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Abstract
Table of Contents
Part I
Part II
Part III
Part IV
Part V
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Part V: A Christian World View: The
Framework of History
Chapter 3
Man's Potential: in Shem, Ham,
and Japheth
HUGH DRYDEN,
writing on "The Scientist in Contemporary Life,'' (31) remarked: "Man's
life at its fullest is a trinity of activity � physical,
mental, and spiritual." Dryden was not speaking of the theological
concept of man as a trichotomy of body, soul and spirit; and
it is important in the present context to observe the distinction
quite clearly. If in his article he were concerning himself with
the concept of "soul," he would have included it under
the heading of man's spiritual nature, not his intellectual capacity.
What he is seeking to point out is that there are three areas
of human involvement which must all be taken into account and
nurtured if man is to develop his personality to the full. He
must live in the sense of surviving as a viable entity, which
means food and warmth and shelter and so forth. He must be allowed
to stretch his mind and explore with his intellect whatever attracts
his attention, which means mental stimulation and challenge.
And he must not overlook the fact that there is a spiritual side
to his nature which is not satisfied either by bread alone nor
by intellectual exercise or rational argument, but something
which transcends them both. This side of his total being seems
to be somewhere within both body and mind, and yet can be entirely
contrary to the interests of either. A healthy body and a healthy
mind do not guarantee, but may contribute to, spiritual well-being.
It is not solely a matter of emotions and yet it must involve
the emotions to be satisfying. For most men it is best described
under the general heading of
31. Dryden, Hugh, "The Scientist in Contemporary
Life," Science, vol.120, 1954, p.1054.
 pg
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Religion, a vague but
comprehensive term that can mean almost anything or nothing,
yet is normally concerned neither with man's body nor with his
mind, but with what is most simply described as his soul.
In a similar vein, Viktor E. Frankl
wrote, (32) "Man
lives in three dimensions: the somatic (physical, i.e., bodily),
the mental, and the spiritual." The thought behind both
these quotations can be expressed in innumerable ways. While
the life that an individual lives in these three realms can be
mapped discretely for purposes of analysis, they are seldom distinguished
in everyday experience. But man does have a capacity for physical
life, for mental life, and for spiritual life. And as a result
of these capacities has elaborated culture in three directions:
He has developed technology to satisfy his bodily needs, philosophy
to organize and elaborate his mental life, and religion to provide
for his spiritual life.
Research into the factors which
influence personality development has shown that whenever these
three "needs" are appropriately cultivated, character
develops in a normal and healthy way. But when one of them is
neglected or denied the individual becomes somehow unbalanced.
It would be wrong to suppose that, as man is constituted at present,
any one of these three "capacities" is more important
than the other. The overly spiritual man is no more a balanced
person than the overly sensual. It may seem that he would be
a preferred type, but experience shows that the mystic can be
quite as unbearable at close range as the "trousered ape"
(to use Lewis' phrase). Neither does the purely intellectual
prove to be any more desirable � at close quarters. It is
difficult to know which is more unpleasant, spiritual or intellectual
pride, but both can be insuflferable. In a curious way the trousered
ape, boorish and uncultured as he is, may be the least unbearable,
if one has a choice. But virtually every distortion or abnormality
of character can be equated with imbalance in one of these three
directions.
Thus as an individual, man can
live in any one of the three realms almost to the exclusion of
the other two with virtually no awareness of his own loss. He
can become almost entirely sensual, or almost entirely intellectual,
or almost entirely a mystic. In the first case he is likely to
be looked upon as crude, in short, an animal dedicated to his
own physical comforts. In the second
32. Frankl, Viktor E., quoted in The Digest
of Neurology and Psychiatry, (Institute of Living, Hartford,
Connecticut) Feb., 1955, p.74.
pg.2
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case he is likely to
be thought of as impractical, a "brain." In the third
case he is likely to be looked upon as other-worldly, a man whose
feet are not on the ground. Of course, there are many combinations,
though there are limits to these. There may be a man whose animal
tastes are strongly defined and yet who has a keen mind. Such
a man "succeeds" in the worldly sense of the term.
