There are passages in the Bible that incessantly visit—and revisit—my mind, because there’s something in them that bothers me. It’s a little like what happens when you break a tooth: your tongue can’t leave the jagged stump alone—it keeps going back to explore it again and again. Why? Your mind instinctively knows there’s something wrong, and it seeks resolution.
Take a careful look at something God told Noah:
“But I will establish my covenant with you, and you shall come into the ark, you, your sons, your wife, and your sons’ wives with you. And of every living thing of all flesh, you shall bring two of every sort into the ark to keep them alive with you. They shall be male and female” (Gen. 6:18, 19).[*]
Before Noah builds the ark, God gives him the passenger manifest: a sample of every animal, and eight people. That’s it. There’s no mention of anybody else boarding the ark, no mention of Noah’s preaching leading to a great revival, no mention of the masses coming to their senses and repenting.
Compare that to the promise we have in Revelation 18 that the whole world will be illuminated with the glory of Christ before He returns:
“After this I saw another angel coming down from heaven, having great authority, and the earth was made bright with his glory” (Rev. 18:1).
You and I have been promised that the latter rain will fall; we will witness another Pentecost before this is all over. We’ve also got the promise found in Daniel 12:4 that the book of Daniel would be unsealed before the end, and that “many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall increase.” You’ve probably heard evangelists explain this prediction as an explosion of rapid travel and technology, but that’s not really what it means. The book of Daniel was sealed, but when the end comes, knowledge of the book will suddenly—and dramatically—increase.
Running to and fro? The original word is šûṭ, a reference to someone rowing a boat back and forth across a stream. It’s a metaphor for the eyeballs of a scribe scanning lines of text—back and forth, back and forth—and it’s a promise that many will be interested in what we have to say as the end approaches. God has ensured that we will have an audience.
Noah, apparently, had no such promises: build the ark, and it will be you and your family who board it. You will search in vain for promises of mass conversions. You won’t find even a promise of one conversion. It’s entirely possible that Noah started his 120-year preaching career knowing that he would get no results.
It raises an important question: If nobody’s going to listen, why preach at all?
It Actually Works
The question is pertinent, because even though we have the promise of a latter-day global Pentecost, we also know that at some point probation will close, and at that point it will be too late. We can expect to see results wane, and then . . . disappear.
So at what point are we off the hook with preaching?
I’m just terrified enough of public speaking that I wouldn’t be holding meetings if it didn’t work. It really is working.
Over the years I’ve heard a lot of armchair critics pan public evangelistic meetings, suggesting that they are a relic from the past. “That doesn’t work anymore,” I’m told. The pessimism has never deterred me, because since I joined the church, I’ve watched it work over, and over, and . . . well, you get the point. It didn’t just barely work, either: I’ve been astonished at the sheer number of people who are interested in what we have to say, especially during the past few years. People (a) really do come to the meetings; they (b) stay; they (c) join the church; and they (d) are still there a couple of years later.
And here’s the thing: I’m just terrified enough of public speaking that I wouldn’t be holding meetings if it didn’t work. It really is working. If you really drill down into the matter, you’ll discover that almost all of us are in this church because of public preaching and/or Bible studies. If you were born into the movement, someone upstream from you came in the same way we all do.
But then we find Noah’s story, which suggests that even if it wasn’t working, we’d have to do it anyway. Ask yourself: Would he have been sinning if he had refused to keep going in the face of poor results?
It raises an important question: Why would God push Noah into an uncomfortable arena when it wasn’t going to work? (At least not by our metrics.) Perhaps there’s something more than conversions and baptisms at play with the act of public preaching.
There’s More to the Story
There’s a fascinating story in the book of Job that’s worth studying:
“Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came among them. And the Lord said to Satan, ‘From where have you come?’ Satan answered the Lord and said, ‘From going to and fro on the earth, and from walking up and down on it’ ” (Job 1:6, 7).
It’s not as if Satan were telling God that he’d been out for a stroll: the foot was a symbol of ownership. If you could walk on something freely, you probably owned it. You might remember that God told Abraham to “walk through the length and the breadth of the land, for I will give it to you” (Gen. 13:17). It was a symbolic act, pointing forward to the moment Abraham’s descendants would lay claim to the land of Canaan.
You’ll also remember that when Christ returns, we are caught up to meet Him in the air; His feet don’t actually touch the ground (1 Thess. 4:17). We are taken back to heaven, where we participate in the work of judgment. After everything is settled, Jesus, as the Son of man, is declared the rightful owner of this world (Dan. 7:14; Rev. 11:15). Then He returns to this earth, where His foot touches the Mount of Olives (Zech. 14:4).
The foot symbolizes ownership. Satan was essentially telling God, “You know that planet with all those people made in Your image? Yeah, I own that now. I’ve been out taking a stroll on my property.”
Perhaps there are more results to public preaching than baptismal numbers.
God’s response is important to note:
“And the Lord said to Satan, ‘Have you considered my servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, who fears God and turns away from evil?’ Then Satan answered the Lord and said, ‘Does Job fear God for no reason?’ ” (Job 1:8, 9).
“Not so fast, Satan; you don’t own it all. Have you noticed my servant Job? He’s still with Me.”
Perhaps there are more results to public preaching than baptismal numbers. Perhaps something happens in the great controversy when we preach God’s last-day message to a dying world. After all, if you and I are faithful, and the message goes out as planned, nobody will be able to say that they didn’t know. All the way to the finish line, God can point to a people who did not cede heart territory to Lucifer.
If the whole world should go dark with evil, would it matter in the greater scheme of things that a few pinpricks of brilliant light could still be seen piercing the murk? Of course it would. It’s the same sentiment you find in the American national anthem, which describes the joy of finding something symbolic remaining after a brutal night of warfare:
“And the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.”
From the moment we were escorted out of Eden, a portion of the human race has chosen to cling to the promise of deliverance through Messiah, the seed of the woman who was to come and crush the devil’s head. Through the worst moments history has had to offer God’s people, they continued to fly the bloodstained banner of Christ. Noah and his family stood alone, waving the flag—and it meant something.
You and I have more to look forward to than Noah did: Revelation reveals that we can expect a world of flag wavers illuminating the world with the hope of Christ. Even if we should stop seeing so-called numerical results (and that has absolutely not happened), we would still be called to carry the standard.
It’s a radical display of free will gone right. The decision we made to separate ourselves from God? It now flows in the opposite direction, choosing allegiance to God instead, and defeating Satan’s accusations that God is arbitrary or severe. “Nobody would ever choose You of their own free will!” the serpent sneers.
“Those people there?” God replies with a smile. “They want Me to come back and set up a kingdom—and I intend to respond.”
[*] All Scripture quotations are taken from the English Standard Version.
