Chapter 1
Mount Ararat
The first mountain of note is the Mount of Ararat. This mountain is forever made sacred from the fact that after God had destroyed a world of God-forgetters and grace-rejecters, that after the world had been lost sight of for a year, the hills and mountains crawled out from under the flood like a lizard crawling out from under the leaves and old chestnut logs.
In the dawning of the spring of the year, how natural it is for a boy to go out into the woods and watch the lizards crawl out from under the leaves and crawl up on the old chestnut logs and sun themselves in the air; and just now we look and behold the mountain of Ararat is crawling out from under the awful flood that has swept the face of the earth, and behold, the Ark of God is just now floating that way, and, to our surprise, she rests on the top of the mountain, and Noah sends out a dove; she returns and he waits seven days and sends her out the second time, and behold, she returns with the olive leaf in her mouth. He waits seven days longer and sends her the third time, and behold, she returns not to him. He waits seven days and removes the covering of the Ark and the earth is dry, and he and his family and all of his flocks and herds come forth from the Ark.
And now Noah builds an altar and offers up a sacrifice to the Lord, and the Lord accepts his offering, and while Noah is holding the service, the beautiful rainbow appears, and God speaks to Noah and tells him that the rainbow in the cloud shall be His everlasting covenant; and it is not only between Noah and the Lord, but it is an everlasting covenant between God and this world. Every time we see the beautiful bow, we know that God will not destroy this world with water again.
We see by the flood that this old world has been baptized with water once, and everything that has been added to the earth from creation’s morn till that day was destroyed in the flood. But the curse of the earth, for man’s sake, was not removed, for after the flood the earth brought forth briers and thorns and reptiles and sickness and death.
But by and by, we are to have another baptism poured out on this old earth, and the next one is by fire, and not only that which was added to the earth is to be removed, but the very curse of the earth is to be burned out, and we are to look for a new heaven and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.
We see the same kind of a family coming out of the Ark that went into the Ark. We see that the stay in the Ark did not change the nature of the families that went into it, and in a short time after the flood we see the human family as far from God as they were when the Flood came.
Just so we have seen men powerfully converted and then baptized with water and it looked like for a few days that they were all right and did not need the other baptism. But they had not run long till they woke up to the fact that they were in need of the second blessing as bad as this old earth needs it. By and by we get them into a red-hot holiness meeting and get them baptized with the Holy Ghost and fire and get them established.
We find that the man that built the Ark got into trouble before he got off to the upper world. He was a great man, but he needed something else to establish him, and that is what we call the last baptism. This old world has been baptized once with water and must be baptized again with fire.
The man on the road to heaven is a man that has been born twice; he has been born of the flesh and also born of the Spirit, and he has been baptized with water, and he has been baptized with the Holy Ghost. You see two births and two baptisms, and the longer you look the plainer it gets to you. Well, amen! We have been accused of preaching the second blessing from all the Bible, and thank God we are guilty and don’t deny the charge at all. Well amen and glory!
Another beautiful thing about the Mount of Worship is this: The lamb that Noah used in the offering was a beautiful type of the Blessed Christ. The lamb was put to death and then burnt on the altar. It was not blessed and turned loose, but it was blessed and then brought forth and the animal life was killed out of the lamb, then put on the altar. The fire was turned loose on the lamb and in the next moment the blue smoke was ascending to the clouds.
The Book says that God smelled a sweet savor going up to heaven, and He was pleased with Noah and his offering and blessed him and gave him and his sons the whole world to take possession of, and to repeople it and start the race again. That looked like a great undertaking, but the Lord was with them and blessed them and told them to be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth. Today we look out on the teeming millions of Noah’s race; he is today the grandfather of all the human family, and that makes him sure enough a grand dad. Just look at the family as it goes by and you will wonder where they all come from, and then you will remember that they all come from Noah, for he is the father of the living now, and his children have multiplied on the face of the earth until there are millions of them.
One of his last acts was to get drunk, and his grandsons are still keeping up the record of their grandfather
While we see the holy Mount of Worship and the Ark, which represents the everlasting covenant of the Lord to His people, and the bleeding lamb, which was the type of Christ, we also see the man on the drunk and his grandsons following in the footsteps of their grandfather.
Today tens of thousands of our fellow-countrymen have forgotten the holy mountain and the bleeding lamb and the Ark of the covenant and have lost sight of everything but the wine that made the man drunk and robbed him of his honor and of his manhood, and they follow him day by day.