Copyright © 2025 Michael A. Brown
‘Noah, a preacher
of righteousness...’ (2 Peter 2:5)
‘What I mean... is
that the time is short.’ (1 Cor. 7:29)
As it was in the days of Noah, Jesus
said...
So I was thinking about Noah the other day. Building the ark, he
knew about the flood that was coming, because God had revealed it to him (Heb. 11:7).
He knew. But at the beginning it seemed a long way off. To him,
then, 120 years would have seemed a very long time (Gen. 6:3). He
preached to the people in the surrounding area, perhaps every few days or every
week, and he exhorted and warned them to repent, but everyone mocked him.
Seasons and years went by, but there were no clouds in the sky and no rain, no
outward sign of the coming judgement that Noah was warning about. So,
blindly, they just ignored him and carried on with their daily life, buying and
selling, building and planting, marrying and giving in marriage...
However, the ark was slowly but surely being put together, nail by nail,
plank by plank, deck by deck. Anyone who cared to stop by and watch for a
while could see it taking shape. Progress was visible. So day by day, and year by year, God’s
set time was drawing ever closer. 120 years became eighty, eighty became
fifty, fifty became twenty... Noah preached again and again, and he
warned again and again, no doubt with an increasing burden of heart borne of
being consciously aware that time was indeed passing quickly. But he returned
every time to the ark ignored, mocked and discouraged.
Noah and his family persevered and plugged away faithfully through it
all. And after a long time, the day
finally came when they had covered the ark with pitch inside and out, and the
work was finished. So they packed their tools away. But the sky was
still blue, with no clouds and no rain. No change there. God then spoke
to Noah again. To get himself and his family into the ark. Because
there were now only seven days left (Gen. 7:1-10). That’s all they
had. God was going to bring the animals to the ark. Two by two, as
the good book says. It took seven days for them all to come. They
were loaded aboard, put in cages, fed, watered, and their cages cleaned out
regularly.
But time didn’t slow down or stop, it continued to tick on day by day,
with the countdown inexorably approaching zero hour. Noah probably went
out and preached yet again, taking one last opportunity. But yet again they mocked him, ignored him,
and turned away.
Seven days, six days, five days, four days, three days, two days, one
day... And then they finally reached God’s appointed time. The last
pair of animals arrived and were loaded aboard, and then there was nothing left to
do: no more building, no more preaching, no more supplies to gather, and no
more animals to load aboard. There was no time left, none, and God
himself shut the door.
Although he was a man of deep faith who lived in the revelation of God’s
purpose in his generation, yet a sense of finality and foreboding must
still have hit Noah. This was it. The day and hour that God had
spoken about all those years ago. It had finally arrived, and there
really was no more time, no more chance to preach and tell people, and no more
opportunity for them to hear and believe, to get in the ark and be saved from
the coming destruction.
The flood began that very day, soon after the door of the ark was
shut. It had been a very long time in coming, that was true, but when the
day did finally come, there was no delay. God’s time had come.
Clouds began to gather as if from nowhere, thunder rumbled, lightning struck,
and the raindrops started to fall…
Using this countdown in Noah’s day as a
handle to work with, where do you think we presently are in the run-up to the
rapture? Do you have a sense that time is ticking down? How many end-times signs can you see
developing in the world that tell you that time is getting increasingly short
and that there isn’t long left now? Are there decades left, or only a few
years? Is the ark nearing completion, as it were? Is it
finished? Are we now in the ark and loading the animals on board?
If so, how many days are left? Here’s a question: what would you
do, and how would you live, if you knew there were only seven days left?
My friend, if you love your family and friends, make sure they know that
the rapture is impending and that it’s coming very soon. They need to
receive Jesus and be saved. If they don’t receive him, they will be left
behind and will have to face the horrors of the worldwide tribulation which
will follow. You may have told them many times, and they may still be
resisting the message. But don’t give up, try to find a way to tell them
once more, perhaps one last time. There’s no need to hit them over the head
with it, or to ram it down their throats, but do find a way. Time really
is running out for them...
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