We must keep
before us the main line of purpose that runs through Scripture, and not lose
the conception of the whole in the consideration of the incidents.
The
temptation and fall of man must be viewed as part of a plan, and the words of
Christ in the parable of the tares explain much that occurs in Scripture
history, an enemy hath done this. Sin opened the door for death, and death
reigned from Adam. God, however, is not
thwarted either by sin or by death. For
the complete emancipation from their dual authority, and for the crushing of
the serpent’s head, He promises the “seed of the woman”. From Genesis iii.
onwards we are reading chapters in the conflict between the Seed and the
serpent, and their respective “seeds”; hence the sad history of Cain and Abel — hence,
too, the awful corruption that necessitated the flood. The purpose of God has sometimes hung upon a
slender thread, and in the well-nigh universal corruption one man is sustained
by grace to keep the Messianic channel pure.
“Noah was a just man, and perfect in his generations”. Noah is called in II Pet. ii. 5,
“the eighth”, and it is a point that is noted in I Pet. iii. 20 that “eight souls” were saved in the Ark. Enoch we have already seen was “the seventh
from Adam”, and although Methuselah and Lamech were born before Noah, yet Noah
is marked as the “eighth” by reason of the significance of the number; the eighth or octave is a new beginning, the
first day of the week also an eighth day, resurrection and regeneration are
thereby symbolized. The very names of
Noah and his sons have a numerical value, which connects them with this
number.
The
gematria of the names is as follows:-
Noah =
58
Shem = 340
Ham =
48
Japheth = 490
----------
936 = 8
* 117.
=======
Ham comes
under his father’s curse, and becomes the father of Canaan; removing his name from the list, the total is
888. The witness of numbers is not,
however, exhausted by this. Genesis
vii. 6 tells us that “Noah was 600 years
old when the flood of water was upon the earth”. Six is the number of man. Six days complete the week of work and lead
to the Sabbath. Noah enters the Ark in
his 600th year and thereby signified that the end of flesh had
come. When were the waters dried up from
the earth? “In the 601st year,
in the 1st month, the 1st day of the month” (viii. 13),
this is the beginning of the seventh hundred, the Sabbath rest of which Noah
himself and his experiences were prophetic.
By the
symbolism of the first seven days we are led to expect that the ages will lead
on to a Sabbath; we do know that the
millennial kingdom will be for a thousand years, and if we look upon the
thousand years as being represented by a day, the six days of earth’s toil and
man’s sin will cover a period of six thousand years. The re-entry of Noah into the world after the
flood in the very dawn of the seventh century suggests the same line of
thought. The millennial kingdom is also called, “the Regeneration” (Matt. xix.
28), and of this the flood and the renewed earth are a type. The days of Noah were also prophetic of the
coming of the Son of man (Matt. xxiv. 37).
Everything points to the flood as an epoch, and a type of the day of the
Lord. Let us therefore, as we look at a
few of the details of this momentous judgment, continually look away from the
type to the great reality that is surely coming upon the world, plunged in
darkness, heading for perdition, yet deluded by the fallacy of “peace and
safety”.
We
noticed in our last paper that although the corruption began in the days of
Adam, yet the height of iniquity was not reached until the days of Noah. After giving the names of Noah’s three sons,
the record continues, “The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was
filled with violence”. “The end of all
flesh had come”. Like Ezekiel’s
reiterated “end” (Ezek. vii. 2, 3, 6) there was no more remedy, and no further
extension. For the preservation of Noah
and his family (also of bird and beast) the building of the Ark was commanded; an act of faith that must have drawn down
ridicule and scoffing upon the patriarch’s head. There are suggestive parallels between this
first structure here commanded, and the tabernacle and temples of Solomon and
Ezekiel that may be worth the while of some of our readers to carefully work
out. In the Ark, actual men, animals and
birds were preserved; in the Tabernacle
and Temple, the cherubim shadowed forth the same hope.
