Genesis 7:21, commentary and pictures

All flesh that moved on land outside the ark died, birds and livestock and wild beasts and every creeping thing and every person together in one total ruin. Only Noah and his family, eight persons shut in by God, were kept alive while all others perished. The destruction was God's just act after one hundred and twenty years of warning, when mercy had been despised and the measure of iniquity was full. Once the door was shut probation ended, and pleading and clinging to the ark and fleeing to mountains and trees could save no one. As men ate and drank and mocked until Noah entered, so men in the last days will be absorbed in worldly life until Christ returns suddenly and unprepared multitudes are taken unawares.

Death Described by Verse

The verse means the total death of all flesh that moved upon the land outside the ark, both fowl and cattle and beast and every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth, and every man, including birds, livestock, wild animals, creeping creatures and people. It was the end of land creatures of every kind, human beings and beasts together, when the waters reached even the highest places and left the earth desolate. Their destruction was the just response to a generation that resisted conscience and prophetic warnings and gave itself over to increasing sin, sweeping away even the animals and vegetation that had been blessings. The judgment arrived after a final period in which people ignored the warning, for after the closing of the ark they continued for seven days their ordinary careless lives without knowing their doom was fixed.

Only those outside the ark died, for Noah and his family entered the ark and were saved while all other flesh died. Eight persons out of the vast population accepted the warning, fled for refuge, and survived, while every living thing outside perished. The rain fell slowly at first and then poured in torrents until the ark floated upon the troubled waters and the waters rose to the tops of the highest trees and mountains where the inhabitants had fled, sweeping them all into the boiling deep. In their destruction they saw too late what unbelief had rejected and would have given everything for a place within the ark.

No height or effort to escape could save people and animals, for the avenging waters rose over even the highest peaks and swept away the last retreat. Terrified human beings fled everywhere, pleaded for admission, clung to the ark until washed away by dashing waves, climbed mountains and the highest branches of standing trees, and clung to trees, only to be flung with tree and people into the foaming water and swept together with terrified animals into the angry flood. God had shut in those who believed His word and no others could enter, while the immense ark rode safely upon the waters with Noah and his family safe inside and the despisers of God perished in the black depths of a shoreless ocean.

The death came after forty days and forty nights of pouring rain, with torrents from heaven above uniting with waters bursting from the broken crust and fountains of the great deep, throwing large stones into the air, entering houses and sweeping away temples built for idol worship. Trees and groves and gardens and palaces and costly pleasure works they loved were swept away with men and fowl and cattle and beasts and creeping things, uprooting idolized trees, burying places of idol worship under rubbish and earth, throwing up concealed rocks over adored places, and turning the lovely home into a broken uneven frightful solitude. The bodies of people and beasts were left on mountains, hills and plains as the waters receded, and then by a powerful wind and the movement of water, earth and rocks God buried them, making the earth a vast burial ground and preventing their decomposition from polluting the air. This cleansing by water from the heavens uniting with water in the bowels of the earth foreshadows the last great day, when fire from heaven will unite with fire stored in the earth to purify the earth by fire.

After believers were shut inside by an invisible hand there were seven days with no rain in which unbelief showed itself in mockery, with people continuing ordinary careless life without knowing doom was fixed, and then steady rain began and continued until every unbeliever outside perished in sin and not one living person or dumb animal outside was left alive. Every species God created was preserved in the ark, while kinds described as confused and produced by amalgamation of humans and beasts were destroyed, and such amalgamation is said to have occurred again after the Flood. The account is inspired Scripture and factual history, with Noah as a real person and the Flood as a historical event whose waters rose to a known height, not a delusion or merely a figure of speech, for God who restrained the waters could bring the destruction He had warned of despite confidence that nature's established order could not change.

