The Days of Noah And Us–Part One

by:  Lonnie Lane

Yeshua told his disciples that whatever went on in the “days
of Noah” would have influence on the end of days. Could our days be those days?
If so, I thought it would be important that we get a grasp on what He meant.
Here’s what He said to the disciples: “As
were the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. For just as in
those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, [men] marrying and
[women] being given in marriage, until the [very] day when Noah went into the
ark, and they did not know or understand until the flood came and swept them
all away–so will be the coming of the Son of Man. At that time two men will be
in the field; one will be taken and one will be left. Two women will be
grinding at the hand mill; one will be taken and one will be left. Watch
therefore [give strict attention, be cautious and active], for you do not know
in what kind of a day [whether a near or remote one] your Lord is coming”
(Matthew 25:37-42 Amplified version).

These verses are often used to prove that those who are
“taken” is evidence of a pre-tribulation rapture, that the righteous would be
“taken” to heaven, but the verse seems to 
indicate that it was everyone on the earth that was “taken” or “swept
away” while only Noah and his family were “left.”  But that’s not the focus of my story.

Noah was born only 126 years after
the death of Adam. It is now about 1800 years since the Cain and Abel
incident. The spirit of violence that Cain loosed in the earth has apparently
increased greatly and devastation and carnage seems to have spread as men began
to spread over the earth. By the time we get to Noah things have deteriorated
greatly. ^“The Lord saw that
the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination and
intention of all human thinking was only evil continually” (Genesis 6:5). There
seems to be no possible redemptive heart among them.

We are told that “the Nephilim were on
the earth in those days, and also afterward” (:4). Nephilim does not
necessarily mean someone large in stature, or a giant. Size has really little
to do with the word’s meaning. The Hebrew word Nephilim is plural for N’phil
which can mean bully or tyrant. These were reckless men, possessing great
energy and powerful personalities, ruthless in nature, bold and wicked. Think
Nazis, or Jihadis (lit. religious warriors) – you don’t have to be tall to be
evil. Perhaps this gives some insight into why the ten Israeli spies who
returned from scoping out the Promised Land came back with this report:  “There
also we saw the Nephilim… and we became like grasshoppers in our own sight, and
so we were in their sight” (Numbers 13:33). Grasshoppers here is the word chagab
which means locusts. While
grasshoppers are kinda cute, locusts – not so much.

Seeing the impious, tyrannical and aggressive ways of the Nephilim, the
Israeli were greatly intimidated and frightened by the behavior they observed.
That they said, “so we were in their
sight” indicates that they had some interaction with them and were regarded
by the Nephilim as no more than bugs they could, and would, easily crush, a
view which the Israeli’s seem to have adopted of themselves. If these Nephilim
were demonically driven, as we expect they were, it’s easy to see how, unless
you had a revelation of the Lord as being greater and more powerful as Joshua
and Caleb obviously did, you could easily be undone by being in the presence of
such evil.

This was evil enough that the Lord was sorry He had ever created mankind. “And the Lord
regretted that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved at heart” (:6).  It seems as if man was in a state of
total degradation.  As we’ve said
before, the Bible is primarily God’s self-disclosure of Himself to those who
have ears to hear, so to speak. So what do we learn about God at this
juncture?  To begin with, He is
never passive about man’s spiritual condition. He is deeply involved. As for
the theory of those who think that God created the earth and then stepped away
and left us on our own, the Flood is proof of God’s involvement in both His
hatred for sin and violence (which is always injustice, which is entirely
antithetic to God’s nature) and His commitment and intention to bringing redemption
to the earth. Even if it means starting all over again.

That God would be “grieved
at heart” makes me wince. I wish God didn’t ever have to be grieved or
sorrowful about us, don’t you? I just want to bless Him and make Him pleased
and gratified like a good father should be from his children. But not so here.
God is the righteous judge when He must judge sin, but He also suffers in the
judging. He does not do it unfeelingly or emotionally detached. There seems to
be an element of agony for God in all this. After all, this is the creation
that He loved and declared “tov maod”
(tove-mah-ohd), which is to say, good, very good, altogether good. Now it is
longer good at all and must now be destroyed.  And out of all the population of the earth, only one man “found favor in the eyes of the Lord…Noah was
a righteous man, blameless in his time; Noah walked with God.”(:8, 9). The
word for blameless is tamiym (t’meem)
meaning complete or perfect, or having integrity. But it doesn’t only mean
morally, it has the sense of being bodily pure. So evidently Noah kept himself
from anything that would have been considered impure by God.

