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The Flood and Its Cause

 

by the late

 

Fred T. Wright

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The Flood

 

A Transcript From an Audio Tape

 

By F.T. Wright

 

The first great disaster on this earth was the flood.  To understand how that the flood was none of God’s doing as a direct execution, we need to understand what the Bible has to say about the astronomical conditions which existed prior to the flood, and what changes took place in those astronomical conditions when the flood actually came.

 

Turn first of all to Isaiah 30:26.  It comes as a great surprise to many people to realize that the Bible has a great deal to say about science and astronomy.  Isaiah 30:26 is one of those verses.  This of course speaks about the sun and the moon as these heavenly bodies are going to be again, when the restoration shall take place.  “Moreover the light of the moon shall be as the light of the sun…”

 

Now some may wonder whether this is spiritual language, or whether this is actual literal language.  In the Spirit of Prophecy, Sister White distinctly and plainly declares that this is literal language.  In the great day when the Lord shall restore all things, at that time we find that the sun will then be seven times as hot as it is now, and the moon is going to be as bright as the sun, and that means a total of eight times the present amount of heat that we have coming down upon this earth, coming in our direction.

 

Turn now to the Ministry of Healing p. 506.  It talks here about the day when the battle will have been fought and the victory won.  “The will of God is to be done in the earth as it is done in heaven.  The nations of the saved will know no other law than the law of heaven.  All will be a happy united family clothed with the garments of praise and thanksgiving, the robe of Christ’s righteousness.  All nature in its surpassing loveliness will offer to God a tribute of praise and adoration.  The world will be bathed in the light of heaven.  The light of the moon will be as the light of thee sun and the light of the sun will be seven fold greater than it is now.  The years will move on in gladness and over the scene the morning stars will sing together and the sons of God will shout for joy while God and Christ will unite in proclaiming ‘there shall be no more sin, neither shall there be any more death.’”

 

So this statement in the S.O.P. makes it abundantly clear to us, that in the great day when there will be that complete restoration, the sun will be seven times hotter than it presently is, and the moon will be as bright, or as hot as the sun.

 

Now today’s not a very cold day, is it?  But last Wednesday and Thursday were much, much hotter than it is today, and I suppose that if five more degrees had been added to the temperature last Wednesday and Thursday we would have felt that it was just too much.  In fact we felt that last Thursday was already too much. 

 

Now let your imagination picture that heat multiplied eight times.  Naturally of course you would instantly say, “I couldn’t survive in that kind of temperature.”  Neither could I.  And so at first glance you may well say to me, “ well now, we would have to be a different sort of people, a heat loving people, if we are going to enjoy the climate of heaven.”  Plants will have to be different; water will have to have a much higher boiling temperature, because I’m quite certain that at that temperature, the water would be far above the present boiling point of water.

 

Now while at first glance it may appear that the intensification of the sun and the re-lighting of the moon would produce a condition in which men couldn’t possibly live, the actual fact is this – that that amount of energy coming down from space would produce not an unliveable condition but would produce a beautiful climate upon this earth from pole to pole - a balmy, pleasant, temperate climate.  The kind of climate we would regard today as being ideal.  The kind of climate found in S.E. Queensland in the middle of winter perhaps.

 

Let’s first consider this one point.  For the moon to be as bright as the sun, it cannot continue to be a receptor.  Presently the sun is something like four hundred to five hundred times as bright as the moon is, because the moon does not reflect as a mirror would – a glass mirror which reflects I suppose 100% of the light rays directed to it – but the moon only reflects a certain portion of what comes to it, and therefore it is much less than one seven fold, what the sun directs to the moon.  So if the moon today is about 1/460th of the brightness of the sun, then if the sun should come up seven times in brightness, the moon would come up to be equal with the sun as it presently is.  For the moon to be 460 times as bright as it now is to equal the present sun, then either the sun must become 460 times as bright, or the moon must become self-luminous.