Sins That Caused Flood

The death of all flesh came because men transgressed God's law, disregarded it until almost all remembrance of the Creator had passed away from the earth, and joined rebellion until it became fixed and they would not submit to divine authority or obey God's word. Their iniquity reached so great a height that the Lord brought a flood of waters upon the earth and swept away its wicked inhabitants, declaring upon them the verdict Incurable as an act of mercy to the world. God gave them one hundred and twenty years to repent while Noah as preacher of righteousness warned of coming judgment in building the immense ark on dry land, but those who followed their own pleasure mocked the message from heaven until the appointed time came, rain was sent from heaven with the foundations of the great deep broken up, and every living thing perished except eight souls.

Men put God out of knowledge and expelled Him from thought, worshiping creatures of their own imagination and works of their own hands. By beholding idols and evil they became like them and constantly sank lower and lower, never rising higher than human conceptions, clothing false gods with human attributes and passions until their standard of character was degraded to the likeness of sinful humanity and they were defiled. God had given commandments as a rule of life, but the law was transgressed and every conceivable sin resulted, with wickedness great and every imagination of the heart only evil continually. In ingratitude and forgetfulness of God, idolatry and disobedience to His law, they used His bounties for selfish purposes, unlawful appetites, pride and sinful pleasure, despised His law and trampled His standard of character in the dust, corrupting their ways before God and corrupting one another.

The earth was corrupt before God and filled with violence and crime, with justice trampled in the dust, neither the marriage relation nor the rights of property respected, and the cries of the oppressed reaching unto heaven and entering the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth. Selfishness and violence and crime prevailed, with selfishness, pride, sinful pleasure and oppression ruling, secret societies formed to work in darkness to do violence, and wickedness open and daring despite truth kept continually before the world by righteous men including Seth, Enoch, Noah, Methuselah and others. God gave one hundred and twenty years to repent of sins, overcome bad habits, form righteous characters and find refuge in the ark, but men refused the gracious invitation, and left in darkness to follow the curse their own sinful hearts had chosen, all flesh died.

Corruption came through surrender to appetite, for since the first surrender self-indulgence had kept increasing until health was sacrificed on the altar of appetite. The inhabitants before the Flood were intemperate in eating and drinking, with gluttony, drunkenness and indulgence of depraved appetite knowing no bounds, demanding flesh-meats and eating animal food though God had at that time given no permission to eat animal food. Indulgence in food and drink inflamed passions and led to violence and crime, and after Satan overcame Adam on appetite he kept control of his descendants through indulgence of appetite and debased passion until they provoked God by iniquity, became so corrupt that God could bear with them no longer, their cup of iniquity was full, and widespread woe followed.

The destruction is connected with the spread of Sodom-like immoral practices, for the old world was destroyed by water as the judgment of God for Sodomitish practices. Abandonment of principle and lowering of the standard of morality brings that judgment, and the same evil that drowned the old world burned Sodom with fire.

Richly gifted, talented, skillful, knowledgeable and long-lived men only a step from paradise, with strength of body and mind, used their gifts, blessings, knowledge, arts and valuable ideas only for selfish purposes, to gratify pride and glorify self. They left God out of their plans and councils, lifted themselves up in their own imaginations and supposed smartness, took themselves out of the hands of God, fully decided they had no need of God and could do much better when left to their own imaginings, and became wise to do what God had never told them to do, wise to do evil. Though living in His house and fed and clothed from His liberal treasury, they continually worked in opposition to their Creator, never thankful and unmindful of His goodness, using every quality of mind to glorify self until violence and corrupting works required their removal lest their wisdom work destruction to future generations who would come in contact with them. So the Lord took the matter in hand and decided He had no need of them, and they and all their wicked works perished, with more lost in knowledge and arts used only for evil than is now known, after which when the earth was repeopled God trusted His wisdom to men more sparingly, giving them only the ability they would need in carrying out His great plan.

This destruction followed the apostasy caused by the sons of God marrying the daughters of men, presenting the flood as a terrible consequence of sin. Even a seemingly small act of self-indulgence can begin a chain of events with far-reaching effects.