He is a clever creature. On the other hand, the man who is both
a "brain" and spiritually inclined is apt to be a theological
type, a success in his chosen field. But a combination of the
animal and the spiritual is hard to conceive; the bridge between
the spiritual and the physical lies in the intellect, which can
be joined to either of the other two or can unite them all.
As with the individual, so with
a society, a culture, or a nation as a whole: when the "body,"
the "mind," and the "spirit" of a people
receive equal encouragement and cultivation, the society enjoys
a measure of health and well-being which is not only reflected
in a higher level of creative activity but in a reduction of
the evil effects of the Fall. By contrast when any one of these
three components dominates (or is seriously neglected) the effects
of sin in human nature become in some way aggravated. This is
particularly clear when a society becomes dedicated to the satisfying
of its animal instincts, the things of its "body."
It ends up by degenerating; it becomes barbaric. It is not quite
so obviously detrimental when a society turns "intellectual"
to the exclusion of all else, and we probably have little to
go on from a study of history. The Golden Age of the Greek philosophers
may be a case in part, and at times "intellectuals"
have possibly dominated life in India. There is little question
that such societies do not or cannot survive for long. The needs
of the body must be recognized, and these needs can only be ignored
by the few if they are in a position to demand that the many
take care of the matter for them. Intellectual elites survive
only while a lower class is willing to serve their need, and
history shows that human beings will not perform this kind of
service indefinitely.
Nor does a purely spiritual society do
very well, either. Not a few such experiments have been made,
retreats from the world, cloisterings in out-of-the-way places.
(The corruption which has soon set in has appalled even the acolytes
themselves after a while.) The greatest danger has been spiritual
pride, and spiritual pride is surely even more disastrous to
rnan's total health than intellectual pride is, for it has no
self-correctives.
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What
is true of the individual, history therefore has shown to be
true of whole cultures. And nations also have personalities.
Whether this is genetically determined or not is a matter of
debate. There are those who argue strongly against this concept
as food for racists. Nevertheless the existence of Modal Personality,
the idea that there is a recognizable English, French, or Chinese
stereotype, can be forcibly argued. I am convinced that God not
only foresaw the consequences of such potentially one-sided emphasis
as we may observe in individuals, but foresaw also that mankind
as a whole would always be tending in the same direction. This
was a foreseeable part of the consequences of the Fall, as the
world was peopled and history ran its course.
And I believe that God took special
steps to control this tendency while the human experiment was
being conducted. God's object was to prevent society from becoming
completely oriented toward one to the exclusion of the other
two, or even two things to the exclusion of the third. And my
belief is that He did this by allotting to each of the three
sons of Noah a specific "responsibility" for human
welfare, a responsibility which was to belong not merely to Shem,
Ham, and Japheth as individuals, but to their descendants, the
Semites, the Hamitic peoples, and the Japhethites. (33) To Ham was allotted responsibility
for man's physical well-being, the provision of a sufficient
margin of dominion over the physical world to set him free from
the constant need to fend against hunger, cold, heat, storm,
disease, and other challenges: this margin of safety to leave
him with some free energies. To Japheth was allotted the responsibility
for the full development and full exploration of man's mental
capacities, a kind of intellectual dominion. And to Shem was
allotted responsibility for man's spiritual development: out
of the family of Shem were to arise in a unique way men who would
be concerned with man's religious needs, and some of these men
founded false religions.
