Genesis 6 & 7

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Genesis 6:5-22

“And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. 6 And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart. 7 And the LORD said, I will destroy 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. 8 But Noah found grace in the eyes of the LORD. 9 These are the generations of Noah: Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God. 10 And Noah begat three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. 11 The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence. 12 And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth. 13 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. 14 Make thee an ark of gopher wood; rooms shalt thou make in the ark, and shalt pitch it within and without with pitch. 15 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 [a six to one ratio, length to width]. 16 A window shalt thou make to the ark, and in a cubit shalt thou finish it above; and the door of the ark shalt thou set in the side thereof; with lower, second, and third stories shalt thou make it. 17 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 every thing that is in the earth shall die. 18 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. 19 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. 20 Of fowls after their kind, and of cattle after their kind, of every creeping thing of the earth after his kind, two of every sort shall come unto thee, to keep them alive. 21 And take thou unto thee of all food that is eaten, and thou shalt gather it to thee; and it shall be for food for thee, and for them. 22 Thus did Noah; according to all that God commanded him, so he did.”

Introduction

[Audio version: https://resources.ccphilly.org/detail.asp?TopicID=&Teaching=WED521]

“Genesis chapter 6, I’m surprised to see some of you back after last week, going through a number of very strange things, and the reminder is always, don’t believe anything I say, you have a Bible, study for yourself, the Bereans were more noble, they didn’t just believe what Paul preached to them, they went and searched the Scriptures to see if those things were true. So I encourage you to do that, because I have one bent and intent once in a awhile, and I’ll come, normally we’re normal. That’s relative to Calvary Philly I guess, every once in awhile there are those strange places you come to, and last week was one of them, as look at the background of the Flood and the “sons of God coming into the daughters of men,” and that whole situation, I believe fallen angels crossing a boundary that Jude says they could never go back from. Verse 4 says “There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that,” notice, “also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, and the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.” And a number of places now as we continue through the Old Testament we’re going to encounter the Rephaim, the Emim, the Zamzummims, the Avims, the Horems, the Anakims, the tribes of giants in different places, and we’ll take note of that, always trying to resist God’s people and God’s Plan as we move forward. But some perversion, some dark thing taking place, relative to us, is that Jesus would say this, and this is what makes this whole scene relative to you and I, “For as in the days that were before the flood, they were eating, drinking, marrying, giving in marriage until the day Noah 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.” So the warning is, there’s going to be something relative to the days of Noah that will characterize the Last Days, and certainly as we move into verse 5 and downward, some of those things are very easy to see.

God Is Grieved By The Continual Wickedness Of Man

“And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” (verse 5) and that’s a no-brainer, if you watch the news and see what’s going on in the world today [and far more now in 2023 than when Pastor Joe was preaching this sermon], “that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” All you have to do is turn on your television, all you have to do is, hopefully everybody in this room has some type of filter on your computers so your kids can’t get on some of the websites, and everyone in this room should know your kid’s MySpace [Facebook], you should have access to that and see what they’re doing, what they’re saying, because over and over again, kids are getting kidnapped because they hook up with somebody on MySpace [Facebook now, or Discord], they get in a conversation, they decide to meet somewhere, a van pulls up, throws them in, and they are gone! So you see the statistics, as we started this evening, it’s the world that we’re living in. [Just watch this Trailer for Tim Ballard’s new movie “The Sound of Freedom,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7oZE2nod4i0] It says here there was wickedness, “that every imagination of the thoughts of the heart was evil continually. And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him in his heart.” (verses 5b-6) Now whenever we read that it repented the LORD, but it says it repented the LORD, remember the LORD can’t repent the way you and I do, New Testament repentance is metanoia, to change the mind, to turn from our sins and turn to God, God never repents in that way. In fact the Hebrew word sometimes has the idea of “to sigh deeply,” and it speaks of brokenheartedness. In fact it says here “it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him in his heart” that word means “to cut to the heart,” it cut him to his heart, the brokenness of God, because in creating man in his image and likeness, extending to man the ability to choose, to make a choice, man turning away, the whole earth now being corrupt, and it’s grieving God, he’s grieving, with a deep sigh and a brokenheartedness as he looks at the condition in the world. “And the LORD said, I will destroy 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.” (verse 7) Now, as we go through, over and over again, there’s going to be references here that the Flood that we’re going to look at, is not a local flood, and people try to say that, ‘Well it was a local flood.’ If it was a local flood, first of all they wouldn’t have had to build an ark, they could have just moved, Noah and his family, if it was a local flood with an ark, the ark would have run down somewhere to a lower point. This is a flood that leaves the ark on top of a 17,000 foot mountain. [If that doesn’t say it all, I don’t know what will do that.] So, this is a serious flood, in the fossil records all over the world we find fully developed mammals found in low levels, in places like the Grand Canyon and so forth. [Even more telling, is under the permafrost in Alaska and Siberia. Whenever they’d plow up some permafrost in Alaska for construction or to make a parking lot, frozen bison and woolly mammoths are found, frozen intact, with undigested food in their stomachs, their cellular structure intact, because they were all somehow flash-frozen in place, after being drowned, buried in mud. These finds are quite common in those locations.] And we find ocean life, fish, crustaceans and so forth, up on top of the Himalayans, the highest elevations, so there was something that turned everything upside down, and God says here that he’s going to bring, not a local, but a global flood. But it says in verse 8, “But Noah found grace in the eyes of the LORD.” The first time the word “grace” is found in the Bible. Noah found grace in the eyes of the LORD, and so have you and I, ok, we have found grace through Jesus Christ in the eyes of the LORD. And remember as we go through this judgment, there are three groups here, there are those who are destroyed in God’s judgment, a picture of the Last Days, there are those who are preserved through, and then there’s Enoch, whose taken out before, Enoch is not mid-Enoch or post-Enoch, he’s pre-Enoch, ok? it’s just simple. “But Noah found grace in the eyes of the LORD. These are the generations of Noah: Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God.” (verses 8-9) Now that’s not “perfect” in the sense of sinless, sometimes the Old Testament uses the word “blameless,” with Job and others, it doesn’t say “sinless.” It’s because that was an individual who repented and went before God. Noah was a sinner, as soon as he gets off the ark he’s going to make a sacrifice. He’s going to offer an offering, and Noah is a sinner who trusts in God’s sacrificial system, he finds grace in the eyes of the LORD because of his heart towards God, and it says here that he’s a just man, “perfect” very interesting, ah, you could translate that “blameless,” it’s the word “tamiym” [Strongs # 8549, tamiym,…sound, without spot, undefiled, upright(ly), whole.], almost 100 percent of the time it’s used, and it’s used many, many times in the Old Testament, it’s used of the sacrificial system, that the animal being sacrificed had to be without spot or blemish, that it had to be pure. And we wonder sometimes, we look at this with the contamination of the human race, if it’s maybe saying something deeper than we would see right on the surface. That Noah was a just man, and not blameless, but possibly “uncontaminated” in his family, maybe. Don’t believe anything I say. [I think you are correct in your analysis, considering what Genesis 6:1-4 and it’s proper exegesis showed us last week. i.e. his family line wasn’t mixed in with the lines of the giants, no giant-DNA mixed into Noah’s line.] “And Noah begat three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth.” (verse 10) By the way, your little kids should love this, my kids when they were little couldn’t believe there was a guy named Ham, they always loved this story.

