One story that raises much embarrassment for many modern Christians is the story of Noah’s Ark in Genesis. Comedians, such as Ricky Gervais, have ruthlessly mocked this story due to the laughability of attempting to squeeze 8 million animal species onto a wooden boat. How did they fit? Why didn’t they all eat each other? How did Noah cope with the animal waste? etc. To deal with these issues, many modern Christians have concluded the story was meant to be interpreted in a mythological way and now treat it as a great bedtime story for kids, but not one that adults should ever take seriously. Interestingly, non-believers at the time of Jesus took this stance as Peter tells us: ‘in the last days scoffers will come…they will say, “Where is this ‘coming’ [the Messiah] promised? Ever since our ancestors died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation.” But they deliberately forget that long ago by God’s word the heavens came into being and the earth was formed out of water and by water. By these waters also the world of that time was deluged and destroyed.’ [4] Noah’s Ark, therefore, has always been a story that people have been tempted to treat as make-believe but the danger with that approach is you may become lax about the upcoming Final Judgement if you think God never truly carried out the first judgement in any literal sense. And not only is it a dangerous gamble to ignore its warnings, there is clear evidence to be found in the rock layers on this planet that attest to a turbulent period in Earth’s history which fits a global flood model, which I will outline below.
Another theological issue with treating Noah’s Ark as nothing more than a children’s fairytale is that Jesus spoke about Noah’s Ark as a real life historical event in Matthew’s Gospel. When Jesus’ disciples asked Him about the end of the world and signs of His second coming, He replied to their questioning by stating: “as it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. 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.”[1] Jesus’ Second Coming will usher in the Final Judgement upon this Earth in a similar vein to the First Judgement which we read about in Genesis. The only difference is that whereas the first judgement was carried out by water, the second and final judgement will be carried out by fire as we read about in 2 Peter: “By these waters also the world of that time was deluged and destroyed. By the same word the present heavens and earth are reserved for fire”[3]. After Noah’s Ark, God promised to never again flood the entire Earth. I find it interesting then that the final Judgement refers to “fire” being the tool used to bring judgement and cleanse the Earth, coinciding with us living in a climate crisis that is heating up the planet and making huge wildfires ever more of a threat.
200 Ancient Flood Myths from Around the World
However, if you are not a Christian, you are hardly going to be convinced to take the Flood Story seriously as a real historical event in our recent past just because Jesus claimed it happened and also one of His disciples. Another line of argument that might help you to reconsider your position, however, is the sheer quantity of Global Flood Stories from all across the planet that share many remarkable similarities. There are over 200 myths from all over the world about a major Flood. Here is a brief snapshot of some of the accounts:
HAWAII - A man named Nu-u made a great canoe with a house on it and filled it with animals. In this story, the waters came up over all the earth and killed all the people; only Nu-u and his family were saved.
CHINA - This legend explains that the flood was caused by an argument between a crab and a bird. Fuhi, his wife, three sons, and three daughters escaped a great flood and were the only people alive on earth. After the great flood, they repopulated the world.
GREECE - There is more than one Greek flood myth, but the one that most likely corresponds to Noah’s Flood is about Deucalion who is told to build a chest to survive a flood. Some men on high mountains also survive, though.
AMERICAN PLAINS - Giants on the earth offended their creator, Ti-ra-wa, so he drowned them in a flood. Then he made the first man and woman, who became the ancestors of the Pawnee people.
PERU - The creator, Viracocha, sent a flood to destroy the unruly giants he had made. Only two giants survived in a boat, which landed at Tiahuanaco. The creator then made animals to fill the earth, and he made people from clay.
HUDSON BAY - One of the gods became angry at the giants and decided to drown them in a flood. But he warned a man to build a large canoe. The man sent out an otter, who retrieved dirt from which the man remade the earth.
TANZANIA - God told two men to take seeds and animals onto a boat so they could survive a mountain-covering flood. These men sent out a dove and then a hawk to see if the earth had dried up.
AKKADIA - Angry over human noise, the gods decided to flood the earth. But the kind goddess Ea warned Utnapishtim to build a cube-shaped ark to save his family and animals from the worldwide flood.
