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PATROLOGOS edutainment

After the unjust murder of Abel he lived on enough years his unfortunate father Adam and he saw even more sons and daughters. And he died our progenitor, after he reached a profound old age, that is, at the age of nine hundred and thirty years! 

Some impression must have made upon you and a great one, my reader, this big number of years. The sin, you see, back then had just started being introduced in the human race. It had not managed yet to corrupt and to weaken the human body. 

Like a worm which for the first time enters on a tree that is tough and enormous and will need many years in order to rot its trunk and destroy its beauty and its greenery. 

But with the passing of the years, the more the tree is getting impaired and they are getting weakened its roots and not only this tree falls down, but also all the new trees, that will come out from its roots and from its seeds, them also will be weakened. 

And for as long the disease of this worm will remain inside these trees, consequently also the new generations of the trees, that will be born from these sickened trees, will become all the more sick. 

The sin therefore was and still is a disease. A terrible disease, that not only targets the soul of the man, but strikes his body as well. 

And since death is a terrible consequence of the sin, you can easily by this understand, my brother, that it was capable the sin also to weaken our organism and to minimize the years of our miserable life. 

Commencing from Adam, as we descend downwards, we will find, that the first generations live many, many years, but later on as we descend, the more they lessen the people's years of life. 

It seems, that the earth back then had not yet transformed to become wild, as she got wild afterwards. 

And the air back then must have been cleaner than what it is today and it wouldn't have been so full from this multitude of the germs, that cause so many diseases and throw the man in bed since his early years. 

Apart however from these reasons there also was some other more important reason, for which God has decided for the first humans to live so many years. 

Books back then did not yet exist. The letters and the scripture were unknown. How therefore would the people learn their own history and how would they get taught, who created them, where and how he created them, for what purpose and for what destine he created them? 

How would they learn, that the sin expelled them from Paradise and that a day will come that the sin will be hit right on the head and its power will be abolished and its dominion upon the people? 

There was only one way, my brother. The living tradition. That is, with his own mouth the father to narrate these to his children and to his grandchildren and to his great-grandchildren. To tell them once, and then to tell them again, and then to repeat telling them again. 

And to tell them not only to one, nor to two generations, but to more, during many years, during entire centuries. Only this way the traditions would be kept, of which traditions the descendants of Adam would well learn about their religion and their destiny. 

For this reason therefore Adam lives nine hundred and thirty years. His son Seth also lives nine hundred and twenty years. And one of the third generation grandchildren of Seth, namely, Methuselah, how many years do you think he lives? Nine hundred and sixty nine years. That is, he reached the thousand years. 

Of this Methuselah Noah was the grandchild. The son of Methuselah was Lamech, and the son of Lamech was Noah, the pious and faithful and fair Noah, the name of whose is related, as you know, my reader, with a terrible event of that years, which cost the lives of all the people, who lived back then and which event is known by the name of «cataclysm». 

How and why it happened this cataclysm we are now going to expose, as it is narrated to us by the unequivocal mouth of God through His celestial Book, which is called Holy Scripture. 

Little by little, the world was growing and from the very first couple within a few thousand years thousands were born and millions of people. Thus it was fulfilled little by little also the blessing of God towards Adam and Eve: «be fruitful and multiply and fill up the earth». 

The man however was corrupt. And his sin therefore and his corruption turned this blessing form God to curse and anger. Because the more they were multiplying the people, the more it multiplied their wickedness as well; the more it flooded also the sin and the lack of respect and the promiscuity on the earth. 

Such is the sin. It seeks the opportunity even within the gifts and blessings of God to multiply and to expand and to lift up an even more shameless and insolent head. 

And like an infectious disease and contagious, when it falls upon a large population, it also causes a great destruction and damage, and the more populous the cities are, where this disease falls upon, the more and more numerous are its incidents as well, similarly it happens with the sin. 

God blessed the people and they multiplied and the sin encountered the opportunity to expand. And the more the people multiply, the more also the sin spreads and completely floods the world. 

One sinner easily lures behind him also the other. And the fall of both it then gets bigger. This is because one corrupts the other even more and one pulls the other even deeper in the pit of the sin. 

