If everyone could turn to Matthew 24, I am going to just read a few verses out of this chapter, beginning in verse 35. Matthew 24:35-39:
Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away. But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only. But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, And knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.
I will stop reading there.
If you have had a chance to share about May 21st, 2011 being the Rapture and about the 5-month period of torment followed by the destruction of the world on October 21, 2011, maybe you have mentioned this to friends or family or people whom you know, and they have come back to you and share a verse like Matthew 24:36:
But of that day and hour knoweth no man…
Actually, this is fairly common today amongst people in the churches when they do hear that there is a date set. You tell them that this date comes from the Bible and they say, “No, no, no; you cannot do this with the Bible because no one knows the day or hour.” Well, this is one of the verses. There are a few verses that do say this and this is one of them here in Matthew 24:36.
It is very significant and important that after making this statement, God speaks of the days of Noah and He likens it to the time when Christ will come, as it says in Matthew 24:37:
But as the days of Noe (Noah) were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.
So there is a comparison that God is making. He is actually directing us to the book of Genesis, to the time before the flood, to look at what happened, because what happened then is going to happen when the Son of Man comes. History is going to repeat and God is directing us there, just as He does earlier in the book of Matthew, in chapter 24, when He speaks of the abomination of desolation, as Daniel the prophet wrote about it. That is an indicator to go read the book of Daniel, to go look up the information dealing with the abomination of desolation, and now He is mentioning Noah and He is telling us to look at Noah.
Also, if you go to Luke 17:26-27, it says:
And as it was in the days of Noe (Noah), so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man. They did eat, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noe (Noah) entered into the ark, and the flood came, and destroyed them all.
You can see, again, that this is indicating that the days of Noah are going to repeat in our day.
What happened in the days of Noah? Well, God did send a flood and it destroyed the whole world and everybody in the world perished, except for Noah, his wife, his three sons, and their wives: eight people. Eight people lived through the flood, because they got into the ark when the waters came. No one had ever seen a flood like that before and not ever since either, because the waters covered even the highest mountain. I think that the Bible says it was 15 cubits and upward.
So it was a tremendous amount of water that God poured out on the world, and they were all caught suddenly in the judgment. As it said in Matthew 24, they did not know. Remember? It says in Matthew 24:38-39:
For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe (Noah) entered into the ark, And knew not until the flood came…
They were caught completely off-guard. God came, we could say, as a thief in the night and surprised them.
Is it not terrible that God did not warn those people? Is it not terrible that they did not hear anything about the flood? That they knew nothing about it at all? They were just purely ignorant of the flood!
Is that true? Is that true? That is not true, is it? They heard a lot about the flood in the days prior to the flood—and we will look at how they heard—but despite that, God says that they were caught off-guard.
Do you think that there are going to be people on May 21 st, 2011 who are caught off-guard? Who are shocked? And surprised? And it comes upon them suddenly? That God has resurrected His people and opened up the ground with great earthquakes, and then He has raptured all of His people who were alive upon the earth and He has taken them up into Heaven?
Yes, we know that there are going to be multitudes of people, hundreds of millions, if not billions, who survive the earthquake and who are going to be surprised and amazed, “How can this be?” But not a one of them is going to be able to say, “I did not hear about it.”
You see, this is what God is saying, “As in the days before the flood, so shall the coming of the Son of Man be,” and history is going to repeat itself. It is shocking that God is telling us this before it happens, but this is what is going to happen.
Now, they were eating and drinking before the flood. They were eating and drinking. Is it a wrong thing to eat and drink?
No, we all have to eat and drink. The Son of Man came eating and drinking. John the Baptist did not come eating and drinking, but it did not matter because the church of their day, Israel, would not listen to either one of them.
People are good at trying to find a reason as to why they do not have to listen to the truth of God’s Word. They will find something, even if it is totally opposite. They faulted John the Baptist for not eating and drinking, and they faulted Christ for eating and drinking.
Well, what could they do? You know, what can you do to please certain people? The answer is: nothing. So since the Son of Man came eating and drinking, there is nothing wrong with eating and drinking.