Out of the family of Ham have arisen,
as can be shown from a wealth of evidence, the producers of the
world's technology, a technology catering to and guaranteeing
man's mastery of the physical world. From the descendants of
Japheth, equated without
38. This subject has been explored in two other Doorway
Papers which contribute to the present volume, the three being complementary:
namely, Part I, "The Part
Played by Shem, Ham and Japheth in Subsequent World History," and
Part IV, "The Technology of
Hamitic People," the lattcr being a study of some 200 inventions
and techniques and processes which are basic to the modern world and which
were originated by Hamitic people (in Noah's Three Sons, vol.1
of The Doorway Papers Series).
pg.4
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much controversy with
the Indo-European peoples, have arisen the individuals and groups
who have contributed uniquely to man's intellectual needs. And
certainly spiritual leadership has come from the Semites. Thus
the contribution of Ham has been a technological one, of Japheth
an intellectual one, and of Shem a spiritual one. When Japheth
applied his philosophical genius to the technology of Hamitic
peoples, a technology to which he had, up till the 14th or 15th
century, contributed virtually nothing, there arose that
new phenomenon of human creativeness, science. For science is,
after all, philosophy applied to technology. Similarly, when
the "Gentiles" entered into "the tents of Shem"
to assume for a time a dual responsibility in history, then in
a new way they applied their philosophical bent to the religious
truth which they inherited from Shem, and theology arose. For
theology is, after all, philosophy applied to spiritual truth.
Thus each contributed to the whole
of man's capacity and in so far as they have each done
so in a balanced way and whenever they have done so, tremendous
advances in culture and civilization have resulted. This was
true in the very beginning when the evidence shows that Shem,
Ham, and Japheth were still together, and it perhaps accounts
for the tremendous speed with which civilization developed in
the earliest period in the Middle East. It is possible that it
accounts for several other notable periods of advance in Europe
and in England, and even more dramatically in the New World.
But whenever any one of the three contributions fails, then society
is impoverished, the effects of sin become more and more manifest
and terrifying, the great strides forward in civilization begin
in some strange way to bog down just when least expected to �
often "unaccountably." And upon a number of occasions
in the past an almost total eclipse of the culture has ensued.
Revival is not always merely spiritual.
It may be intellectual, too. In some circumstances the physical
side of man's life has been so badly neglected that a frightful
poverty has resulted and the consequent desperately small margin
of survival (characteristic of some primitive cultures of recent
times which have recollections of much happier days) contributes
to the decay of the other capacities as well. Revival in intellectual
life and revival in spiritual life are both apt to be observed
anew when the burden of physical life has also been eased.
A society strong only in any two
areas can, however, be
pg.5
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unexpectedly weak when
attacked by a society which is strong in the third area. For
example, technical superiority overwhelmed the Central American
civilizations, who could not save their religiously oriented
culture when attacked by tle more materially minded Spaniards.
But sometimes it seems as though a people with mental vigour
can bring to nought the attacks of otherwise overwhelming physical
superiority.
The principle here is recognized
in the New Testament, for it is not recommended that man be offered
the Gospel so long as he can barely keep body and soul together.
The Lord fed men first. But the temptation for man now to fulfill
the easier part of this twofold responsibility is great indeed,
and social service ministering to the body all too easily overshadows
the spiritual ministry. And I think, if a search is made, evidence
will appear in the Gospels that the Lord was most careful to
meet man on the level of his mind as well. He was always willing
to reason with man, and Peter encourages us to have "reasons"
for our faith. Paul speaks of the importance of the renewing
of the mind (Romans 12:1) and assures us that soundness of mind
is part of Christian experience (2 Timothy 1:4). The Epistle
to the Romans is surely an example of the application of the
intellect to spiritual truth, and I think it is worthy of note
that it was Paul who was called upon to write it. For although
Paul was strictly of the family of Shem and might therefore be
supposed to have pre-eminently spiritual rather than intellectual
insight, he was separated from his own people and made an apostle
to the Gentiles, adopting a Japhetic language in which to cast
the Christian theology he was guided to formulate.
Nations have personalities, by which
I mean that for reasons which are to some extent identifiable,
groups of people viewed as societies, nations, and even as racial
stocks, develop certain characteristic temperaments and ways
of viewing things, because of a shared history, a shared cultural
background, and most important of all, a shared language.