 

Anyone today who understands the Word of God in this connection, especially the promise given to us here in Isaiah 30 verse 26, will look at that moon, see its absolutely sterile condition, its absence of atmosphere, its craters, and so forth and recognise there are all the signs of a body that was once self-luminous.  You know, the children of “light” are not in darkness, and I had to smile when the American astronauts came back from their first two or three trips to the moon and they placed those astronauts into absolutely sterile conditions for two or three weeks, in the fear they might bring back some deadly micro-organisms from the moon.  The impossibility of doing that is made very clear by the fact that the moon was once a luminous body, a ball of fire in which no micro-organism could live, and when that fire went out to leave the moon without atmosphere, then obviously there are conditions there in which no micro- organism could live even if they could migrate there.  And so it proved the quarantine period was absolutely unnecessary – but they did it, and thus they might have learned a little better of how things were back in the beginning.

 

It says there in the book of Peter that the modern wise men believe that “…all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.”  We will read that text in a moment or two. (2 Peter 2:4.)  Because the great change in things as they were at the beginning, Peter plainly says came at the flood.  We go back now to the first chapters in the Bible there in the book of Genesis, and read the condition of things as they were on the first day of creation.  Genesis one, verse one.  “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.  The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.”

 

So if we draw a picture of the earth back there on that first day of creation, there is the solid core but all over that earth what have we got?  Water.  We come back to Noah’s day and in Noah’s day what do we have again – exactly the same situation repeated precisely (water all over the earth).  Now if anyone should be in any doubt about the fact that there was nothing but water to be seen upon the face of the earth, you only have to read a little further here in Genesis one, verse three and on, where it says, “God … dry land appear.”

(See Genesis 1: 3-10.)

 

So on the first day how much dry land was there in evidence?  None.  On the second day how much was in evidence?  Still none.  On the third day what then came?  Dry land appeared.  This dry land appeared only when God had made a division of the water.  Some He left here upon this earth but the rest of it, where did He put it? - above the earth.  Because this firmament – this word firmament is a bit of a strange word because it says firm – ament and when you think of something firm you think of something very solid and yet the opposite is the meaning, because the margin calls it an expanse and the Lord calls it the heavens.  Now, well it just says the Lord called it heaven, singular.  Now we recognize of course that a distinction must be made between three heavens.  First of all there is the heaven of heavens where God dwells.  Secondly there is the starry heavens where all the planets, suns, moons etc. go about their ordered circuits and finally of course there are the heavens that surround us, the atmospheric circle around the earth, and the birds fly in that heaven.  So then from this situation here, the earth changed then, to this situation here (drawing picture on board), where we have water on some parts of the earth in the form of lakes, oceans, rivers and so forth, as they flow upon their way.  And then around the earth, elevated at a height unknown to us, there was water - completely around that earth.  How thick it was we don’t know, but there it was, and that changed the situation from what it was back here in the beginning, when the whole of that water flooded the earth from pole to pole and completely around the equatorial regions (before creation).

 

Now today this same situation exists in part.  Look out the window and what do you see hanging up there in the sky – clouds, which is water, isn’t that correct?  It’s water.  Sometimes of course the clouds are thicker than other days, sometimes they’re thinner, sometimes they’re not there at all.

 

Now by what power is that water suspended up there in the sky? - the heat of the sun.  I thought you might have said God’s power, which certainly would have been a correct answer.  But not in this case the more direct answer for which I was looking.  Now the greater the heat of the sun coming down, the greater the evaporation from the face of the earth and in turn the greater amount of water vapour which can be held up there in the atmosphere.

 

 In fact the whole science of rain is very simply as follows – here is the sea, here is the coastline and back of that we have the mountain chains.  The heat of the sun causes the water to evaporate and ascend into the sky and is held there by the heat of the sun at a certain altitude.  The wind then, because the land masses are hotter, the air here (over the land) becomes thinner and rises and the colder air from the sea moves over the land carrying the clouds with it until the clouds reach the mountain chains.  Then this wind which is coming across the land then moves in up draughts, up the face of the mountain because that wind has to keep on moving, and that carries the clouds higher and higher to pass over those mountains.  Glider pilots of course learn about these thermals and so forth.  They learn to take advantage of them to sometimes rise to heights of thirty and forty thousand feet.  Now as the cloud rises it passes into cooler atmosphere and the colder it gets the less capacity there is for it to remain in the form of vapour, instead it turns into rain and it begins to rain heavily on that side of the mountain and that’s the reason when you pass from the coast to the mountain ranges you will find the heaviest rainfall area, but over the other side what do you find?  Very little, and the further you go inland the more and more arid it becomes.  Mountain chains are extremely necessary to bring rain upon the earth, otherwise rain might pass completely overland and go out to sea again and we get none at all.