Is there anything wrong with marrying and giving in marriage? No, that is God’s plan, is it not? A man and a woman who are attracted to one another, as long as they are qualified and they have never previously been married, they can marry. They can enter into a marriage relationship, and that glorifies God because that is according to His commandment that males and females marry and that their families give them away; the father gives away the daughter. They were marrying and giving in marriage, so what is the problem?
Well, you see, this language just indicates life as normal, life as usual. It is typical. It is what has happened in this world all throughout history. People eat and drink and people marry and are given in marriage. But, you know, the problem is that God was warning them. He was warning them of what was to come, and yet they still, after hearing the warning, continued on as normal.
Let us look at Nineveh for a contrast. If you turn to the book of Jonah, in Jonah 3:4:
And Jonah began to enter into the city a day’s journey, and he cried, and said, Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.
Look at the reaction in verse 5, Jonah 3:5:
So the people of Nineveh believed God, and proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them even to the least of them.
What is a fast? I am not going to eat and I am not going to drink. It actually says this a little later on. The king says in verse 7, Jonah 3:7:
And he caused it to be proclaimed and published through Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles, saying, Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste any thing: let them not feed, nor drink water:
Why? Why this kind of severe reaction? Because they had forty days. They had forty days until they were going to be destroyed, and they believed God.
Now, it does not say that they believed Jonah; it says that they believed God. They believed the message that God sent through that one individual, that lone prophet who was rather unusual because he had just come out of the belly of a whale. He was unkempt, disheveled, probably smelly, and yet they believed this prophet who could have looked very strange to them, plus he came from another nation.
They believed his declaration that was only one sentence long. He brought nothing to back it up. He did not do any miracles. God did not cause him to go into the city and raise the dead. He did not have him go in healing the blind or the deaf, as some of God’s people, the apostles, were equipped to do for a little while after Christ went into Heaven; they were doing those kinds of miracles. God did not validate the ministry of Jonah in any way that we are aware of. He did not have him be proved that he was a true prophet, only that he went in and declared this sentence, and the whole city from the king on down repented.
So part of their repentance was to abstain from food and drink because it was not going to be business as usual. It was not going to be their normal routine. They had just heard information concerning time: “Yet forty days”; and judgment: “and Nineveh shall be overthrown.”
They took this seriously. It became the most serious thing in their lives at that point. Commerce stopped. Society stopped. Social relations stopped, like marrying and giving in marriage. You do not marry when you are sitting in sackcloth and ashes.
All of these things that are normal—they are fine; they have their place in this world—came to a close for a short period of time. We do not know how long they sat in sackcloth and ashes or how long they did not eat or drink, and God does not want us to know. He does want us to know that they did not go on with their lives as they had been living, and that is the key. That is the important difference.
This is why God says of the people prior to the flood that they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, from the day before they knew, up until the day that Noah entered into the Ark. It did not impact them at all. They did not believe. They did not really believe; because if you really believe, then you would repent. The Ninevites did repent, but the people before the flood did not repent; they did not turn.
Now, one of the reasons might be because it was a long period of time leading up to the flood. If you go to Genesis 6:1-2, it says:
And 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 which they chose.
This reference here to “sons of God” is referring to true believers or individuals. Actually, I think it is better said that this is referring to individuals in the families of true believers. They had an association with God. They were part of those who knew that there was a God and which God it was. They were the “sons of God.” And the “daughters of men” were women who were of the world. They were outside of that godly line. They did not follow Jehovah. They did not follow the Lord.
So they were unequally yoked, we would say today or as the New Testament puts it, where you have believers marrying unbelievers, those who profess to be Christian, we could say, marrying just anybody in the world. But God prohibits this. This is not pleasing to Him, and this is what began their trouble.
Then it says in verse 3, Genesis 6:3:
And JEHOVAH said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years.
Now, what is this reference to 120 years? This is a reference to the time that Noah would have to construct the ark, to bring the animals into the ark, to do everything that God wanted done, as far as that ark was concerned. There was 120-year window before the flood came.
So God, at this point, is letting the world know and Noah know that 120 years from this date will be the flood. This would be the year 5110 B.C. That is 120 years before the flood.
And, you know, 120 years is a long time. It is a long time. I mean, if we go back 120 years from this date, I think we would end up where?…1891 or 18-something (1889)….it would be a period of time before automobiles and before all of the technology began in this world. That is a pretty long period of time, and the world was given this length of time.
