Daily Devotional

While there are many counterfeits of faith in the world, there is a genuine faith, and it is this faith which works by love and purifies the soul. God in his providence set forth Noah as a representative of what true faith would do. The Lord designed that Noah in his life and character should present before the antediluvian world a marked example of the results of believing the word of God.

Noah did not walk in sparks of his own kindling. He obtained all his discernment, all his power, all his strength, from the source of all light; for he held communion with God. It was because he had faith in God, because he was a man of prayer, that he was a man of power. He kindled his taper at the divine altar, that he might be a light to the world. He had a message intrusted to him from God. In his day there was so fearful a departure from God and his ways that hatred of God's law, contempt of truth and righteousness, was well nigh world-wide.

The wickedness of men was very great, yet there was hope for them if they would turn from their wickedness, and the Lord made Noah his messenger to proclaim to the inhabitants of the Old World their sins, and to set before them wherein they had provoked the wrath of God. He told them what God proposed to do in the world. He declared to them the word of God. "And the Lord said, My Spirit shall not always strive with man; for that he also is flesh. Yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years. . . . And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart. . . . But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord."