The Global Flood | Noah

The great flood of Noah is one of those events of history that has come under more scrutiny and attack than any other. It was the only time in the history of the world where God has judged the entire world because of mankind’s sin, so it is obvious that people want to dismiss it.

The flood divides the world into an old pre-flood world and a new world (2 Pet 3:5-7). The earth and the whole environment were radically changed and given a complete makeover. For instance, people were living for many hundreds of years before the flood, but after the flood the life expectancy was greatly (See chart). The earth’s surface was also given a complete makeover. We have many features on the earth that give evidence of powerful water action, like the sedimentary rock layers and the well-preserved fossils.

As man’s greatest endeavour is to suppress the knowledge of God and do away with the Biblical record, we now have a world at large completely dismissing the global flood. Many will tell us it was a localised event that happened in a smaller area, one that is not much different to any local flood today.

This has been very prevalent in the church as people have wittingly or unwittingly given in to the pressures of the world to dismiss the Biblical record and embrace the ever-changing fields of study called "science". They have let go of the core foundations of the faith and have gone over to speculations and theories that are normally presented as fact, at least by the media. (See Scientist's admissions)

Now to be clear, not all sciences are equal. Many fields of science are observable and testable where experiments can be repeated and always produce the same results. Then there are sciences that try to piece together events that happened in history. The past cannot be repeated or subjected to laboratory tests so various theories are put forward that are subjective to a particular world-view. This is not the case with the Bible. The Bible contains the written record, given by God, of events that happened in the past. There is no need to go digging in the earth or peering into outer space to try work it out. There is no labour involved, only faith or belief is needed (Heb 11:3, 7). The same would apply to any other extra-biblical historians that recorded events from the past. The Christian faith is not some kind of blind faith. It is faith and belief in events that took place on the concrete plain of history.

Whenever one wants to build a house or a building or some structure you will always want to make sure you are building it on a firm solid foundation. What would you think of a builder who tells you that the foundations don't matter if the house looks pretty and nice? The same goes for the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Many in our day are doing extraordinary things with the Bible that makes you wonder why they still carry it under their arm. They love suggesting that the early foundational chapters of the book of Genesis are not important to our faith. We are told that all we need is to believe certain things about Jesus and then all will be well.

The problem with this idea is that it won’t be long before the words of Jesus and the apostles start driving you back to the foundations in the early chapters of Genesis. The history is all connected and interrelated. This is when the cracks in the wall start appearing as you are tossed back and forth on the ocean of doubt and unbelief. You will hear the world shouting one thing and the Bible saying another. You will start to wonder where the anchor is as you are buffeted by the waves crashing against you.

That man or woman in your church or home group may seem nice and loving as they feed you with doubt on all their evolutionary ideas. They will appear to be wise and scientific as they whisper in your ear that the flood of Noah was a local event, but when you go to the Bible you will hear God repeating a covenant with Noah and the whole world. The covenant was that He will never again send floodwaters to destroy all life upon the earth. (In fact, every time we see a rainbow in the clouds, we are to remember that God has made an oath or covenant with the world). You then turn on the news and see yet another large and destructive flood that has happened somewhere in the world. A conflict begins to rise in your mind as to whether the Bible is trustworthy.

As this point Satan has you exactly where he wants you. A mild panic comes over you as you rush to the pastor to find some kind of clarity on the issue, only to find him humming and harring around all your questions. The walls of your faith now develop large cracks as anxiety and doubt fills your mind. The devil is way down the road to sifting you like chaff from the wheat. He is there like a roaring lion ready to pounce and devour. He is longing to rip you to shreds. Your faith in the Scriptures is too fragile and weak to resist him or to stand against him in any way. You quickly find that your brothers are not there to help you because they too have been devoured and overcome by the philosophies of the world. They are flabby and weak and unable to lift a hand to help you. They are tied up in all sorts of self-induced theological contradictions.

You then go home with a depressed and hollow feeling inside of you. Thoughts begin to bombard your mind: "Surely the pastor must know the truth of what the Scriptures teach. After all, he has a PHD in theology". So, you rush home and open the Bible, but find that the words and context say something different to what the learned doctor was suggesting. Thoughts start pressing in on the mind that Bible is not to be trusted because God makes promises to Noah and his posterity and then doesn't keep them. Doubt upon doubt starts rising in the mind. Why does the the Bible say things like "never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life" (Gen 9:11-16) and then the pastor tells me it was a local flood and there is no way Noah could have possibly got all the animals onto that ark? Does "all life" really mean what it says? The Bible says the waters covered "all the high mountains under the entire heavens" (Gen 7:18-24), but now I am being told it could not have happened because how can it possible for Mt Everest to be covered with water? They say the mountain has been there for many millions of years. Is the "millions of years" true or did the flood change the landscape?

You then search around the internet to try find some clarity, only to find that many believe in changing the meanings of words. If you asked people nowadays what the word "woman" means you may be surprised. We also see that "marriage" has taken on a different meaning and application. Yes, the order, beauty and perfection that God established in the opening chapters of Genesis is being profaned on a wide scale. The next global judgment will be a judgment of fire, but who can blame or bring any charges against God when humans behave with such evil and malice. Sin never remains a private thing. It moves out into society and corrupts everything, even down to changing the meaning of words.

The changing of the meaning of words has become so bad that a person may refer to themselves as "they", which means there are many of them. Just look at how people have been banging on the word "day" in the first chapter of Genesis, trying to force it into every shape and form imaginable. The problem with a normal 24-hour day is that it doesn't fit in so well with the theory of evolution. Rather than being honest and saying they don't believe what is written, people try to change the meaning of words. They have been hammering at it for many decades; but the word still remains; it still stands as a literal day, and it is stilled believed as such. Having the words "evening" and "morning" prefixed to "day" doesn’t seem to make the slightest difference to people. Then we have the literal six days repeated to Moses in the law (Exod 20:11, 31:17). If the Israelites interpreted "day" to mean an extended period they would have been in serious trouble for breaking the Sabbath. The accuracy and meaning of words in the law were a matter of life and death. Today many have gone even further in saying that the early chapters of Genesis are just a myth or allegory or poetry or a "theological piece", whatever that means. They are not shy or ashamed to dismiss the whole historical account outright. The clear and pure waters of Scripture are muddied and made undrinkable. The same goes for Noah's flood. The normal meaning of words are changed to fit in with modern-day philosophies about the past. You will find people meticulously abiding by every copyright law when dealing with another persons work, but when it comes to God’s work and His revelation; well, that’s another story.

So then, man is not a logical creature. He is driven by very powerful internal forces or lusts that override all common sense and logic. These forces or lusts are at their strongest with intellectual pride and arrogance. Wasn’t it the intellectual pride of the Scribes and Pharisees that ended up sending Jesus to the cross? They hated the fact that He was acting independently of them and hadn’t been through their training schools. They hated the fact that Jesus was correcting their false interpretations of Scripture. They were most unhappy with this carpenter from Nazareth who was excelling them at every turn. And to make matters worse He was doing it with such simplicity and power, making them look like old rigid and long-buried fossils.