"finding yourself on the wrong way on a freeway during rush hour"
We live in times when the world is in great upheaval. This has always been the case whenever there is a transition from one dispensation to another. Not only is there always great wickedness amongst the people, it is also accompanied with climatic earthly destructions.
We are not the only ones who have and will experience this. Past dispensational heads like Noah and Abraham also lived in times little short of an earthly hell.
Below are some excerpts from the writing of Nibley that I wanted to share. I have a new found respect for his work and the things he wrote.
"If we fancy Noah riding the sunny seas high, dry, and snug in the ark, we have not read the record—the long, hopeless struggle against entrenched mass resistance to his preaching, the deepening gloom and desperation of the years leading up to the final debacle, then the unleashed forces of nature with the family absolutely terrified, weeping and praying "because they were at the gates of death," as the ark was thrown about with the greatest violence by terrible winds and titanic seas."
After all that...
"Noah went forth into a world of utter desolation, as Adam did, to build his altar, call upon God, and try to make a go of it all over again, only to see some of his progeny on short order prefer Satan to God and lose all the rewards that his toil and sufferings had put in their reach."
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In Abraham's day, men had perverted the order of life, so God altered the order of nature. The problems he had to face were forced upon him largely by the evil times in which he lived.
There is a definite correlation between the behavior of man and the behavior of nature. The universe is so organized, according to this, that when man revolts against God's plan of operations, to which all other creatures conform, he finds himself in the position of one going the wrong way on a freeway during rush hour: the very stars in their course fight against him.
As it was in the days of Noah, so in the days of Abraham, a very old Christian writing explains, the world was ripe for destruction, according to the principle that whenever men fall away completely from God, destruction must follow.
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In desperation, men turned to worshiping idols.
The sophisticated people of Abraham's time wanted the sanction of holy beings which at the same time were one hundred percent compliant with their own interests and desires, just as people today search out those scriptures which support their interests and push the rest aside.
There were displays of astonishing luxury and sophistication, the style being Babylonian rather than Egyptian, and apparently already in a state of decadence just before its destruction by an earthquake.
It is not surprising that "the men of Sodom were the wealthy men of prosperity, on account of the good and fruitful land whereon they dwelt. The people of Sodom and Gomorrah were not condemned for their ignorance of the God of Abraham but rather for their greed; they were destroyed because they did not strengthen the hand of the poor and heeded not the needy.
For them everything existed for the sole purpose of being turned into cash. One cannot help thinking of the church builders in Mormon 8:37 and 39, who adorn themselves "with that which hath no life" while calmly ignoring the needs of the living.
That this emphasis on wealth and status was the real wickedness of Sodom and Gomorrah is attested by both the Bible and the Pearl of Great Price.
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Excerpts from Hugh Nibley's "The World of Abraham".
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