Hey everyone. Welcome to PvBibleAlive. I’m Bruce Hays, the pastor of Parkview Baptist Church in Wichita, Kansas. And today we are continuing in our study of the book of Genesis. And our study centers around a time of violence in the earth. And what a coincidence that is, because we have just had a week of violence across our nation around the death of George Floyd on May 25th, 2020, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Protests began the day after his death when video of the police arrest went viral. Practically every state has had some protests, and some have resulted in violence.
Riots, property destruction, stores being looted, curfews, 12 confirmed deaths so far, the military has been called out, 24 states have called out the National Guard.
Protests have begun to spread around the world.
Bricks and rocks are thrown at police, police fire tear gas, and rubber bullets. Police cars set on fire and vandalized.
And more than all of that, fear and hatred are spreading like wildfire.
It’s always fascinated me concerning the work of the Spirit in preaching. There have been more times than I can count that I have stood to deliver a sermon at my church, and the subject matter, the songs we were singing, and the circumstances in someone’s or everyone’s lives were running parallel to each other. And that was not my doing, it was God who knows the future, who lined up the preaching of the Word, and events. And today is no exception. We are coming, in Genesis, to a climax in the story of mankind. We are coming to the story of the worldwide flood. This is the story of God’s judgment on the world because of violence and corruption.
This is the story of God finally saying, “Enough” to man’s sin. It was God saying, “I’m starting over.” “I’m destroying the whole lot of you.”
And I suppose that that is what I don’t understand about all this current violence and corruption. This kind of activity never leads to anything good. I mean, historically I could point to examples where peaceful protest lead to positive results; Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandi. But I can’t find an example where this kind of indiscriminate, chaotic, violence led to anything but civil war, and eventually a murderous crackdown by some authoritarian power. And more frightening than that is the judgment of God.
Let’s pick up where we left off in Genesis 6, verse 9.
9 These are the generations of Noah: Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God.
Noah was the 10th generation counting Adam as the 1st generation. This was approximately 2000 years since the creation of the world. When we get to this time, it tells us that Noah was the only man, along with his family, who would be worth saving. Noah was like Enoch before him, he walked with God. He had a close spiritual relationship with God. But God took Enoch out of the world, Noah stayed in the world.
10 And Noah begat three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth.
11 The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence.
Now there were two things wrong in the world; corruption and violence—and the first leads to the second.
The Hebrew word for corruption here means; spoiled, or destroyed—it most often describes something that is ruined by an outside force. This same word is used of God destroying Sodom and Gomorrah. In the case of Sodom and Gomorrah it indicated a destruction of the city that left no evidence that the cities had ever existed.
So here, it is saying that 2 thousand years after God’s perfect creation, mankind had so corrupted himself, that there was little evidence of God’s goodness left in mankind. This is an internal condition of the spirit---as he said earlier—the only thought of humanity’s imagination was only evil continually. Now let’s talk a moment about what it means to be evil, or sinful. Sometimes we get the idea that “evil” only applies to those who are the most vile among us. Murderers, rapists, child molesters, thieves. But the definition for evil in scripture is much more narrow than that.
Because you were created to bring honor and glory to God, and to be in relationship with Him, anything that does not do those things can be judged to be evil. So ultimately, sin and evil are simply, self-service. Self-centeredness. Living life and making all your decisions for selfish reasons. So sometimes that doesn’t look evil to us---a person can be a hard-worker, pay their taxes, pay their bills, mow their lawn, and take care of their family, —but they may be doing it entirely from selfish motivations. They consider that kind of life as good for them.
But if the motivation in the heart is anything but God-centered, it is evil, corrupt, decaying.
So the people of Noah’s day were consumed with self-service. And eventually, any society that has entirely self-serving citizens, will become violent. Why? Because your self-serving interests end up colliding with mine. And since none of us are capable of good, society begins to spiral downward, and individuals start lashing out at those who oppose their selfish aims.
And let me tell you, the Bible is an amazing book in that regard. It describes the nature of man to a “T.” And our world is looking more and more like Noah’s.
Noah’s world was full of corruption, and violence. The curse spoken to the woman had come to full bloom. God told the woman that the relationship between herself and Adam would no longer be a cooperation, but a desire for dominance. And that desire was characteristic of all people. It was truly “the survival of the meanest.” Families, clans, tribes and the beginnings of government run by violence. And the strongest and meanest runs the show, at least until someone assassinates the strongest and meanest.