That nations do have personalities
will be admitted readily enough when it is made clear that by
this we do not mean to imply any superiority: only that specific
groups of people have contributed uniquely to the total cultural
wealth of the world, each in an identifiable way, and that this
contribution has been a kind of natural result of what seems
to be a peculiar bent of the people as a whole. Differences of
contribution cannot be converted into superiorities of contribution.
In so far as national
pg.6
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character leans in one
direction or the other, it may be superior or otherwise in some
particular circumstance. For example, stubbornness is probably
useful in a pioneering people who must battle against overwhelming
odds, and a nation with a tendency towards stubbornness may be
specially suited to a pioneering role. Again, a highly inventive
and practical people may be best for one situation, whereas a
philosophically minded people may be better for another. Sometimes
patience is a weakness, sometimes a strength. Much depends upon
the demands of the environment which thus tends to favour some
and disfavour others, and so, acting as a kind of cultural selective
pressure, it tends to bring about a social milieu in which children
grow up to be adults with particular bents in one nation and
different bents in another.
Thus arise not superiorities so
much as differences in modal personality. It enables one to speak
of the typical American, Canadian, Frenchman, Indian, or Chinese.
Such "stereotypes" do exist, though identifying them
with sufficient precision to be able to write a specification
is often very difficult. It is equally difficult to write down
a precise description of facial type, the face of a Chinese as
opposed to that of a Scotsman, for example. All descriptive terms
that have been thought up have proved quite inadequate, since
one can find Welshmen who fit the description of the Chinese,
and even Ainu who perfectly fit the Scotsman's description. Those
who have studied this question of racial type, physiologically
viewed, know the truth of this only too well. And yet for all
this, one can tell a Chinese from a Scotsman at a glance. Personality
types, i.e., modal personality types, are even harder to state
precisely, yet there is no doubt that people who share a language
and a culture and an environment and a history do develop to
a large extent the same attitudes, mannerisms, and ways of speaking.
One very important factor in this
process is language, and language has been held to be one of
the most specific barriers to the breakdown of national character
that exists. (34)
The cultural dialogue in Canada between the English and the French
segments of the population is an excellent illustration, for
there is
34. Kroeber, A. L., Anthropology, Harcourt
Brace, New York, 1948, p.221. In their book Introducing Social
Change, C. M. Arensberg and A. H. Niehoff (Alpine, Chicago,
1966, p.30) remark in this connection, "A language is inextricably
linked to all aspects of a Culture. Nothing more clearly distinguishes
one culture from another than its language."
pg.7
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a real difference between
the sentiments and attitudes toward .any aspects of daily life
between the English and the French, who nevertheless share the
same environment. So important is language that the French people
in Canada who have felt their language threatened, have felt
their very selves to be threatened. Language forms a vehicle
of thought, and it is questionable whether thought is possible
without language. And since thought is the mainspring of action
except where emotion over-rules it, language becomes a fundamental
factor in action. As a people speak, so they think; as they think,
so they act: in this order. We learn to speak before we
learn to think about things in any depth; not, be it noted, before
we feel about things but before we reflect upon them. Helen Keller,
who certainly could claim to have a profound knowledge, held
that a wordless thought was impossible. (35)
Thus if we assume that God allotted
to each of the three families of Noah a growing diversity of
speech, diversity which was at first scarcely observable but
continually widened the gap between the three families, it would
be a simple matter for Him providentially to bring into being
three families of man, each of whom had a World View that increasingly
directed their energies differently. This, I suggest, is exactly
what happened. Although we suppose that all the languages of
man were at one time rooted in a single stock, it was a stock
thlat was capable of developing into three distinct "families"
now clearly recognized as such in two of its branches, the Semitic
and the Indo-European. That there is some justification for grouping
all other languages than these into a one-time single family
is explored in another Doorway Paper. (36) To my mind, the evidence is quite substantial and
of such a nature as to suggest that within the Hamitic family
there existed something which has not been found in the Semitic
or Japhetic families, namely, a strong tendency towards
35. The editor of her biography, John A. Macy,
wrote: "The ordinary man will never be rid of the fallacy
that words obey tbought, that one thinks first and phrases afterwards"
(The Stoy of My Life, Grosset &: Dunlap. New York,
1904, p.419). The crucial importance of language to man is explored
in "Who Taught Adam to Speak?" (Part Vl in Genesis
and Early Man, vol.6 of The Doorway Papers Series).
