Genesis 6:9 - 8:22

Genesis — Steve Gregg

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Genesis 6:9 - 8:22

GenesisSteve Gregg

In this discussion, Steve Gregg reviews the events described in Genesis 6:9 through 8:22. He explores the story of Noah and the great flood, discussing the dimensions of the ark, the animals on board, the length of the flood, and where the ark came to rest. Gregg also examines the debate over whether the flood was global or local and considers the fossil record as evidence of sudden catastrophes. Overall, Gregg offers a thoughtful analysis of this well-known biblical story.

Transcript

Genesis 6 is a great book, and it is a great deal of knowledge. We will return to Genesis 6 now. We saw that conditions in the earth became such that God thought there was nothing else to do but just wipe it clean and start over again.

he found one man who is righteous as we shall see and he decided to preserve that man and his family and a few specimens of animals. It says in verse 8 that Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord which means that God favored him. He was favored and apparently alone favored because God came to him and said that he alone had been found righteous.

But in verse 9 we have another generation, the generations now of Noah. It says this is the generations of Noah, the genealogy of Noah says in the New King James. Noah was a just man, perfect in his generations.

Noah walked with God. Now to say that a man is perfect essentially just means that he is as good as men get, I guess. There is no man who is flawlessly perfect, only God is perfect.

But men can be obedient to God, they can be wholehearted, they can be conscientious about repentance and so forth. So we would think of a perfect man as a man who never makes a mistake. But a man can be perfect in the sight of God if every time he has made a mistake he repents.

David also was said to be perfect before the Lord except in the matter of his sin with Bathsheba. But he wasn't a perfect man in the sense that we would use that term. Perfect would mean completely given over to God and a man can be that.

The parents of John the Baptist, I don't think the word perfect is used, but they are said to be blameless. In fact let me see what word it says, there is something equivalent to that. It says about them in Luke chapter 1, it says of John the Baptist's parents, they were both righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless.

This is Luke 1.6. So there are people, or have been people at least, mentioned in the Bible, that God assesses them as being righteous and perfect and blameless. But that doesn't mean that they never sinned, because everyone sins. It means that they have dealt with their sins humbly and properly before God when they sin and therefore those things cease to be on their record.

And Noah was a man of that sort in his generation. And Noah begot three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Not necessarily mentioned in the order that they were born, however.

It says the earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence. So God looked upon the earth and indeed it was corrupt, and all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth. And God said to Noah, the end of all flesh has come before me, for the earth is filled with violence through them, and behold, I will destroy them with the earth.

So God has spoken to Noah. We don't know if God appeared in a human-like form to Noah, or spoke through a booming voice or whatever, as Bill Cosby has popularized the picture. But somehow God was now communicating with this man who is now, by virtue of that fact, a prophet.

And God said to Noah, make yourself an ark of gopher wood, make rooms in the ark, and cover it inside and outside with pitch. And this is how you shall make it. The length of the ark shall be 300 cubits.

Now we're going to get a lot of references to cubits in this story, and so a cubit probably is the measurement that is known to be approximately 18 inches. A cubit was measured from the long longest finger of the hand down to the elbow. They didn't have the same exact measurements or concerns for exact measurements that we have today.

And I think the average man's cubit would be in the neighborhood of 18 inches. It might be give or take a few. But given the idea that a cubit was 18 inches or a foot and a half, you can then calculate in feet at least how large the ark would be.

Those of you who know metric, you're on your own. I don't know metric. I can't make the conversions for you.

But 300 cubits would be 450 feet. And therefore, of course, that's, well, I'm trying to picture 450 feet. It's like a football field and a half.

So picture a football field with another 50 yards added at the end. That's how long the ark was. Big, big box is what it was.

By the way, we picture it as a boat. It doesn't ever say it was a boat. The word ark means a chest or a box.

And so it might have just been a rectangular box. We picture having sort of a stern and, you know, a boat like shape. And maybe it did.

But the thing is, boats are shaped that way because they have to navigate. They have to go somewhere. The ark didn't have to go anywhere.

It just had to stay on top of the water. It didn't have to navigate to any destination. It just had to be a sealed container.

And so this big box, like half again the length of a football field, and its width 50 cubits, that'd be 75 feet wide, and its height 30 cubits, so maybe 45 feet tall, like a four or five story building. And by the way, these dimensions are realistic dimensions for a seaworthy vessel. There are ark stories and flood stories from many cultures.

The Babylonians have theirs in the Gilgamesh epic. There are Egyptian stories. There's other cultures have their stories about worldwide floods and of a few people being spared.

But they're really strange. Some of them have the ark be a cube shape, like a 150 foot cube. Can you imagine that, rolling around like a dice on the top of the waters? That'd be a pretty rough ride for those inside.

And others have the ark with just immense dimensions that are kind of irregular. But see, the ark as it's described here is six times as long as it is wide. The ratio of length to width is six to one, which is a good and very modern set of dimensions for making ships.

