1 Alderwood Community Church July 15, 2012 The Certainty of God s Judgment Genesis 7:17-24 Intro: Until recently church people scholars, pastors, laymen accepted the Genesis account at face value and believed in what is usually called a universal or worldwide flood as opposed to a merely local one. Today, a number church scholars (including some evangelical ones) have argued that a universal flood cannot be meant by Scripture because of a number of difficulties this interpretation presents. Since the account speaks in universal terms, they believe it is to be interpreted phenomenally, that is, as a description of the flood as it would appear to Noah and the others who went through it. To them it would seem to be universal. They would describe it in this way, but the flood would not necessarily have been a world flood. Read Text: Genesis 6:5-7, 11-13, 17; 7:13-24 1. A global catastrophic flood actually occurred as a result of God s judgment. A. The evidence from scripture. (1) The depth of the flood waters. Gen 6:17, 7:17-20 Verse 19 is important, for in that verse the Hebrew word for all (kol) occurs not once but twice, in what can only be called a near-hebrew superlative. The text says that the floodwaters rose greatly on the earth so that all the high mountains under the entire heavens were covered. That means that the entire earth was covered. (2) The extent of death. Gen. 7:21-23 The word kol (or a variant of kol) occurs six more times in the passage, two of these in verse 22, in each case making the point that all birds, all livestock, all wild animals, and all people died. (3) The duration of the flood. The descent of rain and rise of the waters continued for 40 days, by which time all the mountains of the then-existing earth were covered to a depth of more than twenty feet (Gen. 7:17 20). In all, slightly over a year passed from the time the flood commenced (Gen. 7:11) until the waters had dried up (Gen. 8:14) (375 days). A flood of that duration is not a local flood! No local flood could last that long! As John C. Whitcomb observes, How a flood of such depth and duration could have covered only a limited portion of the earth s surface has never been satisfactorily explained. Henry Morris lists another twenty-six reasons why the Bible is describing a world flood, here are four outstanding ones:
2 (4) The construction, outfitting, and stocking of the ark would have been absurd if the flood were local. The ark was approximately 450 feet long, 75 feet wide, and 45 feet high the dimensions of many modern ocean liners, and was of a size sufficient to accommodate the many thousands of individual animals that the Bible says were in it. What would have been the purpose of a ship like this if the flood affected only the Mesopotamian river valley, as proponents of the local-flood theory maintain? It would have been far more sensible for God simply to have warned Noah to move out of the valley to higher ground, as he later warned Lot and his family to leave Sodom. The birds and animals could also have moved out of the area without having to be stored in the ark for an entire year. (5) After the flood was over God promised never again to destroy the earth by flood (Gen. 8:21 22; 9:11, 15), and this is a false promise if the flood to which it refers was local. There have been many local but terrible floods in earth s history. Many have perished in such floods. If God s promises refer to that kind of flood, they have been broken repeatedly. But this was not the nature of God s promises. They refer to the destruction of all creatures throughout the whole earth and the temporary cessation of the seasons that, God says, will never again occur: Never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done. As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease (Gen. 8:21, 22). This makes sense only if the flood of Noah s day was of worldwide dimensions. (6) In later chapters of Genesis the Bible traces all the peoples of the earth to Noah and his three sons (Gen. 9:18 10:32). The scripture tell us that all the world s people came from him! The sons of Noah who came out of the ark were Shem, Ham and Japheth. (Ham was the father of Canaan.) These were the three sons of Noah, and from them came the people who were scattered over the earth (Gen. 9:18 19). From these the nations spread out over the earth after the flood (Gen. 10:32). (7) Other biblical references to the flood presuppose its universality or at least do not oppose this interpretation. There are quite a few such texts: Job 22:15 16; Isaiah 54:9; Hebrews 11:7; 1 Peter 3:20; 2 Peter 2:5; 3:5 6. Some are quite explicit, as Psalm 104:5 9. He [God] set the earth on its foundations; it can never be moved. You covered it with the deep as with a garment; the waters stood above the mountains. But at your rebuke the waters fled, at the sound of your thunder they took flight; they flowed over the mountains, they went down into the valleys, to the place you assigned for them. You set a boundary they cannot cross; never again will they cover the earth. Psalm 104:5 9 B. The evidence from flood traditions. The Bible s teaching about a worldwide flood seems to be corroborated by flood traditions found among hundreds of widely scattered peoples and cultures of the globe. In 1845 British archeologists began excavations of the ancient city of Nineveh, the capital of Assyria, and brought its treasures back to England, including 20,000 clay tablets and fragments of tablets covered with cuneiform inscriptions. In 1872, the British translator George Smith came across a small fragment of a tablet on which he read the words, The mountain of Nisir stopped the ship. I sent forth a dove, and it left. The dove went and turned, and a resting place it did not