Tbe subject is a fascinating one and remarkably few people are
aware of what has been said on the subject of the origin of this
unique human faculty during recent times.
36. The possibility that all languages known to man have been derived
from a single basic language is examined in some detail in "The Confusion
of Languages" (Part
V in Time and Eternity, vol.6 of The Doorvay Papers Series).
pg.8
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fragmentation. The Semitic
family is still, after all these years, easily identifiable as
such. The same is true of the Japhetic or Indo-European family
of languages.
The only thing that can be said
with certainty about the Hamitic family of languages is that
they share a clear difference in structure and in "World-View"
from either the Semitic or Indo-European families. Whether one
would accept them as a single family, Hamitic in origin, depends
on whether one believes that the
Table of Nations in Genesis 10 is describing the origin of the
whole population of the world as I do, or that it sets
forth merely some segments known to the writer in his own day
to be actually related or at least near neighbours. Personally,
I am quite convinced that the object of Genesis 10 is to contribute
towards a philosophy of history which is implicit in the rest
of Scripture by showing how the human race was finally divided
up. And while the evidence for my belief in this respect has
been set forth at considerable length in another
Doorway Paper (documented from over 200 sources), it still will
not convince those who take a much more limited view of the Table
of Nations. (37)
So then, for the sake of discussion
and not without reason, we can assume that there are three families
of man and that they are still definable. And having made this
assumption, the contribution that each family has made to the
sum total of human civilization and culture is also identifiable.
The order in which they spread out from the central Cradle
of Civilized Man in the Middle East, and the way in which
they went out, are both
matters of some importance in the light of subsequent history.
(38) The biblical
record takes cognizance of, and may indeed account in a way for
both.
The evidence that from the family
of Japheth have arisen the great philosophical systems so characteristic
of Western Cultures is overwhelming, whether we study the history
of India,
37. An extended analysis of the tenth chapter
of Genesis has been undertaken in Part II, "A Study of the
Names in Genesis 10," in which an attempt has been made
to show that this really is a comprehensive Table of Nations
covering the population of the whole world and not merely the
nations surrounding Israel with whom they were personally acquainted.
38. "Fossil Man and the Genesis Record" ( Part
I in Genesis and Early Man, vol.2 of The Doorway Papers
Series) is a study of the distribution of these remains and the light
they throw upon the spread of Noah's family throughout the whole world
after the Flood. In this study, evidence is presented to show that the
world's first settlements were always established by members of the family
of Ham, and not by either Shemites or Japhethites.
pg.9
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the Greek or Roman world,
or the rest of Europe in later tirmes. Here we find the roots
of philosophy. We do not find these roots in Africa or China
or the New World. This aspect of the subject has been explored
in depth by many historians and a large part of the evidence
has been accumulated in a Magnum Opus by the author which he
hopes one day to publish.
The religious contribution of the
family of Shem is not diflicult to document. The false religions
of the world, taking the word "religion" to mean rnan's
attempt to relate himself to the supernatural and to make preparation
for the hereafter, have all originated from a Middle East prototype
that was entirely Babylonian (i.e., Semitic) in origin. Judaism
and Islam likewise sprang out of Shem � as did Christianity.
Everywhere else religion has been very largely of a highly practical
nature with very practical intentions: the bringing of rain,
the defeat of one's enemies, the obtaining of personal success,
and so forth. Religion in the sense of aspiration after holiness
or the presence of the gods is not the objective of native religions.