And so, although it doesn't have to sail, it does have to be stable. And it's a big box that's roughly the same dimensions as a big ocean liner might be. He says, You shall make a window for the ark.

Now, this will not be a glass window. This will be just an opening for air. The thing's going to be sealed up, watertight.

And so there's got to be a lot of people and animals breathing in there. So there is apparently a space where air comes in under the eaves of the roof, so that there can be ventilation of some sort in there. You shall make a window for the ark and you shall finish it to a cubit from above and set the door in the side of the ark.

And you shall make it with lower second and third decks. We're going to have three decks and have one door that all the animals and men come in through. And the window is finished to a cubit at the top.

That apparently means that under the eaves of the roof, there was eighteen inches approximately of open air space. Probably the eaves came down far enough so that the rain wouldn't get in there. And then that was the eighteen inch height of the window that brought in the air.

And God says, And behold, I myself am bringing the flood of waters on the earth to destroy from under heaven all flesh in which is the breath of life. And everything that is on the earth shall die. But I will establish my covenant with you, and you shall go into the ark, you, your sons, your wife, and your sons' wives with you.

And of every living thing, of all flesh, you shall bring two of every sort into the ark to keep them alive with you. They shall be male and female. Of the birds after their kind, of animals after their kind, and of every creeping thing of the earth after its kind.

Two of every kind will come to you to keep them alive. Now, people say, Well, how did Noah go out and catch all those animals? It doesn't say he went out and caught animals. It says, They will come to you.

You know, animals, even in ordinary times, have interesting instincts about danger. Sometimes, you know, dogs will begin to howl before an earthquake. Probably they can feel something rumbling before we can.

But there are animals that seem to know, well, certainly, the migratory patterns of certain birds and really many species of animals that have to leave the more frigid areas in the winter times and find warmer climes. They know when the season's coming, and God put in them intuitions and instincts about how to, you know, when it's time to go. When the land they're in is going to be in danger and they have to go somewhere else to live.

And they don't just wait until it gets cold and say, Boy, I'm uncomfortable, I'm going to head out of here. They leave before it gets cold, because they instinctively are informed about that. And no doubt God simply put it as an instinct in certain animals that this is going to be a dangerous place, the safe place is over there in that big box over there, you know.

And so the animals came to him. He didn't have to go looking for them. And it says, And you should take for yourself of all the food that is eaten, you should gather it to yourself, and it should be food for you and for them.

Thus Noah did according to all that God commanded him, so he did. Now we're going to find that these animals and Noah were on the ark for a full year, a year and ten days, actually, from the time they got sealed up in the ark to the time they left the ark. Now that's a long time to feed elephants and to feed large animals.

If there were still some dinosaurs around in those days, they had to get on there too, because they were animals too. And in all likelihood, only hatchlings of larger animals, might dinosaurs could be included if they were there at all. It's possible they were extinct before this time.

We don't know. But the point is, how do you feed an elephant for a year when it takes a barn full of hay to feed them for a week? And some people have suggested that maybe the animals mostly went into a hibernating state during that time. Lots of animals hibernate.

Now elephants don't generally, but they don't need to. They don't live in places where they need to. But some biologists have said perhaps most species have the ability to hibernate if they needed to.

And if God wanted them to, they'd certainly have the ability, because God could make them do that. Now why would there be food for them there? Well, because the food has to survive through the flood too. They have to plant crops, and they're going to eat something when they come off the ark too.

So they have to preserve food and animals. And we don't know, but it's not impossible that the animals were largely hibernating on the ark. That would make cleanup a lot easier.

That would make feeding a lot easier. It would make the amount that would have to be brought on board a lot easier. And so, I mean, just because it's easier doesn't mean that's how it happened.

But I don't think they really could keep, I don't think they could store up enough hay for an elephant for a year on an ark that size. They just eat too much, two elephants especially. And then there'd be all the other animals too.

So my assumption is these animals were not eating regularly during their time on the ark, and they may not have even been awake. They may have been in a hibernated state. We don't know, but the question does arise, you know, reasonably enough.

In chapter 7, it says, Then Yahweh said to Noah, Come into the ark, you and all your household, because I have seen that you are righteous before me in this generation. So actually the ark, the business of building the ark is passed over. We don't read of them building it.

He's told to build an ark, and then apparently the ark is finished when you open chapter 7. Anytime this is dramatized in movies, the movies are always focused entirely on the process of building the ark, because that's kind of an interesting thing to us, you know, to think of how that was constructed. But the Bible just takes it for granted. Noah built the ark, now it's time for him to get on it.

You shall take with you seven each of every clean animal, a male and his female, two each of animals that are unclean, male and his female. Also seven each of birds of the air, male and female, to keep the species alive on the face of all the earth. Some people have thought they saw a contradiction here between the earlier statements in chapter 6, that he's going to have two of every kind of animal.

