SADDLE CATNAP
TEN REASONS WHY THE GENESIS FLOOD MUST HAVE BEEN A GLOBAL EVENT
by Richard Peachey
| 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 grounded “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). |
| E | The Earth — Three-quarters of the Earth’s continental land surface is composed of fossil-bearing sedimentary 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.” |
| 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.” |
| A | 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, cf. 2:5). |
| T | Traditions from many nations — Hundreds of people groups around the world have stories in which a great flood leaves only a few survivors. Such tales have been found among the native peoples of North and South America, Australia, Japan, China, India, and Europe. |
| NA | Need for the Ark — Noah was warned that the flood was coming. If it were only 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! |