At this point, Noah is a young man of 480. He is 480. He still has 120 years before he becomes an old man of 600. So He is middle-aged at this point, and it is also interesting that 480 is multiples of 120: 4 x 120 = 480, which would be Noah’s age, and God gave another 120-year period until the flood.
It just seems like that was too long for people. That was too long for people. Forty days, okay I can see it. Two years, you start beginning to see it. But 120 years?
A verse like we find in Ecclesiastes 8, I think, applies. This is the chapter in the earlier verses, 5 and 6, where God speaks of a wise man’s heart discerning time and judgment. In this same context, it says in verse 11, Ecclesiastes 8:11:
Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil.
So they were given a period of time, and the nature of man is to relax. Relax. This is off so far in the future, I may not even be alive.
Actually, this was the problem all along throughout the Church Age with the coming of Christ. He may come at some point distant, you know, some faraway day in the future.
So people live their lives eating and drinking, marrying, giving in marriage, as normal. They lived as normal, and yet 120 years, even though it is a long period of time (especially to us today), it passed. It passed.
The reference to 120 had to be to the flood because God did not set man’s age at 120. They were living to hundreds of years before the flood. Even after the flood, many people passed a date of 120. So that was a timeline that God gave to the day or the year of the flood itself, that it would be 120 years.
Now, what was going on for that 120-year period? What was happening? Well, God later gives Noah instructions. He says in Genesis 6:8-9:
But Noah found grace in the eyes of JEHOVAH. These are the generations of Noah: Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God.
Maybe we will look at this later, but Noah was saved in the same way anybody today is saved: by grace. “By grace,” it says, “you are saved through faith; and that not of yourselves,” in Ephesians 2:8-9. He was saved in exactly the same way anybody has ever been saved, through the grace of God, as God bestowed upon him His mercy and grace and overlooked, or actually better put, paid for those sins in Christ from before the foundation of the world, so that He could overlook Noah’s sin. So there was no difference between him and us today.
It goes on to say in verse 10, Genesis 6:10-12:
And Noah begat three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence. And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth.
What did they do that was so corrupt?
In Deuteronomy 4, we find this word “corrupt” in verse 16. It says in Deuteronomy 4:16:
Lest ye corrupt yourselves, and make you a graven image, the similitude of any figure, the likeness of male or female,
Also in the same chapter, in verse 25, Deuteronomy 4:25:
When thou shalt beget children, and children’s children, and ye shall have remained long in the land, and shall corrupt yourselves, and make a graven image…
So they were falling into idolatry. They were making graven images; the same story. The same story before the flood as after the flood, up until our day, as people worship images or ideas or doctrines out of their own minds and not as God declares them to be through His Word. At that time, it was not written, but God did give revelation. People did know His Word, and yet they were making graven images and serving them and bowing down to them and committing spiritual fornication. As a result, God was displeased. He was angry with them and He had a plan to destroy them, as it says in verse 13, Genesis 6:13-15:
And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is 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; rooms shalt thou make in the ark, and shalt pitch it within and without with pitch. And this is the fashion which thou shalt make it of: The length of the ark shall be three hundred cubits, the breadth of it fifty cubits, and the height of it thirty cubits.
Then it goes on.
So God is instructing Noah, “Build this boat. Here is the type of wood. Here is how you pitch it. Here is how high it is going to be. It is going to have three decks or stories,” very detailed instructions to a man, and we really do not know what Noah was like personally or what skills he had.
Some people are good in building things and some people are not. Some people are not. What if you had been given the instructions to build the boat? Well, we know that God would have qualified him and He did give him three sons to help, and there could have been others who were hired labor to do certain things. But still, it was an enormous project that God gave to Noah that would take some time. You do not build a ship that size, without the tools that we have today, in a quick period of time.
So God gave him this 120-year period, and all during this period, we can know that people were being warned. They were being warned of what was to come, because the boat itself, in its building, in its construction, was a testimony to what God had told Noah, that a flood was coming and that He would destroy the world with the flood.
Or let us go to 1 Peter 3:18-20, where it says:
1 Pet 3:18 For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit: By which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison; Which sometime….
That is better translated, “Which aforetime.”
Which aforetime were disobedient, when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water.
