WATER AND JUDGMENT
For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water: Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished: But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men. (2 Peter 3:5-7)
While it is true that rain is not mentioned to have fallen before Noah’s flood, the presence of water on this present earth is explicitly understood in Genesis 2:5&6 for the purpose of sustaining life form on earth: And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew: for the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground. But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground. There was no need of rain for the colloidal suspension of water in gaseous state was present on earth during those early days. Until the antediluvian fallen men waxed worse and worse, rain was never forecasted to fall on planet Earth. It was Noah, the weatherman as well as a preacher of righteousness, that warned of a catastrophic deluge to come while preaching for 120 years; that rain could become a present reality back then. For no one knew what was the impact of such a drastic change in atmospheric condition nor had anyone experienced the terror of that tragic downpour when the windows of heaven were opened. So Adam’s fallen and helpless race raced ahead to perdition, destruction and their eventual doom. They did not believe Noah’s weather forecast and they did not repent to avert the coming catastrophe!
The global flooding of planet Earth is unmistakable according to the account in Genesis 7:11&12, 17-24: In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened. And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights. And the flood was forty days upon the earth; and the waters increased, and bare up the ark, and it was lift up above the earth. And the waters prevailed, and were increased greatly upon the earth; and the ark went upon the face of the waters. And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth; and all the high hills, that were under the whole heaven, were covered. Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail; and the mountains were covered. And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, and every man: All in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land, died. And every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both man, and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven; and they were destroyed from the earth: and Noah only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark. And the waters prevailed upon the earth an hundred and fifty days.
So those sinners witnessed the strength of the molten sky to fail and fall flat on them. Moreover, the fountains of the great deep were broken up and the body of waters above the firmament came through the windows of heaven to avenge the rebellion and violence of sinful men sinning against the thrice Holy God as well as to execute judgment on angels who left their first estate when those sons of God cohabited with the daughters of men and rebelled against the Most High. We see the suspension of the freezing of the great deep we read in Job 38:30 for the expressed purpose of executing God’s judgment to satisfy His holy demand for rebellion and sin by His creatures both great and small. Jonah provides us with his personal experience regarding judgment of such nature in Jonah 2:3: For thou hadst cast me into the deep, in the midst of the seas; and the floods compassed me about: all thy billows and thy waves passed over me. The Psalmist also describes God’s judgment of such scale in Psalm 104:6: Thou coveredst it with the deep as with a garment: the waters stood above the mountains. So the deep fell as a garment to cover the whole earth well over and above all the mountains on earth. The water of the deep is simply another agent or instrument of God’s judgment that drowns sinners in the wrath of God when He simply allows the strength of the fountains of the deep to fail which we read in Proverbs 8:28.
The deep is often spoken of in connection with God’s judgment and the Psalmist again mentions this in Psalm 36:6: Thy righteousness is like the great mountains; thy judgments are a great deep: O LORD, thou preservest man and beast. Hence, according to 1 John 5:17: All unrighteousness is sin: and there is a sin not unto death, we see the great mountains of righteousness corrupted by sinful men into mountains of unrighteousness, and so they become quickly covered by the great deep of judgment when God chooses not to preserve men and beast in His wrath. Job also summarizes how God uses waters to judge the earth; Behold, he withholdeth the waters, and they dry up: also he sendeth them out, and they overturn the earth. (Job 12:15)
The deep is also a picture of death according to Romans 10:7: Or, Who shall descend into the deep? (that is, to bring up Christ again from the dead.) For a sinner wallowing in God’s wrath, his experience is similar with what Jonah has gone through as well as the experience the Psalmist so aptly describes in Psalm 42:7: Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of thy waterspouts: all thy waves and thy billows are gone over me. Hence water is essential in sustaining life, but when God’s grace has been abused to the full, the very nature of this life sustaining water is turned into the instrument of death. As far as the deep is concerned, we find more than one deep is mentioned in the Holy Bible.
This article is taken from a chapter in the book “Water: The Source Of Life Or Agent Of Death” which may be downloaded via: