In this sermon, Chuck Misler explores Genesis chapters 7 through 9, verse 19. He begins by expressing gratitude for the opportunity to study the book of Genesis and the lessons it holds. Misler discusses the reasons for the flood, the purpose it served, and the accomplishments it achieved. He also touches on the significance of the small number of people saved compared to the vast population of the earth at that time. Additionally, he draws connections between the events in Genesis and the book of Revelation, highlighting the role of Jesus Christ as a military commander leading his people to gain their inheritance.

This is the ninth study in the book of Genesis conducted by Chuck Missler. The subject of this tape, Genesis chapter 7 through chapter 9, verse 19. Let's open with a word of thanksgiving for this fellowship. This is fun. Father, we just praise you for the privilege of gathering together in the name of Jesus Christ. We thank you, Father, for your word, for the opportunity to explore the book of Genesis. We thank you, Father, for the promises that you've given us here, for the instruction that you've given us here, and for the lessons that you have here for our learning. Father, we would ask this evening that you would just open our hearts and minds that we might behold those things which you have placed here for our special use. And Father, we would just ask you to send the Holy Spirit that we might more fully comprehend Jesus Christ, for we know that above all these issues, that is what you would have manifested and what you would have us take away from this evening. And Father, we just commit ourselves afresh to your study, asking you for an increased appetite, an increased hunger for the bread of life. In whose name we pray. Amen. You know, there's so much, so much that we could tackle as subject matter on the flood. From the bibliography that was passed out, there's just a number of references in the bibliography on the flood itself. I mentioned last time, brought the little short paperback by James Whitcomb on the earth that perished, a little updating of a nice little book. But if you're really a serious student of the flood, there's a book by Henry Morris and John Whitcomb on the Genesis flood. And it's the kind of book, you may have the same reaction to that book that the little girl did that had to give the book report in school. And she got up before the class and held up her little book and said, this is a book about penguins. It's really a very nice book about penguins. It only has one problem. It really tells you more about penguins than you wanted to know. And some of you would quickly find some of the scholarship and technical detail that Whitcomb and Morris have assembled in the book on Genesis flood, maybe more than your diet for reading would want to absorb. And we'll touch on some of these things. And as you know, my inclination being basically a technologist is to plunge into that and get the speculations just exactly how long a cubit was. It's roughly 18 inches, give or take, four to six inches, depending on what authorities. And there's dozens of them, but they're in the range of roughly a foot and a half to two feet. But within that spectrum, you can generate all different kinds of guesses as to just how big the arc was. It's nominally the size of the Titanic. That's probably a bad example to use. But then again, the Titanic was built by man, right? No, I had special help in the sense of the Lord designing it. And it displaced somewhere in the neighborhood of 15,000 to 20,000 tons, which is a big boat. And we could get into all of that. What's really fascinating is the libraries are full of books attacking the concept of the Genesis Flood and the concept of the boat. Most of the skeptics point out that it's ridiculous to assume that one could put all of the animals on the earth into a boat. Now, they don't know how many animals are in the world at that time. They don't know how big the boat was. But other than that, they've come to the conclusion it wasn't possible, all of which, of course, is ridiculous because, indeed, it really happened. And we'll touch upon that tonight. But one of the things that I'll try to do is not get distracted in too much of the technical detail, because, first of all, it's mostly in the area of speculation, our attempt to infer things. And it isn't the issue. It isn't the issue. The issue is why God sent the flood. That's the issue. And the fact that God did, and the fact that God provided supernatural deliverance for a very, very small number of people. We're going to overlap a little bit from last time, but just to get us back into perspective. Last time, we talked about the primarily focused on the conditions prior to the flood, the antediluvian or pre-flood civilization. And it was bad news. It read very similar to your daily LA Times. Okay. Enough said on both counts. It's interesting. I think we emphasized this, but in trying to reflect on it during the week, one of the main thoughts that haunts me about the whole program is that Enoch, who spent his entire life preaching, apparently, I mean, most of it, because his son was named Methuselah prophetically. We talked about that several times. And he preached, and he preached, and he preached, and he preached, right? In fact, the content of his sermon was the second coming of Jesus Christ. You know that from Jude 14, 15. We covered that. And on the heels of his preaching comes one Noah. And what did Noah do? He preached repentance. You know, the awesome thing is, is that not one person repented in the 120 years that were specifically set out for Noah's specific ministry, just taking the tail end of the last 120 years. And to put that in perspective, that's as half as what? How long has the United States been a government? 200 years? So, you know, in terms that we would consider as rather monumental, Noah's dedication and commitment did not result in one person of that entire civilization repenting. It's a heavy trip. It's a heavy trip. And one of the things that, and I think we covered this whole business of Enoch being a type of the church being raptured. I assume we did that. His being translated was by, one of the things I don't think we did point out, but I'd like to highlight to you as we contemplate Enoch and his being raptured or caught away, is that it was by faith. And we missed that in Genesis, but we pick it up in Hebrews. Enoch is in the 11th chapter of Hebrews. By faith he was taken. So those of you that are pre-tribulation nuts like myself might find that interesting. In other words, it was his faith that caused him to be translated or raptured, if you prefer the Latin-based jargonese here. Another verse that is very, I'm very fond of, is out of Amos chapter three, verse seven, where he promises that surely the Lord will do nothing without revealing his secret unto his servants, the prophets. Now that's a very, very interesting verse because most of us in the study, I suspect, are students of prophecy. Our interest, I think, in this book is not because of our interest in fossils or our interest in evolution or the rebuttals thereto. The presumption that I've made in all the studies that we've taken is that we are basically attacking the book or studying the book from the point of view of prophecy. And I think it's very, very interesting that in God's word, he points out that the Lord, surely the Lord does nothing without revealing his secret unto his servants, the prophets. Now that's interesting. That occurred in the case of Enoch. It's occurred in the case of Noah. And it certainly occurred in the case of Jonah. In fact, Jonah was even upset because his ministry bore fruit. I don't know how many ministers have the attitude Jonah does, but I find Jonah interesting. We find it in the case of Abraham. We find it in the case of Jonah. We find it in the case of Israel in general. Everything that God did and is doing and will do involving the nation Israel has been laid out ahead of time. And also, of course, with Jesus Christ. Remember Jesus Christ the night he was betrayed in John 14, 15, and so forth? And that very important sequence of chapters in his last intimate evening with his disciples. He says, you've been my servants, henceforth ye are my friends. And he reveals to them what he's going to do and what he's up to and what might have been lacking there is completed in his unique revelation in the book of Revelation. And I suggest that's also true of us. One of the reasons we're assembled here tonight is our involvement in effect in 1 Thessalonians 5, in that we are children of the day, not of the night, lest that day overtake you as a thief. Paul's whole point in 1 Thessalonians chapter 5, right on the heels of 1 Thessalonians 4, which has the rapture passage. It ends, that chapter ends, wherefore one other comfort ye, one other with these words. It's chapter 5. The essence of it is that, yet no, of course we don't know the day nor the hour, but we do know the times or seasons. It's his intention that we are and should be aware of what he's doing. And that's the interest that we should have in Genesis, the Genesis flood, in the prophetic sense and in the sense of the issues he's putting before us. So it's the reasons for the flood, the purpose for the flood, the things that the flood accomplished that we should really focus on. Okay, probably the best thing to do is just jump in and then we will back off. After going through it, we'll back up a little bit and try to put it in perspective. Let's jump in. Does anyone remember the exact verse we finished on? Verse 1 probably? Okay, Genesis chapter 6. Let's just jump ahead here or jump back. Genesis 6 verse 1. It came to pass when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, that the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair, and they took them wives of all whom they chose. And we talked about the various theories of that last time. And as you figured out, I tend, I