 

So then, there is a direct scientific relationship between the amount of moisture, or water vapour, which can be suspended in the atmosphere, and the amount of heat out there in the atmosphere.  So if the sun was seven times as hot as it now is, and the moon as hot as the sun, then there would be a vastly greater proportion of water vapour suspended out there in space – so much so that … I haven’t got the scientific know-how to sit down with a calculator to work out how much water vapour would be held up there, and how high it would be above the earth, but I don’t doubt that the scientists could do this very readily – some of those men are quite clever.

 

So it would not be difficult to think in terms of a complete mantle of water vapour, which would be suspended around the whole earth back at that point of time.  Now this would have a balancing effect upon the heat of the sun.  Have you ever been sitting out in the open on a very pleasant cloudy day with a nice fresh cool breeze blowing?  You’re reading your book and the cloud departs and the sun shines through.  What do you at once sense? Heat, a rise in temperature, isn’t that true?  Now clouds have an equalizing effect upon the temperature.  They’ll make cold nights warmer and hot days cooler.  You know yourself that when there has been perhaps a decrease in temperature in the winter time, and late in the afternoon a cloud mantle comes up, you know there’s not going to be a frost that night, unless of course you have very, very cold temperatures.  But there in southern Queensland, you can guarantee if it comes up cloudy in the late afternoon and stays cloudy at least most of the night, there will be no frost next morning and it will be a reasonably warm night.  Temperatures may be five or ten degrees higher, Farenheight of course – than they would be if that cloud were not there.

 

So then coming back to a sun, which was seven times as hot, and a moon as hot as the sun.  As that tremendous amount of heat was beamed down here upon this earth, there was suspended in the atmosphere this mantle of vapour.  Now I didn’t ask you this question – well does this mean we could never see the sun or the stars?  Because if today we had a continuous cloud blanket over us we certainly couldn’t see the sun and the stars.  It could well be though, that the extra heat might cause that vapour to be up there in a transparent form so that it actually magnified the sun and the stars so far as seeing is concerned – act as a giant lens up there in the atmosphere.  I don’t know, but this I do know that the moisture was up there, because the Bible says so in the first chapter of the book of Genesis.  Some of these more intimate details must wait until the great day when God shall show us the earth as it will be again, and then we will know for ourselves just what the actual situation is going to be.

 

Now as this mantle…the sun was shinning in from one direction… sun here, and sun here, and here, and here (drawing on board).  It is coming in from one direction so that we still tend to have the situation as we have today where the Polar Regions would not be the recipients of as much heat as would be the equator.  Now many people have the idea that the poles are colder than the equator because they are a little further removed from the sun.  In other words let’s come to the earth as it now is today and the distance from the pole to the equator represents just that much further that the sun has to travel to reach the Polar Regions and that’s about an extra 12,000 miles, but what is 12,000 miles as a relative figure against 93 million miles.  It’s insignificant, absolutely insignificant.

 

 What then is the real reason as to why the poles are colder than the equator?  It’s simply this – when a band of sunshine one-mile wide strikes the poles, because they are sloping away, the same band one mile wide has to heat up a vastly increased area of the earth’s surface.  It’s the dilution – the spreading of that sunlight over a vastly increased area of land.  You can see with your eyes can’t you, that the distance from there to there, is much less than that distance from there to there isn’t it?  Nearer the poles the sunlight is spread over a much wider area.  This is why the poles are colder, not because the distance is slightly greater…it really slopes off, and the sunlight becomes extremely diluted or spread over a much larger area.  Twice the area is one quarter of the heat.  Those 12,000 miles, which of course would be a great distance if the sun was but another 10, 000 miles away, is absolutely insignificant when you measure it against 93 million miles.

