"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. And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights." Genesis 7:11-12. See also Genesis 7:11-24, Luke 17:20-37.
This verse is a part of the Bible story of the Flood. It is said that it took place in the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month. One of the difficulties that commentators have found with this passage is the great age attributed to Noah. He is said to have been six hundred years old at the time of the blood and to have lived after the flood three hundred and fifty years, as it is written "And all the days of Noah were nine hundred and fifty years; and he died."
But we should know that Adam, Eve, Cain, Seth, Enoch, Methuselah, Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, all those mentioned in the first eleven chapters of Genesis, are not the names of persons, but of doctrines, beliefs, sects. The first historical person mentioned in the Bible is Heber, from whom the Hebrews descended, and from whom they took their racial name. Some beliefs persisted longer than others, some for many hundreds of years. The significance of these names would be more easily grasped if we understood that all these names have meanings. Adam means "ground." Eve means “life." Lamech means "vastation" or destruction. Enoch means "separated." Noah means "rest." When transliterated, they appear like the names of individuals. The opening chapters of the scriptures treat of the development of spiritual life in man, of the fall of man and its causes. The Garden of Eden is a state of the soul, when in it are the good and truth from the Lord. The tree of life is the acknowledgment of the Lord, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil the belief that we of ourselves can know that is good and true. These two beliefs are those at the center of every good or evil life. All good life comes from acknowledgment of the Lord and obedience to His Word. All evil life comes from turning away from the Lord to self.
This men did, and it is recorded that in the six hundredth year of Noah’s life the lord sent a flood upon the earth because men had become evil - that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. Noah represents a belief - a church. If we should accept the assumption that the Roman Catholic Church was founded by Peter and should call it Peter, then we might say that Peter lived three hundred and twenty-five years and begat Arius and Athanasius. And Arius and Athanasius lived fifteen hundred years, during which time they begat sons and daughters. We should then be speaking as the ancients spoke. Such a statement would mean that after three hundred and twenty-five aears Athanasius developed the doctrine of the trinity which has persisted for fifteen hundred years, and all trinitarian churches are its sons and daughters, and that all unitarian churches have their origin in Arius.
Thus understood the difficulties of the literal story and its accuracy are instantly removed, and we realise that the Bible here is not speaking of the age of men. The number of years picture the states of the people. It was said of Babylon, "Thou art numbered, numbered, weighed in the balance and found wanting." Here to number means to judge as to the quality of its truths, and to weigh to judge as to the quality of its goods.
The hundreds have the same significance as the digits, only intensifying them. Seven reminds us of the sabbath day, and is the symbol of holiness, five of the five wise and the five foolish virgins, which represent the church such as it is when it has received and comprehended the truths delivered to it and is about to bring them into practice - its light and experience are small, and are represented by the number five. Six reminds us of the six days of labor. Six hundred intensifies the meaning, and is especially appropriate to describe the church when about to undergo the severest toils of temptation. The second month is added to indicate that they are fully entered into this new state. Seventeen signifies the beginning and end of temptations because seventeen signifies the entering into temptation, Joseph was a son of seventeen years when he was sold into slavery.
We are accustomed to think of some numbers - such as seven, three, forty - as having a meaning: the three days in the tomb, the forty days in the wilderness, the Lord's fast of forty days. But we should realize that all numbers mentioned in the Word have a meaning, and are symbols of the state or condition that prevails at the time.
It was in times of great temptation that the flood came, times in which it is recorded that every living thing died except Noah and his family and the animals taken into the ark. The deluge was a spiritual catastrophe. This statement instantly removes the Divine narrative beyond the roach of those who criticize it on the basis of the accuracy of its natural science or history. There was no universal flood of water, nor was there any extensive local flood reaching to the tops of the mountains. The message of the Bible is a spiritual message.
We are accustomed to think of natural floods, with their destruction of property and life, as great calamities, but the destruction of virtue and truth by floods of iniquity is far more appalling. The life of the body is of little value compared to the life of the sou1, though to the natural minded the life of the soul is of little moment. Not so, however, is it regarded in the Word of God.
The Psalms are full of such warnings: "Save me, O God, for the waters are come in unto my soul,” "I am come into deep waters, where the floods overflow me.” “Let not the water flood overflow me, neither set the deep swallow me up." "The sorrows of death compassed me, and the bloods of ungodly men made me afraid.” ”He sent from above, he took me, he drew me out of strange waters.” These are obviously petitions of the soul, under bitter trials, which are described as floods of waters.
