In the last message we saw that Noah and the people with him in the ark passed through the flood waters. As we have seen, passing through the water was a type of the baptism in the New Testament. After the flood, the ark rested upon the mountains of Ararat (Gen. 8:4). That also was a sign, a type, a shadow of the resurrection of Christ. According to the Bible, the ark was a type of Christ. The ark passing through water signifies Christ passing through the death waters under God's judgment. When the ark rested upon the mountains, it signified that Christ was resurrected out of the death waters.
The Bible is marvelous. Genesis 8:4 says that the ark rested upon the mountains of Ararat on the seventeenth day of the seventh month. If you read the Bible carefully along with history and the best lexicons, you will find that, at the time of the Passover in Egypt, the seventh month was changed to the first (Exo. 12:2). The Jews have two kinds of calendars, the civil calendar and the sacred calendar. The civil calendar was the old one, and the sacred calendar was the new one, which began from the first Passover. When God told the Israelites to have the Passover, He told them that that month had to be counted as the first month of the year. In Hebrew the name of that month was Abib (Exo. 13:4), which means sprouting, budding, fresh ears of corn. This signifies that, in the eyes of God, the Passover was counted as a new beginning of life. Why do I point this out? Because the Lord Jesus was crucified on the day of the Passover, on the fourteenth day of the month (Exo. 12:6; John 18:28). According to the sacred calendar, He was crucified in the first month, and according to the civil calendar, He was crucified in the seventh month, the same month as when the ark rested upon the mount. The Lord was crucified on the fourteenth day of that month and was resurrected three days later. Thus, according to the sacred calendar, Christ was resurrected on the seventeenth day of the first month. According to the civil calendar, it was on the seventeenth day of the seventh month, the very day that the ark rested upon the mountains of Ararat. So, in that early type of the ark resting upon the mountain, we were told the exact date of the resurrection of Christ. This is wonderful.
In 1 Peter 3:20-21, Peter connected the resurrection of Christ to the ark. He said that "eight souls, were brought safely through by water: which figure also now saves you, baptism..through the resurrection of Jesus Christ." The figure of baptism also saves us through resurrection. I say once again that the ark resting upon the mountaintop signified Christ's resurrection out from the death waters. The month and day of both were exactly the same.