Lessons in the Ladder Days

Candace Long: I'm Candace Long with Lessons in the Latter Days, offering biblical commentary to make sense of the times that we're living in. As many of you know, if you've listened to this series for any length of time, I am a follower of Jesus for over 50 years who is Torah observant. That means that I honor the Sabbath and study the Torah each week according to what's called the parashat, which are weekly Torah readings that take us through the first five books of Moses every year according to God's calendar. That's the Hebrew one, not our Roman calendar.

The purpose of reading the Torah every year is to imprint everything that God gave Moses to pass down to His children into our beings. By doing so and learning about God's appointed times and seasons, we actually rehearse everything that we will go through on our way through the wilderness of life to the kingdom. This is God's training ground. Right now, in the middle of October 2021, we're in the middle of Cheshvan, the second month of the Hebrew year. You might say, who cares? It's just another day. But it's not just another day. This is the very time, almost 4,500 years ago, when the flood began, the time when God had had enough and washed every living creature off the planet except for Noah, his family, and a boatful of animals.

The story of Noah is critically important to this Lessons in the Latter Days series because it tells us everything we need to learn if we are living in the very end of days, which I believe we are. You recall that Jesus said in Matthew 24 and Luke 17, "As were the days of Noah, so it will be the coming of the Son of Man." Jesus was telling His followers that the signs and markers that will set apart the very end of days when He comes to rule the earth will be just like the patterns and signs that we see in the days that Noah lived. That's what we're going to do. Today begins a short series called The Days of Noah. There's so much to unpack during his timetable that relates to now.

Here are seven things that we're going to explore in the next few episodes. Number one, we're going to look at the timetable itself. Does Noah's day give us clues about how long we have until the Day of the Lord, which is the second time that God pours out His wrath on all of mankind? Number two, we'll look at the corruption during Noah's day. What made the culture so evil that the Lord had had to obliterate everything? Number three, we'll look at the godless culture that Noah lived in. When did he feel the call to stand up and confront it? This one point is what's going on right now as many Americans are standing toe-to-toe against an oppressive government, fighting vaccine mandates and critical race theory in the classrooms and the deluge of gender-confused masses whose presence threatens the values that we're trying to pass down to our children. How long is this period to last? Are there insights that can help us today in how Noah confronted his culture?

Number four, we'll look at Noah and his family more closely and look for biblical reasons why only eight people were saved from the flood. Does that relate to now? Are the number of people who will be taken at the resurrection or what Christians call the Rapture be fewer in number than everyone thinks? If so, what are the dangers that would threaten so many people to be left behind? Most importantly, how can we make sure that we're part of the remnant that survives? Number five, we'll also look at how God let Noah know when it was time to pull away from the masses. What precipitated his time of separation? Are we there yet? If that call from God came for us to separate from others, would we even know what to do and what that would look like?

Number six, we'll look for insight into what it means to build an ark for your family's survival. Equally as important, what do we do to protect our bunkers if hundreds of thousands of people stormed our places of refuge, attempted to break in, and take what we've stored up? Finally, we'll look at the faithfulness of God, how the Father prepared and protected Noah through every step of his journey, even planting important seeds of wisdom during the generations that came before him. Let's begin. If you're depending only on the Book of Genesis for information about the days of Noah, you will only find five chapters, Genesis 6 through 10.

I'm also going to incorporate information from other books of antiquity to fill out sections of Noah's backstory. I'll list these resources for you in the description notes to this episode on my podcast page at candacelong.com. For this series, here are some of the key resources I have consulted: the ancient Book of Jasher, which was a highly regarded history of our patriarchs and it's mentioned in the books of Joshua, 2 Samuel, and 2 Timothy; the lost Book of Enoch, who was Noah's great-grandfather; the Antiquities of the Jews by the first-century Jewish historian Flavius Josephus; as well as my own Torah lessons with Rabbi Michael Washer from the Lev Tsion Messianic Congregation in El Paso, Texas, of which I'm a member. Rabbi always brings us deeper perspectives from our early Jewish forefathers who lived and breathed Torah.

Let's start today with some overall things about Noah that I think you'll find very interesting. It has always been general consensus among our forefathers that the reason for the flood was not just to destroy people but as a critical preparatory picture for the Day of the Lord. As we've discussed many times before in this series, God teaches through pictures that have multiple layers of meaning. I also want to remind you of a very Jewish doctrinal perspective that's found in Ecclesiastes 1:9. It says, "What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done." The Lord repeats this understanding in Chapter 3: "That which is already has been, and that which is to be already has been, and God seeks what has been driven away."

