(Click play to watch this video of a recent Japanese tsunami washing away an entire town.)
The
Bible says that there was once a worldwide Flood that covered all the mountains
on earth and destroyed all life on the land surface of the earth: the Flood of Noah (Gen. 7-8). Is this true?
Did it really happen? And if it
really happened, what evidence is there that it happened? If it really affected the whole world,
shouldn’t we be able to see evidence of it all around the world?
To
answer this question, first we need to understand what happens when there is a
flood. Floods, especially flash floods,
are the #1 weather-related killer in many places, including the US. They are 40% of all natural disasters. They usually occur within a few minutes or
hours of a heavy rainfall. They can roll
boulders and tear out trees by their roots.
They can destroy buildings and bridges, make new river channels, and dig
up solid rock river beds. They can trigger
mudslides and landslides.
Why
is flood water so powerful? Because it’s
not just water. It’s water mixed with
dirt and other material, which makes it much heavier than normal water. Plus it’s often moving faster. Just six inches of flood water traveling at
six miles an hour can knock you off your feet and drown you. One to two feet of flood water will float
your car. Floods of water are very
powerful. The more water, the more
powerful.
Here’s
something very important to remember about flood water. If you double the water, you get four times
the power. If you quadruple the water,
you get 16 times the power. It’s an
exponential relationship. At this rate,
it doesn’t take much water to do a lot of damage.
A
flash flood in 1972 in Rapid City, South Dakota, in the U.S. followed 15 inches
of rain that fell in 5 hours. It
resulted in 238 fatalities and $164 million in damages. All this from just 5 hours of rain.
The
Johnstown flood of 1889 killed 2,209 people and caused $17 million of damage
(the equivalent of about $425 million today).
Because of heavy rains, a dam broke.
These
are just two of dozens of examples that could be given. But the worst river floods in history have taken
place when the Yellow River overflowed (the Huang He in China). In 1931, 1-4
million people were killed. 88,000 square
kilometers of land flooded.
But
this is only from one river flooding.
What if there was a lot more water, like the water of the ocean? I’m sure you heard of the Indian Ocean
tsunami of 2004. More than 200,000 people
were killed. Or the recent tsunami in
Japan in 2011. 5,600 were confirmed dead,
10,000 more are missing. Floods can do
an awful lot of damage.
And
what do you see when the flood is over?
Dirt and mud everywhere. Not only
is everything destroyed. Many things are
buried deep in the mud.
Compared
to the size of the earth, all the damage and destruction I have mentioned so
far is from floods that affected only very tiny parts of the earth, a single
river, a single coastline. What if there
was a flood that affected the whole earth?
How much damage do you think that would do? What if there were thousands of times more
water, and therefore tens of thousands, even millions of times more power?
One
question that many people have about Noah’s Flood is, where did all the water
come from? According to the Bible, not
only did it rain for forty days and forty nights, but water also came out from
beneath the earth: The Bible says the “fountains of the great deep” erupted
(Gen. 7:11).
Is
there really water under the earth? Yes,
there is water almost everywhere under the surface of the earth. This is what makes wells possible: they draw up water from this subsurface
water. It used to be believed by
scientists that this water did not go down very deep. This is because at 5 km below the surface,
the rocks are compressed so tightly that no water can flow through them. Or so they thought.
But
now there is evidence that water is found very, very deep in the earth’s crust,
and lots of it. This recent discovery has
found more than three times more water than on the surface of the earth. It also suggests that all of the earth’s water
came from below. http://www.scmp.com/news/world/article/1533108/vast-ocean-trapped-under-core-earth-scientists-say
This
is not the only water recently discovered under the earth. There are also new discoveries of water under
the oceans, and under earth’s tectonic plates:
these are the large flat areas of the earth’s crust that move in
relationship to one another. This
movement is what causes earthquakes.
Water (combined with molten rock) under these plates is what enables
them to move around. Sometimes a
volcanic eruption or other event will bring some of this deep water (known as “juvenile
water” or “magmatic water”) to the surface.
So there’s plenty of water underground to more than account for a global
flood.
So
then where did all this extra water go after the Flood? This is what created our modern deep oceans. As it says in Psa. 104:6-8: “You
covered it [the earth] with the deep as with a garment; the waters were
standing above the mountains. At your
rebuke they fled; at the sound of your thunder they hurried away. The mountains rose; the valleys sank down to
the place that you established for them.”
If you pushed down the mountains and raised up the seas to where they
were before, the earth would still be covered by almost two miles of
water! 70% of the earth is still under
water today!