Native religious practices are much more earthy in the nature
of a contract between near-equals. This subject, too, is explored
in greater depth in one of the Doorway Papers (39) and much more extensively in the Magnum Opus referred
to previously. It is sometimes difficult to distinguish between
"practical wisdom" that is characteristic of Confucianism
and rnuch of the so-called religious literature of the ancient
South American cultures, which is more "canny" than
spiritual. Certainly Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are Semitic
in origin. And anyone who will study, even if with some measure
of skepticism, the text of Hislop's The Two Babylons,
(40) will realize
that paganism is similarly Sermitic in origin, being a corruption
of the truth that was once the preserve of the family of Shem.
The contribution of the family
of Ham, always bearinng in rnind that I am using the term in
its biblical sense, is tremendous. It is essentially technological.
It is safe to say, I think, that until about 450 years ago neither
Semites nor Indo-Europeans had contributed a single basic invention
or material or process or food or product of any kind to the
world's civilization. Of a veritable host of writers who have
in recent years been studying
39. On the native concept of "contract" between
God and man, see "Nature as Part of the Kingdom of God" (Part
II in Man in Adam and in Christ, vol.3 of The Doorway Papers
Series).
40. Hislop, Alexander, The Two Babylons, Loizeaux Brothers,
New York, 1953, 330 pp., illustrations.
pg.10
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the origins of our technology
in some detail, not one that I know of has been able to credit
to us anything of importance with the sole possible exception
of the invention of the windmill. The statement sounds so unbelievable
to anyone who has not had the opportunity of reviewing the evidence
for himself that one is tempted to try and support it on the
spot. The reader will find a very substantial collection, fully
documented, of brief histories of some 200 or more basic inventions
attributable to the Hamitic people, from whom we borrowed them
without acknowledging the debt, in another Doorway Paper. (41)
It appears that God had a clear
objective in view in thus dealing with the family of Noah. In
order to open up the world for human habitation, God appears
to have thrust out from the Centre the members of one family,
the Hamites, who were peculiarly fitted as pioneers by reason
of their highly practical nature. Wherever they went, they seem
to have had a remarkable skill in at once recognizing and seizing
upon the immediate raw materials of their environment which would
best serve for food, clothing, weapons, and shelter essential
for survival. (42)
There are some extraordinary examples of native ingenuity under
circumstances in which it might be thought human survival would
be
41. "The Technology of Hamitic People", Part
IV in Noah's Three Sons, vol.1 of The Doorway Papers Series.
42. In his latest work, The Savage Mind (Weidenfeld and
Nicolson, London, 1966, p.3), Claude Levi-Strauss, the French
social anthropologist, has a series of quotations from various
sources which give some indication of why these Hamitic people
succeeded in doing so much more with their environment than the
far less practically minded Japhetic people. Speaking of the
Hawaiians, he writes, "These native Hawaiians' utilization
of their available natural assets was well-nigh complete -- infinitely
more so than that of the present commercial era which ruthlessly
exploits the few things that are financially profitable for the
time being, neglecting and often obliterating the rest."
Speaking of the natives of Cape York Peninsula in North Australia,
he wrote: "The natives are acutely aware of the characteristic
trees, underscrub, and grasses of each distinct 'association
area,' using this term in its ecological sense. They are able
to list in detail and without hesitation, the charasteristic
tree in each, and able to record the string, resin, grasses,
and other products used in material culture, which they obtain
from each association, as well as the mammals and birds characteristic
of each habitat" (p. 45). He conchdes (p.45) by saying that
this intense and detailed knowledge of the available resources
of the habitat is common to native people the world over.
A truly extraordinary illustration of this
thoroughness in exploiting the environment is to be found in an article
on the Indians of the Sonoran Desert by Macy H. Lapham, entitled, "The
Desert Storehouse," Scientific Monthly, June, 1948, pp.451f.
A summary of his paper will be found in Part
IV of this volume, "The Technology of Hamitic People."
pg.11
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impossible, particularly
in desert and Arctic conditions. The price paid for this pioneering
effort at first was some measure of physical and cultural degeneration.
Nevertheless wherever the Hamites went, they ultirnately effected
permanent settlements and more or less established their dominion
over the earth. Centuries later Japhethites followed them at
a more leisurely pace, taking with them cultural refinements
which ultimately led to the emergence of far higher civilizations.
