“Make for yourself an ark of gopher wood; you shall make the ark and shall cover it inside and out with pitch”

Genesis 6:14

Was Noah’s Flood Real?

by Mark Karapetyan

The story of Noah and the Great Flood is one of the most famous from the Bible. However, today, it is considered as “fictional” by skeptics and even many Christians. Unfortunately, like other Biblical accounts, it is taken as a mere ‘fairy tale’. It is unbelievable that even some Christian pastors ridicule the flood story. Disbelief in the Great Flood has become so entrenched that many ostensibly Christian colleges don’t teach it. However, Jesus taught the Flood was real history, as real as His future second coming when He said: “Just as it was in the days of Noah, so also will it be in the days of the Son of Man. People were eating, drinking, marrying and being given in marriage up to the day Noah entered the Ark. Then the Flood came and destroyed them all.” (Luke 17:26–27)

When the Bible refers to a worldwide flood, that’s exactly what it means. Not local, not metaphorical, not a man-made story.

The worldwide catastrophic flood recorded in the book of Genesis, was a real event that affected real people. In fact, those people carried the knowledge of the event with them when they spread to the ends of the earth.

What physical evidence can we look at today to see that the entire world was covered by water? Let’s look at some that would appear to have been left by the catastrophic flood.

Ancient Cultures

One big clue is the massive amounts of flood myths that exist in every culture today. It does not matter if they are close to the Biblical account or not, they do not have to be, the fact that they exist shows that Noah’s flood took place. (It would be a very high coincidence for 148+/- civilizations to all have one flood in their history which they created a myth for, dating far back into time. Since they do, these flood myths also provide evidence for the scattering from Babel). There are hundreds of stories and legends about a worldwide flood. Why do diverse cultures share a strikingly similar story? Stories about a worldwide flood are found in historic records all over the world. For example, a flood story in China, records that “Fuhi”, his wife, three sons, and three daughters escaped a great flood and were the only people alive on earth. Another flood story in Hawaii, records that “Nu-u” and his family escaped a global flood by building a great canoe and filling it with animals. Only he and his family were left alive.

Mesopotamians, Egyptians, and Greeks, all report a flood in primordial times. A Sumerian king list from 2100 BC is divided into two categories: Those kings who ruled before a great flood, and those who ruled after it. One of the earliest examples of Sumero-Akkadian-Babylonian literature, the Gilgamesh Epic, describes a great flood sent as punishment by the gods, with humanity saved only when the pious Utnapishtim (AKA, “the Mesopotamian Noah”) builds a ship and saves the animal world thereon. A later Greek counterpart, the story of Deucalion and Phyrra, tells of a couple who survived a great flood sent by an angry Zeus. Taking refuge atop Mount Parnassus (AKA, “the Greek Ararat”), they supposedly repopulated the earth by heaving stones behind them that sprang into human beings. [1] The overwhelming consistency amongst these traditions indicates that they have derived from the same origin.

Geology

Another piece of evidence is geological. Ninety percent of the earth’s surface is covered by sedimentary rock. This is the type of rock that is formed by water. Sandstone, limestone, conglomerates, etc. are all present in very large quantities on the surface. When we build a new road through the mountains, cut clefts, and expose rock layers, most often they are sedimentary. This type of rock is so common that it is very likely that most people have never seen any other type of rock. Now the skeptics say that some of these rocks could not be formed in a flood, but they still say that water was necessary, and during the flood, we had plenty of water.

Evolutionary theory posits that the layers of fossil bearing sediment took millions of years to accumulate. However, there is no evidence of the erosion that would have taken place if it had actually taken that long to form the layers. Once again, the evidence points to these layers being laid down rapidly in a very short amount of time. [2]

In addition, volcanoes around the world give evidence of the flood. The “fountains of the great deep” were broken open. This would have caused vast exposures of the interior layers of the earth to the surface, hence giving great amounts of volcanic activity. The earth is ringed by active volcanoes even today — giving the evidence of a very dynamic disturbance on the surface of the earth — the flood. [3]

The Black Sea

The Black Sea, located in South-eastern Europe is famous for its concentrated salt level, but scientists are now claiming that it was once a freshwater lake before an enormous flood deluged it. Robert Ballard, one of the best known underwater archaeologists who in 1985, using a robotic submersible with a remote-controlled camera found the famous shipwreck of the titanic, probed the depths of the Black Sea near the cost of modern-day Turkey looking for traces of an ancient civilizations that dates back to the times of Noah. “We went in there to look for the flood,” he said. “Not just a slow-moving, advancing rise of sea level, but a really big flood that then stayed… The land that went under stayed under.”