So this is the state of the earth at the time leading up to the flood.
12 And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth.
13 And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth.
Now, because Noah had this close spiritual relationship with God, God tells Noah that He is going to destroy the earth.
I’ve always wondered here, how did God talk to Noah? I mean, it couldn’t have been just Noah’s internal voice. All of us have this kind of internal voice. It is the voice of our own musings. And if we go crazy, maybe we begin to believe that our own voice is the voice of God, or even the devil, or the dog next door.
But this voice was the voice of God. Maybe it came from the heavens. Maybe it was in Noah’s mind. But it was the voice of God. And certain individuals in Scripture hear the voice of God. Well God tells Noah,
14 Make thee an ark of gopher wood; rooms shalt thou make in the ark, and shalt pitch it within and without with pitch.
What is an “ark?” It’s a boat.
What is Gopher wood? Nobody is entirely sure. The word “Gopher” could be the kind of wood; cedar or cypress. It could be how the wood is processed; planed wood, or it could just be related to it being pitched wood. Pitched wood was simply wood that was water-proofed with a mixture of pine-tar (for example) and charcoal.
15 And this is the fashion which thou shalt make it of: The length of the ark shall be three hundred cubits, the breadth of it fifty cubits, and the height of it thirty cubits.
A cubit was the measurement between the elbow and the end of your middle finger. A typical male’s cubit today would be about 18 inches long. So the arks length would be about 5400 inches (450 feet) its breadth 900 inches (75 ft) and its height 540 inches (45 ft)
So, how big is that? By comparison, the ark was 450 feet long, the Titanic was 883 feet long. The Titanic was 175 feet tall compared to the ark, at 45 feet tall.
16 A window shalt thou make to the ark, and in a cubit shalt thou finish it above; (Noah is to put an 18 inch window at the top of the ark.) and the door of the ark shalt thou set in the side thereof; with lower, second, and third stories shalt thou make it. (3 stories-approximately 15 feet per story)
17 And, behold, I, even I, do bring a flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh, wherein is the breath of life, from under heaven; and everything that is in the earth shall die.
So, when it says here that God is destroying the earth, it refers to the destruction of animal, plant and human life. But, with the break up and upheaval of the earth’s surface, the flood will also permanently mar the earth’s crust.
18 But with thee will I establish my covenant; and thou shalt come into the ark, thou, and thy sons, and thy wife, and thy sons' wives with thee. (8 people are saved.)
19 And of every living thing of all flesh, two of every sort shalt thou bring into the ark, to keep them alive with thee; they shall be male and female.
20 Of fowls after their kind, and of cattle after their kind, of every creeping thing of the earth after his kind, two of every sort shall come unto thee, to keep them alive.
Now, to be clear, the two by two animals were the unclean animals. Those were basically the wild animals, the non-domesticated ones, the ones you don’t typically raise on a farm. The clean animals were taken to the ark—7 of each. For example, there would be 7 turkeys, but only 2 eagles.
Now, you may ask, was that 2 bald eagles, or 2 golden eagles? Well, I’m inclined to believe that when God created the animals in the beginning, that He created 2 of each kind, and that those original 2 had the genetic material necessary to produce all the different varieties of animals we see today. But I am no expert on genetics, or the mating habits of eagles.
Why does it matter? Well let’s take dogs for example. If there were only 2 dogs on the ark, they would have been super mutts. They would have had within them the capacity to produce all the dog breeds we know today. It’s simpler to think of the ark’s occupants that way, because otherwise you could have had 2 of each of the 339 breeds of dogs we know today.
Or maybe it was 2 each of all the types of dog breeds; sheepdogs, pinschers, terriers, dacshunds, etc
Well, what about dinosaurs? Yes, there would have been land dinosaurs on the ark. And that leads us to another question,
How did Noah gather them? Well, the text doesn’t tell us. But I doubt that God left it entirely up to Noah. Most animals have a couple of instincts that probably helped with their salvation on the ark. They are migration and hibernation. It may be that certain of the “chosen” animals were directed by God, through this migratory instinct, to make their way to the place where Noah was constructing the ark. And once in the ark, they went into hibernation for the year they were there.