You see how Jesus preached to the spirits in prison the days leading up to the completion of the ark. “While the ark was a preparing,” the Lord Jesus was preaching to the “spirits in prison.” The “spirits in prison” are those who are taken captive by Satan at his will. They are in the prison, in the dungeon of their own confinement. Their own sins are wrapped about them, like cords, holding them fast. They are prisoners to sin and to Satan. But God preached; the Lord Jesus preached.
How did He do it? Well, how does God preach today? It is God; remember even when Jonah went into Nineveh, the Ninevites believed God. Jonah was preaching the preaching that God bid him, it says in Jonah 3, but they did not see Jonah, necessarily. They understood that it came from God and that the preaching was from God, and that is how God has set it up.
We are ambassadors for Christ and we do beseech you in His place or in His stead, “Be ye reconciled to God.” Since we are an ambassador, we are messengers carrying information from the King to people, but God is the One who actually sent us. We are the ones who are sent into the world to preach so that others might hear and become saved, and yet God is the One who is actually doing the preaching. He is the One who has moved us to obey Him to get His Word into the world.
So here, Jesus was preaching during the period of time that God was long-sufferingly waiting for the ark to be completed. He had already seen the sin, the thoughts of man’s heart was only evil continually when God visited them in the year 5110 B.C., and anyone who would have died would have died under the wrath of God if they were not saved; they would have been condemned. But God put up with their sins for another 120 years because He had a plan, and that plan included Noah and his family.
Or turn over to 2 Peter 2, and I will start reading in verse 4. We read in 2 Peter 2:4-5, where it says:
For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment; And spared not the old world, but saved Noah the eighth person, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood upon the world of the ungodly;
You see what God is saying about Noah. He is describing him as a “preacher of righteousness,” and, you know, of course he would have shared what he knew from God, all the information, because that is what God commands His people, to not hold back anything but to bring the whole counsel of God.
Noah would have told people, as he was building the ark. Maybe a little five-year old boy comes up and says, “Noah,” or probably with a lot more respect, “Mr. Noah, what are you doing?” “I am building an ark, son. I am building an ark because God has told me that He is going to destroy the world in so many years.” They would have seen him working and his sons working. He was always busy with that boat.
Now, Noah also probably had to make a living. It is not a business to build an ark. He was building that ship in obedience to God, but he also would have needed some kind of income. He would have had to have done some type of work, maybe a farm, maybe building other things for people, so he could not devote all of his time to the construction of the ark. That is another reason why God gave 120 years, because Noah would have to provide for his family.
So we do not know a lot of details, but we do know that the construction itself—the building of the ship—was a testimony and a witness to anybody who would see or live nearby.
At that time, there could have been one or two million people in the world, but remember that it was all one continent. The days of Peleg had not come yet; the world was not divided. Also, there was one language. The tower of Babel had not happened and there was not all the languages that we find today. There was one language and one continent, and we see later in Genesis at the tower of Babel that the people wanted to come together, which is the nature of most people. People want to live in close proximity with other people.
So Noah, yes, he is building this ark and the people are not like thousands of miles in that direction over an ocean. They are all somewhere, probably in a region. They would be spread out to some degree. But, more than likely, the vast majority of people knew what Noah was doing. They had to know.
Just think of Jonah, again. Think of Jonah. He does not even have a tract. He does not have a backpack full of tracts. He has no paper at all, no literature. He only has his voice, however far that will carry, and he was not, it appears, all that eager in bringing the message to the Ninevites. But he went into the city and he made his declaration and God multiplied it or made it abound (I do not know what God did) to the degree that the whole city heard. The 120,000 people in Nineveh heard, as a result of Jonah, one man, entering into a city.
This is just one idea of how the Word of God can spread and how God can forewarn people, when He has a mind to, of what He is about to do.
So God set up Noah and established him to build this boat. We can be sure that the people saw it, and what was their reaction? Did they have a reaction? Did they respond?
Well, God does not tell us all the details, like with Sodom. We knew that Lot’s sons-in-law mocked when they heard that God was going to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. But God does not fill us in.
It would have been interesting, would it not, if God would have filled us in and given us some accounts of people standing afar off and having a good joke on old Noah, on this fool, (he is not an old man yet) on this crazy man? He obviously is off his rocker and insane, or whatever else they could think of.
