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THE DELUGE OR NOAHIC FLOOD WAS IT UNIVERSAL OR LOCAL?
AN understanding of the first nine chapters of Genesis is vital in our study of the Scriptures and to gaining a clear view of early history. The first chapter is an account of creation (bara) in six periods. It records the creation of living things (plant life, fish, birds, animals and mankind) all in variety and each developing after its own kind. We are given no clue as to the length of these periods but they provide ample time for the development of large communities of people, possibly in many places on the earth. Evidence of these varied communities has been found by archaeologists. In the second chapter, beginning at verse seven, a new development is recorded. Here, we are told, God formed (yatsar) a man from the dust of the earth into whose nostrils He breathed the breath of life, and the man, Adam, became a living soul. Next we are told God planted a garden in the eastern part of the land called Eden. This territory must have been especially fertile with a most pleasant climate. In Genesis 13:10 it is referred to as the "Garden of the Lord", but the only clue we have to its locality is in chapter 2:10. This will be referred to later. In the garden grew trees that were pleasant to the sight and good for food. God planted there the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, the fruit of which tree, Adam was warned not to eat .Verse nineteen of this same chapter relates that God formed (yatsar) the beast of the field and the fowl of the air and brought them to Adam that he might name them. "And Adam named the cattle, the fowl of the air and the living creatures" . We are not told who these living creatures were but later in Chapter 6:20 we are told that they are the creeping things of the earth. This second chapter goes on to relate the making or "building" (margin) of the woman Eve as an helpmeet for Adam and the third chapter tells the story of the fall of Adam and Eve through the temptation of the serpent (nachash) and their later expulsion from the Garden of Eden. Now the garden was planted in the eastern part of Eden which was evidently a section of land that God had reserved for Himself and after Adam and Eve were sent away, a flaming sword was placed at the eastern end of the Garden. This means that Adam and Eve were driven into a territory which. was east of Eden. This act is the beginning of our historical period for we are given in ordered sequence, the names of Adam's direct descendants through his third son Seth. From this new domain their eldest son Cain was banished after he had slain his brother, and we are told, he went out from the presence of the Lord and dwelt in the land of Nod (or the wilderness) on the east of Eden.
The land of Nod must have been inhabited by some of the descendants of the people created in Genesis chapter one as Cain married a wife, built a city, had children, some of whose names are recorded in Genesis chapter four. God gave Eve another son, Seth, in place of Abel who Cain had slain and after Seth's son, Enos was born his family began to call themselves by the name of the Lord. In other words, as Adam was called "the son of God" (Luke 3:38) so his descendants distinguished themselves from the other races of the world by the name "sons of God". In chapter six it tells us that as Adam's descendants (sons of God) began to multiply upon the earth (or land, "erets") they saw the daughters of men that they were fair and intermarried with them. This brought evil among the Adamic people as it induced the sons of God to worship the nature goddesses of the pre-Adamic people and to join their pagan rites. It is quite possible that it was mixing with these pre-Adamic people that caused Cain to bring the wrong offering to God, an offering that was rejected. The fruit of the ground was the usual offering of primitive people to their gods. However, wickedness increased among Adam's descendants in the land which had been set apart for them. The Bible does not tell us anything about this land but in chapter six, 1,056 years after Adam's fall from grace, Noah, a direct descendant of Adam through Seth is born. We are told he was upright and perfect in his generations (tamiym). The meaning seems to be that Noah was of pure Adamic descent. To Noah God reveals that He will destroy Adamic man because of his wickedness. Verse thirteen says "The end of all flesh is come before Me for the earth is filled with violence through them and behold I will destroy them with the earth." God commanded Noah to build an Ark for which He gave implicit instructions. For 120 years Noah preached to his fellow countrymen, warning them of God's judgement and urging them to repent. At the end of this period Noah and his wife, his three sons and their wives - eight people in all - went into the ark. Together with them went a representative number of animals and birds which lived in their land. These would be descendants of the special animals formed (yatsar) for the Garden of Eden - the cattle, birds and creeping things. NOW LET US CONSIDER THE FLOOD Disraeli said, "Tradition can neither be rnade (fabricated) nor destroyed". If this is so then the tradition of the Chinese that it was on the Tian Shan Range or Heavenly Mountains that the Chinese Noah, Fu Hi appeared after the Deluge, surrounded by a rainbow and offered sacrifices of seven pairs of animals, is relevant. The Flood and the destruction of the land was, according to tradition, brought about as a punishment on those who had ridiculed a holy man who warned them to repent of their sins. (ref C.P Skrine - Chinese Central Asia) Again, in Indian tradition, the area of the Pamirs west of the Himalayas is called "The Gate of Paradise" or "The Hub of the Universe". By Usher's chronology the Deluge occurred in 2348 B.C. which is only four years different to David Davidson's date of 2344 B.C. This would mean that Noah was born 1,056 years after the fall of Adam or in 2944 B.C. It is quite important for us to note these dates as it helps us to get a clearer picture of the events portrayed in the early chapters of Genesis. One other fact is important. We must realize that the Bible is a history of God's plan for the world, worked out through a certain family of people descended from Adam. The other peoples of the world or their lands are not mentioned except if, and as, they impinge on the history of this one family. Abraham was born about 2000 B.C. in the city of Ur in ancient Chaldea which was at that time a flourishing country with many large cities, a large population and a developed civilization. This has been proved by archaeology. Less than 100 years later, approx. 430 years after the Flood, Abraham went down into Egypt to buy corn. There also, he found a great civilization and a dense population. There is controversy over the date of the building of the Great Pyramid of Gizeh. However, whether it was built shortly before, or two or three centuries after the Flood, how could Egypt have provided the builders with 100,000 workers every three months if, in the first place, all men were descended from Adam (i.e. in 1656 years) or in the second place, if all human beings had been destroyed by the Flood such a short time before? At Thebes, Prof. Sayce, the Egyptologist, found in a tornb of the XVII Dynasty, pictures of negroes as they are today, white skinned Aryans, brown Egyptians and typical Mongols. As these types have remained the same during the 3,600 years since, is it reasonable to suppose that these four distinct types could have developed in the six preceding centuries, from 2,344 to 1,700 B.C. and from the eight survivors of the Flood? THIS PROVES THAT THE NOAHIC FLOOD DID NOT COVER EGYPT! If we take the Genesis record to mean that all the high mountains in the world were covered with water, then the Himalayas would have been covered. This means that a flood to a depth of six miles would have covered Egypt. AS THIS DID NOT HAPPEN IN EGYPT THE NOAHIC FLOOD WAS NOT A UNIVERSAL FLOOD. Where, we could ask, did this unbelievable mass of water go when it subsided? From where did the dove get the olive leaf? If all vegetation had been submerged for a number of months there would not have been any live trees. Flood waters kill vegetation very quickly. According to geologists the earth has been subject to great floodings in different periods of its history. Many areas show evidence of this, but all of these are earlier than 2,344 B.C. Mr. Gorn-Old, a student of Chinese folk lore says. "The sacred book of the Chinese Shu-King speaks of Fu-Hi, the Chinese Noah and gives his epoch as 2,944 B.C. which is 1,056 years from the fall of Adam. This coincides with the Noahic epoch, as Noah was born in 2,944 B.C. and establishes the identity of the legendary Fu-Hi with Noah. The traditions of ancient Chaldea, Egypt and China picture the first civilization, as distinct from the pre-Adamic rural communities, and existing in a world surrounded by high mountains. In the Akkadian tablet records, a garbled story of the Flood is given, but it is more than likely that it came originally from descendants of the Noahic family. A great deal has been made of Genesis 7:21 which says. "And all flesh died that moved upon the earth." The word 'earth' is from the Hebrew word 'erets' which can be translated also as land, country, field or world. The earth here is the Adamic land or where the Adamic people lived. It is interesting to note that only the people, cattle, fowl and creeping things that lived on dry ground were destroyed by the Flood (Gen. 7:23). There is no mention made of sea creatures. If the Flood were universal and all land had been covered to a depth so great, even the fish in the sea would not have been able to survive. NO! THE FLOOD DESTROYED THE WICKED ADAMIC CIVILIZATION AND THEIR LAND. NOAH AND HIS FAMILY WERE THE ONLY SURVIVORS. Let us now see if we can find out where the Garden of Eden was and also the situation of the Adamic land. The first and perhaps the only clue we have as to its locality is in Genesis 11:2. "And it came to pass as they journeyed from the east they found a plain in the land of