This past Friday I taught in the School of the Bible on Final Judgment. Final Judgment is when God had to completely exterminate a culture or people. Though there are only four occasions of it in the entire Bible, they can overshadow the Bible to the point that people are convinced the God of the Old Testament was a monster and had a personality change in the New Testament. I just wanted to give you a snippet showing how, in fact, God was merciful and patient. 
The first example of Final Judgment was the Flood. In children’s books we have these terrible renditions where the animals are cute, and everyone is happy. One day God realizes people are bad, and a week later BOOM! The deluge. Well, that’s not how it went. Methuselah was a walking statement of God’s mercy. His name meant “When I Die The Flood Comes,” so every time someone met him they were given a warning. God had seen that the every person on the earth was so wicked He had to destroy them, but He didn’t want to. He held out as long as He possibly could. We think we have achieved maximum patience when we don’t complain at the DMV. God waited longer than we could imagine. He chose to keep Methuselah alive for 969 years (the oldest recorded human) giving the earth chance after chance after chance to repent. Our God is patient and merciful.
“The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance.” – 2 Peter 3:9
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I plan to upload the audio of my teaching, but for now if you’d like to read more click here.