And now he says there's going to be seven each of every kind of clean animal. Well, obviously he's making an exception for a few species that are clean animals. It's not contradictory.

I mean, give the writer credit for being of average intelligence. The reference to two each is only four verses earlier. Clearly this is an exception.

He's bringing two each of every unclean animal, but seven each of every clean animal. Why? Why more of them? And what makes a clean animal? After all, people weren't eating meat yet. Why were some animals regarded as clean and others unclean? Well, I think it's obvious for sacrifices.

And that's what we find when Noah came off the ark. He sacrificed these clean animals, some of them, but there needed to be more of them because some of them had to be sacrificed. And so seven each of the clean were brought.

Now it does say in verse three, also seven each of the birds of the air, male and female, whereas up in the verse 20 of the chapter says of the birds after their kind, animals after their kind, and of every creeping thing of the earth, two of every kind will come to you. So in general, animals and birds came two by two, two each. But now it seems to say there were seven each of the birds in verse three, but I think we're supposed to understand that in connection with verse four, two.

I mean, why not? It's the previous verse. And that is that he's talking about clean birds, the clean birds, as well as the clean animals were brought in groups of seven rather than two. But he still says the unclean are brought only two each there in verse two.

Now God says in verse four, for after seven more days, I will cause it to rain on the earth 40 days and 40 nights. And I will destroy from the face of the earth all living things that I have made. And Noah did according to all that the Lord commanded him.

Noah was 600 years old when the flood of waters was on the earth. So Noah with his sons, his wife, his son's wives went into the ark because of the waters of the flood of clean beasts, of beasts that are unclean of birds and of everything that creeps on the earth. Two by two, they went into the ark.

Now this says even the clean beast went in two by two, but that's not a problem. There were seven and they went in, they went in pairs. Obviously there'd be one that went in that was not part of the pair, but they still came in in couples, generally speaking.

I mean, to make this, these statements absolute and turn that into some kind of a problem is to be nitpicky. I mean, we would all recognize if we're not looking for trouble here, that this is that the clean beast went into by two, just like the others did, but there was obviously an odd one in each case of their, that didn't go into by two, but that in general, that's how they came. It says two by two, they went into the ark to Noah, male and female, as God had commanded Noah.

And it came to pass after seven days that the waters of the flood were on the earth. Now we are given specific dates for various developments here of the flood. The first date that's given is in verse 11, in the 600th year of Noah's life in the second month of the 17th, on the 17th day of that second month.

So if their, their months were not the same as ours, but it'd be like on the 17th day of February, if you want to try to figure out the distances between these dates, it'd be like on our calendar, it'd be like the, like on the 17th of February, the floods begin. Of course they didn't have February and so forth. They had other months.

We don't know what months they had before the flood because the seasons were different after the, after the flood, you know, as they called their months then. But it was the second month, the 17th day when the rain began and not only the rain, but it says on that day, the fountains of the great deep were broken up and the windows of heaven were open. Now the fountains of the great deep apparently referred to the aquifers, the subterranean waters began to erupt as, as they do with a geyser or maybe even more, more dramatically than that.

You know, the fissures in the earth's crust has caused water from underneath to come rushing up to be added to the waters in the ocean, as well as the windows of heaven being open. This either just refers to a lot of rain coming from clouds, or as some have suggested, there might have been this water canopy around the atmosphere, which at this point was broken down into condensed, into water and, and didn't exist anymore after this. So that this water canopy ceased to exist at the time of the flood, as many have suggested.

In any case, waters came from below and from above. And people said, well, what about the fissures? Noah clearly didn't take any fishes on the ark. And of course, fish live in the water, so there shouldn't be a problem with God being able to preserve the species of fishes in spite of the flood.

But someone asked, and I've asked this myself in times past, you know, what about the fact that some species of fish are saltwater species and some are freshwater species? Clearly, the waters that were added to seawater were fresh waters, and therefore they would very much dilute the seawater. Although this happened over a period of 40 days, and it's possible that the fishes simply adapted. It is possible for you to get a, to buy saltwater fish at a pet store and have a saltwater aquarium, but you can gradually wean them off the salt over, over time.

You can actually make them into freshwater fish very gradually by adding, you know, more freshwater to the saltwater. From what I understand, this is what I've heard from pet stores, looked into that once a long time ago. And if that's true, then as the water gradually, you know, made the oceans less salty, then those saltwater fishes would have to, you know, adjust it.

And over a period of 40 days, maybe that would be long enough for them to do so. They're probably, we don't even know if there were freshwater fish before this time, because we don't really know if there were lakes before this time. There could have been, but lakes could have very possibly been formed after the topology, topographical, you know, structures of the earth were changed after the flood, and waters would gather from rains and from runoff into these areas that became lakes, in which case the fishes there would, would have to be eventually adjust to being freshwater.

