THE LONG SUFFERING OF OUR GOD

 

There was a great patriarch who stood next in line to Adam in the Priesthood, to whom was given ‘the dominion’ and who was made the father of all living in this day. This man was Noah who was also another noble and great one by the name of ‘Gabriel’, ‘in the beginning’. (“Teachings of Joseph Smith”, p 157).

Noah was born in the year 2,944 B.C. which was four years after the City of Enoch was translated. His greatness is attested by the fact that he was ordained to the priesthood at the unprecedented age of ten (D&C 107:52).

By the time Noah was called by God, at the age of 480,  to preach the message of “repent or perish”, “the society of his dispensation was worse than anything before or since – worse than Babylon where they offered human sacrifices, worse than Greece where they subjected young children to degenerate orgies, worse than Sodom, worse than Gomorah. (W. Cleon Skousen, “The First Two Thousand Years”, p 200)

It was a day when the power of Satan was upon all the face of the earth. So successful was Satan that the scripture says the earth seemed veiled with a terrible chain of darkness and Lucifer ‘looked up and laughed, and his angels rejoiced’.  (Moses 7:24,26)

And so Noah preached for 120 years as a testimony of Jehovah’s mercy until the floods came  (Genesis 5:3; Moses 8:17). But the mercy didn’t end there. During the three days post resurrection, the Saviour went to the spirit world and there organised the preaching of the gospel to those who had lived in the days of Noah and perished in the flood. Peter called this ‘the long-suffering’ of God (1 Peter 3:18-20).

“…..though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool” (Isaiah 1:18). This is the mercy and the long suffering of our God.

And here is the ultimate mercy of the deluge of the Flood which destroyed all the wicked upon the earth save one family:  The people of Noah’s day were so wicked that they ‘transmitted their unrighteous natures and desires to their children and brought them up to indulge in their own wicked practices’. Had they been allowed to live, the generations they were raising would eventually have had no ability to exercise their moral agency because they lived in evil continually and knew no good (see John Taylor, in “Journal of Discourses” 19:158-59). Therefore, The Flood became an act of mercy for generations of spirits yet to come to earth.

Mormon testified that the Saviour would not withhold the power of the Holy Ghost from the earth as long as there is ONE person who could be saved (Moroni 7:36). Abraham tested the Lord on this by trying to save Sodom’s population. He started asking Him if He would spare the Sodomites if there were fifty righteous souls there and the Lord kept re-assuring him that he would not destroy them even for ten’s sake but there were not even ten to be found (Genesis 18:23-33). Such was the case in Noah’s day.

His desire to save is there, the mercy ever extended, the long suffering infinitely present. We just need to want it.

Thy infinite mercy

Thy bountiful long suffering,

Trailing from the cross of Calvary,

Sealed with Your hour of agony.

 

- CATHRYNE ALLEN

(Art: Our Father Who Art in Heaven by Greg Collins)