Today’s Scripture Reading [March 27, 2011]
And the ark rested in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, upon the mountains of Ararat. [Genesis 8:4. KJV)
In my last week’s sharing, I revisited the story of the Great Flood and Noah’s ark-building. To build an ark of that size – 450 feet long, 75 feet wide and 45 feet high – was not a small feat, certainly not for a faint-hearted. But Noah’s absolute obedience to God’s calling saved his family plus that ten of thousands animals that God had commanded Noah to bring with him.
To many Bible-believing Christians, like myself, the event of the Great Flood as recorded in the Book of Genesis was not just a legend, a myth or a fairytale. It was a real event experienced by a real family – Noah and his family. Besides the Bible, there are many stories of flood recorded by ancient people on stone carvings or ancient documents that archaeologists have found them. Some ancient caves were found to have pictures drawn to depict story of a gigantic flood. The Chinese language character for vessel clearly described of 'a boat with eight people'. Why not 5, 6, 7, 9 or 10? Why eight people in that Chinese language character? This is no pure coincidence. Rather, the story of the flood and a boat with eight people escaped the flood was communicated and depicted in this Chinese language character. Chinese language is one of the most peculiar languages (with Hebrew and Greek are being two others, in my opinion) and each stroke of its character bears meaning of some kind. Furthermore, Grand Canyon in the United States provides the most convincing geological evidence of an occurence of a global flood of biblical proportion not just million years ago but simply only few thousand years ago. To many non-Christians and those Bible skeptics, this Great Flood is just a fairytale. When the story of Noah is told the usual response from some skeptics is: If God is so loving, why would He send a flood to destroy all mankind? Frankly, this is quite a fair question and as Christians we owe them the answers, and whether they accept our answers or not, that’s their job and their convictions.
Going back to the days of Noah, after warning Noah of the impending flood, it took God 120 years to fully ‘operationalize’ His power and to release trillion upon trillion gallons of waters into the earth. Even though God saw that the wickedness of men was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of their hearts were only evil continually (Genesis 6:5), God remained very patient with them. He had given them 120 years to repent, to turn away from their evil ways and to give reverence to His ways. Is 120 years too short, too long or just right for God to destroy, not human, but sins and wickedness? As we can see from the Bible, God has capped our life span at 120 years (Genesis 6:3), and chronologically speaking, He had given the people there a whole life-time to repent. Instead of taking up this good offer to repent from their evil ways, the people continued to live in evilness.
As we can now see and witness from our daily news, the time leading up to the Great Flood was a lot like our time today in that it was characterised by a deliberate and escalating disregard for the ways of God. Everyone of us is given a lifetime to make the right choice and the only right choice for us right now is to give complete reverence to our God. We don’t know when will Mother Nature strike neither do we know what kind of man-made disasters we may (or rather will) have to face. We many think that we are very safe from major calamities but are we really safe? Being a small country, we are completely dependent on our daily needs from other countries – the water we drink, the fire we use to cook our food, the petrol we use for the cars, the vegetables, the meat, the canned food we eat, and not forgetting the air we breathed! Where can we run to when disaster strike? Remember, even you can be in the driest place on earth as in a desert, and the last thing you could expect is to see droplets of water from the sky, let alone raging waves, it can still be a very unsafe place. The desert may be dried now but it still can be literally sunk under trillion upon trillion gallons of water. This speaks to us very clearly that no place is safe in this earth and if we think we are in the safest place because we are living in a place surrounded by other countries that can protect us from tsunami, or we are living in a place outside the ‘Pacific rim of fire’, we all may be in for a surprise. Even for Japan which is over 550 times the size of our country, we can see now that Japan is facing stress of unimaginable proportion not just to the people around the earthquake zone but the whole of Japan.
Thankfully, in the midst of the Great Flood, we are given a glimpse of hope. When the Great Flood subsided, the ark that Noah built finally landed was not in a valley but on the Mountains of Ararat (Genesis 8:4). As we all know, in order for any mountaineer to reach to the top of a mountain top at 10,000 to 15,000 feet high, he has to put in a lot of training efforts. First, he has to exercise almost daily to be physically fit. This will follow with rigorous warning up by starting to climb mountains of 3,000, 4,000 or 5,000 feet high. Until he is trained to be able to climb mountains of these heights, he will not attempt to climb mountains at 10,000 or 15,000. It would be foolish to do so because it is like trying to run before he even know how to walk. But with God’s efforts, with God’s help, He brought the huge ark that Noah built and all its contents – Noah’s family and those ten thousands of animals – to the mountain top of Ararat. Likewise, our obedience to God is our best ‘bet’ to bring us to the mountain top of God’s dwelling place – the heavenly mansion that God has prepared for us. We don’t need any effort of ours. All that is required of us is our absolute obedience to live His ways and He will do the rest for us; He will steer us to the mountain top where we can enjoy absolute safety from the wrath of God himself. Our continual effort to obey Him, to keep our eyes on Jesus is our daily exercise – spiritually-speaking – to prepare us to reach the mountain top of God’s dwelling place. Like Noah’s ark which was an exclusive place specially built for Noah and his family and under God’s instruction and direction, the mountain top of God’s dwelling place is equally exclusive, reserved only of His chosen, obedient children.