We don't know how all these things worked out, but it's not hard to think of ways that they could. And that's, that's the important thing. When people raise things as objections to suggest that the story doesn't make sense.

Well, I mean, if there's a plausible suggestion that could make it make sense, there's no reason to reject that. So it was this day, the 600th year of Noah's life, the second month, the 17th day of the month, and the rain was on the earth for 40 days and 40 nights. Now it says the rain was on the earth.

It means that it kept raining for that period of time. The water was on the earth much longer. The rain was coming down on the earth for that period of time, 40 days and 40 nights.

On the very same day, Noah and Noah's sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, and Noah's wife, and the three wives of his sons were with them, entered the ark. Not the day that the water started. Well, you know, here's the thing.

God told them a week early to move on to the ark. And now it says on the day the rains came, they, they went on the ark. It's probable that they actually did begin living on the ark a week before the flood.

They didn't have to stay in until the waters came. They could, they simply began to live in the ark a week early. And then when the waters came, they went in and the door got closed and God actually sealed them in.

And so on that day, they went in and it says they and every beast after their kind, all cattle after their kind, every creeping thing that creeps on the earth after its kind and every bird after its kind, every bird of every sort. And they went into the ark to Noah two by two of all flesh in which is the breath of life. There's a lot of repetition in the stories you notice.

So those that entered male and female of all flesh went in as God had commanded him and the Lord shut him in. So the ceiling shut of the one aperture where the water could get in, which the only part they couldn't have sealed off inside and out with pitch. God apparently managed that, sealed it off.

Now the flood was on the earth 40 days. Again, this doesn't mean that that's how long the water covered the earth. It means the flood was, it was flooding.

It was flooding for 40 days. You see when it's rain, we have floods today. The flooding process is going on while the rain is coming and while runoff is accumulating in low areas and stuff.

That's the flooding going on. After that, you know, there might be many days that the water kind of runs off and soaks in and stuff like that. It's only talking about how long the flood was accumulating.

The waters were accumulating of the flood for 40 days because it tells us they lasted much longer than that. After the flooding came to an end, the waters increased. That's what was going on for 40 days.

The waters were increasing and lifted up the ark and it rose high above the earth. The waters prevailed and greatly increased on the earth and the ark moved about on the surface of the waters and the waters prevailed exceedingly on the earth and all the high hills under the whole of heaven were covered. And the waters prevailed 15 cubits upward and the mountains were covered.

That means apparently above the mountaintops, the highest ones, the water was 22 1⁄2 feet deep. Now how'd they know that? Did they take soundings? They might have, although they might have just deduced it. The ark was 45 feet tall and if it rode in the water about half submerged, they might have assumed that was true.

They might have even been able to observe that that was true, that it rode in the water about half submerged and half above the water. That'd be 22 1⁄2 feet. They might just figure, well, we didn't hit any objects.

The water must have been that high above the mountaintops because we would have hit something otherwise. I don't know. Maybe they measured it, but it was 22 1⁄2 feet above the mountaintops.

Now some people say, well, wait a minute. Are you saying the water was like above Mount Everest? I mean, could they breathe up there? You know, the air at the high elevations in the mountains is too thin for humans to really helpfully breathe. Some of those animals, could those delicate animals in the ark survive up those high elevations? But they're not thinking right.

With the whole water level of the earth is at a high elevation, then the pressure systems are going to be measured from the surface of the water, not from where we measure them here. And so that wouldn't be considered a high elevation in the atmosphere if the entire surface of the world was covered with water up to that height. But more than that, there might not have been a Mount Everest then.

A lot of times people say, well, if the whole earth was covered with water, where's the water now? And they say if you took all the water that's presently in the clouds and that's in the atmosphere and condensed it to liquid, it would only, you know, it might cover the lower parts of the earth a few feet deep, but there's just not that much water to cover the mountains and so forth. But the topography topography changed at the time of the flood. It would have to.

I mean, if you've ever been in a flood, and they're not uncommon, really, I mean, I was in a flood in Santa Cruz. There's only two weeks of rain, but in 1982, I guess it was the Love Creek floods and so forth. A whole mountainside fell down.

They got super saturated water and, you know, houses were cut. And, you know, and these mountains weren't even submerged. This is just water coming from above and soaking in made them fall down.

If they were completely underwater, just think of how that would have a leveling effect. But also if there was a tremendous turbulence going on, and the earth's crust moving like the fountains of the great deep were broken up, there could have been movement of the tectonic plates and so forth, then you might have new mountain ranges forming and some old mountain ranges disappearing. Some of the deep troughs in the ocean might not have been anywhere near as deep before.

You see, with the oceans as deep as they are in the mountains as high as they are now, there's not enough water to cover. But if things were different, so the oceans were less deep and the mountains less tall, the same amount of water might easily cover it all. And so, again, what is thought to be, you know, the impossibility of it is not necessarily impossible.

