Welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the Book of Genesis. This is study #3 of Genesis, chapter 7 and we are looking at Genesis 7:4-6:

For yet seven days, and I will cause it to rain upon the earth forty days and forty nights; and every living substance that I have made will I destroy from off the face of the earth. And Noah did according unto all that JEHOVAH commanded him. And Noah was six hundred years old when the flood of waters was upon the earth.

I will stop reading there. In verse 4 God speaks to Noah and He says, “For yet seven days, and I will cause it to rain upon the earth forty days and forty nights.” First of all, this tells us that God gave Noah seven days warning and He specifically told him the exact day the flood would take place. It is obvious and I do not know how anyone could dispute that because it was a direct statement, so all Noah had to do was start to count from that tenth day of the second month of his 600th year, so seven days from that day would be the day the flood would begin. That is exactly what happened, historically, as it says in Genesis 7:10-11:

And it came to pass after seven days, that the waters of the flood were upon the earth. In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month…

So, historically, God told Noah in advance of the exact day. We already know from going through chapter six that God had given Noah 120 years of advance warning in order for Noah to build the ark, but to say that you have 120 years from 5110BC before something happens is not quite specific enough because it could have been any month in the twelve months of Noah’s 600th year. So God first gave him the year so Noah would have sufficient time to build the ark, but when the year came God gave Noah more information and greater detail as He told Noah the very day the flood would begin.

This is a problem for people in the churches and many professed Christians that insist, “No man can know the day or hour,” and they even go to passages like Matthew, chapter 24 where it says in Matthew 24:36: “But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only.” This is the verse that so many in the churches go to for their proof text that you cannot know the day or hour when Christ is coming and they apply that to any date, such as May 21, 2011 or October 7, 2015. Whenever they hear a date it is their automatic reaction and more and more people are “joining up” with that idea because it is just an easy verse to pull out for their doctrine.

But it is surprising that some people that ought to know better have joined with them, but God’s elect people know that often the apparent meaning of a verse is not the actual meaning of a verse. A good example of this is the verse that says, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son.” They quote this verse to prove that God loves everybody and, yet, they are completely wrong in their interpretation of that verse. Or, the verse that says, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house,” they interpret to mean that the work of “believing” can actually save someone. Again, that is completely wrong understanding of what appears to be a plain and direct statement. We do not have enough time to go through the Bible and the many verses that apparently say one thing, but in reality, they are teaching something completely different. God wrote the Bible this way so people that are spiritually dead and in spiritual blindness do not recognize that you have to “dig into” the Bible and that often the plain, literal meaning will lead one astray. In the churches’ hermeneutics, they have a lazy way of approaching the Bible, so they accept the plain, literal meaning, especially when it is a doctrine they prefer like, “But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only.” Then they look at the next verses as proof, where it says in Matthew 24:37-39:

But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, And knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.

“There you have it,” they say. “First we have Jesus’ own statement that says of that day and hour knows no man and then He tells us about the days of Noah and the flood and notice it says that they knew not until the flood came and took them all away. All the people knew not.”

They think this supports their claim, but God’s elect never disputed the fact that the unsaved would know not. As it says in Daniel, the wise will understand, but none of the wicked will understand. So we agree with that completely because the flood took all of that group of people by surprise and they did not know the day or hour until they experienced it. We completely agree with that idea, but it doesn’t mean these people did not hear about it and some even saw Noah building the ark for 120 years in a world of just a handful of millions of people.

Everyone knew that Noah was just a crazy “old man” or a crazy middle-aged man of that day. He would certainly have been considered to be “out of his mind.” They would say, “Look at him building this ark because of some fanciful idea of a flood. He thinks God spoke to him.” They would have mocked and ridiculed and laughed because mankind is no different today than they were back then. They did not know the day because they did not want to know. They disregarded the warning and they went about eating and drinking and marrying until the day came, and then they knew. They had been warned and warned, but then the rains began to occur and the flood came and through the actual experience of it, they came to know it. That is actually how the Bible uses the word “knoweth” when it says, “But of that day and hour knoweth no man.” It means that mankind has yet to experience the Judgment Day of God. Once man experiences the destruction, he comes to “know it.”

Anyway, Jesus is making the statement, “But of that day and hour knoweth no man,” and then He gives the historical example of Noah and flood. Then what are we to do as diligent students of the Bible? We go back to the Book of Genesis to see what the situation was and when we read about it, it says in Genesis 7:4:

For yet seven days, and I will cause it to rain upon the earth forty days and forty nights; and every living substance that I have made will I destroy from off the face of the earth.

God told Noah the exact day. Noah knew the day of the flood. The rest of people that remained outside the ark would have been told, as Noah would have told anyone that would listen and he certainly told his family. They finished the work and loaded the animals over the course of that week. Noah, the preacher of righteousness, would have made it known as the Spirit of Christ would have moved in Noah to preach to the people in the prison of sin and Satan. He preached to them and, yet, they disregarded him and they preferred ignorance as they went about their everyday lives.