People are quick with the wit to just make it sound like it is nothing you have to worry about. You do not have to worry about this ark. You do not have to worry about this flood that is supposedly coming. No, do not worry. Do not worry. Just go on with your life. That is the counsel of man that has always proven wrong but always proven to have many people listen to it and agree with it, and so they go about their lives like nothing ever happened.
We know today that as it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be in the coming of the Son of Man. You can find many people who scoff, and that is what God tells us. There will be scoffers in the last days. They just do not think that it is important.
Sometime, type in “May 21, 2011” in Google or Yahoo and you will find groups that have popped up, Chat Groups or Forums on the Internet, and they are discussing certain things. There is a group about the Mayans. It is interesting, because anybody is free to post. A Family Radio listener went in and posted the information about May 21st, 2011, and they went off on a thread discussing this. What really struck me and stuck in my mind was this one person who said, “You know, I joined this Mayan Chat Group to talk about 2012 as the possible end of the world because I thought it would be fun. I thought it would be fun; but now, we are discussing this May 21, 2011 and it is not fun. It is not fun!”
You see, the people really do not believe the Mayan prophecy of 2012, so you can talk about that. You can joke about that. You can have a deep discussion about that, because it has absolutely no chance of happening, and I think that people realize that. But when you are coming seriously and you are presenting verses from the Bible and you are saying that this information came only from the Bible and no other way, then it ruins the fun. It ruins the fun! People just want a quick quip, just a quick little witticism to dismiss it so that they do not have to listen to it and they do not have to worry about it, and the church is trying to provide this. The church is trying to provide this by informing everyone, “No man knows the day or hour. No man knows. You do not have to worry about it.”
It is very sad that they are coming up with this, because let us read that again in Matthew 24. It says in verse 36 that no one knows the day or hour, and then it says in Matthew 24:37-39:
But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, And knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.
2 Peter 2 told us that God brought the flood upon the world of the ungodly. All of the unsaved, all of the wicked, all those who had no relationship, no true relationship with God, they were not saved in any way. They were surprised. They were caught off-guard. Christ came as a thief in the night.
Someone brought up this verse the other night when we opened up the “May 21, 2011 – The Rapture!” room on Paltalk in the Christianity section. She brought up this verse, “See, no one knows the day or hour.”
Okay, you brought up the verse. Look at the context, “As it was in the days of Noah, so shall also the coming of the Son of Man be.” Nobody knew in the whole world in the days of Noah? That is not true. Noah knew and Noah’s family knew. They knew for 120 years.
If that is not good enough, go to Genesis 7:4-5, where God comes to Noah and says:
For yet seven days, and I will cause it to rain upon the earth forty days and forty nights; and every living substance that I have made will I destroy from off the face of the earth. And Noah did according unto all that JEHOVAH commanded him.
God came to Noah in the 120th year, the year 4990 B.C., and He said, “Now I am going to get more precise. I am going to give you an exact day, an exact day,” which is the 17th day of the 2nd month of Noah’s 600th year. “One week from this day, Noah, the flood will come and the world will be destroyed.”
So Matthew 24 tells us, “As in the days of Noah, so shall the coming of the Son of Man be,” and we find that Noah had advance information. He was forewarned. He had to be in order to build the ark. Then even more so, God told him the exact day and month, as well as the year.
“Okay, well, no man knows the day or hour. No man knows.”
That is true. Not of ourselves, but that does not mean that we cannot know, that God cannot reveal it, that He cannot forewarn us, as He does before all judgments.
Let us look at one other reference to Noah in the New Testament, in Hebrews 11. Hebrews 11:7 says:
By faith Noah…
Again, when we read Hebrews 11, the references to faith are always to Christ, “By the Lord Jesus Christ,” we could say, or “By Jesus.”
By faith Noah, being warned of God of things not seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house…
See how God is telling us that it had not happened yet? It was only in God’s mind. He was going to do it. He declared that He would do it, and yet for a period of time, it was as though it had not happened.
There was a world before the flood. There was a time that this world existed before the flood, and people were warned of that day just like we are being warned today. Has May 21st, 2011 come yet? It is not here.