Let me repeat and remind us again, if we were to plot through the whole episode of the Great Flood, we can easily discovered that during that time mankind had degenerated from human beings created in the very image of God who walked and talked with Him to a race whose thoughts and actions were totally depraved and bent only on evil (Genesis 6:5). Even God had graciously given the people 120 years to repent, we saw that only one family, the family of Noah did take up the offer to live righteously and to work tirelessly on God’s instructions to build the ark. This was the first chance that man was given the opportunity to ‘re-create’ and to live righteously with God. But as we proceed to read from the Book of Genesis, very soon after the Great Flood, sin returns. The sin of pride was so great that instead of looking upward to seek God, to be God-dependent creatures, man started to build a sky-scrapper – the Tower of Babel – and to try to reach out to heaven on their own and they wanted to build name for themselves (Genesis 11:4). In the process, they discarded God and God has no choice but to discard them because God’s spirit is not going to strive with them forever. Up to a point, God is going to give up on us if continue to do evil.
It’s been about 2011 years since man was given a second chance to be re-created by another divine event. This second chance to re-create was done by God’s only Son, Jesus at the Cross (2 Corinthians 5:17). Sadly, like the first re-created event of the Great Flood, the death of Jesus at the Cross still cannot save world’s decline in morality and its increased depravity. As a result, a single look around us is all that’s needed to see that from a spiritual and moral perspective life today is becoming pretty much “as it was in the days of Noah”. We must be reminded that God’s spirit is not going to strive with us forever (Genesis 6:3), and just like in Noah’s day when God decided not to strive with us terrible judgment will follow.
Today, the most sobering thought that paralleled to Genesis 6:3 when God declared that He will not strive with man forever, can be found in Matthew 7:14: “Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it”. Just think of the alarming facts: in the Great Flood, only eight people were saved and in Lot’s day, only three were saved when brimstones of sulphur rained from the sky and destroyed the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. Depending on who you are, it can either be an awful event or an awesome event. It’s going to be awful for those who continued to live like ‘the days of Noah’ or ‘the days of Lot’ but it’s going to be awesome for those few of us who have prepared whole-heartedly to follow the ways of our Lord. Only by fully embracing Christ who is our very Ark of Safety can then be the key to His gateway and into eternity with God forever. There two places that we will all be going once the spirit of God departed from the earth: an awesome dwelling place with God, or an aweful dwelling place with Satan, all his angels, the false prophets, the evildoers and all those who rejected the blood of Jesus. There is no other alternative.
The present triple tragedies in Japan – the earthquake, the tsunami and the radiation contamination – has viewed by some people that this is God’s judgment on Japan. Some said that it’s because of their atrocities during the World War II while others said that it’s because Japan is leader in producing pornography movies, and so on. Unfortunately, when Haiti was struck with earthquake last year, unkind remarks were also made and some viewed it as God’s judgment on Haiti people, for whatever reasons. These are totally untrue - my opinion. They are unkind remarks made at the worst time when what the people there now desparately needed are help and sympathy, and words of encouragement to stay strong. For me as a Bible-believing Christians, I strongly believe that these are God’s warning signs before He gives up His spirit to strive with men. When, where, and how these events occurred are not important at all. The most important thing for us to understand is that once we are outside the Ark and when the storm really hits and when God has finally decided to give up His spirit to strive with us, the history of God and man will come to a close and those who believed in Him will forever be with Him, and those who refused to believe in Him, rejected His precious blood, will be without Him forever. Be safe and not sorry. Embracing the Lord Jesus and receive eternal life from Him because it is not His will that any perish (2 Peter 3:9); seek the Lord right now while He may be found and call upon Him while He is near (Isaiah 55:6). The spirit of God is not going to strive with us forever. God has given the people over 2,000 years to repent, to acknowledge Him, to accept His precious blood. How much longer you think God is going to give you. Time is running out! The door of salvation is going to close soon, perhaps much sooner than you can expect, or how much longer you think God should be waiting for you to come to your sense. Yes, God loves us and He hates sin but don't over estimate yourselves! Remember, when Jesus was up on the Cross, He cried out: Why Thou has foresaken Me? (Matthew 27:46). Yes, for a short period of time, God the Father has foresaken His Son all because He was bearing all of our sins of all kinds and God just couldn't bear to see the sins that His Son was bearing. He turned His eyes away. So, take heed, if God can foresake His Son, who you think you are that God cannot foresake you when you still prefer to bear your own sin. Be safe and not sorry. There will be no third divine event. The death of Jesus on the Cross is the final divine event and through this divine event of the death and the resurrection of Jesus, the Son of God, all those who believed in Him will not perish but have everlasting life (John 3:16).
