WEBVTT 00:00:09.359 --> 00:00:15.039 Welcome to the Preaching the Cross Radio Podcast, featuring the radio ministry of Pastor James W. 00:00:15.199 --> 00:00:18.480 Knox of the Bible Baptist Church of the Land of Florida. 00:00:18.719 --> 00:00:31.280 Our prayer is that these half-hour Bible study programs will bring the lost to a saving knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ and enable the saved to grow in the grace and knowledge of the Savior. 00:00:31.519 --> 00:00:34.159 Now here's your host, Pastor James W. 00:00:34.320 --> 00:00:34.880 Knox. 00:00:48.640 --> 00:00:51.359 And thank you so very much for that kind word of introduction. 00:00:51.439 --> 00:00:52.240 I'm Brother James. 00:00:52.320 --> 00:00:59.920 I greet you in the name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world, and I welcome you to the Preaching of the Cross Radio Broadcast. 00:01:00.000 --> 00:01:02.560 We thank you very much for tuning into the program today. 00:01:02.719 --> 00:01:12.000 We hope and pray that this next half hour will be a real help and blessing to you as we continue on in our study of Earth as the center of the universe. 00:01:12.400 --> 00:01:37.120 We left off on the last broadcast talking about the proofs for the universal flood that the Bible speaks about in the days of Noah, in which eight persons were saved alive in the ark when God destroyed the world that then was, with its race of superhuman giants, with its abounding wickedness, and did so uh in response to mankind. 00:01:37.920 --> 00:01:41.200 God always gives man what man asks for. 00:01:41.359 --> 00:01:43.120 God is very reasonable, God is very kind. 00:01:43.200 --> 00:01:54.000 If a man repents of his sin, calls upon the Lord seeking the salvation of his soul, uh, God will, on the basis of the death, burial, and resurrection of his son, the Lord Jesus Christ, give them everlasting life. 00:01:54.159 --> 00:02:01.359 On the other hand, if a man uh tells God to leave him alone, don't bother him, uh, stay away from him, that man uh will get just that from God. 00:02:01.519 --> 00:02:06.640 He will be alone in outer darkness, where there's weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth for all of eternity. 00:02:06.799 --> 00:02:20.719 In the days of Noah, man wanted violence, man wanted corruption, man wanted uh a destructive type of civilization, and God gave them just that, a violent destruction of a wicked civilization. 00:02:20.879 --> 00:02:31.520 There have been entire books, great volumes written dealing with the geological proofs and the anthropological proofs of the great flood in Noah's day. 00:02:31.680 --> 00:02:42.479 We just cited a few of them on the last broadcast, and we'll cite a few more on the program today before beginning a discussion of the abiding curse, which will continue on the next broadcast. 00:02:42.639 --> 00:02:54.639 But the truth of the matter is that everywhere you look on planet Earth, there is evidence of a catastrophic judgment of God and a flood at that by water. 00:02:54.800 --> 00:03:25.039 We talked about the uh the uh what I can't call the name the uh the dinosaur that the mammoth, the hairy mammoth, and we talked about the fact that these were found in their entirety frozen in Siberia, with the hair still on the skin, the skin uncorrupted, the flesh uh still edible, and the food in the mouth and in the stomach still capable of a botanical examination. 00:03:25.280 --> 00:03:40.000 Uh Baron George Cuvier, uh C U V I E E R, said, quote, this eternal frost could not have taken possession of the regions which these mammoths inhabited except by the same cause which destroyed them. 00:03:40.240 --> 00:03:44.159 This cause therefore must have been as sudden as its effect. 00:03:44.639 --> 00:03:54.080 In one area of Siberia, covering not less than ten thousand square feet, the rocks contain fish petrified. 00:03:54.240 --> 00:04:05.680 They are contorted in agony, sometimes the tails bent to the head, and in attitudes of fear, anger, and pain, not a single fish is injured by the others, and none survived. 