Let me just take a moment to interject a question we should
all ask ourselves: Are we keeping ourselves from anything that would be
considered impure or spiritually unprofitable by God? Having been forewarned by
Yeshua about the end days being like the days of Noah, it would seem wise to
know that Noah was able to cling to God in the midst of all that evil and raise
what must have been godly sons, who somehow found godly wives. At this point,
I’d like to give a round of applause to Mrs. Noah. Noah could never have raised
such obedient sons if she had been out with the ladies, or whoever, cavorting
in the local goings on, and rebellious against Noah who thinks he heard from
God. His boys evidently were in compliance or they never would have helped Noah
with the building project (we assume they did) or entered the ark at all, or
had wives that went along with this too. There would have been ridicule and
opting out of what Noah was doing. But they all went along with it. There seems
to be order in Noah’s family. They all must have believed Noah had integrity
with God and had heard from Him and so they were, along with Noah, committed to
obedience to God. To me, considering what they lived in the midst of, that says
a lot about Mrs. Noah as well as Noah, and of course, their sons and their
wives. Talk about taking a stand for righteousness in the midst of
unrighteousness, they get high rewards from God, I would think.

Meanwhile, in the neighborhood, no one seemed to pay much
attention to the message in Noah’s building project, despite the fact that it
was the size of a football stadium. By the way, it could not have taken Noah
120 years as is often thought to build the ark because “Shem was one hundred years old, and became the father of Arpachshad two years
after the flood” (11:10) so
Shem was 97 when he entered the ark with his wife and according to Genesis
6:10, Noah’s three sons were already born when the story opens. 

Well, what can we deduce from the goings on in the days of
Noah? There certainly was no well regulated government at that time and probably
no one thought of government at all. 
We’re familiar with the verse that says, “Where there is no vision, the people
perish” (Proverbs 29:17
KVJ). It actually says, “Where there is
no vision, the people are unrestrained” (NASB). Well, unrestrained sounds
like the people in Noah’s day, for sure.  The verse goes on to say, “But happy is he who keeps the law,” the law being the word of God.
The vision spoken of, which can mean to gaze at, perceive, behold, see, or
prophesy, could only be referring to vision from Lord, which those people
clearly did not have. Conclusion: When a population of people do not have the word
of God they are without vision or perception, or understanding from God. That
would mean no perception of: God’s plan of salvation, of righteousness, of eternal
life or eternal judgment, of God’s rewards and blessings or the requirement of
accountability to Him, or for that matter, of the value of human life, or of
dignity and honor, justice or freedom, or of equality for all… the list could
go on. Without a vision, a mentality that looks toward righteousness, or an
awareness of eternity with or without God, you are left only with doing what
seems right in your own eyes and yielding to any and every impulse or lust of
the flesh. Makes me shiver to think of it.

Can you see why the governments of mankind are based then on
their concept of God or religion? Even if their concepts are far from Biblical
thinking, for there to be order and hope, there must be some kind of God. He
made us to need Him. Even atheistic governments make gods of their “state” and
all live to obey and further the “state” of the nation. Are you aware that the
American Constitution and the governments of “western” nations are based on the
Biblical commandments, starting with the basic Ten? Are you also aware that the
further we get from holding the Bible or the Ten Commandments as sacrosanct
(sacred, holy, divine, untouchable, inviolable, hallowed), the less we hold to our
Constitution? If you wonder why the Constitution today is being disregarded or
altered in interpretation, it is because we have done the same thing to the values
in the Bible. Note: Bible history reveals that it only takes one generation to
forget God.  