The
destruction by the flood was utter and complete, the high hills “under the
whole heaven” were covered (vii. 19), “the mountains were covered” (20).
“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 … and every living substance … and
Noah alone remained alive, and they that were with him IN THE ARK”
(21-23).
The first
act of Noah upon leaving the ark was to build an altar and offer unto the Lord
burnt offerings, “and the Lord smelled a savour of rest”. Noah the man of rest, in his sabbath century, with death
and judgment passed away, looks out again upon the earth. “I will not again curse the ground any more
for man’s sake”. Why? Because Noah and his family were now
sinless? No,
“Although the imagination of man’s heart
is evil from his youth; neither will I
again smite any more every living thing, as I have done; while the earth remaineth, seed time and
harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not
cease” (viii. 21, 22).
With
Noah, “the eighth person”, God makes a covenant, and his covenant is referred
to eight times afterwards (ix. 9, 11,
12, 13, 15, 16, 17 & vi. 18). This covenant, said God, is “between Me and
you and every living soul of all flesh”; it was for “perpetual generations (generations
of the Olam or age; and so was called an everlasting covenant, or,
a covenant for the Olam or age). This
age lasts as long as the earth remaineth, and under the terms of this primitive
covenant mankind as a whole still receives the providential mercies of God, and
is under the assurance that no more will He bring a flood of waters to destroy
the earth. God blessed Noah and his
sons, and said unto them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth”; this places Noah in the position of Adam, for
at Adam’s creation the self-same words were uttered. In Gen. i. 28
it is recorded that God said to Adam:--
“Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish
the earth and subdue it: and have
dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every
living thing that moveth upon the earth.”
This is parallel with the words of Gen. ix. 2:--
“And the fear of you and the dread of you
shall be upon every beast of the earth, and upon every fowl of the air, and
upon all that moveth upon the earth, and upon all the fishes of the sea, into
your hand are they delivered.”
Following the blessing upon Adam comes the provision of his food:--
“Behold I have given you every herb
bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree in the
which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat” (Gen. i.
29).
In the same way similar words follow the blessing upon Noah:--
“Every moving thing that liveth shall be
meat for you; even as the green herb
have I given you all things” (Gen.ix.3).
Here we observe
a most important change, for the first time in Scripture do we read of flesh
being given as a part of man’s dietary.
To those who have any knowledge of the ways and means of spiritism, the
change will be most suggestive, for anyone to attain to a high position in
spiritism vegetarian diet is essential, as also is abstinence from
marriage. To preserve the race from the
universal effects of another irruption of spirit beings this change is made; here there is a further foreshadowing of the
end:--
“Now the spirit speaketh expressly, that
in the latter times some shall apostatize from the faith, giving heed to
seducing spirits and doctrines of demons . . . . . forbidding to marry, and commanding
to abstain from meats” (I.Timothy.iv.1-3).
Again, as
in Genesis i., reference is made to the fact that man was
created in the image of God, and upon this fact is based the law of capital
punishment (Gen. ix. 6).
These
parallels with Adam’s original blessing and position indicate that Noah was in
type a second Adam, and foreshadowed the Lord Himself. The bow in the cloud, given as the token of
the covenant made between God and all flesh, is seen together with the Cherubim
in Ezek. i. 28, and in Rev. iv. 3,
and it shines around the head of the mighty angel who sware by Him that
liveth for ever and ever, Who created heaven
and the things that therein are, and the earth and the things that therein are,
and the sea and the things which are therein, that there should be a time no
longer, but that the mystery of God should be finished (Rev. x. 1-7).
There are
mysteries deep and wide that surround the record of the flood and the Ark; into these we cannot here attempt to
penetrate; we rejoice, however, to trace
the rainbow of God’s covenant through to the day when the mystery of God shall
be finished, and a real renewed earth
shall be placed under the righteous way of a greater than Adam, and a greater
than Noah.
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