ay had come, the last hour, the last minute, ay!
the last second. God Almighty came down and shut the door of that ark.
No angel, no man, but God Himself shut that door, and when once the
master of the house has risen and shut to the door, the doom of the
world is sealed; and the doom of that old world was forever sealed.
The sun had gone down upon the glory of that old world for the last
time. You can hear away off in the distance the mutterings of the
storm. You can hear the thunder rolling. The lightning begins to
flash, and the old world reels. The storm bursts upon them, and that
old ark of Noah's would have been worth more than the whole world to
them.

I want to say to any scoffer who reads this, that you can laugh at the
Bible, you can scoff at your mother's God, you can laugh at ministers
and Christians, but the hour is coming when one promise in that old
Book will be worth more to you than ten thousand worlds like this.

The windows of heaven are opened and the fountains of the great deep
are broken up. The waters come bubbling up, and the sea bursts its
bounds and leaps over its walls. The rivers begin to swell. The people
living in the lowlands flee to the mountains and highlands. They flee
up the hillsides. And there is a wail going up:

"Noah! Noah! Noah! Let us in."

They leave their homes and come to the ark now. They pound on the ark.
Hear them cry:

"Noah! Let us in. Noah! Have mercy on us."

"I am your nephew."

"I am your niece."

"I am your uncle."

Ah, there is a voice inside, saying: "I would like to let you in; but
God has shut the door, and I cannot open it!"

God shut that door! When the door is shut, there is no hope. Their cry
for mercy was too late; their day of grace was closed. Their last hour
had come. God had plead with them; God had invited them to come in;
but they had mocked at the invitation. They scoffed and ridiculed the
idea of a deluge. Now it is too late.

God did not permit anyone to survive to tell us how they perished.
When Job lost his family, there came a messenger to him: but there
came no messenger from the antediluvians; not even Noah himself could
see the world perish. If he could, he would have seen men and women
and children dashing against that ark; the waves rising higher and
higher, while those outside were perishing, dying in unbelief. Some
think to escape by climbing the trees, and think the storm will soon
go down; but it rains on, day and night,