Genesis 6:5

"And Jehovah saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually."

What is visible here is the total corruption of humanity. The very citadel of human life, the heart, which in Hebrew thought meant the mind, was devoted exclusively to the contemplation of evil, and there were no exceptions. Furthermore, there were no men anywhere (with the exception noted in Genesis 6:8) who varied from this pattern; and there were not even any occasions when any man left off the mental pursuit of wickedness! It would be difficult to devise a sentence that would any more effectively portray the corruption of humanity than does Genesis 6:5. That this is the result of the judicial hardening prophesied by Genesis 6:3 in which such a condition was foretold in the projected withdrawal of the Spirit of God from "striving with" man, is dramatically evident.

THE FIRST HARDENING OF HUMANITY

The entire Bible deals with the phenomenon of Judicial Hardening, and this is the first instance of it. Only four such occasions are evident in the Holy Scriptures, the others being: (2) the hardening of the entire pre-Christian world (Abraham excepted), as explained in Romans 1; (3) the hardening of the whole of mankind (except a remnant) at the time of the First Advent of Christ, and (4) the final judicial hardening of the entire world just prior to the Second Advent of Christ, as depicted in Revelation 16.

Note:

1. The Hardening of humanity prior to the Flood God's answer: The Flood Exception: Noah
   
2. The Hardening of Romans 1 God's answer: His Chosen People Exception: The True Israel
   
3. The Hardening of mankind including the Jews God's answer: The First Advent of Christ (mercy) Exception: The remnant of the first Israel
   
4. The Hardening of the whole world (Revelation 16) God's answer: The Second Advent of Christ (judgment) Exception: The redeemed "in Christ"

It is fitting enough, and absolutely in accord with what is revealed in the prophets that the judgment should finally come at the end of the fourth Great Transgression of humanity. We believe that the peculiar expression found eight times in the opening chapters of the Book of Amos is explicitly related to the sequence given above. That expression is:

"For three transgressions of Damascus, yea for four, I will not turn away the punishment..." - Amos 1:3.

This expression is repeated verbatim, (only the name of the offender being changed in each reference) no less than eight times; and in each case was followed by the imposition of divine judgment and punishment against the offender. As it was with them, who appear here as prophecies and tokens of the ultimate judgment upon all mankind, so shall it be with the entire Adamic race, which is now headed for its fourth and, we believe final, hardening prior to the Second Advent and final judgment before the Great White Throne. Certainly, we may dismiss as mere lack of discernment the scholarly dictum that this eight-times-repeated warning in Amos was merely a literary device of the prophet. In each instance of his use of it, he said, "Thus saith Jehovah."