Why Have I Never Heard This Before?

Genesis 8:21-22

21 And when the Lord smelled the pleasing aroma, the Lord said in his heart, “I will never again curse[a] the ground because of man, for the intention of man's heart is evil from his youth. Neither will I ever again strike down every living creature as I have done. 22 While the earth remains, seed time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.”


I read these verses this morning and it answered a long standing question. Why has God not struck us down AGAIN like he did by the flood? I mean I know he had promised not to destroy the world by flood. But I did not realize he had promised not to destroy the world again, period. I know God has plans for us. I know God is at work and there's a second coming etc. which rules out first being another destruction but for some reason I didn't connect the dots. In my mind there has always been a chance God would wipe us out by fire or plague or something, BUT HE PROMISED not to "strike us down". This is big to me because it accounts for a lot of tolerance and patience on Gods part. I don't know about you but for me, wrapping my mind around Gods character means asking, "what would I do in this situation if I were God?" Obviously this has a lot of room for error in the answer to the question but that being said my answer has, a lot of times, been "wipe 'em out". Never-mind patience! That has to run out sometime. Never-mind tolerance! You can not be tolerant of absolute evil. But if you say you're going to do something or not going to do something (and if you are God) you stick by that promise. What a relief.


I believe a lot of peoples unbelief in God is due to not reading the Bible and understanding it. I clear up a lot of issues I have with God through reading it and through real simple straight forward statements in the Bible that either I never read or never noticed.