Shinar and dwelt there." It is quite evident that these descendants of Noah were settling in a new country. WHERE HAD THEY COME FROM? Certainly not from Mt. Ararat which lies to the North of Mesopotamia. In Genesis 2:10-14, there is a puzzling statement. "And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted and became four heads." The names of these four new rivers are given - Pison, Gihon, Hiddekel and Euphrates. Geographers have studied the river systems of Eurasia to try to discover a place where a river is parted into four heads - these four heads becoming four great rivers. THIS CANNOT BE FOUND IN THE MIDDLE EAST. In a very old map of the world - a copy of a more ancient map made in A.D. 1,532, there is shown a river which does divide into four heads. This map shows the only place where this has occurred. I say "has occurred" because the upheaval which caused the Deluge must have had an effect on the topography of the area. It does not need a large disturbance in the earth's crust to change the beds of rivers, and this is what has occurred in an area north of the Himalayas. Here the Gobi Desert with the Takla Makan area comprise the Han Hai or dried up sea of the Chinese. It is an area which stretches continually from the Pamirs to the Great Khingan Range and the western frontier of Manchuria. It represents the bed of an ancient fresh water sea or series of lakes, and is studded now with rocky formations representing the ancient islands of the Han Hai. The Tarim Basin which lies in the south-west of this area occupies more than half of the area known as Singkiang. The river Tahm rises in the Karakoram Mountains and is now called the Yarkand Daria. W.G. West in his book "The Geography Behind History" describes it in these words. "The Takla Makan is today a howling wilderness, a true desert and totally devoid of vegetation - a place of desolation, sand and rock. Ringing the desert is a belt of piedmont gravel, built up by detritus brought down by fast running streams. The water disappears in the gravel to reappear in the south, draining into the lake Lop Nor. The Turfan depression lies at the north-cast of the Tarim Basin. It is a fault trough which descends to 940 feet below sea level. In this depression is a salt swamp, remnant of the former lake which filled this area." (end quote.) The Pamir Plateau lies at the extreme western end of the Tarim Basin between the Tian Shan Mountains and the Hindu Cush. From the lakes of this plateau issue four great rivers whose modern names are the Indus, the Jaxartes, the Oxus and the Tarim rivers. This is the only place on the globe where this phenomenon is found. Genesis 2:13 says that the second river encompassed the land of Ethiopia. Cush is the original name for Ethiopia and is a word which is older than the Hebrew language. Today these mountains are called the Hindu Cush. The Oxus River is still called the Gihon by the natives and the Chitral branch of the Indus answers the description of the Pison. The Jaxartes and the Tarim are in all probability the Euphrates and the Hiddekel. Sir Guy Maspero (History of the Orient) and Prof. Buchanan state that from their investigations of this area, they believe that the Pamir Plateau is the place described in Scripture as the source of the four rivers. The Euphrates in Mesopotamia was possibly named by Cain or his descendants after the one in their homeland. Many rivers today bear migration names. The land of Ethiopia may have been named in the same way as it would remind them of the mountainous terrain they had left. ETHIOPIA'S ANCIENT NAME WAS CUSH. The Pamir Plateau is called 'the roof of the world' and has an attitude of 15,000 ft. with mountains rising from it to a height of 1 0,000 ft. while the Tarim Valley today is the world's greatest sink hole, where the Tarim River disappears at a place which is 500 ft. below sea level. Today the Pamir Plateau is used only for grazing in the summer months, its high altitude making it an impossible place in the winter. The old Akkadian or Chaldean idea of the world shows this area of the Tarim Basin and the Takla Makan as a floor, the appearance of which is something like an over-turned boat, hollow underneath. The collapse of the crust of this central dome, under which drained water from the marshy country in the north, produced the effect described in Genesis 7 as "the breaking up of the fountains of the deep." It is a known geological fact that immense quantities of water flow underground in Central Asia. We are told "God planted a garden eastward in Eden". When Adam and Eve were turned out of the garden a flaming sword was placed at the eastern end to prevent them from re-entering it, so they evidently settled in and inhabited the land we have been discussing. It was a large area, about 600 miles by 250 miles, quite large enough to support the population that would grow from Adam and Eve in a period of about 1,650 years. The floor of the basin was raised in the centre, sloping to the sides, and was ringed by high hills which provided a natural barrier to the world outside. One of the great rivers of Eden watered it. Today, the Takla Makan suffers from progressive dessication. It is the only place known on earth where no form of life exists in a desert. If this is the site of the Adamic world then, truly, the land as well as the people was destroyed. Many Chinese legends still current in Chinese Turkestan, speak of the many cities buried there as a divine judgement on the inhabitants for their sins. David Davidson in Early Egypt, Babylonia and Central Asia, states that the same earth movement that produced the collapse of the earth's crust in Turkestan, converting the whole basin into an inland sea of fresh water, produced a slow settling of the land surface from East Turkestan towards the Yellow Sea. In Chinese tradition, there was a golden age in China between 2,357 B.C. and 2,205 B.C. during which period the Emperor Yao reigned. During his reign he instructed his minister, Yu, to cope with the floods which were devastating the country. The mighty seisrnatic disturbances which brought about changes to the original Eden or Paradise, the collapse of the Adamic earth and the deluge, raised this area to the highest plateau on earth and changed its climate. When the highest peaks surrounding the valley were covered, water overflowed into the lower lying country and as it subsided, flowing out eastward, the ark was stranded on the highest peak. THE WORD 'ARARAT' MEANS HIGHEST PEAK. Now Daniel tells us that in the last days knowledge will be increased. A new book was published in 1974, called The Jupiter Effect written by Drs. Gribbin and Plagemann. This book explains the new Tectonic Plate theory. It is the latest scientific explanation of the reason for earthquakes. Scientists now believe that the earth's crust is broken up into plates which fit closely together, but are subject to movement because of the instability of the molten rnagma underneath. As a rule the plates slide imperceptibly past each other at a rate of from one to five centimetres a year. Some are stationary for long periods. All great earthquakes occur along these fault lines as they are called. One of these fault lines goes right into the area we have been discussing, but it has not been fully studied yet. If a movement of the magma causes a thrust of one plate against another at a special point, the pressure builds up until an upheaval is necessary to relieve the strain. When the edges of the plates are near shore lines or under water we have tidal waves which are felt for tremendous distances, but when they occur in a land mass the cataclysm is localized to a certain extent. However, a gigantic earthquake such as is envisaged here would have had a lasting effect on the area. As the thrust of the southern tectonic plate raised the Pamir Plateau to its present level, the land to the north and east would be lowered and the waters from the Han Hai and the 'fountains of the deep' would pour out into northern China. It would take a long time to drain this inland sea and Chinese history records that for many years in this period China was devastated by floods and great canals were dug to alleviate the danger. Geologists have proved that there have been many major cataclysms in the earth's crust in times past but this one recorded so briefly in Genesis and confirmed by geographers and local legends, is the greatest in the history of the Adamic race and of our epoch. The Universal Flood theory does not fit the account given to us in Genesis. God's word is perfect and every detail presented for our instruction, is credible and factual. Our increased knowledge in these last days has made clear what has puzzled readers in by-gone centuries. THE STORY OF THE FLOOD ENDS WITH A COVENANT. And so the waters were abated from off the earth and Noah went forth with his family and the animals on to the dry ground. And Noah built an altar unto the Lord and offered burnt offerings. And the Lord said 'I will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake ... while earth remaineth, seed time and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.' And God spoke unto Noah and his sons saying, 'I will establish My covenant with you and with your seed after you, and with every living creature that is with you...' And God said 'I do set my bow in the cloud and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth ... and the waters shall no more become a flood to destroy all flesh.' Today Adam's descendants through the Noahic family must suffer God's judgements again, as their condition is, as the Lord Jesus prophesied in Matthew 24:38, the same as it was in the days of Noah. But God's covenant of the rainbow is unbreakable. He will not again destroy all Adamic man by a flood. God extended this covenant to include all mankind. (Gen. 9: 17) 'And God said unto Noah, this (the rainbow) is the token of the covenant which I have established between me and all flesh that is upon the earth.' God has made a way of escape from His judgements. By repentance and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, God's Son, we can be cleansed from our sins and obtain everlasting life.