lean to what's sometimes scholastically called the Romantic school or the Mystical school as to the view of that passage, justifying my views basically on Peter and Jude, and we covered that last time. Although there are, as I think I was faithful in reporting to you, there are different alternate views to that. And the Lord said, My spirit will not always strive with man, for he also is flesh, yet his days shall be 120 years. This is sort of an ultimatum. This is an ultimatum. There were giants in the earth in those days, and also after that. And the also after that probably refers to the period of the conquest. When Joshua addresses the land, the devil had his brood waiting for him. So the concept of the Nephilim, the fallen ones, which in the Septuagint, the word was used instead of the Hebrew Nephilim, it was used the Greek gigantus, which from which we mean giants. The concept of giants is consistent with what we know about the Amalekites and some of these strange tribes and the Goliath kind of thing. But the word actually comes from the Hebrew word being the fallen ones. And again, I said I think we probably won't that whole subject pretty hard last time. But in any case, the also after that, meaning after the flood, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bore children of them, and the same became the mighty men who were of old and men of renown. Now incidentally, the only reason I wanted to get at that prophecy aspect of it is that we associate that whole mysterious spooky thing with Genesis 6 and the pre-flood condition. We sometimes might not be sensitive to the fact that same problem, apparently on a smaller scale, but a significant scale, occurred after the flood. And that was what the children of Israel were faced with in conquering the land. And if you remember our study in the book of Joshua, bear in mind we have Joshua taking over the command from Moses. None of that first generation went into the land because of their unbelief, like Kiddush Barnea, by not believing the two spies that brought the good report. So only the two spies, Joshua and Caleb, went into the land. The rest died off. The children, as a result of the 40 years of wilderness, went into the land under a plan of military conquest, which violated almost every one of God's laws. The ark led the procession. The priests led the procession. If you study every detail of the conquest of the land, it raises more questions than it answers, and it only begins to take perspective when you recognize that what's being staged there is a model of the book of Revelation, with one Yehoshua as a military commander leading his people to gain their inheritance, to dispossess the usurpers. And in Joshua chapter 5, we find that the real leader of the battle of Jericho is none other than Jesus Christ. And the procedures by which they take Jericho are very strange, but form a structural model of the book of Revelation. It sends in two witnesses in advance, and we have seven cycles of trumpets. And even to the business of being faced with seven nations that they're attempting to face. And they're being led by a king by the name of Adonai Zedek, Lord of Righteousness, the title of the Antichrist. And they defeat him at the battle of Beth Horon by signs in the sun, and the moon, and the stars. And the kings go in the caves and cry, you know, rocks fall on us, and so forth. There's a whole bunch of ways that the book of Joshua models the book of Revelation. I commend that study to you, the Joshua study. The tapes are available through the regular sources, either the lending library or through the tape ministries here or the Firefighters for Christ. They're available. They can be made available to you free of charge. The point is, though, that the interesting thing, just to tie that together for those of you that have been with us through the Joshua study and the Revelation study, is that Joshua and his armies were facing Nephilim in the land. And Jesus does provide a basis for a parallel here by pointing out, as the days of Noah were social, the coming of the Son of Man be, some of the kinds of things that may be extant upon the earth in his second coming might be far more bizarre than classical scholars have any imagination of. And I think that's all we need to say on that. I think it's so. Let's move on. Okay, and sons of God came into the daughters of men and bore their children unto them, and the same became the mighty men who were of old but of renown. And God saw that the wickedness of man was great upon the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and that it grieved him at his heart. Now, the word repent here shouldn't throw you. God doesn't change his mind. He changes not. It's a sense of in the sense to communicate the grief that he felt at the result. So I don't know. A lot of people make a big thing of that as if it's some kind of big contradiction. I think the intent of the passage is clear. The attitude God has towards that civilization is clear. It should be. It's never been a stumbling block for me, so it's hard for me to deal with it. The Lord said, I will destroy a man whom I have created from the face of the earth, both man and beast. By the way, it's Mr. and Mrs. Man. Incidentally, for the generations of Adam, back there in verse 2 of chapter 5, male and female created he them. It's interesting that he always sees woman in Adam, in man. There's a thing that we, I think, talked about in Genesis 3, but you should always keep that in mind as we go here. But in any case, let me not get sidetracked on that. Let me try to make it tonight. I will destroy a man whom I have created from the face of the earth, both man and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air, for it repenteth me that I have made them. But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. First occasion of the word grace in Scripture. These are the generations of Noah. The word Noah means what? Rest. Good. Okay. Great. Noah was a just man. What that means is, we know from Romans 3, is that he was a justified man. Doesn't mean he didn't do anything wrong. It means he was justified. How was he justified? Romans tells us. By what? By faith. Good. And perfect in his generations, and I think we covered that in terms of his line, if you accept the view that I mentioned earlier, that he was uncorrupted by this non-humanistic strain in mankind. And Noah walked with God. Now, it's interesting with both Enoch and Noah. They walked with God. And you might notice that it wasn't a casual stroll. It was a long-term commitment. Okay. And Noah begot three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Not necessarily in that order. That's no big deal here, but it will be later when we talk about Abraham. The order they're mentioned are not necessarily the order they're born in. They're ordered in the order, sometimes for some other purpose. The 12 sons of Jacob are enumerated, I think, on 10 occasions in the Scripture, and they're always in a different order. And the order is always significant, for the purpose of the hand. So just be sensitive to that. There's no big issue having to do with Shem, Ham, and Japheth. There will be an issue later. The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence. And by the way, just already, do you get the sense that this is a local problem? That they, that Noah and his bunch lived in the bad neighborhood? There's a lot of discussion about the flood as being a local phenomenon. The skeptics attack the concept of a worldwide flood, and well-meaning evangelical Christians somehow feel their position is strengthened by acknowledging that, well, maybe the flood was a local affair. And that raises more problems than it solves. And we'll get at those later. But I mean, just even in the thrust of the passage, I think it's very, very difficult to get sort of a you know, a localized view of what's going on. Verse 13, And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh has come before me, for the earth is filled with violence through them. And behold, I will destroy them with the earth. Make thee an ark of gopher wood. And as I think I mentioned to you, we're not sure what gopher means. It sounds like it's the same root from coffer and all that. The concept of wood in the tabernacle was to speak of humanity. There was shit and wood, I believe. But the point is that in the tabernacle, we use gold for everything in the tabernacle pointed to Jesus Christ. We've covered that before. It's a fascinating study if you haven't done it. The materials by which things are made, the dimensionality, their placement, every detail of the tabernacle speaks of one thing, Jesus Christ, in some way. But some of the things were gold, pure gold, speaking of his deity. Other things were wood overlaid with gold, speaking of the incarnation, wood having been alive. Okay. And speaking of his humanity, gold speaking of his deity, silver speaking of the blood, the whole thing rested on silver sockets. Silver was the redemption tax. And even Judas is true to the model when he throws this 30 pieces of silver, the price of blood on the thing and says, Behold, I betrayed innocent. Silver, no blood. The equation of silver and blood Levitically is consistent throughout the scripture. Anyway, even here with the ark, the emphasis on the wood, the fact that it's pitched, the word pitch is the Hebrew word kopher, which everywhere, everywhere except in this chapter is translated atonement. And anyway, so we begin to get a hint right away that this ark did not only physically provide for the protection and sustenance or the taking care of the deliverance of Noah and his seven charges, his wife, his three sons, and their wives, four guys and four gals through the flood, but it also is there for some other purposes. Book of Romans, I think it's chapter, what is it, 15, four, it says whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning that we through the patience and the comfort and the comfort