Through the Bible with Les Feldick

LESSON 1 * PART 4 * BOOK 3

NOAH: SECURITY OF BELIEVER

Genesis 7 & 8

In this lesson we’re going to look a little more at the Flood and why the earth that now is, as the Bible calls it, a result of all that took place during this particularly the five months, 150 days, that the water was at it very deepest. It covered what at that time was the highest point, and that didn’t necessarily mean that there were 14-15 thousand foot mountains before the flood, we don’t know for sure, but it was a universal flood. There was no such thing as just part of the Middle East being inundated, but it was universal.

Now one of the arguments of course is, well where did the water come from? Well it’s easily explained as we did in the last half-hour that originally in Genesis 1 the earth was covered with water and God removed half of that water, or at least a portion of it, put it up in the atmosphere and the rest He made seas. And then it all came back down and covered the planet totally; the Scripture says in one place that even the highest point was 15 cubits under the surface of the water. But with all that was taking place, as we pointed out in our last half-hour, the tremendous volcanic and earthquake activity – and again we especially living here in the Middle West, we just have no idea of the power that can be involved.

Now back in 1883 I think it was, there was a volcano in the East Indies, in the area of what is now Borneo or Java called Krakatao, probably the largest single eruption that this planet has ever known this side of the Flood. And as history gives the account of it, it was in a civilized area and this thing had been building for several weeks. Getting more evident, and still people didn’t move away from it. In fact, they even scheduled tours up to the base of the mountain to listen to it and then finally I think it was one day in August, Krakatao erupted and in its eruption, the sound of it now was registered three thousand miles away.

Now imagine if a volcano, or any kind of a noise, would take place in New York City and it could be heard in LA. Well, so was that one. But that was just one and as a result of that one volcano the whole atmosphere of the planet once the dust started going around it, was affected, weather was affected. And that was just one. Now multiply that as one author has put it by thousands and thousands of other great volcanoes and you can get just a little bit of a picture of what took place when the fountains of the deep were broken up.

Now earthquakes also come into the whole scenario and when you’ve got earthquakes taking place under water – you want to remember the whole planet is now covered with water and out of that water is coming all this volcanic eruption but underneath you’ve got all this earthquake activity. The planet is in convulsions. Everything is changing and we have to realize that all living things died. Normally we think that the fish and the water creatures survived, but you see, archaeologists have found humongous areas of accumulated dead fish that can have no other explanation but that they also died in Noah’s Flood.

In fact, there are a few Biblical geologists who give credit for our oil pool, crude oil, not to the precursors of coal and so forth, the great vegetation that has decomposed and turned into oil but rather they were great accumulations of fish and so that our crude oil is actually precursed by these water creatures. But there is evidence all over the globe and we know it right here in eastern Oklahoma. You can go into almost any high spot around here and you can find oyster shell. And right along with fresh water shells they find seawater shells.

And in various areas especially up in the northern part of the Mid-West, the upper plains, Montana and so forth, they’ve found areas of great seemingly burial yards of all the great wild animals. All mixed together. And of course a few human as well. So this great flood and all that action has caused a lot of confusion in the area of science.

But there’s ample evidence all around the planet that there was some tremendous event that totally tore this planet apart. When they speak of the ancient continent of Atlantis, I personally think it existed. I think that at one time the land mass was all single, there was no big division of oceans and indeed if Atlantis was somewhere between South America and Africa and it’s on the bottom of the ocean, I have no trouble believing it because all we know is that that pre-Flood civilization was destroyed. The planet was completely renovated and everything that’s on the scene tonight, everything, our mountains, our rivers, our canyons, our Grand Canyon, our ocean beds, everything is the result of Noah’s Flood.

And so everything has a new beginning. God’s in control, He’s Sovereign. Do you think that it was an accident that the Middle East ended up with the world’s oil? Of course not. That was Sovereignly designed because God, from the very beginning, had decreed that time as we know it would come to an end in the Middle East. We know that everything that is taking place in the Middle East tonight is tied to God’s program of bringing things now to its culmination and the only way it could be done is with this business of oil.

