Spiritual Meaning of

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Gen 7:6-24

The deluge was a spiritual catastrophe. This statement instantly clothes the Divine narrative with a significance that disarms science of the objections it has urged against belief in it as a physical occurrence. We have neither the time nor the disposition to notice these objections. The Bible is a Divine book; and its message is spiritual. It addresses itself to man as a spiritual being; so that whatever may be the outward form in which it comes, underneath there lies the spiritual instruction, appeal, warning or encouragement it was intended to bring to man. The Lord, who is the Divine author of the written Word, said: "The words that I speak unto you they are spirit and they are life." This is true of every inspired book in the Holy Word. Seen in this light, the Bible vindicates and establishes its claim to Divine inspiration.

The outward things of history - things that have been enacted in the natural world - are not, in themselves, Divine revelations. Revelation includes the thought of a degree of truth made known to man that he could not have discovered by the exercise of any faculty proper to his mind. God is the only way to Himself. He lets down the ladder on whose rounds man ascends to a knowledge of Him. "The world by wisdom knew not God."

And so of the story of the flood. If it is believed to be the record of outward happenings, there is not in such a belief one single element of spirituality, nor one single thing that tends to give the mind an exalted conception of God. It is only when we regard the narrative in the light of a Divine parable that we find the ground of its spirituality and learn from it the deep things of God. It is a parable. It describes spiritual things under the form of natural and corresponding things in the visible world of nature. Let us think of it in this way. In general the story of the flood is God's own way of telling us of the spiritual destruction of the last posterity of the Most Ancient Church in the flood of dreadful persuasions and abominable evils that they brought upon themselves. It is the story of how they were carried down to destruction by the falsehoods which they believed and the evils which they loved. A natural inundation is used to represent a spiritual inundation.

The effect of this spiritual inundation was (1) to destroy and utterly sweep away the corrupt people of the dead and fallen church, and (2) to act as temptations by which those of the succeeding or Ancient Church, were regenerated. A flood is one of the most familiar symbols used in the Bible to denote a state of deep and interior temptation. The Psalmist prayed: "Save me, O God, for the waters are come in unto my soul. I sink in deep mire where there is no standing. I am come into deep water where the floods overflow me. Let not the water floods overflow me, neither let the deep swallow me up." David was not speaking of natural water, nor of natural floods. He was using the language of correspondence and was praying for deliverance from the evil and false principles which were infesting his soul. The prophet in portraying the certainty of the Lord's protection of those who put their trust in Him in times of spiritual distress and temptation says: "When the enemy shall come in like a flood the spirit of the Lord shall lift up a standard against him." The temptations that arise from the sphere of naturalism, with which we are all surrounded, are described by the prophet in the following language: "Egypt riseth up like a flood and his waters are moved like the rivers." Our Lord said of the house built on the rock: "The rain descended and the flood came, but it fell not." But of the house built on the sand He said: "The rain descended and the flood came and it fell." We all see that by the house built on the rock is meant a human character founded upon the Divine truth which the flood of temptation is unable to move; and that the house built on the sand is a human character built on wrong principles, which falls under the power of temptation as the house on the sand was swept away by the flood.

From these instances, it is easy to be see that the Scriptures use natural floods as the expressive symbol of spiritual trials and temptations which prove the destruction of the wicked but which serve as purifying experiences to the good. This is the light in which to view the Mosaic story of the deluge. Think! Two sources are assigned for the flood; the breaking up of the fountains of the deep, and the opening of the windows of heaven. These two sources of the flood are clearly spiritual and stand, the windows of heaven for the understanding or intellectual principle, and the fountains of the deep for the will or voluntary principle of the mind.

The windows of heaven! They are the perceptions of the understanding, for it is through intellectual perceptions that man sees the things of heaven. In the good, these spiritual windows of the heaven that is within are opened to admit the light of truth into the mind. But in the story of the flood, these windows admitted that which was one of the principal sources of destruction; consequently they denote the understanding given over to falsehoods and destructive reasonings, by which the whole intellectual life of the fallen church was inundated and destroyed. The fountains of the deep! These deep fountains, or fountains of the deep, picture to us the will and its loves. In the Bible, the will is compared to the deep because it is the receptacle of the deep things of a man's life. The good man's will is the deep place of his life; all that he thinks and does comes out of the deep places of his heart. So of the evil man. His corruptions are deep. Out of the fountains of the deep love the good man has for the Lord, arise all the holiest joys of his life, and, in like manner, out of the fountains of the evil man's deep love of himself, arise all the dissatisfactions and unrest of his life.

In the case of the flood, "the fountains of the deep were broken up." Don't you see that this means that the will, as a will for goodness, was, in the people of the fallen Adamic Church, disrupted; that it had become a deep lust? The will of good was broken up and the entire voluntary life of the evil people of the Adamic Church was given over to lusts of every description.

Everything in them perished; not a vestige of the church remained. This spiritual destruction is described in correspondential language as the covering of the high hills under the whole heaven, the submergence of the mountains, the death of all flesh, both of fowl and cattle, and beast and of every creeping thing. All things of the church perished. This was the effect of the flood upon the incorrigibly wicked. But the evils and falsities that end a fallen church act as temptations through which the members of the new and succeeding church are regenerated. Thus the flood, which ended the Most Ancient Church, operated to purify the affections and thoughts - to elevate and regenerate the members of the succeeding Ancient Church. They resisted these evil and false things. They had not closed the way to remains; they were capable of regeneration. All such were represented by Noah and his family. They were the remnant. They endured these dreadful temptations and were saved. With them, a wind, the spirit of the Lord, passed over the earth of their minds, and the waters, the falsities of the dead church, were assuaged. Their understandings and wills became receptive of truth and love. A new will of obedience was formed in their understanding. New influences operated upon them, and the waters of temptation gradually abated They came, at length, through hard and bitter trials, into a state of spiritual love. They reached it through daily obedience to the truth. This happy state is beautifully described in the allegory: "And the ark rested in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, upon the mountains of Ararat."