We don't know how flat the earth was, how much flatter the surface. And some of these really huge mountain ranges we have right now could easily have arisen after the flood or in the course of the flood and continued to rise even after the flood as maybe the earth's plates might have continued to move a little bit. Anyway, the Bible says it happened, and it's certainly not impossible to believe that it happened.

So I do believe that it happened just the way it's described. The mountains were covered. Of course, this raises probably the time to ask the question about whether we're talking here about a global flood or a local flood.

Now, I'm sure everyone here probably believes in a global flood, and I do too. Because when you read the Bible, it says all the high hills were covered, all the flesh on the surface, all of the surface land was covered. But there are some people who think that this flood was maybe not global.

They feel it's problematic. They say, well, in this early stage of human history, it's not likely that humanity had spread out over the whole globe from the Garden of Eden, you know, they would have spread out some, but not as far as they have today. And they were perhaps all kind of still in the general region of the Mesopotamian region, the Tigris-Euphrates Valley, and that the, maybe the valley itself flooded, and maybe the local hills and so forth were covered over with water.

But that wouldn't have to cover the whole world. For one thing, they say, to kill all the people in the world wouldn't require flooding more than just that valley, because that's where everyone was, they say. And they also say there's just difficulties believing in a worldwide flood.

Some of them I've already mentioned. They say there's not enough water to cover the earth, and so forth. But the Bible certainly indicates, the Bible is true in what it says, it had to be a worldwide flood.

Now they say that when it says all the high hills were covered and all the animals died, that that's using hyperbole. And I recognize the Bible uses hyperbole sometimes. But the things that are said about the flood rule that out in this case.

One of the most obvious reasons is that Noah and his family would not have to build an ark to escape a local flood, especially if they had 120 years of warning in advance. You would not have to take animals on the ark. The animals no doubt lived all over the face of the earth at this point in time.

And if they was just wiping out a certain valley, God could have put the instincts in the animals to go over the next hill instead to an ark. God could have just said to Noah and his family, listen, this place is going to flood up. So you go over that mountain range over there and you'll survive.

Everyone else here is going to die. That's what he did with Lot when he was going to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. He just sent Lot out.

But he didn't just send Noah out of the area, because there was no area safe to be. The whole world was going to be under water. And there are societies all over the planet that tell of a flood in their history.

And of a man or a family being preserved in a boat of some kind. The idea of a flood and the saving of a few people on a boat is extremely widespread in a lot of pagan cultures as well as in the Western and Jewish scriptures. Anyway, I believe that you just take the scriptures seriously and you're going to have to have a worldwide flood.

You can't have all the visible mountains covered with water and it not be global. Because if it's local, it's got to be contained by something. And that's something that has to be mountains.

But in order to contain it, the mountains have to be above the water level, at least a little bit. And furthermore, it only rained and had these subterranean waters for 40 days. But it took almost another year for the waters to drain off.

Now when you have local floods, water comes pouring into an area very quickly. But when the water stops being added with equal quickness, it dissipates. It runs off through the crevices and ravines and between the mountains and so forth.

The water doesn't just sit there for a year after the rain stopped in a local flood. And so the fact that it took so long means the water had to evaporate and it had to go back under the earth's crust probably and so forth. But the idea of a local flood is totally unnecessary.

And it's usually suggested by people who are wanting to try to harmonize the Bible with secular opinions about geology. Because the uniformitarian theory of geology, which became popular in the early 19th century, is that the layers of earth's crust that we now have, the strata that they find the fossils in, that these layers were laid down over millions and billions of years. They believe that these layers of strata of earth's crust are really sedimentary rock.

That is, there were minerals suspended in water which gradually settled down because they were heavier than water, and settled down, then more settled on top of them, then more on top of them, so the weight of the higher levels pressed the lower levels into solid rock eventually over millions of years. And so they say that sedimentary rock, settling in this gradual way over billions of years, formed these different strata of the earth's crust where we find the fossils. And that's one of the reasons they say the earth is billions of years old, because that's such a slow process, they say.

And they say that the dinosaurs and these other creatures lived longer because they find them in the rock strata that is associated in the mind of the geologist with sometime billions of years ago. But before the 19th century, most western scientists believe that the earth's strata were created by the flood, not by uniform processes of gradual sedimentary accumulation, but rather by Noah's flood. The two views of geology are called catastrophism and uniformitarianism.

Uniformitarianism, obviously from the word uniform, is the idea that there's uniform processes that have been going on for billions of years without any interruption, and it is those uniform processes over millions of years that have created the phenomena that we see in the earth's surface. But catastrophism is the idea that these things were formed by a catastrophe. And Noah's flood is the view that many western scientists believe caused it in the old days before uniformitarianism became more popular with scientists.

But both are simply theories. You can't prove one or the other, but the evidence seems to be more in favor of catastrophism in many cases. For example, among the fossils they find, they find what they call polystrate fossils that go through several strata.

