NOAH'S POSTERITY

 

We often say how easily we forget history which always repeats itself but it is not that we forget but that the Prince of this world remembers. He remembers his past successes and traps of destruction, how to manipulate the human mind and how to foster their sense of pride against God.

The adversary’s main goal is always human annihilation. He certainly knew how to preserve his murderous cult amongst men and return them to pre-flood conditions. It is easy to imagine that his goal was another deluge to wipe out humanity only this time there stood in the way one thing – God’s covenant with Noah and Enoch that never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth (Genesis 9:9a;11). Nevertheless, within two or three generations after the Flood, Noah was to see his descendants duplicating the abominations of the pre-flood period.

It all started with Noah’s son Ham who married a woman named Egyptus who was a descendant of Cain. Even though Ham ‘walked with God’ and possessed the priesthood like his father and brothers, he was never able to pass this privilege to any of his descendants because of the blood of Cain. Ham and Egyptus had a daughter who discovered Egypt and set up the dynasty of Pharaohs (Abraham 1:21-27). It’s a fascinating story.

Because the Lord knew that city life under the wrong kind of leadership could corrupt a whole nation in one generation, he encouraged Noah and his descendants to observe the patriarchal government through pastoral living. This is the very thing that the enemy opposed in order to return the population to wickedness through a man called Nimrod.

Nimrod was one of the sons of Ham and Egyptus who became the builder and founder of the city of Babel (Genesis 10:8-10). Nimrod was a mighty hunter in the land (JST Genesis 10:5) and not a mighty hunter before the Lord (Genesis 10:9). In fact, he was the prototype of the enemy that lured Cain into his murderous cult.

“He persuaded people not to ascribe their prosperity to God…but to believe that it was their own courage which procured that happiness. He also changed the government into tyranny, seeing no other way of turning man from the fear of God, but to bring them into a constant dependence on his power. He also said he would be revenged of God, if He should have a mind to drown the world again; for that he would build a tower too high for the waters to be able to reach! And that he would avenge himself on God for destroying their forefathers.” (Josephus, Book 1, Chapter 4). Does this not remind you of Cain when he declared:  “Who is the Lord, that I should know him?” (Moses 5:16)

And so Noah’s descendants built a tower of Babel in defiance to God. But something wonderful was born out of this unfortunate human error……the Jaredites and the return to the land of America. All hail to the Book of Mormon and Joseph and our ever-loving God who ensures that the adversary cannot win, not as long as there are humble, faithful sons and daughters of God who are willing to follow Him…..

- CATHRYNE ALLEN 

(Art: Noah's Ark by James Edwin McConnell)

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) 

 

THE ENEMY THAT NEVER SLEEPS

 

There have been evil societies on this earth from day one because the enemy never sleeps. Two of them are worthy of mention: the people in the days of Noah who were so evil that God swept the whole earth clean with a flood (Moses 7:33,34); and the Nephite civilization that allowed wickedness and evil to lead them to destruction in ancient America.

I want to mention the Nephites as the Flood will be covered later in our Come Follow Me studies. I find it hard to fathom the atrocities such as were committed amongst the Nephites of Mormon’s day (Moroni 9:8-10). Mormon described his people as brutal, strong in their perversion and delighting in everything that is not good. He went on to say that ‘tongue could not tell, neither could it be written’ of the suffering among the women and children (Mormon 9:19).

Mormon recorded that ‘a continual scene of wickedness and abominations had been before his eyes ever since he had been sufficient to behold the ways of man’ (Mormon 2:18). In his last epistle to his son, he cried to God to ‘hide their sins, and wickedness and abominations from before His face!” (Moroni 9:15).

Mormon wrote the whole Book of Mormon in such a way that we might come to know the enemy and ‘be more wise than they have been’ (Mormon 9:31). Unfortunately, we don’t learn from history. The adversary is working today in secret ways, in corridors of power and in personal battlefields. He seeks our destruction and when he succeeds, he laughs and he and his angels rejoice (3 Nephi 9:2).

The adversary knows us. He observes our behaviour and our choices and our words. He knows what buttons to push.  He sees those moments when we are at our weakest. He waits for those moments. He lives for those moments.

This is why we need to take notice, now more than ever. We are preparing for the Millenium. When the Saviour comes, there will be destruction of evil at a level which we have never witnessed before: “And the saints also shall hardly escape; nevertheless, I, the Lord, am with them, and will come down in heaven from the presence of my Father and consume the wicked with unquenchable fire D&C 63:34)

Those who have been righteous and accepted Christ as their Redeemer and lived by His commandments will be transfigured to abide His glory and will be caught up to meet Him in the clouds of heaven, together with the righteous dead who will rise from their graves. (Joseph Fielding Smith, “Doctrines of Salvation”, 2:296). Can you imagine a more glorious sight? This is what we want to be a part of.

And the enemy? He will be bound by those who sought to conquer him on their personal battlefields so he will have no power over them for a thousand years (D&C 101:28; 1 Nephi 22:26; Moroni 9:6). Now this is what I am looking forward to……..

- CATHRYNE ALLEN 

(Art: Descending From The Clouds of Heaven by Greg Collins)