00:04:05.840 --> 00:04:11.919 Being preserved almost perfect, these fish must have been caught and turned to stone with amazing rapidity. 00:04:12.400 --> 00:04:16.959 In the state of Montana is the Grasshopper Glacier. 00:04:17.199 --> 00:04:22.160 This gigantic mass of ice is literally filled with grasshoppers. 00:04:22.480 --> 00:04:31.920 The stream which flows from the melting of this glacier is so laden with grasshoppers that the fish, fed to the full, cannot be tempted by any known bait. 00:04:32.399 --> 00:04:49.360 Professor Buckland says that the fossil cuttlefish found in the Lyme Regis must have been killed and embedded in the strata in a moment of time, so rapidly, in fact, as to be prevented from discharging the contents of their ink bags. 00:04:49.839 --> 00:05:02.399 I must register, he says, the proofs of instantaneous death detected in these ink bags, for they contain the fluid which the living Cephia emit in the moment of alarm. 00:05:02.879 --> 00:05:13.360 The animals must therefore have died suddenly and have been quickly buried in the sediment that forms the strata in which their petrified ink and each ink bags are thus preserved. 00:05:15.439 --> 00:05:32.879 Fossils, animal and human, are found heaped together in numbers so enormous and in such confusion as is explicable only by sudden and overwhelming catastrophe, and the bones, like the stones and the boulders around them, are rubbed, ground, and smoothed by water. 00:05:33.199 --> 00:06:05.360 Sir Joseph Prestwich, commenting on the Italian hecticombs of hippopotami bones, showing no trace of weather or exposure, says, quote, my supposition is therefore that when the island was submerged, the animals in the plain of Palermo naturally retreated as the water advanced deeper into the amplitude of hills until they found themselves embayed as in a sign with promontories running out to sea on either side and a moral a mural precipice in front. 00:06:05.600 --> 00:06:17.839 As the area became more and more circumscribed, the animals must have thronged together in vast multitudes, crushing into more accessible caves and swarming over the ground at their entrance until overtaken by the waters and destroyed. 00:06:18.000 --> 00:06:18.720 End of quote. 00:06:20.000 --> 00:06:30.639 These words of celebrated geologists are of great importance not only in endorsing the teaching of the Bible, but in directly contradicting the prevailing theory of uniformity and succession of ages. 00:06:30.879 --> 00:06:48.480 The evidence of geology is now so convincing that Professor George Frederick Wright of Oberlin concludes his article in the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia with a statement, quote, if we disbelieve in the Bible deluge, it is not because we know too much geology, but too little. 00:06:48.800 --> 00:06:49.759 End of quote. 00:06:50.000 --> 00:07:03.600 One of the most recent and most amazing discoveries concerning the flood is the chronological prism catalog WB four four four, now in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. 00:07:03.759 --> 00:07:18.480 It was discovered by Weld Blundell Expedition, working in Mesopotamia, and is described by Professor Stephen Langdon of Oxford as the most important historical document of its kind ever recovered among cuneiform records. 00:07:18.639 --> 00:07:27.920 It gives the complete chronological tables of early Babylonian and Sumerian history and dates from about 2000 BC, the time of King Sinmagir. 00:07:28.079 --> 00:07:33.839 Lieutenant Commander Trumper gives some account of this precious document in the Bible League Quarterly. 00:07:34.000 --> 00:07:41.279 The first thing to notice is that it is an original document and not one that could have been amended or redacted in any way. 00:07:41.519 --> 00:07:48.879 It contains eight columns of cuneiform writing and is a matter of fact catalog of dynastic changes and occurrences. 00:07:49.120 --> 00:07:54.319 It reads thus Line one Ilulu reigned twenty-five years. 00:07:54.480 --> 00:07:58.079 Line two, Balulu reigned thirty-six years, line three, fourteen. 00:07:58.480 --> 00:08:01.360 Line four, they reigned one hundred and seventy-seven years. 