Now, if these strata are supposed to have taken billions of years to form, you've got like trees, fossils of trees that cut through several layers of the earth's crust, and which if formed gradually, these trees would have to have been there for billions of years while these rocks gradually accumulated around their trunks. And some of these trees are upside down with their roots up and their branches below, as if they were torn up and suspended in water when they got encased in rock. Rather sudden.

Frank was talking today during the break about how many of the fossils of sea creatures are found to have been fossilized while they were doing things like swimming or giving birth or having fights with each other. Now, you see, if the uniformitarian view is correct, and these fossils, these rocks were accumulated very gradually, then we'd have to assume this creature was giving birth for billions of years while the rocks were gradually forming around it. But if it was sudden, if it was a catastrophe that these mudslides and rapid mineral deposits accumulating in one spot because the water's thrashing about, then there'd be a lot of creatures that'd be caught in the activities that would be captured as fossils immediately.

And that is really what the fossil record seems to indicate. That is also why I think the evolutionists have never been able to find transitional forms between species in the fossil record. Because they believe that record was formed over billions of years and during the time when animal species were coming into existence through evolution.

And therefore they're looking for the intermediate species in the fossil record. They think, well, these layers have the oldest animals and these ones higher have the more modern animals and there should be some transitions between them, but they can't find them. But if all of these strata were formed at one time in the flood, not during the time that species were coming into existence, but rather at the time that they were being eliminated, then that would explain why there aren't any transitional forms.

There was no evolution in the fossil record. The geological column doesn't give any testimony of the origin of life, but rather of the destruction of life. But because the worldwide flood is such a supernatural event that cannot be explained in terms of natural laws, and because we live in an anti-supernaturalist age, what scientists believed 200 years ago is unthinkable today to scientists, but not because science has proved the old views wrong, but only because the mood of society has made the old views intolerable.

Because the old views require supernatural activity from God for there to be such a catastrophe. That is intolerable to the modern secular mind. So they have to believe in uniformitarianism, they have to believe in the slow accumulation of the rocks and so forth.

And then they just really don't have anything intelligent to say about some of these fossils that cross several strata and that obviously bear witness to creatures killed suddenly and immediately fossilized. You see, what the evolutionists believe is that these fossils were made when a creature died, its corpse fell to the ocean, and over millions of years the minerals built up around them and made a fossil of them. But if that were true, why didn't they decompose over those millions of years? If you put a dead squirrel out there in the yard and come back and look at it a couple days from now, it's not going to be in very good shape to make a fossil from.

There's going to be scavengers that will eat it, there's microbes that will cause it to decay into nothing. Eventually you're just going to have a few scattered bones there. You're not going to have a fossil that's a nice representation of that animal ten days later, or ten weeks later, or ten million years later.

And so you're not going to have this dead body lying there waiting for the rocks to form around it for millions of years. So to me, the uniformitarian geology just doesn't really make a lot of sense in view of the evidence, and it certainly doesn't make sense in view of the Bible. The Bible would suggest catastrophism, and this flood that destroyed everything is what created the fossil record in most cases.

Now, I think we read through verse 21. No, verse 20. About how all the high mountains were covered, and all flesh died that moved on the earth, birds and cattle and beasts and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth, and every man.

All in whose nostrils was the breath of the spirit of life, all that was in the dry land died. So he, God, destroyed all living things which were on the face of the ground, both man and cattle, creeping thing and bird of the air. They were destroyed from the earth.

Only Noah and those who were with him in the ark remained alive. And the waters prevail on the earth. Now, this 150 days, we are told its measurements in the next chapter.

This includes the 40 days. The 40 days when the waters accumulated and the waters rose are included in the 150 days, which is five months that the waters prevailed on the earth. Now, prevail on the earth means they didn't go down measurably.

And that 150 days measures the length of time it was before well, from the time that the flood started to the time that the ark actually touched solid ground. They couldn't see solid ground because the water still covered the earth. But the ark, of course, was submerged 22 or more feet below the surface.

And at one point, the ark, which had been free floating for 150 days, on the 150th day, it hit something, the top of a mountain, apparently, and it lodged there and it didn't move anymore. But they still couldn't see the mountaintops for another few months, I believe. Anyway, the dates are given in the next chapter.

But when it says the waters prevailed on the earth 150 days, it means that in addition to the 40 days that the waters were rising, there was another 110 days after that, that they didn't, they just floated around and didn't, didn't have any evidence of solid land at all until the end of that time when the ark hit something. And we see that in chapter 8, God remembered Noah and every living thing and all the animals that were with him in the ark. And God made a wind to pass over the earth and the water subsided.

Now, verse 2 is parenthetical. It says the fountains of the deep and the windows of heaven were also stopped and the rain from heaven was restrained. It doesn't mean that after 150 days, the rain stopped.

That had stopped after 40 days. It's trying to tell us now that the waters were going to go down. And there are two things that were significant.