According to Ballard, some 12,000 years ago, much of the Earth’s surface was covered in ice. “Where I live in Connecticut was ice a mile above my house, all the way back to the North Pole, about 15 million kilometers, that’s a big ice-cube,” he said in an interview with ABC news. “But then it started to melt. We’re talking about the floods of our living history,” he added. According to Ballard, after the water from the glaciers started melting, it rushed into the world’s ocean causing huge, catastrophic flood around the world. “The question is, was there a mother of all floods,” Ballard said.

Doing what he and his team to best, Ballard and the crew went diving, and there, four hundred feet below the surface, they encountered an ancient shoreline, which is the ultimate proof that Ballard’s theory was correct, a catastrophic event did happen in the distant past in the Black Sea.

Ballard even established a timeline of the events by carbonating shells found along the ancient coastline. Ballard estimates that around 5,000 BC the catastrophic flood occurred, a date that according to many scholars is the date when Noah’s historic flood took place. [4]

Fossil Graveyards

Massive graveyards of thousands and even millions of fish, dinosaurs, and mammals are seen in North America, Europe, and Africa.  The same is true of plants.   From Utah-Colorado north to Alberta-Saskatchewan, Canada, thousands of dinosaurs are found in certain beds such as the Morrison Formation.  Dinosaur National Monument in Utah has a visitor’s display where numerous dinosaurs are exposed.  Agate Fossil Beds National Monument is a good place to see numerous fossil mammals jumbled together.  Other parts of the world also illustrate fossil graveyards.  The city of Cincinnati, Ohio sits on top of a great mass of sea animals (Figure 4).  The Messel site near Frankfort, Germany, is also a most unusual collection of animals and plants.  These two sites along with others mentioned above reveal the following information:  1. the burial of great quantities of animals together.  2.  Rapid burial and excellent preservation.  3. The presence of species now limited to different continents.  4.  The position of mammals that suggest death by drowning.  Geological processes as seen in the modern world cannot account for such unusual conditions.  A world-wide catastrophe involving water is the easiest explanation. [5]

Of these layers, there are large amounts which show evidence indicating that the rock layers were still wet when deposited. Rocks do not bend; they shatter and break because they are hard. Yet, in whole sequences of rock strata, we find bends without any fractures indicating that the rocks folded and rippled as if they were wet and pliable before setting as hard rock. This is best demonstrated by the Tapeats Sandstone in Grand Canyon which is folded at a right angle without any evidence of breaking. [6]

The Grand Canyon

Many beds, such as the Redwall of the Grand Canyon, can be traced for thousands of miles. The Redwall or its equivalent extends north all the way to Canada, east to Niagara Falls in New York, and south to Mammoth Caves in Kentucky.   An equivalent is even found on the top of Mt. Everest, the world’s highest mountain.  Also, evidence of such widespread water is thin bands of clay called tonsteins that appear in or between coal seams.  Some of these one or two-inch laminations spread across thousands of square miles in Europe.  Such massive and far-reaching beds require continent-wide, if not worldwide, flooding.  The current direction indicators in the Redwall and similar beds, show a generally East to West movement of water.  Modern rivers and seas produce currents in various directions depending on the topography of the country.  Coal is composed of buried plant material that has been subjected to heat, pressure and chemical action.  Some coal beds can be very thick.  In the United States and Canada, there are beds that are over 100 ft. thick.  Some coal seams in Europe and Australia are several hundred feet thick.  Geologists claim that coal is produced from buried marshes and peat bogs.  Since it takes several feet of peat to be compressed into one foot of coal, seams of coal several hundred feet thick would require peat bogs over a thousand feet thick.  No peat bogs of such depths are found in the modern world.  Therefore such thick coal seams require conditions in the past that are not happening in the present world.  Some coal seams in the eastern United States can be traced north and south for hundreds of miles.  Such geographical extend and such thickness, require massive water movements on a very large scale.  A world-wide flood as described in Genesis would be expected to lay down sediments over very broad geographical areas and that is what we see in the geological record.  [7]

The Coconino Sandstone of the Grand Canyon grains have washed and eroded from as far north as Wyoming. The Navajo Sandstones in Zion National Park, those huge white cliffs.  The same grains have washed and eroded from the Appalachians, all the way across North America.

