Review

Introduction

The Industrial Revolution Defined

We are children of the Industrial Revolution.

The Industrial Revolution was a “process of change” that shifted our economy from one based on agriculture and handicrafts to one based on industry and machine manufacturing. (encyclopedia Britannia).

Life Before Modern Technology

When you farm and make things with your hands, life moves at the pace of nature.

Life Under a Cursed Earth

Genesis 3:17 (ESV): ¹⁷ And to Adam he said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life

Genesis 3:18–19 (ESV): 18  thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field.

(Genesis 3:19 (ESV): ¹⁹ By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”)

The curse extends beyond the ground to everything that emerges from it.

Romans 8:19–22 (NLT): ¹⁹ For all creation is waiting eagerly for that future day when God will reveal who his children really are. ²⁰ Against its will, all creation was subjected to God’s curse. But with eager hope, ²¹ the creation looks forward to the day when it will join God’s children in glorious freedom from death and decay. ²² For we know that all creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.

Romans 8:23 (NLT): ²³ And we believers also groan, even though we have the Holy Spirit within us as a foretaste of future glory, for we long for our bodies to be released from sin and suffering. We, too, wait with eager hope for the day when God will give us our full rights as his adopted children, including the new bodies he has promised us.)

Poor Stewards of Long Life

Genesis 6:3 (ESV): 3 Then the Lord said, “My Spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh: his days shall be 120 years.”

Genesis 6:5 (ESV): 5 The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

Romans 12:21 (ESV): 21 Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

Jude 14–15 (ESV): ¹⁴ It was also about these that Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied, saying, “Behold, the Lord comes with ten thousands of his holy ones, ¹⁵ to execute judgment on all and to convict all the ungodly of all their deeds of ungodliness that they have committed in such an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things that ungodly sinners have spoken against him.”

Genesis 5:24 (ESV): 24 Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him.

How the Flood Changed the Physical Environment

The purpose of the flood was to change the physical environment so that humans could no longer live for hundreds of years.

• Genesis 1:6–7 (ESV): ⁶ And God said, “Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.” ⁷ And God made the expanse and separated the waters that were under the expanse from the waters that were above the expanse. And it was so.

• Genesis 2:8 (ESV): ⁸ And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed.)

• Genesis 1:8 (ESV): ⁸ And God called the expanse Heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day.

• Genesis 1:1 (ESV): ¹In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

• Genesis 2:5–6 (ESV): ⁵ When no bush of the field was yet in the land and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up—for the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the land, and there was no man to work the ground, ⁶ and a mist was going up from the land and was watering the whole face of the ground—

• Genesis 7:11 (ESV): ¹¹ In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of the heavens were opened.

Humanity Taking Matters in Its Own Hands

Romans 8:23 (NLT): ²³ And we believers also groan, even though we have the Holy Spirit within us as a foretaste of future glory, for we long for our bodies to be released from sin and suffering. We, too, wait with eager hope for the day when God will give us our full rights as his adopted children, including the new bodies he has promised us.)

• The Industrial Revolution was a “process of change” that shifted our economy from one based on agriculture and handicrafts to one based on industry and machine manufacturing. (encyclopedia Britannia).
  • • 2 Peter 3:5–7 (ESV): ⁵ For they deliberately overlook this fact, that the heavens existed long ago, and the earth was formed out of water and through water by the word of God, ⁶ and that by means of these the world that then existed was deluged with water and perished. ⁷ But by the same word the heavens and earth that now exist are stored up for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly.

The Holy Spirit is Our Way Out

Ephesians 1:13–14 (ESV): ¹³ In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, ¹⁴ who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.

2 Corinthians 1:21–22 (ESV): ²¹ And it is God who establishes us with you in Christ, and has anointed us, ²² and who has also put his seal on us and given us his Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee.

 

© Joshua D. Smith, Ph.D., 2024