Noah's Ark
We have been given an account of the life of Noah in the book of Genesis, in which we learn of the wickedness of man.
Genesis 6:5-6 “Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the Lord was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart.” We have the record of God that His righteous creation had become very wicked! And this grieved God very much, “The thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” God is Holy, and He created man Holy, and God wanted man to continue in His Holiness.
Man had corrupted the entire earth, the purpose of God in man's creation had been defeated, so God saw the need to start over. Genesis 6:11 “Now the earth was corrupt in the sight of God, and the earth was filled with violence. And God looked on the earth, and behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted their way upon the earth. Now at this point God is about to change things because God is love, and God wants His creation to be happy and blessed, so He had to start over. That is what the account of Noah is all about, God's new start with mankind. Genesis 6:13-14 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. Make for yourself an ark of gopher wood; you shall make the ark with rooms, and shall cover it inside and out with pitch.”
God made a way of deliverance for mankind, because He wanted man to live and be happy, not cursed!
Let's go back to the sixth day of creation:
Genesis 1:27 “And God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.”
Notice all that God had done, He created man in His own image, a Holy being to walk after God's own Divine nature. Remember God is love, man was made in the image of God so we can say truthfully that man was formed in and for love! Look at what God saw after He created all of the things of the earth and in the earth.
And God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.
This is how Adam started out
Adam and Eve broke the only commandment that God had given them, they took of the forbidden fruit of the tree. Eve was deceived in all of this, but Adam wasn't; he knew it was wrong! “And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, From any tree of the garden you may eat freely; but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you shall surely die." Genesis 3:16-17
Notice the reason God gave to them for not eating of the forbidden tree, because it would cause them to die to the presence of God's Divine Spirit, it was not a physical death, but a spiritual death, a death from the Divine essence of God's Spirit, and this is exactly what happened to them! In that spiritual death Adam and Eve lost all of the Divine presence and fruit of God's Spirit. From this point on, they were incapable of living in the capacity, or for the purpose that God intended. God set about to remedy this problem, you see God had enough devils, He wanted more Angels, He created Adam to bring forth a new people with Heavenly, Not Demonic attributes!
Yes, this was Adam's fall, he fell from being a Divine being, God could no longer make this statement about His creation “Behold, it was very good.” Something happened, man had died to the Divine presence of God, he was no longer like God, nor was he in God's own likeness, a living, finite reflection of the Divine Nature. This was his fall, and ours as well since we were in Adam as a seed when he fell.
Genesis chapter six shows us just how bad mankind became “The thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” God could not and still cannot abide with this kind of behavior!
Now it is evident that all of the blame can be traced back to Adam and Eve, not God, God had created them “good” not evil, THEY CHOSE to become self-willed, this happened when they did the opposite of what God had commanded them to do. They took from the tree of “good and evil” and died to all of the Divine nature that God had placed within them. Learn from this, don't listen to that serpent of old, listen only to God, this is what Jesus did. John 8:28 Jesus therefore said, "When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am He, and I do nothing on My own initiative, but I speak these things as the Father taught Me.” And again:
John 5:19. “Jesus therefore answered and was saying to them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, unless it is something He sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, these things the Son also does in like manner.”
It is plain that Jesus understood that only the Father from above is to be obeyed, The Devil tried many times with many temptations to get Jesus to repeat the awesome mistake that Adam and Eve made, but Jesus stood victorious against the “Old serpent!” We need to follow the same example that Jesus Christ set for us.
God isn't going to start all over again, He is very soon going to end this world of corruption and take out of it only one entity, His bride the true Church, this Church won't be any certain denomination, it will be comprised only of Holy sanctified believers.
What a true Christian believer isn't like
I will do this by describing in detail those things that a true believer doesn't have in their lives:
They are not self-willed.
They are not selfish.
They don't envy others.
They have no pride.
They are not wrathful or hateful, nor vain.
They live without malice.
They are not sensual.
Guile is never in their mouths.
They have no falseness.
They are not covetous.
They are definitely not worldly-minded.
Their souls are not in any torment.
They are not envious.
They are never conceited.
And of course they don't love self-esteem.
This is not the complete list, but it should serve to give you an idea of what the true sanctified Christian man or woman is like.
To understand the make-up of a fallen soul all you have to do is look over the list you just read and reverse the statements, if it said they are not, realize that the fallen soul is.
The fallen soul whether or not they pretend to be a Christian will have these types of fruit in their lives:
They all will be self-willed.
They will be selfish.
They will envy others.
They will have pride.
They will be wrathful and hateful at times.
They will be vain at times.
They will have malice at times.
They will be sensual.
Guile will be a part of their lives
You will be able to find falseness in them.
They will be covetous.
They will definitely be worldly-minded.
Their souls will oftentimes be in torment.
They will be envious,
They will be conceited at times.
And most will love self-esteem.
I am not saying that all of these attributes will be evident all of the time, but at times you will see many of these attributes in their lives!
First of all, why did God choose Noah?
