There are some kingdoms of this world that seem to be more blessed by God than others. How can that be? Is God unjust? I think we find the answer when we address a basic misunderstanding in our view of history. Because we all grew up learning that the different peoples developed independently from one another, created their own culture and religion and that now, for the first time ever, missionaries would tell the people of a foreign God, whom they never heard of before. But that is not the story of mankind. Truth is that all peoples trace back to Noah’s three sons and their wives. After the flood, Noah lived another 350 years, and we can be sure he told the people around him everything he had experienced and everything he knew about God. Abraham was 58 years old when Noah died, so there is a good chance that these two actually met! While Abraham’s family had preserved the heritage and feared the one true God, others moved away further and further – both geographically and spiritually. Eventually, only bits and pieces of the true story remained and new ‘gods’ were created. Wherever truth got lost, forgotten or outright rejected, the glory and the blessing of God departed; and with every new god invented or called upon, the kingdom of darkness expanded. In some places, you can feel a much stronger presence of evil than in others, or, to say it positively, you can feel the presence of God in some places more than in others. But God lets it rain on the just and the unjust.
[1] Noah’s
son Shem lived another 152 years; by then, Abraham had already died, his son
Isaac was 110 years old and Jacob 50! See Appendix 4 in my book "Christianity, Politics and the Sovereignty of God" (This article is an exert from Chapter 5.1 "Kingdom Geography").