This is the third part of a series on the global deluge of Noah’s day. Thus far, we have seen the importance of teaching about the deluge, and that it’s more than just a Sunday school class for children. We also studied some characteristics and the purpose of the global deluge and the Ark. Now we turn to see what the whole account of the deluge teaches us about God, and how an increasingly humanistic world accuses Him for His actions.
The God that sent the Deluge
The skeptic would say (and often does), “Suppose it’s true, that your God sent a flood that covered the entire world. That would then make your God a murderer.” Before answering, it is interesting to note that these are the same people who tend to defend abortion by saying that the mother has the freedom to choose, but when the Creator decides to choose, they are no longer pro-choice. Also, only if God exists can one have the logical basis for speaking of categories such as good and evil. Because if we are all here due to an accident of random chemical reactions (as the naturalistic model/philosophy claims), there would be no universal moral law, only instincts and our subjective opinions. If only subjective opinions were to exist, then a complaint against God’s actions on the part of a skeptic would have to fall into that same category of subjective opinions and thus undermine his very argument.
However, God does exist. And the one and true God decided to extinguish the people on earth and did so while being 100% righteous. Men and women offend the Holy, Just, and Pure Creator God with their rebellion and transgression day and night. His holy wrath is above them (John 3:36), so the simple fact that they continue to live for every second of their existence is by God’s grace and mercy. In fact, the problem is even greater than the event of the deluge. Why do we have to die in the first place?
This question comes up several times in question-and-answer panels wherever I have the honour of traveling to and sharing: “The old woman who loves her grandchildren has to suffer and die just like the murderer who has raped children, why this apparent injustice?”
Since the fall of man (Gen 3), death became the exit from this life (Rom 5:12) for all life on earth (except Enoch). What is most devastating is that, ” but your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he does not hear.” (Isaiah 59:2).
However, physical death is not the real existential problem for human beings. In fact, it is a sign of God’s mercy. Consider the following scenario, product of our imagination:
Adam and Eve sinned and thus severed their relationship with God, the Creator. From then on, they fill the earth with sons like Cain, and great-great-grandchildren as described in Genesis 6. These people never experience death, and when the day comes when Nero, Hitler and Nimrod fight for world power, war breaks out over the whole earth (and none die among them since there is no death). But the situation is even worse. The heart of every human being is described thus: More deceitful than all, is the heart, and without remedy; who will understand it? (Jeremiah 17:9). This describes the heart of both: that of Emperor Domitian who persecuted the church, and that of the old woman who is a loving grandmother. It also reminds us that for the evil human heart, there is no remedy. This would be an eternal sentence where political and internal corruption dwells within each person. There is no hope of getting out of this eternal sentence of evil.
This scenario, thank God, is not the reality! Our time of living in corruption in this created world has an expiration date! Moreover, God has provided an Ark in Christ Jesus, and that means that whoever believes in Him will not suffer eternal punishment but is reconciled to God and given a righteousness not his own.
The Deluge was real. Not only real, but universal. God’s judgment is not metaphorical, nor poetic, but a sure fact. The Deluge reminds us of the severity of sin before the Holy God of the universe. But it also shows us how God elects evildoers, justifies them, and saves them by His grace. Peter was right, so many were those who ignored God’s judgment in the past until suddenly the deluge came and God’s time of patience for them was over, and many are those who also ignore the coming judgment.
We need to step out of the fashion of our century and understand that God’s redemptive plan is not meant to restore my marriage (though it can), nor to provide material wealth in this short earthly existence. The purpose of God’s redemptive plan is to glorify Himself by rescuing a few from His own judgment and giving them eternal life together with Christ Jesus. And for others, he first judged by the waters of his wrath, he will next judge by the flames. And the eternal end of all who die without Christ, whether by water, fire, cancer, or accident, is the lake of fire.
Just as it was in the days of Noah, so will it be in the days of the Son of Man. They were eating and drinking and marrying and being given in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all (Luke 17:26-27).
J.C. Ryle reminds us:
When the Flood came, men were found “eating and drinking, marrying and giving themselves in marriage,” absorbed in their worldly activities, and completely ignorant of Noah’s repeated warnings. They saw no chance of a flood. They didn’t think there was any danger. But at last the flood came suddenly and “took them all.” Everyone who was not with Noah on the Ark drowned. All were brought in the end to account, without forgiveness, without conversion, and without any preparation to meet God. And our Lord says, “So shall the coming of the Son of Man be.”
