SADDLE CATNAP Ten Reasons Why The Genesis Flood Must Have Been A Global Event

SA Size of the Ark The Ark was “450 feet long, 75 feet wide and 45 feet high” (Genesis 6:15). Built like a huge barge, the Ark had the same capacity as about 520 standard railroad stock cars — easily enough room to hold every kind of land-dwelling, air-breathing animal. (A much smaller vessel could have been used to save all the varieties of local animals.)

D Depth of the Water The water “rose and increased greatly on the earth,” covering “all the high mountains under the entire heavens . . . to a depth of more than twenty feet” (Genesis 7:18-20). And later on, it wasn’t until the water had already “gone down” quite a bit that the Ark landed “on the mountains of Ararat” (Genesis 8:3,4). Could this have been a “local” flood?

D Duration of the Flood The flood continued rising for forty days (Genesis 7:17), then took months to go down. For more than seven months no land could be seen (Genesis 8:5) — and the earth remained too wet to live on for over a year (Genesis 8:14). Could such a flood have been “local”?

L The Lord Jesus Christ Our Saviour affirmed that the flood was worldwide; he compared the future judgment to the one that had occurred in Noah’s time. Jesus said, “. . . the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man” (Matthew 24:39). Will we dare to argue with this statement of “Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Colossians 2:2,3)?

Three-quarters of the Earth’s continental land surface is composed of fossil-bearing rocks. There are “billions of dead things, buried in rock layers laid down by water, all over the Earth.” Most of these are marine organisms; some are large animals, jumbled together in huge “fossil graveyards.”

SA D D L E Size of the Ark Depth of the Water Duration of the Flood Review! Size of the Ark D Depth of the Water D Duration of the Flood L The Lord Jesus Christ E The Earth

C Causes of the Flood Physically, the flood occurred when “all the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened” (Genesis 7:11). Spiritually, the flood was God’s judgment on “man’s wickedness on the earth” (Genesis 6:5). These causes are not “local.”

Peter repeatedly affirmed a global flood: The Apostle Peter Peter repeatedly affirmed a global flood: “. . . God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built. In it only a few people, eight in all, were saved through water” (1 Peter 3:20). “By water also the world of that time was deluged and destroyed” (2 Peter 3:6). “. . . he did not spare the ancient world when he brought the flood on its ungodly people, but protected Noah, a preacher of righteousness, and seven others” (2 Peter 2:5).

T Traditions from many nations Hundreds of people groups around the world have stories in which a great flood (due to divine anger) leaves only a few survivors (saved by a floating vessel), who afterward repopulate the Earth. Also, in all these stories, animals play a significant role.

T Traditions from many nations “Indeed, some 500 separate cultures, including those of Greece, China, Peru, and native American, have a powerful tale of a great flood that has altered the course of their history among the legends and myths by which they described themselves and their origins. In most of them, as with the biblical tale of Noah’s Flood, there are but few survivors, perhaps only one family, from which the race thenceforth derives.” — Charles Officer and Jake Page. 1993. Tales of the Earth: Paroxysms and Perturbations of the Blue Planet. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 63.

NA Need for the Ark Noah was warned that the flood was coming. If it was only going to be a “local” flood, he could have escaped by leaving the area. So could the animals (especially birds!). An Ark would not have been needed at all.

P Promise of God After the flood, God said, “. . . never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done” (Genesis 8:21). But if Noah’s flood was local, then God has often broken that promise, because many destructive local floods have occurred since Noah’s time!

Traditions from many nations C Review! Causes of the Flood A The Apostle Peter T Traditions from many nations NA Need for the Ark P Promise of God