The Ark, An Amazing Ship

“The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence.” (verse 11) I would say we qualify as “the days of Noah” with that statement, “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.” (verse 12) all flesh had corrupted “his way upon the earth,” “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.” (verse 13) Now, remember Jesus said in Matthew 24, if he wouldn’t return when he did, there would be no flesh left alive, on the earth, that the last days would be so terrible. Here he says “the end of all flesh is come before me,” reason, “for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them” notice, “with the earth.” Not a local flood. Now, it moves on at this pace, Noah’s 500 years old when he’s hearing this. His grandfather Methuselah is part of the family, his great grandfather Enoch, it says “walked with God, and was not, because God took him.” So Methuselah his son has communicated to the family, ‘Ya, your great grandpa Enoch, what a man he was, remarkable man, and a man for 300 years who walked with God,’ and it’s going to tell us that of Noah, he’s the next person that it tells us, that walked with God. And no doubt he sat as a little boy he sat enraptured with attention, a little Sunday-school [no, Sabbath-school] kid hearing about the fact that Enoch walked with God, and God took him. And Methuselah now, his grandfather Methuselah outlives, it seems, Lamech his own son, Methuselah will die in the day that the flood comes, his name means “when he dies it will come,” or “his death shall bring.” So you have an interesting picture here, God saying ‘This is it, I’m bringing global judgment.’ Noah already know, 500 years old, and Methuselah’s name is “When he dies it shall come,” this is not an encouraging situation. God says to Noah “Make thee an ark of gopher wood; rooms shalt thou make in the ark, and shalt pitch it within and without with pitch.” (verse 14) “gofer wood” most probably cypress, “rooms” is always translated “nests” interesting. Now bitumen or tar, interesting idea. He’s going to build this boat [in naval terms it’s not a boat, it’s a full-sized ship], this ark. And God says I want you to pitch it within and without. Why is that? Is that everything? when Noah and his sons and their wives walking around with their feet sticking to the floor, ah, probably just the hull. But why within and without, pitch a boat within and without? The word “pitch” there is kaphar [Strongs # 3722, kaphar, fig. to expiate or condone, to placate or cancel:--appease, make atonement, cleanse, disannul, forgive, be merciful, pacify, pardon, to pitch, purge (away), put off, (make) reconcile (-liation).], most of the places in the Old Testament it’s translated “atonement,” in fact over 70 times that word is translated “atonement.” Isn’t it interesting? Pitch it within and without, this boat [ship]. Now we’re going to find this out, the Ark is a type of Christ in this sense, there’s only one Ark, too narrow, I know, there’s only one way to be saved, there’s only one Ark, everybody’s not out building their own ark. ‘I don’t like those measurements, I don’t want my ark to be, my ark’s not gonna be 300 cubits long and 50 cubits wide,’ there’s only one Ark, and on the Ark there’s only one door, there was only one way into the Ark. And God is just saying that’s just yesterday, today and forever. Take this ark, pitch it within and without. Now I think, personally, it was pitched within and without to preserve it, because I think it’s still going to turn up. Next week, we’re not going to get that far this week, next week we’ll put up some satellite photos we have, it’s interesting to look at the latitude and longitude of the pictures from modern photos and photos from 1949 and they line right up, kind of interesting, but you do with that what you will. I know it’s there, I don’t have to go see it to know it’s there, but I’d like to go see it, it would be fun, but I know it’s there [with my bad knees, I’ll wait till the Resurrection, and fly over to it]. “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. [a six to one ratio, length to width, and within Naval architecture that is the perfect ratio for stability and seaworthiness.] So it’s a rectangle, the way it’s described it’s flat on both ends, you see these people finding the Ark and it has a bow and a stern, the Bible doesn’t know anything about that in it’s description. It’s a barge and flat on both ends, the way it’s described. [Comment: But if it has a stem and keel, it would have had a blunt but rounded bow and stern, we don’t actually know the schematic that Noah drew out from the basic length and width and height requirements God gave Noah, God would have given him license within those parameters to make adjustments around the design of a keel that length, as keels, especially on large craft, are needed for structural strength and integrity of a ship, all ships. Pastor Joe is a Biblical scholar, not a Naval architect, and like I’m always saying, he wasn’t there, so let’s wait and see, we’ll know soon enough] Our problem is, what’s a cubit, Bill Cosby you can hear him there. What is a cubit, the standard cubit in the Bible is 18 inches, then you go into Persian cubits, Babylonian cubits, some of them were 22 inches, some feel that if the Nephilim were ruling here, a cubit was 35 to 45 inches if they were governing things. But if we take the standard cubit, 18 inches, we have a boat [ship], a barge, that is 450 foot long, 75 feet wide, and 45 feet high. We’re going to find out as we read this, that there are 3 decks, two of them below the door, we know the displacement would be 24,000 tons, where the draught is right about the midline. That’s amazing, because it’s going to tell us in chapter 7, that the water covered the highest mountains by 22 ½ feet, which would take you exactly to where the draught is on the boat [ship]. The measurements of this boat [ship], modern Naval vessels, freighters, Naval warships, are usually 7 to 1 ratio or 7.5 to 1 ratio, sometimes a little sleeker than that these days. This is a 6 to 1 ratio, it’s an interesting perfect measurement for a flood [stability-wise], it’s not meant to navigate, it’s meant to float. They discovered the displacement of this, they discovered the displacement of this, there’s an equation with displacement and center of gravity that tells them this description of this boat [ship] could almost turn [heel over] to a complete 90 degrees, and still fall [right itself] on it’s bottom again. But we don’t have any evidence that the water was that rough to do that [but it probably was, when God picked up the wind in the evaporation process he started later, as we’ll see, and wind produces waves, I served on a Balao class World War II submarine in 1968-69, made an Atlantic crossing in January of ’68, and on into the Med., I know about wind and waves. I also grew up sailing.] This thing is 450 foot long, longer than a football field, have a hard time fitting it in a stadium, 75 foot wide, 45 foot high, it would be 1,400,000 cubit feet, that’s equivalent to 522 box cars that go behind a train [modern boxcars, which are much larger than the pre-1950s boxcars]. Scientists have estimated an average of about 18,000 species, with this size they could put 125,000 sheep on here. But when they go through the species in the world, 18,000, most of them are smaller than sheep, they have estimated they could fit 2 of every species in the world on 150 box cars. This is big enough for 522 boxcars. You have to understand, this is a huge ship, with huge displacement. And nothing like this was ever built, not by the Romans or the Phoenicians, not until modern navigation. So, very interesting, God says ‘You make this thing 450 feet long,’ and Noah’s getting the blueprints here thinking ‘OK, it’s me and my wife and Methuselah? He’s never…’ so he has three boys while he’s building this, to speed the process up, you know. And they get married, ‘Marry, and get her to help too, would you please.’ “A window shalt thou make to the ark, and in a cubit shalt thou finish it above; A window shalt thou make to the ark, and in a cubit shalt thou finish it above; and the door of the ark shalt thou set in the side thereof; with lower, second, and third stories shalt thou make it. (verse 16) It seems like there was a long opening, a sophat over it, at least one side of it, if not both sides, we do out best as we look at this [with all those animals eating and relieving themselves, ventilation is an essential ingredient in the design of this. If you don’t think so, enter a New England cowbarn with it’s doors which remain mostly shut during the wintertime 😊] “and the door of the ark shalt thou set in the side thereof; with lower, second, and third stories shalt thou make it.” So it seems the door was on the first story, there was a lower second deck, and then a third deck, so the draught on the ship, with the displacement, it wouldn’t come up to the door, it [the waterline] would be below that. So everything we hear about the description is remarkable in the way that it’s laid out.