21 And take thou unto thee of all food that is eaten, and thou shalt gather it to thee; and it shall be for food for thee, and for them.
22 Thus did Noah; according to all that God commanded him, so did he.
Now lots of people wonder; how could Noah, his 3 sons and their 4 wives have fit all these animals in the ark and cared for them all? Let me just summarize from Answers in Genesis.
According to the Bible, the Ark had three decks (floors). It is not difficult to show that there was plenty of room for 16,000 animals (the maximum number of animals on the Ark, if the most liberal approach to counting animals is applied), assuming they required approximately the same floor space as animals in typical farm enclosures and laboratories. The vast majority of the creatures (birds, reptiles, and mammals) were small (the largest only a few hundred pounds of body weight). What’s more, many could have been housed in groups, which would have further reduced the required space.
It is still necessary to take account of the floor spaces required by large animals, such as elephants and rhinos. But even these, collectively, do not require a large area because it is most likely that these animals were young, but not newborns. Even the largest dinosaurs were relatively small when only a few years old.
How Were the Animals Cared For?
We must distinguish between the long-term care required for animals kept in zoos and the temporary, emergency care required on the Ark. The animals’ comfort and healthy appearance were not essential for emergency survival during one stressful year, where survival was the primary goal.
Studies of nonmechanized animal care indicate that eight people could have fed and watered 16,000 creatures. The key is to avoid unnecessary walking around. As the old adage says, “Don’t work harder, work smarter.”
Therefore, Noah probably stored the food and water near each animal. Even better, drinking water could have been piped into troughs, just as the Chinese have used bamboo pipes for this purpose for thousands of years. The use of some sort of self-feeders, as is commonly done for birds, would have been relatively easy and probably essential. Animals that required special care or diets were uncommon and should not have needed an inordinate amount of time from the handlers. Even animals with the most specialized diets in nature could have been switched to readily sustainable substitute diets. Of course, this assumes that animals with specialized diets today were likewise specialized at the time of the Flood.
Now, as I’ve said before, I am no expert, but I think the former description gives a good explanation of how this huge enterprise was accomplished. We also need to take into account that what was happening was a miraculous event. God caused a worldwide flood. And if we believe that God can cause a worldwide flood, can we not also believe that He is capable of preserving 16,000 creatures on a boat?
7 And the Lord said unto Noah, Come thou and all thy house into the ark; for thee have I seen righteous before me in this generation.
2 Of every clean beast thou shalt take to thee by sevens, the male and his female: and of beasts that are not clean by two, the male and his female.
3 Of fowls also of the air by sevens, the male and the female; to keep seed alive upon the face of all the earth.
4 For yet seven days, and I will cause it to rain upon the earth forty days and forty nights; and every living substance that I have made will I destroy from off the face of the earth.
5 And Noah did according unto all that the Lord commanded him.
“And all flesh died” that’s how we can summarize Genesis chapter 7. Everything died, except Noah, his family, and those few animals who went on to the ark. Of course, all the sea creatures would also have survived, and possibly certain insects and animals who burrow underground. But it’s a stark description of catastrophic death. And more importantly, death as a consequence for mankind’s sinfulness.
In our day, in the church, at least in America, we overemphasize the Love of God, and never want to mention, the wrath and judgment of God against sin. We want to get people “saved,” but saved from what? In America, the message is that a person can be saved from being unfulfilled. Saved from sadness. Saved from purposelessness. Saved from being unloved.
But the meaning of the word “saved” has to do with pulling a person out of imminent danger. A person can be saved from death by drowning, or starvation. They can be saved from bodily harm from fire, or wild animals.
Many of us in America have little experience with that kind of salvation. So we begin to think of salvation as meeting our other needs; fulfillment and purpose.
So today, when Christian preachers speak of salvation, we stop short of saying that we are to be saved from the judgment for our sin. From spiritual death, eternal separation from God in Hell. That’s a distasteful message in America. That’s why many preachers ignore the OT. It’s too judgmental. But in the story of the Ark you can’t avoid the truth that God judges sin, and that sin leads to death, and death on a massive scale.
7 And the Lord said unto Noah, Come thou and all thy house into the ark; for thee have I seen righteous before me in this generation.