00:08:01.600 --> 00:08:04.480 Line five, Fur by weapons was smitten. 00:08:04.639 --> 00:08:07.680 Line six, the rulership passed to Awan. 00:08:07.920 --> 00:08:14.000 The tablets are taken up with information of this sort exclusively with one single exception. 00:08:14.319 --> 00:08:22.000 Mention is made of the flood, the most stupendous event in the history of the age, and hence alone recorded in the royal list. 00:08:22.480 --> 00:08:27.360 The beginning of this tablet runs, line one, rulership which from heaven descended. 00:08:27.600 --> 00:08:30.480 Line two, at Eridu, rulership again. 00:08:30.800 --> 00:08:34.240 Line three, at Eridu, Alulem was king. 00:08:34.480 --> 00:08:37.840 Line nineteen, the rulership was established at Larak. 00:08:38.159 --> 00:08:40.960 Line twenty-five, the rulership passed the Sapar. 00:08:41.120 --> 00:08:44.559 Line thirty-one, the rulership established at Shirapat. 00:08:45.440 --> 00:08:47.919 Then come the lines thirty-nine. 00:08:48.879 --> 00:08:51.759 The deluge came up upon the land. 00:08:52.159 --> 00:08:56.000 Line forty, the rulership which descended from heaven. 00:08:56.240 --> 00:08:59.519 Line forty-two, at Kish, there was rulership. 00:08:59.759 --> 00:09:02.960 Line one then states that rulership descended from heaven. 00:09:03.120 --> 00:09:09.840 Exactly the same expression as is used in line forty for the recommencement of the dynasties after the flood. 00:09:10.080 --> 00:09:14.720 And nowhere else in the whole tablet does this occur. 00:09:14.960 --> 00:09:26.720 The natural conclusion is that the writer of the tablet thought the flood of the flood as having made such a complete effacement of the race and its rulers that rulership had to descend again from heaven as from the beginning. 00:09:26.879 --> 00:09:28.559 A fresh start was required. 00:09:28.799 --> 00:09:38.159 So the Bible tells us that God specifically gave Adam dominion in the earth and did the same to Noah after the flood. 00:09:39.039 --> 00:10:02.159 A great sensation was created in March 1929 when Professor Leonard Woolley of the University of Pennsylvania announced that during his excavations at Ur of the Chaldees, he had found the remains of a civilization of Abraham's time, and a considerable distance below there was a layer eight feet thick of water laid clay, evidently deposited by a deluge of stupendous proportion. 00:10:02.399 --> 00:10:07.519 Beneath it were the remains of a yet older and different civilization. 00:10:08.480 --> 00:10:18.960 Writing in the London Times, march sixteenth, nineteen twenty nine, Professor Woolley said, quote, as we went deeper, the successive strata showed very little change. 00:10:19.120 --> 00:10:26.799 The types of pottery were uniform, and everything seemed to show that civilization had long been consistent, not to say static. 00:10:27.039 --> 00:10:38.639 At last, when we got to about the level of the outer plain, the workmen announced virgin soil, a clean, water laid clay, without the slightest admixture of pottery or ash or other human debris. 00:10:38.799 --> 00:10:51.600 That there might be no possible mistake, we carried our pit deeper through eight solid feet of clean clay, then suddenly came on a flat stratum rich in flint, chips, and cores, pottery like that found above. 00:10:51.840 --> 00:11:07.279 Deeper we went and found more pottery, some of it of the types common in the earliest graves, but with this further examples of painted vessels and shreds of a sort hitherto unknown at Ur, and at the very bottom a burnt brick, also of a type wholly new to us. 00:11:07.519 --> 00:11:16.159 This last proves that at the time when the painted pottery and the flints were in use, Ur was not merely a village of mud huts, but already a civilized town. 00:11:16.399 --> 00:11:26.320 The disaster which thus buried an old settlement and caused a breach in the continuity of civilization can on the face of it be nothing other than the flood of Sumerian history. 00:11:26.480 --> 00:11:32.240 The Sumerians regarded the flood as an historical event, marking the epoch in their national annals. 