taken the third by faith, and prevented the flood.
From beginning to end it was a matter of education. Christians to-day exalt the material to the neglect of the spiritual, as surely as did men before the flood. Shall we not look for similar results, since similar principles are at work?
The education of the popular schools advocated nature study; but, leaving God out, they deified nature, and accounted for the existence of all things by the same theories which are to-day termed evolution. This is man’s theory of creation with faith dropped out of the calculation.