WESTERN AUSTRALIA - Gajara and his family survived a worldwide flood on a raft. He then sent birds to see if the waters had receded. Pleased by the smell of cooking kangaroo, the god Ngadja placed a rainbow in the sky to stop the rain clouds.
The oldest known recording of a global flood is the Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh from the eighteenth century BC, which critics claim Moses must have plagiarised from for his version in Genesis. But remember that being dated older than Moses’s writings only confirms that the tablet was written earlier, not that its contents are original or correct. Secular critics claim the Babylonian version is the source of the Genesis text, yet the former is full of myth and embellishment, whereas Genesis is simple and is written in a historical style. There is a “directionality” to myth; it goes in one direction. That direction is from simple accounts to embellished legends. Historical accounts may give rise to legends, but legends do not give rise to history. This points to Genesis as containing the original, authentic version and the epic a later derivative.
So, why are these accounts so similar? I would argue that the Genesis account recounts a historical event, which left eight surviving humans. Noah’s descendants initially stayed together until God confused their languages at Babel and they scattered. As the various people groups spread around the globe, the story of the Flood was shared, until it became distorted and embedded in their respective histories. You may not agree with my claim yet, so below I will outline the key pieces of evidence that we have access to today to verify this position.
Evidence for a worldwide flood happening in our recent past:
Secular Scientists propose that there is one time in Earth’s history when the world was completely covered in water. This is found at the base of the fossil record in the Hadean period. Interestingly, this rock layer is actually missing from Earth, but we know it did exist in the past because we find this rock layer on our moon. How is it possible for an entire rock layer to be missing? The secular theory is that the Hadean period, occurring 4 to 4.6 billion years ago, lacks a rock record primarily due to the harsh conditions of the early Earth. The Earth was largely molten, subjected to extreme radiation, and experienced significant geological upheaval and volcanic activity. The theory is that the Hadean rock layer on Earth melted into Earth’s mantle and new land formed afterwards. This all happened during a cataclysmic meteorite shower that pummelled the Earth and the moon. There are many deep craters on the moon today, so we know this meteorite attack occurred and it must also have hit the Earth. All in all, there is one time when the Earth was completely underwater - was this, therefore, the time of Noah’s flood, rather than it being inaccurately dated as occuring before life evolved? This would mean that the rock layers that formed after this event, which we have access to today, were brand new land mass. The record of the first Earth, from Creation until the Flood had been decimated, and the fossils trapped in the new layers, were laid quickly and catastrophically from mass movement of sediment. This testifies to a mass global extinction event that took over a year to subside, as Genesis tells us.
I appreciate, this is a wild theory if all you have ever accepted is old ages for the universe and life beginning as bacteria slowly evolving over billions of years. Just hang in there a little longer and consider the evidence below…
Fossils of animal tracks and fossils of animals midway through a meal have been discovered. The image here is of a fish swallowing a smaller fish as it was rapidly buried allowing for fossilation to occur. These samples defy the logic that fossils have formed gradually and slowly over millions of years. The best-fit conclusion is that they were buried rapidly by massive amounts of sedimentation during a global catastrophe. The fossils of animal tracks would have disappeared and their bodies would have decomposed long before they could be fossilised slowly. Therefore all the fossils we have today have been buried rapidly. The Bible outlines a famous global catastrophe that occurred rapidly and we also find this story referred to in 200 flood stories from many cultures around the world.
There are vast graveyards of animal remains that are found throughout the world. Ongoing excavations in the Gobi Desert tell of one such sight where twenty-five theropod dinosaurs have been discovered along with 200 skulls of mammals. There is no evidence of the several million year evolutionary gap or of the iridium boundary that is thought to delineate when the dinosaurs became extinct. In Alberta, Canada there is a huge graveyard that stretches for hundreds of miles and holds innumerable dinosaurs bones. In Agate Springs, Nebraska a fossil graveyard of around 9,000 animals was found buried in alluvial deposits. The remains of hundreds of rhinos, three-toed horses, camels, giant wild boars, birds, plants, trees, sea shells and fish are mixed and intermingled in great confusion. Fossil graveyards are important evidence for the global flood for a number of reasons: 1) they demonstrate rapid burial in massive proportions, 2) they demonstrate unusual sediment conditions not found today, 3) they demonstrate a wide variety of creatures preserved in communities, 4) they regularly mix marine and terrestrial creatures, 5) they are found at all levels of the fossil record all over the world.
