Genesis 6:1

Happy Groundhogs Day!

Apparently Punxsutawney Phil did not see his shadow today, which means an early spring. That would be good news to our friends and family who are dealing with this incredible snowstorm that is blanketing the country! Did you see that poor Queensland, Australia, which already has been suffering through record flooding this year, now has cyclone Yasi barreling toward them at 180 miles an hour, with 360 miles of width??? They're saying it will be at least as bad as Hurricane Katrina, producing 20 foot swells! What's going on?? That leads me into this next chapter of Genesis and the account of the Flood.

As we enter this section of Scripture, let's look at a couple of New Testament references to Noah that Jon Courson points to. First, let's see what Jesus had to say, when He was asked about His Second Coming:

As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. (Matt 24:37-39)

When Jesus was telling parables, he always made it clear that the story was just that, a parable that used the common things experienced by men to tell a spiritual truth. However, when He spoke of Old Testament figures, like Jonah and Noah, he affirmed the truth of the Biblical accounts. Noah was a real man, who lived in a time of very evil men. His story is true. In these verses, Jesus tells the disciples that His Second Coming will be just like the days of Noah, when people were oblivious to the signs and going about their days as if there were no God. They were taken by complete surprise by the suddenness of the Flood and its destructive power.

Here's what Peter wrote concerning the End Times in 2 Peter 3:3-6.

Above all, you must understand that in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires. They will say, “Where is this ‘coming’ he promised? Ever since our ancestors died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation.” But they deliberately forget that long ago by God’s word the heavens came into being and the earth was formed out of water and by water. By these waters also the world of that time was deluged and destroyed.

Here, too, Peter affirms the truth of the account of Noah. Just as there were scoffers in his day, there are scoffers in ours. So, let's look at this account and find its relevance for our day. In verse 1 we're told that "men began to increase in number on the earth..." Courson takes a mathematical projection of the population growth from the times of Seth. Figuring an average of four children born to each man, and each of the four having four, he comes up with a number over 3 billion. He says that it took from the time Noah got off the ark until 1867 for the earth's population to reach 1 billion again. I just checked out the figures online, and the current world population is over 7 billion (nearly doubling since 1970). I believe that the projections are now that the population will continue to double every 15 years! Put people in crowded conditions, and the evil already in their hearts will also multiply! That's exactly what happened in Noah's day.

Truly there is much to say about the first verses, so I'll leave the explanation of the marriages of the "sons of God" and the "daughters of men" until tomorrow. I'm anxious to see the parallels between Noah's day and ours! In the meantime, I'm praying for those poor people in Queensland and for those I love in Chicago and the East Coast!