Sedimentary Deposition

The walls of the Grand Canyon from the bottom to the top, supposed to be representing 300 million years of slow and gradual sedimentary deposition. When the plateau was pushed up, during the flood, those rock layers were bent and folded… WITHOUT FRACTURING! This means they had to be soft.  If they had been hard, they would have been fractured. That means that they could have only just have been deposited… which means the supposedly three hundred million years never happened. Those rock layers must have been rapidly deposited in quick succession during the global flood.  Limestone layers in the Grand Canyon are full of fossils. The same limestone is found in Pennsylvania, in exactly the same position, and in England and the Himalayas. Then there are the chalk beds, like the white cliffs of Dover, Europe, Middle East, Kazakhstan, Texas and Western Australia etc. These are all similar chalk beds with the same fossils.[8]  Many sedimentary layers can be traced over hundreds of thousands of square miles. On the other hand, river deltas, which are the most significant example of sedimentation we see today, are only a tiny fraction of that area. Liquefaction during a global flood accounts for the vast lateral expanses of layers.

Was the Flood Local or Global?

Many Christians think that the Great Flood was not global, but local to a specific region.

I believe that the flood was global as the Bible says and here’s why:

1.  If the flood was local, why didn’t God command Noah to simply move to another region or location that was dry?

2.  If the flood was local, why did Noah and his family stay inside the ark for over a year and not just forty days? Remember, for four months, the dove could not find a place to land.

3.  If the flood was local, why did God send the animals to the Ark to escape death?

4.  If the Flood was local, how could the waters rise to 15 cubits (8 meters) above the mountains  (Genesis 7:20)? Water seeks its own level. It couldn’t rise to cover the local mountains while leaving the rest of the world untouched.

5.   If the Flood was local, God would have repeatedly broken His promise never to send such a flood again. (There have been thousands of floods since Noah’s time).

6.  If the flood was local, why were the tops of all high mountains covered with water at least 20 feet for five months?  (Genesis 7:19-20)

7.  If the flood was local, why was the ark very large?  It took Noah over a hundred years to build it.  Why didn’t he just build a small boat for himself, his family and some of the animals?

8.  If the flood was local, why did all the people and animals die?  Also, how did the creatures on dry land die?

 

Conclusion

The departure from God and abandoning what is right in exchange for the lust of the world was the reason for the Great Flood.  God condemned man to the same destruction that they had already chosen for their souls.  As God watched man race toward complete moral bankruptcy (much like us in America and the rest of the world), and in spite of continual warnings, He executed His judgment.  Make no mistake, judgment on sin will come, and the wicked will indeed be destroyed in the end.

Similarly, America and every other sinful nation on earth will be blind-sided by God’s judgment.  If God judged and destroyed the entire world population except for Noah and his family that were saved, why should God overlook America? If God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, why should He spare America?  America is simply sliding deeper down the spiral of sin and destruction. We are deceived if we buy into the misguided approach of many who believe that God will just simply overlook bringing judgment again on every nation.  We will pay for turning our backs on God.  We will pay for kicking God out of schools, governments, homes, and our lives.  If God doesn’t judge America, He will have to apologize to the people that died in the Great Flood.

Remember, there will be a price to pay when God abandons a nation …

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“If My people, which are called by My Name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear From Heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land”

 

2 Chronicles 7:14

 

 

 

The 4000-year-old clay tablet containing the story of the Ark and the flood stands on display at the British Museum in London during the launch of the book ‘The Ark Before Noah’ by Irving Finkel, curator in charge of cuneiform clay tablets at the British Museum. (AP Photo/Sang Tan)

 

 

[1] CRI.org/Equip.org

[2] Whatchristianswanttoknow.com/Evidence for the flood of Noah

[3] Gospelgazette.com. David Everson/Physical evidence for the flood.

[4] http://www.ancient-code.com/ Underwater archaeologist claims there is evidence that Noah’s Biblical Flood actually happened

[5] Bibleinfo.com/Harold Coffin.  Is there evidence that the flood was global

[6] Creationday.com/Scientific evidence for the great flood

[7] Bible7evidence.blogspot.com/The great flood.

[8] Godisreal.today/evidence for the flood