00:11:33.120 --> 00:11:48.159 He would have been an optimist indeed who had hoped to produce material evidence for such an event as the flood of Sumerian history, which is also the flood of the book of Genesis, but in no other way can I interpret the facts which our excavations here give us. 00:11:48.480 --> 00:11:49.519 End of quote. 00:11:49.840 --> 00:12:03.200 Two days following the publication of Professor Woolley's discovery, the London Times created a second sensation by announcing that Professor Langdon had made the same discovery at Kish, which is near Babylon, hundreds of miles from Ur. 00:12:03.679 --> 00:12:17.519 Two months prior to this, in a letter to the Times, Professor Langdon had referred to the discovery at Kish of a stratum E, in which an alluvial layer had been found a foot thick, running right through Kish as far as the excavations extended. 00:12:17.840 --> 00:12:28.879 In this layer, said Professor Langdon in the March 18 issue of the Times, there are two precipitations of clay, potsherred and stranded fish, lying perfectly horizontal. 00:12:29.039 --> 00:12:39.440 They could not have been placed there by the hand of man, and their position in the layer cannot possibly be explained by any other hypothesis than that of a flood over that part of Mesopotamia. 00:12:39.679 --> 00:12:49.679 When we made these discoveries two months ago, we were loath to believe that we had obtained confirmation of the deluge of Genesis, but there is no doubt about it now. 00:12:51.440 --> 00:12:55.519 Also a quotation from a recent book by J. 00:12:55.759 --> 00:13:12.879 Garrow Duncan, who is director of excavations in Babylonia, Egypt, and Palestine, and he said I I should say a recently re-released book, said, quote, a year ago, who could have believed that the story of the flood in Genesis might prove to contain actual history? 00:13:13.039 --> 00:13:20.320 I confess that this is one of the passages of which I had never dared hope for any confirmation from the results of excavation. 00:13:20.480 --> 00:13:40.799 Yet, the discoveries in Babylonia and in the neighborhood of Ur and Kish leave no doubt whatever that at the very period in which the story of Noah and his Ark must be fitted, the whole country was buried under an inundation, bringing civilization to a dead stop and causing cessation of all life and activity. 00:13:43.759 --> 00:14:08.960 You see, the wonderful thing about the Bible and being a Bible believer is you never have to fear what scientists may discover, you never have to fear what archaeologists may unearth, you never have to fear what anthropologists may learn, because all truth, all genuine, accurate truth will confirm the Bible record. 00:14:09.120 --> 00:14:19.919 Never will it speak against the Bible record, never will it undermine the Bible record, all genuine truth confirms the Word of God. 00:14:21.039 --> 00:14:39.120 Now, as Earth's first catastrophe was to conceal forever a world so beautiful and perfect as to call forth the oratorios of the angels, so its second great catastrophe was to leave only a memory of its wonderful civilization, cities, and manufactories, an astonishing longevity of men. 00:14:39.279 --> 00:14:47.679 These all fade from our vision of the dim, mysterious ages behind that black and hideous gulf whose resistless waters swept them away forever. 00:14:47.919 --> 00:14:54.480 The earth was not again to be subjected to such a violent shakeup that would release the waters from their bounds to devastate and destroy. 00:14:54.639 --> 00:14:59.440 The rainbow was the sign of this promise, and here again there is a suggestion of a new order of things. 00:14:59.679 --> 00:15:03.919 When the earth was reconstructed, provision was made for the preservation of vegetable life. 00:15:04.080 --> 00:15:10.720 In Genesis 2, six we read, There went up a midst from a mist from the earth and watered the whole face of the ground. 00:15:10.879 --> 00:15:11.120 Dr. 00:15:11.279 --> 00:15:17.519 Pember suggests that there was no precipitation until the flood, when the windows of heaven were open for the first time. 00:15:17.840 --> 00:15:25.039 Even if the earth was watered by precipitation of moisture before the flood, it was of such a character that the rainbow was not in evidence. 