An analysis of the facts and arguments surrounding the Flood of Genesis showing its true nature and meaning by Charles A Weisman (U.SA) PART ONE Many in Christendom may find this material to be shocking and upsetting since the subject of Noah's Flood has for so long been misconstrued within church doctrine and religious dogma. This article will reveal how much of the prevailing teachings regarding this Biblical story is fact and how much is fiction. 1. INTRODUCTION The Biblical story of Noah, the Ark and the Flood is perhaps the oldest and best known story that exists today. The great Deluge, commonly called "Noah's Flood," as recorded in Genesis 6, 7 & 8, has been a subject of intense controversy and debate. Much of this debate surrounds the scope and reality of the Biblical account. Some say it was a literal worldwide flood, others say it is merely an allegorical story. Certainly if the truth of this one subject were made evident many of the debates surrounding the Bible would no longer exist. During the nineteenth century, two doctrines gained strength and popularity among Christians regarding what the Bible says (1) That the earth and all that is on it is very young in age, and (2) that there was a worldwide flood that destroyed all life upon the earth except that which was in Noah's Ark. In support of these concepts there has developed a religious sect known as creationism, led by those known as creationists. Creationism is based on Christian "fundamentalism" or "Judeo-Christian" theology, which many are now discovering to be a distorted Christianity (a mixture of the Bible and human precepts). Without either of these two concepts, the doctrine of creationism cannot stand and will quickly vanish from the minds of any rational person. Itis the intent of this material to show that the idea of a worldwide flood is neither biblical, historical nor scientific. In this endeavour, we will need to examine exactly what is and is not being said today on this matter, and compare it to evidence derived from the Bible, science and history. 2. THE FACE OF THE EARTH Here we will examine the Bible itself and see if the Bible really says what the literalists, fundamentalists, and creationists claim it says about a worldwide flood. From the reading of the Genesis account of the Flood in the English translation it would seem that it was worldwide in scope if we take the passages involved strictly literally. Various passages tell us that life was to be destroyed from the face of the "earth" (Genesis 7:12), the waters were on the face of the whole "earth" (Genesis 8:9), etc. When these passages were written it would be hard to believe they were made with the understanding of a global planet. We have to recall that it was not much more than 500 years ago that people believed the "earth" was flat. The word "earth" used in these passages of Genesis is the Hebrew word "erets" (Strong's O.T.#776). Erets does not actually carry any connotation of a global, spherical planet in its translation. While it has been translated as "earth" many times, it is also translated "country" 140 times, "land" 1,476 times, and "ground" 96 times in the Old Testament. In the various references to erets it can be shown it is most often used to infer a limited land area rather than the entire planet.
When God had told Abraham, "Get thee out of thy country (erets) ... unto a land (erets) that I will show thee" - (Genesis 12:1), He did not mean for Abraham to leave the earth and go to another earth or planet. The word erets was referring to a limited land area just as it was in Genesis 7:10 - "the waters of the flood were upon the erets" or upon the land. Creationists have arrogantly quoted Genesis 8:9 ("for the waters were on the face of the whole earth") and stated that it obviously means a global flood. As the creationist Dr. Morris states: It almost seems frivolous to try to show that the Bible teaches a worldwide Flood. This fact is obvious in the mere reading of Genesis 6:9 and one who does not see it there will hardly be influenced by other reasoning. - (Henry M. Morris, Scientific Creationism, (1974) p.252) Perhaps the most common error made in understanding the Scriptures is allowing inconsistencies to exist in the underlying principles it teaches. Creationists are no exception to this problem and such statements as that above clearly reveal their lack of Biblical study and understanding. Their aim is to support tradition over Scripture. In doing so, they allow a misinterpretation of a verse to contradict other verses. In the Bible the word erets rarely means the planet earth. For instance, during the plagues upon Egypt we read that "the rain was not poured upon the earth [erets]" - (Exodus9:33). Everyone understands erets here to mean only a local land area-the land of Egypt.Why, then, in reading in Genesis that "the waters of the flood were upon the earth [erets]"or that "the rain was upon the earth [erets]" - (Genesis 7:10,12) should we assume the whole planet is meant? The rain that fell on the earth at the time of the Flood was also confined to a local land area. In Exodus 10, verses 5 through 15, we read of a plague of locusts in Egypt:
Again it should be evident that this locust plague covered only the limited land of Egypt, as shown in verse 15, and also in verse 14 which states "the locusts went up over all the land (erets) of Egypt." Why, then, should any insist that when it says the flood waters "were on the face of the whole earth (erets)" in Genesis 8:9, it must mean the waters were of a worldwide scale? It is the same wording used in both cases and interpreting erets to mean a limited land area maintains consistency in such verses. Atthe time when Joseph was in Egypt there existed a "famine over all the face of the earth [erets]" - (Genesis 41:56).Was there a famine in Greenland, in the tropics of Africa and South America, in Antarctica, in the Hawaiian Islands? There is no evidence of a global famine at this period of time. However, there was a famine in all the lands that had contact with Egypt at that time. Because of the famine the Bible states "all countries [erets] came to Egypt to buy corn" - (Genesis 41:57). Certainly the Eskimos and Polynesians never came to Egypt.
When such events were originally written, whether it be of the Flood or the locust plague in Egypt, the land area they transpired in was the centre of attention and encompassed the total scope of intent and field of understanding. In this context a local affair or event can appear to have a universal meaning. Once this is understood, the entire account of the Genesis Flood, as well as these other events mentioned, make sense and become very credible and in line with history and science. Jeremiah once spoke of a flood overflowing the erets, and though he used "flood" to figuratively describe an invading army, it provides an interesting comparison: "Thus says the LORD; Behold, waters rise up out of the north, and shall be an overflowing flood, and shall overflow the land (erets], and all that is therein; the city, and them that dwell therein; then the men shall cry, and all the inhabitants of the land (erets) shall howl" - (Jeremiah 47:1-2). If the word "erets" in this passage were translated "earth" as it was in Genesis 7, it would sound like a universal flood. It thus could read - "an overflowing flood shall overflow the earth ... and all the inhabitants of the earth." This sounds worldwide in scope but we know it was a flood covering only the land (erets) of the Philistines!