of the scripture might have what hope. That's a prophecy term, by the way, hope, the blessed hope. So we must be tuned to that more so than whether or not Navarra saw the ark at Ararat and whether the Russian aviators in 1916 did or did not really see what we think is the ark or the fact that it's been spotted from the satellites and all that stuff. We'll get a little of that, but I think what's more valuable to us rather than get into this archaeological excitement that surrounds the ark is to focus on it spiritually. Anyway, make thee an ark of gopher wood, rooms shalt thou make in the ark, by the way, the word's actually nests, but that's fine, and shalt pitch it within and without, both sides, inside and outside with pitch. Pitching on the inside doesn't do a lot for water tightness. It does do a lot for preserving the thing, preserving the thing. Now it is going to be used for 371 days, but I can't sense whether that would require pitching it or not. From the people who appear to have seen it, they say it looks like shellac. It's some kind of a herb. And this is the fashion which thou shalt make it of. The length of it shall be 300 cubits, and the breadth of it 50 cubits, and the height of it 30 cubits. And as Bill Cosby is immortalized, what's a cubit, right? A window, I'd say for your own rough guess, without boring you all evening with the details of what a cubit probably was, there's an Egyptian cubit, a Pavilionian cubit, several different Hebrew cubits, and so forth. It was conceptually the length, tip of the elbow, the tip of the finger, but that depended who you're talking about, right? Anyway, the net of it is that if you use it in your own mind's eye, 18 inches, you're not far off from whatever scholarly tradition you come from. And it goes as high as I think 22 or 24 inches, and it's as small as 13 or 14 inches. And in that range, you can pick a lot of different standards, and there's all kinds of dry and dusty footnotes you can track through if you're really excited about that subject. We'll pray for you, yes. So, but it's a good-sized barge. Now, a couple of other things we could spend, I'm a Naval Academy graduate, so I could, you think I could bore you with some of the stuff, I could really bore you with naval architecture. I will tell you, I will tell you that a one-in-six ratio turns out to be ideal. It's very, it has the stability characteristics of this dimensionality, there's instantly books written on the stability implications of this boat, recognizing it's not a boat. It's not a boat. It is not intended to provide motion. It's a barge. It's a float. It's a barge. And it's called an arc. There are three words, there are three arcs in the scripture. This is the first one we run into, right? There is another arc that we run into that, I think it was that Nina Folk picks out of the the river, right? I'm being facetious from the Ten Commandments movie, but the one that Moses was in, right? In which he also is put in an arc and preserved from a judgment. And then, of course, there's the arc of the covenant, as we call it, the arc of testimony, which is a container that was used prominently in the tabernacle affairs. Now, the word arc, believe it or not, in Genesis chapter 50, verse 26, is translated coffin. So while the word arc here carries the concept of a barge or protective floating shelter, it also suggests death. If you were a linguist and sensitive to the roots, it suggests death. Whose death would this arc suggest? Could not Noah's, it caused him to live. By whose death does Noah live? Jesus Christ. Incidentally, it's always, and I think this is a rule you can apply in your own Bible study, it never hurts to try the idea on of putting Jesus Christ modeled in the middle of it and see what happens. And I'm going to suggest to you before the evening's over that the arc is a type of Jesus Christ. God is already inside the arc. He says, come, when they go in. The whole idiomatic use of the arc is going to be instructive to us. Far more instructive, I think, than worrying about whether or not it did break in half in the landslide up in Ararat and all of that. There's a lot of, well, I mean, in fact, let me at this point stop, since I've touched upon that and dismissed just to make a few remarks. The existence of the arc, the physical existence in a secular historical sense of the arc on Ararat is recorded hundreds of years before Christ in the Babylonian records. I've forgotten the name. I forgot to jot this all down. By a king who makes reference to the fact that the arc can be spotted in the mountains in Armenia. And this tradition is carried through by, I think, half a dozen of the ancient Babylonian, Greek, and Hebrew scholars all the way into the days of Josephus. They make reference of the existence of the arc. Now, this doesn't mean a lot to a cynical scholar because they're just historical references that may or may not have, it certainly is a historical tradition. The arc is referenced by Marco Polo in the 1300s. Whether he actually saw it or whether he just trafficked in tales of other caravans, obviously we have no way of knowing. But there are references to the arc all the way into relatively recent times. And one of the most famous sightings was by a Russian in 1916, the result of which the Tsar commissioned an expedition only to be unseated in the Russian Revolution and that all fell apart. But the Russian aviator did report his findings and caused a lot of stir at the time. And it's been often quoted in some of these books. And on it goes, there are stories of eyewitness accounts. And what I really recommend you do, you're either not interested in all of that or you're intensely interested in that, I strongly recommend you get one of the several good books in most of the Christian bookstores on the arc. And they will recount for you, first of all, the history of the various proposed sightings, I'll put it that way, because it's all hearsay evidence of eyewitness accounts. The account, and I meant to write his name down, but that died in 1960 when he as a young boy with his grandfather claims to have climbed it and describes it. There have been expeditions, some of which have actually brought pieces back and subjected them to some tests. There's been, so there was a major expedition planned in 71 with laser equipment and others to get through the ice. And the Russian government managed to put pressure on the Turkish government to prevent it, which makes you wonder what they're afraid of. And so you will find a continuing archaeological interest in attempting to more fully establish the presence of the arc on a mountain called Ararat in Armenia. Ararat actually means elevated or holy mountain. It actually is a range of mountains, but there's a great deal of evidence, not free of controversy, but a great deal of evidence that they've found the exact one. There's also evidence from a satellite reconnaissance that they think they've spotted it. And there's a great deal of interest, of course, to try to track it down. I have some very peculiar views on that. Um, I think the, uh, the whole gist of the arc story in the Bible obviously rests on the proposition that God was providing providentially, supernaturally for Noah, right? So that says that God could have dropped that arc anywhere he wanted to. There wasn't anything accidental about where it landed on Ararat. Now that happens to be 16,946 feet above sea level. And if you're trying to land Noah in a reasonable place, you and I wouldn't exactly pick, you know, a 17,000 foot altitude unless you really want oxygen bottles for all of them and what have you. You would, you know, our human knowledge would say, gee, wouldn't it be more practical to drop him down in a nice green valley and let him cannibalize the shelter for a start and so forth. But God didn't do that. He put it at the top of Ararat. Now Ararat turns out to be an ice most of the time. It turns out to be one of the most geodetically unstable places on the planet Earth. And it's also at an altitude that forced Noah and his entourage to seek lower altitudes, leaving it intact. So that says to me, and I'm assuming that I take the basic approach to that, not the approach of the skeptic, but rather the one of a believer, that God had a purpose. That's not by accident. I don't think anything God does anything by accident. So why did he put it up there? And why is it in such a place that it almost defies access by man, even with today's modern technology? It is so tough to get at and most of the year it's under ice. So it's been spotted by explorers under the ice, but they can't get at it. Why? And the presumption is, my personal presumption, not alone, but I'll just put it that way to avoid getting into big controversies. My personal presumption is the ark is there for another purpose. That ark, which stood in Noah's driveway for 120 years, as a testimony to the unbelieving world, I think will again emerge in God's own time as a testimony to an unbelieving world of another judgment coming. And one of the evidences I have or feel is there is this idea of pitching it within and without. Because there's no real reason to pitch the ark from the inside, if you're building a boat, unless you have another purpose. You certainly don't pitch on the inside to keep the water from leaking out. I don't think, I haven't really. So I have a feeling this whole business of the ark is not just a casual archaeological search. I think the ark will be tractable to discovery in a more manifested way in God's own appointed time. And someday, one of these days, when you open the daily newspaper and you discover that Expedition XYZ has finally made it, and by the way, here's a floor plan of it. We have very interesting descriptions of the ark. It's in three floors, and some rooms are very, very large, more than large enough for an oversized elephant. Others are very small bars. All this has been described by people who claim to have been aboard at various