“Behold, I, Even I, Do Bring A Flood Of Waters Upon The Earth”

God says, “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 every thing that is in the earth shall die.” (verse 17) Recorded in every ancient culture around the world, a global flood. “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.” (verse 18) First mention in the Bible of the word “Covenant.” Probably there was one insinuated when God talked to Adam and Eve in Genesis 3:15, but the first time we have the word is here. Eight people, the number of new beginnings in the octave of the week and everything. [Very significant, the Last Great Day, at the end of the Feast of Tabernacles, what the Jews call the 8^th day of the Feast, prophetically symbolic of the 2^nd Resurrection, see https://unityinchrist.com/Does/TheMatrix.htm and Fall Holy Days https://unityinchrist.com/E-Mails/June%2014/FallHolyDays-short.htm and wow is that going to be a new beginning for all of mankind that has ever lived and died in the long, painful history of mankind!] “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.” (verse 19) So every pair brought in, male and female, for the purpose of that, to keep them alive, because as we get down a little further, it’s going to say “seven of every clean animal shall you bring in.” So there’s at least, if it’s just seven, or seven sevens, or some discrepancy in the Hebrew, if it’s seven of every kind, that’s male and female, fourteen, Leviticus lists seven clean forms of animals, that’s 140 of those. The interesting thing is, we don’t get to any of that until we come to Leviticus. So, early, God administering to these people that lived before the Flood, those that worshipped, even then there was some lesson, some animals were acceptable in sacrifice [and I dare say for humans to eat, based on Leviticus 11], and others were not. So even then. Now of course we have Moses, who will write the Law and write this for us. It may be his way of describing it, but obviously Noah understood that there were some animals that were fit for sacrifice [and eating] and some weren’t. [Dr. Hermon Hoeh, the PhD historian for the Worldwide Church of God felt, and saw evidence, as Pastor Joe is seeing, that elements of the Law of God and the sacrificial system were known from the beginning, from the time of Adam and Eve right up to Exodus 20 and the formal giving of the Law of God on Mount Sinai. Hints of it were also seen in Genesis 18, which Jews feel was around the time of Passover, because when Yahweh and two angels, all three in human form, showed up at Abraham’s tent, Abraham and Sarah served the LORD lamb and unleavened bread. The Jews feel this was a sign that Abraham was observing the Passover and Days of Unleavened Bread. We’ll find out soon enough.] There’s no contradiction, he was to bring them two of every kind, male and female for this purpose, to keep them alive. When it comes to the clean ones, bring seven pairs of every kind, that’s for sacrifice [and I dare say, consumption.] So, he says “Of fowls after their kind, and of cattle after their kind, of every creeping thing of the earth after his kind, two of every sort shall come unto thee, to keep them alive.” (verse 20) Notice this, “shall come unto thee,” God says ‘I’m going to bring them, you don’t have to be there with Methuselah trying to get the Ark done, making nets and traps and going out all over the world trying to collect them, they’re gonna come.’ “two of every sort shall come to thee, to keep them alive.” Now he’s going to be a hundred years building the Ark. So that means somewhere, Mama and Pappa, you know there weren’t poles, but there were polar bears obviously, they loved the tropics in those days, they’re going to start coming from somewhere, they’re going to have kids along the way, their kids might finish the journey, a hundred years to get there. [Certain sub-species couldn’t make it, because some continents were separated by water, wooly mammoths, saber-toothed tigers, found in Alaskan and Siberian tundra, never made it.] The world evidently is tropical at this point, there are foundations on the earth, and all they do is explore woolly mammoths, whether it’s in Alaska, near the north pole, or in Siberia, and one of the things about the wooly mammoth, well it’s cold there, that’s why the mammoth has a wool coat on, no, no, the interesting thing about those studies, is they find them in a certain condition, one is, there stomach is full of fresh vegetation, and it’s all subtropical. [And how did God get rid of all the water on a whole planet. What made the Ice Age, which Carbon-14 says was 10,000 years ago, but Carbon-14 dating beyond 3,000 to 4,000 years is inaccurate, tends to expand time, so their dating of the Ice Age is really about 4,000 BC, the time of the Flood. The movie “The Day After Tomorrow” shows the immense cyclonic weather system