Such was the substance of the Saviour's prophetic utterance comparing "the days of Noe" to the days of "the coming of the Son of Man." Noah's time seems to have been typical of two things. Its pointing was backward as well as forward. It symbolized both the beginning and the end.

The Deluge was Earth's baptism, and baptism represents birth or creation. In a certain sense our planet was "born of water and of the Spirit" when called into being, when "the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." In Noah's day it experienced a rebirth, a "washing of regeneration," typical of a spiritual and fiery immersion yet to come.

Noah was a child of promise. The Lord, having shown to Enoch the approaching destruction of Earth's wicked inhabitants, covenanted with him that the repeopler of the desolated globe should be of his lineage. In order that this promise might not fail, Enoch's son Methuselah, distinguished in Bible history as "the oldest man," was not taken when Zion was translated, but remained to become the father of Lamech and grandfather of Noah.

Noah was but ten years old when Methuselah blessed and ordained him. Like his predecessors in the patriarchal line, he was a prophet and a preacher of righteousness. The word of the Lord came to him, saying: "My spirit shall not always strive with man; yet his days shall be a hundred and twenty years; and if men do not repent I will send in the floods upon them." They hearkened not, and the Lord then decreed: "The end of all flesh is before me, for the earth is filled with violence, and behold I will destroy all flesh from off the earth."

After the Flood, which swept away all but Noah and his family—eight souls,—it devolved upon this patriarch to recommence the work begun by the great sire of the race under God's original command—the command to "multiply and replenish the earth." Noah's time, therefore, typified, as shown, the period of the Creation. Like Adam, he "was the father of all living in his day, and to him was given the dominion."

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"As the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of Man be." In Noah's day "a veil of darkness" covered the earth. A like condition is to characterize the Last Day, thus foretokened. The disaster that overwhelmed the Antediluvians, destroying the wicked with water, is to have as its sequel a more fearful calamity, in which the unrighteous will be consumed by fire from Heaven. And as unexpectedly as came the regenerating flood wherein our planet was once immersed, will come the purifying name that shall cleanse it from all iniquity and prepare it for eternal glory.