The Psalmist says again, “For this shall everyone that is godly pray unto thee, in a time when, thou mayest be found: surely in the floods of great waters they shall not come nigh unto him." And thus Daniel describes the end of the Jewish Church: "And after three score and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off, but not for himself: and the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary; and the end thereof shall be with a flood” - a flood of iniquity, falsities, and delusions, not a flood of water.
Such are the floods mentioned in the Word. The good survive them; the wicked sink and perish. “Whosoever heareth these sayings of mine and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock: And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock. And everyone that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand: And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell: and great was the fall of it." The floods alluded to in both the Old and the New Testaments are the influences which impel the soul to wrong, and under which those who trust in their own opinions only and do not rest upon the Rock of the Divine Word will surely go down.
Similar floods of falsehood are meant in Revelation where it is written: "The serpent cast out of his mouth water as a flood after the woman, that he might cause her to be carried away of the flood." A flood from the mouth of the serpent is that flood of false teachings destined to discredit, if possible, the New Church which is meant by the woman.
The flood mentioned in our text had three sources: the "fountains of the great deep,” the “heavens," and the “rain." How these can be related to a flood of material water I do not know, but in times of spiritual struggle these deeps within man are opened up. The selfishness of the fallen heart says, "There is no God." The wicked in his pride says, "There is no fear of God before his eyes." "Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of thy waterspouts; all thy waves and thy billows have gone over me."
The windows of heaven are the rational faculties of the soul. They are given to let in heavenly light. In an orderly state they are indeed the windows of heaven; the Divine light of truth shines freely in; they are the eyes of the soul. But when the mind is perverted and turned away from the Lord, they let in only falsities, and false reasonings. Infidel books, Infidel enemies who pose as friends supply waterspouts of false conclusions, seemingly powerful and weighty with much truth in them, but ail dishonoring to the Lord. To a darkened mind logic proves evil to he good and good evil, religion to be only superstition, heaven a dream, hell a bugbear, virtue a farce, and the glorious order of the universe only a "fortuitous concourse of atoms" brought together by blind chance.
And there is the rain, the unceasing pattering of false teachings from companions and associates, attacking the spirit day by day with scornful words, immoral jests and jeers, the frequent invitation and persuasion to wrongdoing, the denunciation of the virtuous as hypocrites. One grows up in a quiet home where the Bible is read. He has been trained to respect everything sacred, and the Word has been to him the Book of Life. He was brought up in reverence of it, and the hymns he first learned were to him like angel songs. He goes out into the world, into business, and comes in contact with selfishness, and with the love of the world. He is told by those who have made a name for themselves in the world that there is no God, that man has no real knowledge of anything higher than his body. He is assailed by doubts, and the natural worldly inclinations within him respond.
The great movements without and within, the windows and the fountains of the great deeps infest him, and the daily talk of those about him, the incessant seizure of anything evil, the pointing out of the weaknesses of some, the hypocrisies of others, the errors which have been mingled with religious doctrines, and which often place them in antagonism to science when they never really are - all these make a threefold attack under which tens of thousands fall, and which can be defeated only by the soul's taking counsel of the Lord, refuge in the ark, "a hiding place from the wind, and a covert from the tempest."
The fountains of the great deep - of the will, the voluntary principle; the windows of heaven - of the mind, the intellectual principle! The deep fountains or the fountains of the deep picture to us the will and its loves. In the lord the will is compared to the deep because it is the receptacle of the deep things of human life. The good man's will is the deep place of his life. All that he thinks and does comes out of the deep places of his heart. So if the evil man - his corruptions are deep, out of the fountains of the deep love the good man has for the Lord arise all the joys of his life and, in like manner, out of the fountains of the evil man’s deep love of himself arise all the dissatisfactions and unrest of his life.
In the Bible story of the Flood, Noah and his family were saved. Most of the people perished. Spiritually this means that with many all things of the Church perished, but that there was a remnant called Noah which resisted evil and false things. They endured in temptation and were saved. With them a wind, the spirit of the Lord, passed over the earth of their minds, and the waters, the falsities of the dead Church were assuaged. Their minds and hearts became receptive of truth and love. A new will of obedience was formed in their understanding. New influences operated upon them, and the waters of temptation gradually abated. They came at length, through hard and bitter trials, to a state of spiritual love. They reached it through daily obedience to the truth. This happy state is described in the allegory: "And the ark rested in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, upon the mountains of Ararat."