The Day of the Lord, or the day that is all Sabbath, has been in the Father's mind since Genesis. Everything in Scripture leads us to be able to enter that kingdom. Noah's flood was a prescient narrative that prepares us for this very time that we're living in now. What God wants us to do is to examine the tavnit, or the picture of Noah, in terms of the preparatory warnings, the events leading up to the flood, and the flood itself. Let those pictures speak to us and teach us what we are about to face in the near future. This is God's way: an event that happened in the past which prepares us in how to walk with God and under His protection through the darkest of times into the kingdom.

Let's look at Noah's name, our lead character in this narrative. It isn't really Noah; it is Noach, which means rest. His name is a picture for the Day of the Lord, the day that is all rest, which occurs simultaneously at the same time when all hell breaks loose on Earth and God's wrath cleanses the ground by destroying every living thing that is mounted up in rebellion and defiance against Him. I'm going to use the pronunciation Noah because I can't say Noach real well. Noah's name also means comfort. Rashi, the well-known 11th-century rabbi, wrote that Noah will ease off of us the toil of our hands. Interestingly, until Noah came, people had no agricultural instruments. The earth had brought forth thorns and thistles when man sowed wheat as a consequence of God cursing the ground after Adam's fall.

Noah was a picture of a godly worker of the ground with instruments that God taught him how to make in order to properly manage cultivation of crops. It's interesting to me that so many people I've spoken with in the last year or so have felt a leading to return to a simpler life and sustain themselves with food that they have a hand in growing. That's a little foreign for me, frankly, because I didn't grow up with a green thumb, but I was prompted this year to begin growing herbs on my back deck. Don't look for any YouTube channel from me on how to grow herbs because I am a fledgling. But I have learned a great deal from simply being responsive to the leading of God to get back somehow to the soil.

I find it significant that in this metaphorical flood of judgment that we're going through in the country right now, our food supplies are being prevented from reaching us because of the supply chain backlog at the ports. It's as if the Lord is saying, "I am removing the easy supply of things that you need to survive. You have depended on others to do your work long enough. It's time to rethink the original mandate that I gave you, which is to cultivate your land, till your ground, and become self-sustaining through good seed, not GMO seed, which God gave you to plant."

Let's look at Noah's birth. Jasher tells us that Noah was born at the revolution of the year in 1056 after creation. This little-known fact is significant, and I'll tell you why. It's another tavnit because the term revolution of the year is when the year changes from one year to another. In our Western culture, the revolution of the year is New Year's Day. But in the ancient Hebrew calendar before the Exodus, the first day of the new year was Tishrei 1. That day just happens to be Rosh Hashanah, the very day that begins the holiest week of the entire year to the Jews. It is this very day, when the earth has existed 6,000 years, that the Day of the Lord will begin according to Jewish doctrines.

What is especially significant is that the flood started on this very day in the 600th year of Noah's life, which would be his birthday, Tishrei 1. The fountains of the great deep burst forth on this day when God's wrath was poured on the earth. This is an incredible foreshadowing if we see it through a Jewish lens. For instance, in the seven-day plan of God that the Lord laid out for us in Genesis 1, the seventh day was the Sabbath, the day that is all Sabbath, God's day, the Day of the Lord. This happens when the world has been in existence exactly 6,000 years. Scripture teaches us that the day that ushers in the kingdom will fall on Tishrei 1, Rosh Hashanah, also called the Feast of Trumpets, announcing the coronation of the King.

This is the very day that the righteous are taken to the marriage supper of the Lamb in heaven while on Earth, on this same day, the birth pangs or the tribulation begins on Tishrei 1 and lasts seven years. Do you see the parallel? On Tishrei 1, when Noah reached 600 years old, the flood begins. The sages believe that this is a picture, a tavnit, referring to the 6,000 years that the world will reach when God destroys it a second time, not with water but this time by fire, which ushers in the birth pangs before Messiah comes to set up His kingdom on Earth. The 600th year of Noah is a tavnit for the 6,000th year since creation. We will be like Noah and find true rest. We will be preserved safe while unbelievable wrath is poured out on the earth at the same time.

Did Noah have any warning about all this? Absolutely. The flood was not something that just came up in Noah's life, just like the concept of the Day of the Lord is not foreign to us. We know it's coming. We know that the righteous will be suddenly snatched up and saved right before the wrath of God is poured out on everyone else left in the world. We have all grown up knowing about that day, the day of judgment. In the same way, Noah grew up hearing about the flood from his great-grandfather Enoch as well as his grandfather Methuselah. Noah was alive and well during the time before Enoch was taken up to heaven. He witnessed firsthand the thousands and thousands of godly leaders who followed Enoch and sought out his wisdom before he was taken from them.

