“And if any man think that he knoweth any thing, he knoweth nothing yet as he ought to know” (I Corinthians 8:2).

There are many things which none of us can know—not even the Apostle Paul. Yet even with his realistic modesty, there are certain key truths which Paul could affirm with certainty, and so can we, on the same grounds as he.

One essential thing each of us should know, first of all, is this: “I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing” (Romans 7:18). A person needs to know that he is a lost and hopeless sinner before he will ever really come to Christ for salvation.

Once a lost sinner does receive Christ as Savior, however, he then should be able to declare with Paul the certainty of his own salvation. “For I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him against that day” (II Timothy 1:12).

The Christian life, once begun, is not necessarily easy. With Paul, in fact, it involved “labors more abundant, in stripes above measure, in prisons more frequent, . . . In weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness” (II Corinthians 11:23,27). Yet he could say with confidence: “We know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to His purpose” (Romans 8:28).

Because of such an assurance, he could also say: “I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content. I know both how to be abased, and I know how to abound” (Philippians 4:11,12). Whatever life might bring, it could never shake his certainty of the life to come. “For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens”(II Corinthians 5:1). HMM

“For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark, and knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be” (Matthew 24:38,39).

The Lord Jesus Christ not only believed in the special, recent creation of all things by God (note Mark 10:6-8), but also in the worldwide Flood of Noah’s day, including the special preservation of life on the Ark. The Flood in which He believed was obviously not a “local flood,” for He compared it to the worldwide future impact of His second coming.

Neither was it a tranquil flood, nor a selective flood, for Jesus said: “the Flood came, and destroyed them all” (Luke 17:27). It is clear that He was referring to—and that He believed—the Genesis record of the great Flood! There it says that the whole earth was “filled with violence” (Genesis 6:13), having first been filled with people, and that the resulting world-cleansing deluge was so cataclysmic that “every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both man, and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven; and they were destroyed from the earth” (Genesis 7:23). Indeed, “the Flood came and took [literally ‘lifted’] them all away.”

This is what Jesus said, and what He believed, and therefore, those who are truly His disciples must also believe this. The destructive effects of the Flood can still be seen today, not only in the Biblical record, but also in the abundant evidences of cataclysmic destruction in the rocks and fossil graveyards all over the world. To refuse this evidence, as do many modern intellectuals, can only be because they “willingly are ignorant,” as Peter said in referring to this testimony (II Peter 3:5). HMM