Australia’s Largest Christian News Site

Since the 1980s, there’s been an increasingly common slogan. The phrase is synonymous with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander land rights, self-determination, and sovereignty. “Always Was, Always Will Be” has become an expression of grievance and unhappiness.

But does the concept fit within a Biblical framework?

Always Was?

In the creation process, God began with a water-covered Earth. Not a hot molten mass that slowly cooled over millions of years. On the third day, God separated “dry land” from “the waters below the heavens”. Then He created all manner of plant life to grow on the earth (Genesis 1:9-13). Land, and the vegetation that grows on it, was created by God.

The Bible does not tell us the size and shape of the “dry land”. We’re not told of its location on the globe, or whether it was one continental landmass or many smaller landmasses.

But it was certainly not the landmass that today is called Australia. Nor was it Africa or Asia or the Americas.

On the sixth day, God created the first man and the first woman (Genesis 1:26-27). God placed only one restriction on the first humans… not to eat the fruit of one particular tree (Genesis 2:16-17). Disastrously, they disobeyed God’s command, ate that forbidden fruit, and plunged themselves and all of their descendants into a fallen state of sinfulness (Genesis 3:1-19).

Sometime later, God “saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” (Genesis 6:5). God’s response was to destroy humanity (and all land-dwelling air-breathing creatures) with a global flood (Genesis 6:11-13, 17). Only Noah, his wife, their three sons and their wives, and the creatures that God brought to Noah survived.

This means, of course, that every human being is a descendant of Noah and his family. There were no groups of humans living in some remote south land that escaped the Flood. From a Biblical perspective, no group of people can claim to have lived on some land “from the beginning of time”. Only eight human beings in a large ship survived the Flood. So, every single one of us is blood-related, regardless of our ethnic or cultural background.

The Flood did something else… it reshaped the landmasses of the earth. Today, we can observe just how much a local flood can reshape a place. The waters of the global Flood “prevailed more and more upon the earth” (7:19). The land was broken up; tectonic plates rapidly shifted around; and new geographic features were formed.  It was out of the Flood and its aftermath that the continent which today is called Australia was formed.

Never has it been always under the ownership of a particular group of people!

Always Will Be?

It is God who establishes nations. It is God who determines the extent of a nation’s reign, both in a geographic sense and in a temporal sense. Paul declared that God “made from one man every nation of mankind on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation” (Acts 17:26).

One clear example of nations being displaced is the removal of the Canaanite peoples from their lands.  God promised Abraham that his descendants would be instrumental in driving out the Canaanite nations at a time when “their iniquity” would be complete (Genesis 15:16-21). This would occur over four centuries later under the leadership of Joshua.

Therefore, it is simply arrogant for any individual or any nation to claim “always will be”. Our times — both as individuals and as nations — are in God’s hands. Physical things do not last, and if we link our identity to the physical world, we miss the best that God has for us through relationship with Him.

This truth applies as much to Aboriginal people seeking to derive their identity from land and traditions, as to modern Westerners seeking to build their identity in property, possessions, and pleasures.

Nothing “always was” and nothing “always will be”. Except for Jesus Christ!

___

Photo by Lara Jameson.