times in history. But the point is that obviously, you can't help but think that wouldn't it be interesting to have the ark accessible to ABC News or something right now? And the real question is why? What purpose would it serve? You sort of have the conclusion you and I jump to erroneously, is that would cause people to believe. Wrong. Wrong. Remember the rich man and Lazarus? Remember? Rich man, after, gee, if somebody could just come back from the dead, that would convince everybody. And he had his answer. They have had the prophets and so forth. And even after that parable, Jesus, interestingly enough, raised one from the dead, and his name happened to be Lazarus. Did that convince anybody? No, the concept of believing is nothing, it's not an intellectual process. It's a supernatural process. It has nothing to do with reason. But God will use it, I think, the same way he used Noah's ark to condemn an unbelieving world. And that time will come. Anyway, we got down to verse 16 before we got this distraction. A window shalt thou make to the ark, and in a cubit shalt thou finish it above. Now most of us, because of the little Sunday school picture books, visualize that as a little square, you know, 18 inch square window, which isn't a lot of air circulation for that bunch, okay? And in fact, the descriptions of the eyewitness accounts, all are similar. That's what makes them, increases their credibility, by the way, because a number of different independent records of visiting them, visiting the site where the ark is, describes it as a window, it's 18 inches high, going the whole length of it, as sort of an open, unfinished eve, if you will, where you can get air circulation. So it's 18 inches high, but it's a little square. But like an open eve all the way along the edge. And the artist's sketches of the, from these witness accounts is in these books, and you can track that down. The door of the ark shalt thou set in the side thereof, with the lower, second, and third story shalt thou make it. And behold, I, even I, do bring a flood of waters upon the earth to destroy all flesh wherein is the breath of life from under heaven, and everything that is in the earth shall die. But with thee will I establish my covenant, and thou shalt come into the ark, thou and thy sons and thy wife and thy sons' wives with thee. And of every living thing, of all flesh, two of every sort, shalt thou bring into the ark to keep them alive with thee. They shall be male and female. Of the fowls after their kind, and of the cattle after their kind, and of every creeping thing of the earth after its kind, two of every sort shall come unto thee to keep them alive. And thou shalt take unto thee of all food that is eaten, and thou shalt gather it to thee, and it shall be food for thee and for them. Thus did Noah, according to all that God commanded, so did he. Now we're going to find out as we get into this a little more, that he just didn't bring two of each. He brought seven of certain kinds. And that's apparently for sacrificial reasons and other reasons. And so the two by two is a basic rule. He amplifies that a little more in a little bit. It might be useful, I think, to just continue the narrative and then back up and overview it. Chapter 7, verse 1. And the Lord said unto Noah, Come thou and all thy house unto the ark, for thee have I seen righteous before me in this generation. Do you notice how he's righteous? God sees him as righteous, because he's wearing, if you'll excuse it, maybe a poor pun, Christ-colored glasses. He sees Noah in the righteousness of Christ by faith, the same way you and I are seen righteous before him. Nothing that we do, it's what we appropriate to ourselves by faith. It's exactly Noah's basis also. Of every clean beast shalt thou take unto thee by sevens, the male and his female, and of beasts that are not clean by two, the male and his female. This particular verse to me is extremely provocative. Most of us, first of all, it may be something you're not sensitive to, because we've all been victims of the little simple model of Noah and then two of every kind of animal. The fact that some of the animals were not by twos, but by sevens, may come as a surprise to you. The assumption we make is that this is for purposes of making an offering. Okay, but notice which kinds of animals are brought by sevens. Not sariculture, but clean. I don't want to get into that, it's a whole other thing. The clean. How do they know? How do they know? This is the book of Genesis. Ever think about that? Now that's mind-blowing because what it supports is this view that I've been trying to show you, that the Levitical system as we think of it in Mosaic terms, as Moses recorded in the Torah, and we tend to associate it with Moses. There's lots of evidence in the New and the Old Testament that those ideas are fundamental and God ordained them with Adam. The coats of skins, the slaying of the animal there, the problem with Canaan and Abel, as we've reviewed already. And what fascinates me is even here with Noah, he can take advantage of a presumption of understanding of what a clean animal is versus an unclean animal. That's not obvious. It's Levitically set apart. Now you can say, gee, they're unclean or clean because of, gee, there's in those days improper preparation of pork involved. Yeah, fine. That isn't, that may be part of what God had in mind in establishing what he calls Levitically an unclean animal. It's certainly not obvious to a civilization or a secular mind. It is a term of art, or as a lawyer would say, a term of technology that presumes a Levitical system. And I think it's very, very fascinating that to see the evidence of that here in chapter seven, not, which is a long way before we get to Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, so forth. Now, admittedly, the reader of the Torah would be aware of those ideas so he can communicate, but the writer is taking for granted that the reader understands that those ideas precede Mount Sinai. You with me? Okay. Verse three, are the fowls of the air also by sevens, male and female, to keep seed alive upon the face of all the earth? That applies to all of them, not just the fowls of the air. I mean, that's a concluding phrase. Yet for seven days, and I will cause it to rain upon the earth. Now notice he's saying in chapter seven, verse one, come into the ark, right? But it isn't for seven days that rain comes. You know, you and I can probably sort of relate to Noah spending this time building this gigantic project. In fact, I think of this project every time I drive down through Costa Mesa and that guy's building that boat in his front yard. And I get to thinking, you know, it's quite an ambitious project. And I keep thinking that, can you imagine building, you know, the Titanic, you and your three sons? You know, there's often people who talk about Noah's carpenters as if he enlisted help and so forth. I don't think so. I think Noah was a type of Christ. I think he did it alone, willing to allow his sons to help in the model perhaps. But I think it was a very lonely project for some of the better part of 120 years. And we could sort of relate to this crank down the street who says it's going to rain. They didn't know what rain was. It was this canopy effect, presumably. There's a lot of evidence for that. But that's nothing compared. Can you imagine Noah and his sons bringing all the animals into the ark? And then for seven days, nothing happens. I mean, I can hear it, you know. You know, it always interests me whenever you see one of these renderings, either in a radio drama or a film drama or something. Most Bible stories that are done by faith groups and so forth tend to have everybody sort of polite and quiet. And they're always sort of unreal, generally. I don't really visualize Ham, Shem, and Japheth and Noah and the wives sitting around the table eating dinner, you know, for, say, the fifth or sixth day and not making some comment, you know, like, Dad, shouldn't we talk this over? But see, God had told Noah for yet seven days, and I will cause it to rain upon the earth. The concept of rain was new. Caused rain upon the earth 40 days and 40 nights, and every living thing that I have made will I destroy from off the face of the earth. Doesn't sound like a neighborhood, local kind of regional problem. Noah did according to all that the Lord commanded him. And Noah was 600 years old when the flood of the waters was upon the earth. And Noah went in and his sons and his wife and his sons' wives with him into the ark because of the waters of the flood, of clean beasts and of the beasts that were not clean and of the fowls and everything that creepeth upon the earth. There went in two and two unto Noah into the ark, male and female, as God had commanded Noah. And many guys said, what about the sevens and sevens? I think the taking for granted. You understand those are, you know, exceptionalists. It came to pass after seven days that the waters of the flood were upon the earth. A couple of comments, and this is all in the realm of speculation, but you can from the language and piece together a presumption. It's a presumption on our part. Well, first of all, I don't think it's required for us to visualize that Noah and his three sons would go round these guys up. You know, I don't really visualize Noah running around with a butterfly in that or something. God is ordaining this, and I really have no insight as to what actually happened, but my presumption is, is that Noah got a lot of help from the Lord. It's also my presumption, there is some subtle textual evidence to support the presumption, but it's technical and not of consequence, that the animals may have gone into hibernation on the ark because they're on the better part of a year, more than a year. So the idea, now there's some very peculiar things to know, and we'll get to this in chapter eight, but the essence of it is not one of them are lost. You know, it's