Justice Mercy and Law

The death of all flesh was God's own act in strict justice as moral governor, Father and Lawgiver who makes and executes His laws, for law without penalty has no force. His goodness, long forbearance, patience, mercy and love do not hinder Him from executing that law with its penalty, for the good and safety of His subjects, and obedience to all His law is absolutely essential to eternal life. God does not work on man's plan and can do infinite justice that man has no right to do before his fellow man, so Noah would have displeased God if he had drowned one of the scoffers and mockers that harassed him, yet God rightly drowned the vast world as punishment of transgressors who refused obedience. That sweeping away fulfilled the prophetic warning that all who would not keep the commandments of heaven should drink the waters of the flood, showing the penalty of disobedience to divine law and an exhibition of His power against transgressors and exemplifying the truth of His word. Their death was the execution of the final penalty for transgressing His law, not a washing by the waters straight into glory, proving God is not too merciful to punish transgression.

God bore long with transgressors through one hundred and twenty years of probation with warning by Noah to repent, overcome bad habits, form righteous character, choose between evil and good, and find refuge. For centuries He looked with patience and forbearance on awful presumption, broken law trampled under foot, crime, violence and repeated rejection until every imagination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually. When the measure of iniquity was full, the cup full, the boundaries of mercy passed and the limits of forbearance declared, He came forth out of His hiding place and interposed in wrath to repress the increase of unrighteousness, cut short iniquity, vindicate the honor and authority of His law, and blot out the race by sweeping them away. After believers were shut in by an invisible hand and a final week passed with no rain in which mockery fully revealed unbelief, steady rain fell until not one living person or dumb animal outside the ark was left alive. That history warns that men today are likewise given a period of test and trial to show loyalty before destruction by fire, as it shall be in the days of the Son of man.

The judgment declared the verdict Incurable upon people whose rebellion had become fixed and who would not submit to divine authority, who chose to continue in resistance although they had light and knowledge, repeating past sins, taking up rebellion afresh every day, insulting the Spirit, despising mercy, defying justice and refusing to repent or reform. God's wrath was declared not merely for sins committed but for that settled refusal to be forced to submission, and when solemn warnings were no longer ridiculed the doomed longed in vain for one hour's probation, one more privilege of mercy and one more call, but the sweet voice of mercy was no more to be heard. Yet mercy was mingled with judgment in saving Noah, and love no less than justice demanded that judgments put a check on sin. As guardian as well as sovereign God cuts off those determined on rebellion so they will not lead others to ruin, in mercy punishing the few to prevent judging millions and to save the many, since long life is no blessing to the sinner and the longer men lived the more corrupt they became through the unpunished influence of Cain's life and teaching.

By the Flood God cleansed and washed the earth of its moral pollution and swept evil-doers from its face. The corruption requiring that washing came through surrender to appetite, with gluttony, drunkenness and intemperance in eating and drinking prevailing, demanding flesh-meats without divine permission, until indulgence of depraved appetite knew no bounds, inflamed passions and led to other crimes, violence, widespread woe and a cup of iniquity full. This proves God has tested fallen men where He tested man before the fall, and that indulgence of appetite is among the most flagrant sins causing the greatest human woe.

The death of all flesh in consequence of sin, the transgression of God's law, displays with overwhelming force and terror the wrath of God falling upon a sinful world, revealing the character of sin and the character of its retribution, for the wages of sin is death. It proves it is a fearful thing for the unrepenting sinner to fall into the hands of the living God, with rocks thrown up from the great deep remaining as witnesses. Its proof of divine wrath is surpassed only by the greater agony of Christ in Gethsemane when He bore that wrath for a sinful world.

Complaints that the destruction was harsh and arbitrary, charging God with severity, are murmuring and false. The Flood is to be gratefully remembered together with mercy to Adam and the gracious covenant with Noah. That charge is inconsistent because accusers submit to Satan, the cruelest tyrant, whose rule replaced justice, purity and love with oppression, violence and brutality, darkening minds by idolatry to despise the offerings prefiguring Christ's death and to counterfeit them by sacrificing their own children upon altars of their gods.

