The Patriarchs. Bellett John Gifford

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      At the close of this predestinated but undisclosed period, Noah enters the ark. This was the great salvation in a mystery. It was as the night of Egypt's doom and Israel's rescue. Nothing less than safety and deliverance under the fullest securities and dearest title in an hour of most solemn judgment, was now the story of Noah. And this is the salvation of the gospel. In Egypt afterwards, the very hand which carried the sword of destruction along the land had appointed the sheltering blood. Could the sword strike? Impossible! And now it was He, who took counsel with Himself about the judgment of the world, who had also counselled His elect about the way of escape. It was the hand which was about to let the waters out which was now shutting Noah in. Could they then prevail against him! Just, in like manner, impossible!

      "The voice that speaks in thunder

      Says, 'Sinner, I am thine.'"

      The One to whom vengeance belongs has settled all the plan of safety. He that is bearing the sword into the land has appointed the scarlet line in the window. But a solemn scene of judgment accompanies all this. The sun was risen on the earth, as, after this, Lot entered into Zoar. And yet that sunny hour was the very time for the rain of brimstone and fire to fall. Nothing could be done till Lot entered the city, but then nothing remained to be done ere the fire came down.

      How deeply was the moment of visitation hid! They might well have said, "Peace and safety," when they saw that morning sun, as he was wont, gilding the bright and happy surface of the scene around them. But even then the "sudden destruction" fell.

      Noah's generation was eating, and drinking, and marrying, just as the water began to rise. There was no harbinger, save, like Lot's escape to Zoar, Noah's entrance into the ark. But that was folly. To imprison himself and all that he had in the sides of a ship aground, that was folly. But the flood came in the moment of fancied security, and took them all away. They were "willingly ignorant" of the word of God, the testimony of the "preacher of righteousness;" one who addressed them in the power and on the principle of a resurrection hope. 1 Peter iii.

      Sudden and sure destruction on all outside, but divine, infallible security on all within. The city of refuge was appointed of God, and its walls must be salvation. Impossible to be less. The same righteousness which has pronounced a curse on every one that continueth not in all things written in the book of the law to do them, has likewise pronounced a curse on every one that hangeth on a tree. Gal. iii. Can He then deny His own remedy to the sinner, cursed under the law, when he pleads, by faith, the Saviour cursed on the tree? Alike, impossible.

      "The Lord shut him in." The hand of the Lord imparted its own strength and security to Noah's condition. It is not too bold to say, that all within the door of the ark were as safe as the Lord Himself. The Lord returned, we may say, to His own heavens, or to His throne, which is established for ever, and Noah was left on the earth, in the place and day of judgment. But Noah was as safe as the Lord. "We may have boldness in the day of judgment: because as He is, so are we in this world." Jesus has gone back to heaven, and we are still in this world, the judgment of which is marked before God; but we have the boldness which is proper to Jesus. Wonderful to utter it! And yet is all that mysterious, glorious security figured in that little action, "The Lord shut him in." God's own hand imparted its strength to Noah's condition ere He returned to the heavens.

      Some of every sort are borne with Noah from the place of death into the ark of salvation. The "eight souls," as Peter speaks, but with them, remnants of the beasts of the earth, small and great, winged fowl and creeping things, all are housed and redeemed together with Noah.

      So was it afterwards in Egypt. Not a hoof was left behind. The great redemption of that day, in like manner, provided for all-Moses and the 600,000, with their wives and little ones, and also all their cattle; all again knew and manifested the saving strength of God. As in the day of Nineveh, long after, "the much cattle" are the Lord's thought, as the six-score thousand persons that could not discern between their right hand and their left.

      And in the coming day of the inheritance of Christ, His dominions will measure all the works of God's hand, "All sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field; the fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea;" and the fields and the floods, and the hills and trees of the wood, shall be joyful before Him. Psalm xcviii.

      Welcome mystery! Are they not all His creatures? Did not His hand of old form them, and His eyes and His heart rest and delight in them? And is this lost to Him? May Jonah grieve for his withered gourd, and the Lord not spare the works of His own hand for His abiding joy? He will renew the face of the earth, as it is written-The glory of the Lord shall endure for ever, the Lord shall rejoice in His works. Psalm civ. 31. "The earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God. For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of Him who hath subjected the same in hope, because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the children of God."

      But it is here that I may pause for a moment, to notice the dispensational character of these days of Noah.

      The earth, as the scene of God's delight, and of His people's citizenship, had been lost by the apostasy of Adam; and the hopes and inheritance of the saints, all through the days before the flood, were heavenly-the Lord thereby disclosing, though faintly, certain portions of the great secrets of His own bosom-the secrets of the good pleasure purposed in Himself ere worlds were, that heaven, as well as earth, should be connected with the destinies of man. The heavens were opened to man, when Adam, the man of the earth, failed. Gen. v. 24.

      That was so. But earth was not shut because heaven was thus opened. The divine counsel ran otherwise. It was this-that God would "gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth." And the heavenly calling having been already revealed in the story of the saints before the flood, the due season had now come for the revelation of God's great purpose concerning the earth, and to make it known that He had not given it up, because, in His dispensational ways, He had taken up the heavens.

      As in Rev. iv. When the heavenly saints, "the fulness of the Gentiles," the mystic elders and living creatures, are seated in their heavenly places, the thoughts of Him who sat on the throne there return to the earth. The rainbow is at once seen around the throne-the witness of this, that the covenant which gives security to the earth was about to be the spring of action in heaven. And so now in these days of Noah. When the heavenly family had ended their course, and Enoch was translated, the Lord's thoughts returned to the earth, and that, I may say, at once; for the next thing of character in the progress of the hand, or the Spirit of God, is the prophecy of Lamech, pledging God and His mercies to the earth again, and introducing Noah-"This same [Noah] shall comfort us concerning our work and toil of our hands, because of the ground which the Lord hath cursed."

      This is all simple-scarcely capable of being misunderstood. The prophecy of Lamech, which introduces it, tells us what we are to expect and find in the mystery of Noah. "The key of the parable lies at the door." The recovery of the earth, the return of God's rest and delight in it, all this will be made good in the coming times of the true Noah, in whom, and in whom alone, all the promises of God are yea and amen.

      A great action, however, must usher in those times. The call of the heavenly people is quite otherwise, as in the call of the antediluvian saints. There was in those days no interference with the scene around. Cain's family was left in possession-quiet, undisputed possession-of their cities and their wealth. The visitation of God then, as always under such a call, only separated a people without affecting either to regulate or judge the world. It left it as it found it. But God's claim to the earth, and His purpose to take it up again, is necessarily otherwise. There He is as thoroughly interfering with every thing, as in the other way of His "manifold wisdom" He was utterly leaving all alone. For by judgment He must purge the earth, and get it fit to be His footstool.

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