 

 But coming back to the first days of creation, we know today from the scientific evidences and from the statements in the Spirit of Prophecy that the world did enjoy an equal climate from pole to pole.  There was no blazing hot equator; there were no frigid polar caps.  This is proved by the fact that down there in the Antarctic they have discovered whole mountains of coal and thermal regions, proving that at the time of the flood there were gigantic forests at the south pole which were buried on the spot and today have become great coal and oil fields.  Likewise up in the northern regions inside the arctic circle, in the land of perma-frost and perpetual ice you have heard about those giant mastodons which have been dug out of polar the caps, their meat just as fresh today as though it were frozen, and still with un-chewed buttercups in their mouths, proving that these animals lived in an area where buttercups - which are a frost tender plant - were able to grow in profusion and provide food for these giant mastodons.

 

 A careful consideration of a situation where there was a complete cloud mantle, or vapour mantle, around the earth, would reveal to us that we would have a situation like a glasshouse, or a hot house.  Today when you have for instance a heating up of the earth’s surface throughout the day by the direct rays of the sun, then at night time when there is no cloud there, all the heat will simply escape into outer space.  When the cloud cover is there, the earth is not trying to heat the whole of outer space.  So then, the heat, which is generated around the equatorial regions, would travel in gently flowing breezes completely around the whole earth - so that the heat generated here would also heat the poles, and thus give the whole world a very pleasant, temperate climate from pole to pole.  What a wonderful world to live in and we can be quite sure that the God of heaven who is the most wonderful of mathematicians, the greatest scientist in existence, would have that thing so beautifully balanced so that just the right amount of heat, just the right amount of water vapour, just the right height above the earth, and generating the right kind of breezes to carry just that right amount of heat, so that the whole world would be a perfect paradise in which to live.  Don’t you feel envious already of Adam and Eve?  In heaven it will be a pleasant, even climate all the year round.

 

 Now yesterday we made the point that there has to be the maintaining of a connection between man and God.  That sun was a power, that moon was a power.  That water vapour then became a power by virtue of the fact that it was raised up above the earth and sat there as a potential cataclysm, because all that had to happen was for the sun to go out - or let me say for the moon to go out - and the sun to either go out, or to decrease in brightness, and all that energy that kept that water vapour up there in the sky would no longer be there to keep it up, and then what must happen?  It must come back as rain - it must come back to where it came from.  The same as if you have a man standing down here on the ground and a great weight is lifted on a rope above his head and the rope breaks.  What’s going to happen?  Down comes the weight!

 

 Now let’s think for a moment here – the point I made the other day is this – that God’s powers, very finely and delicately balanced, are put together for man’s blessing and good, and there isn’t a person here today who wouldn’t rather live in the days before the flood, when that was the kind of climatic condition.  You would rather live then than now, with our severe extremes of heat and our unpredictable weather -wouldn’t you rather?  But living back there was far more dangerous than living today, because today that mantle of water vapour is not there.  Because today another flood is absolutely impossible, and God has promised there will be no more floods, but that next time the earth will be destroyed by fire. 

 

And so it was then that to avoid the deadly danger of that nature collapsing over the heads of man, man had to maintain a personal relationship and contact with God.  A contact with God, which God himself will never force upon the individual.  Now you see the situation and the principle.

 

Beginning with Adam’s sin of course – when Adam sinned in the Garden of Eden God had every right at once to withdraw Himself from the scenes of this earth and abandon man to the powers of nature without the guiding, controlling hand of God.  And if God had done that back in the Garden of Eden then how long would Adam have survived?  Not very long.

 

Have you ever thought about that sun up there?  Have you ever thought about the fantastic outflow of energy from it?  Bear this in mind - the sun is not like a searchlight directing all its power in one direction only - the sun is an orb. And in what direction does that power go? - in every direction. We only get a tiny portion of the power, which emanates from the sun – just a tiny portion.  The rest goes in the other direction or at right angles and misses this earth completely and totally.  Just think then of the fantastic outflow of energy which is boiling up from that sun day by day. How is this possible? Did God build into that sun an everlasting fuel supply, or is God moment by moment energizing that great ball of fire to give heat, and light, and life to the human family?  Moment by moment God is energizing it.