rather odd that you could take a collection of animals under any circumstances in one of our best equipped biological laboratories and end up with the same control group you started with if you're conducting an experiment. You can't do that without supernatural assistance. But in fact, for the purpose that God has here, and I think there's at least two, none were lost. But in fact, for the purpose that God has here, and I think there's at least two, none were lost. What are the purposes? Number one, to replenish the earth. He needed a complete pair, in the nominal case, to repopulate the earth, so he couldn't afford to lose one. But notice the miracle that's involved. But there's another lesson in that. It has to do with our security in Jesus Christ. Do you remember what Jesus prayed to the Father the night he was betrayed? You know, of all that you have given me, I have not lost any. All right? Isn't that neat? I think that's exciting. I think that's exciting. That's the only reason I sleep nights. I mean that most sincerely. We were up at Arrowhead Friday for the retreat up there, and I got, you know, a lot of questions about, you know, it ended up being the eternal security question. And I'm a poor guy to deal with that, because you can argue that question on both sides validly from Scripture. But I personally, if I felt that my salvation depended on my faithfulness, I'd be terrified. Because I can screw anything up. There's lots of empirical evidence to prove that. My security in Jesus Christ rests on his faithfulness, not mine. And there are many arguments from the Scripture that I could flee to. Romans 8 and so forth. But one of the most complete, in my view, is Noah's Ark. To the extent that this is intended as a type of our security in Christ, I think it is, I can rest in the fact that Noah didn't close the God did. The question that you need to ponder as you drive home tonight is, could Noah have gotten out of the Ark if he tried? And I don't think he could. And I think that if I'm saved, I'm saved because it was foreordained before the foundation of the earth. And if I'm saved, it's because Christ has begun a work, and I know that he's faithful to finish the work he's begun, and I rest in him. And you can get the other side of that coin, but I think that this is a interesting thing, that nothing was lost on the Ark. And any of you that have been in a college statistics or psychology course, where you run experiments with rats or pigeons or whatever they're using, know the problem of what they call a control group. We want to conduct an experiment in behavior or learning or whatever, of having a litter or a group of whatever, and trying to manage that statistically, because in fact, some die. And you're trying, if you're trying to evaluate drugs or medicines or whatever in a biological context, you have some very serious problems to deal with in terms of the statistics, because the groups aren't controllable. You end up having some, you know, the idea of taking a group, two of every conceivable kind, not every species, every kind, and preserving them for 371 days is a chore, and I don't think you can do it without supernatural intervention. If that's true, then getting them into the Ark and managing them for 371 days, doing stable duty for a year plus, isn't really, other than the butt of a lot of jokes and things, isn't really a problem, although a lot of people seem to be, you know, seem to have difficulty with that. Okay, we were down to verse 11. In the 600th year of Noah's life, in the second month, in the 17th day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were open. You know, it's not a Chuck Nistler Bible study if I don't drown you in some irrelevant facts. The Jewish calendar places the creation in the late fall, and the flood occurs, if you take a tight genealogy of Genesis 5 and Genesis 11, it's a long, complicated controversy. It, the flood occurred 1655 years, one month and 17 days after the creation. Now, I don't know of any scholars that take that too seriously, but it's one of those facts you can write down, and I don't, I'm not sure what it'll do except win a bet with somebody, in terms of that. I do believe the chronology is very significant. I do believe we can dig through that and learn something, and I'll show you one example of one possibility. But there's much chronology associated with the flood, that the Holy Spirit has gone to some trouble to put detail in here, that in my opinion has yet to be exploited for insight. So I throw that out to you as a challenge. I think there's a, you know, fruit to be garnered by digging into that, but it's a complicated technical area, so I wouldn't go out of, it's not recommended for the faint of heart. But we will get at the gene, the chronology before we get too full into chapter 8 here, but let's, let's move on. The same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened. Now, by the wind, the word windows there is the sluices or downspouts, so it's probably poetic language, but there are two sources of water for the flood. It didn't all just come from the rain for 40 days and 40 nights, although that's plenty. You can do some arithmetic with that and come to the conclusion it wasn't a local scene, okay? But for, and the water, that kind of water is a lot of water, and gives rise and supports. It's one of the many supports for the, what I'll call the canopy theory, the idea that water was suspended around the earth in a blanket. Incidentally, it can be done transparently if you have trouble with that. If you're an aviator, you know that water vapor isn't necessarily visible. And so, but the point is that the water from the sky, if you will, is only part of the water, because here tells you something else. The fountains of the deep were broken up. Water was held in reserve and let loose from below to flood the earth. Now, incidentally, there's no reason to believe there are any significant mountains on the earth at that time, because we're going to find out, well, from Psalm 104 and elsewhere, that the mountains and the upheavals occurred after the flood. That doesn't mean there weren't any mountains, but the mountains as we know them are relatively recent as a result of upheavals. A passage in Psalm 104 suggests after the flood, there's a consequence of the flood. The valleys went down, the mountains went up. But there was an exaggeration in making it more extreme from the highs and lows. So, that's a complication. But in any case, the great deep broke up, the windows of heaven were opened, verse 12, and the rain was upon the earth 40 days and 40 nights. At the very same day entered Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, the sons of Noah, Noah's wife, and three wives of his sons, with them into the ark. They and every beast after its kind, and all the cattle after their kind, and every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth after its kind, and every fowl after its kind, and every bird of every sort. They went in unto Noah into the ark, two and two of all flesh, wherein is the breath of life. And they that went in, went in male and female of all flesh, as God hath commanded them. And here's the interesting verse, and I underline this, and the Lord shut him in. And incidentally, it doesn't even just say he shut the door. I sometimes put it that way. That's not what it says. He shut him in. Now, we believe in a God in three persons, do we not? God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. And I'm going to suggest to you that you are shut in in Jesus Christ. By what? The Holy Spirit. Ephesians talks about being sealed with the spirit of promise. He is spoken of as a down payment, earnest money in a deal, a binder, depending on what field of business you come from. The concepts are the same, commitment, irrevocable commitment. And that's what I see the parallel here with the Lord shutting Noah in. He's in. He's got it made. Verse 17, And the flood was forty days upon the earth, and the waters increased, and bore up the ark, and it was lifted above the earth, and the waters prevailed, and were increased greatly upon the earth. And the ark went upon the face of the waters, and the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth, and all the high hills that were under the whole heaven were covered. Does the book of Genesis talk about a universal flood? I believe so. And if you've got a problem with a universal flood, do some homework. Don't compromise with a local idea and so forth. If you had a local flood, the animals could migrate. Noah could have migrated. You didn't need to build an ark. The whole concept is a different conceptual difference, but I'll prove to you before the night's over, the flood had to be universal. We'll get that proof in a little bit here. But I want you to sense the whole flavor of this. Verse 20, 15 cubits upward did the waters prevail, and the mountains were covered. The 15 cubits upward implies the draft of the boat, of the ark. Because 15 cubits doesn't sound like much, but it's nominally half of the ark. So it's getting deep for the ark to be lifted. And all the flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl and of cattle and of beasts and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth and every man, every man. We are all descendants of Noah. The Eskimo, the American Indian, aboriginal tribes in whatever remote part of the earth you can imagine can track back, if they could, if they had knowledge, back to Ham, Shem, or Japheth. Turn to verse 22, all in whose nostrils was the breath of life, and all that was in the dry land died. And every living thing that was destroyed that was upon the face of the ground, both man and cattle and creeping things and the fowl of heaven, and they were destroyed from the earth. And Noah only remained alive and they that were with him in the ark. And the waters prevailed upon the earth 150 days. And there's some divisiveness as to what that actually implies