The British Museum, come to find out, was just a short walk from our London hotel. Surprisingly, we needed only to choose a time for our visit and fill out a form to gain free access. We joined throngs of school children and visitors like us from all around the globe in a line that stretched almost as far back as our little hotel.
The British Museum opened its doors in 1759 and is home to more than eight million artifacts, originating from every major continent in the world. In fact, the collection grew so large that the museum was compelled to expand. Today the London Museum of Natural History houses myriad natural history specimens and the British Library displays and stores various collections of historical books and manuscripts.
As we stepped inside of the massive building, we immediately saw The Rosetta Stone, a marvel to behold. The Rosetta Stone, part of a granodiorite or coarse-grained stone, is inscribed with a decree that is translated into three languages—hieroglyphic script, Demotic, and Ancient Greek. This decree, was issued in 196 BC during the Ptolemaic dynasty of Egypt on behalf of King Ptolemy V Epiphanes. The stone was discovered by soldiers of Napolean’s army in 1799 near the town of Rashid (Rosetta) in the Nile Delta and set aside by an officer named, Pierre-François Bouchard (1771–1822).
We wandered even further back in time and marveled at giant stone and marble statues of lions and Pharaohs, svelte men and voluptuous women. We gazed at all matter of remnants from now lost civilizations, some existing 2000 years before Christ. Beautifully crafted gold jewelry, intricate carvings, coinage, and even empty tombs. Each astounding section provided us with just enough information to understand the origin of the different collections, many noting some of the questions related to the slave trade that served archeologists and the extraction and removal of these items from the countries of origin.
The reason for providing this very limited, short, and simple summary of the artifacts we beheld is to remind us that the people and civilizations represented by these artifacts—some everyday tools and other dramatic works of art—are as much a part of the true story of the whole world as we are. We know from biblical history that Israel encountered many of the nations represented in the museum, Jesus lived in the Roman Empire and referenced the coins stamped with Caesar’s image that we beheld.
Embedded within the True Story we cannot escape the vastness of God’s creation and the rise of nations. Genesis 10:1, for example, begins a description of the Council of Nations detailed in the genealogy of Noah.
These are the generations of the sons of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, sons born to them after the flood.
We discover that these nations spread far and wide across God’s creation. From Japheth’s sons come the coastland people who spread into their lands, each with his own language, by their clans, in their nations (Gen. 10:5). From the sons of Ham, which included the likes of Cush, Egypt, Canaan and Gaza, came their clans, languages, lands, and nations (Gen. 10:8, 20). Then the sons and the territories of Shem extended from Mesha in the direction of Sephar to the hill country of the east by their clans, their languages, their lands, and their nations” (Gen. 10:30–31).
This remarkable passage ends by repeating Gen. 10:1 to form an inclusio, a literary devise much like a refrain and emphasizes God’s comprehensive reign over all the nations of the earth.
These are the clans of the sons of Noah, according to their genealogies, in their nations, and from these the nations spread abroad on the earth after the flood (Gen. 10:32)
As we meandered our way through each hallway, I stopped to take in the fact that my life, our lives, are inexorably linked with those who have gone before us. If we hold fast to the fact that God is our Creator, then we must lay hold of the fact that God created all of us in God’s image. Humankind from the beginning is by God’s design multinational, multicultural, and multiethnic and will one day bow, together, at the feet of Jesus.
In marvelously similar language to that of Genesis 10, John describes this global display of worship,
Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation, and you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God, and they shall reign on the earth (Rev. 5:9–10)
We will all know to sing, in our native tongues,
To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might forever (Rev. 5:13)