 

Now if God should walk out of the scene and leave all this and no longer energize the sun, it might burn for a little while, but steadily it would diminish in brightness and as it went down, and down, and down, then what must happen to this great mantle of water vapour? It would fall back upon the earth again.  But the interposition of Jesus Christ between that potential disaster and man saved that great flood happening long before it did.  But from Adam’s day on men became progressively more and more wicked, more and more disdainful of God, and more careless of God’s gifts.  More and more violent in their ways towards one another, and as they became progressively more sinful and rebellious against God, then the Spirit of God found itself forced, or obliged, to respect their wishes, and steadily and surely it was withdrawn.

 

In His great love for man, in His great compassion for them, and also in His great desire to see sin brought to its end, God sent Noah to preach the everlasting gospel to that degenerate race of people.  What was God’s purpose in the sending of that message?  To save them – right - to save them.  God’s whole work, God’s whole effort, was a work of salvation.  But as those men and women rejected that message then what were they actually doing to themselves?  Yes, they were bringing themselves to the place where they would be destroyed.  So God’s effort to save was actually destroying – do you see that?

 

The same as when God came down to Pharaoh, God’s effort to soften Pharaoh’s heart, hardened Pharaoh’s heart, and that is why it was when God came down to Noah in the sixth chapter of the book of Genesis and God said to Noah, “I will destroy man whom I have created.” God said that because He knew perfectly well that His effort to save mankind would destroy them.  So Noah preached and the more he preached the harder they became – the more decided against God, because the very point of Noah’s message was decide; “choose you this day whom you will serve.”  When the gospel of Jesus Christ comes to a man living in the land of sin, that person must make a decision.  He must either say yes, I will take it, or no I will reject it.  There is no pathway in between.  Well you may say what about the king Paul spoke to – was it Felix?  And this man said to him, “I won’t make up my mind today, but when I have a more convenient season then I will call for you and make my decision.” That’s what that man said with his lips, but in actual fact that man made his decision that day, didn’t he?  The more convenient decision never came.  That day, by saying later I will make my decision, the man actually said, “today I have made my decision.”

 

So every time the gospel comes to us we either receive it, or we reject it, and the very preaching of Noah caused those folk to choose and to reject, until the time came that there were eight people prepared to go into the ark and millions of people who were not prepared to go into the ark.

 

Because the men and women of this earth had come to the point where they had totally abandoned God, then the Spirit of God could find no lodging in their hearts whatsoever. And upon what does the Spirit of God depend for residence down here upon this earth? People. And when there are no people upon this earth in whom the Spirit of God can dwell then what must the Spirit of God do?  He must move out and leave the entire place in the hands of Satan and of men.  Now in doing this God is but simply respecting still that great freedom of choice that God gave to man in the first case.  As we read there from AT Jones, God made man free to choose, and left him free to choose.

 

When Israel desired a king God warned them against the having of that king, but what did God do when they determined to have their king?  He let them have him – He left them with that free choice.  When they took the sword against His appeals to them, He left them with the sword, and when at the time of the flood the entire population but eight people said to God, “we have made up our way of life, there’s no room in that way of life for You and your principles,” then God said, “ I respect your choice, and I will work with your choice - I have no option but to leave.”

 

God of course, still maintained protection around the eight as the story of the ark shows. But as the Spirit of God departed from that earth and the moon being the nearest body to the earth naturally went out completely, and the sun being further away began to diminish in brightness going down to 6/7, 5/7, 4/7, 3/7, 2/7, down to 1/7 of it’s brightness.  And as the moon went out, the sun dimmed down to 1/7 of it’s brightness, imagine the fantastic cooling that must have taken place out there in that mantle of water vapour, and imagine in turn the unbelievable deluge of rain which must have come hurtling down upon this earth. A rainstorm the like of which we have never seen.  And thus came the flood, not because God sent it, but because God was not able to prevent it.  The only way for God to prevent it would have been at this point to take away man’s free choice.

 

God could have said to man “well look, I’m sorry, but if I respect your choice and leave you as you desire you will all perish, and so I’m going to have to take away your free choice for your own good, in order to save your lives.”  Now then my question is this – that’s the only way God could have saved those people, the only way.  Now if God then should find himself obliged to take away their free choice at this point to save them then why did God give it to them back in the first case?  Does God make mistakes?  Does He lack pre-knowledge?  Not at all.  When God gave to man that free choice back in the very beginning, when He first made the world, God knew perfectly well what was going to happen down here by the time of the flood.  He wasn’t caught by surprise.  He did not have to modify His principles.  He did not have to break His law in any sense of the word whatsoever.  He was not breaking the rules, rather He was allowing, in spite of His efforts to save them, the simple outworking of the principles, the truth of which He declared to them right back there in the beginning.