00:15:25.200 --> 00:15:30.720 It is a well known fact that the rainbow accompanies the summer showers rather than the more gentle autumnal rains. 00:15:30.879 --> 00:15:41.360 In a climate of perpetual springs, such as may have existed before the flood, it is not unreasonable to believe that the precipitation, if any, was of this character, and for that reason the rainbow was invisible. 00:15:41.519 --> 00:15:51.200 But while the rainbow is a sign that the water should no more become a flood to destroy all flesh, it also suggests what man lost in the ruin of the antideluvian world. 00:15:51.440 --> 00:15:59.759 Droughts and floods, hitherto unknown, deprived him of the natural increase of the soil and swept away the hard earned accumulation of his toil. 00:15:59.919 --> 00:16:11.840 The frosts of winter and the burning heat of summer would hinder him in his work, while the sudden changes of temperature would subject him to colds and chills, lower his vitality, and make him heir to innumerable diseases. 00:16:12.000 --> 00:16:20.639 Discouraged and delayed in his projects, worn and weakened in his body, he would not live out half the millennium enjoyed by his forefathers. 00:16:21.120 --> 00:16:29.759 You know it's difficult for us to believe that the original climate of the earth possessed these trying extremes of temperature that were to be productive of so much woe and want. 00:16:30.000 --> 00:16:37.279 It was only after the flood that the Bible says in Psalm seventy eight forty seven he destroyed their vines with hail and their sycamore trees with frost. 00:16:37.600 --> 00:16:43.440 In fact, other portions of Scripture definitely associate the storm and the drought with the curse of sin. 00:16:43.759 --> 00:16:48.799 In the first chapter of Job, destructive storms and lightnings are ascribed to the malignity of Satan. 00:16:48.960 --> 00:16:55.759 In this chapter they are actuated by Satan, and other portions of Scripture also associates them with sin. 00:16:56.159 --> 00:17:00.720 Take that remarkable prayer of Solomon at the temple dedication. 00:17:00.879 --> 00:17:06.960 When he speaks of droughts and mildew, he's careful to ascribe these banes to the sin of the people. 00:17:07.440 --> 00:17:17.759 In David's reign the famine of three years was declared to be a judgment for Saul and his bloody house, while the three years drought in Elijah's day was a malediction upon the house of Ahab. 00:17:17.920 --> 00:17:24.480 Jeremiah, Haggai, and Amos also make it plain that the elements were cursed for the iniquity of the nation. 00:17:25.200 --> 00:17:34.799 While life was appreciably shortened, and the sons of Noah were not to live as long as their fathers, still they were destined to number their years far beyond the generations which followed them. 00:17:35.039 --> 00:17:37.119 Shem died at the age of six hundred. 00:17:37.359 --> 00:17:45.519 Our fact said his son lived to be but four hundred and thirty eight, while Peleg, his great great grandson, died at only two hundred and thirty nine years old. 00:17:45.759 --> 00:17:51.920 His son, Ru, likewise lived to an age of two hundred and thirty nine, his grandson to the age of two hundred and thirty. 00:17:52.160 --> 00:17:58.079 Thus a period of life was established which was only half as long as that of the grandson of Noah. 00:17:58.799 --> 00:18:05.519 What new calamity did the human race experience that there should be this second curtailment of life? 00:18:05.759 --> 00:18:16.400 Well, it would seem that the lesson of the flood was not to be fully learned by man, and that true to the prediction of the imagination of man's heart was to be evil from his youth. 00:18:16.559 --> 00:18:19.519 God predicted it would be so, and it was so. 00:18:19.839 --> 00:18:30.640 As the population grew larger and larger, instead of the people scattering to various portions of the earth where they might get the benefit of God's sunshine, showers, and soil, they persisted in living in congested centers. 