3 find, and it returned. Smith recognized that these words resembled part of the biblical account of the flood and immediately began to search for other fragments of the story. In time he found other parts of this account and other copies. This Babylonian flood account became known as the Gilgamesh Epic. Before this discovery it was assumed that the Babylonian traditions of the flood, preserved by the ancient historian Berosus, had been borrowed from Genesis during the Babylonian captivity of the Jewish people. These stories dated from before the captivity, however. So they provided independent verification of the Bible s story. Hundreds of flood stories abound throughout the world in various cultures and are therefore evidence not merely of the historicity of the flood but of its universal extent, since the people having these stories presumably have them because of their descent from the flood s survivors. Wycliffe Bible Translators among the Samo-Kubo tribe in Papua, New Guinea, reported a flood story among this isolated people group. There are various flood stories among many of American Indian tribes. There are flood stories Brazilian tribes, Alaska Natives, and natives of Greenland. There are traditions in India and China that the same stories with significant detail. In their book, The Ark on Ararat, Tim LaHaye and John Morris list 212 people groups who have their own flood story. These flood traditions vary. But there is much agreement too. In 88 percent of them there is a favored family. In 70 percent survival is due to a boat. In 95 percent the sole cause of the catastrophe is a flood. In 66 percent the disaster is due to man s wickedness. In 67 percent animals are also saved. In 57 percent the survivors end up on a mountain. In smaller percentages birds are sent out, a rainbow is mentioned, and eight persons specifically are saved. C. The evidence from biology. (1) How could Noah fit all the animals on the Ark? Creation researcher John Woodmorappe suggests that, at most, 16,000 animals were all that were needed to preserve the created kinds that God brought into the Ark. The Art did not need to carry every kind of animal nor did God command it. It carried only air-breathing, land-dwelling animals, creeping things, and winged animals such as birds. Aquatic life (fish, whales, ect.) and many amphibious creatures could have survived in sufficient numbers outside the Ark. This cuts down significantly the total number of animals that needed to be on board. Another factor which greatly reduces the space requirements is the fact that the tremendous variety in species we see today did not exist in the days of Noah. Only the parent kinds of these species were required to be on board in order to repopulate the earth. For example, only two dogs were needed to give rise to all the dog species that exist today.
4 Noah wouldn t have taken the largest animals onto the Ark; it is more likely that he took juveniles aboard the Ark to repopulate the earth. The younger animals obviously require less space, less food, and have less waste. Considering the size of the Ark, and it s 3 decks, there would have been plenty of room for all the animals, Noah s family and food. (2) How did all the animals get to the Ark? Genesis 6:20 tells us that Noah didn t have to search or travel to far away places to bring the animals on board. The animals simply arrives at the Ark as if called by a homing instinct (a behavior implanted in animals by their creator) and marched up the ramp by themselves. Though this was probably a supernatural event (one that cannot be explained by our understanding of nature), compare it to the impressive migratory behavior we see in some animals today. D. The evidence from geology. According to Creation Researchers John C. Whitcomb and Henry M. Morris, the best-known exponents of this view, nearly all the existing fossils and the various levels of sedimentary rock in which they are found, coal beds and oil deposits were produced by the flood during the year the waters were on the earth. Many naturalistic geologists disagree with Whitcomb and Morris, here are 4 arguments: 1. Heat Flow from Solidifying Lava. Throughout the world there are places where molten lava, called magma, has pushed itself up between various layers of fossil-bearing rock and has then been covered over by more fossil-bearing rock. This lava takes thousands and in some cases hundreds of thousands of years to cool. 2. Radiometric Dating. Various means of dating rock by the decay of radioactive substances lead to ages of hundreds of millions of years for certain kinds of intruding lava, such as the Palisades sill. Since it disrupts fossil-bearing rock, the fossil rock must have been laid down prior to it, that is, millions of years ago too early for the flood geology theory. 3. Metamorphism. Certain chemical changes in rocks require high temperatures and considerable pressure before they occur. The only known way of accounting for these temperatures and pressures is for the rocks to have been buried under miles of other rock. 4. Plate Tectonics. Certain kinds of fossil-bearing rocks go back to the time when the continents were joined together. According to the flood geologists, the continents would have had to have moved from that original position to their present position at an extremely rapid rate and in relatively recent times. No one can explain how that could have happened. Types of Evidence (more evidences for a universal flood) On the other hand we can point to the following things as perhaps being due to the flood in some manner and as at least hard to explain without it. 1. Scattered throughout the world in various places are large caches of animal bones in what geologists call rubble drift in ossiferous fissures. Ossiferous fissures are great rents in the earth, such as occur during earthquakes or other violent disruptions of the earth s surface. Rubble