The Flood greatly increased the curse upon the earth, which began at Adam's fall and was enlarged at Abel's murder, becoming much heavier at the Flood and affecting people, animals, trees and all vegetation.

Warning Rejected Probation Closed

God purposed to destroy the impenitent yet gave one hundred and twenty years to repent of sins, overcome bad habits, form righteous characters and find refuge in the ark. During that probation Noah served as preacher of righteousness, warning of coming judgment while building the immense ark on dry land for the safety of all who would believe and enter. He and those who died in faith preached obedience to God's law amid universal scorn, and he and his helpers kept constantly at work and preached all the more earnestly in proportion to the ridicule and scorn heaped upon God's law and upon them, without losing reverence and love for the law. Their unbelief, mockery and derision did not hinder the predicted event, and the rain came and they perished.

The animals quietly entering two by two without a visible leader under God's invisible leadership was a given sign before the word was given to close the ark. Then God shut Noah in by an invisible hand and closed the door, and that shutting in of Noah was the shutting out of the world. Once the ark was closed mercy ended, probation was ended, the long forbearance of God had ceased, the cup of the unjust was full, hope for the world was dead, the last warning rejected and the golden opportunity past forever, and justice took the sword of vengeance. After believers were shut inside there were seven days with no rain in which unbelief showed itself in words and acts of mockery, and each passing day left one less day of probation.

During that final week with no rain the people mocked and derided Noah, denounced him as a visionary character, a fanatic and an alarmist, and laughed to scorn his warning as superstitious fears and forebodings. They thought they were right and Noah was wrong, claimed to know more than that faithful servant, closed their ears to words of truth, explained away truth by false science, branded his message as foolishness because rain had never existed and seemed impossible, and laughed and mocked his words as parables and as fanciful, inconsistent illusion of the brain. Their confidence that nature's established order could not change did not prevent the flood, proving that even if the whole world opposes God's law it makes no difference and that rejection did not make the message of none effect. Noah's heavenly warning did a certain and special work of warning, testing and proving the inhabitants of the world, deciding destiny as men either turned from transgression to obedience or refused it.

When rain fell slowly at first and then poured down in torrents until the ark floated upon the troubled waters, the doomed fled everywhere for refuge, pleaded for admission, clung to the ark until washed away by dashing waves, climbed the highest mountains and the highest branches of standing trees only to have wind fling tree and people into the foaming boiling deep, and the waters rose to the tops of the highest trees and mountains and swept every man, animal and bird into the deep. In their destruction they saw too late what they had rejected in unbelief and would have given everything for a place within the ark, longing for one hour's probation, one more privilege of mercy, one more call from Noah and the voice that had invited them to shelter and Noah's prayers they had mocked. The sweet voice of mercy was no more to be heard, and the dying were filled with remorse but not repentance, with hatred and sorrow, as Noah's sermons rang in their ears. Only eight of that vast population accepted the warning, fled for refuge into the ark and were saved, while all other flesh died, and that destruction condemned the world for rejecting light, the truth being a savor of life unto life to them and a savor of death unto death to those who refused it and required self-denial and lifting the cross to obey.

Only a few repented during the one hundred and twenty years, some believing carpenters dying before the flood and other converts backsliding, so only eight righteous lived to enter the ark. Many who helped Noah build the ark died with all flesh because they did not believe the warning, did not cleanse themselves from all wrong principles, and did not overcome temptation to do and say things entirely contrary to the mind and will of God.

