Noah’s descendants reproduced the mistakes of unbelief, and developed new systems of creature worship. The center of Babel (the gate of god, Babylon) became a prototype of all human-centered religions and kingdoms with its self-dependence, false philosophies, erroneous doctrines, amalgamations of truth and error, and abuses. God scattered them, and then out of this maze of confusion called a man of faith, as He began to form a cradle into which could come the greatest revelation of self-sacrificing love the universe will ever see. Abraham’s growing walk of faith out of Babylon blazed a trail for people of faith of all lands and all succeeding generations. Step by faltering step he learned to see things from God’s perspective, to believe what God believes. In his line of God-dependent descendents would flow the blessing that God had for the entire world, the cure for the curse of self-seeking. God embodied His re-creative faith within the promises He gave to Abraham, who in responsive faith received and believed them in greater and greater dependence. To Abraham’s posterity were given the written oracles of God, the great record of God’s faith and love from the beginning. This story documented for the race their God-given identity that had been under attack since the intrusion of the lie into this world. Transmitted verbally for generations, but now inscribed in sacred writings by Moses, the unbroken line of the truth would last through the duration of the battle. Woven into this record was the sanctuary built under God’s direction upon the deliverance of Abraham’s descendents from Egypt (after 400 years of slavery). This sanctuary was given to embody the ways in which self-sacrificing love would itself be the cleansing solution for self-seeking, the restoration of holiness by its removing of iniquity. In the heart of that sanctuary was the visible presence of God, resting above the mercy seat of pure gold, itself above the stones on which God Himself had inscribed the code of self-sacrificing love. Thus justice and mercy were shown as the foundation of His throne of faith and love. All of these lines of faith, in heritage and revelation, were to lead to a visit by the living Word, born into the human family as one of us, to be anew the expression of faith and love from the other-centered Godhead to the fallen race.