because it wasn't still raining and the waters took longer to subside. What they think that means is the fountains of the deep being continuing to provide the depth, if you will. Get to chapter 8, and God remembered Noah, and that's a strange, strange word, because what it really means is remembered in the sense that Samson wanted to be remembered in Judges 16, 28. Or Hannah wanted to be remembered in 1 Samuel 1, 11. Or the thief on the cross in Luke 23, verse 42, wanted to be remembered. When the thief was hanging on the cross, he says, Lord, you know, remember me when you come into your kingdom. Was he saying, hey, Lord, when you get up there, cast a, you know, have a memory that I was here hanging with you? That's not what he mean. What did he mean when he said remember? Yeah, right, right. In your love, intervene on my behalf. That's what you really mean by remembered. And that's what's happening here. God remembered Noah. That is, gee, that's right. I've got, that's right. I've got someone down there to deal with. No, no, no. It's that God, this is a literary way of focusing, God's focusing his attention in the mode of deliverance. And every living thing and all the cattle that was with him in the ark, and God made a wind, ruach, maybe it's the spirit, maybe it's a wind. You can look at it either way. Same word. To pass over the earth, and the water subsided. The fountains also of the deep and the windows of heaven were stopped, and the rain from heaven was restrained, and the waters returned from off the earth continually. And after the end of 150 days, the waters were abated, and the ark rested, and the ark rested. Very interesting phrase. There are three rests we might think about. We talked about one in Genesis 2, or 1 even. God rested when he finished what he had done, right? In the creative sense. Okay. There's this rest of the ark resting on Ararat. There's another rest when we look at John chapter 19, where Christ says it is finished. And the book of Hebrews talks about the Lord, in Acts 2 we also use that he rested. How did he rest? By sitting at the right hand of the Father. The whole book of Hebrews deals with entering into his rest, right? What's Noah's name mean? Rest. Now here's the interesting thing. The ark comes to rest, and this is a milestone. The milestone is that the old world that then was, perished. That's the way Peter describes it in his epistle. The world that then was, overflowed with water, perished. Right? The ark comes to rest, having delivered the faithful, Noah and his family, and his house. What comes from here on is a new beginning, a new life. It's very interesting to notice when this occurs. Verse 4, you might mark in your Bible. The ark rested in the seventh month, on the 17th day of the month, upon the mountains of Ararat. The word Ararat, by the way, means holy mountain or elevated mountain. And this would throw you, if you try to track the seventh month, because you're bound to plunge into the Hebrew calendar and all of that, you'll miss a very important, unless you go at We're going to eventually, if we were, at least conceptually, we'd move from Genesis on forward, and we come to a book called Exodus. And the book of Exodus, one of the key miracles in the book of Exodus, God again delivers the nation Israel. By the way, if you hadn't noticed, the Ham, Shem, and Japheth, you know, represent that revealed mode of the seed of the woman so far. It's going to get more specific. It'll be Shem, and more specifically, it'll eventually be Israel. But this, at the moment, contains, if you will, the messianic line. God again delivers them through water in Exodus by taking them through the Red Sea on dry land. And that event is so important to the nation Israel that he makes that month the first month. The seventh month is the civil month, but the first month is the ecclesiastical month, the first month of the ecclesiastical year, right? So it becomes the first. It shall be unto you the beginning of months, he says in the book of Exodus, right? And specifically, that particular event was a Friday the 13th, immortalized in secular or Gentile memories as an unlucky day, because you're on the Egyptian side of the Passover. And that was bad news. If you were an Egyptian that happened to have a Jewish servant in your house and he snuck out when you weren't looking and put blood on your doorpost and lintel, you were delivered. The Passover had nothing to do with ethnic background. It had to do with who was covered by the blood. If you were an Israeli and you didn't buy that whole idea and didn't put the blood on the doorpost and the lintel, the firstborn of your house and of your cattle and everything you owned died that night. If you were Egyptian and happened for whatever reason to have blood on your doorpost and lintel, you were spared. The blood was the basis, not the ethnic background. But the point is, to the Hebrew, their days doesn't start the way we reckon time. They start at sundown. So the evening of what we would call Friday the 13th was the 14th of Nisan, Passover. Passover spoke prophetically. Passover was commemorated historically of the Passover in Egypt. Prophetically, the Passover spoke of the Lamb of God. When John the Baptist first sees Jesus Christ in public, he says, Behold the Lamb that taketh away the sin of the world. What's he talking about? A model of the Passover. The whole Passover points to the death of Jesus Christ on our behalf as our Passover. Of the seven Mosaic feasts, the Passover is not a Levitical feast technically, because it's not offered by the high priest. It's offered by the head of each household. Isn't that interesting? And there's a whole study you can go to in terms of the offering of Cain and Abel and the early offerings being one-on-one, all the way to the Passover being the head for each household, all the way to the high priest doing it on the Day of Atonement for the nation, pointing to Jesus Christ who did it for the world. The broadening of the highway of salvation. But the point I'm making is that Passover was the night he died. When did he rise from the dead? It's the third day, the 17th of Nisan. The 17th of Nisan is the new beginning, the resurrection. I'm the resurrection and the life, he said. Our faith is linked to the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Paul makes a big deal of that in 1 Corinthians 15. I'm going to show you when we get to Genesis 22 that Abraham was saved by faith, but the faith, the specific thing that saved Abraham was his faith in the resurrection, the resurrection of Isaac by type. We have a very interesting lesson coming up. One of my most favorite chapters in the Bible is Genesis 22, and that'll be a big deal when we get there. Now here's what's interesting to me. God appoints the ark to rest on Ararat on the 17th day of the seventh month, and the Holy Spirit calls that to our attention. I have to do a lot of digging to realize the seventh month becomes later the first month, and that the ark comes to rest to start the new beginning on the anniversary, some thousands of years in advance, of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The 17th day of the first month, which is the third day after the 14th, which is the day of the Passover. So this is a celebration in advance of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Now you tell me that this book wasn't designed, or are you going to tell me that the book of Genesis, this conclusively proves that the book of Genesis was written after the book of Matthew? I don't think so. I don't think that the Torah was engineered to prove that Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah, except of course it was by him, engineered that way, but I'm speaking with my tongue on my cheek. He certainly had every detail of his ministry foreordained, and it's interesting the places you find that foreordination, and the book of Genesis is one of them. Now you may sound, this may sound very obscure, but some of you who've done the background can begin to sense what I sometimes call rabbinical reasoning, the concept of the ark resting on the 17th day of the seventh month, becoming in effect the third day after the 14th of Nisan, is rabbinically logical. Maybe strange to us, but it's interesting. I share that with you both as an evidence of design in this collection of 66 books written by 40 guys over thousands of years, written by one author who engineered every detail to tie together as a single message system, but every detail points to a person, the person of Jesus Christ. Now I show you this one, there's lots of them I can't tell you. You say, well wait a minute, there's a lot of other places here the Holy Spirit's given us the day and the month. Terrific. I'm convinced that they have treasures behind each one, and those of you that have been in college in advanced mathematics knows that familiar phrase of the professor, the rest is left as an exercise for the student, right? Verse five, and the water is decreased continually but until the 10th month, and in the 10th month on the first day of the month were the tops of the mountains seen, and it came to pass at the end of the 40 days that Noah opened the window of the ark which he had made, and he sent forth a raven. He's going to send four birds out, a raven and three doves, and they're a week apart. He sent forth a raven which went forth to and fro until the waters were dried up from the earth. In other words, the raven doesn't come back. The raven is not uncomfortable alighting on unclean things, so it doesn't come back. It's of the earth. He sent forth a dove from him to see if the waters were abated from the face of the ground, but the dove found no rest for the sole of her foot, and she returned unto him into the ark, for the waters were up on the face of the whole earth, but he put forth his hand and took her and pulled her into unto him into the ark, and he stayed for yet another seven days. You get the impression, we don't