One is that the rain had stopped long ago. And the other is that now a wind came to start to increase the evaporation process of the water so that it began to subside more quickly. And the waters receded continually from the earth.

At the end of 150 days, the waters decreased. Then the ark rested in the seventh month, the 17th day of the month on the mountains of Arab. Now, they didn't see those mountains, but it was resting on there, but still water all around.

Now, it was the, what day was it? It was the seventh month, the 17th day of the month. When did the rain start? On the second month, the 17th day. Right.

So if we were using, you know, like our, the way we speak of things, this would be July 17th and the rains would have begun on February 17th. So it's exactly the same day of the month, but five months later. So that's the 150 days that we've talked about here.

And it says, and the waters decreased continually until the 10th month. And the 10th month on the first day of the month, which would be about what, two and a half months after the 150 days, right? I mean, the first day of the month, but the 10th month is about two and a half months later. So they, they felt land under the ark at a certain point, but it's two and a half months later that they actually began to see the tops of mountains around them.

This suggests, of course, that the ark's location in the mountains of Ararat was not simply somewhere in the mountain range. They had to be on the top peak because the top peak stopped them from moving before any other peaks were visible. You know, I've seen some photographs of some places where some people think the ark might be now, and it's kind of, it's not at the top of a mountain peak, but it could have since then fallen.

Of course, it could have come down in an avalanche or, you know, things have changed since then. But at the time they were apparently lodged on the top peak of the highest mountain, or at least one of the very highest mountains, because they, that top mountain top was only 22 feet from the surface of the water and no other peaks were above the water. So it's right on the pinnacle of a mountain.

Now it doesn't say Mount Ararat. There is a mountain or mountains in the region of Turkey or Armenia today that are called Ararat. But Mount Ararat is not a single mountain.

It's a range of mountains. And so it's, we don't know exactly which mountain it was. It might have been the highest mountain at range, but the ark may have of course slid down the mountainside in the years, centuries since then, and been covered in glacial ice and so forth.

In fact, many of the people who've explored looking for the ark are looking in an area where they think photographs may indicate the ark is, but much of the time it's simply encased in a glacier and they can't really get to it or see it. Anyway, verse six, now they could see mountaintops at this point. So it came to pass at the end of 40 days, apparently another 40 days after they saw the mountaintops, that Noah opened the window of the ark, which he had made.

Then he sent out a raven, which kept going to and fro until the waters had dried up from the earth. That means it kept going to and fro means that it didn't come back to the ark. It found places to lodge at night.

I mean, there were mountaintops to be seen. Ravens are hardy birds, unlike the dove that he sent out later. A raven is a tough bird.

It could find a place to nest even before there were suitable places for the more delicate animals to live. So it didn't come back to the ark, apparently. And then he sent out from himself a dove to see if the waters had abated from the face of the ground.

But the dove found no resting place for the sole of her foot, and she returned into the ark to him, for the waters were on the face of the whole earth. So there were mountain peaks showing, but the earth, the habitable, flat portions of the earth were still fully covered. So he put out his hand and took her, the dove, and drew her into the ark to himself, and waited yet another seven days.

And again he sent the dove out from the ark. And the dove came to him in the evening, and behold, a freshly plucked olive leaf was in her mouth. And no one knew that the waters had abated from the earth.

He couldn't see where that leaf had come from, but he knew that there was some place the dove had found where trees had begun to grow again. Now you might say, well, how could in only a few months' time there be a tree with leaves and so forth already? But olive trees actually are, from what I've read, unusual among trees, in that they do survive. I think they can survive even underwater completely for longer periods than some trees can.

It's not their natural state. But they can take root from a twig or from a branch and begin to grow again. And apparently somewhere, some olive twig or something had lodged in the ground and begun to grow, and the dove found it and brought it home to Noah.

So he waited yet another seven days and sent out the dove, which did not return to him again anymore. So he knew that even the creatures that needed more, that were more delicate and needed more hospitable environments to live, that they could live now. The dove found someplace to live.

Unless it got killed by the raven. But it never came back anymore. Anyway, verse 13, And it came to pass in the six hundred and first year in the first month, the first day of the month, that the waters were dried up from the earth.

Now, it started on the 600th year. This is now the 601st year of Noah's life. This is the first month, the first day of the month.

It's New Year's Day. They could see with their eyes, as they looked out of the ark, that the waters were dried up. But they didn't go out immediately.

And Noah removed the covering of the ark, and that must have been really to get all that fresh air in there after all that time. And he looked, and indeed the surface of the ground was dry. And in the second month, on the 27th day of the month, the earth was dry.

Now, it was visibly dry, I guess, like January 1st, so to speak. But it wasn't until almost two months later that the earth was dry enough that they wanted to leave the ark and go out. So it probably was still super saturated, muddy.

