ALIVE: Chapter 24 Circle Back to Meaning -Rainbow's End
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And so the story of the most alive man of his time, Noah, comes to end. The rainbow that God places in the sky is to remind Himself and humankind that no matter how filled with evil the world becomes, He will not ever again destroy life... by water.
Because the earth endured only one death and rebirth (i.e. baptism) by flood, so too a person must only be baptized once. Jesus Christ mandated one baptism to place each of us, one at a time, in Noah's ark of salvation. He said, "Unless a person be born of water and the spirit (s)he cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven." The spirit of mercy that the olive branch proclaimed after the ordeal, is poured over humankind through the ages.
When using the word 'salvation', let's keep in mind the image of Noah's ark tossed around a storm-swept sea surrounded by the drowned and drowning, to be clear of what we mean.
Baptism recreates the primal condition of water and darkness that preceded creation. The earth's baptism by flood, and the person's baptism by water equally lead to rebirths, necessary rebirths. A person must be born again, because the earth was born again. The second birth is the validated birth. In the Gospel of John, it is written, "but to as many as receive Christ He gives the right to become children of God who are born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but [of the will] of God." God willed the rebirth of His creation, and He wills the rebirth of every human into a being who will never die.
During the devastating flood, bodiless God saw the carnage and felt remorse. Was that the moment He decided to take on flesh, so He could experience for Himself the pain and suffering He had inflicted on His human creation? Was it during the deadly devastating flood that God decided that rather than destroy life, He must destroy death?
God had suffered the knowledge of evil and wickedness long enough, the reason for His decision to obliterate it on the earth, but seeing death on such a grand scale He understood as never before what a tragedy is death, and how essential it was to destroy it once and for all.
Having reversed Creation by rejoining the waters above the firmament with the waters below the firmament, His sorrowful desire was to rejoin Himself with fallen humanity. He wanted to be made in human image and likeness. Full circle. Only then, thought God, could He go to the receptacle of death, Hades, and annihilate it.
The roadmap to Golgotha was drawn during the flood. There would after that be the third and final Creation, which will last forever. As we leave Noah, let's not ever drift too far from what this experience taught us. To do so would be to be a helium balloon released from the hand of God and going nowhere.