Earth Changed and Evidences

The Flood that drowned all flesh changed the whole surface of the earth, breaking its crust and sweeping away trees and flowering shrubs while preserving seeds and a few kinds of trees and shrubs for future generations. Every living thing outside the ark died — men with fowl and cattle and beasts and creeping things — together with the trees and groves and gardens and palaces and costly pleasure works they loved. Torrents of rain from heaven above united with the fountains of the great deep broken up, uprooting idolized trees, fruitful trees, shady avenues, forests and gardens, burying places of idol worship under masses of rubbish and earth, and throwing up rocks concealed under the earth to cover lovely places men had adored. The lovely home God had given man was thus turned into a broken, uneven surface and frightful solitude, marked by deep gorges and seamed and cleft rocks and varied shapes and structures. The world before the Flood far exceeded the present world in beauty, grandeur and loveliness, for God had surrounded people with the precious things of earth because He loved them, but they turned those blessings into a curse by using them to gratify pride and glorify themselves until He destroyed them for violence and corrupting works. Sin corrupts and debases the earth, and every place inhabited by human beings is debased with sin, yet without the curse of sin the earth would still be a happy place; the destruction came after a 120-year warning through Noah and would not have happened if the impenitent had repented, but they brought the curse on themselves by ingratitude to God, disobedience to His law, and worship of the works of their own hands.

The broken surface of the earth with its gigantic rocks and towering mountains reveals what God did in unlimited power, and the rocks thrown up by the breaking forth of the waters remain as witnesses to that flood and to the terror of God's wrath poured out because its inhabitants transgressed His law. Seamed and cleft rocks, deep gorges, varied structures, time-worn rocky walls, battlements of rocks, and grand mountain scenery have stood since that Flood, washed by mountain torrents, as seen in places such as the wild rocks around Patmos. These remains hold treasures of wisdom and knowledge to educate the mind and morals, refine the soul, and lead men to discern the living God, serving as His school.

Men, animals and trees buried by the Flood were many times larger than those living later, leaving evidence that the antediluvians perished by a flood, and the larger bones of men and animals explain why remains in the earth differ from present conditions, not as proof that another race lived before creation. The earth's surface was broken up and markedly changed, burying and preserving evidence of the abundant plant and animal life that existed before it, including forests later transformed into coal and oil. Fossil remains of creatures buried in the earth are meant to support faith in the inspired account that all birds, livestock, beasts, creeping things and human beings that moved on the earth were destroyed, and explaining them away through naturalistic reasoning turns evidence intended to honor God into a cause of unbelief.

Some later descendants of Noah who believed God had brought this destruction of the antediluvian people and cursing of the earth by the Flood rebelled against Him for it. Afterward many denied Him and explained the Flood by natural causes, while others admitted a Supreme Being destroyed that world yet rebelled against Him like Cain and disbelieved His covenant not to bring another flood. Men on the plain of Shinar tried to secure themselves against another deluge by building a tower much higher than the waters had reached, hoping by ascending to the region of the clouds to find out the cause of the Flood, exalting their own pride and turning future generations from God to idolatry.

By the waters of the Flood God blotted the long-lived race from the earth because the intellect He had given them was perverted and the imagination of their hearts was evil continually. God had given them knowledge and valuable ideas with wisdom, tact and judgment to carry out His plan, but they used every quality of mind to glorify self. With them perished the knowledge and arts they had used only for evil, so more was lost in the Flood in many ways than is now known, and when the earth was repeopled God trusted His wisdom to men more sparingly, giving them only the ability they would need in carrying out His great plan.

Pattern of Final Judgment

As in the days of Noah when people were eating and drinking and marrying until Noah entered the ark, so shall it be in the days of the Son of man at Christ's sudden return, when people absorbed in worldly life, pleasure and business will be unprepared and taken unawares. The flood account is factual history with Noah as a real person, and Noah's generation prefigures the age before Christ's appearing because human nature apart from the Spirit is the same in both ages. The total death of every person and every dumb animal outside the ark vindicated the honor of the law after sin exceeded the limits of grace, following a probation of one hundred and twenty years in which obedience was preached amid universal scorn and a final one-week test after believers were shut in by an invisible hand during which no rain fell and mockery fully revealed unbelief, until steady rain fell and not one living being outside was left alive. Their unbelief, mockery and derision, denouncing the warning as visionary, fanatical, alarmist, superstitious fears and impossible because rain had never been seen, did not hinder the predicted event, and left in darkness to follow the curse their own hearts had chosen all flesh died. The same destruction will break prior to the second appearing, whose day and hour are unknown, upon a world absorbed in pleasure-loving, amusements, gains, traffic, moneymaking, dishonest practices, luxury, extravagance, wine-drinking, reveling, robbing the poor, planting and building, and upon a church following the world and lulled in blind deluded slumber of security while peace and safety is cried, coming as a snare and as a thief with sudden destruction, proving the end of all things is at hand for those walking the broad road to eternal ruin who must be warned and saved by a crucified and risen Saviour.

