BEFORE GOD DESTROYS, HE FOREWARNS (PART IV)

“Noah Warned, Nobody Cared”

By Akin Ojumu

Second in the chain of events that culminates in the outpouring of God’s wrath on apostates is that God raises up among the very people He wants to destroy a herald of righteousness. This is the preacher of righteousness sent out to warn the people of their sins, beg them to repent, and plead with them to turn to God before it’s too late. 

Because of God’s love, mercy, kindness, and longsuffering, and Him never being in haste to meet out His justice on wicked sinners, He gives them an opportunity to repent and be saved.

2 Peter 3:8-10

“But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed.”

In exercising His mercy, kindness, and forbearance to the sinner and the lawless, God sends out His herald of righteousness to blow the trumpet and sound the alarm. The preacher of righteousness, in ancient Greek, refers to an official entrusted with making public proclamations, which are often grave and cataclysmic in nature.

Joel 2:1-2

“Blow a trumpet in Zion; sound an alarm on my holy mountain! Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble, for the day of the Lord is coming; it is near, a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness! Like blackness there is spread upon the mountains a great and powerful people; their like has never been before, nor will be again after them through the years of all generations.”

Characteristically, the heralds of righteousness are outnumbered and always in the minority. Although the alarm they sound is consequential and their warnings monumental, their voices are always like a whisper drowned out in the din of the promoters of putrid theology and cacophony of the spreaders of spurious doctrines.

Almost always, those whom God has sent to warn the apostates and the wicked tend not to have clout or popularity. Having no massive following and lacking a fanatical cult of personality, nobody pays the preachers of righteousness any heed. 

To the people to whom they’ve been sent, the heralds of righteousness are nothing more than nuisances that must be silenced, annoyances that must be exterminated, irritants that must be eradicated, and inconveniences that must be terminated. 

Consequently, they are cursed out, swore at, berated, dismissed, disparaged, ignored, maligned, and mocked. Their voices are often drowned out by the loud voices of the majority who are hellbent on silencing them.

In redemptive history, Noah was the first man whom God would raise up to sound the alarm to the people of his day of the imminent outpouring of God’s wrath. The Bible tells us that Noah was the herald of righteousness of the ancient world.

2 Peter 2:5

“If he did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a herald of righteousness, with seven others, when he brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly.”

1 Peter 3:18-20

“For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit, in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison, because they formerly did not obey, when God’s patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through water.”

Matthew 24:37-39

“As it was in the days of Noah, so will it be at the coming of the Son of Man. For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark. And they were oblivious until the flood came and swept them all away. So will it be at the coming of the Son of Man.”

As God observed the extreme wickedness of humanity of Noah’s day, He noted that “every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time.” Instead of immediately pouring out His wrath and destroying them, however, He held His nose and endured the stench of iniquity for a period of time. 

Genesis 6:1-3

“When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive. And they took as their wives any they chose. Then the Lord said, “My Spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh: his days shall be 120 years.”

God gave the vile and lawless people of Noah’s day one hundred and twenty years to repent. In that entire period of time, Noah was right there in their midst sounding the alarm and warning the people of an impending doom. As he and his family built the Ark, he continued to preach the message of righteousness, i.e., the Gospel, to the wicked, pleading with them to turn from their wicked and evil ways and return back to God and His ways.

Hebrews 11:7

“By faith Noah, being warned by God concerning events as yet unseen, in reverent fear constructed an ark for the saving of his household. By this he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith.”

Of course, the scoffers scoffed at Noah. They undoubtedly laughed him to scorn for building a ship in the middle of the desert. In a world that had not experienced rain, since the land was watered by a mist rising from the ground, they must have thought that Noah had lost his mind for saying the world was going to be destroyed by a massive rainfall.

2 Peter 3:3-7

“Knowing this first of all, that scoffers will come in the last days with scoffing, following their own sinful desires. They will say, “Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation.” For they deliberately overlook this fact, that the heavens existed long ago, and the earth was formed out of water and through water by the word of God, and that by means of these the world that then existed was deluged with water and perished. But by the same word the heavens and earth that now exist are stored up for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly.”

When the people of Noah’s day looked around them, everything was as normal as they had always known it to be. There was no ominous sign that they could see to make them change their ways. The sky wasn’t falling down, and the ground hadn’t cracked open to swallow anyone. In their assessment, life couldn’t be better. The plants were yielding their fruits in their season; they enjoyed a bountiful harvest and a booming economy. They were prospering, flourishing, and blossoming. Who was Noah to tell them otherwise? The bloke must be insane.

Blissfully unaware that God’s hammer of justice was about to drop on their knuckleheads, the people of Noah’s day ignored “mad” Noah and his message of doom and gloom. With no care in the world, they carried on with life as usual. And so it was until the flood came and they all perished.

Matthew 24:37-39

“For as were the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark, and they were unaware until the flood came and swept them all away, so will be the coming of the Son of Man.”

We’ll take it from here next time.