2 Of every clean beast thou shalt take to thee by sevens, the male and his female: and of beasts that are not clean by two, the male and his female.
By the way, this is a fact that few remember, even after you’ve heard the story a number of times. All the unclean animals came two by two, all clean animals came in sevens. So why did God require 7 animals of clean animals? Well clean animals are what we would call domesticated animals---cows, sheep, goats, chickens, ox, deer, gazelle, etc. Uncleans animals were camel, horse, pig, bat etc. Now I’m not going to go into how they were classified here, but suffice it to say that the reason clean animals were taken in by sevens is two-fold. Number one, after Noah and his family got out of the ark, these animals would be the beginning of a flock, herd, or brood. They would have the beginnings of the farm life they would live after the flood. But why 7? Because the first thing that Noah did after the flood was to build an altar, and sacrifice one each of those clean animals.
Genesis 8: 20 Then Noah built an altar to the Lord, and took of every clean animal and of every clean bird, and offered burnt offerings on the altar. 21 And the Lord smelled a soothing aroma. Then the Lord said in His heart, “I will never again curse the ground for man’s sake, although the imagination[a] of man’s heart is evil from his youth; nor will I again destroy every living thing as I have done.
You see, as much as the flood was a demonstration of God’s wrath against sin, it was also a demonstration of God’s grace toward those who turn to him in faith. And Hebrews
And according to the law almost all things are purified with blood, and without shedding of blood there is no remission.
From the very start of Genesis, God is showing how you get right with him.
Noah made a blood sacrifice to make atonement for his, and his family’s sins.
Now here is another principle of Bible interpretation. The principle of foreshadowing. A “fore” shadow is a shadow you see before the real person or thing arrives. Imagine that you are in a dark house with the front door open to a sunshiny day. Suddenly you look down to the floor in front of the doorway and see the shadow of a man. You don’t see the man, you just see his shadow. You know it’s a man because of the shape and movement of the shadow. But you can’t tell all the details about the man yet. But one thing you know…somebody is about to come through your door.
Well the OT is full of those kinds of shadows. They are like shadows in the doorway. You see something, or someone is coming. But you don’t get all the details about them. You know it’s a man and other details. The OT is full of these shadows of a coming man. They are shadows of one person, Jesus Christ. Sometimes, they explicitly tell you what they are, other times they don’t. But the whole sacrificial system given by God to the people of Israel was a foreshadowing of the final sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross to pay the penalty for man’s sin. Isaiah 53
53 Who has believed our report?
And to whom has the arm of the Lord been
revealed?
2 For He shall grow
up before Him as a tender plant,
And as a root out of dry ground.
He has no [a]form or [b]comeliness;
And when we see Him,
There is no [c]beauty that we should desire Him.
3 He is despised
and [d]rejected by men,
A Man of [e]sorrows and acquainted with [f]grief.
And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him;
He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.
4 Surely He has borne our [g]griefs
And carried our [h]sorrows;
Yet we [i]esteemed Him stricken,
[j]Smitten by God, and afflicted.
5 But He was wounded[k] for our transgressions,
He was [l]bruised for our iniquities;
The chastisement for our peace was upon Him,
And by His stripes[m] we are healed.
6 All we like sheep
have gone astray;
We have turned, every one, to his own way;
And the Lord [n]has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.
7 He was oppressed and He was
afflicted,
Yet He opened not His mouth;
He was led as a lamb to the slaughter,
And as a sheep before its shearers is silent,
So He opened not His mouth.
And these animals that Noah sacrificed were a foreshadowing of the sacrifice of the Lamb of God; Jesus Christ.
So they had 7 of every clean animal, was the extra male or female? We don’t know for sure, but I would bet that the animal that Noah sacrificed after the flood was a male, if it fit the pattern of later Jewish sacrificial rules.
3 Of fowls also of the air by sevens, the male and the female; to keep seed alive upon the face of all the earth.
So, Noah was 500 years old when he had Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Now he has spent 100 years building the ark. And then God tells him,
4 For yet seven days, and I will cause it to rain upon the earth forty days and forty nights; and every living substance that I have made will I destroy from off the face of the earth.