 

Now some folk may raise the question perhaps as to why it is that we are so sure that this did happen at the time of the flood.  Let’s go back again to the thirtieth chapter of the book of Isaiah and read that verse a second time, because in it is a clear revelation of that point of time when all this took place.  Isaiah chapter 30 and verse 26, “Moreover the light of the moon shall be as the light of the sun and the light of the sun shall be seven fold as the light of seven days when … in the day that God bindeth up the breach of His people and healeth up the stroke of their wound.”

 

Now what is a breach?  Separating - it’s a break through isn’t it? You have a wall and that wall is breached, then a certain area - not the whole wall – the whole wall is not broken down, but a great part of it is broken down – a hole is made in that wall, OK?  So what would be the breach upon the people?  The breach upon the people would be when you have a large number of people and a great number of them are cut off, destroyed and finished.  Now you think for instance, if you go back to the original … in the Garden of Eden and how Eve of course began to produce after their kind.  They had Cain and Abel and other sons later on, and they in turn had their sons, and they had their sons, till down here you have a tremendous line of generations of family names, and so forth.  And each of them of those families, or fathers in those families, would have gone on producing after their kind, until to this day we have an unbroken line right back. Shall we say, here is a family called Smith.  Certainly there were no families called Smith back in those days, that’s a modern English name, but it’s very common and I’ll just use it for the purpose. Now when the breach came upon the families, there was only one family and that was the family of Noah.  Apart from his, the whole race was swept away in the greatest breach ever made in the race of men, and right there whole lines of families were cut off forever. Family names disappeared for all time, and there was that great breach made upon those people.  That was the stroke of their wound.  Now what is a stroke?  Something which happens in a blow isn’t it?  A stroke is a blow; it takes place at a point of time.  And it certainly was at the flood when that great breach was made in the human family.  The great stroke was delivered against the world and the people who lived in it.

 

Now there is coming a time when that stroke shall be healed and that breach shall be made up, and when that healing takes place the sun shall be returned to its former brightness and the moon likewise.  So if the returning of the moon to its former brightness and the sun likewise is the healing of that wound, then what must that wound have been? The taking away of it.  Without question that took place there at the flood.  It’s very simple and very clear I am sure.  Now when back there twenty years ago I saw that picture, then my heart leaped for joy to rejoice that God, at the flood, had not in any sense of the word betrayed His principles.  He had not come down to use force to establish His kingdom. Simply, and regretfully, and sorrowfully He had obeyed the request of the multitudes and left them as they desired to be left, then to receive the awful destruction which came upon their heads because of a nature that was no longer under the control of Him who alone can control that nature.

 

In the whole picture God stands clearly a law keeper still – not a destroyer, but a Saviour who would have saved them if only they would let Him, and I can hear Jesus together with the Father expressing Himself much as He expressed Himself there in the last verses of the twenty-third chapter of Mathew.  When Jesus sat upon the Mount of Olives and looked down upon that doomed city, the city of Jerusalem and said to them back here in verse 37 and onwards, “Oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered your children together even as a hen gathers her chickens under her wings, and you would not, behold your house is left unto you desolate.”

 

And likewise, as the Spirit of God departed back there the Lord said to the world, “Oh world, world, how often would I have gathered you, but your world is left unto you desolate.”

 

 

The End

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Wherefore do the wicked live, become old, yea, are mighty in power…

 

Therefore they say unto God, Depart from us; for we desire not the knowledge of they

 

ways, What is the Almighty that we should serve him? and what profit should we have if

 

we pray unto him? Lo, their good  is not in their hand: the counsel of the wicked is far from me.”

 

Job 21: 7; 14; 15. KJV.

 

 

 

“Have you marked the old way which wicked men have trodden?

 

Who were cast down out of time, whose foundation was overthrown with a flood.

 

Who said to God ‘depart from us’ and what can the Almighty do for them?

 

Yet He filled their houses with good things…”

 

Job 22:15-18. KJV