We find many instances in the Bible where it speaks of "the earth," or "the face of the earth" in which it clearly refers to a limited land area or country. When we thus read the Genesis account of the Flood, the erets should be read as "land" as a more meaningful and correct expression- "And the flood was forty days upon the land" - (Genesis 7:17), "And the water prevailed exceedingly upon the land" - (Genesis 7:19), etc. The waters of the Flood prevailed upon the "land" in which Noah lived and not the entire planet. 3. INFALLIBLE vs LITERAL As with all cases involving an error in thinking or erroneous conclusion, there is a basic flaw in the premise of those who believe the Bible tells of a flood that covered the entire planet. That faulty premise was revealed in one of the first in-depth books written in support of the worldwide flood concept. The book was called "The Genesis Flood, " written by John C. Whitecomb and Henry M.Morris in 1961.(Published by The Presbyterian & Reformed Publishing Co.) In the first sentence of the first chapter the writers state the following:
Since the Bible is regarded as "infallible" creationists believe it must be read in a literal context, or "taken at face value," as some say.(Charles Taylor, The Oldest Science Book in the World, 1984, p.103) This is done out of a misguided reverence for the Bible. The fact that the Word of God, is "infallible" does not mean that every line and every word is to be read literally or at "face value." In fact, it is clear from the Bible itself that this manner of interpretation was never intended in all cases. The sayings and parables of Christ should be sufficient evidence that all Divine words are not to be literally construed. The words Christ used in these parables, such as sower, fowls, field, thoms, fruit, seed, tares, wheat, harvest, leaven, woman, treasure, furnace, earth, fig trees, fire, water and other words were never intended to be taken literally. To take these words literally, in their common usage, or at face value, would lead to a very confusing and inaccurate interpretation of what was meant. The same can be said about the many symbolic words found in Genesis, Daniel, Revelations, and in many prophecies. Yet are these not part of the "infallible" Word of God?" Those who lean on the "infallible" aspect of the Word of God as justification for their "literal" or "face value" interpretation, also fail to take into account the human element of the book called the "Bible." The Bible has undergone dozens of copies from one original to another, not to mention several translation changes from one language to another. Was the revelation of God's truth preserved exactly as originally given in today's Bible? Only those whose minds are possessed with a radical and phoney piety would believe so. One error for example is in 2 Samuel 8:13-14, "where aram (Syrian) is doubtless the error of a copyist who misread daleth (d) as resh (r)." (The New Westminster Dictionary of the Bible, Edited by Henry S. Gehman, Westminster Press, Philadelphia, 1970, pp.240-41. ) 'Syrian' in verse 13 should be read as 'Edom' as it is in verse 14. There are dozens of other such errors in the Bible, but how can this possibly be if it is the "infallible word of God?" What we have are copies, versions, and translations of the original words from God.Translations and copies of the Bible by men are not infallible. The Bible does contain poor or even wrong translations, some were by accident while some were intentional. Can these mistranslations be read at "face value" or be taken "literally?" Todo so may render an understanding which may be in conflict with science, history, or the Bible itself. The infallibility of the Bible rests on God assuring His word will be fulfilled rather than on human belief or works. Anything that depends upon man, including translations and interpretations of God's word, are not going to be infallible.The Bible thus is not actually "the word of God," rather it is a translation or version or copy of the word of God given to various messengers throughout many centuries. The super pious, who mindlessly read the Bible literally, act as though God Himself actually wrote and printed the Bible they hold. This is a pitfall that so many have blindly fallen into. To support their perspective of what the Bible is, the creationist and fundamentalist will fabricate and distort history and science so it will conform with their personal belief or "conviction" of what the Bible says. Everything must give way to the literal meaning or face value context of the words they read in the Bible. This is the foundation of the false notion that the Flood is universal as well as many other false biblical doctrines of the literalists. Science, history and the Bible have been distorted to support a misinterpretation of certain verses in the Bible. That the universal flood concept is a misinterpretation and distortion of Scripture, let us further analyze the position of the creationists regarding physical evidence 4 THE CREATIONIST'S STORY Creationists have established a theory of catastrophism, which attempts to explain the geological features and events by way of a worldwide, cataclysmic flood. Under this concept, earth history is dominated by catastrophism. The Flood, which covered the entire globe with water, had extinguished all life forms that were not saved within the Ark.Consequently, the fossils that exist are the remains of organisms that perished in the Flood. Their arrangement in the geological column has nothing to do with time since they were deposited at essentially the same period. Rather their arrangement is due to the altitude they were living at prior to their death when trapped by the flood waters, and also to mechanical sorting; as one creationist states: The creation model, on the other hand, can interpret the [geological] column in terms of essentially continuous deposition [of fossils], all accomplished in a relatively short time - not instantaneously, of course, but over a period of months or years, rather than millions of years (Morris, Scientific Creationism, (1 974) p. 111, 112). Creationists accordingly have developed their own scientific version of earth history, basing it on what they call "flood geology." By this premise, most if not all of the geological events and surface features of the earth were a result of the aftermath of Noah's Flood. All of these phenomena of what we have called residual catastrophism - mountain-building, glaciation, pluviation, volcanism, and possibly continental drift, along with others that might be discussed if necessary - represent the dying phases of the great Flood (Morris,op. cit.,p. 128.) Thus, all of the curious or previously unexplainable features of the earth can be explained by this flood. These include: mid-oceanic ridge, frozen mammoths, salt domes, coal formations, extinction of dinosaurs, the Grand Canyon, strata, continental shelves, etc.(Brown, In The Beginning, (Centrefor Scientific Creation) p. 15). Creationists have thus created their own version of the geological column in which to explain geological events from the perspective of a global, cataclysmic flood. In doing so they have compressed the hundreds of millions of years of the earth's history into only a few months or a year. Creationists are opposed to the concept known as uniformitarianism, or the principle of the uniformity of nature, which is frequently summed up in the familiar statement that the present is the key to the past. Creationists believe that natural and geological processes and events that now occur, such as radioactive decay and sedimentary formation, did not act at the same rate or in the same way in the past but have undergone change. They thus are not uniform processes. Creationists instead believe in catastrophism, whereby all of the events and processes of the earth had either been formed rapidly or had undergone a sudden change in a relatively short period of time. That time period being the duration of the Flood of Genesis. This concept then is what believers in a universal flood call their "creation model." In comparing this "model" to geological and other physical evidence there are some obvious problems and conflicts. We will thus examine evidence from various areas which will show that only a localized flood existed, and that the worldwide flood idea is as inconsistent with the historical and scientific evidence available as it is with the Biblical evidence. 5 GEOLOGICAL EVIDENCE A flood is certainly a geological event resulting in changes in the surface of the earth. But a universal flood of the magnitude claimed by the literalists compels even the uninformed to question its validity. Floods or flooding have occurred in just about every portion of the earth at one time or another, and they continue to do so. Thus evidence of flooding in various localities around the earth is no evidence of a worldwide flood. If one were to search the rock formations or dig deep enough in any given part of the earth, chances are we would find evidence of flooding that had occurred at some time. Much of the geological evidence, such as the dating of rocks and strata of the earth, is opposed by creationists for the reason that it annihilates their interpretation of Scripture. (For more information on the antiquity of the earth see: Christianity & The Age Of The Earth, by Davis A.Young) Geological evidence exists that glaciation has occurred for millions of years on the earth. The last Great Ice Age started one million years ago and ended.about 25,000 years ago.
To avoid the restraints of science creationists disallow current observable evidence, measurements and data to be used in a decision regarding geological features. They reject it by saying all that we see today is the result of the Flood's cataclysmic effect rather than regular and natural processes. It is not only a cop out but a very unscientific theory - yet they call it "scientific creationism! " TO BE CONTINUED FACTS & FICTIONS REGARDING NOAH'S FLOOD An analysis of the facts and arguments surrounding the Flood of Genesis showing its true nature and meaning by Charles A Weisman (U.SA) PART TWO 6. RAIN AND WATER Another question involving physical science that is raised in light of a universal flood theory is - where did all the water come from to cover the entire earth and where did it go? We read in Chapter 7 of Genesis verses 19 & 20:
From these verses many say the Flood was worldwide, and that the tops of the highest mountains (about 29,000 feet) were covered with 15 cubits (about 22 feet) of water. This means the water level would have been five miles above the present sea level.
