A Glimpse of Coming Disaster
Genesis 6
There has been a tremendous attack on the biblical account of Noah and the Flood in Genesis 6. It has been called a myth, just a local flood in the Mesopotamian region, etc. But why? Why all the concern. To put it simply if it is true, and it is, than God is real and real serious about sin and holiness. That God’s wrath will be poured out in the last days just like it was here. If this world destruction really happened with water, then the prophesy of God destroying our present world with fire will come true to. It also means God has the fortitude to pull the trigger. God’s love will not override his Holiness and make his wrath of none affect. God will end our present world. Genesis 6 and 7 clearly record a global flood that God brought upon the earth as an act of judgment against men’s rebellion and sin. Let’s look at it.
I What are the Questions Surrounding the Flood story ?
A. Was it just a local Flood or a global Flood?
Many people even Christians have bought the lie of a local flood. In a Nazarene Sunday School book they told of this find to support a local flood. We try to make God more believable by minimizing his activities to what we can prove and understand. A discovery of a layer of mud by archaeologists in the middle East, and more recently the finding of evidence for a local flood in the Black Sea have both been claimed as evidence for a (local) biblical flood.
Biblical Evidence for a global Flood
1. The Need for an Ark-
If flood was local, just walk to the other side of the mountains and escape. Like Abe did the famine. Or Lot fleeing Sodom and Gomorrah.
2. The Need for animals on the ark
There would have been other animals to reproduce those kinds if they all died in a local area, or they could have fled to non flooded area.
3. Jesus believed everyone on the planet outside the ark died. Matthew 24:37-39
4. The waters were above the mountains .
Genesis 7:20 said 20ft above the mountains. Water seeks its own level. It could not rise to cover the local mountains and leave the rest of the world untouched.
5. The Duration of the Flood- 1 year and 10 days.(Gen. 7:11, 8:14)
-It was more than 7 months before the tops of any mountains became visible. How could you drift around that long in a local flood without seeing any mountains.
6. God’s Promise Broken?
If the flood local, God would have repeatedly broken his promise never to send such a flood again. There have been huge local floods in recent times. Bangladesh, for example, were 80% of that country was flooded.
B. How could Noah get all the kinds of animals on the ark?
Ken Ham questioned. Noah couldn’t have got all those animals on the ark. How many animals would he need? I don’t know. How big was the ark? I don’t know. You don’t know how many animals he needed or how big the ark was, but your sure they wouldn’t fit.
Worse Question. How did Moses get all those animals on the ark?
Two books discuss this in detail. The Genesis Flood, and John Woodmorappe’s books Noah’s Ark: A Feasibility Study. Seven years of Study.
Question One: “How many Types of Animals did Noah need to take? (Gen.6:19-20; 7:2-3)
No sea creatures, Only air breathing, land dwelling animals, creeping things, and birds.
“Kind” doesn’t not mean every single species of animal we see today.
Frank Lewis Marsh- 500 varieties of the sweet pea have been developed from a single type since 1700. Over 200 distinct varieties of dogs, as different from each other as the dachshund and the collie, have developed from a very few wild dogs. (Or two created ones.).
In the field of zoology a very good illustration of descent with variation is furnished by the domestic pigeon. The diversity in form and temperament to be found among strains of pigeons would stagger our belief in their common origin if we did not know that they have all been developed from the wild rock pigeon of European coasts, Columbia livia. (Answers -McDowell)
We know horses, donkeys, zebras, came from one source.
Dogs, wolves, coyotes, and jackals came from a common canine (dog-like) kind.
Woodmorappe tallied 8,000 kinds and 8,000 probably extinct to get 16,000.
Question Two: “Was the Ark large enough to carry all the necessary types of animals?
1. Dinosaur- 668 supposed types only 106 weighed more than ten tons fully grown, probably only 50 actual different kinds. The Bible doesn’t say they were full grown. To reproduce probably young.
2. It may be surprising, but the median size of all animals on the ark would most likely that of a small rat, according to Woodmorappe, while only 11 % would have been much larger than a sheep.
4. Noah didn’t have to round them up, God brought them to the ark. “Shall come unto you” 6:20
4. The Size of the Ark: 450 x 75 x 45 or 1.52 million cubic feet. To put in perspective the equivalent volume of 522 standard railroad stock cars, each one can hold 240 sheep. The 16,000 animals would occupy 14.4 stock cars. Even a million incests would only need another 12 cars. Leaving 5 trains of 99 cars for food, family and people. There was room for more people. Noah preached and God made room. But they didn’t come.
C. Where did all the Water come from? And go to?
1. From Above the earth and below the earth 7:11-12
2. Even secular geologists observe, it does appear that the continents were at one time “together” and not separated by the vast oceans of today. (Psalms 104 may refer to this)
II What is the Evidence for a world wide Flood?
A. Historical Record from other cultures
Do you know that archeologists have discovered 250 different flood legends from 250 different ancient cultures.
b. There are 33 primary ancient cultures that have been discovered:
• 33 of 33 have a flood tradition.
• 31 of 33 have a common tradition that the flood was globally destructive.
• 32 of 33 say man was somehow divinely saved in the flood.
• 30 of 33 say there was some kind of special provision made for the animals.