These refinements were not of the ingenious kind but related
to those aspects of culture which could never have flourished
had the way to survival not already opened up for them by the
Hamites who preceded them. Man's physical and mental life were
now secure.
It appears that the world in pre-Flood
times shared a measure of spiritual truth which was presumably
revealed at the very beginning but had increasingly become corrupted
due to man's sinful disposition and his tendency to worship what
he himself creates. At the time of the Flood, it may have been
true that Noah was the only man left with any measure of purity
of faith and spiritual understanding. One gathers from Genesis
9 that Shem shared more of his father's spiritual insight and
love of God than either Japheth or Ham, and Shem's godly disposition
seems to be the source from which arose the subsequent stream
of spiritual insight that remained after the Flood. However,
by the time of Abraham this stream had narrowed down almost to
one man, and God called Abraham out and took him under His wing
in a special way. He prospered him until his family was enlarged
and the reservoir of his own spiritual understanding increased.
In due course this family grew to be a nation, and this nation
was welded into a self-conscious people by the bitterness of
their experience in Egypt and the wonders of their redemption
out of it. This people was then brought into a land capable of
giving them physical security, once it was subdued And there,
by a succession of revelations brought to them through a line
of prophets specially commissioned, the light which had almost
died out was formalized, written down, and guaranteed for posterity
in the Old Testament. (43)
43. A remarkable little book entitled The
Philosophy of the Plan of Salvation was published by James
B. Walker in 1885 (Walden 8c Stowe, New York, 276 pp). The author
shows the rationale of God's dealings with Israel from the call
of Abraham to the coming of the Messiah. He underscores the fact
that God's dealings with Israel were guaranteed to bring about
the formation of a nation which was to stand in a pagan world
as a testimony to the (continued)
pg.12
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If we briefly summarize the historical process, it
is clear that God then took steps to complete the revelation
of Himself to mankind through His people by sending His own Son
to be their King, in order that He might set them at the head
of the nations as the spiritual leaders of the world, had they
been willing.
We cannot tell what might have
happened if they had risen to the call and accepted their Messiah.
Perhaps the millennium would have followed, a period of cultural
achievement, the nadir of civilization that would have revealed
the full potential of human nature in the cooperative effort
of Shem, Ham, and Japheth together. But, as Noah predicted, descendants
of Shem defaulted and Japheth took over part of the responsibility
which was initially allocated to them. (44) The result has been a period referred properly to
as "the times of the Gentiles," since, as it happens,
in Genesis 10 the children of Japheth are actually identified
as "the Gentiles." But this period, as I read Scripture,
is a special period, a kind of parenthesis which will be concluded
when the Messiah returns again to assume His rightful position
over the family of Shem, and Shem recovers his originally appointed
position within the family of nations.
I believe Scripture is full of
this threefold division. As we have explored elsewhere, (45) Abraham had three wives,
a Semite, a Hamite, and a Japhethite; there are three Gospels
written specifically, one each for Shem, Ham, and Japheth respectively,
that is, Matthew, Mark and Luke; three "groups" came
seeking Jesus in a special way, first the shepherds (Shemites),
the Wise Men (Hamites), and finally "certain Greeks"
(Japhethites); in the Crucifixion Shem, Ham, and Japheth joined
hands, Shem as the instigator, Ham in the transport of the Cross
(Mark 15:21), and
(continued) Oneness of God amidst the polytheism
of the Old World. The book is certainly worth acquiring, though
difficult to obtain now.
44. Genesis 9:26�27: And Noah said, "Blessed be the
Lord God of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant. God shall
enharge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem; and
Canaan shall be his servant." It appears that the phrase
"he shall dwell in the tents of Shem" quite possibly
means he shall assume for a season the rightful position of Shem,
this phrase being rather analogous to our "sitting in the
seat of." It is noteworthy that in the Authorized Version
the children of Japheth as listed in Genesis 10 are identified
as"the Gentiles," which at once brings to mind the
New 'I'estament circumstance in which Jerusalem was to be "trodden
down by the Gentiles" until their time was fulfilled (Luke
21:24).