00:18:30.960 --> 00:18:36.400 God's purpose was the scattering of men throughout the earth so they might secure the benefit of his natural gifts. 00:18:36.720 --> 00:18:40.480 Man's purpose was and still is the very opposite. 00:18:40.720 --> 00:18:47.839 By organization and centralization, man hopes to improve his material prosperity without God. 00:18:49.200 --> 00:19:04.640 As the world's population journeyed to the east, they found in the plain of Shinar excellent building material, and moved by the spirit of iniquity and rebellion, they said, Let us build us a city and a tower whose top may reach unto heaven. 00:19:04.799 --> 00:19:17.200 Instead of relying upon the promise of God to spare the world another flood, they decided that the best safeguard against such a catastrophe would be to construct a tower so high that it would defeat any effort of God to submerge it with water. 00:19:17.440 --> 00:19:20.079 Or perhaps they thought they would do what Satan did. 00:19:20.240 --> 00:19:28.400 They would climb so high as to actually replace God and make themselves the name that is above every name. 00:19:28.640 --> 00:19:36.799 The confusion of tongues which followed this daring effort of the people to defy God is told about in great simplicity in Genesis chapter eleven. 00:19:36.960 --> 00:19:43.440 It was not only to put an end to their building operations, but to scatter them abroad over the face of the earth. 00:19:43.599 --> 00:19:52.640 The Bible account of this calamity, which divided the race into nations, led to misunderstandings and conflicts and added greatly to their toil. 00:19:52.799 --> 00:19:55.039 It's not without corroborating testimony. 00:19:55.279 --> 00:20:01.359 Morosis, the ancient Chaldean historian, said this, and I quote from his record. 00:20:01.920 --> 00:20:13.440 They say that the first inhabitants of the world, glorying in their own size and strength, and despising the gods, undertook to raise a tower, whose top should reach to the sky where Babylon now stands. 00:20:13.599 --> 00:20:19.039 When it approached the heavens, the winds assisted the gods and overthrew the work upon its contrivers. 00:20:19.359 --> 00:20:21.599 Its ruins are said to be still at Babylon. 00:20:21.839 --> 00:20:30.640 The gods introduced a diversity of tongues among men, who until that time had all spoken one language, and a war arose between Cronus and Titan. 00:20:31.039 --> 00:20:39.440 The place in which they built the tower is now called Babylon on account of the confusion of tongues, for confusion is called Babel by the Hebrews. 00:20:39.680 --> 00:20:40.720 End of quote. 00:20:41.920 --> 00:20:53.920 The location of Babel is identified by an inscription found many years ago in the Great Pyramid Borsippa, B-O-R-S-I-P-P-A, made by order of King Nebuchadnezzar. 00:20:54.160 --> 00:20:59.440 This world monarch has gone on record to state that the gods of Babylon urged him to restore the ruins. 00:20:59.599 --> 00:21:08.880 The inscription describes this mammoth construction as follows The tower had seven stages, but the first king who built it was unable to finish the work. 00:21:09.119 --> 00:21:12.160 Men abandoned it, speaking their words in disorder. 00:21:12.319 --> 00:21:19.920 The earthquake and lightning had shaken the crude brickwork and split the burnt brick so that the upper stories crumbled up into mere piles. 00:21:20.160 --> 00:21:27.839 Marodok, my great god, inclined my heart to repair the building end of quotation as recorded. 00:21:28.079 --> 00:21:39.039 This inscription points out to us among the ruins which lift their heads around the site of ancient Babylon, the still gigantic remains of a monument which in the days of Nebuchadnezzar were believed to be the Tower of Babel. 00:21:39.359 --> 00:21:46.799 It is to this day called the Bears Nimrod, and is located six miles north of Hilla, a suburb of ancient Babylon. 00:21:46.960 --> 00:21:53.200 It covers a surface of forty nine thousand square feet and rises nearly three hundred feet high. 00:21:53.359 --> 00:22:02.319 The building of the city and the Tower of Babel and the dispersion of the human race are the last great events of Earth's earliest history, of which Common records are found among the nations. 