Commentary and Reflection:
Eight hundred years before Moses, God gives Noah instructions about clean and unclean animals. Clearly, this instruction on diet is not for just the Jews, but for humanity. The Creator of both man and animal knows what is best.
“Foreseeing the need for emergency food after the Flood had destroyed all vegetation, God knew man would need to eat, temporarily, the flesh of clean animals. Furthermore, they were needed for sacrificial purposes. For these obvious reasons God made provision to preserve enough clean animals that they might not become extinct.” SDABC
Through the flood, God made a clean slate with humanity because of great evil. Even so, he provided a way of salvation and a “preacher of righteousness” so that whoever believed should not perish. We see nature expressing God’s wrath and judgments. There was nothing or anything that anyone could do in the face of God’s judgment.
“Satan himself, who was compelled to remain in the midst of the warring elements, feared for his own existence” PP 99. The most developed and powerful nations cannot stop tornadoes, hurricanes, fires, earthquakes, or floods. In the same manner, there is nothing that anyone can do in the face of God’s judgments. Man prides himself on his sins during times of prosperity, but when the elements rumble, then he cries out, “Oh, my God.”
The fossils of extinct animals like dinosaurs, the large oil deposits that come from organic matter buried deep in the earth and in oceans, marine sediments on land and land sediments in the sea, mud from the surface of the earth found under the sea floor, all of this is incontrovertible evidence of the worldwide catastrophic event that Moses wrote about, the flood.
All in whose nostrils was the breath of the spirit of life, all that was on the dry land, died. So He destroyed all living things which were on the face of the ground: both man and cattle, creeping thing and bird of the air. They were destroyed from the earth. Only Noah and those who were with him in the ark remained alive. Genesis 7:22,23
The Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary says the following about Mt. Ararat: “All Bible expositors agree that the mountainous land of Armenia is meant, though it is uncertain just what part of the Ararat range is indicated. Rumors to the effect that the remains of Noah’s ark have been discovered have not yet been substantiated. The traditional location, modern Mt. Ararat, has two peaks, one 16,945 ft., the other 12,287 ft. high. Among the Persians these twin peaks are known as Koh-i-nuh, “the mountain of Noah.” Here was an ideal location for the ark to rest while the waters subsided, and from which the survivors of the Flood might spread to every land.” SDABC
When leaving the ark, Noah offered sacrifices to The Lord, a symbol of the supreme sacrifice of His son, and the Lord smelled a soothing aroma. God’s tolerance of the wickedness of men has a limit. Once that limit is reached, his judgments are to be expected. In our time evil seems to be reaching that limit, but in his grace and mercy, He has provided a Way of salvation, and He sends his people to proclaim it so that whoever believes in Jesus will not perish, but have everlasting life.