Well, it tells us here in Hebrews 11:1:
Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
Many people are going to believe on May 21st, 2011 when they see it, when it happens, when someone in their family is taken up or when their backyard opens up from an earthquake because there are some bodies of people who died there 800 years ago.
People are going to see it on that day and then they will cry, “Lord, Lord!,” because that is what the Bible tells us. But then it is too late because the door is shut and God has already gathered His people and there are no more plans to spare the world or to save anybody else. It is all over and done with. The door is shut. Christ is the Door, and the Door of Salvation has closed and will never open again; that is it.
Well, God, you see, is telling us to hear the warning now, right now. Do not put it off, as men tend to do. Men naturally do this.
Let me read that verse again in Ecclesiastes 8:11:
Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil.
No, the guillotine is not falling today or tomorrow. Well, it could, individually, for any person. It is not scheduled for today or tomorrow. It is scheduled for May 21st, 2011.
So people are thinking, I know because the Bible tells us that this is the nature of people, “I have two years; I have two years, so I can still live like I want to live the rest of this year, maybe all of 2010.” You know, who knows what goes on in the minds of people? “Maybe on January 1st 2011, I am going to get serious with God; I am going to start listening to what I am hearing. You see, I can still enjoy the world for like a year and a half and then get serious at that time. Boy, I will start praying then!”
Well, in all likelihood, in all likelihood, a person who thinks that way, when January 1st comes, they will put it off and put it off, because they are not a child of God. If you are thinking that way, that is not the mindset that God would give us. We should think right now, at this time, “It is time to go to the Lord; it is time to beseech Him for His mercy.”
What can we beseech Him for? “O Lord, take me into the ark! O Lord, have mercy on me that I might enter into the safety of the Lord Jesus Christ and be saved so that I will not perish, so that I will not die and I will not miss out on eternal life and living forever.”
Yes, but someone might say, “But it is different. It was different for Noah than it is for me today, because God told Noah personally. God came to Noah and told him directly to build the ark. He instructed him on what to do and Noah, of course, obeyed. If God told me that way, if He spoke to me out of Heaven, I would obey, too!”
Well, let us read Hebrews 11:7 again:
By faith Noah, being warned of God of things not seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house; by the which he condemned the world, and became heir of the righteousness which is by Christ (by faith).
The key here is the warning, that Noah was warned of God.
Turn to Psalm 19. It says in Psalm 19:7-11:
The law of JEHOVAH is perfect, converting the soul: the testimony of JEHOVAH is sure, making wise the simple. The statutes of LORD are right, rejoicing the heart: the commandment of JEHOVAH is pure, enlightening the eyes. The fear of JEHOVAH is clean, enduring for ever: the judgments of JEHOVAH are true and righteous altogether. More to be desired are they than gold, yea, than much fine gold: sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb. Moreover by them is thy servant warned: and in keeping of them there is great reward.
You see, God warns by His Word. His Word, which are all those words there that are synonyms for the Word of God: the Law, the Testimony, the Statutes, the Commandments, the Judgments; exactly like Psalm 119. They are synonyms; they are all speaking of the same thing, “By these things—or the Word, the Bible—is Thy servant warned.” That is how we are warned.
You are hearing, “Yet seven days,” as it says in Genesis 7, “and the flood comes.” Then 2 Peter 3 tells us “one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.” That is right from the Bible, and it so happens that in 2011, it will be exactly 7,000 years from the flood. 7,000; we are it—we are it.
If it was 5500 years from the flood, people would not have to worry; you could relax. But 2011 is 7000 years exactly. And, of course, we know that the end of the great tribulation, which began on the day before Pentecost in May of 1988, is coming to a close on May 21st, 2011, and that May 21st, 2011 is the 17th day of the 2nd month of the Hebrew or Biblical calendar, which is the day that God shut Noah and his family and animals into the ark.
With that move, God delivered those eight people and also the animals, and at the same time, He shut out, forever, all those who were in the world so that they could not enter into the ark anymore. They drowned and they perished and they were destroyed.
It is terrible. It is very sad that as the days of Noah, so shall it be in the days of the coming of the Son of Man. This is going to happen to multitudes of people, and yet God in His mercy has ordained that tens of millions find grace in His sight. A great multitude will become saved leading up until that day, until the very last one.
Well, let us stop here.