• 25 of 33 describe an ark or boat landing on top of a mountain.
• 29 of 33 describe a bird being sent from the boat to find land.
• 30 of 33 describe a colored arch as a symbol of divine favor.
NOTE: Isn’t it interesting that today the rainbow is used as the universal symbol of gay activism. How perverse we have become. We not only have sunken into moral debauchery, we actually flaunt it in God’s face, using the symbol of his holy covenant as a symbol for mankind’s sin.
• 31 of 33 say the first thing the people did when they landed on dry ground is to worship God...(I SHOULD THINK SO!!)
There are two laws or principles of historical analysis that I think we need to recognize at this point:
(1) It is commonly understood that if isolated people groups have the same tradition in their stories, this reflects a common ancestry.
(2)It is commonly understood that when widely separated people groups have the same tradition in their stories it must reflect some historical occurrence.
d. This is why I say there is strong HISTORICAL evidence supporting the event of a global flood as described in the Bible.
(Information above taken from tape series, Somebody’s Trying To Make A Monkey Out Of You)
B. Strong GEOLOGICAL evidence supporting the flood.
Again, take a look at such geological evidences as the Grand Canyon. Scientist tell us it took billions and billions of years to form under the erosion effects of the Colorado River.
• But did you know that the top of the Grand Canyon is higher in elevation than where the Colorado River begins (above Granby, Colorado)? Hmmm...That means the Colorado River must have had to flow “UP-HILL” for several million years before it could erode away a ditch deep enough to allow it to start flowing down-hill.
• The fact is, the Grand Canyon could have literally been formed in a matter of days under the astronomical hydraulic pressure that had to accompany the run-off of a global flood.
C. Billions of dead things buried in rock layers, laid down by water all over the earth. (Fossil Record)
Approximately 75% of the earth’s crust is sedimentary rock. These layers of sand, soil and material–mostly laid down by water–were once soft like mud, but now hardened like stone. Buried in these sedimentary layers are billions of dead things (fossils of plants and animals) buried very, very quickly. The evidence all over the earth is staring everyone in the face.
Picture -Fish
Picture- How fossils form
This is how you get snails and fish fossils on top of some of the world’s highest mountains.
Mount Ararat, 17,000 feet in the air has produced Marine Fossils, Mt Everest
also, In the Himalayas, 20,000 feet in the air, marine fossils have been
discovered.
D. Maybe the Ark still on Mt Ararat (modern day Turkey) Today(around 4,500 - 5,000 years ago)
III What Does the Flood Story Mean to Us Today?
The Coming judgement of Fire is likened unto the formal judgement of water in Noah’s flood. in
2 Peter 3.
3 First of all, you must understand that in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires. 4 They will say, "Where is this ’coming’ he promised? Ever since our fathers died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation." 5 But they deliberately forget that long ago by God’s word the heavens existed and the earth was formed out of water and by water. 6 By these waters also the world of that time was deluged and destroyed. 7 By the same word the present heavens and earth are reserved for fire, being kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men.
Jesus compared the suddenness of his coming to Noah’s Flood in Matthew 24:37-39.
37 As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. 38 For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; 39 and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. 40 Two men will be in the field; one will be taken and the other left. 41 Two women will be grinding with a hand mill; one will be taken and the other left. 42 "Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come.
RELEVANCE TO US TODAY
On one occasion Jesus said, ’As the days of Noah were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be’ (Matthew 24:37). As we have seen, the days of Noah involved four types of iniquity: great wickedness, evil imaginations, violence and corruption, and these things have all become a way of life in the 1990s. When people are taught from kindergarten to adulthood through every branch of the media and the education system that the world made itself (and thus God is unnecessary or does not exist), and that they are nothing more than evolved animals, it is not surprising that they give themselves over to these sorts of behaviour. As a result, the Ten Commandments have become the ’ten suggestions’, chastity is regarded as ’neurotic inhibition’, immorality has become ’the new morality’, perversion is ’an alternative life style’, and the only absolute left in society is that there are no absolutes.
Violence and immorality, rather than being abhorrent in society, have become the subject of entertainment. Some films today portray more than 100 acts of violence per hour. And it seems that few films can be made these days without showing specific acts of adultery or fornication. It has become ’old-fashioned’ to speak out against this, so it is little wonder that this celluloid action is emulated in real life, as happened when a film dealing with gang violence, called Boyz N the Hood opened in 800 cinemas across the USA in 1991. One man was killed and 20 other moviegoers were shot, stabbed or beaten up in a wave of copy-cat audience violence which erupted in cinemas, drive-ins, and car parks.
The warnings given to Noah’s generation are terrifyingly relevant today. When God’s mercy is rejected, then His judgment must and will fall. But, as in the days of Noah, so now God has both given warning of the judgment to come and provided a way of salvation. The Ark was the only refuge from divine judgment then and it had to be entered by faith.
Jesus is like the Ark in Noah’s Day. He is the one and only way to escape the wrath of God being poured out upon the earth. If you turn your back on the world and come into Christ, you will be saved. If not you will perish. The Door will be shut and you will be left outside where there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth. Jesus said I am the door.
-credit to Answers in Genesis for much material
