Noah, Faithfulness of

Ted Bowling, reeling from the blasphemous portrayal of Noah in the 2014 movie, reports that it is a Satanically inspired advertising of a vastly skewed view of God. The movie portrays Noah as a person both anti-God and anti-family. The movie, by assassinating the character of a just man who walked with God, joins company with the mockers, trashing God for the sake of mammon. Some of the biblically-unsupportable lies the movie tells include: (1.) Rock people, representing fallen angels, help Noah build and protect the ark, earning a redemption into heaven; (2.) Methuselah, a mentally deranged witch doctor, heals Shem's wife of barrenness; (3.) Noah is a psychopath who entertains finishing off the human race by murdering his grandchild. The movie quickly becomes a revolting distortion of the Scriptural account, highlighting instead Satan's wish-list for the destruction of mankind, the dissolution of marriage, the disintegration of the family, the worship of the environment and the universal perception of God as distant and uncaring. Sadly, world events have come full circle to Noah's time when the thoughts of mankind have become evil continually. God's called out ones will be standing alone, like the Patriarch Noah, forced to endure endless scoffing, awaiting the intervention of Almighty God to destroy evil and bring us through the horrendous flood of Satan's lies, establishing His Kingdom under the rulership of Jesus Christ.

Christians living at the time of the end would do well to consider the character and behavior of Noah, a paragon of virtue and devotion to God. John Ritenbaugh explains that God and Noah worked side by side to deliver the small remnant of humanity through the waters of the Flood, God supplying the sanctification and grace and Noah obeying in faith. This is the kind of relationship God desires with us.

Despite its harshness, God's decision to destroy the earth and humankind by a flood was ultimately an act of great love for His creation. By it, He intervened to derail the degradation of human morality before it became permanently set in man's nature. John Ritenbaugh also explores the first mention of God's grace in Scripture, which occurs within the Flood narrative, showing that the entire episode and the subsequent covenant were effects of His grace.

John Ritenbaugh, reflecting upon the episode of God's rescuing of Noah and his family from the devastating flood, marvels about the perennial biblical patterns that never change, serving as an unambiguous teaching device. That rescue indicates God has never saved anybody by works. Everything, the physical and spiritual creation, begins with God, including the establishment of a family line from Seth to Noah to Abraham to Moses to David to Christ. Paradoxically God writes comparatively little about the first, and perhaps the greatest hero of faith, the father of all mankind after the rest of the world disappears, save for the evaluation that he did according to all God commanded him. What Noah built became the means of salvation of his family. Genesis 8-9 could be considered an overview of the entire plan of salvation. The time preceding the great flood parallels the time we are living through right now. The narrative demonstrates that clearing out an entire population of troublemakers did not solve the endemic and recurring problem of the deceptive, evil human heart. Only God's calling to each of us individually, followed by repentance and a rigorous conversion/sanctification process, will safeguard us from the fiery holocaust which will envelope this entire world. As God demonstrated grace by motivating Noah to build an ark to transport his family to safety, God has similarly provided a protective ark for His called-out ones today, namely His Church. Just as Noah's family had to help build the ark, we have been placed in the church with specific spiritual gifts, just as Noah had received, to help build up and edify the body or our place in the ark. Are we going to help build the ark or watch others build it? As Noah never forgot the Source of grace, we also should never forget that everything depends on God's generosity. We must emulate father Noah's humility, rejecting Satan's puffed up pride, remembering that just as God gifted Noah, He will also gift us for the specific task we have to do.

John Ritenbaugh observes that, in every biblical covenant, God gives responsibilities in order to be in alignment with Him. If we fail to meet the responsibilities He has given to us, God will penalize us. Every covenant we find in Scripture outlines promises, responsibilities, and penalties. As members of the Body of Christ, we have been given specific tasks to carry out, placed in that Body where we can be the most productive. God is currently at work producing leadership in an organization which will follow Him, calling people into His family one by one, meticulously crafting it into a perfect organism. God is showing the same precision in His spiritual creation as He did in the physical creation. God did not create the universe and then just walk away, paying less attention to us than the earth (as magnificent as it is). Everything God made works (including our ultimate spiritual creation) perfectly. Jesus Christ, seated at the right hand of the Father, upholds and tends His spiritual creation right now. As God used Noah to build an ark (Noah perhaps had no idea as to what an ark was and what rain was), God has also called us to complete a project to which we are totally oblivious. Though we are in much ignorance as to how the end project will emerge, God has provided us tools to finish what He has called us to do. By reviewing God's patterns, we can see that we are part of the same project to which Noah and his family, progenitors of Christ, had been called. The ark, a protective enclosure or place of sanctuary, recurs perennially in Scripture, as the basket, protecting Moses, another Christ figure. Joseph, another Christ figure, was transported in a kind of ark (a coffin) into the Promised Land. The Ark of the Covenant is a protective enclosure, shielding God's treasures. The church metaphorically is an ark, a structure protecting God's called-out ones until the time of resurrection into His family. As Noah could not see God, but still did what He commanded, walking by faith, trusting Him totally, we, as