And as between two righteous people, one helps and supports the other, and thus more easily both of them they advance holding each other on the path of virtue and they progress and they become perfect in a safer and faster way, likewise it happens between two or more than two sinners. 

The help, which one gives to the other, contributes and aims into both of them advancing even further in the way of their wickedness and into them perfecting themselves and solidifying themselves no longer in virtue, but in the sin. 

And thus by the multiplication of the people, not only the sinners got multiplied, but they also got corrupted and they demoralized even more. 

The sin spread and flooded the earth, and this is apparent also from the behaviour, that they show the so called «sons of God», that is, the descendants of the pious and virtuous son of Adam, of Seth, who separated from the beginning from the cursed seed of Cain they confessed and worshiped the true God and they constituted a separated society, the society of God's people. 

These people avoided all kinds of relationships and relevance with the corrupted descendants of Cain, who were foreigners towards God and hated Him. 

Alas however! The sin entered little by little in this society as well of God's children, of the children and descendants of Seth, and begun to corrupt them. The evil therefore spread everywhere. To all the places and to all almost without exception the souls. 

And as the Holy Scripture says, «seeing the sons of God the daughters of men, that they were beautiful, they took wives for themselves of all, whom they chose». 

And thus they get mixed up the sheeps and the goats together, the healthy with the sick, the pure and the clean with the infected and the unclean, in order to spread everywhere the infection of the sin, in order to become infected the children of God as well from it, so that they are also pasted with the disease that the daughters have of the people, that is, the girls of the corrupt descendants of Cain. 

And while their fathers taught them to not even come close to that society the corrupted one of the descendants of Cain, they disobey and not only they approach, but they also get into family relations with that society and they get mixed up in a way that both of these societies would join into one from then on and would transmit to the best of them the complete idioms and defects of the worst. 

The children of God, the descendants of Seth, disobeying the advices of their fathers they decide to receive as spouses the daughters of the people, the descendants of Cain. A sinful decision. Something that had not happened till then, because it was bad, they decide to do it. 

And observe to see, that as the sin instigates them in the beginning to decide, similarly afterwards the sin leads them to choose. 

They choose spouses only «through the eye». They saw that the daughters of the people were good, that is, beautiful, and they were attracted by their beauty, without noticing at all, what they were hiding, those mermaids and those fairies inside their heart. 

And they judge and they decide and they act as carnal people, not as children of God, as people fearing God and seeking to be liked in the eyes of their Lord. They prefer what is more likable to their flesh and pleases their sinful desire. 

And thus the children of God entered too in a descent, the descent of the sin, in which descent the sin from one step to the other will all the more conquer them, until it transforms them into it's everlasting servants and into it's permanent slaves. 

And this result did not take long in coming. Because, what happened to Solomon, the wise king, when he messed up with impious and idolatrous women? Didn't he degenerate to the point that during the times of his old age his heart would not be perfect to the face of his God, as was the heart of David his father? 

And didn't they divert these foreign women his worshiping heart towards their own god», to the point that he would built even temples to Chemosh, the god of the Moabites, and to Astarte, the abomination of Sidon? 

As therefore he afterwards fell a wise and pious king famous and acclaimed to everyone, similarly they fell also the wretched descendants of Seth with the women descendants from Cain that they received. 

They lured them to their side and not much time passed that the sons of God, the pious people, the God-fearing people, were seduced from the way of virtue and they became similar to the descendants of Cain. 

And God sees them now and He does not recognize them as His own. He sees them and He does not like them. He sees them and He does not find almost no one who is good so that for his sake God would not loathe also the others. He sees them all and He hates them. 

«And God the Lord said, My Spirit shall not strive with these men forever, for indeed they are flesh; yet their days shall be one hundred and twenty years». 

Previously, before they were corrupted the descendants of Seth too, something existed on the earth for God to see it and show mercy to its inhabitants. Now however? There exist nothing. And God decides to withdraw His grace and His spirit from these people. 

The Holy Spirit can not, it is not fair for ever to be tolerant towards the transgresor and sinner. 

It is true, that even when the sinner casts away His salvatory grace, the Holy Spirit keeps urging him to repentance and to emendation making use of the conscience as well of the sinner as a means, through which the Spirit speaks to his heart. 

