The Flood That Happened

Critics of the Bible often point to the flood of Noah (Genesis 6-9) and attempt to discredit the account, claiming it could not have been a global event or that it was folklore that was poached from other civilizations.  They often claim the flood narrative is similar to a Mesopotamian myth, portrayed in the “Epic of Gilgamesh” where Gilgamesh travels to the mountains of Mashu in search of the man who brought humanity through the flood and therefore the biblical account was copied.

Many ancient civilizations include a story of a worldwide flood, including the Mesopotamians, Greeks, Egyptians, Chinese, Hindus, Norse, Mayans and the aboriginal tribes in Australia.  Mesopotamian history divides the Sumerian King list into pre-flood and post-flood periods, where pre-flood lifespans are long and post-flood lifespans are much shorter.

Early Jesuit missionaries in China discovered a 4,320 volume work “complied by Imperial Edict” and containing all knowledge.  It states that the earth was shaken on its foundations and the waters in its bosom rushed upwards with violence and overflowed the earth.  Additionally, it says that man had rebelled against the high gods and the system of the universe was in disorder.

Chinese writing, recognized for its ancient beginnings, uses pictographs that remarkably parallel the biblical account of Genesis in its words for boat (vessel, eight, people), create (speak, dust, life, walk, mud), forbidden (two trees, God), garden (dust, breath, two persons, enclosure), tempter (devil, trees, cover), and many more.

All these similarities are too incontrovertible to be coincidence.  While they demonstrate the likelihood of some degree of literary dependency or commonality, they do not reflect the notion that the biblical account is downstream from these other narratives, but simply different recollections of the same event.

The flood was a cataclysmic disaster of epic proportions.  Around 2300 BC not only did it rain, but water exploded out of the depths of the earth from the “springs of the great deep.”  Genesis 7:11 tells us, “In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, on the seventeenth day of the second month – on that day all the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened.  And rain fell on the earth forty days and forty nights.”

The earth was rocked by a giant earthquake deep on what is now the ocean floor that propelled water, mud and rocks skyward.  As the rain began to pour down, the water, mud and rocks returned to earth burying all life with it (with the exception of some marine life and the passengers on the ark).  The continents formed as the land masses rapidly split apart, pushing up the mountains in the process.  The Mid – Oceanic Ridge that encircles the globe like a baseball seam is evidence of this catastrophe.

On the floor of the Atlantic Ocean lies the Mid – Atlantic Ridge.  It is part of the Mid – Oceanic Ridge and traces the shape of the continents on either side of the Atlantic, from Greenland clear down to the southern tip of South America.  This explains why the continents of North and South America appear as if they were once joined with Europe and Africa with Antarctica, India and Australia neatly nestled up against Africa’s horn, Madagascar and Cape Agulhas – because they were.  However, this fact when explained by the theory of continental drift, grossly underestimates the forces that were at play in order for this to occur and is in fact a misnomer that surmises a slow and gradual process. In reality, this unfolded in a much shorter timeframe.

The sheer violence of the energy released when the springs of the great deep burst forth sent the land masses on either side sliding away from each other with unimaginable force.  As the continents were pushed apart further, the missing weight above the fracture lines enabled the pressure below them to push up the rupture path and form the Mid – Oceanic Ridge.  This in turn increased the slope the continents were slipping along, adding to the speed of separation.  The friction below the continental plates generated enough heat to melt solid rock, which in turn crumpled and pushed up when it encountered enough resistance to overcome the compressive strength of the rock making up the plates. This entire process took only months and not the millions of years implied by continental drift theorists.

Evidence can be seen in mountain ranges of pushed up and bent sedimentary layers of rock.  In order to bend and form the often wavy lines of strata layers, the rock had to be soft in order to compress.  The resulting mountain ranges we see today are all perpendicular to the direction they were moving (example – the Rocky Mountains run north and south) when they were formed and contain fossils of marine life at high elevations.

Contrary to evolutionary theory, the geological column does not represent a chronological record of the evolution of species but rather constitutes empirical evidence of a global flood with millions of animals buried under mountains of mud and sediments.  Since fossils are preserved without decay, they must have been buried almost instantaneously and could not have formed over millions of years as paleontologists would have us believe.

Different types of creatures are found at different levels, not because of timing but because of the density of their carcasses relative to the sediments they are buried in.  Smaller animals with higher densities per square unit of surface area are found deeper than large animals with greater surface area and less density per square unit of that surface area.

Furthermore, the earth’s climate drastically changed after the flood.  What was once a semi tropical paradise, became an environment of extremes, with the poles freezing and greater heat intensity concentrated along the equator.  Fossilized ferns and temperate plant species discovered in Siberia and the Arctic as well as evidence of a once forested Greenland point to a much warmer and hospitable global climate.

This was the result of the newly formed mountain ranges, higher elevation of the continents, lower sea levels, the shifted axis of the earth and the amount of water now on the surface.  Volcanic activity had left the sky clouded with smoke, higher land elevations dictated colder temperatures and the oceans, still warm with subterranean water and residual friction heat, had high evaporation rates, clouding the sky further.  Much of the moisture in the air fell as snow, covering the land surfaces with thick layers of snow, thereby reflecting the sun’s rays and adding to the cooling effect.  This resulted in the freezing of the poles, the formation of glaciers and the ice age.

Since then, the earth has been gradually warming, as the sun thaws the permafrost and melts glaciers.  The decomposition of plant material close to the surface which did not fossilize or petrify has given off vast amounts of methane and carbon dioxide, which once in the atmosphere, hold heat near to the surface of the earth.  What modern scientists today blame on industrialization and man’s impact on the climate is actually global warming that has been going on since the ice age caused by the flood.

Frozen mammoths have been thawing and have been discovered in Siberia since the 1600’s and each year new discoveries are made as the permafrost recedes further.  In the summer of 2018 Russian scientists unearthed a foal that had been buried and frozen in the permafrost in the Batagai Depression in Siberia.  The young horse is from the Lenskaya or Lena horse species which is now extinct and was around two moths old when it died.  The pristinely preserved foal was buried at a level of 100 feet, with no damage to it’s carcass and with even it’s hair in near perfect condition.  It is highly probable that this colt was rapidly buried in the early stages of the flood of Noah.

Many more amazing discoveries along with a fascinating, detailed and comprehensive analyses of Noah’s flood and why the earth cannot be older than the Bible testifies can be found in my book Truth Cries Out.  Empirical evidence confirms the biblical account of not only the flood of Noah but of the historicity of the Bible.  Ongoing archeological finds in the middle east continue to confirm that the Bible is a historical document and combined with literary evidence compiled by the early Christian writers and non-biblical historians, the conclusive authenticity of these ancient manuscripts leave no doubt that the Bible is not only trustworthy, it is truth.

Other worldviews cannot refute the Bible, nor do they offer plausible alternatives to its claims.  Noah’s flood is just one example of how the Bible stands up to scrutiny and has proven to be a reliable historical document that when held to the same standards as other ancient writings can easily be considered the most authenticated literary compilation known to man.