What kind of God would cover the earth with a flood?

The same God who is ready to forgive sinners.

Here's Nancy Lee DeMoss.

No one had to perish in the flood.

Not one person had to perish.

Every person who died had been given ample, gracious opportunity to repent.

This is the Revive Our Hearts podcast for Thursday, August 6, 2015.

Nancy is giving us a fresh look at a familiar Bible story this week.

She's continuing in the series, Noah and the Flood, the Gospel in the Old Testament.

A hundred years ago, Messina was a prosperous, gorgeous coastal city on the Italian island of Sicily, just off the toe of the boot there.

This city of Messina had a population of about 150,000, but it had become a wicked and irreligious

city.

On Christmas Day of 1908, a local newspaper in Messina published a blasphemous parody against God.

And in that article, they dared God to make himself known by sending an earthquake.

Exactly three days later, December the 28th, 1908 at 5.30 in the morning, a huge earthquake and a massive tidal wave came in an utterly destroyed Messina and dozens

of nearby towns. I've read some different estimates as to the number of deaths that resulted, somewhere

between 80 and 100,000 it appears. It's considered the deadliest earthquake in European history.

Now, as you read about a story like that, where men just defy God and they say, show us that

your God, prove it by an earthquake. Three days later, the earthquake comes and destroys the city.

You ask, was this an act of God that was directly in response to the challenge that was issued in that newspaper?

Well, I want to be quick to say that you and I cannot fathom the heart and the thoughts and the ways of God.

But we do know that there is a God.

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