About 1500 years after the creation, so about 4500 years ago, The Fall had reached terrible depths of evil. “Wickedness Abounds” is certainly an accurate description – the Lord tells us in Genesis 6:5 that “every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time.” In His perfect justice and righteousness, God determined that he would judge the evil Disobedience of the world and start afresh with the one man who was found righteous in his sight, who walked with God blamelessly: Noah.
Noah is a Christ-figure in history. Like Jesus, he stands apart from those around him in regards to righteousness, and walked with God in a way that was unique from all others. While Jesus is this way in an absolute sense, being the Son of God, Noah was a man who had a sinful nature like everyone else since Adam and Eve, and yet he found grace in the eyes of the Lord because he truly sought to please God with his life. He was not a perfect man, like Jesus, but he was surely a man of Great Faith and true Repentance.
God told Noah to build a huge Ark and take representatives of all the land animal kinds with him, Noah’s Sons, and their wives (8 people in all) aboard the 450-foot long Ark (which would have included the land dinosaur kinds!). The Obedience of Noah shone as he precisely followed God’s commands, working diligently for approximately 70 years after hypothetically declaring “Construction Begins!” – despite the sure mockery and persecution he would have suffered in the evil generation in which he lived.
After a final 7 days of warning, a time during which Noah was surely preaching to those outside to repent and join his family before it was too late, God shut the door and the Deluge of Rain (and bursting forth of the fountains of the great deep) began. For 40 days and 40 nights the rain fell, and the Death of Unrighteous was utter. This actual historical event is a drastic reminder of the future judgment that is to come, and points to Jesus as the Ark of Salvation, the door by which every person must enter through in order to be saved from God’s wrath for their sin (John 10:9). I am Salvation, the only means of salvation from death, is God’s declaration to the world.
After 150 days of the waters prevailing on the earth, they began to subside and Noah sent out a Dove to see if the ground was ready. A New Beginning was given to the world, by God’s judgment as well as His mercy and grace. It was a fresh start with Noah’s righteous family. God made the Covenant of Noah as a reminder of His original dominion mandate to Adam and Eve, to fill the earth and rule over it, under God’s leadership in right relationship with Him.
As a token of this covenant, God gave the Sign of the Rainbow as a promise of the eternal mercy He would have upon the earth and its inhabitants, because of His “I Am Mercy” nature. Indeed, there is an emerald rainbow that encircles God’s throne (Revelation 4:3), its lack of beginning and end signifying the eternal nature of God’s mercy and its emerald green color reminding us that it is only by God’s mercy that we have life, because “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23) and “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23).
Surely, God’s desire and plan from the beginning, until now, and will be forever and forever, is for human beings to live in a perfect relationship with Him in a perfect world. The Lord showed this first at the creation, again at the Flood, and speaks of Heaven in this same way countless times in the Bible. The new heavens and earth to come will be the ultimate New Beginning, with the curse of the fall done away with once and for all (Revelation 22:3) as God’s Kingdom and His presence are fully manifest in Creation with those who have been saved by the “Noah of All Eternity” – Jesus Christ!
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