This leads us to the other side of the equation, that being where did all the flood waters go to? The Genesis account states that after the flooding stopped (Genesis 8: 1-2), the Ark rested in the 17th day of the 7th month. Then the "waters decreased continually until the tenth month," at which time some land could be seen (Genesis 8:5). This covers about 74 days. After another 54 days "the waters were abated from off the earth" (Genesis 8:11), and in another 36 days "the face of the ground was dry" (Genesis 8:13). It thus took only 164 days from the time the flooding ended for the water to recede and the ground to become dry. Clearly the waters of Noah's Flood could only recede or "abate from off the earth" if it were a localized flood on the earth. Here we have all the evidence needed to prove that a universal flood did not occur, for if water covered the globe so that all of its mountains were covered, then where did the waters recede to? Did all of this water just evaporate into outer space? Water covering the entire planet could never drain off anywhere and give us dry ground in only 164 days. Not even in 100 years or a 1,000 years could this have happened. If such a worldwide flood did exist the water could never have drained off or evaporated - the earth would forever be water-covered, or a frozen ball of ice. The only reason the waters were able to recede from the land is because the Flood was confined to a limited area. Thus, the Flood was not of the worldwide magnitude creationists claim it was. 7. HISTORICAL EVIDENCE The Flood of Genesis was a true historical event which occurred at a specific period of time. The date at which the Flood occurred according to Usher's Bible Chronology, was in the year 2348 B.C. Haberman states that this date was correct within four years -"the correct date for the Deluge is from November 1, 2,345 (Genesis 7:11), to November 11, 2,344 B.C. (Genesis 8:14)."(8) This date of the Flood falls within a period of history known as the "Bronze Age," which dates from about 3,000 B.C. to 1,200 B.C. The significant discovery of bronze, along with other advances such as increased trade routes, ox carts, domestication of draft horses, the bellows, potters wheel, and the plough resulted in a cultural revolution second in importance only to the modem Industrial Revolution.If there was a worldwide cataclysmic flood it would have upset world progress so drastically it would have taken centuries for the world to recover. However, there is no evidence of this at all as the Bronze Age did not stop and then restart all over again, or revert to the Stone Age. The Flood of Genesis occurred at a period of time in which there exist definite traces of recorded history. While written records of this time are sparse, there also exist other archaeological records such as city ruins, tools, pottery, weapons, skeletal remains, and other artefacts which support the chronicles and written records that do exist. These records all show that there were many great civilizations existing in various parts of the world at the time the Flood occurred, with a worldwide population of 50 to 100 million. If a worldwide flood occurred at this time the earth's population would not yet have recovered the loss. The Flood of Genesis thus occurred in a period of time in which we have a verifiable history of numerous civilizations existing with no evidence of a catastrophic disruption from a worldwide flood. If there was a worldwide flood then all civilizations and cultures would have been destroyed along with their advancements, governments, inventions, cultural habits, languages, and arts which were peculiar to each civilization. What history does reveal to us however, is that none of the known civilizations and cultures throughout the world have large gaps or voids in their chronology as a result of being destroyed by a universal flood. It certainly would not be plausible to believe that they were destroyed and then suddenly, within a few years, miraculously reappeared in their original size and strength. The six oldest civilizations that had an ongoing and well-established culture according to recorded history are: Sumer (Mesopotamia), Egypt, China, Minoan, Indus Valley, and the Holy Land or Phoenicia. Some of the earliest written records of an advanced civilization are those of the Sumerian civilization in Mesopotamia. Its first dynasty, according to Sumerian King-Lists, dates to about 3,350 B.C. Prof. Waddell has done exhaustive research on Sumerian chronicles, seals, King-Lists, and other records which show a continuous, ongoing civilization from 3,350 B.C. well through the period of the Flood. In fact, Mesopotamia was undergoing great prosperity and expansion during the period of the Flood under the well-known ruler, Sargon The Great (2,300 B.C.). Further growth and expansion continued under his grandson, Naram-Sin (2,250 B.C.). By the time of Abraham (1,930 B.C.), Mesopotamia was heavily populated and a thriving centre of civilization and culture. These historical facts could never have occurred if its entire civilization had been obliterated by a flood. Of all ancient civilizations, that of Egypt is the most familiar. Egypt's dynastic history started with the uniting of upper and lower Egypt by King Menes about 3,100 B.C. The period of Egyptian history known as the "Old Kingdom," extended from 2,800 to 2,175 B.C., which covered the third through the tenth dynasties. There was no record of a sudden and complete interruption within this great epoch of Egyptian history by a great deluge. Further, the Step Pyramid, the Great Pyramid, the Sphinx and other Egyptian monuments that were built prior to the Flood would surely have been destroyed by the magnitude of the flood described by creationists. A reasonably accurate history of China begins around 3,000 B.C.Valuable information on this culture has been obtained from the Chinese sacred book known as Shu King. According to the chronology of this text, and verified by archaeological finds, China was undergoing a prosperous period during the Yao Dynasty (between 2,400 -2,200 B.C.) with no record of a cataclysmic interruption of its civilization. Minoan history is perhaps as old as that of Egypt. Based on the island of Crete, the Minoan civilization entered a high state of cultural advancement about 2,500 B.C., with the founding of Cnossos the capital city. The Minoan civilisation is often viewed as the first great civilisation of Europe and the focal point of world history around the middle of the second millennium B.C. It had already produced many artistic works, established cities, had an alphabet, and made use of bronze prior to the date of the Flood. It continued to grow and develop and by 2,000 B.C. became established as a centre of trade and culture until 1,470 B.C. when it was destroyed by a volcano. The archaeological remains of the Minoan civilization, including hundreds of written records on clay tablets, all show a continuous ongoing culture from 2,800 to 1,470 B.C. No devastating flood occurred on Crete during this period of time.
The civilization of the Indus Valley also has some very early beginnings. Prof. Waddell, who has done diggings and research in this location, shows by ancient Indian Official King-Lists and Chronicles, that this civilization's recorded history extends back to 3,100 B.C.(10) A thriving cultural state started around 2,500 B.C., notably within its two major cities, Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro, that rivalled that of Egypt and Mesopotamia. This ancient civilization, which also contained some 100 smaller cities, towns and villages, continued uninterrupted until 1,500 B.C. when it fell for unknown reasons. Thus, the evidence provided by history shows that no devastating universal flood could have occurred since the time of recorded history - about 3,500 B.C. How could all of these civilizations, cultures, and tribes, along with the tens of millions of people that embodied them, suddenly disappear from history and then suddenly reappear all over the world, carrying on with the same cultural habits, the same style of art, the same writing and language, the same architectural designs, etc., that were often unique to each civilization. History paints a very grim picture for those "fundamental" Christians and creationists who proclaim the Bible tells of a worldwide flood. In fact it proves that no universal flood had ever occurred in the past 6,000 years. .8. ZOOLOGICAL EVIDENCE A central issue surrounding Noah's Flood is the variety and number of animals Noah had to bring on the Ark. Creationists have claimed that all species of life existed contemporaneously before the Flood:
Here again we see the tactic of creationists to refer to those things they don't like as being "evolution." Yet the question is, if dinosaurs and other extinct life forms lived contemporaneously with man, where is the evidence of this? It was claimed that there was evidence of human footprints alongside dinosaurs prints in Texas, and books were devoted to this subject.(12) The so-called human footprints were latter proven to be prints of dinosaurs. If all species lived contemporaneously prior to the Flood, then to maintain consistency in their interpretation of Scripture creationists have to say that all species of animal life were brought on the Ark. This includes dinosaurs, sabre-toothed tigers, mammoths, trilobites, and millionsof other now extinct species; for Noah was commanded to bring all living things on the Ark:
Of all species of life that have ever existed upon the earth 99 per cent are now extinct. With about 1.5 million species living today we can conclude that 150 million species have existed with about 148 million that have become extinct.(14) We now have an exceedingly larger number of animals to fit on the Ark than just the animals we have today. To help remedy this problem some have said that "larger animals such as dinosaurs could be represented on this boat by young dinosaurs."(15) This does not help much in making room for all these animals nor does it explain how or why these animals became extinct. It would absolutely make no sense to bring all these life forms on the Ark if 99% of them were to die anyway! After all, the purpose of doing so was to preserve these animals, or "to keep them alive" (Genesis 6:19). These obvious problems have led most creationists to now say that the Flood was responsible for the extinction of all species, such as dinosaurs, which are represented in the fossil record. Since they became extinct by the Flood then that tells us that they were not on the Ark. This again raises the question of why did Noah fail to bring all of the animals on the ark as commanded? If the Flood was the cause of their extinction we have to conclude that Noah was in gross disobedience to God's command by leaving 99 percent of the living things out of the Ark allowing them to become extinct. But the Bible says that;