5 And Noah did according unto all that the Lord commanded him.
6 And Noah was six hundred years old when the flood of waters was upon the earth.
7 And Noah went in, and his sons, and his wife, and his sons' wives with him, into the ark, because of the waters of the flood.
8 Of clean beasts, and of beasts that are not clean, and of fowls, and of everything that creepeth upon the earth,
9 There went in two and two unto Noah into the ark, the male and the female, as God had commanded Noah.
10 And it came to pass after seven days, that the waters of the flood were upon the earth.
So God gives Noah, his family 7 days to get everyone and all the animals on the ark.
11 In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened.
2nd month, 17th day of the month; when was this? We don’t know, but it is interesting that in many cultures around the world, there is a festival for the dead, or day of the dead, some of them tying that festival to the date of the flood. In some traditions, Halloween is associated with the sinful world before the flood, and the day after commemorates the dead. This would make sense that Noah and his family, the only human survivors of the flood would hold a day of remembrance for all the lost souls who died when the flood began. If that is the case, the flood would have begun on our November 1st.
12 And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights.
13 In the selfsame day entered Noah, and Shem, and Ham, and Japheth, the sons of Noah, and Noah's wife, and the three wives of his sons with them, into the ark;
14 They, and every beast after his kind, and all the cattle after their kind, and every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind, and every fowl after his kind, every bird of every sort.
15 And they went in unto Noah into the ark, two and two of all flesh, wherein is the breath of life.
16 And they that went in, went in male and female of all flesh, as God had commanded him: and the Lord shut him in. (God closed the ark door and sealed it.)
17 And the flood was forty days upon the earth; and the waters increased, and bare up the ark, and it was lift up above the earth.
18 And the waters prevailed, and were increased greatly upon the earth; and the ark went upon the face of the waters.
19 And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth; and all the high hills, that were under the whole heaven, were covered.
Once again we need to address a misunderstanding. It rained for 40 days and 40 nights, but that was not the only source of water for the flood. Genesis 7:11 says that the fountains of the great deep were broken up. Answers in Genesis addresses it this way; This describes great subterranean reservoirs or chambers deep inside the earth. Reservoirs full of water under the surface of the ground.
So water came from above and below the surface of the earth. This would have been a huge tectonic volcanic event. It would have resulted in the break-up of the earth’s surface, the rising of mountainous regions, the cutting of vast canyons and rifts in the earth, tsunamis and storms beyond our experience.
Now what caused all of that? Obviously the Bible says that God caused it to happen. But did He just do so by saying, “Let it rain, etc” or did He bring in some natural event using natural forces to bring the flood? I have no problem with either.
For example, no less a scientist than Isaac Newton who proposed the universal theory of gravitation believed that a comet passing near the earth was the mechanism for the flood. The gravitational pull of the comet disrupting tides, and causing earthquakes and volcanic activity, possibly some icy/ mineral element of the comet itself breaking up and falling to the earth brought on the precipitation, and/or ice falling to the earth’s surface—giving us Mammoth’s flash frozen, encased in ice with green vegetation still in their mouths.
Now, I’m not going to pretend that I am a scientist and affirm that the flood was the result of this or that. I just present it to you so you will understand that the flood doesn’t have to be a story shrouded in some fairy story category.
I believe God brought it, just as scripture says, but He may have brought it by what appears to us to be natural means.
20 Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail; and the mountains were covered. 20 feet over the mountains.
21 And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, and every man:
22 All in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land, died.
23 And every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both man, and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven; and they were destroyed from the earth: and Noah only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark.
I don’t know if that stirs your heart the way it does mine. But I can imagine the panic and fear from man and animal alike when the flood waters, storms, earthquakes, volcanos, and tsunamis came. In fact, I believe the fossil record lends credibility to that account. This quote comes from “Answers in Genesis.”
In a biblical worldview, fossils are not the result of millions of years of slow and gradual processes. Most were rapidly buried during the yearlong flood. This rapid, catastrophic burial explains the geological features we see:
· Preservation of soft parts and creatures like jellyfish that have no hard parts.
· Soft tissue in dinosaur bones.
· Massive fossil graveyards where land and sea creatures are buried together.
· Exquisite details preserved.
· Fossilized tracks preserved before the fossil of the creature itself.
· The order in the fossil record. As the waters rose, successive environments were buried.