Now we like to think that we didn’t go into that war (1990) because of oil, and I don’t say that we did, but yet the whole world is concerned about the Middle East only because of that one commodity. Just stop and ask yourself, if there was no oil in the Middle East would the world be concerned about those deserts? Why of course not. But oil is at the center of everything.

Now, I’ve mentioned before we know that at some point in the future there’s going to be a great Russian invasion of the land of Israel. We know that’s going to happen. But the problem has always been, why will the Russians want to invade Israel; there’s nothing there? And I’ve said for years, they’re going to find something, either going to discover a great deposit of gold, because Russia is strapped for cash, or they’re going to find a great deposit of oil. And in the last Jerusalem Post, they have struck oil and they are excited down in the Negev and they think and again it’s only projection, they think it might be one of the greatest oil finds ever. Now if that comes to fruition, then you just mark it down, Russia is going to have her eye on that great oil reserve. And of course, the nation of Israel with all of her technology and her ambition, are the ones that can bring it to fruition. But everything that now is can only be traced back to the time of Noah’s Flood.

Our whole Middle-western farm area, scientists and geologists like to tell us that it’s all the result of great glaciers that brought all that great topsoil and came down about as far as central Missouri and then they receded. Well, like I was telling my wife one night here while back, you know, they can pull the wool over our eyes and it sounds so good, but there’s a lot of things that these people don’t tell us. And I think you’re all aware that glaciers are made up of snow and ice and dust and so on and so forth, but there’s only one way a glacier can move. By gravity. The only way it can move is gravitationally. But you know what they tell us? That glaciers that began in Canada actually traverses elevations of over 2000 feet, in their move down into the Mid West. And some of those things, and they can’t give an answer for it. So all you can say is – it’s ridiculous.

We also know that glaciers were able to just grind to powder great rocks and granite and just literally ground it, then why in the world do you find in those same areas fossils, which are far more fragile, totally intact. They weren’t destroyed in the glacial move and they can’t explain that. And so the best way as I’ve been trying to tell my classes now for 20 years, you look at something on this old planet tonight and you just tell yourself, this is the way God prepared it when the water left the surface. He laid down all the great farm areas. He laid down the coal beds. He laid down the oil pools, the gas pools. He laid down the rivers, the canyons. All of these things came on the scene as this water began to leave.

Next time you go to Grand Canyon, you ask one of the guides, well how much deeper is the Grand Canyon now than when they first discovered it a couple of hundred years ago? He’ll say, “Oh I don’t know, probably an inch if that. It hasn’t gotten any deeper.” Why not? I mean if that thing was cut by wind and water and erosion, why isn’t it still cutting it? Well, why not just be logical and say “Well as the waters left, that volcanic disrupted surface of the earth, it was probably molten. It was still soft. And just like if you were to take a pail of water and pour it on some fresh concrete, what would you do? Oh you would just cut little tracks right through it, easily.”

And so I think of all these great canyons as this great rush of water began now finding its way to the sea, and God brought the land areas up into view, all these things took place in just a short period of time and the planet was now prepared for the great restoration of mankind, and it’s the only logical way to realize that everything we have needed in our technological society, God provided. God has provided every bit of it.

He has provided the great forest areas for our lumber. He’s provided the farm areas for our grains and for our food. He’s provided everything. And I’ve already made the point, He put the oil, the greatest part of it, in the Middle East because that’s where the world is finally going to have to come together in that final great effort, which of course we refer to as Armageddon and I’m kind of amused that when the Iraqi thing started a lot of people started saying this is Armageddon. No this isn’t Armageddon! Not by any stretch of the imagination.