So Noah was not in gross disobedience to God's command. The only other conclusion is that the creationists are dead wrong about the age of the earth, the extinction of species by the Flood, and their universal flood concept. Palaeontology tells us that the vast majority of living things became extinct millions of years before Noah's time.(16) The testimony of Scripture and science allows us to conclude that the creationists are dead wrong. There was no mass extinction of living things only a few thousand years ago by a worldwide flood. If creationists still want to believe Genesis speaks of a worldwide flood, then Noah would still have been required to bring a sample of each species now living into the Ark. Could such a feat be accomplished given the number of species and the size of the Ark? In Genesis 6, God specified to Noah the size of the Ark:
With a cubit being about 18 inches long, the ark would be about 450 feet long, 75 feet wide, and 45 feet high. Further, the Ark was to have three "stories" or decks. The total volume of the Ark would have been about 1.5 million cubic feet. However, the space available assumes every cubic inch of space is utilized which is far from practical. There would need to be space to get at the animals to feed them and for head room, breathing room or ventilation, naturally wasted or unused space would exist, exercise space would be needed, etc. Also the decks and beams would consume space. We thus could conservatively reduce the available space on the ark by one fifth giving about 1.2 million cubic feet of usable storage space. Noah was commanded to bring "two" of every animal and "creeping thing" into the ark, but of "every clean beast," and of the "fowls of the air" he was to bring in by "sevens" (Genesis 7:2-3).(18) There currently exists 200,000 species of animals, over 900,000 species of insects, and about 450,000 species of plants.(19) We could estimate the number of "clean" animals along with all the birds to be about one sixth of the animals or 33,000 in number. Thus Noah would have needed room for 231,000 "clean" animals (7 x 33,000), 334,000 "unclean" animals (2 x 167,000),and 1,800,000 insects (2 x 900,000). A squirrel or rabbit would need about 3 cubic feet of space. As for an elephant, it would need about 1,400 cubic feet of space. A turkey would need about 9 cubic feet, a 15 foot crocodile and a 600 lb. gorilla each require over 140 cubic feet of space. A fox would take up about 10 cubic feet, a lion 120, and a 20 foot tall giraffe would require 900 cubic feet of space. We could justly figure 10 cubic feet of space per animal on the average, and about .05 cubic foot of space for insects (this would also include the space needed for their stalls, cages, containers, etc.). We have to also consider food for the animals which God told Noah to bring on the Ark (Genesis 6:21). Since Noah and the animals were in the Ark just over a year, there would have to be storage space for one year's supply of food. On the average, a person can eat about 1,300 pounds of food a year which is about 7 times his weight in food. An elephant can eat about 60,000 lbs. of food a year which is 7 to 8 times its weight. The average ox or cow can consume about 24,000 lbs. of food a year which is about 14 times its weight. One wolf can eat a sheep a week or 52 sheep a year which is about 20 times its weight while a lion can eat about 35 times its weight. A shrew can eat several hundred times its weight in a year. Since the weight of many types of food, such as hay, is less dense than body weight they would occupy much more space. It would be more than fair then to consider 8 times the space needed on the average for food storage for each animal and insect. Based on this, the following table represents the space needed for a one year voyage:
With only 1.2 million cubic feet available on the Ark, we can see from these figures that Noah would have needed at least 43 arks to accomplish the job of storing all the animals and their required food. This, of course, does not take into consideration the food needed to keep the animals alive (such as sheep) for the meat eaters (such as wolves). It does not consider plants, most of which could never survive a worldwide flood. It does not consider reproduction of animals. It does not consider water for drinking and bathing. Nor does it consider all the species that have become extinct since Noah's time. The need for 100 Arks would be a more likely figure. We also must consider the impossible task of Noah gathering every species of animal, marine life, insect, bird, plant, and microbe from every corner of the planet, and then somehow redistributing them back to their original habitat. It is a task which all the modern zoos with all their trained keepers and explorers could not accomplish. Further, many animals require a specific climate and habitat in which to live.The polar bear and penguin of the arctic cannot live in the same environment as a hippopotamus and chimpanzee of the tropics. How could all of these animals survive together on an ark or on the mountain side where the Ark landed? The environment of the Ark could not have been suitable for all species of animals and plants. Such problems were never encountered since Noah never collected specimens from all over the globe. He collected only those animals which were in the area he lived and where the Flood occurred. This obviously was done so as not to create an ecological void in that part of the earth. We have to either consider this to be the case or face the insurmountable problems associated with a universal flood. All zoological evidence shown here and much more all prove there was no universal flood. 9. RACIAL EVIDENCE Perhaps one of the more difficult problems proponents of a universal flood have to answer, and one they most often avoid, is how could the eight survivors of the Flood produce the numerous racial types of man that exist upon the earth. A belief of the "Christian" sect known as creationism is that all the world was populated from the descendants of Noah's three sons. In other words, "all tribes and races came from a common ancestral population.(20) Creationists are forced to place this common population, consisting of eight persons, some time after the Flood since they believe in the extinction of all people by a universal Flood.
Cuvier's classification of races was just prior to the advent of Egyptology the studying and discovering of the ruins of ancient Egypt by such men as Jean Francois Champollion in the 1820's. The ancient Egyptian monuments, tombs, and temples reveal a vast storehouse of ethnographical records in the form of paintings, mummies and sculptures displaying different racial types of man. Certain racial types can be distinguished in paintings and sculptures dating as far back as the 4th millennium B.C., as Prof. Coon explains:
To overcome this problem, some have suggested Noah brought a representative pair of each race on the Ark.(22) Peter, in speaking of the Flood, says that only "eight souls were saved" on the Ark (1 Peter 3:20 & 2 Peter 2:5). The only way then to get the other races on the Ark is to say that these other races are not regarded as people, but are inferior "beasts" or "living creatures." The claim that other races were on the Ark is sheer speculation. The science of ethnology and anthropology have shown that every single racial type that existed prior to the Flood existed after it. This proves that the Flood was confined to a specific geographical area. ALL people on earth were not destroyed by the Flood as creationists claim. In Luke 17:26-29, Christ likens the "days of Noah" with the "days of Lot." In each case the people experienced a catastrophe which "destroyed them all." Yet everyone acknowledges that "in the days of Lot" all the people on earth were not destroyed, only all the people in Sodom were. Likewise, only all the people in the Flood were destroyed, not all the people on earth. It cannot be supported by any rational or biblical means that all races were destroyed by a flood and then instantaneously reappeared or were formed thereafter. It is infinitely more logical that all races were separately created by God on the planet, and they each survived the Flood, as did numerous other life forms, by being outside its realm and geographical influence. 10. LOCATION OF THE FLOOD According to Scripture, when Adam and Eve were expelled from Eden they departed out of it to its east side, since God had "placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims" to keep them from "the way of the tree of life" - (Genesis 3:24). Thus Adam, Eve and their descendants were now to live at the east side of Eden. This was to be the new Adamic homeland and would later become the site of the Flood. Thus if we can locate Eden we then can easily find the location of the Flood. Scripture gives the following reference as to the location of Eden:
This tells us that the garden, which was within Eden, was eastward or "in the east"(2) or "to the far east."(3) For this information to have any value in locating Eden, we need to have a geographical point of reference. In other words, from what point or area did Eden lie east of. It is most likely that Moses was in the "wilderness," or the area Israel wandered for forty years, when he wrote down the historical account of Genesis. This would be somewhere from Mt.Sinai to the edge of Canaan. Thus Eden was eastward of this area. One popular belief of the location of Eden has been in the Tigris-Euphrates region known as Mesopotamia. However, if this was Eden it would not have been referred to as a land in the east. This region was very well known since it was a major centre of population, just like Egypt,and was called by the name of Shinar. Thus Mesopotamia would never have been referred to as a land to the east any more than Egypt would be referred to as a land to the south. If Eden had been located here then its location in Genesis 2:8 would have read, "in the land of Shinar," or "in Mesopotamia." This is exactly how this land area was referred to by Moses in Genesis 10:10, 11:2, 14:1, 14:9,and 24:10. This area was therefore well known to Moses by a common name. The inhabitants of Mesopotamia, even before Moses' time, understood that the Garden of Eden had been located to the east of their land, as Prof. Waddell had pointed out:
It was clear to the inhabitants of ancient Mesopotamia that their land was not the "Garden of Eden." Rather it was to the east of them. We must therefore look further east for the location of Eden to a land area that would not have been commonly known by name at that time. Scripture gives us further evidence regarding the location of Eden by describing its geographical boundaries:
Haberman, in quoting other researchers and archaeologists, reveals that the people of Asia consider the plateau of Pamir to be the original Eden and the central part of the world. It was thus on the east side of the Pamir Plateau (Eden) which became the homeland of the Adamic race up to the time of the Flood. Today this land is known as the Tarim Basin or Eastern Turkestan. This region of the Tarim Basin, being surrounded by some of the highest mountain ranges on all sides, forms a gigantic basin in the earth's surface. Its area measures a thousand miles long and about 350 miles wide. Thus, though it can be called a "localized" flood it was by no means a small flood. It was by this flood that God brought judgment upon all that were in the land, not all that were on the earth. 11.THE NEED FOR AN ARK In attempting to support the belief in a worldwide flood, creationists claim that no Ark would be necessary or even needed at all if the Flood was only a local one. This line of thinking stems from their misunderstanding of the nature and purpose of the Flood, as they state:
This clearly reveals some errors in the reasoning of the creationist doctrine, one being the idea that a "local flood" means a "little flood." The usual conception of a local flood is one that wipes out some community or village. In other words, a flood of a rather small size covering perhaps a few square miles or so. However, this conception of a flood is but a puddle in comparison the actual Flood of Genesis which covered an area of about 350,000 square miles - larger than the states of Texas and Oklahoma combined! This was no puddle. As previously shown, and as many others have demonstrated, the size of the ark was far too tiny for the purposes that a universal flood would have required. And, indeed, its size would be too large if it was for a small "local flood." But as shown the Flood of Genesis was of a great magnitude, perhaps the greatest flooding of dry land which has ever occurred. For this size of a flood, and this size only, would the size of the Ark given in Genesis be appropriate. Creationists further question the need for an Ark if the Flood was not universal because during the time it took Noah to build the Ark, he could have easily walked to a safe location. Their reasoning goes like this:
Any time man tries to second guess what is and what is not "sensible" for God to do according to his understanding of things errors are inevitable. God had long ago informed man that: "my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, says the LORD."(12) Man's way would have Noah and his family simply walk out of harm's way, but this is not the way of God. Why then did God have Noah build an Ark if the Flood was not universal? It was a test of faith. But more than that, it was to serve as an example and message of faith and salvation to future generations:
Such things, says Paul, as happened to Noah and others in Scripture are "for examples, and are written for our admonition" - (l Corinthians 10:11), and "for our learning" - (Romans 15:4). Noah's task of building the Ark and the destruction of all others in the land was to serve as a lesson of judgment and punishment, and how the righteous will be saved by faith. Without the difficult task of building the Ark, there would have been no test of Noah's faith. The Scriptures show that God's way is not going to be as easy or as "sensible" as man's way. God had established things in this manner to provide us with a test of faith, for it would not require any faith in God to do as our carnal nature directs us, or to act by what seems right or "sensible" in our own eyes and heart. So once again the creationists and fundamentalists have undermined one of the messages of the Bible, a message of faith, in order to support their fairy tale. 12. CONCLUSION & COMMENTS FACTS vs SPECULATION Those who take the position of a literal worldwide flood are forced to engage in considerable speculation in order to support their position. Some of these speculative arguments, which are unfounded and unsupported by facts from Scripture, history or science, include the following: * That God had created more water than originally existed and then after the Flood made most of it disappear. * That other races of man were brought on the Ark, or that all races evolved out of one family. * That all of the species of life had been gathered from every comer of the globe and then somehow redistributed to their original location and habitat. * That all species of life, in groups of two or seven, and all their required food for a year, easily fit within the limited space of the Ark. * That all types of marine life could have survived the fresh waters of the flood rains. * That all strata and sedimentary formations were formed rapidly within less than a year instead of millions of years. * That the great mountain ranges did not exist 5,000 years ago but had undergone uplifting or creation by the Flood. * That the "antediluvian geography" which existed prior to the Flood was radically different from the geographical layout that exists today. * That natural and geological processes did not always occur at a uniform and predictable rate. These and other claims are derived from predictions and speculations based on the belief that a universal flood occurred. They are not scientific or provable facts. True scientific application requires one to objectively gather and examine all data and facts and use them to arrive at a conclusion. Scientific creationism starts with a predetermined conclusion, such as a belief in a universal flood, and seeks facts which it can conform to that conclusion. Other facts are distorted or rejected while predictions and speculations are used to fill in the gaps. Whenever creationists are at a loss to explain their conclusion they are always able to pull a miracle out of their hat not found in the Bible, or engage in speculation which they sanction as "the word of God." CREDIBILITY OF THE BIBLE The creationist movement began as a reaction to the teaching of evolution in public schools. The movement was thus set in motion to counter the spread of anti- Bible thinking and humanist philosophy. The creationists saw the credibility of the Bible being drastically threatened. Thus by their concept of creationism they attempted to explain all events and conditions by the Bible- something the Bible was never intended to do. If the fundamentalists and creationists are so concerned about the rise in scepticism, disrepute and disbelief surrounding the Bible, they need not point to the atheists, anti-Christs, evolutionists or a mystical devil; for through their fictitious doctrines they have been the greatest contributors to such sceptic trends. They have continually accepted that which is inconsistent, illogical and non-biblical while denying or rejecting the obvious, the provable and the biblical. In so doing their credibility has been brought down into the mud, and by claiming their authority from the Bible, they have dragged the Bible and Christianity down along with them. As a result fewer people today regard the Bible as a credible source of truth. But can we really blame any scientist or lay person for rejecting the Bible when those who are recognized as the so-called experts in the Bible, relate myth and fantasy as being "the word of God?" The fundamentalists and creationists have done more to discredit the validity of the Bible than the atheists and evolutionists they speak against. Unfortunately, all too many people have blindly rallied behind these "experts" without analysing what they are saying. We should be more like the brethren at Berea, who, after hearing Paul and Silas preach the word of God on certain matters, "searched the Scriptures daily to find out whether these things were so" - (Acts 17:11). In other words, when we hear something spoken about the Bible, we should learn to check and research it for accuracy. The Bible does not teach blind obedience in men, even if they are respected leaders, ministers or have a "Ph.D." after their name. The creationists and fundamentalists do not want people searching the Scriptures to see if their literal interpretation is true. Like the Baal priests of old, they want everyone to think as they do and read and interpret the Bible the way they do. Now these same people are preaching about a universal flood, and they will continue to support their theory with arguments and denials no matter how absurd they might be. All of this is actually counterproductive to their very aim of promoting and supporting the Bible. RELIGION AND SCIENCE The debate over "creationism" and "evolutionism" has been part of a dialectical plan to inject confusion and distortion into the thinking process. Thus, many erroneously perceive this supposed conflict as a conflict between the Bible and science. The Bible and science should be regarded as sources of knowledge, and not synonymous with the theories or men that use these sources. The connection is a false one and generates much confusion. Creationism is not truly biblical just as evolutionism is not truly scientific. In the conflict over creationism and evolutionism, it is perceived by most that one must be right and the other wrong, and people thus pick the one that most appeals to them. It never seems to occur to anyone that both arguments are wrong or false. But since this isn't the case, people are left with the situation of either believing one or the other, or concluding that either the Bible is wrong or science is wrong. It is amazing how so many have been caught up in this meaningless debate, believing that true religion (the Bible) and science are in conflict.The God whose word is found in the Bible is the same God who created all the laws and processes of the natural sciences. There can be no conflict between them, but there can be error on the part of man in interpreting them. As Dr. Nott stated:
