George Hawkins Pember matriculated at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, in 1856; took the B.A. in 1860, being placed in the Second Class Classical Tripos; and his M.A. in 1863. He died July 5, 1910, in his seventy-third year. He studied the classics in his unconverted days for his own glory, but since his conversion he sought to use the knowledge so gained for the good of God’s church. How extensive and accurate was his classical knowledge, and how very widely he had read, may be seen in The Great Prophecies and in Earth’s Earliest Ages.
“He was preeminently a teacher of teachers, and one of the best exponents of prophetic Scripture during his period, so rich in great teachers of the Word of God”.
~ G. H. Lang
“This is a book of distinct and conspicuous mark on the exhaustless theme of Scripture Prophecy. It is evident that the conscientious labour and thought of years are embodied in the volume. While the author shows that he has studied with care the literature of his subject, he has at the same time wrought out an independent scheme of interpretation marked by great comprehensiveness and self-consistency.”
~ United Presbyterian Magazine
“Pember was one name (among two or three) that dominated prophetic study in the Victorian age, a writer foremost in scholarship, in expository insight, in literary clarity, who had the added gift of interpreting facts in the light of Scripture; and Earth’s Earliest Ages was to many of us a key book in our earlier years.”
“One of the deplorable facts of today is the disappearance of these giants, and even of their works, with few if any to take their place; and the value of this present volume becomes correspondingly greater as it gives to the present generation a summary of one who knew his Bible, and fearlessly stated a drama of all-comprehensive gravity now obviously at the doors.”
~ D. M. Panton
“One of the most valuable expositions of prophecy ever published. It is written in a popular and interesting style, and handles with masterly discriminating, scholarly research, and eloquent description the principal prophecies of the Bible.”
~ Prophetic News
The Days Of Noah by G.H. Pember
The Days of Noah
By G.H. Pember Extract from Earth’s Earliest Ages by G. H. Pember,
© Kregel Publications, 1975, Ch. 8 & 9, pp. 127-148. Footnote numbering adjusted from the original.
The sixth chapter of Genesis contains an account of the days of Noah, a description of momentous interest to us: for our Lord has declared that a similar epoch of worldliness will at length exhaust the forbearance of God towards the present dwellers upon earth, and cause Him to come with fire, and with His chariots like a whirlwind, to render His anger with fury, and His rebuke with flames of fire; to plead with all flesh by fire and by His sword (Isa. lxvi. 15, 16).
It becomes, therefore, an obvious duty to consider the progress of wickedness and corruption among the antediluvians, so far as it has pleased God to inform us of it: to acquaint ourselves not merely with the sowing but also with the watering, the growth, and the ripening, of that hideous crop against which the gleaming sickle of the Almighty at length flashed forth from heaven; to note the various incentives to evil as they successively appeared, and to observe the particular influence of each upon the rapidly decomposing masses of society. For by so doing we shall arm ourselves against the errors and temptations which are daily multiplying around us, and be enabled to discern the threatening signs of our own times.
Now the first-mentioned characteristic of those former days of wickedness and peril is the rapid increase of population (Gen. vi. 1); a circumstance which in itself has ever tended not merely to diffuse but at the same time to intensify sin. For every form of evil which exists in thinly populated countries will also be found where men have multiplied; where there are countless vices peculiar to crowded districts. And, if they are numerous, men support each other in rebellion, and are prone to become far more daring and defiant of God. Among ourselves, the strongholds of rationalism and atheism are always to be found in large cities.
But while the families of the earth were thus increasing in number, they were at the same time making vast progress in civilization and knowledge. Cain had taught them to settle in communities and build cities (Gen. iv. 17); and the sons of Lamech—speedily followed, no doubt, by many others—