There are several places in the Grand Canyon (and many other rock formations across the globe, like this image from Israel) where sediment layers are found that have been folded without cracking the rock, indicating the layers had to be folded while the sediments were still soft or pliable. Hardened rock layers are brittle. Try bending a slab of concrete sometime to see what happens! But, if concrete is still wet, it can easily be shaped and molded before the cement sets. The same principle applies to sedimentary rock layers. Folds like these show that the folding had to happen soon after deposition, indicating that the deposition and the upheaval responsible for the folding were, in fact, one event.
A secular interpretation of these folds is that they happen slowly over a long period of time under much heat and pressure. Secular scientists argue that the rock layers in the Grand Canyon were supposedly deposited over a period lasting from 520 to 250 million years ago. Then, amazingly, this whole sequence of layers rose over a mile, around 60 million years ago. The plateau through which the Grand Canyon runs is now 7,000–8,000 feet above sea level. Think about it. They are claiming that the time between the first deposits at Grand Canyon (520 million years ago) and their bending (60 million years ago) was 460 million years! It is true – rocks put under enough heat and pressure can be bent. But, before the bending can take place, the physical structure of the rock has to change. These folds in the canyon show no sign of any structural change. Their view requires that the hardened sandstone was made flexible like playdough by pressure and heat and the subsequent earth movements so it would bend smoothly. However, this pressure and heat should have metamorphosed the original sedimentary rock layers, changing the minerals, their crystal shapes, and the rock textures. When Andrew Snelling investigated rock samples from the Grand Canyon[5] to look for changes in the rocks over time, his research could find no evidence for the secular theory and instead found evidence for the rock layers bending over a short period of time (less than a year) after the sand was deposited and hardened soon after the year-long global flood cataclysm.
Radioactive decay of uranium powers plate tectonics and allows dry land to form. The Bible records one distinct time when land mass needed to be built speedily (after Noah's Flood where Genesis records that "the fountains of the great deep were broken up" 7:11). All scientists agree that there is one moment in time when the whole of planet earth was under water - that was during the Hadean Cataclysm when meteorites pummelled the Earth and broke up the crust. Our moon still bears craters from this time and contains rocks from the Hadean period - whereas the earth is missing them. Secular scientists also talk about the Earth forming new land mass with the rise of Pangea, the super continent which broke up to form the continents we know of today. What if this is actually all referring to the same event? I.e. The aftermath of a Global Flood. One way God could form new land mass after the deluge was to drastically speed up the radioactive rates of decay.
Geologists have uncovered a great mystery in granite rocks. They find tiny black circles, known as radiohalos. These are caused by radioactive decay of polonium, but the source has disappeared. Where did it come from, and where did it go? The only answer is a global Flood.
As uranium atoms decay, subatomic alpha particles fly out like bullets, damaging the surrounding material. These bullets produce spherical halos called radiohalos. This happens repeatedly until the atom is stable and no longer decays. The nucleus of the original uranium-238 atom undergoes eight alpha-particle changes until it becomes the stable lead-206 atom. There are eight dark rings that can be seen in radiohalos in granite rocks (like a bulls-eye target). As each of the alphaparticles is “fired” from the nucleus, it has a different energy. Consequently each bullet travels a different distance into the surrounding material before it stops to leave a black mark. The origin of eight-ring radiohalos is not a mystery for geologists. They must have formed from uranium-238 decay. The mystery is the source of the one-ring, two-ring, and three-ring radiohalos that are found in the same rock specimens.