00:22:02.480 --> 00:22:19.440 From this point, the Bible devotes all its time to the history of the children of Abraham and the affairs of the Hebrew people, and singularly enough, we do not find in the annals of contemporary nations any traditions that would even suggest events like the Exodus, the conquest of Canaan, the miracles of Elijah and Elisha. 00:22:19.680 --> 00:22:30.079 Surely, if as some critics hold, the Bible writers copied their stories from the myths of the ancients, there would certainly be some corresponding stories among the contemporary nations. 00:22:30.319 --> 00:22:40.480 The this constitutes one of the best proofs that the common myths of the nations are all based upon the actual facts of human history that the Bible itself records. 00:22:40.720 --> 00:22:43.359 Another thing should be kept in mind in this connection. 00:22:43.599 --> 00:22:52.720 Shem, one of the eight that helped construct the Ark and pass through the terrible experiences of the flood, did not die until Isaac was fifty years old. 00:22:52.960 --> 00:23:16.240 Now it's hard for us to realize that Abraham and Isaac lived with those who for one hundred years of their earthly life witnessed and assisted in the building of the great vessel of ancient times, the greatest vessel of ancient times, that they saw the foundations of the great deep broken up, they heard the groans of a perishing world, and still later witnessed the building of the great city with its towering masterpiece and the subsequent confusion of tongues and dispersion of the nation. 00:23:16.559 --> 00:23:25.599 The eyewitnesses of these events were able to tell them in person to Abraham and Isaac and the generations of that day. 00:23:25.839 --> 00:23:26.960 Just think of it. 00:23:27.920 --> 00:23:35.599 Five hundred years after the collapse of the Babylonian Empire and the dispersion of the nations that occurred. 00:23:37.119 --> 00:23:40.400 At that time came the great disaster of Sodom and Gomorrah. 00:23:40.720 --> 00:23:49.200 While this was a local rather than a general cataclysm, it is significant to note that our Lord and Peter closely associated with the flood. 00:23:49.359 --> 00:23:52.319 In Luke 17 and 2 Peter chapter 5. 00:23:52.480 --> 00:24:02.640 It would seem from this that the flood was a judgment, of course, but like the flood, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah was judgment for universal sin. 00:24:03.119 --> 00:24:16.240 Only three of the inhabitants of the doomed cities were permitted to escape, while the Dead Sea and the barren regions that surround it were to remain not only as a perpetual memorial to the catastrophe, but as an abiding curse to mankind. 00:24:17.200 --> 00:24:27.440 When Lot selected this portion of Palestine for his flocks in Genesis chapter thirteen and verse ten, we have every reason to believe it was the most beautiful and most fertile part of Palestine. 00:24:27.680 --> 00:24:30.000 In fact, it is described this way in the Bible. 00:24:30.160 --> 00:24:41.359 The Bible says in Genesis thirteen, all the plain of Jordan, it was well watered everywhere before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, even as the garden of the Lord, like the land of Egypt. 00:24:41.759 --> 00:24:53.119 Well watered indicates a river rather than a lake, and the comparison to Egypt and its Nile would suggest that its fertility even rivaled the banks of Egypt's great river. 00:24:53.440 --> 00:25:06.880 Lieutenant Lynch, in the narrative of his expedition to the river Jordan and the Dead Sea, pointed out that traversing the bottom of the Dead Sea there was a depression which strongly suggested the channel of the Jordan River. 00:25:07.119 --> 00:25:15.359 He even traced the possible route of a former river flowing south of the Dead Sea and interesting enter entering into the Gulf of Aqaba. 00:25:15.920 --> 00:25:25.119 Not only were the cities of the plain destroyed, but as an abiding monument of the catastrophe, the bottom of the Jordan was sunk more than a thousand feet below its original plane. 