The period of the seven-day warning passed and then came the seventeenth day of the second month and the rains began. At first people may not have believed it as it began to rain, but it was such a heavy rain. We have heavy rains at times today, but the next day the rains would have been just as heavy and it kept raining and raining and then they came “to know” through the experience of it.

How are we to reconcile these two things? In Matthew 24 Christ says, “And knew not until the flood came, and took them all away,” but He says this in the context of this statement, “But of that day and hour knoweth no man,” but when we read the historical account of the flood we learn that Noah “knew.” His wife knew and his sons knew and their wives knew. They were the only eight souls that were delivered, but other people would have been told about it. How do we reconcile these two things? God helps in in 1Thessalonians 5:1-5:

But of the times and the seasons, brethren, ye have no need that I write unto you. For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night. For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape. But ye, brethren, are not in darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief. Ye are all the children of light, and the children of the day: we are not of the night, nor of darkness.

Do you see what God is saying? Yes, Christ comes as a thief in the night. Actually, He has come and taken certain people by surprise, just as King Darius, also known as Cyrus, came upon the kingdom of Babylon and took the kingdom in one night. The Babylonians were caught off guard. It was just amazing how a mighty power like Babylon could be so unsuspecting and, yet, we understand that Babylon represents the kingdom of Satan and the unsaved inhabitants of this world and they are “blind” and have no ability or wisdom to discern both time and judgment and, therefore, it comes upon them like a thief in the night.

And, yet, that is not the case with God’s elect people: “But ye, brethren, are not in darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief.” All we have to do is to apply what this verse says to Noah. Noah was a man that found grace in the eyes of the Lord. God is following a Biblical pattern that is carried through the entire Bible and that principal is that the Lord God will do nothing but He reveals His secret to His servants the prophets. So before God acted and sent the flood to destroy the first earth by water, He foretold what He would do to Noah. He gave Noah advance warning and then He gave Noah more in depth information as He told Noah the actual day because Noah was not in darkness that that day should overtake him as a thief. Neither were his wife, his sons or their wives overtaken.

Those in the churches and even some outside the churches would say, “All that means when it says that you are not overtaken as a thief is that you are saved and if you are saved you are ready.” But that is not how it worked out in the life of Noah and his family. They built the ark. They had access to the ark because God used them to build it in obedience to Him. If it were true what some people say that not being caught as a thief means you are saved, then Noah and his family would have just wondered, “Is the flood coming today? Is it coming tomorrow? We will just keep our eyes out for some rain clouds and if it starts to rain, we are safe and secure.” That is not how it worked out. God gave them information concerning both “time and judgment.” He told Noah, “And, yet seven days,” and the world will be judged.

Noah had seven days to take care of matters and get all the food on board and to get the animals on board and to take care of any last minute provisions. Perhaps they went to neighbors and friends and went into a city and stood on the street corner warning people: “People, the ark is complete. God has told me that on the seventeenth day of the second month the judgment of God is coming and the flood will start; the ark will be closed and no one will be able to enter after that time. Now is the time! Now is the day of deliverance. You can find refuge from this certain judgment because God told me that it would be in seven days.” Again, Noah was a preacher of righteousness and he would have told them the exact day, the seventeenth day of the second month. He would likely have told them, again, and again, as he was beseeching people as an ambassador of God: “Will you not be reconciled to the Lord? Believe Him and trust him. Come, we have room. Come and get onboard the ark.” Out of love for his fellow man and at a time when it was still possible to bring someone onboard, Noah would have made these kinds of pleas. And, yet, God had already told him (when He gave him instructions 120 years earlier) what people would board the ark: Noah, his wife, their sons and their wives. Only God’s elect listen to the Word of God and believe it and trust it because they were given “eyes to see” to understand that these things are true and trustworthy. God’s Word is always certain.

So only eight souls got onboard the ark and they were probably disappointed that so many people would not be coming into the ark and, yet, it was the will of God. God shut him in and God did what He said He would do in Genesis 7:4:

For yet seven days, and I will cause it to rain upon the earth forty days and forty nights; and every living substance that I have made will I destroy from off the face of the earth.

So it would have been understood that the door of the ark would be shut because it would make no sense to build an ark and then leave the door open. The ark, as it were, was a “divine vessel” that was really a gift from God to the people of the earth and the opportunity to get on board was limited to that seven-day period, but once that seven days expired, there was no more possibility or opportunity. That is exactly what happened. We know that Noah and his family were not caught off guard. God did not come as a thief to them, but the rest of the people of the world were in “darkness.” Their eyes were not open and their ears could not hear – they were lifeless in the spiritual realm. Since God’s Word operates in the spiritual realm, it is as though it cannot move them to take action as it does the people of God. For the people of God, God moves in them to will and to do of His good pleasure. As a result, the unsaved were left outside the ark and outside the kingdom of heaven. They were outside of God’s salvation and then the rains came and the flood arose and the world was destroyed.