Building, not bending, the Ark of history, because history isn’t heading where most people think it’s going.
Noah and his sons were instructed by the Lord: “Make yourself an ark of gopherwood; make rooms in the ark, and cover it inside and outside with pitch….The length of the ark shall be three hundred cubits, its width fifty cubits, and its height thirty cubits. You shall make a window for the ark,…and set the door of the ark in its side” (Gen 6:14-16). Do you have any idea how big that is? It was about 50 feet high and 500 feet long—the length of one-and-a-half football fields. Its capacity was astounding, holding the equivalent of 450 tractor trailer loads. The British newspaper the Telegraph reported that when a group of master’s students from the University of Leicester’s Department of Physics and Astronomy used the dimensions of the Ark given in Genesis, applied the Archimedes principle of buoyancy and approximate animal weights, they were astonished to find out that the Ark would have floated, carrying 70,000 animals without sinking. Interestingly, the ratio of the length to the beam is six, the same as a Suezmax supertanker. No wonder the ark took many years to construct. Yet all this time, Noah, called by Peter “a preacher of righteousness,” continually warned the people to join him in the safety of the ark. The Bible says that, up to this point, God had arranged it so “a mist went up from the earth” and watered the ground (Gen 2:6); rain had not yet fallen. So you see what faith it took for Noah to believe God’s warning and invest his life in such a project. The people rejected the message and mocked Noah. So today, people reject the story of the cross of Christ, where He took the storm of God’s wrath for all who find in Him the only place of safety. It’s love that warns. Jesus Himself said, “Flee from the wrath to come” (Mt 3:7).