Now it’s a preview. All I told my classes – now that just goes to show you how easy it is to believe that the time is coming when some great world leader will call the armies of the world together in the Middle East but it won’t be to get rid of Saddam Hussein; it’s going to be to get rid of the Jew, first and primarily. And then of course, it turns into the forces of the anti-Christ and Satan trying to actually create a war with the coming of the Lord Jesus and of course that’s futile. But their whole premise to start with will be to bring the armies of the world to get rid of the Jewish problem. That has been Satan’s aim all through Scripture. To get rid of the Jewish problem!

And now I don’t have to explain what that is. Every day’s news is trying to deal with the Israeli and the Palestinian problem. Palestinians will tell us there’s only one way to solve it and that is to push Israel into the sea. Bless their hearts, I know they want a homeland, and I can feel with them, but again being a student of Scripture we know that Palestine was deeded to the Jew. It’s Israel’s homeland and God is going to see to it that they keep it. No one is going to drive the Jew into the sea.

All right, so coming back then if you will to Noah’s Flood, I hope you’ve been asking yourself the question, “Well now if there was such turmoil and with all these great tidal waves being caused by the earthquakes and volcanoes, what about this Ark?” Even though it was built sturdily, and even though it was built of tremendous water capable lumber, how did it survive? Well do you remember I told you several weeks ago, that the verb when Noah and his family were getting ready to go into the Ark, verb from the Lord Jesus was what?“Come into the Ark.” So I think that I’m safe in saying that throughout these five-six months when the water is roaring and this Ark could have been tossed around like a cork and sunk many, many times, yet it was the very presence of Jehovah within that guaranteed that that Ark stayed afloat.

Now we won’t take time to look at it because these thirty-minutes just go too fast. But you all know the account, when Jesus and the Twelve were coming across the Sea of Galilee in that – wasn’t too small a boat because after all, Jesus was evidently below deck and a storm rose and where was Jesus. I’ve already told you, below deck, and what was He doing? He was sleeping. And those storms on the Galilee can get pretty ferocious because it’s a shallow lake. You think that little boat would have ever sunk? Huh-un. It would have never sunk.But see the Twelve still hadn’t gotten it through their thick heads who He was down there. And so they go down and they wake Him up.

And you know the account. And they said, “Lord we perish.” Well, the Lord could have just said, “Let me sleep, we’re not going to perish.” But you see, so many times, He would condescend to those Twelve and so He did, He went to the upper deck and what does He do? “Calms the wind.“ The storms went down. But they wouldn’t have sunk, because He was in the boat. And I think that’s the same way it was with the Ark. When I explained the tremendous tidal waves and someone will come and say, “Well then how did the Ark survive?”The Lord was in it. Had He not been in it, it wouldn’t have. But it does. And remember it’s not going to go any place, all it has to do is just stay practically in one place.

Now we’ll skip all these verses, you can read them in your leisure. But it rained for forty days, no doubt about that. And then we come down to verse 24 of chapter 7:

Genesis 7:24

“And the waters prevailed upon the earth (in other words, they maintained at that deepest depth) an hundred and fifty days.” For 150 days, that’s five months. Now if you can just again imagine not only what was taking place in the activity, but the pressure. The pressure that is now placed upon the surface of this planet by all this water. It’s just beyond our comprehension.

Now scientists I think have practically proven that can take common garbage and if you can put it under enough pressure, what can you make out of it? Well a form of crude oil. And so if you can picture again, the tremendous amount of vegetation that was on this beautiful earth, and remember it was pole to pole. It was a semi-tropical climate and so the vegetation that was on the surface would again be beyond our imagination. And all of that was just plowed under, and I’ve talked to coal miners who have worked in coal mines oh almost a mile deep and they said, every once in a while you’ll see right in that vein of coal the perfect outline of a tree, of a limb, of leaves. So they know that all this stuff at one time was living vegetation. And so all of this then became under the pressure of this tremendous amount of water, the coal beds of today, and I think the oil fields, albeit some think it’s accumulated fish; I’m not going to argue with it.

