Welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the Book of Genesis. This is study #16 of Genesis, chapter 6 and we are going to read Genesis 6:13-14:

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. Make thee an ark of gopher wood; rooms shalt thou make in the ark, and shalt pitch it within and without with pitch.

Verse 13 is similar to what we already read in Genesis 6:11-12:

The earth also was corrupt before God, and 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.

God is saying it again, as He says, “And God said unto Noah, the end of all flesh is come before me.”

God is declaring that a judgment will take place upon all the people of the earth and he told Noah this information ahead of time. The Lord is revealing what He is about to do and that will become a pattern that God will follow in the rest of the Bible as He comes to His people to give them advanced information concerning things He will do. For instance, we read in Hebrews, chapter 11 about what God had done here in Genesis, where it says in Hebrews 11:7:

By faith Noah, being warned of God of things not seen as 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.

Noah was warned of God of “things not seen as yet,” so in Genesis 6, verse 13 God is telling Noah He is going to destroy the earth and all flesh. He is warning him. Following the warning, God told him to construct the ark: “Make thee an ark of gopher wood.” But, first, the Lord again explains why He intends to destroy the world: “For the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth.”

We have not talked about the word “violence” yet. It is Strong’s #2555 and it is very closely related to Strong’s #2554. Strong’s word #2554 is a word the Lord uses in Ezekiel 22:26:

Her priests have violated my law, and have profaned mine holy things: they have put no difference between the holy and profane, neither have they shewed difference between the unclean and the clean, and have hid their eyes from my sabbaths, and I am profaned among them.

The priests had “violated” God’s Law. It is also the same word that is used in Zephaniah 3:3-4:

Her princes within her are roaring lions; her judges are evening wolves; they gnaw not the bones till the morrow. Her prophets are light and treacherous persons: her priests have polluted the sanctuary, they have done violence to the law.

Again, they have violated the Law of God. What God says is to be carried out and, yet, when the Law of God found its way into the hands of Old Testament Israel or Judah or the New Testament corporate church even the very clear and direct commands of God were altered or changed. They were misrepresented and perverted. The word “pervert” means “to change.” Israel did this with God’s Laws and the churches do it. For instance, God is very clear regarding the qualifications for elders and deacons – they are to be the husband of one wife, raising their children well. So an elder or deacon should be married (and not divorced) and he should have one wife. He should be raising his children well in the fear and admonition of the Lord. Those are the qualifications, but the churches have altered the qualifications. They say, “Well, yes, but an elder can be someone that has been divorced and remarried or he can be a single man or he can be a married man that does not have children.” They change the Law. When God says that He does not permit women to teach or usurp authority over the man in the churches, how in the world do the churches get around that? But they do – they have women elders and deacons and women pastors and women exercising authority within the churches and congregations, flatly violating the Law of God.

Also, God has laid down His Law in regard to salvation. He says, “I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion,” but the churches and congregations find a couple of verses in the Bible and they say, “No, it is not ALL of God because the Bible says, ‘Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.’” They do violence to the Law of God. And we could go on and on, listing doctrines that the churches have developed out of their own minds. The “tongues movement” is an outright violation of Revelation 22:18 where God says, “If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book.” Historically, we have pointed out to people the verse in Revelation 22, verse 18, which God placed in the last Book of the Bible to declare that the Bible is now a completed Book and that the Bible, alone is the Word of God. We have been saying that for a long time. If people think that God is still communicating with them through tongues or visions or any method outside of the Bible, they have violated that commandment. That is the idea this word “violate” or “violence” conveys.

In Psalm 73 we see this word, Strong’s #2555, that is used in our verse. God says of the wicked, in Psalm 73:6:

Therefore pride compasseth them about as a chain; violence covereth them as a garment.

In the Bible the “garment” that covers the saved is a picture of the righteousness of Christ or a picture of the salvation of God that covers over sin, but for the wicked “violence” covers them. We know that the world is extremely violent in regard to the great numbers of shootings, stabbings and murders that are committed daily. Then there are all the wars and terrorism. The world is just an extremely violent place, physically. The physical violence cannot be avoided today, but that physical violence illustrates the spiritual violence that precedes it, the violence committed against the Law of God. Yes, violence against the Law of God is committed in the churches, but in the world every human being is under the Law of God and is married to the Law of God, according to Romans, chapter 7. Mankind is in a spiritual marriage relationship to the Law and when people sin God can speak of them as adulterers and adulteresses because they have broken the marriage bond to the Law of God. So the physical violence is terrible and awful, but God’s focus is on man doing “violence” to His commandments. For instance, it says in Proverbs 4:14-17:

Enter not into the path of the wicked, and go not in the way of evil men. Avoid it, pass not by it, turn from it, and pass away. For they sleep not, except they have done mischief; and their sleep is taken away, unless they cause some to fall. For they eat the bread of wickedness, and drink the wine of violence.

This is significant that the Lord speaks of bread and wine here. He relates the bread to wickedness and the wine to violence. “Bread and wine” symbolize the Gospel and the Lord Jesus Christ is the bread of life. The wine is a type and figure of the Gospel that goes forth and the blood of Christ that covers over sin. And, yet, the wicked “drink the wine of violence.” It is the perversion of the Law of God and the Gospel, in particular, in the churches and it is a perversion of the Law of God that is written upon the hearts of men out in the world. The people of the world know they are not to kill, steal or commit adultery. They know that men are not to marry men and women are not to marry women because the Law of God is written on their hearts, but they do violence to the Law of God when they turn the Law around and change it. They say that which is good is evil and that which is right is unjust. In the churches, it is changing grace to works. In the world it is changing the moral law that God has commanded for mankind. Today in the Day of Judgment there is, more and more, a turning from the commandments of God and society is trying to change the Laws that God has placed upon man’s heart, but man can never escape it – it will always be there.

Let us look at one more verse before we go back to Genesis. In Jonah, chapter 3 God sent Jonah a second time to Nineveh and Jonah declared that in forty days they would be destroyed. Then the king of Nineveh reacted, as it says in Jonah 3:7-9:

And he caused it to be proclaimed and published through Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles, saying, Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste any thing: let them not feed, nor drink water: But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and cry mightily unto God: yea, let them turn every one from his evil way, and from the violence that is in their hands. Who can tell if God will turn and repent, and turn away from his fierce anger, that we perish not?

The Ninevites were going in an evil way and had “violence in their hands,” and the hand represents the “will” of a person. Just as the people before the flood were filling the earth with violence, it is the same old story with mankind, time after time, so God picked a time that fit perfectly in His program of “times and seasons” for the flood. Of course, God did not just pick a random time because the flood occurred 6,023 years from creation and that was no coincidence – it happened according to a set time. Also, God picked that time in order to make the statement to Noah, “And yet seven days,” before He brought the flood waters. From the date of the flood of 4,990BC, seven thousand years later (“a day is as a thousand years”) brought us to the beginning of Judgment Day in the year 2011AD. So the Lord picked this time for the flood because of how precisely it fit into the program for the first earth and the flood and the program for the second earth and Judgment Day.

So the Lord came and He saw man’s incredible wickedness within and how the thoughts of their hearts were only evil continually and how man was filling the earth with violence outwardly. There was no doubt people doing acts of physical violence, but, again, what is mostly in view is doing violence to the commandments of God. They are doing their own thing, so the Lord said in Genesis 6:13:

… for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth.

This is God’s response to sin. It always brings His wrath and judgment. God will destroy sin. In this present earth in its desperately wicked condition, iniquity abounds like never before in history. Sin is enormous. There are a thousand mountains of sin and there is an incredible amount of iniquity. Abundant evil has covered the face of the earth in our time and God is not putting up with it any longer because Judgment Day did come on May 21, 2011 and the wrath of God began to be poured out at that point, so God is no longer patiently waiting. The Book of James tells is that the husbandman waits for the early and the latter rain and the implication is that once He receives the early and the latter rain, he will no longer wait. The “early rain” identified with the church age and the Latter Rain identified with that (about) seventeen-year period during the second part of the Great Tribulation period. It all concluded on May 21, 2011 and ever since that time God has no longer been waiting for the precious fruit of the earth because He has already gathered it. The periods of spiritual rain are over and it is Judgment Day and God is actively pouring out His wrath.

You know, man can go on with sin for quite a while. God was patient as He worked out His salvation program and He was longsuffering as He told Noah that the flood would come in 120 years. During the time the ark was being constructed, people were continuing in the same wickedness and violence continued to fill the earth. Corruption continued. People can get the wrong idea about God and His nature and they can start to think and believe, “We have been doing these things and we have been involved in sin and doing as we please for year, after year, after year and nothing has happened.” Therefore, they conclude in their erroneous thinking, “And nothing ever will happen.” So when a timeline is revealed, like, “And yet seven days,” people just dismiss it, but there does come a time when God will destroy all flesh and they will die in their sins and cease to exist. The time will come for this present world – that is guaranteed. The time will come. In fact, the time has come for spiritual judgment, but God has other things involved in His program of judgment that He is working out. For instance, there is the “testing” of the faith of His people and there is the “appearance” of His people before the judgment seat of Christ. In addition, there is the timeline for the judgment and when the final detail is taken care of, God will follow His historical pattern and precedent in the Bible and He will come to destroy the world. The unsaved will cease to exist and there will be no more corruption and no more violence against the Word of God. God will create a new heaven and new earth where His people will be perfect in their entire being. That means they will keep the Law of God perfectly and there will never again be violence against the Law of God and, therefore, there will be no violence against his fellow man. There will be no “raising of the fist” against God ever again.