Welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the Book of Genesis. This is study #5 of Genesis, chapter 7 and we are continuing to look 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.

We are going to pick up where we left off in our last study as we looked at 2Peter, chapter 3 because God’s statement to Noah, “For yet seven days,” identifies with 2Peter 3:5-10:

For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water: Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished: But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men. But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up.

I will stop reading there. In this passage God is speaking of the flood. It is clearly what He is referring to when He says, “Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished.” Then God made reference to this present world in which we are living and He said that it is “kept in store against the day of judgment.” Then He added in 2 Peter 3:8:

But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.

I also read verses 9 and 10 because they bring the focus upon the final judgment of the world, which means that if you were to try to map out this chapter and summarize it, you would say that in the first few verses God addresses the flood and the destruction of the first earth; following that, God speaks of the destruction of the second earth. Right in the midst of this discussion of the destruction of these two worlds, He makes this statement in verse 8 to His beloved, which is language that identifies with those Christ has saved, the elect: “But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing…”

In our last study we looked at the word translated as “ignorant” and we saw that this word is often translated as “hide” or “hidden.” This word was used in reference to the woman who touched the hem of Jesus’ garment in Luke 8, verse 46 and it was also the word used in regard to the statement in Acts 26:26: “For the king knoweth of these things, before whom also I speak freely: for I am persuaded that none of these things are hidden from him; for this thing was not done in a corner.”

This word was translated as “ignorant” in 2Peter, chapter 3, verse 8, so it could really say, “But, beloved, let not this one thing be hidden from you.” That gives it a different sort of idea than the word “ignorant,” especially when we realize that God had hidden truth in the Bible until the time of the end. That is what it meant in Daniel when it was said that the Word was sealed to the time of the end. It is “hidden” truth, spoken in mysteries and in parabolic language that man was held back from understanding. The people of God were held back from understanding these things until we reached the time of the end of the world, which began with the Great Tribulation period and continues into our day. Then God opened the Scriptures to the understanding of His people and knowledge increased. We have witnessed and we acknowledge that we have learned many things over the course of the period of the Great Tribulation and into this Day of Judgment, all things that were not previously known.

Notice, again, the language that God uses: “But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing.” God wants this one thing not to be hidden from His people. The phrase “one thing” is found in reference to Martha and Mary when they were hosting people in their house; Martha was busy serving, but Mary was sitting at the feet of Jesus and listening to the Word of God. It says in Luke 10:40-42:

But Martha was cumbered about much serving, and came to him, and said, Lord, dost thou not care that my sister hath left me to serve alone? bid her therefore that she help me. And Jesus answered and said unto her, Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things: But one thing is needful: and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her.

“One thing” was needful. In this case, what was that “one thing”? It was to listen to the Word of God and, of course, what is true of Martha is true of all of us – we are careful and troubled about many things. And, yet, the solution to our cares and anxieties is to slow down and to sit at the feet of Christ, which is what we do whenever we pick up the Bible and read it. Whenever we spend time in the Word of God, we are sitting at the feet of Jesus. It is a good for all of us to pray, “Lord, teach me. Cause me to understand. Open my understanding.”

Anyway, “one thing” was needful and that phrase stresses that what is being referred to is very important. God hid many things in His Word. God hid information about the true meaning of “hell” and about the timing of the atoning work of Christ being done at the foundation of the world and about the end of the church age, and so forth. God hid information concerning many things in His Word and it is all important, but there is only one specific thing that God placed this much emphasis upon and it had to do with this statement in 2Peter 3:8: “But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing.” He wanted this “one thing” not to be hidden from us and that means we are to know this one thing at the proper time. And what was it? It goes on to say, in 2Peter 3:8:

… that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.

Okay, that is interesting. Does it mean that God is “timeless,” in a sense, since He is outside of time? Is it just helpful information about the character and nature of God that indicates it does not matter in God’s sight if a day passes or a thousand years passes because He is the Eternal Being?

Even though it is a wonderful truth that God is eternal, we wonder why God would highlight this the way He is doing in this passage concerning the flood of the first world and the fiery destruction of our present world. In this context, He is going to tell us something extremely important that must not be hidden from us, so we cannot imagine that this only refers to God being “outside of time,” so it must be something else.