Okay,
so a worldwide flood is possible. But
did it really happen? If there was
really such a worldwide event, there should be evidence of it everywhere. But what kind of evidence would we expect to
find? The Bible says it was a worldwide
flood that killed everything living on the surface of the earth. That means we would expect to find billions
of dead plants and animals buried in dirt, sand, and other sediments that were
laid down by water (flood mud) all over the earth.
And
guess what? That’s exactly what we see
everywhere. Scientists at all the top
universities around the world, including Harvard and Oxford and others once identified
all the rock layers we see everywhere around the world today as layering
produced by the water of a great flood. Have
you ever taken a good look at that layering?
What could lay down those layers so perfectly flat like that? Only water.
What
made these scientists think these are flood deposits? Some of these layers are huge. They go clear across continents, even
sometimes between continents. What could
lay down such large, flat layers over such huge distances? No river could do that. Nor would a shallow sea. It can only be explained by a worldwide flood
of water. Evolution has no convincing
explanation for these huge, thin layers.
Maybe
you’ve heard the explanation that each of these layers were the surface of the
earth for a year or for many years. But
if that’s true, where’s the topsoil that the trees and other plants would have
needed to live? Or where did their roots
grow? Sometimes these layers are
tiny. A tree or even grass growing here
would have broken up the layers. But the
lines are perfectly straight. And there
is no topsoil in any of these layers.
They are all sterile. And where’s
the little gullies and depressions where water would have run off? There’s no place on the surface of the earth
that is as flat as that today. So where
did all these perfectly flat layers come from?
Have
you ever taken some dirt and sand and rocks, put it in a jar, filled it with
water, and then shook it around for a while?
Then let it settle for a while, and what will you find? Layers.
Just like we see in the rocks of the world: layers of sediment laid down by water.
The
Bible says that the Flood covered all the mountains on earth. That means we would expect to see fossils up
in even the tallest mountains in the world.
Guess what? There are fossils
high up in all the major mountain ranges of the world. Some ancient peoples recognized this as
evidence of a worldwide flood.
Not
only are there fossils up in the mountains of the world, there are also pillow
lavas. Do you know what a pillow lava
is? It’s the shape that lava takes when
it flows out into a body of water. In
other words, it is formed under water.
But there are pillow lavas high up on many of the mountains of the
world. How did they get there, unless
those mountains were once covered by water?
The
Bible says that the Flood lasted only about a year. This means that everything happened very
quickly. Is there any evidence for
this? Yes, the fossils themselves. Most animals do not form fossils when they
die. Their bodies are eaten or decompose
long before they become a fossil. But so
many fossils are found in perfect condition.
Nothing started to eat them before they were buried. They didn’t start to decay. Often every little piece is there. This tells us they were buried very quickly.
One
of the most common fossils of all is fossil ripple marks. This is clear evidence that these layers were
laid down by water. And it had to happen
quickly or that pattern of ripples would not be preserved. Right?
If there are ripple marks on a beach, will they be preserved for
thousands of years? No. They’ll be blown away or washed away in the
tide or by a storm. These kind of marks
can only be preserved if they are buried very, very quickly.
The
same thing is true of footprints, like dinosaur footprints. These had to be made and buried very quickly
in order to be preserved. If you make a
footprint in the mud today, will it be preserved for thousands of years? No.
These things are only preserved if they’re buried immediately after they
are made.
What
about the many places where rock layers have been deformed without breaking,
sometimes into the most incredible shapes.
Ordinarily rock doesn’t bend when forces act on it; it breaks. So how can a rock layer, or sometimes several
different rock layers together, bend or sag or compress without breaking? These layers must have been bent while they
were still soft, before they turned into rock.
And that means that all these layers that were bent together in the same
way were all soft at the same time, and bent at the same time. This also means that they were all laid down
at the same time. That’s why there are
no gaps or breaks between the layers.
This tells us that these layers were not laid down over millions of
years, but all at once, suddenly, as in a flood. And that means the Flood was not that long
ago.
Well
if that’s true, then fossil animals should look just like animals we see today,
except of course for species that didn’t survive the Flood or that have died
out since then. And guess what? That’s exactly what we find! Many fossil animals look just like those we
see today. These include crocodiles and
turtles, millipedes and dragonflies, and lots of other bugs. They look exactly like those animals look
today, although some were much bigger than today. There are also palm trees that look just like
they look today, as well as lobsters and shrimp, crabs and sharks, and so many
others. Instead of more and more variety
over time, as evolution claims, with things getting bigger and better; what we
actually see in the fossil record is less variety today than in the past, with
fewer different kinds of things, and often smaller sizes than before. Some people think that the fossils are
opposed to the Bible, but actually the fossils provide some of the strongest
evidence of the truth of the Bible.
