NOAH'S ARK

ARK-BAPTISM THAT SAVES

450' long

75' wide

45' high

95,700 sq. ' w/ 3 decks

1,396,000 cubic '

Gross tonage of 13,960

For never having rained up to this point, the building of the Ark took intelligence beyond the minds of our day. Noah followed the plans of the Lord as he labored. This took constant conversation with the Architect of the Ark. To make that voyage through a storm that engulfed the whole earth took a vessel that only God could envision.

Man is too busy denying that flood while they pump fossil fuels daily into their gas tanks. This vessel was large enough to comfortably house all the animals He supernaturally brought to the door of the vessel. The only ones He couldn’t bring to the door was man who had freedom of his will (which like men today was enslaved to the thinking of Satan). Free by their own sowwerful definition and that mindset is still active today. May they figure it out before the door closes one more time.

Baptism that Saves

1 Pet. 3:21 “The like figure whereunto even baptism doth also now save us (not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God,) by the resurrection of Jesus Christ.”

Peter gives the context for this statement by taking the reader back to Gen. 6:1 to the account of Noah to the disobedience of the angels, where people were demon possessed and Noah preached righteousness to these people. Only eight people were spared in the ark. Those eight were saved "through" the water in the sense that they were saved from the deadly moral and spiritual pollution that had engulfed the world after the demonic invasion. The waters lifted up their ark of safety, even as the same waters destroyed their old world and old lives. Thus both the flood, with its ark of safety, and baptism, with its emergence from the waters of "burial" are "like figures" of the wonderful reality of the death and resurrection of Christ, as well as the death to sin and the new life of the believer.

Baptism in and of itself would at most be only a bath for washing off the filth of the flesh, but, it becomes "the answer of [or, better, "appeal for"] a good conscience toward God" (see also Heb. 9:14) when experienced as a testimony of one's saving faith in the atoning death and justifying resurrection of the Lord Jesus secured forever by Christ's resurrection.