5 drift is a kind of deposit in such fissures apparently placed there by water during the disruption in which the rents occurred. Such fissures have been found in England, France, southern Spain, Germany, Russia, and other countries. The interesting thing about them is that many are filled with bones of such animals as elephants, rhinoceroses, hippopotamuses, reindeer, horses, pigs, and oxen. The skeletons are not intact. They have been ripped apart. But the bones are not scattered. They are thrown together in almost unbelievable profusion. It is a final interesting feature of such deposits that they usually occur on isolated hills of considerable height. What can account for the collection of so many bones of so many mutually hostile animals in such unlikely environments if not the worldwide flood of Genesis 6 9? 2. The existence of large inland bodies of water and the remains of such bodies, called fossil lakes, is best explained by the deluge. Today much of this water is gone, as we might expect, due to evaporation and drainage in the millennia since the flood. But at one time there were vast inland seas on literally every continent. The area of China now known as the great Gobi desert was once an inland lake of a size comparable to the present Mediterranean. It is referred to as the great Han Hai or interior sea by the Chinese. Geologists ascribe different origins to these inland and fossil lakes, and it may well be that there have been different origins for them. The land may have fallen and then been raised again, even to heights of 1,000 or more feet. But it must be admitted that a deluge of a magnitude such as that described in the Bible would be a satisfactory explanation for these lakes since it would provide sufficient water to fill the basins. 3. Coal beds and oil fields could have been produced by the deluge. The creation of coal and oil in the immense quantities known to us is an amazing thing, usually ascribed to the action of natural forces over millions if not billions of years. But it is conceivable that much or even all of this could have been created at nearly one time through the burial of large quantities of vegetable and animal matter by flood activity. 4. The last of these strange facts is the astonishing preservation of thousands upon thousands of mammoth bodies in Siberia. The mammoth was a member of the elephant family and looks like an elephant in reconstructed pictures. But it was larger, standing twelve to thirteen feet high at the shoulder, and was covered with a thick coat of long, coarse, black hair. Its tusks could be nine or ten feet long and measure two-and-a-half feet around the base. Each one weighed on the order of 180 to 200 pounds, as compared with the 40-pound tusks of an average elephant today. It is almost impossible to exaggerate the number and distribution of the mammoth remains in northern Asia, particularly Siberia. This area of Russia stretches more than 2,000 miles along the Arctic Ocean. Experts estimate that as many as five million of these creatures may have perished all at one time. What known geologic or atmospheric cause could have overwhelmed them, young and old alike, buried them and then preserved them until today? The best possible explanation is a worldwide flood followed by a change in climate so drastic that these northern areas, which had been temperate before, now became arctic and thus preserved these magnificent creatures frozen in the ground. When it comes to examining the geological evidence, we must not forget that the reason for the various interpretations of the evidence is based on a persons worldview. Many non-christian scientists view the evidence through a naturalistic lens and do not believe that God is the one
6 who created the World or is one who has supernatural powers. The Christian holds that the earth was created by God and believes that God is all powerful and can do anything he pleases with nature. Miracles are just that. They are occasions when God demonstrates his power and overrides the normal operation of nature. That is why we say miracles are supernatural. 2. This act of God s judgment is recorded to instruct us of our accountability to God and warn us about our future judgment. A. Man is sinful. (Gen. 6:5-6, 11-12) B. God grants grace. (Gen. 6:8) C. God patiently extends the offer of salvation (120 years while Noah was building the boat) 1 Peter 3:20 God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark as being built. D. God eventually judges sinful men. (Gen. 6:3, 7, 13, 17; 7:4, 21-2) There is a sense of urgency. The time will come when God closes the door. (Gen. 7:16) 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; 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. Two men will be in the field; one will be taken and the other left. Two women will be grinding with a hand mill; one will be taken and the other left. Matthew 24:37 41 People now, just as in the days of Noah are eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage they are going about their daily affairs oblivious of their accountability to God and the certainty of final judgment. First of all, you must understand that in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires. 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. But they deliberately forget that long ago by God s word the heavens existed and the earth was formed out of the water and by the water. By these waters also the world at that time was deluged and destroyed. 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. But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. 2 Peter 3:3-9