And by the way, I do want to pass this on, if anyone wants to read a good book on the Flood, one of the best I’ve ever read and someone just gave me a copy here a month or two ago, it’s by a gentleman by the name of Rehwinkel, I hope I’ve got that spelled right, and if you can’t find it in a bookstore, you can call Concordia – now I’m not here to advertise anything but Concordia Publishing, in St. Louis. In order to get my copy, I just called them, I didn’t bother to bring a phone number along, but if you’re interested in reading a good book on the Flood, I think it is $15 if I’m not mistaken.

Genesis 8:1a

“And God remembered Noah….” Now that throws a curve at us because I say, “Well if He’s in the Ark how could He forget him?” Well I don’t think that’s what’s implied. But it was coming to the time now when God to begin to move things forward on behalf of Noah and those things in the Ark.

Genesis 8:1

“And God remembered Noah, and every living thing, and all the cattle that was with him in the ark: and God made a wind to pass over the earth, and the waters asswaged;” In other words, they begin to leave. Now it isn’t just the wind itself because we know that from all the activities of these volcanoes, new surfaces are coming on the scene. The mountains are rising up, the rivers are being formed and as you drive across the countryside, always be amazed. I mean if you really get a good look at this, most of the surface of this earth is naturally drained.

Do you ever think about that as you drive through the country? How that as it rains, the water, through all its various little trickles and streams all finds its way to a common place. On this side of the Rockies of course it goes to the Mississippi. On the other side it goes to the Pacific, but you go all around the planet and everything with isolated instances, I know, but everything is draining to the sea and a common creation. Well this all happened at the end then I think of Noah’s Flood.

Genesis 8:3-4

“And the waters returned from off the earth continually: and after the end of the hundred and fifty days the waters were abated, (in other words, they have reached their peak and they’re running to the sea) 4. And the Ark rested in the seventh month, and upon the seventeenth day of the month, upon the mountains of Ararat.” Now that doesn’t mean it’s up on the top of Mount Ararat. Mount Ararat is a rather high mountain, I think it is around 16,000 feet if I’m not mistaken. That doesn’t mean the Ark was at the 16,000 point. You know as well as I do that when you call a mountain, like Mount Hood in Oregon, or even some of our mountains here in eastern Oklahoma, you consider all the ground, down to the base and all the way around. So the Ark could have rested at any level somewhere in the area of the great mountain, Ararat.

Genesis 8:5-6

“And the waters decreased continually (oh they’re flowing into the sea now, maybe in some areas a little slower than others but God’s getting the surface ready for re-habitation) until the tenth month: in the tenth month, on the first day of the month, were the tops of the mountains seen. 6. And it came to pass at the end of forty days, that Noah opened the window of the Ark which he had made:” Which remember, there’s only one and it’s in the roof, it isn’t in the side. And it was a rather small one, only about what? Eighteen inches by eighteen, something like that.

Genesis 8:7

“And he sent forth a raven, which went forth to and fro, until the waters were dried up from off the earth.” And it doesn’t come back to the Ark does it? Now I think the analogy here is, what kind of a bird is a raven? Well, it’s like a vulture, it’s a bird of prey and it’s something that’s carnivorous. So I think what you have here is this old raven goes out and it doesn’t come back because it could find ample stuff floating on the water that had already died and was perfectly at home with him. But the next little bird he lets go is of a totally different sort. What is it? The dove. Now in Scripture we always associate the dove with the Holy Spirit, so the spiritual realm here as over against the natural.

Now remember what I told you several weeks ago, all through Scripture, you always have first the natural and then the spiritual. First we have Cain and then Abel, first Esau and then Jacob. First, Saul and then David and all that. Well same way here, the very same way. First, the raven which spoke of the unregenerate person, who is always satisfied with the things of the old life. Well what about the dove? Let’s look at it quickly.

