The Rain is Coming

By John E. Thomas

From the beginning God has been building a place of safety for those who are His to live with Him in paradise. Adam and Eve were put in a Garden, enjoying fellowship with God, in a place full of peace, purpose, and pleasure.

A few generations later as wickedness increased on the earth, Noah met with God and was commissioned to build an ark—a place of safety for those who respond to God in faith to escape the judgement coming and live in God’s presence. It took a hundred years for Noah to build this rectangular box of wood that would safeguard them from the flood coming to cleanse unrighteousness from the earth.

Moses rescues a people from slavery and brings them to a mountain where he is told to build an ark, a rectangular box of wood, that would be the center of God’s presence for the community—a sign that God was with them and would save them from the wickedness around them.

When Jesus came, He was the ark of safety from the judgment coming on the world. He was also the ark of God’s presence—Immanuel, God with us, that would be a safeguard from the wickedness of the world. Just as God told Noah that he had been found righteous in his generation and would build an ark to save humanity from the judgement coming, Jesus was found righteous in all generations, and He started building an ark that would save humanity from the judgement that was coming.

This is now the second letter that I am writing to you, beloved. In both of them I am stirring up your sincere mind by way of reminder, that you should remember the predictions of the holy prophets and the commandment of the Lord and Savior through your apostles, knowing this first of all, that scoffers will come in the last days with scoffing, following their own sinful desires. They will say, “Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation.” For they deliberately overlook this fact, that the heavens existed long ago, and the earth was formed out of water and through water by the word of God, and that by means of these the world that then existed was deluged with water and perished. But by the same word the heavens and earth that now exist are stored up for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly.—2 Peter 3:1–7

The ark that Jesus is building is His church—which is His body. The people who trust in Him, obey Him, and together declare His glory “are being built up as a spiritual house” (1 Peter 2:5) where God Himself dwells. “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be His people, and God Himself will be with them as their God” (Rev. 21:3).

God has one plan: a people called out from the world, gathered together as family, built up together as a spiritual house, that reveal His glory and love Him. His plan is the church, not the institution, but the people that don’t belong to this world, the ways of the world with its self-centeredness, but belong to one another in love—love for Him that overflows in love for fellow believers (see 1 John).

It is time to get in the ark. The rain is about to fall and there will be a time that the door is sealed and there will not be another opportunity. Now is the time, today is the day. If you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts!