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(3). GEN. 4: 25.--Seth was so called, because "God hath appointed me", said Eve,
"another seed instead of Abel, whom Cain slew". Cain was "of that wicked one", and if
the unalterable and inflexible purpose of God was that Seth should be the seed through
whom the line of promise should run, then Cain had obeyed the will of God in thus
murdering his brother, but if God met the attack of "the wicked one" by appointing
"another seed instead of Abel", His purpose would still go on, and the enemy's attack
fail. Besides, that view makes the whole transaction real, the other makes it an awful
fiction.
(4). GEN. 6: 5-7.--Come again to another scene, the flood. If the deluge was a
predestined part of the unalterable, inflexible purpose of God, so must have been the
wickedness that necessitated it, and God, looking down upon the increasing violence,
must have rejoiced to see how well His purpose was developing; but what saith the Holy
Word?
"And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every
imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually, and it REPENTED
THE LORD that He had made man on the earth, and it GRIEVED HIM AT HIS HEART,
and the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth;
both man and beast, and creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it REPENTETH ME
THAT I HAVE MADE THEM" (Gen. 4: 5-7).
Here is solid, sober Scripture, call it by what name in the range of figurative language
that you will, when all is said and done, stand once again and behold this record of
Divine grief over the apostacy of His creatures, and the resolution to blot them out that
followed. We need no greater proof than this, that the responsibility for human guilt rests
upon man, and that he was under no necessity by reason of an iron purpose to do so
wickedly. Noah himself, as we sought to show in the last two papers, is a kind of second
Adam with whom a new start is made. We will not pursue this subject further, being
content to have seen that there is a vast difference between that electing purpose that was
made in Christ before sin entered, and that purpose and plan which spans the ages and
ends in the defeat of the adversary, the destruction of the last enemy, and the homage of
heaven and earth and underworld in the name of Jesus. We cannot quote a more apt
passage in conclusion than that of Rom. 3: 5-8:--
"But if our unrighteousness commend the righteousness of God, what shall we say? Is
God unrighteous who taketh vengeance? (I speak as a man), God forbid; for then how
shall God judge the world?
For if the truth of God hath more abounded through my lie unto His glory; why yet am
I also judged as a sinner, and not rather (as we be slanderously reported, and as some
affirm that we say), LET US DO EVIL, THAT GOOD MAY COME? WHOSE
DAMNATION IS JUST."