From the whole revelation of God’s divine Word, we can see that in eternity past God planned to express Himself. This is God’s eternal purpose: to express Himself in a practical and real way through a corporate entity composed of many human beings. This is God’s eternal purpose. In order to accomplish this purpose, God created the heavens and the earth.
Satan, God’s enemy, intervened and damaged God’s creation, especially the earth. So the earth was judged with water by God (Gen. 1:2). The whole earth was under the judging water, which was a kind of death covering the land. Then God came in and raised up the land that had been covered by the death water, raising it out of the death water on the third day. A good number of Bible teachers agree that this is a picture of the resurrected Christ. The land that was raised out of the water on the third day was a type of the resurrected Christ from whom all life has come into being. Out of this land God made man in His own image to express and represent Him. In Adam at that time we could see the land because Adam was made with the dust of the ground. We could also see Christ because Adam was made in the image of Christ. Genesis 1:26 says that man was made in the image of God, and Colossians 1:15 says that Christ is the image of the invisible God. Therefore, man was made in the image of Christ and bore the image of Christ. If you could have seen Adam, you would have seen the image of Christ. So with Adam, a man, there were the dust of the land and the image of Christ. Hence, in Adam we see three things: the land, Christ, and man. These three things are combined to be God’s expression and God’s kingdom. That was a miniature of what God intended to obtain.
Satan, knowing God’s central thought, came in to damage man. When the Lord Jesus became flesh (John 1:14), He came to become dust. When He came to join with man, it meant that He came to join with the earth. After Adam had been damaged, man eventually became flesh (Gen. 6:3), and God came in to judge that flesh. When God judged the flesh, He also judged the earth, for the flesh, that is, mankind, cannot be separated from the earth (Gen. 6:12-13). In God’s sight and according to God’s concept, man is always related to the earth. When man is judged, the earth is judged, and when the earth is judged, man is judged. God always treats these two things together. By the flood, God judged the flesh and the earth.
After the flood, the ark landed on Mt. Ararat on exactly the same day of the month as the Lord Jesus was resurrected from the dead—the seventeenth day. The Lord was crucified on the fourteenth day of the month, the day of the Passover, and three days later He was resurrected. The ark was resurrected from the death water on the seventeenth day of the month. According to the record of Genesis, this was on the seventh month of the year, which was changed at the time of the Passover to be the first month of the year, according to the Jewish sacred calendar. In other words, the Lord Jesus was resurrected on the same day and in the same month as the ark was resurrected from the death water.
When Noah and the seven others came out of the ark, they lived on the new earth. The resurrected people lived on the new earth, and, once again, that new earth typified the resurrected Christ. That Noah and the other seven resurrected people lived on the new earth signified that they lived in Christ. Now we all are living in Christ today.
This pleasant situation did not last very long, for Satan came in to corrupt and pollute mankind again. As Genesis 10 reveals, Satan utilized Nimrod’s father, Cush, to build Babel. Satan’s corrupting and polluting of Cush and Nimrod meant that Satan had once again corrupted mankind. In the eyes of God, that polluted mankind became one with the land of Chaldea. In the eyes of God, mankind is always related to the land. If you read the history of Israel according to the record of the Bible, you will see that God always put Israel and the land together as one. Some verses refer to both the land and the people because God always reckons the two as one (Isa. 1:7-9, 27). If the people in the U.S.A. are corrupt, it means that the U.S.A. is corrupt. When the people on the land are polluted, it means that, in the eyes of God, the land also is polluted. We cannot separate the people from the land.
At the time of Babel, man became one with the land of Chaldea. God came in and called Abraham out of that corrupted Chaldea, meaning that He called him out of the corrupted mankind. God brought Abraham out of that land into an elevated land, the good land of Canaan. The land of Canaan is an elevated land. According to geography, the land of Canaan is surrounded by water, by the Mediterranean Sea, the Dead Sea, and the Jordan River. This signifies that it is a land that comes out of the death water and is elevated above it. This is the land that signifies Christ with God’s proper people. In God’s eyes, He always considers the good land, Christ, and His proper people as one.