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"As it was in the days of Noah, so shall at be also in the days of the Son of Man." Luke 17:26

Our richly endowed colleges are undermining faith in the Bible, which means faith in a personal God, and are substituting a scant recognition of the laws of nature, devoid of sympathy or mercy. Practically every minister graduated during the last twelve years has been an agnostic and a believer in human evolution. Disbelief in the Bible account of man's creation in God's image, means disbelief also in a fall from that image, disbelief in the need of redemption and reconciliation, and disbelief in the necessity for the Restitution to be accomplished by Messiah's Kingdom. Acts 3:19-21

We do not question the sincerity of the Higher Critics. However, it is not honorable for those who have abandoned the creeds to pose before the public as supporters of the creeds, and to draw salaries and receive honorary titles for undermining the faith of the people, while posing as the representatives of Christ and the Bible. Such a course is dishonest and dishonorable.

THE DELUGE CORROBORATED BY HISTORY

We would that we might lure back to the Word of God some of the noble minds now arrayed against it! We know their difficulty. In their minds they associate the unreasonable theories of our creeds with the Bible, believing it to be the foundation for the gross darkness and superstition which once blinded us all. Would that we could show them, as we now see it, the fallacy of this positionshow them that the Bible is in most violent conflict with the errors of the past, and that it teaches from Genesis to Revelation a Divine Plan so wonderful that all may be sure that only a God of Wisdom and Love could have devised it, and only those moved by His Holy Spirit could have written it.

The Bible truly says that we may see the deep things of God only by the illumination of the Holy Spirit, and that illumination is promised only to the sanctified. The fearful thought impresses us that by no means all of the professed ministers of Christ are sanctified and in a condition of heart to be guided into a knowledge of the Truth.

The Higher Critics approach every Bible topic from the standpoint of unbelief, and if they would reverse their position and seek for corroboration of the Bible story, their success would be better. These critics, exploring the ruins of Babylon, found baked clay tablets rudely picturing the Ark, and saying a few words about a general deluge. Instead of saying that this confirms the Bible thought, they reverse the proposition, and say that the Israelites, in captivity in Babylon, doubtless drew their story of the Deluge from the Babylonian legends.

How silly to suppose that the beautiful, interesting and connected narrative of Genesis could ever have been drawn from a few poor, miserable, fragmentary words which the Babylonians have recorded on the subject! The Genesis account gives the genealogy of Noah in a most remarkable manner-the exact day and year and month of his life in which the Deluge occurred, the number of days of rain, how long the flood prevailed, etc., etc. Before the finding of the Babylonian tablets, the Higher Critics held that the entire story of the Deluge was a myth, and that Jesus and the Apostles had been deceived when they quoted Moses in respect to it.

GEOLOGY CONFIRMS THE MOSAIC DELUGE

We wish to deal with the facts of nature and briefly to show that they fully confirm the words of Jesus, the Apostles and Moses respecting the Deluge.

The great stumbling-block heretofore has been the supposition that the story of the Deluge implies a flat earth, and that such a flood of waters rising higher than the mountains should be recognized as an impossibility, since we know that the earth is a sphere. Thus does shallow thinking, called "wisdom of this world," set in defiance the Wisdom of God and His Word-to its own confusion.

As the study of astronomy has progressed, the Valian theory respecting creation has come forward. It shows that the earth when in a molten condition must have thrown off various minerals in gaseous form. These, cooling, would become more or less separated from each other, according to density, and must have constituted great rings and bands about the earth, similar to those which we perceive encircling Saturn and Jupiter. As the earth cooled, these rings would obtain separate motions of their own, because of their distance; yet always they would tend to gravitate toward the earth. The circumambient air, or firmament, would keep these from immediate precipitation. Gradually they would spread out as a great canopy, gravitating more and more toward the poles, because of the greater centrifugal force at the equator. Finally, the accumulation at the poles would become so great as to overcome the resistance of the atmosphere, and cause precipitations, which would flow toward the equator.

The theory is that many such deluges had been precipitated upon the earth before man was created, and that from these came many of the mineral deposits of earth. Only one such ring remained when man was created. Indeed, this was not a ring, but had come to the state in which it acted as a canopy. As the last of these rings, it consisted of pure water. As a canopy it refracted the sun's rays much as would the roof of a hot-house, so that the temperature of earth was uniform-the same at the poles as at the equator. Divine Wisdom foreknew the condition of things which would prevail at the time of the Deluge, and hence delayed the breaking of this great envelope of waters until that time.

FROZEN IN THE SOLID ICE

Not long ago, in Siberia, a mammoth was found with grass between its teeth, frozen solid in a great basin of ice, which was so clear that the animal could be seen long before the ice melted enough for it to be conveniently exhumed. Similarly, a deer was found in the polar regions, with undigested grass in its stomach, proving clearly that the catastrophe which overtook it and froze it solidly in the ice was a sudden one-just such as did occur, according to the Valian theory.

The breaking of the watery envelope made the change at the poles sudden, and sent a great flood of waters over the earth toward the equator. Thus came the great Glacial Period, and some of the great glaciers, or icebergs, carried over North America, cut great gullies, valleys, crevices, canyons. Geologists have traced the course of some of these and charted them.

EQUATORIAL HEAT WAS INTENSE

As the cold at the poles was extreme-to form the great ice-caps covering the earth and only gradually melting away-so the heat at the equator must have been proportionately extreme. The intense heat at the equator, warming the ocean, set up ocean currents. These for the past four thousand years have been gradually modifying the arctic regions-advancing the temperate zone further and further toward the poles, and more and more reducing the ice-caps, bringing them toward the equator as great icebergs to be melted and sent back warm.

THE ARK DIVINELY PROTECTED

We naturally inquire, Where was the Ark while such a torrent of water poured over the earth from the poles? How was it that the Ark was kept safe and comparatively quiet in such a time of stress? The answer of faith would be that God, who directed Noah and his family to build the Ark, exercising His Power would undoubtedly protect it.

And now comes forward Prof. George Frederick Wright, the geologist, who tells the world that the region around about Mt. Ararat, where the Ark rested, was apparently at one time the scene of a great eddy. While the waters raged elsewhere, God specially held that part quiet, just as we have often seen a quiet eddy or bay alongside of a swiftly rushing stream. Prof. Wright's deductions respecting the quietness of this little corner of the earth are drawn largely from the fact that he finds there a wonderfully deep soil, which seems to indicate that it was a settling basin for intensely muddy waters in the long ago.

We can draw a lesson from the Deluge in the line of our text. We deduce that the Savior's words do not refer to the wickedness of the antediluvians, and that He did not compare it to the wickedness at the time of His Second Advent, though doubtless a correspondency might have been deducible. The Master's words would imply rather that as the people of Noah's day were quite unconscious of the coming Deluge, so will all mankind be totally unconscious of the great catastrophe which will come upon the world in the end of this Age, preparing the way of Messiah's Kingdom.

The clear teaching of our text is that the Day of the Son of Man, the time of His parousia, or presence, will precede the time of trouble coming upon the world. St. Matthew's account of this same discourse is slightly different and emphasizes the point we are making. It declares, "Thus shall it be in the presence [parousia] of the Son of Man." In other words, the Scriptures clearly teach that the Second Coming of Jesus will be invisible to the world, and visible, even to His people, only by the eye of faith.

During His parousia a sifting, or testing, of His consecrated Church will proceed, and will result in the gathering of all the Elect into the Heavenly Kingdom by the change of the First Resurrection. This will be the full end of the Gospel Age, and the full beginning of the New Age. It is to this time Jesus referred saying, "Watch ye, therefore, and pray always, that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of Man."