I don't know, probably many of you have had the experience of stepping onto land that looked kind of like it might hold you, but it was really mud. And I'm just thinking really deep. I remember when I was a kid with my grandfather out somewhere in Bishop, California, or something like that, near a river where my grandfather was fishing.

I was out walking on the grass, and I saw on this low area, it just looked like bare mud ground, but it looked solid. I saw a big gopher snake out there, and I thought, oh, I want to catch that snake. So I jumped out onto there, and I sucked up to my thighs in mud.

I thought it was solid ground, but it was super saturated ground. And it was hard to get my legs out of that suction. I could see why they wouldn't want to immediately just go out and start running around in this mud.

So it was another month and a half or two, or almost two months before they went out. But you can see that the day that the ground was dry was exactly one year and 10 days after the flood had started. It had been the 600th year, the second month, the 17th day when it started.

It's now the 600th first year, the same month, second month, but now the 27th day, just 10 days later in the month. And it says in verse 15, God spoke to Noah saying, go out of the ark, you and your wife and your sons and your sons' wives with you. Bring out with you every living thing of all flesh that is with you, birds and cattle and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth, so that they may abound on the earth and be fruitful and multiply on the earth.

So Noah went out and his sons and his wife and his sons' wives with him. Every beast, every creeping thing, every bird of whatever creeps on the earth, according to their families, went out of the ark. Then Noah built an altar to the Lord.

So the first act on the new planet was to, you know, basically sort of like when we went to the moon, we planted the flag, you know, it's kind of, we're claiming this moon for America. I don't know how the rest of the world feels about that. I think they probably think it's their moon too, but we planted our flag there.

And when Noah came out of the ark, when Abraham went into the promised land, first thing they did in New Area is like they planted God's flag. They built an altar to the Lord and offered sacrifice there. It's like claiming the territory for God.

So this is a good start for humanity after the flood to build an altar and worship God as a first act of coming out on the dry ground. He took every clean animal and every clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar. Not every specimen, but some of every species.

And the Lord smelled the soothing aroma. Again, this is anthropomorphic language. God probably doesn't have nostrils, but he was pleased nonetheless, as we would be pleased to smell something pleasant to our nostrils.

He was spiritually pleased with the spiritual aroma of this. Then the Lord said to in his heart, I will never again curse the ground for man's sake. Although the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth, nor will I again destroy every living thing as I have done.

Now it says the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth, even after the flood, but it doesn't say what it said before. Before it was much more sweeping, that every thought of the imagination of man's heart was only evil continually. It doesn't say that now.

It says men, their thoughts are corrupt. They're fallen from their youth. They're evil, but they're not always as evil as they were before the flood.

And he's not saying that that's how men always are. And he says I won't curse the ground again for man's sake. And what's that mean? It certainly doesn't, it can't mean that he's removed the curse that he placed on the ground in the time of Adam.

He wouldn't have to curse the ground again. That curse would remain already. He's saying I'm not going to put another curse on the ground.

I'm not going to curse the ground again. But I think the cursing of the ground he's talking about here is that curse that it's just gone through, the flood, where everything on the earth has been slain because of God's anger. That's the curse that's been on the earth.

I think that's what he's talking about. I'm not going to cover the whole thing with water again. He makes that very clear by the end of the verse.

He says nor will I again destroy every living thing as I have done. While the earth remains, seed time and harvest, cold and heat, winter and summer, day and night will not cease. In other words, until the end of the world, now the end of the world is going to be with fire, not with water.

That's what Peter says in 2 Peter 3, he says the flood destroyed the old world with water, but the present earth that remains after the flood is going to be destroyed by fire when Jesus comes back. But until then, there's going to be no more interruptions of nature like this. There's not going to be an interruption of the seasons and the day and night like the flood apparently did.

Now, we don't actually have reference prior to this of the four seasons like we have here, seed time and harvest, cold and heat, winter and summer. These various seasons that we now have were never mentioned in the scripture before this. It's true that it says that God made the stars for signs and for seasons, but their seasons just means periods of time.

The idea of four seasons like we have now, which is of course a result of the tilt of the earth on its axis. That's why we have four seasons, because the earth is tilted on its axis. It's something that the earth acquired that tilt during the flood, and that would certainly disrupt the earth's surface.

If it's a super-statute of water and God shifts it, it's going to jostle everything. Now, it's not going to hurt Noah and the people on the ark much. If you take a bucket of water and you put a little toy boat in it, and you turn the bucket around, the water still is a cushion.

The boat is protected from it, from the movement. If God did completely disruptive things to the earth's surface under the water, the ark above it would be minimally affected. But it may be that when they came out of the ark, the earth had now shifted on its axis, and now we have these four seasons that are here mentioned for the first time.

It doesn't say that this is the beginning of those seasons, it's just that they've never been mentioned before. It's possible that the earth didn't have the four seasons before that. We also have reason to believe that they didn't have rainbow before that, and other common things that we take for granted.

We'll have to worry about that another time.