The Baptism of Noah

1 Peter 3: 20-21 “...the patience of God waited in the days of Noah, while an ark was being constructed, in which a few—that is, eight souls—were rescued through water. 21 And also, corresponding to this, baptism now saves you, not the removal of dirt from the flesh, but an appeal to God for a good conscience through the resurrection of Jesus Christ…”

In Exodus 12:2, God tells Moses that the seventh month will now be the first month, and that Passover will begin on the fourteenth day of this month.  Thus Christ rose on the seventeenth day of the first month, previously the seventh month.  Going back to Genesis 8:4 “And the ark came to rest in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on the mountains of Ararat.”  

So we see that Noah and his family came through the Flood, baptized, as Peter writes centuries later and rescued through water, and came to Mount Ararat on the same day that Jesus was raised from the Grave.  The Passion Translation of the Bible has a

note indicating that the word Ararat means “Curse is reversed”.  

The Passion Translation also indicates (in its notes) the meanings of each of the Fathers from Adam to Noah:  Man, Appointed, Mortality, Lament of Death, Splendor of God, Descends, His Death Will Bring, Powerful Overcoming, Rest and Comfort.  (I have bolded the definitions I’ve been able to confirm in the Logos Bible software.)  Noah’s father, Lamach, prophesies that Noah “will comfort us in the labor and painful toil of our hands caused by the ground the LORD has cursed”, that is, from Adam’s sin.  Indeed, after the Flood, the first thing Noah does is plant a vineyard.  This foreshadows the wine of the New Covenant, though Noah gets drunk on it.  As well, the thorns that Adam and his offspring had to contend with were wrapped around Jesus’ head by the Roman soldiers as they tortured him before nailing him to the Tree of Life.  

The story of Noah cannot be adequately covered one page at a time, but I am convinced that Noah was a real person who built an ark to survive a massive, regional flood.  I find all this awe-inspiring.  Even more though, our need to die to sin and be reborn is essential, but the opposite of what is being taught in many churches today, where God’s abundant grace is emphasized.  I suspect that the practice of infant Baptism may be stealing that powerful symbol.  Peter equates Noah’s flood to baptism.  Paul makes a similar analogy in 1 Corinthians 10 between Moses the Israelites being baptized by coming through the Red Sea.  In both cases (Noah and Moses), the new life was not a sinless one.  While Paul writes about dying to our old self, we do not simply stop sinning, or even stop wanting to sin, and he hits that too, in Romans 7:19 “For the good that I want to do, I do not do, but the evil that I do not want to do, this I do.”  Is this your journey as well?