Avoiding Titanic’s Fate
Noah’s ark was steered and secured by God
When God gives us instructions, He does so, knowing full well what the
future holds for us, a year from now or even decades later. To be saved we must
discern God’s will in our life and be obedient to it. What God may ask of us
may be foolishness to the world and we can easily be dissuaded from persisting,
only to our detriment and loss.
When God asked Noah to build the Ark it sounded as foolishness to the
world – the world living in sin.
“Wickedness of man was great upon the earth, and that every
inclination of the thoughts of his heart was altogether evil all the time…the LORD
grieved in His heart” (Gen 6:5-6)
When Noah was born, his father Lamech said of him,
“May this one comfort us in the labour and toil of our hands caused
by the ground that the LORD has cursed.” (Gen 5:28).
From Lamech’s statement, it is apparent that
4500 years back a deep famine had come on the land. Years must have passed since
the last rainfall for Lamech to state that the LORD had cursed the land.
That the world laughed at Noah when he
set about building the ark with his three sons Shem, Ham, and Japheth comes as
no surprise. Noah was 600 hundred years old and his sons were married and in
their 100s themselves since they were born to him when he was over 500 years
old.
Before the floods, humankind had an average
age of 800-900 years. Because of the wickedness of humankind, the LORD said, “My
Spirit will not contend with man forever, for he is mortal;
his days shall be 120 years.” (Gen 6:3)
God’s instruction to Noah for building the Ark was very precise.
“Make for yourself an ark of gopher wood; ‘make rooms in the ark’ and coat it with pitch inside and out. And
this is how you are to build it: The ark is to be 300 cubits long, 50 cubits
wide, and 30 cubits high. You are to make a roof for the ark, finish
its walls a cubit from the top, place a door in the
side of the ark, and build lower, middle, and upper decks. (Gen 6)
One cubit is roughly the length from the
elbow to the tip of the middle finger of a middle eastern adult who were
generally big made. One cubit would roughly be 20+ inches or 1 ¾ feet or 51.08
cms. With these conversions of cubit to feet, the dimensions of the ark approximate
to 510-feet long, 85-feet wide and 51-feet
high covering three levels and the rooftop. Each of the three decks would be the size of an acre i.e. 43,560 sq ft each.
The full-scale Noah's Ark in Williamstown
in Grant County, Northern Kentucky has been built to these dimensions accommodating
a zoo with live animals and a museum. It is roughly the size of one football
field and some change.
What is remarkable about these dimensions
is God’s perspective on ship building, the capacity needed to accommodate all
the animals and the birds, and the food needed for Noah’s family of eight
adults and the animals and bird for nearly a year’s stay on the boat, and the large
open spaces (‘rooms in the ark’ for air pockets) that the boat had to have to
ensure the density of the boat was lighter than the rising waters for the boat
to be buoyed up and to float.
“Then
the LORD said to Noah, “Go into the ark, you and all your family, because I
have found you righteous in this generation. You are to take with you
seven pairs of
every kind of clean animal, a male and its mate; a pair of every kind of
unclean animal, a male and its mate; and seven pairs of every kind of bird
of the air, male and female, to preserve their offspring on the face of all the
earth. For seven days from now I will send rain on the earth for forty
days and forty nights, and I will wipe from the face of the earth every living
thing I have made.” (Gen 7:1-4)
Seemingly
there are two renditions of this event as Genesis 6:19-20 refers only to only two
of each kind:
“And you are to bring two of every living creature into
the ark—male and female—to keep them alive with you. Two of every kind of bird and animal and crawling creature will come to
you to be kept alive. You are also to take for
yourself every kind of food that is eaten and gather it as food for yourselves
and for the animals.”
What
is further remarkable is how God protected Noah’s Ark from the fate of the Titanic
which hit an iceberg and damaged its hull that let the water flood the ship and
led to its tragic sinking over 14-15 April 1912.
“For
forty days the flood kept coming on the earth, and the waters rose and lifted
the ark high above the earth. So the waters continued to surge and rise
greatly on the earth, and the ark floated on the surface of the waters. Finally,
the waters completely inundated the earth, so that all the high mountains under
all the heavens were covered. The waters rose and ‘covered the mountaintops to
a depth of fifteen cubits. (Gen 7:17-20)
Note: The waters rose and covered
the mountaintops to a depth of fifteen cubits. The ark was built 30 cubits
high providing for 10 cubits to be underwater to avoid being grazed and damaged
by the sharp mountain tops, to finally rest safely on Mount Ararat.
“But
God remembered Noah and all the animals and livestock that were with him in the
ark. And God sent a wind over the earth, and the waters began to subside. The
springs of the deep and the floodgates of the heavens were closed, and the rain
from the sky was restrained. The waters receded steadily from the earth,
and after 150 days the waters had gone down.
“On
the seventeenth day of the seventh month, the ark came to rest on the mountains
of Ararat. And the waters continued to recede until the tenth month, and
on the first day of the tenth month the tops of the mountains became visible.
(Gen 8:1-5)
“In Noah’s six
hundred and first year, on the first day of the first month, the waters had
dried up from the earth. So Noah removed the covering from the ark and saw that
the surface of the ground was dry. By the twenty-seventh day of the second
month, the earth was fully dry.” (Gen 8:13-14)
The
enormity of the floods comes into perspective when we consider that the “floodwaters
came upon the earth… In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, on the
seventeenth day of the second month” (Gen 7:11) and the earth was fully dry only
the following year “By the twenty-seventh day of the second month, the
earth was fully dry.” (Gen 8:14).
The
floods lasted for one year ten days. If that is any consolation to all
who are locked down for 50 days (as of this writing) due the novel Covid-19
pandemic which is expected to persist for as many days as Noah and his family
were in the ark. If not more.
The
lessons we need to draw from Noah’s story are:
1.
While the whole
world may be live in sin, we need to live in righteousness; strive for God’s favour
to be upon us; that we and our family may be saved on the day of reckoning
2.
When God
instructs and we follow he takes full charge as God did of Noah’s boat and landed
it safely on Mt Ararat
3.
God prepared
Noah for the long-haul; He guided Noah on the supplies that will be needed for
his family, and the animals and the birds in his care for a whole year and ten
days on the boat; we too must ask God what ‘supplies’ do we need for the
long-haul, not only during a crisis
4.
God abhors sin
and while God will not break his promise to flood the earth – sin could well invite
other calamities – whether the ravages of climate change or contagious viruses
Let us remember and meditate over the following
scriptures to seek God’s protection over us:
"It is of the LORD'S mercies that we are not consumed,
because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy
faithfulness." Lamentations 3:22-23
"The LORD is slow to anger, and great in power, and will not at all
acquit the wicked: the LORD hath his way in the whirlwind and in the storm, and
the clouds are the dust of his feet." (Nahum 1:3)
"The LORD is merciful and gracious, slow to
anger, and plenteous in mercy. He will not always chide: neither will he keep
his anger for ever. He hath not dealt with us after our sins; nor rewarded us
according to our iniquities.
For as the heaven is high above the earth, so great
is his mercy toward them that fear him. As far as the east is from the west, so
far hath he removed our transgressions from us. Like as a father pitieth his
children, so the LORD pitieth them that fear him. For he knoweth our frame; he
remembereth that we are dust.
As for man, his days are as grass: as a flower of the
field, so he flourisheth. For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone; and the
place thereof shall know it no more. But the mercy of the LORD is from
everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear him, and his righteousness unto
children's children; To such as keep his covenant, and to those that remember
his commandments to do them." (Psalms 103:8-18)
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