Remember, the only other place in the Bible where God speaks of a “thousand years” in this kind of way is in Psalm 90:3-5:

Thou turnest man to destruction; and sayest, Return, ye children of men. For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night. Thou carriest them away as with a flood;

Again, “a thousand years” and God speaks of man’s destruction and uses this word “flood.” And a thousand years are as yesterday or as a day, in association with a flood. If we go back to the flood account in 2Peter, chapter 3, that is also the context of the flood and speaks of “a thousand years.” If we go back to the only flood account the Bible tells us about, we find this statement in Genesis 7:4:

For yet seven days, and I will cause it to rain upon the earth forty days and forty nights…

In order to come to understand any mystery that has been hidden within the Bible, we must go where the Bible leads us and we notice that God mentions the flood in 2Peter, chapter 3 and then in between describing the two destructions, God interjects the statement about “a thousand years” being “as a day.” If we had a yellow highlighter, we would highlight God’s statement, “But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.” The Bible at times allows us to make the substitution of a “day” for a “year.” So, here, God says that with Him one day is as a thousand years. So, we could substitute in Genesis 7:4 and we could say, “For yet seven thousand years and I will cause it to rain upon the earth forty days and forty nights, with the “rain” representing God’s wrath, so in seven thousand years God will pour out His wrath upon the earth.

At this point we would need to know the timing of the flood in order for us not to be ignorant of this one thing: “that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.” We would need to know the year of the flood. We could not have known if we lived 60 years ago or 100 years ago or any time prior to that in history. It has just been the last 40 years or so that we have known about the Biblical calendar of history. It was developed as the Lord opened up the understanding of Mr. Camping to write the book “Adam When?” That book is very helpful in showing us the actual Biblical calendar. A Biblical calendar means just that – it is a Bible calendar or a calendar that can be shown to come right from the Bible. It is not a manmade calendar. It is not a calendar that the churches produced. It is a Bible calendar that is derived primarily from the genealogies in the Book of Genesis and God kept that calendar secret for almost all of the church age. It came forth right before the church age ended, but for over 1,950 (or so) years after the Bible was completed that information was sealed. Even if we had understood 2Peter 3, verse 8 to be a signpost to go back to Genesis and look at Genesis 7, verse 4 where it spoke of “seven days,” nobody could have done anything with it because there was no understanding of when the flood actually took place until just in the last few decades. God opened up the information concerning the Biblical calendar that helped us to date Noah’s 600th year and identify it with our calendar so we could know it was the year 4990BC.

Again, let me refer you to the book “Adam When?” That book was written in the 1970s and that date was in view way back then, but at that time no one was even talking about the Great Tribulation and significant dates at the end of the world, but we had the date of the flood. It was 4990BC and Noah’s 600th year.

When we go 7,000 years from 4990BC following the principal that “one day is as a thousand years” it takes us to 2011AD. We add 4990 to 2011 and then we subtract “1” because there is no year “0” and we get exactly 7,000 years. Look where this date falls. It is not falling in the 18th century when the world still used horse and buggy and when there was evil, but not the desperate wickedness that has overtaken the world in our day; back then men did not marry men and women did not marry women. Back in the 18th century, you could have found apostate churches or an apostate denomination, but you would also find many true congregations because Christ was still in the midst of the churches.

What I am trying to say is that if this 7,0000-year period fell in some other century or on any other date in history or any future date, we would not have any idea of how to fit this statement into a timeline for the end of the world. But what happened was that God opened up the Biblical calendar of history so we could know the date the flood occurred. Then God also showed us through that calendar that the end of the church age occurred in 1988 and that there would be a 23-year Great Tribulation period that would start May 21, 1988 and go to exactly May 21, 2011, the very year that was 7,000 years from the flood. Not only that, but in Genesis 7 and Genesis 8 God gave us many dates in regard to the flood. We know that the flood began on the “seventeenth day of the second month” in Noah’s 600th year and when we go 7,000 years into the future to 2011, it falls on May 21, 2011. I have said this before, but it is astounding. May 21, 1988 began the Great Tribulation and May 21, 2011 concluded the Great Tribulation, after exactly 8,400 days or exactly 23 years. That date of May 21, 2011 also had a significant underlying Hebrew calendar date. The date May 21, 2011 is a Gregorian calendar date, but there is also a Jewish or Hebrew calendar that underlies our calendar, which the Jews use for their religious calendar. For example, when we look at the Feast of Tabernacles, it occurs in the seventh month of the Hebrew calendar and we were looking in the year 2011 at October 21st as the last day of the feast in the Hebrew seventh month, even though October is the tenth month of our Gregorian calendar because the Hebrew calendar date does not match the Gregorian calendar date. We can have a given date in our Gregorian calendar and “underlying” it is a Hebrew calendar date that is very different. May 21, 2011 was the Gregorian calendar date for the end of the Great Tribulation, but the underlying Biblical date of the Jewish calendar was the “seventeenth day of the second month,” the very day that the door was shut on the ark and the rain began to fall; then it was seven days until the flood began. Exactly 7,000 years from 4990BC on May 21, 2011 it was the equivalent date of the “seventeenth day of the second month” in the Hebrew calendar. God was “locking it in” and he was verifying that we were understanding the Biblical calendar correctly. We were understanding that which He told us when He said, “But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing.”