that could have blast-frozen all of those carcasses with undigested food in their stomachs, and the immense and sudden snowfall and sudden drop of temperatures causing the Ice Age. The waters of the Flood are now locked up in the arctic regions, north and south, and Greenland. Scientists now realize that could have happened very suddenly, and the movie shows exactly how, very graphically, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ku_IseK3xTc] Many of them, the vegetation is still in their mouth, and it’s subtropical. And they can tell from the DNA testing that they were suffocated, preserved, they died very quickly. So there is a very interesting study in some of these things. But he says ‘they will come to you, the animals are going to come.’ “And take thou unto thee of all food that is eaten, and thou shalt gather it to thee; and it shall be for food for thee, and for them.” (verse 21) now look at verse 22, it just says “Thus did Noah; according to all that God commanded him, so he did.” Important word, can we say that about our own lives, “thus did Noah according all that God commanded him, so he did.” In Hebrews 11:7 it says, “By faith Noah, being warned of God of things not seen as of 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 faith.” He’s the only one described where his testimony begins and ends with the word “faith.” “By faith…by faith.” Because, imagine this, it never rained. God said it’s gonna rain. God may have well said ‘It’s gonna snark,’ what did that mean, he had no idea what rain was. [I’m not really sure it hadn’t rained before the Flood, another one of those gray areas in Scripture where we’re going to have to wait and see, at the Wedding Feast of the Lamb.] And God says ‘I want you to build this boat, 450 foot long with the smallest cubit,’ imagine what his neighbours thought. The breadth of it, 75 feet wide, when you try to imagine the structure of this thing, the tree-huggers must have been having a heart attack, he must have cut down every tree in the neighbourhood as far as you could see, there must have been nothing but stumps. With some of the Scriptures we have, maybe he only cut down two, I don’t know, maybe they were really big. And he’s working on this for 100 years. Did his wife say ‘Are you sure?’ about the 25^th year. Did his sons doubt him? Did his daughters-in-law think ‘I can’t believe I married into this family!’ Did the locals begin to have like a 4^th of July, an Ark Day picnic every year? And just imagine, Methuselah lasted a hundred years working on this thing with Noah. It just says “Thus did Noah; according to all that God commanded him, so he did.” You know, you and I feel like, ‘Well I got saved ten years ago, and I read that the Lord is coming, and he hasn’t showed up yet, maybe he ain’t really coming. Maybe I can live in sin, maybe I don’t have to be so radical, maybe I.’ Wait a minute, it says ‘Noah, having been warned of things that had never been seen,’ that’s what you and I are warned of. It says ‘the days that are coming on the world are days such as never have been or ever will be after this,’ (Matthew 24:21 paraphrase) An era where the earth is filled with violence, where the imagination of man’s heart is continually evil, where there’s strange things spiritually going on. And if we have to wait ten years, or twenty years, this guy worked on this boat for a hundred years, he started on it when he was 500 years old, that’s depressing, you think, that’s retirement age or something, 500. What a man. I’m assuming Mrs. Noah must have been remarkable, and I think of the things my wife puts up with, it ain’t anything like this. She’s a great enabler and a great support and she’s my partner, but I can’t imagine what Mrs. Noah, she must have lost her friends, no more tea parties, no more Bridge, nobody to hang out with, you go to a diner, they all go to another table, just imagine, this is isolation. And it tells us that he was a Preacher of righteousness the whole time. I wonder if there were giants around, what they thought? They must have said ‘Wait till he’s done, this is big enough for us, we can use it as a canoe.’ “Thus did Noah,” it means, you read this short chapter, it’s loaded with information, but then it just says “Thus did Noah; according to all that God commanded him, so he did.” What was his prayer-life like? What was he, when he laid his head down on the pillow, were there times when he said ‘LORD, I’ll never get this done, LORD, I’m not worthy, I’m not up to the task. How could you ask somebody like me? I don’t know anything about boat-building.’ God said ‘Neither does anybody else on the planet, there’s never been one.’ ‘LORD are you sure you picked the right person?’ Same kind of arguments you and I have with God all the time. ‘I’m not worthy, I can’t do this, I don’t know anything about it, it’ll leak if I build it.’