Polonium-218, polonium-214, and polonium-210 generate exactly the right amount of energy to produce the three-ring, two-ring, and one-ring radiohalos. The problem is that polonium is never found alone in rocks. It is a rare, unstable element that appears quickly during the decay of uranium and then decays into stable elements, such as lead. The only possible source of the polonium was the decay of uranium. But we do not find a uranium source at the centre of the one, two, and three ring radiohalos! As the uranium atom’s nucleus becomes progressively smaller, three variations of polonium appear briefly in sequence at the end of the chain.
So, where did the polonium atoms come from? The best possible answer is that the polonium traveled from a nearby source where uranium atoms were decaying. Is there such a nearby uranium source? Absolutely! The same flakes that host the polonium radiohalos usually contain uranium radiohalos, usually less than a fraction of an inch from polonium radiohalos. Under normal conditions, like those we see in the earth today, that migration would be impossible. Polonium-214 atoms decay so quickly they are gone in the blink of an eye. Polonium-218 has a half-life (decay rate) of only 3.1 minutes, while polonium-214 decays in 164 microseconds! By comparison polonium-210 atoms are long-lived, with a half-life of 138 days. What unusual forces could have carried so many atoms away from the uranium source so quickly? Because, in reality, you can’t get Polonium radiohalos in rocks from an original source of Polonium - it would have decayed away too quick before the time taken for the rock to solidify. The Polonium could only have arisen from the uranium decay chain, but how did it get separated from it so quickly to create its own Radiohalos, instead of staying in the 8 ring Uranium to Lead Radiohalos that are common and supposedly take millions of years to form?
A worldwide flood explains the existence of Polonium Radiohalos in granite rocks in a way that old universe models cannot. Uranium-238 is found a short distance away from Polonium Radiohalos. Hot water seeping through the granite during the Flood could easily explain how products of the uranium’s decay could be transported to the site of the Polonium Radiohalos. The rapid formation of polonium radiohalos has astounding implications for earth history and physics[16].
Why did Noah and the animals not perish if such high levels of radiation were occurring on the earth? Water is known to block radiation and the water levels of the flood would have been miles high from where the Ark was located to the Earth's core where the Uranium (and other isotopes) were decaying rapidly. Also, if the population at that time had no radioactive materials in their organic bodies, then they would have been unaffected by the change in decay rates.
Humans/Animals have radioactive materials in our bodies from the food we eat that grows in the ground that consists of decaying isotopes. But pre-Noah, before the land-mass was destroyed, there was possibly no radioactive isotopes decaying, or if they were, they certainly weren't churned up in the ground like today. Maybe this is why Genesis records the first humans having exceptionally long life-spans of up to 950 years! In the first six chapters of Genesis we find records of an Earth that is very different from the climate and atmosphere we know of today. There was no rain on the early Earth, but the ground was watered by fine mists [6]. Even secular scientists argue that the Early Earth’s atmosphere was completely different to what we experience today so you can’t just dismiss these biblical claims as make-believe.
Interestingly, God declares just before the flood in Genesis that humans will no longer live as long and he will limit their days to 120 years. Then the flood happens and afterwards, there is a genealogy recorded of Noah's descendants and their ages start to drop steadily from 500 years for Noah's son, to 403 years for his grandson, all the way to 119 years after a few generations. The change in radiation levels would fit to explain this declining life span.
Scripture indicates that much of the water for the Flood came from the “fountains of the great deep.” The deep or great deep refers to the ocean. The bursting open of the fountains of the great deep implies the ocean rose up and covered the land or that oceanic or subterranean sources of water burst forth onto the land. Monumental geological and hydrological activity occurred early in the Flood. Gigantic earthquakes could have caused large cracks or rifts in the earth’s crust, explosively releasing subterranean water and triggering volcanic activity. It appears that at the end of the Flood the world was covered by huge volumes of volcanic ash and gas that had spewed into the atmosphere. The abundant ash and gas trapped in the stratosphere would act as an “anti-greenhouse”. Instead of warming the earth, it would reflect sunlight back into space and cool it. Scientists recognise that volcanic dust and gas can substantially cool the earth. The eruption of Mount St. Helens in Washington in May of 1980 caused a dark “dry fog” to spread from Oregon into central Montana. The darkness lasted for two days. Volcanic ash and gases from the Flood would probably take at least three years to fall out. Three years would be enough time to start an Ice Age. The eruptions would need to continue for many years after the Flood to sustain it. Secular Geologists recognize that there was extensive volcanic activity during the Ice Age. Therefore, the Global Flood can explain the extensive Ice Age that is well documented to have occurred in Earth’s past. I would argue it happened more recently than the secular dating.
