The Lasting Noahic Covenant
When God gave Noah this promise, the world had just been through the devastating cataclysm that flooded the entire globe and destroyed all except those on Noah’s Ark. The world was fearful and barren and there seemed nothing to prevent another such flood from coming on the earth.
Nevertheless, God’s promise—not only to Noah but also to the animals (Genesis 9:9-10)—has been kept for years. God later reminded Job of this promise when He told him that He had “shut up the sea with doors. . . . And said, Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further: and here shall thy proud waves be stayed” (Job 38:8, 11). The psalmist also referred to this covenant. When the whole earth had been covered “with the deep as with a garment: the waters stood above the mountains. At thy rebuke they fled. . . . Thou hast set a bound that they may not pass over; that they turn not again to cover the earth” (Psalm 104:6-7, 9).
God has kept His Word, and there has never been another worldwide flood. Sadly, however, many modern compromising Christian theologians and scientists have said that the Flood must have been only a local or regional flood, in order (they hope) to please the evolutionists, practically all of whom insist that the earth is 4.6 billion years old and never had any global flood.
If that were true, however, then God has broken His promise. There have been numerous local and regional floods in the world since Noah’s day. But God has kept His promise. The Flood indeed was a unique cataclysm in which “the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished” (2 Peter 3:6), and such a flood has never occurred again.