can't prove this, we have an impression this is on a Sabbath day each time. Another seven days, and again he sent forth the dove out of the ark, and the dove came in unto him in the evening, and lo, in her mouth was an olive leaf plucked off, so Noah knew that the waters were abated from off the earth. In other words, this is the evidence. The dove brings back to Noah evidence of the trees. There were trees that were sprouting and beginning to grow again. First sign of life, if you will, in the world, and he stayed for yet another seven days and sent forth a dove, which returned not again unto him anymore, and that was the final proof that, hey, it's okay. It came to pass in the 600th and first year, in the first month, in the first day of the month, the waters were dried up from off the earth, and Noah removed the covering of the ark and looked, and behold, the face of the ground was dry. And in the second month, on the seventh and twentieth day of the month, was the earth dried. And God spoke unto Noah, saying, Go forth from the ark, thou, and thy wife, and thy sons, and thy sons' wives with thee. Bring forth with thee every living thing that is with thee, and of all flesh, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, that they may breed abundantly in the earth, and be fruitful and multiply upon the earth. And Noah went forth, and his son, and his wife, and his son's wives with him. Every beast, every creeping thing, every fowl, and whatsoever creepeth upon the earth, after their kinds, went forth out of the ark. And Noah built an altar unto the Lord, and took of every clean beast, and every clean fowl, and offered burnt offerings on the altar. It's interesting, the first thing Noah does is build an altar. Now, you can say, did he create that idea out of his imagination? I doubt it. I believe he was, he was, it was in, it was ordained in a very elaborate Levitical system that we only have little insight into. And it's my personal presumption that it was very consistent with what is later ordained, or there would be more coming on it. So I think we're justified in presuming, in fact let me put it this way, I think Adam, Cain, Noah, you name it, had far more knowledge than we give them credit for, in a New Testament sense. One of the great examples that is the preaching of Enoch in Jude, which speaks of the Lord coming back in the second coming with ten thousands of his saints. The whole flavor of that in Jude, you miss, because it's the New Testament just before the book of Revelation. The fact that that was Jude's attribution to Enoch is startling. I think these, there's far more here than we generally ascribe to them. Verse 21, The Lord smelled a sweet savor, and the Lord said unto in his heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake, for the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth. Neither will I again smite any more every living thing as I have done. While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease. Now this is a very interesting phrase because many people believe that the polar axis of the earth was tilted. In fact, maybe tumbled completely at the time of the flood. And what's interesting is seasons are a result of our 22, 23, 22 and a half degree, whatever, 23 and a half degree tilt of the axis. And the emphasis of the enduring, you know, the enduring of the seasons here is consistent with that view. There is evidence, fairly technical evidence, that the earth has reversed its rotation and reversed its polar orbits, if you will, polar orientation on a number of occasions in its history. They determined this from magnetic properties of certain materials. It seems there's an implicit reversal recorded in the memory, if you will, of the materials. It's given rise to a lot of studies and so forth, and that gets beyond our real intent here. But that idea, you'll find a lot of technical papers in the secular world that address when, how many times, why, and so forth. Let me just skim through and see what else I wanted to cover that I may not have. I mentioned the 371 days. One of the things that might be useful for you is the raven was out on the 264th day. The dove the week later, 271. The 271st day, the second dove with the branch coming back, 278th day. The dove that stays out there is 285th day. The arc is actually opened on the 314th day, and it's 57 days later, the 27th day of the second month, that the 371st day that, in fact, it's over, which is essentially 53 weeks. And what's interesting about the chronology, though, is that they're 30-day months. And this also supports the view that the Earth originally had a 360-day period, totally synchronous with the Mars orbit, which is 720 days. And it was some perturbation that caused the Earth to change 1.5 percent to give us 365 and roughly a quarter day revolution around the sun that we think of as a solar year. And so that gives rise to the discrepancy, if you will, from the ancient calendars versus the calendar you and I are acquainted with. A couple of things on the arc that I think I mentioned, or I want to make sure we mentioned, how many doors does the arc have? What did Jesus Christ say in John 10 about the door? I am the door. Anyone that enters but by me is a thief and a robber. Now, he's speaking there of the sheepfold, but I believe he's also appropriating to himself the tabernacle, the one gate, the one door. And I think it's interesting that the arc has one door. I would emphasize there's only one arc, okay? And I think we could be very humorously, very facetiously, or very soberly consider the philosophical discussions that preceded the Flood. The Universalists saying there's many paths to God. It doesn't matter what you believe as long as you're sincere. Probably a lot of sincere people that perished in the Flood. Cain was sincere. In fact, his sincerity and passion is what led to him to kill his brother in envy. He was not an unbeliever. He was very sincere, very passionate, very committed to giving the Lord an offering, and upset that his offering wasn't accepted, and Abel's was. He was not insincere. He was not an agnostic. He was not an atheist. A lot of debates at the time, probably, as to about what God is all about. And I have to believe there were guys passing out all kinds of tracts, having all kinds of propositions, but there was only one arc. And out of a world that probably numbered in the many millions of people on the whole face of the earth, a culture not inhibited by short procreative periods, but hundreds of year lifetimes, idealized climate around the world, and a lot of things that you could easily get yourself to believe that there were very, very large populations. Out of a whole bunch, eight saved. Only eight. The Lord's economy is sobering. Jesus Christ said that there are two gates. One of them is very broad. One is very, very narrow. To one leads a highway that's extremely broad. Broad is the way. Wide is the gate that leads to destruction. Straight is the gate, and narrow is the way. And so if you are going through, you are lured into, or going through a gate that's very big, and there's lots of company, you got the wrong gate. Okay, calendar I've covered. The cause, we could spend a lot of time talking about the earth's axis, and there are several theories. Velikovsky has one. The NASA trio that did the book on the Joshua thing has another, whether it's Venus or Mars. The concept of a comet flyby has gotten a lot of attention from the scientists, whether it's a planetoid or becoming one of the naked eye planets. The early Babylonian writings recording one missing planet, I mean the naked eye planets have one missing. They also record it in the backwards order, which causes some of the early writings to believe that the earth revolved in another rotation. All of this is covered in some of the writings, if you want to dig into that stuff. It is interesting to me, by the way, as just a footnote or an aside, how little we know about the interior of the earth. We know a great deal about outer space. We know very little about the interior of the earth. Our knowledge goes to a very thin, percentage-wise, very little of the planet earth. So little that there was a project many years ago proposed by the National Science Foundation called Project Moho, do you remember that? And it never got off the ground. It finally just got tangled up in bureaucratic red tape and it was abandoned. I'm glad it was, because the idea of drilling through the mantle to see what they might find is a little dumb. It's dumb from just a physics point of view, because the pressures and temperatures and whatever there could have been it would make the Dutch boy and his finger in a dike look like, you know, how do we plug it up? We've got a little problem. It also makes me nervous by reading Revelation chapter 9. The busso is open. There's all kinds of strange things that resulted. I don't think the National Science Foundation was ready for. We can't talk about the flood without looking at the analogy of baptism. Think about it. We are baptized in Christ. We, in type or in model, go under and come up new, fresh, a new birth. It's interesting, by the way, I mentioned in the ark that there were no deaths. None of the animals were lost. Do you notice something else? There weren't any births either. Everybody has to do it for themselves. You're not just there. You were, you know, you could make a thing of that if you want to. No births, no deaths in the ark for the 371 days. Now, we can't talk too much about the flood without talking about fossils. There are all kinds of evidence of a worldwide catastrophe, of all kinds, all kinds of evidence. Sedimentary rocks is one thing. You notice how sedimentary rocks always have layers and so forth? One of the things, if you study the field of hydrology, you'll discover that they have to be made quickly. If it takes millions of years to do those layers, they get disturbed and they're not conformable, to use that term. So