The Fiery Wrath of God

                                  Genesis 8:20-21

In Noah's day, the entire human race had become wicked and violent. The only righteous persons left in the earth were Noah and his family who walked with God and had found grace in God's sight. Genesis 6:8-10 (KJB). God, who is pure and holy, cannot abide evil. God knows that evil must be utterly destroyed. God decided to destroy the entire human race in a world-wide flood except for Noah and his family, but it greatly grieved Him to do so because every evil human also had a good and living nature that God had created and loved. Genesis 1:26-27 (KJB). But they all had allowed their evil natures to dominate their good natures to the extent that their good natures no longer had any effect on their lives. Genesis 6:5-7; Romans 1:18-32 (KJB). God delights in destroying evil itself, but God became grieved because He had to destroy the good natures of those evil humans along with their evil natures. God could not separate their good natures from their evil natures because their good natures had become stained with evil, and they all had refused to repent of that fact.

God had given the sin offering to Adam and Eve and all of humanity to symbolize God's salvation from sin and evil through the shed blood of the coming Messiah, and Noah and his family still practiced that sacrifice. Genesis 3:20-21 (KJB). But the rest of humanity had lost all outward faith in God because of their evil, but their suppressed good and living natures still retained that faith in a latent form. When God destroyed this evil, human race, they all descended into the cursed regions of death within the ground, and that fact greatly grieved God because all of their suppressed good and living natures were in danger of being lost from God's Love forever. Genesis 3:17; Genesis 3:20 (KJB).

God knew that He had used His fiery wrath against evil to dissolve Lucifer's being after he had rebelled in order to separate from him and recover all of the good elements that God had put into his system so that God could exile his totally evil and empty nature to earth. Ezekiel 28:13-19 (KJB). God can never lose anything He has ever created because of His Almighty Love. Ecclesiastes 3:14; Psalm 111:7-8; I Corinthians 13:8 (KJB). But God cannot save from eternal death any of His living humans until they all return to faith in His power and self-sacrifice that is needed to save them. God also knew that only some of the descendants of Noah would ever come to faith in the shed blood of the Messiah that would forever save them from sin, evil, and eternal death. This meant that God had to devise a plan whereby He could use His fiery wrath against evil to dissolve the beings of every human who would not become saved by His grace, but He would also need to return them all to faith in His power to save them.

So God gave to Noah the burnt offering sacrifice to symbolize the fact that God intends to save all of His living humans not already saved by grace from sin, evil, and eternal death by His use of His fiery wrath against evil. God would send His Son to  preach to all of His living humans whom He destroyed in the flood about His sacrifice for them and His fiery salvation that will return them all to faith in His power to save them. I Peter 3:18-22 (KJB). John the Baptist taught that Jesus would save not only by a baptism with His Spirit, but He would also save by a baptism with His fire. Luke 3:16-17; I Peter 3:21 (KJB).

God had Noah to sacrifice clean animals in the burnt sacrifice to symbolize the fact that God will save all of His living humans that He will cleanse by His use of His fiery wrath against evil. That caused God to smell a sweet odor. God removed the curse of the ground from humanity which meant that God will save all of His living humans from the regions of death. God will save all of His living humans confined to the regions of death despite the evil that they have practiced because God will burn all of their dead and evil natures with His fiery wrath when they all return to faith in Him as their Savior. The burnt offering symbolized that God will never again "smite" any of His living humans whom He loves. The Hebrew word for "smite" means to kill. Christ will effect His burnt offering salvation for all of His living humans confined to the regions of death when He appears to them near the end of the world and causes them all to repent and return to the faith that He put into them when He created them. Revelation 5:11-14; I Corinthians 3:11-15; Matthew 13:36-43; II Peter 3:9-13 (KJB).