· The sheer number of fossils—billions and billions, mostly marine creatures.
24 And the waters prevailed upon the earth an hundred and fifty days.
Now a question regarding the timetable for the flood. Answers in Genesis put together a table delineating all the days that transpired during the flood event, so we can get an idea how long the disaster lasted.
Timeline (days) Duration Month/Day Description Bible Reference 0 Initial reference point 600th year of Noah’s life: 2nd month, 17th day of the month The fountains of the great deep broke apart and the windows of heaven were opened; it began to rain. This happened on the seventeenth day of the second month. Noah actually entered the Ark seven days prior to this. Genesis 7:11 40 40 days and nights 3rd month, 27th day of the month Rain fell for 40 days, and then water covered the earth’s highest places (at that time) by over ~20 feet (15 cubits) and began the stage of flooding until the next milestone.2 Genesis 7:11–12, Genesis 7:17–20 150 150 days (including the initial 40 days) 7th month, 17th day of the month The water rose to its highest level (covering the whole earth) sometime between the 40th and 150th day, and the end of these 150 days was the seventeenth day of the seventh month. The Ark rested on the mountains of Ararat. On the 150th day, the springs of the great deep were shut off, and the rain from above ceased, and the water began continually receding. Genesis 7:24–8:5 150 + 74 = 224 74 days 10th month, 1st day of the month The tops of the mountains became visible on the tenth month, first day. Genesis 8:5 224 + 40 = 264 40 days 11th month, 11th day of the month After 40 more days, Noah sent out a raven. Genesis 8:6 264 + 7 = 271 7 days 11th month, 18th day of the month The dove was sent out seven days after the raven. It had no resting place and returned to Noah.3 Genesis 8:6–12 271 + 7 = 278 7 days 11th month, 25th day of the month After seven more days, Noah sent out the dove again. It returned again but this time with an olive leaf in its beak. Genesis 8:10–11 278 + 7 = 285 7 days 12th month, 2nd day of the month After seven more days, Noah sent out the dove again, and it did not return. Genesis 8:12 314 29 days 601st year of Noah life: 1st month, 1st day of the month Noah removed the cover of the Ark on the first day of the first month. The surface of the earth was dried up, and Noah could verify this to the extent of what he could see. Genesis 8:13 370 (371 if counting the first day and last day as full days) 56 days 2nd month, 27th day of the month The earth was dry, and God commanded Noah’s family and the animals to come out of the Ark. From the first day of the year during the daylight portion there were 29.5 more days left in the month plus 26.5 more days left in the second month until the exit. Genesis 8:14–17, Genesis 7:11 Table 1: Timeline of Flood Duration1
So, over a year they spent on the ark. A daily reminder of Galatians 6:7
Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap.
But it is also a reminder to all those who, like Noah, through Jesus Christ—found grace in the eyes of the Lord.
This account of the flood reminds me of how precariously balanced the state of our world is. We are metaphorically sitting on a ticking time-bomb. And it’s not ready to explode because of some environmental crisis, but because mankind has forsaken God, and has corrupted himself, and become violent and hate-filled toward his fellow man.
2nd Peter 3 was written to us as a warning against a future judgment which will be worse than the flood.
3 knowing this first, that in the last days mockers will come, walking after their own lusts 4 and saying, “Where is the promise of his coming? For, from the day that the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.” 5 For this they willfully forget that there were heavens from of old, and an earth formed out of water and amid water by the word of God, 6 by which means the world that existed then, being overflowed with water, perished. 7 But the heavens that exist now and the earth, by the same word have been stored up for fire, being reserved against the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men.
10 But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in which the heavens will pass away with a great noise, and the elements will be dissolved with fervent heat, and the earth and the works that are in it will be burned up. 11 Therefore since all these things will be destroyed like this, what kind of people ought you to be in holy living and godliness, 12 looking for and earnestly desiring the coming of the day of God, which will cause the burning heavens to be dissolved, and the elements will melt with fervent heat? 13 But, according to his promise, we look for new heavens and a new earth, in which righteousness dwells.
Judgment is coming again. Except this time it will be the final judgment. So, when you see the violence increasing around you, it is not the time for blame, or for fear. It is the time to turn to God, to enter the ark of His eternal spiritual salvation in Jesus Christ.