The cleansing by water from heaven uniting with water in the bowels of the earth foreshadows the last great day when fire from heaven will unite with fire stored up in the earth to purify the earth by fire. The flood's destruction of the wicked was an act of mercy and a verdict that rebellion had become incurable and would not submit to authority, and it stands as warning and parallel to the fires of the final day. God swept the earth of moral corruption with a sea of water when inhabitants corrupted their ways and plucked the tree of the knowledge of evil to human ruin, and He will soon sweep the earth again in answer to cries from India, Africa, China and many places with misery, anguish and physical suffering, not with water but with a sea of fire unquenchable by any human devising that will avenge His own elect who cry day and night, yea avenge them speedily. This warns those given to pride, vanity, pleasure-seeking, display and wasting time and money to prepare and think seriously of giving an account.

Those who rejected warning perished in the flood after God's Spirit was withdrawn and ceased to strive with that sinful generation. When iniquity became common until it no longer shocked the senses and rebellion became incurable, the flood destroyed every kind of land creature and every person outside the ark though they had been urged to find refuge, warning that when warnings are refused the Spirit may cease to strive. As Noah and his family were preserved in the prepared ark riding safely on the deep amid storm, so God will be the refuge of His believing ones in the time of destruction with no evil or plague coming near them, even when nature is convulsed with burning mountains, boiling water, earthquakes and great destruction of human life before the coming of the Son of man. God delivers those who remain faithful though they warned others and were mocked, and will likewise protect His people in the final crisis from the wicked seeking to destroy them for refusing the beast's decree and mark, arising as protector and avenger to deliver those who seek Him with all their hearts when defiance becomes almost universal and His people are pressed in affliction. Only those who take refuge in God's provision will be saved while those who reject it are lost, and as the ark rode safely on the storm-tossed waters so the Word of God outlasts efforts to destroy it, with mercy mingled with judgment as shown also by the fire on Sodom and Gomorrah and by God's interposing to hinder Satan's plans when a crisis comes.

God swept all the rest of mankind out of existence and saved only Noah and his family, eight persons in all the vast world, while great men and good men, philosophers, scientific men and learned men perished because they did not believe, calling the warning fanciful, inconsistent, an illusion of the brain and deceived, and holding it not in accordance with God's character to destroy so many and spare so few. The same reasoning continues at the end when the message to fear God and keep His commandments is proclaimed, with unfaithful professed servants and great and wise men lulling themselves in carnal security by arguing that a good and merciful Maker would not consume men with fire for unbelief and that wise men would know the Sabbath and the shortness of time if it were true, yet wrath will soon fall on all the sinful and disobedient and they will perish in the general conflagration by fire, leaving saved only the few who keep the Sabbath and believe the warning. The destruction that came in Noah's day is the pattern for the coming day of final separation, completing the separating line now being drawn and leaving only two great centers forever separated, Christ the Prince of heaven, the Prince of life and immortality, and Antichrist the center of the rebel forces of apostasy. The antediluvian world was destroyed because they transgressed the holy law and would not heed admonitions, and that destruction teaches for all time the sure result of transgression and foreshadows the final destruction of the whole world in the closing period of its history for transgression and impenitence.