45. This threefold division of the family of man as recognized throughout
Scripture is elaborated upon in "The Part Played By Shem, Ham and
Japheth in Subsequent World History" , Part
I in Noah's Three Sons, vol.1 in The Doorway Papaers Series.
pg.13
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Japheth in the execution.
Even in Acts the Gospel wvas preached first to Shem, then by
a strange circumstance to one who belonged to the family of Ham
(the Ethiopian eunuch), and finally to the family of Japheth.
All this is surely more than coincidence, and there are other
such triads.
As we have already seen, the Fall
of man enters the overall picture as an essential part of God's
plan to reveal His true character by a redemptive act. While
this process of education, this demonstration to mankind of His
love was being worked out through history, it was essential that
the effects of the Fall be held in check. Without the restraint
of civilization and culture, the wickedness of man would have
known no limit and the world would become a scene of barbarism
totally destructive of anything in human nature that might have
provided a context for the grace of God. Imagine for one moment
what would have been the consequence at the time of our Lord's
appearing if the whole world was a morass of unrelieved wickedness
and cruelty, without order, without law, without restraint upon
human nature � every man a monster of iniquity. It is not
an impossible situation to conceive. The Incarnation would manifestly
have been ineffective; there would have been no context for the
Cross, nor even words capable of explaining what God meant by
it in terms of His love.
Thus for the conducting of the
divine plan, it was essential that in some way man should be
civilized; and the means whereby God ensured this would happen
seems to me to have been set forth in Scripture implicitly by
reference to the circumstances of the emergence of three families
equipped for and appointed to three specific kinds of contribution.
In the narrower sense of the term this, as I see it, is the framework
of history, and while it is true that racial and cultural rnixture
have both taken place on a global scale it is still possible
to sort out these threads and see the hand of God. It is not
true to say that all the descendants of Shem have been wholly
absorbed with a religious World View. And certainly the Japhethites
have not all been philosophers. Yet it is true that from Shem
sprang the great monotheistic faiths and from Japheth the great
philosophical systems. As for those who form the third branch
of the family of man, there is no longer any question that from
them has arisen the world's basic technology. Thus the total
potentiality of Man was not entrusted to one family.
Now what I mean by total potential
is simply what man is
pg.14
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capable of. He is capable
of building a Gothic cathedral, of smashing an atom, of writing
a Handel's Messiah, of putting a space vehicle gently
down on the far side of the moon, of painting a Creation of
Adam, of carving a Thinker, of formulating an equation
like E=Mc2,
of building a Parthenon or a Pyramid, of making a Flemish tapestry
or a Ming vase or a bust of Nephertiti, of writing an "Elegy
in a Churchyard" or Les Miserables . . . and alas,
of planning a Belsen or a Dachau. What if all of this potential
creativeness were to find expression for good? Perhaps if Israel
had accepted their Messiah and preserved for the world the spiritual
balance which Shem was intended to contribute in a full and perfect
way, the world of the Roman Empire days would have formed the
basis of a World Empire, under the Lord as King, in terms of
prosperity undreamed of. And perhaps when the Lord returns this
will be part of the meaning of the term " Millennium. "
But Man is not the creature he
should have been, and every great gift he has can be, and usually
is, corrupted and turned to evil use. So it is well that these
potentials should have been divided. Imagine a race, all the
members of which possessed the brains of an Aristotle, the inventive
genius of an Edison and a da Vinci, and the great religious zeal
of a Loyola to give the "spiritual" drive to all the
other forms of energy. And then imagine this dedicated to serve
the selfish and hence the strongest instincts in Man. What would
one have? What could man achieve? What would man achieve
under the wrong leadership? And who would their leader prove
to be? The Anti-Christ, perhaps?
pg.15
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Copyright © 1988 Evelyn White. All rights
reserved
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