Genesis 7:1-24

“And the LORD said unto Noah, Come thou and all thy house into the ark; for thee have I seen righteous before me in this generation. 2 Of every clean beast thou shalt take to thee by sevens, the male and his female: and of beasts that are not clean by two, the male and his female. 3 Of fowls also of the air by sevens, the male and the female; to keep seed alive upon the face of all the earth. 4 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. 5 And Noah did according unto all that the LORD commanded him. 6 And Noah was six hundred years old when the flood of waters was upon the earth. 7 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. 8 Of clean beasts, and of beasts that are not clean, and of fowls, and of every thing that creepeth upon the earth, 9 there went in two and two into the ark, the male and female, as God had commanded Noah. 10 And it came to pass after seven days, that the waters of the flood were upon the earth. 11 In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows [or floodgates] of heaven were opened. 12 And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights. 13 In the selfsame day entered Noah, and Shem, and Ham, and Japheth, the sons of Noah, and Noah’s wife, and the three wives of his sons with them, into the ark; 14 they, and every beast after his kind, and all the cattle after their kind, and every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind, and every fowl after his kind, every bird of every sort [or wing]. 15 And they went in unto Noah into the ark, two and two of all flesh, wherein is the breath of life. 16 And they that went in, went in male and female of all flesh, as God had commanded him: and the LORD shut him in. 17 And the flood was forty days upon the earth; and the waters increased, and bare up the ark, and it was lift up above the earth. 18 And the waters prevailed, and were increased greatly upon the earth; and the ark went upon the face of the waters. 19 And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth; and all the high hills, that were under the whole heaven, were covered. 20 Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail; and the mountains were covered. 21 And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, and every man: 22 all in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land, died. 23 And every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both man, and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven; and they were destroyed from the earth: and Noah only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark. 24 And the waters prevailed upon the earth an hundred and fifty days.”

“For Yet Seven Days, And I Will Cause It To Rain Upon The Earth Forty Days And Forty Nights”

“And the LORD said unto Noah, Come thou and all thy house into the ark; for thee have I seen righteous before me in this generation.” (verse 1) Now there’s an interesting question here, the phrase “Come thou” in the Hebrew can be “Go,” it’s used a multitude of times in the Old Testament, but it can sometimes be a sense of beckoning. And it’s an interesting picture, is the LORD saying to Noah, is the LORD inside the Ark saying ‘OK, come on now, come on in,’ because it says “Come into,” “Come thou and all thy house into the ark; for thee have I seen righteous before me in this generation.” Now by the way, he sees us righteous too, through the blood of Jesus Christ. “Of every clean beast thou shalt take to thee by sevens, the male and his female: and of beasts that are not clean by two, the male and his female.” (verse 2) Now there’s the discrepancy, male and female, and of every unclean beast, those that are not clean, by two’s, male and female. “Of fowls also of the air by sevens, the male and the female; to keep seed alive upon the face of all the earth.” (verse 3) so that the breed would continue. Now God says this in verse 4, “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.” Now did they have a conversation ‘What do you mean, rain?’ ‘Drops of water are going to fall out of the sky,’ ‘You don’t want me to tell anybody that, do you LORD?’ ‘That’s never happened before, nobody’s ever seen that.’ “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.” Now, seven days, wherein here does Methuselah die? Is he the first burial at sea? I don’t know, where does he die in these seven days. And what would you think after working on this 100 years, and what’s the neighbourhood thinking, animals are coming, they’re just going up and getting onboard, they watched this whole strange process. And then all of a sudden God says ‘Seven days,’ then you’ve got an interesting week of thinking, don’t you? If God said to you, the Rapture’s gonna happen in seven days. What would you do this week? ‘Lord, I hope my wife’s black eye goes away.’ ‘Lord, I promise I’m not gonna watch pornography all week, I could never get victory, I can’t get victory,’ ‘I’m coming in seven days,’ ‘Lord, I got victory, I’m serious now, I’m serious Lord.’ What would you do if you knew it was seven days? Get a permanent? [laughter] Head out with your credit card tomorrow, going Yeehaa!? I ain’t gonna see next week’s bill.’ Some of you are living in faith like that right now. [laughter] Don’t do that. I don’t think your credit card is the Mark of the Beast, but it is just as scary. What would you do? I mean, just think what Noah thinks this week, what goes through his mind? He must at least think, ‘We got seven more days with Grandpa,’ and he says to his sons and his daughters-in-law, ‘Seven days, God spoke to me,’ must have been a very somber week. “And Noah was six hundred years old when the flood of 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.” (verses 6-7) Now Noah and his family are mentioned at least six times through here, the perishing are never mentioned once [except in verses 21-22]. “Of clean beasts, and of beasts that are not clean, and of fowls, and of every thing that creepeth upon the earth, there went in two and two into the ark, the male and female, as God had commanded Noah. And it came to pass” and we knew it would “after seven days, that the waters of the flood were upon the earth.” (verses 8-10) Did Noah wonder, did he ever doubt in those seven days? Did Methuselah die on this day. If you sit with a pad and a pencil and you add up the days, and you calculate, as you go through here, from the day they enter the Ark, they will be onboard 377 days, until they disembark, when they leave the Ark. A 365 day year, and 12 other days on this Ark. “In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month,” notice this please, “the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows [or floodgates] of heaven were opened.” (verse 11) So, it’s not just rain that comes down. It says “the fountains of the deep,” we know there was some kind of hydro-system, some type of aqua-system, because there were rivers flowing from Eden, there was some kind of pressure, some kind of heat, causing water rise. And as we study around the planet now, again, some of this earth, now there was going to be an upheaval, being pushed up, ah, crustaceans, sea life on the Himalayas, right down the middle of the North Atlantic there is a mountain range deep in the water, evidently some of the land is sinking and the water’s coming up, it begins to rain, probably the vapour canopy condensing around the earth as God separated the waters above the firmament from the waters below the firmament. Just a remarkable, remarkable upheaval begins to take place. The rain comes down, the windows of heaven are opened, the fountains of the great deep are broken up, and the water begins to come up from under the ground, “And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights.” (verse 12) Felt like that in the last week or so. 40 days and 40 nights, you don’t have to worry, by the end of our story God says he’ll never destroy the whole world by a flood again, it’ll be fire next time, but you don’t have to worry about the rain. “And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights. In the selfsame day entered Noah, and Shem, and Ham, and Japheth, the sons of Noah, and Noah’s wife, and the three wives of his sons with them, into the ark; they, and every beast after his kind, and all the cattle after their kind, and every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind, and every fowl after his kind, every bird of every sort [or wing].” Notice this, “And they that went in, went in male and female of all flesh, as God had commanded him: and the LORD shut him in.” (verses 12-16) The LORD shut the door. You know what, if I’m Noah, I’m glad that God does that, so it doesn’t have to be on my conscience, I’m glad that God is so gracious, Noah’s obedient, Noah did all of those things, but Noah knew it was time, because God is the one who shut the door. What an interesting, what an interesting picture. “And the flood was forty days upon the earth; and the waters increased, and bare up the ark, and it was lift up 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. Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail; and the mountains were covered.” (verses 17-20) So fifteen cubits brings you to the draught-line, it’s half the height of the Ark, exactly what the Ark would have needed to glide across the top of the tallest mountain without tearing out the bottom. Now, we don’t know what the tallest mountain was, we don’t know if the Himalayas were brought into birth through the process, but the point is, it’s very interesting to see what the preciseness of this description is as we look at it. Scientists know today, if you would take all the oceans of the world, 330 million cubit miles of water on the planet, and you were to bring all the mountains down to sea level, you were to bring all the basins of the earth up, that there’s enough water on the earth right now, if the whole earth was level, it would be underwater by thousands of feet. 330,000,000 cubit miles of water on the planet, 1.5 trillion tons of rain every day fall right now on this ball of dirt.