00:25:25.279 --> 00:25:37.680 It is indeed difficult to account for this remarkable depression of the bottom of the Dead Sea to the depth now ascertained without a convulsion thus extensive and terrible, all the signs of which are still exhibited on the spot. 00:25:37.920 --> 00:25:50.240 Archaeologists have discovered that the mountains around the sea are even older than the sea itself, which is one more testimony that the levels have not always been the same as they are now. 00:25:50.400 --> 00:26:03.359 Now this may have been the place where the garden was located eastward in Eden, but it may also well be that this was part of the overthrow and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah and the site thereof. 00:26:03.759 --> 00:26:34.960 You see, the point is to be emphasized in this connection that the present barrenness of this region, in contrast to its beauty and fertility before the disaster overtook the corrupt cities of the plain, instead of being congested and a center of population, it was to lie desolate through the centuries, while the waters of the Dead Sea so bitter that no life can exist in their midst, were to conceal forever from the eyes of man the ruins of this great tragedy, if indeed this was the location of Sodom and Gomorrah. 00:26:35.200 --> 00:26:52.319 You see, we have not only in this instance, but in many others that we will discuss in the next program, evident testimonies throughout the earth that God is indeed a God of wrath and judgment where such is necessary. 00:26:52.720 --> 00:26:55.039 Now God had Noah preach righteousness. 00:26:55.279 --> 00:26:57.200 Some say up to a hundred and twenty years. 00:26:57.279 --> 00:27:00.640 That's the time period that's mentioned there in Genesis. 00:27:00.720 --> 00:27:12.400 We don't know if he's preaching all that time or building the ark all that time, but we know that before God sent the flood, he sent Noah to preach and warn men, because it was not God's will that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. 00:27:12.640 --> 00:27:27.119 We know that before the fire fell on Sodom and Gomorrah, that God sent uh angels down there to warn Lot, to warn his family, to so that they could then warn others and that all could flee and escape from this wrath to come. 00:27:27.279 --> 00:27:37.200 We know that God was willing to spare it if he found righteous men in the city who would repent of their uh wicked deeds and uh live a decent life as God laid it out in that time. 00:27:37.519 --> 00:27:39.920 And so it is in our day. 00:27:40.319 --> 00:28:01.119 As the great cataclysmic judgments of the book of Revelation approach, the great vials, the great plagues, the uh time of great tribulation, as the Bible calls it, do you know and do you realize that the Bible picture all the way through is of God giving you a warning to flee from the wrath to come before it comes? 00:28:01.359 --> 00:28:04.799 The Lord Jesus Christ said that he is the way, the truth, and the life. 00:28:04.960 --> 00:28:09.599 As many as received him, to them gave you power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name. 00:28:09.759 --> 00:28:20.480 And when this great wrath of God is poured out on the earth, you can say, with a writer of the Thessalonians, I have been saved from the wrath to come. 00:28:21.039 --> 00:28:29.680 If you'll put your faith and your trust in the Lord Jesus Christ, when God's wrath and God's judgment are poured out upon the earth, you can escape. 00:28:35.759 --> 00:28:37.440 Thanks for tuning in today. 00:28:37.599 --> 00:28:43.200 Join us every weekday for another episode of the Preaching of the Cross Radio Podcast. 00:28:43.519 --> 00:28:50.480 For hundreds of hours of in-depth expository Bible teaching, please visit our YouTube channel, James W. 00:28:50.640 --> 00:28:59.440 Knox Sermons, our sermon audio page, Bible Baptist Land, or our website, Bible Baptistteland.com. 00:28:59.839 --> 00:29:05.359 Until next time and throughout eternity, may Jesus Christ be praised.