JUDGMENTS OF FIRE AND WATER

JUDGMENTS OF FIRE AND WATER

"While the earth remains, seed-time and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease" Gen. 8:22

These words are part of the new covenant which God made with man after the Flood, in that judgment of a corrupt race the order of Nature had been set aside. One whole lunar year had been a year of judgment (compare Gen. 7:11 with Gen. 8:13, 14), and during that time there had been neither seed time nor harvest, nor cold nor heat, nor summer nor winter, nor day nor night, so far as the experience of man and the condition of the earth were concerned. The purpose of that particular judgment being accomplished, God reinstated man in his relationship to the earth, putting him under a new order of life, that of the government of man by man (see Gen. 9:1-6). In doing so He restored, and abidingly confirmed, the natural order. The next judgment of the earth will be its final fire-cleansing (See 2 Peter 3:7 and 12; Psa. 148:8). Until then this order abides. It is important that we remember that this covenant has never failed, and that the continuity and regularity of the seasons is due to the faithfulness of God. Through the ages man has lived by seed time and harvest, by cold and heat, by summer and winter, by day and night; and this because God has been faithful and patient. The sorrows of humanity are all due to man's misuse of these things. If they were properly used under the Divine government, there would be neither pain nor poverty, but perfect human conditions. All earthly blessings flow from these Divine arrangements. All earthly curses result from human misuse of them.