“All In Whose Nostrils Was The Breath Of Life, Died”--The Flood Was Real

“Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail; and the mountains were covered. And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, and every man: 22 all in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land, died.” (verses 20-22) Now not the fish, they didn’t have the nostrils that were filled with the breath of life. “And every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both man, and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of the 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 an hundred and fifty days.” (verses 23-24) and it’s going to tell us in the next verse they were assuaged, they reach a level, the rain stops at 40 days, but they prevail, they stay at a level for 150 days. Look, maybe a friend brought you here tonight and you’re already saying ‘I knew my friend was nuts! They’re in a cult, I can’t believe they sit and listen to this lunatic week in and week out.’ You’re entitled to that opinion. If you don’t believe Noah’s Flood took place, that’s certainly up to you. But don’t say that the Bible doesn’t teach it. Because people say ‘The ark wasn’t big enough, and you could never have got all the animals on it,’ and you ask them ‘Really, how big was the Ark?’ ‘Ah, I don’t know.’ ‘Well how many animals were on it?’ ‘I don’t know.’ So you don’t know how big it was, you don’t know how many animals were on it, and you know it wasn’t true. And I’m dumb for believing what I believe, and I’m supposed to believe in ESP with you, right? Ah, look, here’s the truth, there are over 270 historical records from ancient cultures that speak of a worldwide flood, over 270 stories from all parts of the world. The global flood record is found amongst the Babylonians, the Egyptians, the Persians, the Greeks, the Hindus, the Chinese, the Druids, the Polynesians, the Mexicans, the Peruvians, the North American Indians, in Greenland, Iceland, you go on and on, all of these cultures around the world in their histories, speak about the Flood. One of the interesting records is the cuneiform record in a book you can get called, you have to track it down, it’s tough to find, “The Assyrian Discoveries,” by Dr. George Smith. And of course the cuneiform, the Babylonian records are a little skewed from the Bible, but it’s this close, they say, not in the Epic of Gilgamesh, which is one of them, but there’s another cuneiform record, and they haven’t all been deciphered, but it says this, “There was a holy man, that the earth was filled with violence, it was filled with corruption, it was impure, but there was a sage, a holy man, who walked before God. And God was displeased with what was going on in the world, and the world was filled with giants. And this man and his wife and his three sons and their wives built an ark,” he uses the word “ark,” and it says “God closed the door. And he took two of every kind of animal, and survived the flood.” It says “The boat came to rest on the mountains of Ararat,” cuneiform, this is secular history, ancient history, and it says “The man, sage, sent out a raven, and then he sent out a dove three times, before it came back with an olive branch in his mouth.” 270 historical records from every major ancient culture in the world corroborates this story, it doesn’t turn it into a false record, it corroborates it, these are people who didn’t know each other, didn’t speak each other’s language, they were separated by continents, by oceans, and they all have record of this flood.

Genesis 8:1-5

“And God remembered Noah, and every living thing, and all the cattle that was with him in the ark: and God made a wind to pass over the earth, and the waters asswaged; 2 the fountains also of the deep and the windows of heaven were stopped, and the rain from heaven was restrained; 3 and the waters returned from off the earth continually: and after the end of the hundred and fifty days the waters were abated. 4 And the ark rested in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, upon the mountains of Ararat. 5 And the waters decreased continually until the tenth month: in the tenth month, on the first day of the month, were the tops of the mountains seen.”