But when the sinner keeps insisting to wickedness and to embitter the Holy Spirit, Who persistenly seeks his salvation, what will happen after all? 

A time will come, as it also came for the «children of God», the descendants os Seth, when God will say also for him what He said for them: «My Spirit shall not strive with these men forever». 

But alas and three times alas to him, about whom God will say this dreadful and terrible speech. This man, it means, that he is definitely incorrigible. 

Since God despaired of him, it means that no hope, absolutely none exists for him. What is left for him and what awaits him? The destruction and the perdition. God's benevolence cannot do absolutely nothing for this man. 

And thus as a natural consequence God's justice will immediately have the word in order to wipe out as soon as possible the place from the dirt and the stench and the cunningness of this unrepentant sinner. 

And this also now is about to happen with these people, who live during the epoch of Noah, who got corrupted and they got perverted to the highest degree. 

God sees the people of that epoch and His wrath grows about them. And He decides to withdraw from them His grace and to abandon them «for indeed they are flesh». This is the reason and this is the cause, why God takes one such terrible decision for these people. 

I will abandon them, He says, because they are flesh. They are completely corrupt. There does not remain any spiritual thought inside of them. They are flesh entirely. They think carnally and lustly. 

And there does not exist no hope for them to be corrected, because no trace, nor spark of spirit does not remain in them. 

And as in vain someone would toil in order to whiten the black skin of the Ethiopian, likewise in vain someone would also toil, when trying to transmit spirit to someone who is completely submerged in the dirt of the flesh. 

«For indeed they are flesh». And it is proven therefore quite clearly, that the carnal inclination, which so easily penetrates in our soul, it is something that expels the Holy Spirit and makes war on it and forces it to flee. 

And when it finally enters inside our soul this carnal inclination and conquers and impregnates her, then the Holy Spirit is impeded to act upon her for salvation and to work on her the work of the sanctification and of the redemption. 

Flesh and Spirit are two enemies, who can never reconcile, but where one enters, the other is expelled and where the other dominates, the first runs away. 

God therefore decides to abandon them. And thus, the only outcome, that would wait for them, was the disaster and the perdition. 

Despite all these the benevolent and merciful God even during the last moment postpones. Although He finds them incorrigibles and deserving destruction, He gives some suspension to the execution of His decision, lest they should repent these wretched and avoid the bad damage, that the justice of God prepares for them. 

No, He doesn't immediately gives space to His wrath, but He says something, that shows the great and infinite mercy of His: «and their days shall be one hundred and twenty years». 

The justice of God shouts «I seeked the punishment of the incorrigible and the unrepentant of them». But His mercy and His compassion are looking for postponement. 

The justice says: Let us cut down this tree the fruitless one, which in vain we cultivate and which without any purpose holds this position. 

The forbearance and the mercy say: Let us wait therefore for a while longer. Let us postpone until the next year, lest until then this tree gives its fruits. 

And the forbearance and the mercy prevail. And God postpones for one hundred and twenty years to execute the decision of His justice. 

He just postpones. He does not forgive however, if the sinner does not repent. He postpones, but does not entirely abandon the work of His justice. He postpones, but He does not forget it. The time will come, that He will remember it and His justice will then operate without postponement and without mercy. 

The mercy, as you see, also has its limits and the compassion of God does never work by eliminating His justice. 

God awaits. He awaits for a long time. But he does not wait for ever. No matter how long and plenty it is this time, it still has its limits, in which limits it ends, and so it begins the terrible period of the fair retribution of God. 

But also the postponement, which He gives to these unrepentants God, does not bring no result. 

From this marriage the illegitimate one between the descendants of Seth and the daughters of Cain's generation a generation of people was born, who are distinguished for their high altitude and for their huge strength. It was the generation of the giants. 

However they were also children of parents who had been connected to each other through the sin, and for this it was inevitable but to bring inside their entrails fermented the evil seed of cunningness and lawlessness. And when someone has evil intentions and inclinations, then the stronger he is, the more he sins. 

With the appearance therefore of the giants, of these renowned and famous people, not only didn't improve the things, but they also got worse. 

The savageries would become more horrible, the injustices more violent and the supressions more rough and unjust. And in order to use the phrase of the Holy Scripture, «they grew the wickednesses of men on the earth». 

End of chapter 1