RUN BEFORE THE RAIN

iUniverse, Inc.

Chapter One

What was that light ahead?

In the calm, warm dawn, Noah was checking on a new litter of bobcats born a few weeks earlier in the foothills above his remote estate when the sound of a rushing wind around a bend in the path caught his attention. He didn't smell smoke, but he could clearly see what looked like a flame through the brush. Rounding the bend, he observed a small tree not more than four or five feet high. It was not glowing, exactly, but radiating, as if every leaf and branch were infused with fire. The flame ascended ten feet into the air, but there was no smoke or heat. Bright flames, but no smoke or heat? Radiating light, but with its green leaves still lifted to catch the morning moisture?

"That is strange," Noah uttered aloud.

Approaching the tree, he felt a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach and his knees gave out under him. This seemed vaguely familiar to him—the brilliant flames rising into the sky, no heat or smoke, green leaves that should have shriveled and fallen off, the sound of a strong wind, but no movement in the trees around him.

When Noah was a child, his grandfather, Methuselah, told him how he would sit beside Adam late into the night to hear what it was like when God spoke to Adam and Eve in the Garden. Noah's great-grandfather, Enoch, related the same captivating experience of when God spoke to him from a flame, but none of these stories prepared Noah for what happened next.

"Noah!"

God spoke his name!

Noah's instant reactions were terror and reverent subjection. He fell to his knees, spread his arms with palms on the ground and lay prostrate with his forehead pressed into the mountain trail.

Noah heard a voice—better yet, he felt a voice—that entered his body from the burning tree. Oddly, though it somehow resembled the intonation of a deep voice, he couldn't distinguish specific words because the sound of rushing wind overpowered his hearing. He tried to concentrate, but the sounds all seemed to run together. He needed to relax, but he couldn't.

Divine instructions—inaudible, but perfectly clear inside his head—came to him in a single thought that flooded his mind and drowned out the sound of the rushing wind. The pulse of information raced from his mind to his heart and into his soul, where he sensed, at first, a profound dread. A vision—again more felt than seen—of what would soon happen to the world and what he should do filled Noah's being and impressed itself upon his memory. Finally, his initial fear was replaced with a calm feeling that all would be well with him and his family.

It was hard to tell how much time passed; it could have been an hour or a second, but Noah's physical sensations slowly returned: the smell of dirt moistened by the morning dew, the feeling of the pebbles pressing against his face, the warm sun on his back. What was this all about? What have I done? he questioned. Noah rose to his feet and brushed the dirt from his hands and tunic. His mind reeled with thoughts of what all this might mean. His breathing and heart rate were back to normal, but he had so many questions.

Then he heard a bird singing nearby. From the middle of the path he saw a sparrow perched on the branch in front of him, chirping a beautiful melody. It was as if this little creature knew that God had been there and was naturally lifting his song in praise of his Creator.

Noah cautiously approached the tree. The sparrow flew off to sing in the distance as he stretched out his hand to confirm that the tree was real. The heart-shaped leaves were warm in the sunlight, still moist with the last remnants of morning dew. They had the scent of a plant's natural freshness and held no odor of smoke. Had he been seeing things? Was this real? How could a tree look like it was burning with flames reaching into the sky and yet not be consumed?

On his way back home, Noah forgot about the litter of bobcats he had come to check on and stopped several times in mid-trail to think. The experience was so dreamlike and the message from God so fantastic that he doubted anyone would believe him. He sat on a rock by a stream that flowed from the hillside to rehearse what he would tell his wife, Miriam, and his father when he returned home. If what God said to him was real, then this supernatural event would change their lives forever.

Noah's training as an objective scientist led him to carefully outline God's message and reason through each part, but he was having difficulty fully understanding it. God was angry with mankind—that much was clear. Yes, they had obeyed God's early command to multiply and fill the earth with millions of inhabitants. But over the centuries, mankind had grown profoundly evil. Some of this was due to the influence of the appearance of Anakim giants, but it was sin within the heart of each person that caused him or her to act upon every wicked impulse with unrestrained violence. God was grieved in His heart by this rampant, worldwide sin. He was determined to destroy every creature on the face of the earth and start over. Noah had no trouble understanding that part because the trend in the past few centuries was undeniable.

But the fact that Noah and his family had been singled out as the sole recipients of God's saving grace was too astonishing to handle in his mind. This unmerited favor was not due to their "goodness," but it was because God's future plan for the world's redemption involved repopulating the planet from one family. Noah didn't understand it, but his faith compelled him to accept it.

The final part of what Noah "heard" was what caused his inner turmoil. He and his family were told to build a ship—a giant boat that God had called an "ark"—that would be their home while God destroyed the rest of the planet in a global flood of water. God's specifications for the ark were brief, but they described a vessel of immense proportions to protect them during the global deluge. Male and female of every kind of animal on Earth were to be his passengers during the flood. In Noah's mind, this made for an impossible journey, but he knew that it would happen in the next one hundred and twenty years. God had made a covenant promise with Noah to bring it about exactly as He said.

Noah felt a little better after he reasoned this through, but he was no less settled about what lay ahead for him and his family. He had no idea where to start, so he began his walk back home to talk it over with his wife and father.

* * *

By the early Earth's timetable, Noah was a middle-aged man of almost five hundred years, showing evidence of slowly advancing age: thinning hair and streaks of gray in what was once a red beard, wrinkles around the eyes, and the usual aches and pains on damp mornings. But Noah spent most of his days outdoors, and his tall, muscular frame was otherwise in good shape. He was a typical specimen of vitality for this era. His wife, Miriam, was also from the line of Adam's son Seth, whose descendants were called Sethians. Rather than fair-skinned and blue-eyed like Noah, she had almond skin, brown eyes, and glistening, black hair. The significant difference in appearance was not unusual; the Sethian family line had always exhibited a diversity of colors, shapes, and sizes. In the beginning, their race was commanded by God to multiply and spread over the earth, and that they did....