“And God Remembered Noah”

“Chapter 8 says this, we’ll never get through chapter 8, that’s the first verse. It says “And God remembered Noah,” now it doesn’t mean he forgot him. He only had one guy to remember at this point in time, ok. The idea is, God’s attention, it’s an anthropomorphism, using human language to try to describe something in the heart of God. “And God remembered Noah, and every living thing, and all the cattle that was with him in the ark: and God made a wind to pass over the earth, and the waters asswaged;” (verse 1) they subsided, literally they became quiet. Now the interesting thing here, it seems the first evidence of weather patterns. Before this the whole world’s tropical [we don’t know this, this is an assumption based on trying to lock down specific interpretations to every verse, whereas we just don’t know, as the first 11 chapters of Genesis were written in poetic Hebrew, which wasn’t meant to specifically be taken literally all the time. It’s possible the Ice Age started at either pole, driving the northern and southern poles into instant subzero temperatures, followed by massive snow precipitation, locking up a lot of the floodwaters into polar ice. We don’t know but blast-frozen animal carcasses of bison and woolly mammoths with undigested food in their stomachs seems to indicate this scenario.] Now a wind begins to pass over the earth [which would make for waves, maybe big ones, depending on the wind force]. Did these animals onboard live at their normal pace for 377 days, or was there instantly a cold, a change in the climate that caused hibernation for the first time, something that affected them. It seems, we have no record any of them reproduced during this time [again, we just don’t know]. I know if I was stuck on a big boat, just me and my wife and my kids and their spouses, with thousands of animals for a year, I’d want them asleep. We’re not sure, those details are not given, but it points to the fact that all of a sudden weather patterns that had not existed before, now there’s some evidence here that that begins to take place, a wind begins to blow. “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:” Now there’s a constant lowering of the level of the water, “and after the end of the hundred and fifty days the waters were abated.” (verses 2-3) they’re fading, they’re going down. And it says this, “And the ark rested in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, upon the mountains of Ararat. And the waters decreased continually until the tenth month: in the tenth month, on the first day of the month, were the tops of the mountains seen.” (verses 4-5) So it says here, on the 7^th month, the 17^th day of the month, that’s an interesting detail, isn’t it, God tells us, the Ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat. We know this, Moses wrote this record. If you go in your own time to Exodus chapter 12, verse 2, it tells us there that through God’s instruction, Moses changes the civil year to a religious year. And he makes the 7th month into the 1^st month. The first month then, the 7^th month, the 17^th day becomes the 1^st month the 17^th day, the first month on the 14^th day, Jesus Christ is crucified, the 1^st month on the 17^th day he rises from the dead. It’s more than peculiarity the Ark comes to rest on Mount Ararat on the day of Jesus’ resurrection, on Resurrection Day, when life begins anew. The mountains, plural, of Ararat. Now there’s lots of debate about where this boat [ship] is. Now look, again, we see these guys on TV and they all have these stakes driven in the ground and they’re doing magnetic readings [that would have been Ron Wyatt, who has the Ark on a different mountain on the Ararat mountain system], and they have this boat with a bow, you can bet that ain’t Noah’s ark, there’s no description that gives us any indication that it was anything like, but bargelike with flat ends on both ends, there’s no description having it tapering, having a bow, that would not have been suited for a floodtide like it endured [I disagree, as God’s basic design did not specify whether Noah could have designed a keel into the ship or not, which is a strengthening design in any ship—we weren’t there, we don’t know, so we must not over-interpret every single verse, Pastor Joe is not a Naval architect.]. We’ll talk about it more next week. Mount Ararat, the major mountain, amongst the mountains, plural, of Ararat would be the logical place for it to be, because it says in the days afterwards, as the waters dropped, the rest of the mountains became visible, which means that it landed on the tallest one of the mountains of Ararat, which, coincidentally is Mount Ararat. Now we’ll talk about the history of this a little bit next week, Marco Polo in the 13 hundreds, he stayed at Saint Jacobs Monastery, and the monks there told him that every so many years, the last two weeks of August, first weeks of September, the glaciers would die back far enough, they would go up to the Ark, they showed him things in the monastery they had brought out of the Ark. I don’t know if they found the Captains Log, that would have been interesting. Almost 100 years ago, there was a tremendous earthquake that opened up in Mount Ararat what’s called the Ahora Gorge, the top of it is about 15,000 foot above sea level, and is a huge cavernous gorge that opened up, and Saint Jacobs Monastery is gone, buried. But up at the top of the Ahora Gorge is where, it’s a Muslim country, so they don’t own Mount Ararat as the home of the Ark, because the Koran says it was on a different mountain. [Ahora Gorge is a 400 m deep canyon located along the North Eastern flank of Mt. Ararat] Tsar Nicholas had a thousand men there at the top of the Ahora Gorge for a month, and the Russians somewhere have photographs of the Ark, Anastasia’s daughter used to wear a wooden cross made from the wood of the Ark. And all of the testimonies we have, though none of them are as solid as we would want them to be, all corroborate that they’ve seen it at the top of the Ahora Gorge, on Mount Ararat, on the main mountain. I’m convinced that’s where it is, but you’re all entitled to your own distorted opinion, and don’t believe anything I say. Josephus says it’s there, when you read through the ancient historians, they all say it’s there, there’s records of it being there, there are those in the last century who were there and claimed to have seen it, evidently, difficulty getting to it because of it’s location, 15,000 foot, it’s in the ice all year round, and every so many years, it sticks out of the glacier. I was invited to go, about 12 years ago, 13 years ago [1993-94]. And I thought ‘This can’t be the Lord,’ but I asked my wife and she said ‘ok,’ I thought ‘She’s gonna get the life insurance money, or I’m supposed to go.’ You know Dave LeCompte, we had taken a number of trips with him to Siberia, and worked in these army camps, he became friends of the head of the Russian Geological Survey Department, who was a born-again Christian, who said ‘We had been there before, and every so many years, the last two weeks in August, first two weeks in September the glacier dies back far enough, you can get to the Ark.’ He said ‘The Ukrainians are going to fund the trip, you’ll have to come and meet us in the Ukraine, and go as a Ukrainian with us.’ [Utterly impossible now, with the Russo-Ukrainian War going on right now.] So then I started collecting pictures, and reading, going on the treadmill, I thought ‘Just let me go, I’ll be too fat, worn out halfway up, they’ll slide me down the mountain or something,’ and I started going through all of that, and then the Russians put missiles on Cyprus, if you remember, off the coast of Turkey, and all of this hostility then exploded, and the whole trip at that point was shut down. But, all of that to say this, it’s through that I started looking and asking and trying to collect pictures, get information. And again, I don’t have to go there to believe it’s there, I believe it’s there. But it would sure blow my mind to stand there and look at it. But, “And the ark rested in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, upon the mountains of Ararat. And the waters decreased continually until the tenth month: in the tenth month, on the first day of the month, were the tops of the mountains seen.” (verses 4-5) the other mountains, the lesser mountains of Ararat begin to become visible, that’s where will pick up next week, and next week we’ll throw up some photos, nighttime photos, surveillance photos, and you can look at them, do whatever you want with them.