So now God is about to reveal Himself as a God of judgment
in Noah’s day. Did many people then even think He existed? Surely the demons
did and satan was no doubt pleased with the evil abounding. But then God
declared what He would do. God announced, “I
will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, from man to
animals to creeping things and to birds of the sky; for I am sorry that I have
made them” (:7). God always tells his prophets what He is about to do,
making Noah a prophet. And He always declares it, says it, speaks it out, like
“Let there be light” (lit. “Light, be!”). He doesn’t just do it. And whatever
He says comes to pass! Even if it hasn’t already, if He said it, it will come
to pass. When we say, “Promises, promises” regarding God’s promises, we can
count on them happening.

“Then God said to
Noah, The end of all flesh has come before Me; for the earth is filled with
violence because of them; and behold, I am about to destroy them with the earth”
(:13). What?! Destroy the people with the earth?! What a terrifying
statement. This wasn’t a Bible study for Noah. This was reality. Destroy
everything? Everyone? Did Noah fear He mean Noah too? No, He went on to tell
him how to build the ark, which in the Hebrew is actually a box, not a boat.
The only other time the word is used is for Aaron’s ark or “chest” which is
also a box in which the tablets, Aaron’s rod which budded and the jar of manna
was to be kept. So Noah is making a floating box.

God tells Noah the configurations of the box and how to
build it. “Make yourself an ark (a
box) of gopher or cypress wood; make in
it rooms (stalls, pens, coops, nests, cages, and compartments) and cover it
inside and out with pitch (bitumen). And this is the
way you are to make it: the length of the ark shall be 300 cubits, its breadth
50 cubits, and its height 30 cubits [that is, 450 ft. x 75 ft. x 45 ft.]”  (:14,
15 Amplified). FYI, based on these calculations it has been estimated that the
ark would have held 90,000,000 pounds of weight, equal to that of 600 freight
cars, or a four mile long train. Up until 1932 of all the world’s steamships
only 1% were as large, only 7 wider, only 8 higher and only 6 could hold
greater tonnage than the ark. Quite an astounding accomplishment on Noah’s
part, don’t you think.  Another
round of applause for Noah on his project management abilities. I wonder if he
had angelic help.

Now here is the sweetest part of
this whole story. I love, love, love how God hides Yeshua in places you can
only find by the Spirit’s leading, I suspect, or you wouldn’t notice it nor
would it delight you to find such places. Noah was told by God to “pitch it,”
to “cover” the box inside and outside with pitch. The word to pitch is kapar. It means to cover. This is the
only word used in the Bible for – are you ready for this? For atonement. It is
used in the Tenach (O.T.) 69 times to mean atonement. When sins are covered
they must be atoned for. It has to do with a redemptive price, a ransom, to
cleanse, forgive, be merciful or pardon, to pitch, purge away or reconcile.

The stuff with which Noah was to
“cover” the box was a kind of bitumen which is a black oily viscous material
that is a by-produce of decomposed organic material, which when mixed with
other materials makes it a sealant. It was also used as building mortar or
adhesive. Research says it was used by Neanderthal men to waterproof canoes
40,000 years ago. Who knew? The stuff is also used in part of the mummification
process. But what’s important here is not about the stuff, but about the matter
of it being a covering which is where the revelation is.

If Noah had just built the boat
and not “covered” it, the boat, or box, would have made those on the ark just
as vulnerable as those who perished, because it was the “covering” that kept
the water from overtaking them. Said another way, it was the covering or the
atonement that kept them from perishing, not the box. Do you see, that without
the covering of the blood of Yeshua, without His atonement on our behalf, we
would be just as vulnerable to the wrath of God against sin as those who were
“swept away”?! Consider that the word of God is the box, the ark. But without
the atonement, the word is just a box and will not keep us from the wrath of
God. It is the covering of the blood of Yeshua that preserves us from judgment
and being “swept away” from His presence.

If there is a message in the story
of Noah, it is this: That we must keep ourselves from the ungodliness that may
go on in our day, that we must believe God’s Word even when all around us disregard
it, and that God has covered us with His mercy, by the atoning blood of Yeshua
if we are truly His, and that we are exempt from the wrath of God even if it’s
happening right in front of us. How can we but bow before Him with reverent and
grateful hearts of worship?