The reason that we don’t like the death of so many people when God sends judgment is because we are humanists! We believe that everything is centered around man, and we are deceived into believing that man has some “innocence” before God. Because of our humanistic worldview, we find it difficult to accept the story of the Deluge and the severity of it. It is also difficult for us to communicate the eternality of judgment for the lost. I confess that I have gone through times when I have struggled with the concept of the lake of fire. An eternity in flames is horrendous, and in my humanism, it seemed unfair. Although I trust God and His Word, my carnal mind has struggled a lot with the concept of hell, and so I understand why we have a hard time being frank with God’s judgment sometimes. A testimony that has helped me with this false dichotomy between the love and the severity of God’s judgment comes from the mouth of a missionary in Africa, and I hope it will help you as well. For this reason, I dare to share this long quote from preacher Paris Reidhead:
Now I ask you, what is the philosophy of missions? What is the philosophy of evangelism?
If you ask me why I went to Africa, I will tell you that I went primarily to “improve” God’s justice. I didn’t think it was okay for anyone to go to hell without a chance to be saved, so I went “to give poor sinners a chance to go to heaven.”
Now, I haven’t explained it further, but if you look at what I just said, do you know what that is? It’s humanism. I was simply trying to use the provisions of Jesus Christ as a means to improve human conditions of suffering and poverty.
And when I went to Africa, I discovered that Africans were not poor, ignorant pagans running through the jungle, waiting for someone to explain to them how to go to heaven. They were monsters of iniquity! They were living against, and with a contempt for, the knowledge of God, far greater than I imagined!
They deserved hell, because they refused to walk in the light of their consciences, in the light of the law they already had written on their hearts, with the testimony of nature and truth!
I was so angry that on one occasion, as I was praying, I complained to God that He had sent me to be with people who were not waiting to hear how to get to heaven. For when I got there, I found that they already knew about heaven, and they didn’t want to go there because they loved their sin, they preferred to stay in it.
I went there motivated by humanism. I had seen photographs of lepers, I had seen photographs of people with sores, I had seen photographs of native funerals… And I didn’t want my fellow humans to suffer eternally in hell after such a miserable existence on earth.
But it was there, in Africa, that God began to tear off the façade of this humanism!
And it was that day, when I was praying in my room, with the door closed, that I wrestled with God. Because there I was, coming to the conclusion that people who I thought were ignorant, and who wanted to know how to go to heaven, and who were saying, “Let someone come teach us!” didn’t really want to take the time to talk to me or anyone else. They were not interested in the Bible, nor in Christ; And they loved their sin and wanted to stay in it. And it was in that place, in that moment, that I felt that the whole thing was a mockery, a farce, and that they had seen my face!
There, alone in my room, as I faced God in all frankness, with what I felt in my heart, it seemed to me as if I heard Him say to me: “Yes, Paris, that’s right. And will not the Judge of all the earth do justice? The wicked are lost and are going to hell; and not because they have not heard the gospel. They are going to hell because they are sinners who love their sin! And because they deserve hell. But… I did not send you for them. I didn’t send you for their sake.”
And I heard it clearly, as never before; though not with a physical voice, but it was the echo of the truth of the ages, making its way through an open heart. I heard God say to my heart that day something like this: “I didn’t send you to Africa because of the lost, I sent you to Africa for My sake… They deserve hell! But I love you! And I suffered the agonies of hell for them! I didn’t send you for them! I SENT YOU FOR ME… Do I not deserve the reward of my suffering? Don’t I deserve those for whom I died?”
And that turned everything upside down! And I changed everything! And it put things in the right perspective! At that point I stopped working for Micah for ten coins and a shirt! I was serving a living God! I was no longer there because of the lost. I was there for the Saviour who suffered the agonies of hell for me, even though He didn’t deserve it. But He did deserve them, because He died for them.
Do you see? Let me conclude, let me summarize. Christianity states, “The chief end of all that exists is the glory of God.” Humanism proclaims, “The chief end of all that exists is the happiness of man.” One of these principles was born in hell: the deification of man; the other was born in heaven: the glorification of God!
So, do you see it? The end of all that exists is the glory of God.
But the end of everything is not everyone’s judgment. God in His grace offers us the Ark of Jesus Christ to pass over His eternal judgment against the wicked. Christ, our Passover (1 Cor 5:7), offers us propitiation on Calvary’s cross. The end of everything is the glory of God, but God has determined, by His glory, to save a few, to reconcile them, restore them, remake them, and redeem them.
Thank you God for the Ark.
Thank you God for Christ.
Glorify yourself.