In closing

But, here we are. As is the days of Noah, you know, do you believe that God’s going to do something in our day that he’s never done before? I mean, there’s God’s Word, and there should be the testimony of the Spirit. Jesus said when the Holy Spirit comes, he will show you things to come, he will show you things to come. You find new-believers in Africa, in Russia where our missions trips were, in Hungary, anywhere in the world, you find new-believers, and they all have witness, ‘The Lord is coming, something’s going on.’ We have the great advantage of collecting data continually, between the television and periodicals and magazines, that we become satiated, and we’ve become dulled. You know, when we started the Bible study at Arthur’s here, Calvary, with 25 people in 1981, anything I could find in those days, in Life Magazine or anywhere, you were trying to put things together, you were squeezing the wrong pieces of the puzzle, you know how you do that at home when you put a big puzzle together and you finally get tired, and you’re hammering pieces in, you know, you kind of try to make anything fit. And in those days there were so many screwballs, ‘This is going on, these vultures in Israel are multiplying twenty times faster than the vultures in anywhere in the world,’ and I said that, and found out it was all nonsense. But in those days we were desperate, you know. The truth is, if you have eyes and ears, you should know right now, that the world is unravelling. [Comment: Pastor Joe gave this sermon on June, 28, 2006. In February 2022 Vladimir Putin’s Russian Federation invaded the Ukraine, and that war, with the same devastation not seen since World War II, has been going on for over a year now. From 2020 to 2022 the corona virus swept the earth, killing millions. And the war in Ukraine is acting as a proving ground for modern weapons’ systems, just like the Spanish Civil War was just before World War II. Also the war in Ukraine is acting like a catalyst, bringing about a re-armament of European nations not seen since World War II, and may yet cause or bring about the creation of The United States of Europe, as is prophecied in the Books of Daniel and Revelation (see https://unityinchrist.com/prophecies/2ndcoming_4.htm). Pastor Joe was giving this sermon on the 28^th of June 2006, I’m transcribing this on the 9^th of June 2023. We’re getting far closer to the end, World War III, and the 2^nd coming of Jesus Christ than when Pastor Joe preached this sermon.] For you and I, it’s a great exhortation, working against the clock, there’s still opportunity, maybe we can see a revival, in Philadelphia or the East Coast or around the world, maybe we can see a great ingathering again [see https://unityinchrist.com/prophets/Zephaniah/REVIVAL.html]. But for every one of us there should be a tension that we sense, as we read the Word of God, as we look at the horizon, there should be a tension between the present and the future that’s never been there before, that makes us sober, ‘Any man that has this hope purifies himself, even as he is pure.’ When we look at these things we should take inventory, ‘Lord, where am I compromising?’ And look, he loves us. If you’re in sin tonight, you’re compromising, you’re a prodigal, you’re away, he loves you. The door is open, the door and lock is open, it’s open. There comes a point when he shuts it, the door’s open right now. If you’re here tonight and you don’t know Jesus Christ, the door is open…let me tell you this, we’re going to put you in a time machine and take you back to Noah’s day. What are you going to do? ‘Where’s the boat?’ ‘Oh isn’t it too narrow, there’s only one way to be saved, and there’s only one door,’ as was in the days of Noah so shall the days of the coming of the son of man, there is a way for you to be forgiven tonight. If you die tonight, there is a way for you to know that you’ll spend eternity in his presence instead of hell, lost, there is a way to be saved. There’s a way, it’s not ‘It’s too narrow,’ no, no, no, no, there is a way, there’s a way. If the avion flu starts to spread around the world, and somebody comes up with a vaccine [or like with Covid-19, which came in 2020], you’re going to say ‘Oh, that’s too narrow, only one vaccine? I want a vaccine that’s made of egg yolk, instead of, I want to fast, I want to drink carrot-spinach, I spent the money, I bought a juicer from television, my Jack LaLanne, I can drink vegetable juice and not get the avion flu.’ No, no, nobody’s going to say that’s too narrow. Nobody’s going to say that’s too narrow, people are going to stand in line and say ‘Give me the shot.’ [Today they would since modern medicine has been politicized over the past four years between Republican Party evangelicalism and Blue Democratic Party, the nation has gotten crazy and terribly divided.] There’s a shot, there’s a vaccination, there’s an immunization, it’s the blood of Jesus Christ, and if you accept that, you will live forever, you will be immune to God’s judgment, to hell, you’ll be forgiven, God’s child. So I encourage you this evening, if you don’t know him this evening, as the musicians come, we’ll sing a last song, if you don’t know Christ tonight, and you want to be saved, you come, we’re gonna lift our hearts to the Lord, we’re going to say ‘Lord, deal with us, here we are, your sons and your daughters, let us be serious as we look at the world,’ we need that, he’s continuing to change us. But if you haven’t made the first step, you haven’t come for forgiveness, and it’s on your heart tonight, and you hear him speaking to you, in your heart, as we lift our voices, I encourage you to come, I’m sure if a friend brought you, he’ll come with you. But let’s stand, let’s pray together…[transcript of a connective expository sermon on Genesis 6:5-22, Genesis 7:1-24, and Genesis 8:1-5, given by Pastor Joe Focht, Calvary Chapel of Philadelphia, 13500 Philmont Avenue, Philadelphia, PA 19116]