Call to Present Readiness

The same increasing wickedness that swept away the inhabitants of the earth remains hardened today, with selfishness and violence and crime prevailing as the close of this earth's history approaches, and with disregard for God and His law, love of pleasure, selfish gratification, pride, vanity, covetousness, war, reveling, drunkenness, rioting, godless pleasure and carnal security proving the end is at hand and the time left to prepare very short. God looks upon the world today as He looked upon it then, for the wickedness of that time is repeated in this age, when iniquity abounds among the nations, when multitudes are honored and great festivities are held, when men seek their own pleasure and circulate means without taking the Word as guide, and when the Spirit is withdrawn until iniquity no longer shocks the senses. Even the sign of animals quietly entering the ark two and two under invisible leadership without a visible leader did not humble the hardened, who made light of Noah and his family, mocked and derided through a week without rain after God closed the door, and then saw gentle rain increase in power until every living person and animal outside was destroyed. That destruction came amid eating and drinking and marrying until Noah entered, and the whole world is fast becoming the same again before the coming of the Son of man, when nature will be convulsed with burning mountains, boiling water, earthquakes and great destruction of life, while calamities, floods and disasters by land and by sea increase as warning messages go forth as through Noah. The youth educated in large cities are surrounded by influences similar to those before the Flood, with the world given up to pleasure, immorality prevailing, rights of the weak disregarded, and cities fast becoming hotbeds of iniquity, so Bible believers must take their position for righteousness and truth.

The history of the old world is to be kept before the mind and read and understood as a warning alongside present selfishness, covetousness, violence and war, for its destruction by waters that removed inhabitants from the face of the earth stands as a warning in a world becoming corrupt and violent. Noah's preaching, which was of heavenly origin, did a certain and special work of warning, testing and proving the inhabitants of the world, deciding destiny as men either turned from transgression to obedience of God's law or refused it, and the truth for the last days is doing the same work of warning, testing and proving. God gave one hundred and twenty years to choose between evil and good, would have saved every soul that obeyed, yet surrounded by influences that drew attention from God and heavenly things they deliberately chose their own wicked ways and refused mercy, proving that whatsoever a man sows he must also reap with a sure reaping time known by God. Their death warns that men today are likewise given a period of test and trial to show whether they will be loyal before the world is destroyed by fire, and that it is no more favorable to form a character for future eternal life now than it was then.

All are tested by present truth as by Noah's preaching, for the massive ark saved all who would hear warning and turn from unrighteousness, those who believed were saved, and only eight persons were saved while all other flesh died. Once the hour to close the ark came at last mercy ended, so the lesson is to humble under the mighty hand of God, wake up and get ready, lest it be everlastingly too late and the last call of mercy be unheard. God's people must come out from among the incurable, be separate and touch not the unclean thing, for the old world had insulted the Spirit in the face of conscience, made free choice of the wrong, rebelled, despised mercy, defied justice and set feet in the way of the froward with no desire to turn back, and the same condition will exist in the days of the Son of man. Safety is in knowing God's ways and choosing His guidance rather than lifting up self in finite wisdom, taking self out of His hands and deciding there is no need of Him, and only those who take refuge in God's provision will be saved while those who reject it are lost. There is not a second probation, for now is probationary time while mercy still offers cleansing from scarlet and crimson sin and victory through partaking of the divine nature, secured by the crucified and risen Saviour who died to win the world back to favor, loyalty and commandment-keeping, before mercy is gone forever as when the Flood destroyed all flesh.

The whole world perished in the Flood, proving that the saved are few and not the great numbers, so present believers must not be discouraged when only a few believe present truth and regard the commandments of God. Following the majority leads to destruction and not to heaven, so those who know duty must not follow the majority nor turn to the right or left to fables where a dish of fables is set in place of truth, but must lift the cross, keep duty, and regard the commandments, while those who refuse to lift it will meet destruction. After Adam and Eve were placed in Eden and fell, the floodgates of woe were opened, the world became corrupt before God, and because its people would not believe all perished except Noah and his family saved in the ark. Yet God, who laid out the great plan of redemption before creating the world, gives humanity the privilege of gaining back God-given manhood and womanhood so the immortal image of God may be restored.