The Scripture answers this question for us in Genesis 7:1 Then the Lord said to Noah, "Enter the ark, you and all your household; for you alone I have seen to be righteous before Me in this time.” Do you see how God makes decisions like this? God in the beginning of His creation wanted a people that were a duplicate of His nature, because His nature is perfect, and good. But, man chose to be self-willed and not live according to the nature that God had originally given them, as recorded in Genesis chapter three! And after six short chapters of the Bible we find that all men, except Noah, had become very corrupt and evil.
God in His infinite wisdom saw that there was only one thing He could do that would be successful, and that was to start over with the only man that was not corrupt and evil, which was Noah, God included his family as well.
Noah went through in faith
Listen to what the Bible says about this man Noah, Genesis 6:22. “Thus Noah did according to all that God had commanded him, so he did.” This same thought is repeated in Genesis 7:5. “And Noah did according to all that the Lord had commanded him.” Do you see Noah's obedience, when you do, you are really seeing Noah's faith!
True faith always produces true obedience! Noah built an ark, a large boat, where no large body of water had ever existed, this is faith. Noah endured all of the jokes that the people of this world dished out; this was faith. Noah preached a message of righteousness to the people of this world only to receive back ridicule and debasement from them. God told Noah to collect a few of each kind of the land animals that existed on the earth, and bring them into the ark, imagine bringing in snakes, lions and tigers! This was of course another example of Noah's faith in action.
Noah Always did according to all that God had commanded him.
Many people do not realize that his obedience to God in all of these marvelous things was the result of his believing God; when we don't obey God it is always because we don't believe God, we think to ourselves “I don't have to do this God's way, and everything will still work out all right.”
John 3:36 “He who believes in the Son has eternal life; but he who does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him."
This is an interesting Scripture, for, in it, we can see the difference between believing, and obeying, disbelieving and disobeying!
*NOTE IN THE KING JAMES BIBLE, THE WORD “BELIEVE” IS USED IN BOTH PLACES. THE SECOND TIME THE WORD “BELIEVE” IS USED IT IS ACTUALLY A DIFFERENT GREEK WORD, AND THIS GREEK WORD MEANS TO OBEY. Most of the newer translations have caught this error. The translators of the King James Bible apologized for the rush job they were forced to do translating the King James version of the Bible. Until the Civil war, the translator's notes were in the King James Bible, in these notes the translators gave an admonition for us to read other versions of the Bible as well, because of the hurried way that they were forced to do their translating. This note placed in the King James Bible by the translators has been removed! I wonder who it was that made the decision to remove such an important note from the very men that did the translation of the King James Bible. Also, what could have been their motive for removing the translator's notes?
Back to faith
Hebrews11:7 “By faith Noah, being warned by God about things not yet seen, in reverence prepared an ark for the salvation of his household, by which he condemned the world, and became an heir of the righteousness which is according to faith.”
And again in Matthew 24:37-41 "For the coming of the Son of Man will be just like the days of Noah. For as in those days which were before the flood they were eating and drinking, they were marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and they did not understand until the flood came and took them all away; so shall the coming of the Son of Man be. Then there shall be two men in the field; one will be taken, and one will be left. Two women will be grinding at the mill; one will be taken, and one will be left”
The Apostle Peter had something to say about Noah: 2 Peter 2:4-5 “For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to pits of darkness, reserved for judgment; and did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a preacher of righteousness, with seven others, when He brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly.”
This is the same thing that is going on now, I believe that this world is just about as corrupt now as it was then. The only difference is that God has His Church, the bride of Jesus Christ is being taken out of the world, and this has been happening for the last two thousand years. Can you see that we must in the same way as Noah did, believe (obey) God, and do what God says to do whether or not we understand it?
Are you in the process of building your ark? I don't mean a boat, I mean are you doing the things that God has told you to do, or are you being disobedient? We have the above warning in the book of Matthew, the warning is clear, we will all be going about our daily lives, and suddenly everything will be over for us. This can happen in two different ways, the first as described in Matthew 24:37. The second way it can happen is this: You might be going about your day's business, suddenly you feel a great pain in the middle of your chest. People start asking you what is wrong, but just as suddenly you are no longer in your body, for your spirit has been separated from your body, this is what death is. The people around your dead body will say he has died, or she has died! But you will know that you are not dead, you are simply no longer in your body, you won't even know exactly where you are.
This second scenario can have many different ways of coming about, for instance: you might be walking somewhere and a car might come careening around a corner and hit you. We don't know how our life is going to end, and we don't know When our life will end. About the only thing we can be sure of is that our life on earth WILL end!
When this happens you will be willing to give up everything you have on this earth to have a second chance at living your life correctly. News flash!!! You actually have that second chance, right this very moment, but after you pass from this life into eternity you will never have another chance!
Believe God and repent of your self-willed way of life, follow Noah's example and look carefully at the commandments of Jesus Christ.
AND DO THEM!
Today is the day of salvation. Don't look around for someone to help you, you know if you have a selfish heart, a worldly spirit, a love of esteem and pride in your life. You and only you can form the words or groans of prayer that can reach the throne of God; the only thing you really need is a contrite and broken heart about the way you have treated God and your fellow man. DO IT NOW!