As soon as the Church shall all have passed beyond the veil into the condition of Heavenly glory-the Kingdom condition-the great time of trouble will fully envelop the earth-"a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation." Daniel 12:1; Matthew 24:2 1

It will be that time of trouble which will be Messiah's revelation of Himself to the world. In it, they will seek the covering, or protection, of the great rocks of society (secret orders) and of the great mountains of earth (the earthly governments) (Rev. 6:14-16.) But none of these will be able to deliver them from the fiery trouble (distress) of that Day, which will consume every institution out of accord with righteousness, truth, justice. "He shall be revealed . . . in flaming fire, taking vengeance." 2 Thessalonians 1:7, 8

The vengeance will not be so much against deluded and ensnared humanity, as against evil principles and the unjust arrangements of the present time. When we say unjust arrangements, we do not wish to be understood that the world is necessarily more unjust than in the past; but rather that, with our increased light and knowledge, more is expected of the present generation than of their forefathers.

From all accounts, we infer that the time of trouble will be sharp and short, "else would no flesh be saved." (Matthew 24:22) Messiah's spiritual Kingdom, invisible to men, will come to the rescue. It will have its earthly representatives, and order will soon come out of chaos. Humanity, humbled by the fall of present institutions, will be ready to accept Messiah's Kingdom. We read, therefore, that it will be "the desire of all nations." Haggai 2:7

It is for us who are the called of God (Romans 8:28), to continue to abide in Christ, to seek His will in every matter, to wait patiently for His appointed time for our deliverance, and according to our covenant, lay down our lives in the service of the brethren. We remind you of St. Paul's words, "The Day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night. When they [the worldly] shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape. But ye, brethren, are not in darkness, that that Day should overtake you as a thief. Ye are all the children of light, and the children of the Day." 1 Thessalonians 5:1-5

The light now shining is and should be very helpful to us. If we realize that we are living in the "days of the Son of Man"-that the inspection of the Church is now in progress, and that soon the Elect will be complete-this faith will make us the more zealous to make our calling and election sure. Therefore,

"Let us watch and pray,

And labor till the work is done."

Gradually mankind will come to understand. Gradually their eyes of understanding will open, and they will see that it is the "wrath of the Lamb" that causes the "time of trouble such as never was since there was a nation." They will learn the intended lesson.

Some, in reading Jesus' words, "As it was in the days of Noah," have inferred a time of dreadful wickedness in the end of this Age, corresponding to the wickedness of Noah's day. There may or there may not be a parallel in this respect. We merely call attention to the fact that the Master did not so say. He said that as in Noah's day humanity were eating, drinking, marrying and building, without realizing that a great change in dispensation was impending, so it will be with mankind in the days of the Son of Man.

In the time of Christ's Second Presence, men will know it not, but will proceed about the ordinary affairs of life-eating, drinking, planting, building-and know not, until the great and sudden catastrophe of anarchy is upon them. As literal water swept away literal things existing before the Flood, so symbolic firetrouble, destruction-will sweep away the institutions of today, and prepare the way for the new institutions, which the Scriptures describe as the new heavens and the new earth. (Isaiah 66:22; 2 Peter 3:13) The new heavens will be the new ecclesiastical powers-the Church, the Elect in glory with Christ. The new earth will be the reorganized social arrangement, wholly different from the present.

Whoever expects that the Kingdom will bring an instantaneous Paradise is mistaken. Whoever expects that God's will shall be done on earth as completely as in Heaven the moment Messiah's Kingdom is set up, is mistaken. By Divine appointment, that Kingdom is to last for a thousand years. During that time it will be burning out-consuming-ignorance, superstition, selfishness, sin-root and branch.

All who respond to its blessed influences will thereby be uplifted out of sin and death conditions to human perfection. On the contrary, all who with fullest opportunity shall be resisters of righteousness and lovers of iniquity will be destroyed with Satan in the Second Death-"punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord." 2 Thessalonians 1:9

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