The 400 Silent Years…

In the broad scope of the biblical perspective of the history of humankind, we fully realize God's intended kingdom on earth through Adam and his progeny was overthrown in the Garden of Eden by Satan's wiles. The Devil usurped the scepter of rule form Adam and became the master of the world system, wresting it from Divine oversight to demonic dominance.

Nonetheless, in God's eternal plan he provided the way and the means for the continuance of the people of God amidst the broken and shattered and anti-God governance all around them. These two diametrically opposed systems are often referred to as the Kingdom of God versus the Kingdom of Man (understanding that the Kingdom of Man is under the sway of Sin and Satan).

From Adam forward, the people of God were represented by extraordinary and faithful patriarchs who passed along as best they could the truths of God to their families.

When the Devil's devices became nearly universal in their deception and disruption of God's truth, God called Abram to become the progenitor of not merely a family but a nation. The covenant God gave Abraham and the subsequent nation of Israel continued and enhanced a suppressing biblical counter-culture to the Kingdom of Man.

So the Kingdom of God was first manifested through promises, traditions and special revelation sustained by individuals and families, and then through prescriptive laws and principles and prophets through the covenanted privileges of Israel.

During this time God had clearly revealed and exhibited to humankind His framework for a godly society and lifestyle. The biblical framework for life given in the Old Testament is evident and abundant.

But at the close of the Old Testament, the nation of Israel collapsed in rebellion and unbelief, first ignoring and then rejecting the foundational truths God had revealed to them; and through them to the world.

Consequently, between the Book of Malachi, the last Scripture of the Old Testament – and the Book of Matthew – the first in the New Testament – there is a period of 400 silent years.

This period of "silence" is in the sense that God gave no public manifestations of His power or presence, and in the sense that He withheld any further revelation in written form.

The great question is, Why?

The answer seems to be that humankind – having rejected in disbelief the absolutes and the principles God gave in the Old Testament – were ten left to grope and flounder after "the meaning of life" utilizing only their own human resources.

This period after the close of the Old Testament and before the birth of Jesus Christ reflects the profoundest search for the ultimate meaning of "truth" and "life" the unaided, autonomous human intellect has ever made.

Suddenly, seven world religious appeared within fifty years of each other: in the Middle East, Zoroastrianism; in India, Jainism, Buddhism and Hindu reforms; in China, Taoism and Confucianism; within Israel, the development of Judaism.

Furthermore, this era became the "Golden Age" in Greece and the great western philosophers; Pericles, Zeno, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, et al.

All these religions and philosophies had one thing in common – they emphasized Man as Savior. Some were pessimistic and irrational, stressing the illusory character of the human ego and the limitations of human thought; one is saved by losing individual desire altogether. Others were optimistic and rational, stressing ethics and doing good; one is saved by good works.

For philosophy, reasoning after "truth" became the paramount pursuit, while pursuing holiness was ignored or forgotten altogether. It was no longer a matter of faith in divine revelation, but rather merely a quest for new lines of intellectual inquiry.

Greek philosophy taught humankind there was no faith, no hope, no certainty because nothing is quite true – the only wise course is to doubt everything. The scholar replaced the prophet, and reason took the place of revelation. It was a time of disillusionment and pessimism.

Both religion and philosophy were models of an exalted humanism. Deny self and desire and become one with nothing, or embrace everything and live without restraint; suicide or annihilism on the one hand; debauchery and orgy on the other.

Apart from his sovereign providence, God withdrew Himself in the years between the Testaments immediately preceding the birth of Jesus Christ. He was "silent" as He allowed humankind to wrestle mightily with its own resources to unravel the ultimate meaning of life. But such meaning as He had already so powerfully revealed in the Old Testament, cannot be found until man has first come personally face to face with his God.

But when one abandons God, one abandons hope and hopelessness becomes an inescapable fact of life. The "Golden Age" of human achievement was permitted to run its course in order that God might show in the most dramatic terms the inability of humankind to discover the meaning of life without the aid of Divine revelation.

"Both Zeno and Cleanthes (his successor in the School of Stoics) committed suicide. Tacitus, Suetonius, Pliny, Seneca, and many other writers of the times underscored the frequency of suicide under the empire. In Trajan's time, suicide had become almost a national pastime; the number of Latin phrases to describe it accordingly multiplied to an extraordinary degree! The more violent solution was essentially Roman, but even in Greece it had led to such a total resignation to the 'bludgeonings of chance' that men in the end either sought to escape the hurts and cruelties of fate and the boredom of life by allowing themselves no feelings whatsoever (which is Stoicism), or by abandoning all restraint and adopting a policy of eating and drinking and being merry and living only for the leisure of the moment (which is Epicureanism).

"Meanwhile in India, by a different route, the same basic problem led to a rather similar kind of pessimistic solution – the goal being individual extinction, not by suicide, but by the destruction of all personal desire, the achievement of Nirvana. This was the annihilation of individual identity (which is Nihilism).

"Such then was the fruit of philosophy uncorrected and unenlightened on its development by revelation. The search for the meaning of life was a dismal failure and resulted in almost universal pessimism. The answer was suicide or abandonment of all self-restraint or the negation of all human responsiveness. It was realy the annihilation of man as an, while God was both unknown and unknowable." –Arthur Custance.

This was what the Apostle Paul wrote in I Corinthians 1:20-21…

"Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe."

When God had allowed the world to become completely ready – "in the fullness of time" (Gal. 4:4) – God broke His silence with the revelation of Him Who alone was "the way, the truth and the life." Then and only then was hope restored to a world which seemed to have accepted hopelessness as an inescapable fact of life.

"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light." –Matthew 11:30