Let me read you how Jasher describes Enoch's sudden departure from Earth, which is a tavnit for our sudden resurrection when the trumpet blows. Because our spiritual ancestors lived so long, their lives overlapped with one another. For instance, when Adam died, Enoch had been ruling for 243 years. They knew each other. In fact, Enoch was spiritually mentored by Adam. After Adam's death, Jasher writes this: Enoch resolved to separate himself from the sons of men and to secrete himself in order to serve the Lord. He kept away from the sons of men for three days and then went to them for one day, and he did in this manner for many years. Afterward, he appeared to his people one day out of seven, and after that, once in a month, and then once in a year, until all the kings, the princes, and sons of men looked for him and desired again to see the face of Enoch and to hear his word, but they could not. As all of the sons of men were greatly afraid of Enoch and they feared to approach him on account of the godlike awe that was seated upon his countenance.

These people that Enoch pulled away from were the children of God; they were not the evil lineage of Cain. But this was before they fell away. God led Enoch to first pull away from the people and spend time with Him. Then he was told to return to pour out what he had been taught before God took him to heaven. Jasher continues writing this: Enoch was teaching them the ways of God. Behold, an angel of the Lord then called to Enoch from heaven and wished to bring him up to heaven to make him rule there over the sons of God, these are angels, as he has ruled over the sons of men upon earth. Enoch gathered his people and he gave them divine instructions and said, "I have been required to ascend into heaven." As he taught them, they lifted up their eyes and the likeness of a great horse descended from heaven, and the horse paced in the air and stood before Enoch. He proclaimed, "Where is the man who delights to know the ways of the Lord his God? Let him come this day to Enoch before he is taken from us." 800,000 men came to him.

God prepared His people over many generations to let them know that a flood was coming. I want you to be very careful to listen to those leaders whose teachings about the end of days resonate with you. God has given certain ones insight and wisdom to alert others that our window of time on Earth is closing. Let me give you a brief overview of the ones that God chose to pass on His ways and warn others before the flood. After Adam, Seth began to rule. The next key leader after that was Kenan, just 365 years after creation. Jasher wrote that Kenan was a very wise man and had understanding in all wisdom, and with his wisdom, he ruled over spirits and demons. Kenan knew by his wisdom that God would destroy the sons of men for having sinned upon earth and that the Lord would in the latter days bring upon them the waters of the flood. In those days, Kenan wrote upon tablets of stone what was to take place.

This warning from Kenan was over a thousand years before the flood came. After Kenan came Mahalalel and then Jared, our sixth ancestor who was Enoch's father. It was during Jared's time when the Watchers came to Earth. They intermarried with women and birthed the hybrid race that we know as the Nephilim. Almost all mankind fell away during his time. Jasher writes that Jared died in sorrow, but before he died, he called his son Enoch, his grandson Methuselah and his son Lamech, and great-great-grandson Noah, just a young boy, to his bedside, and Jared foretold of the things to come.

This is Jared speaking: "Oh my sons, God will take you to a strange land and you never shall again return to behold with your eyes this garden and this holy mountain. Therefore, set your hearts on your own selves and keep the commandment of God which is with you. Unto him of you who shall be left shall the word of God come, and when he goes out of this land, he shall take with him the body of our father Adam and shall lay it in the middle of the earth, the place in which salvation shall be wrought." Then Noah said unto Jared, "Who is he of us that shall be left?" Jared answered, "You are he, Noah, and your son Shem who shall come out of your loins. He it is who shall lay the body of our father Adam in the middle of the earth."

We'll pick up Noah's story in the next episode, but just understand how very important you and I are to influence this generation before the Day of the Lord. We have a limited time to exert godly perspective and wisdom on those we are close to. This is not a time to get distracted. In closing, I want to reflect on the lives of our spiritual ancestors. I am continually moved by their sense of responsibility to pray and intercede for their families amidst the growing evil that eventually seduced almost all of their children and grandchildren. This is a huge wake-up call for us, to remind us that in the same way that God prepared the leaders of that generation that He was about to destroy the earth in judgment, so He is calling some of us to warn others now, if we have ears to hear.

If you want to know more about our early ancestors and the resources I used, you'll find them in my description notes to this episode on my podcast page at candacelong.com. I want to thank you so much for listening. I'm Candace Long. I hope you'll join me again next time for Lessons in the Latter Days. God bless.