Conclusion
My thesis on Noah’s Ark, which is controversial even in modern Christian circles, is that God sent the global flood to bring judgement on man’s wickedness: “the LORD saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time.”[2] AND God also sent it to cleanse the Earth from the polluting effects of fallen angels that had meddled with the DNA of human females to create the Nephilim[7].
The Bible refers to these Nephilim as the “heroes of old” and I would argue these hybrid creatures gave rise to the ancient myths about giants which permeate every culture throughout time. In the book of Enoch it states that these fallen angels did not only pollute the descendants of humans but “they began to sin against birds, and against animals, and against reptiles, and against fish” (Verse 7.5) I find it interesting that Dinosaurs are being reclassified by secular scientists as monstrous chickens![8] They certainly are fearsome looking creatures with their claws, teeth and brute strength. The land versions seem like a hybrid between reptiles and birds and the sea-faring ones seem a hybrid of reptiles and fish - sounds a lot like the quote from Enoch above!
I would propose that dinosaurs were not part of the original creatures that God made during Creation week. Instead, they became a prolific abomination on the early Earth that posed a danger to every other living thing. God acted to cleanse humanity from sin but also purify animal lines by commanding Noah to take two of every animal on board the ark for preservation of their DNA. God, interestingly, sent the animals to Noah (Noah didn’t have to round them up himself) which could imply that God dictated which animals were to be considered pure and which should perish. This gave rise to a global reset for the Earth to be decontaminated from the influence of the fallen angels. Many Christians ignore the Book of Enoch because it is not part of the biblical canon, but Jude quotes from it in his small letter in the New Testament. Jude was a brother of a Jesus and it seems plausible that if Jude was familiar with this text and read from it then maybe Jesus did too.
To overcome the issue of how all the animals fit onto the ark, well it would seem plausible that there were a lot less species on the early Earth. God created individual kinds from different families that were coded with complex DNA that could micro-ally evolve to adapt to new environments. The mass evolution we see today is what occurred after the global flood from original kinds.
Secular science will tell you that there have been a minimum of five major mass extinction events to hit planet Earth over time. Many Christians happily go a long with this assumption but it has serious theological consequences for the believer. Why would God tell us in such detail about just one mass extinction in the Bible and not document the other four? What kind of capricious God creates so many creatures before humans even make it onto the scene, just to let them be wiped out again and again and again? Did the animals sin? What was the purpose for so many extinction events? Why send Jesus, as God in the flesh, to save humanity if we are an afterthought who arrive so late and in the meantime God is watching millennia of pain and suffering tick by for the animal kingdom before human sin was a reality?
I would propose that the five mass extinction events should be conflated to just one - Noah’s Flood - over a period of a year that led to the Earth reforming (Pangea) and the population recovering over that time frame. The animals that were due to be wiped out to cleanse the Earth from fallen angel influence became extinct as a consequence of this event. Then God promised to never flood the Earth again. Instead, the Bible talks about one final judgement coming which will similarly impact the whole world but this time it will change everything. “The heavens will recede like a scroll being rolled up, and every mountain and island will be removed from its place.”[9] If you don’t believe that the first judgement happened, then how will you ever be prepared for the final one which we will all face? Likewise, if you believe that there have been multiple extinction events then this throws the whole Bible into doubt and paints God in a malicious light. Of all the prophecies in the Bible that predict the future, two-thirds of them were fulfilled at Jesus’ first coming. That means there are a third of the prophecies still to be fulfilled up to His second coming. I plead with you to read them, study them and get ready!
References
[1] Matthew 24:37-38
[2] Genesis 6:5
[3] 2 Peter 3:5-7
[4] 2 Peter 3:5
[6] Genesis 2:5-6
[7] Genesis 6:4
[9] Revelation 6:14
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