Wierd Noah

#514

Weird Noah

I was amazed how educated my father became when I went to college. Probably every boy thinks his parents are very ignorant. It is only when you have been exposed to the world and to those college professors and to others who think they are so smart that you learn how smart you must be to survive in this world, especially under meager circumstances. My father could do must anything because like his father and the father before him, it was necessary to do most anything. I remember several of the many preachers at his funeral talking about his expertise as a builder, as a farmer...that he could cook, sew, butcher anything. A man who gets in front of a bullet for his child is called a father. A man who gets in front of a bullet for another man's child is called a hero. Every man who has a child should seek to be not only his child's father, but his child's hero.

Can you imagine being one of Noah's children? In Paul's letter to the Hebrews, in chapter 11 about heroes of the faith, Noah is the first man in the wold to be mentioned. The greatest tribute to Noah is the fact that his children were all saved from disaster. At the time of the great flood, from any available records, the population of the earth was about what it is today, between 6 and 7 billion. Of that number, only 8 mortal souls were saved, Noah, his three sons and the wives, eight souls on that side of the flood. For 120 years Noah followed the exact mathematical calculations from God Noah had built the great ark, probably about the size of the Queen Mary. According to the scripture, there had never been rain on the earth, just a hydrosphere. Sin had taken over the earth and Noah was a “preacher of repentance”. I believe that after the ark was completed and all the animals had entered the ark through the great door, two by two, much to the amusement of the hoards of Pagan onlookers, Noah probably stood at the door and begged them to come aboard and save themselves. They probably laughed and called him nutty just as they had described him to his own children. Then it began to rain and probably astonished because they had never seen rain, the Pagans enjoyed it for a while until they started to drown and knew that their frolicking minutes were over.

Once, as a child, two adult men were working for my father. They should have known better, should have had more respect for my father and certainly for his young child but they both talked at length about the peculiarities of my grandmother, my father's mother. She was known in the community as a woman who had come from a wealthy, well known family and she had her own idea about doing things in the community particularly at the church, at the womens club, at the school. She was able to have her own large car and she was resented by the men in the community because even 80 years ago she was a liberated woman. Blood is not always thicker than water. I have one cousin who has never found that he can say one thing good about any relative. He has despaired every relative we have in my presence and, you can write this down as Gospel, if he talks about others to me, he will talk about me to others. Not one of his relatives has ever met his standards. The soul requires much exercise in temperance.

On this side of the flood, it did not take Noah's descendants long to become just as Pagan as his relatives and friends on the other side of the flood. In just a few hundred years, only one, Abraham, the first Jew, was called by God to leave the land of his birth and go 600 miles North. Abraham, the richest man in the world at that time, was tested by God in his willingness to kill and sacrifice his son of promise, Isaac (Gen 22). On the way from Ur to Canaan, Abraham's father, Tyrel, a worshiper of idols, died near the city of Damascus. Cleansed from idol worship with the death of his father, Abraham is the second hero of faith in Hebrews 11. Can one even imagine, his only 30 year old son carrying the wood on which he would be sacrificed on a mountain? They had to carry the fire coals with them but just before Abraham plunged the dagger into the body of his son, God let him know that he had passed the test and a lamb was hung in some bushes by some thorns...a sign of the promise of the thorn crowned, only son of God, who would be sacrificed on the same hill.

As Fulton Oursler has said, “this is the greatest story ever told”. Christians should never be ashamed of this great story of sin's ruin and Christ's redemption. Christ has told us that if we are ashamed of him, he will be ashamed of us (Luk 9:26). I'm convinced that if every Christian who professed their faith in Christ displayed their faith before the world, the world would be a changed place. Most of us are just playing church. When one disparages our blessed Lord by using his name in vain or by telling a dirty joke or some other Pagan practice, how many of us actually take an unashamed stand. I have had several Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons work for me over the years. Always, without fail, they stand up for their faith. Several have told me that in their activities of going door to door, they are amazed to find how little most Protestants and Baptists know about anything. Once, two Jehovah's Witnesses were at my door, and I said, “I am a flaming Baptist.” They stepped back, and one said, “I have never seen one of those before”. I should have been ashamed because they are willing to take the abuse of the world and are willing to be called weird like “weird Noah” or Abraham in order to convert others to their belief. Most of us cannot live our own belief before members of our own family. This is probably the reason children from Christian Church homes are so easily entrapped by Satan when exposed to the world.

Because thy lovingkindness [is] better than life, my lips shall praise thee. (Psalm 63:3)