The
most exciting recent discovery has come from carbon dating supposedly ancient
fossils. At first, nobody bothered to
carbon date fossils, because they were assumed to be too old for carbon dating. (Carbon 14 dating can only be used to date
things younger than 100,000 years old.) But
now, dinosaur bones and other fossils have been dated to only 5,000 years
old. That’s a long way from millions and
millions of years!
In
fact, the evidence of the Flood is all around us. But this evidence is not only in the rocks of
the earth. It’s also in the memories of
the survivors. Because as you know from
the Bible, Noah and his family escaped the Flood in a huge boat. The Bible tells us that in this boat (or
ark), Noah and his family were saved, together with two of every kind of animal
on the earth. Outside the ark, everything
living on the land was destroyed, including all the people.
After
the Flood, the ark landed on a mountain (Gen. 8:4). First, Noah sent out a raven to see if the
water was dried up, but it found no place to land (Gen. 8:7). Then he sent a dove, and it also could find
no place, so it came back to Noah in the ark (Gen. 8:8,9). Then, after a few days, he again sent the
dove. This time it returned with an
olive leaf in her beak (Gen. 8:10,11). A
few days later, the dove didn’t return at all (Gen. 8:12). Then Noah and all the animals left the ark,
and Noah offered up a sacrifice to God (Gen. 8:20).
But
the Bible is not the only ancient writing to mention the Flood. Another ancient version comes from the
Babylonian Gilgamesh epic. This was discovered
in the 19th century by the British explorer Henry Layard at Nineveh in Iraq. This was a very early archeological
excavation, one of the first of a city mentioned in the Bible. Layard sent back thousands of clay tablets with
writing on them to the British Museum in London to be analyzed. In 1872, George Smith, an assistant at the museum,
discovered that one of these tablets had the story of the Flood. The tablet was broken, and some of the story was
missing. So Smith went to Nineveh to
find the rest. The next year, only five
days after arriving on the site, he found another tablet with the missing
lines! This was an exciting discovery!
According
to this Babylonian account, Noah, whom the Babylonians called Utnapishtim (which
means “he found long life”), was warned of a coming Flood and told to build a
large boat to preserve himself, his family, and all the animals. After the flood, the ark rested on a mountain. First, Utnapishtim sent out a dove that came
back. Then a swallow that came back. Then a raven that didn’t come back. Then they all got out of the ark and he
offered a sacrifice. The order of the
birds is a little different. But this is
very close to the Biblical story! Here
we have two different flood stories, from two different cultures, yet are
similar even in many of the small details!
But
it’s not the only one! Flood stories can
be found all over the world. About 200
of them have been recorded so far! They
come from Europe (9), the Middle East (8), Africa (15), Asia (37), North America
(78) and South America (22), even from Australia and the islands of the Pacific
Ocean (27)—in other words, from the whole inhabited earth! Though most of these stories have changed
over the years to reflect changing religious beliefs, there are at least seven
common elements worldwide: 1) Most of
them are very clear that this was a Flood that flooded the entire earth. 2)
They say that this Flood took place because of the disobedience of mankind,
except 3) for one tiny group of people, usually a single family, that did not
disobey. 4) One man of this family was
warned in advance of the coming Flood.
5) This small group were the only ones to survive the Flood. 6) They survived by floating in the water, often
on a boat, though sometimes by going to the top of a very high mountain. 7) From this tiny group, the entire earth was
repopulated.
These
common elements can be seen in the large majority of Flood stories around the
world. It’s remarkable that there is
such worldwide agreement about these basics:
that it was a worldwide flood that destroyed all but one tiny group, who
coming down from a high mountain, are the source of the world’s current population. If we had only two or three of these stories,
we could say that perhaps one of them influenced the others. But when we have them from all over the
earth, if this is only a myth, how do we explain that?
Some
say that the reason for so many Flood stories is that floods are a common
disaster around the world. But why then
do they have so many common elements?
Why are there are no similar worldwide stories about other catastrophes,
like earthquakes, fires, volcanic eruptions, or drought? Why only a Flood?
In
several of these stories, other elements are preserved that are remarkably
similar to Genesis: For example, several
of these stories agree that the Flood was caused by waters coming from under
the earth, the “fountains of the great deep” mentioned in Genesis.
