928. The meaning of what human hearts fabricate is evil from their youth as the fact that the volitional side of the human mind is completely evil is established by the statements just above; what the heart fabricates has no other meaning.

We think that we have a will to do good, but we are wholly mistaken. When we do good, it is not our will but a new will that is the Lord's — and so the Lord himself — that moves us to do so. By the same token, when we think and speak what is true, the source is a new intellectual capacity coming out of the new will and so the Lord again. People who have been reborn are entirely new people, formed by the Lord, so they are said to be created anew. ¹

Footnotes:

554. Genesis 6

1. And so it was that humankind began to multiply on the face of the ground, and daughters were born to them.

2. And the sons of God saw the daughters of humankind, that they were good, and they took wives for themselves from among all whom they chose.

3. And Jehovah said, "My spirit will not denounce humankind forever, because they are flesh. And their days will be one hundred twenty years."

4. The Nephilim ¹ were in the land in those days and for a very long time after ² the sons of God went in to the daughters of humankind, who bore children to them. These were mighty men, who for ages had been men with a name.

5. And Jehovah saw that the evil of the people in the land multiplied; and what the thoughts of their heart fabricated was nothing but evil every day.

6. And Jehovah was sorry that he had made humankind on the earth, and he grieved to himself at heart.

7. And Jehovah said, "I will obliterate the human whom I created from the face of the ground, from human to beast to creeping animal to the bird in the heavens, because I regret that I made these things."

8. But Noah found favor in Jehovah's eyes.

554. Summary

THIS is talking about the condition of the pre-Flood people.

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