Genesis 8:8-9

“Also he sent forth a dove from him, to see if the waters were abated from off the face of the ground; 9. But the dove found no rest for the sole of her foot, and she returned unto him into the ark, for the waters were on the face of the whole earth: then he put forth his hand, and took her, and pulled her in unto him into the ark.” The dove found no rest for the sole of her foot and she returned unto the Ark. That dove wasn’t going to light on some old rotting carcass. It just wasn’t at home on it. And as a believer we’re not to feel at home in the world either.

Genesis 8:10-11

“And he waited another seven days; and again he sent forth the dove out of the ark; 11. And the dove came to him in the evening; and, lo, in her mouth was an olive leaf pluckt off: so Noah knew that the waters were abated from off the earth.” What’s that the sign of? New life. Now this dove, the spiritual aspect is finding that which she could identify with and so she comes back with this signal that new life is coming on the earth.

Now don’t sit back and say, how can that be so quickly? I told you also several weeks ago, all you have to do is go out and look in the area of St. Helen’s. And you’re from out there in Oregon and I’ll bet you know it as well as anybody that that area has come back so fast after the terrible eruption of that mountain just what, ten years ago now? So if God speeds things up, then this all becomes so believable, and remember with Him nothing was impossible. And so the dove comes back now with something that signifies the new creation, the new life.

Genesis 8:13a

“And it came to pass in the six hundredth and first year, in the first month, in the first day of the month, the waters were dried up from off the earth:…” Now that’s a year and 10 days they were on that ark.

Now before you read any further, I always like to ask the question, unless you’ve been in my classes – How did Noah and all his creatures in the Ark, how did they get out? Oh everybody says, oh he opened the door. Oh no they didn’t. God had shut that. And just like in the life of a believer, now remember this has got to carry all the way through. A believer doesn’t go out of this life the same way he came in. Not into the spiritual life. Now read on, how did they get out of the Ark?

Genesis 8:13b

“…and Noah removed the (what?) covering of the ark,…” That’s roof isn’t it? So how’d they go out? They went out the top. They didn’t go out the side. They went out the top, they went up. And if the Ark rested in a crevice like some people think it did, they walked out on ground level.

But in the spiritual realm, once you and I enter into the Ark of Safety, there’s only one way out and which way is it? It’s up! Now isn’t that beautiful! That’s the only way we’re going to go someday. We’re going to go up. We’re not going to go back into the old life. We’re going to go up whether it’s in the Rapture and I think it’s getting close, and when we’re suddenly translated or whether we do have to go through the valley of death and someday wait for resurrection, whatever, that’s the direction we’re going.We’re going to go up!

And so the only way out of the Ark was through the roof. “Noah removed the covering and looked, and behold, the face of the ground was dry.” I’ve been amazed over all the years of teaching I’ve never found anyone who could answer it for me until I showed it to them. Now this goes to show how easy it is to read something and never see what we read. Because, it’s there, plain as day, that he removed the covering. All right, now let’s move on again quickly. Verse 14.

Genesis 8:14

“And in the second month, and the seventh and twentieth day of the month, the earth was dried.” It’s been a little over a year from the time of that sudden destruction until now the new earth is making its appearance. And let’s move on quickly, verse 18.

Genesis 8:18-21a

“And Noah went forth, and his sons, and his wife and his sons wives with him: 19. Every beast, every creeping thing, and every fowl, and whatsoever creepeth upon the earth, after their kinds, went forth out of the ark. 20. And Noah builded an altar unto the LORD; and took of every clean beast, and of every clean fowl, and offered burnt offerings on the altar. (remember the sacrificial animals, and fowls he took in by sevens. And he takes one of them to sacrifice to God) 21. And the LORD smelled a sweet savour;…” And then verse 22, here’s where we’re going to end for tonight.

Genesis 8:22

“While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.” You don’t have that kind of language before the Flood. There was no such thing as seasons before the Flood. There was no such thing as weather. It was constant. And so the Flood changed all that. One scientist has put it that that’s probably when the earth began its seasonal tilt so that we consequently have now our seasons.