The Flood - An Epilogue (Part 2) - Jesus Shows Compassion in the Afterlife
In The Flood - An Epilogue (Part 1) - God’s All-Knowing Patience, we noted how God knowingly waited 120 years before officially sending the flood. We noted Christ’s statement in Luke and Matthew that the flood itself was unexpected, sent without warning. Yet, God’s unspoken hesitancy was an act of mercy. How contradictory, right? But, scripture says it.Â
The question is, can unspoken mercy be mercy?
Should it be troubling that God will silently give someone a chance to repent of their evil? and then punishes them without warning if they do not? Consider the possibility that any man who met God face-to-face would change his ways. Wouldn’t that be reason enough for God to personally encounter every single one? Well for God it is the reason not to. Why? Because it takes a special person to change his ways without needing that face-to-face revelation. Noah was just such a man before facing God, and so Noah was saved. By that standard then, it would seem that the people of Noah’s time were unsaveable, as evidenced by their hearts being (and remaining for their last 120 years) only evil all the time (Gen. 6:5). Furthermore, as I wrote in Genesis 7:4 - When the Father Judges, Jesus Grieves, it is the heart that God judges us by in the end. A child may appear to be a little angel when Mommy and Daddy are around; it is when they are not around that the child’s true nature comes out… for better or for worse. And so, God remains quiet so you can be judged by your heart, rather than your ability to simply follow rules and act sweet in the attempt to avoid punishment.
At about this point, I might expect the skeptic to point out those figures in the Bible to whom God gave direct revelation in the midst of their evil. These would be the people whose hearts appear questionable at first, those people who might have gone to Hell had God never revealed Himself to them so directly. Paul stands out as one example. Simon Peter is another. I suppose a typical Christian response is that God gives such revelation to all who would be saved by it, and withholds it from those who would not be saved by it. However, that does not account for the Pharaoh of Egypt, who saw God’s miracles and rejected Him anyway; or Judas, who betrayed Jesus even after seeing Jesus’ miracles first hand. Then there’s a middle-ground which says we are generally saved according to our heart, but occasionally God will change a heart through revelation as it suits His purposes. Well, each argument has its merits, and each contain aspects of what is true. However, such debate gets too far afield of who God is, creating positions that each deal with only part of God’s revealed truth. But while no single position appears to deal with all of God, Genesis 6:5-6 may help us get close…
 5 The LORD saw how great man’s wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time.
Then, to balance this out, look at His reaction to this state. While I believe that verse 5 was God the Father, as I argue in Genesis 6 - Who Regretted Creating Mankind?, I believe the next verse is Jesus…
6 The LORD was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain.
It was therefore because of the grief felt by God the Son that God the Father gave man another 120 years to shape up, and then by that same dynamic God saved the line of Adam through Noah and his family. To be clear, The Father knew He would do this and He knew the reason. Story over… the rest of them just go to Hell now, right? Well, it turns out that for those who were killed, it was not the end of the story! You see, it was not all Jesus was going to do.Â
1 Peter 3: 18For Christ … was put to death in the body but made alive by the Spirit, 19through whom also he went and preached to the spirits in prison 20who disobeyed long ago when God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built. Â
After saving Adam’s line through the righteous Noah, Jesus preached to the condemned for the righteousness that they had lacked on earth. However, this preaching did not occur before they died, when they could have changed their ways; it came after, when their fate had been set. Yes, He preached to them, but He did not spare them. It would seem that their punishment only started with their death… it continued on in the afterlife. It lasted until Jesus preached to them, and continued afterwards, as Peter records in his second letter…
2Peter 2:Â 5if [God] did not spare the ancient world when he brought the flood on its ungodly people, but protected Noah, a preacher of righteousness, and seven others … 9if this is so, then the Lord knows how to rescue godly men from trials and to hold the unrighteous for the day of judgment, while continuing their punishment.Â
The idea here is that God knows how to separate the godly from the ungodly, to rescue the godly and then punish the ungodly. However, there is a spiritual aspect of this as well. Noah was not only rescued from The Flood of this earth, but from the prison that is beyond. But that is not the real key to understanding the situation. The key is in the words “godly”, “ungodly”, and “righteousness”. Remember that righteousness is believing God and obeying Him. The ungodly of Noah’s time were fully aware of God, and fully aware of how to be godly. After all, they knew of Adam, Cain, and the cursed ground. They even had Noah as a comforter among them for nearly 600 years. However, they chose not to be godly. They chose. Noah alone was righteous. Noah alone took what He knew of God, and acted in a godly way to toward his fellow man. No one else did. However, despite the love the ungodly withheld from God in His seeming absence, Jesus loved them. His heart broke over their depravity; when He died on the cross, He went to them and preached as they awaited judgement. When they go before the Father, they will know they have no excuse. They will realize then that they were not really blind-sided.