Several
accounts mention the survival of exactly eight people in the Flood. This includes the Chinese account. In fact, one of the Chinese characters for
“boat” includes the sign for eight people, exactly the number that survived in
the Bible. The Hindu account of the
Flood mentions that three of these were the sons of the primary figure, whose
names are given as Sharma, C’harma, and Jyapeti. This is very close to the Bible (Shem, Ham,
and Japheth)!
In
many accounts, the survivors save animals along with themselves. Several specifically say that they saved all
the (land) animals, just like Noah. In
several accounts, these animals are brought in pairs, just like in the
Bible.
After
the Flood, several mention that the boat came to rest on a high mountain, after
which a test was done to see if the waters had dried up, often using
birds. In several, the birds used for
these tests include doves and/or ravens.
And
in several, a rainbow is associated with the story, just like in the Bible. A few even remember that a sacrifice was made
after the Flood. This is a remarkable
set of similarities! Could they have
happened just by chance? The statistical
probability for that is near zero. It’s
very hard to explain all these similarities in such different and distant
cultures unless they all preserve the memory of an actual, historical
event.
If
the Flood of Noah was just a myth, we would not expect there to be any
agreement among the different flood stories as to where the ark landed after
Flood. And in fact, many of the later
Flood stories disagree on this point.
Each one points to a mountain within the territory of the people telling
the story. But among the earlier Flood
stories, there is a general agreement about where the ark landed: in southeastern Turkey. Not only do these stories agree about the
place, they also agree that the ark of Noah was still there for all to
see!
These
claims were not just made by the Jews.
Two thousand years ago, claims that the ark could still be seen were
made not only by Josephus the Jewish historian, but by Berosus the Chaldean and
Nicolaus of Damascus. Dozens of other
ancient writers have confirmed its existence since then, mostly Christians and
Muslims.
The
Bible says that Noah's ark landed in the "mountains of Ararat" (Gen.
8:4), the region known to historians as Urartu, north of ancient Assyria (in
modern Armenia and eastern Turkey). Today,
some people believe the ark is on the mountain Agri Dagh at the eastern edge of Turkey. This is the mountain usually marked on maps
as Mt. Ararat.
Satellite
surveys recently identified a strange feature on top of the mountain that some
believe is the ark of Noah. This is not
the first time that high-tech interest has been drawn to Mt. Ararat. A U-2 spy plane in 1949 spotted something unusual
at the 15,500 foot level that convinced many people the ark might really be
there. These photos certainly show
something up there that looks like a huge ruined boat—more than 600 feet long
(183 m).
The
excitement increased when spy satellites looked at the same area in 1973 (the Keyhole-9
spy satellite) and again in 1976 and confirmed what is now called the “Ararat Anomaly.” Because of this and other evidence, several
groups have gone up the mountain to see what’s there.
The
latest group, which includes several Chinese from Hong Kong, found a structure
with several wooden rooms. They plan to
return again in the future to see if this really is Noah’s Ark. Unfortunately, so far the wood from this
structure has not dated old enough to really be from Noah’s Ark. So what it really is, nobody knows (although
there have been accusations of fraud).
But
the identification of Agri Dagh with
Noah faces another, much more serious problem:
it may be the wrong mountain! The
earliest reports put the ark in the area of Cudi
Dagh, a mountain in southeastern Turkey.
The Church of the East—the ancient church of Christians living in this
area (also known as Nestorians)—built several monasteries around Cudi Dagh, with one on the summit called
the “Monastery of the Ark.” According to
a Muslim writer, this monastery was built using wood from the ark itself. This monastery was later replaced by a Muslim
mosque, also with wood from the Ark.
Every Sept. 14th, members of many different local religions (including
non-Jewish and non-Christian religions) used to gather at the mountain to
celebrate Noah’s sacrifice after leaving the ark.
Near
Cudi Dagh, the earliest evidence of agriculture and domesticated animals
has been found in the world. This is
exactly what we would expect to see if Cudi
Dagh is, in fact, where Noah landed.
(None of this is found in the area of Agri Dagh.)
So
what do you think? We have only looked
at a very small part of the evidence for the Flood of Noah. But we have found that there really is strong
evidence of a worldwide flood all over the world: both physical evidence and historical
evidence. Why is this important? First, it supports the accuracy of the
Bible. Second, it is a powerful reminder
that God has the ability to destroy the world.
This is how Jesus himself used the story of the Flood: as a warning that God will again destroy the
earth because of sin and wickedness (Luke 17:26,27,30).