one of the interesting things, they require incredible pressures, but interestingly enough, have to be done relatively quickly. A mile deep only takes 220 days, if you really go through the arithmetic. So the whole existence of sedimentary rocks implies, incidentally, a catastrophe, because it implies pressures and the rest of it happening quickly. But more importantly is the advent of fossils. We've heard from the evolutionists, till we're getting tired of it, of all about the fossil records. Fossil records are very, very strange. To date a fossil, the way you date a rock layer is to determine what fossils are found in it, and that determines the date. The way you determine how old a fossil is, is what layer was it found in. Now, I'm not being facetious, if you follow the art, I won't call it a science, of that, you'll discover that it's circular reasoning. I was fascinated, I think it was Ironside, when I was a kid, I remember reading a book on that, where he says that it's like, it's circular reasoning, you visualize a dog chasing its tail. And he pointed out the only difference between them and the dog is the dog always kept his end in view. Now, there are no fossils being made today. On the bottom of the ocean's floor, when trilobites or whatever die, they don't make fossils. Do you know why? They get eaten, or they decay, or they're victims of scavengers, or what have you. The existence of a fossil intact implies a quick pressure. There was no time for it to decay, or decompose, or be eaten by a scavenger. So the presence of fossils imply a catastrophe, it's not a natural process. So you want an evolutionist to point to a fossil, terrific, how did they get there? And we get into the petrified forests, and all those examples, we could spend all evening on that sort of stuff. Okay. I made also a list of things that happen after the flood, and I won't take all the time to get into all these details. The extensiveness of the oceans, as alluded to in scripture, after the flood, there's less land after the flood. The thermal blanket that surrounds the earth is removed, therefore we have a shorter longevity, because that allows more radiation to take place. The longer radiation goes to shorter longevity, and you can look at the genealogies before and after the flood, and see the dramatic results. The existence of snow and ice, rain didn't occur beforehand, neither did snow. The existence of the seasons and the rest of it, the lack of the greenhouse effect, destroyed the universal climate the earth enjoyed at that time, for which there's evidence in the Arctic regions. Mammoths and others that have been preserved in the ice, with the food still in their mouths. And so, all the upheaval occurs after the flood. The existence of mountain ranges, and that's alluded to, I think, in Psalm 104. The presence of winds and storms and rains and ice, all that is a post-flood, post-Diluvian experience, glaciers. The instability of the earth's crust, which gives rise to the mountains, drops the valleys, is an instability that endures to today. And it's interesting how, on the one hand, that occurs at the time of the flood, to create the world as we know it. It's also one of the signs that Jesus Christ pointed to in the Matthew 24, the Olivet Discourse. The fact that the land was probably initially very barren, and eventually, and the climate rendering a much narrower portion of the earth as being habitable after the flood. And, of course, I mentioned the change in rotation. Chapter 9, verse 1, God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them, Be fruitful, multiply, and fill all the earth. And the fear of you, and the dread of you, will be upon every beast of the earth, and upon the fowl of the air, and upon all that moveth upon the earth, and upon all the fish of the sea. Into your hand they are delivered. Noah is given the earth to rule over. Enmity is put between man and beast. Verse 3, Every moving thing that liveth shall be food for you. Vegetarianism is over. It was before eating the animals for Noah's use are ordained here. Every moving thing that liveth shall be food for you, even as the green herb have I given you all things. But flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof, shall ye not eat. We'll take another evening to study the blood. The first seven references to the blood in the Bible give you the full story of God's redemptive plan. And we'll take that another time, because we have a short time tonight. And surely your blood of your lives will I require. At the hand of every beast will I require at the hand of man. At the hand of every man's brother will I require the life of man. Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed. For in the image of God made he man. This is the institution of capital punishment. It's used to be associated with the institution of human government. And that's a whole subject we'll deal at some length as we get into the post-blood civilization. But notice that it's ordained here in the first ordination after the flood. And you be fruitful and multiply, bring forth abundantly in the earth and multiply therein. God spoke with Noah and his sons with him saying, And I behold, I establish my covenant with you and with your seed after you, and with every living creature that is with you, and of the fowl and of the cattle and of every beast of the earth with you, from all that go out of the ark to every beast of the earth. And I will establish my covenant with you. Neither shall all flesh be cut off any more by the waters of a flood. Peter tells us about the small print. Okay. Won't be waters next time, it'll be fire. Neither shall there be any more be a flood to destroy the earth. And God said, This is the token of the covenant, which I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you for perpetual generations. I do set my bow, that is a rainbow, in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth. Very important passage. Because first of all, it is one of the proofs of the lack of existence of rain prior to the flood. Because if there was rain before the flood, when light hits, rain drop, it becomes a prism and causes the effect we know as a rainbow. First and sometimes a second order effect, if you're really watching. There's always two rainbows. But the other one's very faint to see. But the point in point is, is that rainbows are new, they're a sign of the covenant. Now, it says, It shall come to pass when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow shall be seen in the cloud, and I will remember my covenant, which is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh, and all the water shall no more become a flood to destroy all flesh. And the bow shall be in the cloud, and I will look upon it that I may remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is upon the earth. And God said This is the token of the covenant which I have established between me and all the flesh that is upon the earth. And the sons of Noah went forth of the ark, which were Shem, and Ham, and Japheth. And Ham is the father of Canaan. And these are the three sons of Noah. And of them was the whole earth overspread. We'll stop here because the rest of this really ties better to what comes later. The point is, though, if the flood was not a worldwide universal flood, then God did not keep his promise. You see, if the flood was a local flood, and then this rainbow is a covenant that he's not going to do that anymore, God hasn't kept his promise because there have been a lot of very severe local floods. You see what I'm getting at? Now, that argument is meaningless to an unbeliever. But to someone who's in the scripture, it's a whole different scenario because you can prove, if you will, within quotes, that the flood had to be a worldwide universal flood because God promised not to do that again, and a symbol of the promise is the rainbow. But the thing that God has not done since is a universal flood. There's been a lot of local floods and very severe ones. I could also argue of all the people, Job, and I made a list of them, but I won't bore you with it all, of the different people that believed in a universal flood, but the most important of which is Jesus Christ, because Jesus Christ himself clearly speaks of the flood as being universal. And Peter, of course, is universal. So the flood is presented in the New Testament especially, not just the Old, as a universal, all-consuming flood. We talked last time, and I didn't get a chance to re-summarize it in terms of Noah as a type of Christ, but perhaps more important, the ark as a type of Christ, being divinely provided, the design being revealed in advance, the coffer would be covered, it was the only refuge from judgment, there was only one, man was invited to come into, come into me and I will give you what? Noah. Noah, right, rest. Absolute security, we talked about that, and there was only one door, and I think we've really covered the ark. Okay, good. So that is the quick look on that, and what I would recommend we do next time, I think what I'm going to attempt to do, is we'll go through Genesis, the rest of 9, I'll treat it as if it's part of chapter 10, and the next time we'll talk about chapter 10 and 11, and we'll talk about civilization, we'll talk about the table of nations, we'll talk about the idiom within which God will deal with us today when he speaks of Magog, Gog and Magog in Ezekiel 38 takes its root from Genesis 10, the table of nations, we'll talk about the basis of Nimrod and what he was all about, the first type of the Antichrist, the first dictator on the planet Earth, was a Cushite, and we'll get into all that next time, it'll have, begin to lay roots for our revelation background, and if we accomplish what I hope to accomplish here, next time we'll be prepared for the whole new major section in the book of Genesis, the study of Abraham, who is the father of the faithful. This is the end of the ninth study in the book of Genesis.