Creationists have committed a grave mistake in confounding science with evolution. In doing so they have deprived themselves of a source of God's truth, the laws of nature and science, which has been a cause of much of their Biblical error. There appears to be one particular obstacle that has caused the creationists to deviate from standard scientific study and to formulate their own "science." That obstacle has been the concept of long periods of time that have transpired on the earth. In fact it seems that one can claim to be a creationist merely by rejecting the possibility that God's activities include time-consuming natural processes. Creationists tend to class all such processes under the category of "evolution" and thus dismiss some true scientific facts. However, nothing in the Bible precludes God from using long periods of time. The concept of catastrophism was developed by the creationists for the goal of rendering invalid all traditional scientific data and natural processes. The reason this concept was devised is obvious. If this evidence is regarded as being valid, then their universal flood theory would collapse a hundred times over. An accurate understanding of either science or the Bible can stand on its own without a multitude of conjecture and speculative theory to hold them up. They do not conflict with one another for there is harmony between the works and the words of the Creator. The confusion and conflict is solely in the minds of men. PIETY AND EMOTIONALISM It is not at all difficult to identify the cause and motivation behind the line of thinking of the creationists and fundamentalists. It is a type of piety or respect for the Bible which comes from the heart rather than from understanding. The Bible places a great deal of emphasis on wisdom and understanding, as the Proverb says:
When Solomon asked God to give him "an understanding heart" his request "pleased the LORD" - (1 Kings3: 9-10). God knows how misguided the human heart is without understanding, for He told us through Jeremiah that:
Christ was often confronted with super pious persons who spoke and acted out of their heart but had no wisdom or understanding in their heart. Many such pious individuals talk steadfastly about God and the Bible, but as Christ said, "Not every one that says to me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven' - (Matthew 7:21). The Pharisees were also very religious and often used a strict literal meaning and application of Scripture. Yet Christ always denounced their ways. Evidently religiosity and piety were not very highly regarded by Jesus Christ. The heart is indeed deceptive and leads us to judge and interpret things by the way they appear or seem on the surface. It is true that on the surface the account of Noah's Flood appears to be universal. Yet Scripture teaches us to "Judge not according to the outward appearance" of things - (John 7:24; 2 Corinthians 10:7). The creationists have difficulty applying this principle. If anyone suggests anything but the apparent meaning or literal interpretation of Scripture it is practically viewed as heresy. It is this type of blind piety that has generated so many misconceptions and erroneous doctrines regarding the Bible. Creationism is built upon emotionalism and misguided piety. Logic and reason seem to be totally absent in the formulation of their universal flood theory. Why has this concept been accepted by so many? For the same reason it started - misguided emotionalism and piety. Christians unfortunately have put their support on the side that purports to uphold the Bible, assuming it to be correct for that reason. Instead of employing independent study and thought they blindly follow the party line, and thus a fiction, such as the universal flood concept, becomes accepted and defended as a fact.
there appear many clear and well marked racial types in the paintings and sculptures from Egypt as well as Mesopotamia. By 1600 B.C., an even greater diversity of distinct racial types can be found. Each of these types are represented as they appear today showing that they were permanent throughout all history and had never undergone any type of transformation.
(6) N.D.Newell, Creation & Evolution: Myth or Reality, 1982 p. 38 (7) Morris, Scientific Creationism, Creation-Life Publishers, p. 211. (8) Frederick Haberman, Tracing Our Ancestors, (1934) p.16. (9) See: L.A. Waddell, The Makers of Civilization, (1929). (10) Waddell, The Makers of Civilization, p. 27 (11) Henry M. Morris, Scientific Creationism, p. 112, 117. (12) John D. Morris Tracking Those Incredible Dinosaurs, (1980). (13) Genesis 6:19 (14) These are rather conservative figures as one biology text states that the species now living represent "Probably less than one tenth of one percent" of all species that have ever existed. - William Keeton, Biological Sciences 3rd ed., W.W Norton & Co., 1980, p. 802. (15) WaIter T. Brown, In The Beginning, 1986, p. 16. (16) 90 percent of all living things became extinct during the Jurastic period about 60 to 100 million years ago. (17) Genesis 6:15 (18) The wording of some translations is "seven pairs." (19) Many species become extinct each year (currently about 200 a year), so there were many more species existing in Noah's time. (20) Henry M.Morris.Scientific Creationism, p. 183. (21) Carelton Coon, The Origin of the Races, 1962, p. 3 (22) The book, The Genesis Flood, pp. 17-20, stressed the point that all mankind was destroyed by the Flood and that "Noah and his family were the only ones who escaped the judgment waters." (1) Genesis 2:8 Same wording is used in the Septuagint Translation. (2) Ferrar Fenton Translation. (3) James Moffatt Translation. (4) L. A. Waddell, The Makers of Civilization, (1929) p. 117. (5) Genesis 2:10-14 (6) Strong's Exhaustive Concordance, O. T. #6578. (7) Ibid., O.T. #3568 Strong also states this word is probably of foreign origin, meaning that the name "Ethiopia" in Africa was derived from another land. (8) Ibid., O.T. #2313 (9) Frederick Haberman, Tracing Our Ancestors (1932) p.11-12. (10) Whitcomb & Morris, The Genesis Flood, 1961, p. 11. (11) Ibid. (12) Isaiah 55: 8 (13) Hebrew 11:7 (14) J.C. Nott, Types of Mankind (l854) p. 61
WAS NOAH’S FLOOD UNIVERSAL? By Willie Martin (U.S.A.) For years the controversy has raged about whether Noah’s flood was universal, or was it confined to a certain geographical location. This is a study to present our view about the flood as related in the Scriptures. We will use the Bible, and see if it has anything to say about its scope. The common claim, among most denominations, who still preach the Bible, and who more or less try to stay with the Scriptures as they read it and study it, is that there was a world wide drowning of men, about 4300 to 4500 years ago. That there was a flood called Noah’s flood that drowned all the men upon the earth at that time in the world’s history, except for his wife, his sons and their families, this is the common teaching among most Protestant Denominations and the Roman Catholic Church. Some Fundamentalists groups and some Pentecostal groups do not teach this. Then there are many people outside of the church who don’t know one way or the other, and couldn't really care less. Some of them think this is nonsense - that the Bible story is a myth. Some say that is not important anyway. Then there is the great, vast bulk of the population, who know so little about the Bible, they don’t know if there might have been a flood or not. Those who do, study the Bible, and are willing to go through the Scriptures and see what the Bible actually teaches about the location of The Flood in Noah’s time. First of all let us look at the Book of Genesis. It is amazing how people can read a verse of Scripture and think to themselves: "Yes that’s right." then put their brain in neutral and simply become brain dead. They will study no further; they have found the truth; and God help the person who disagrees with them. Such is the case when a discussion comes up concerning Noah’s Flood. Many read Genesis 6:13-17: "And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth.…….And, behold, I, even I, do bring a flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh, wherein is the breath of life, from under heaven; and every thing that is in the earth shall die." These are the verses most generally used when defending the destruction of the entire earth by Noah’s Flood. Now first off we know that the earth was not destroyed. Yet, if one is to believe that The Flood was universal, they must also believe that the entire world was destroyed at that time. Because that is what is says "I will destroy them with the earth." By this one verse we know that The Flood was not universal. But let’s go on because those who believe in the entire world being flooded will not be content with this verse. But one can just see them beginning to foam at the mouth, and wish to destroy me, and accuse me of trying to destroy God’s Word. And nothing could be further from the truth. I simply believe in reading and "understanding" all of God’s Word and in not presenting some ill-considered argument that the atheists and other non-believers can latch upon like a dog on a bone. Firstly, let’s look at what Strong’s Concordance has to say about the word "earth". I suppose you all will accept that Strong's Concordance is an authority. If you do not, then there is nothing, which can be used as an authority for anything. Strong’s relates: In the Old Testament the following are used almost every time. #127: soil; country, earth, ground, husband, land. #776: a land, common, country, earth, field, ground, land, nations, way, wilderness, world. In the following, one is used only once and the other only a few times. #2789: a piece of pottery, earth, sherd, stone. #6083: dust, clay, earth, mud, ashes, dust, earth, ground, mortar, powder, rubbish. In the New Testament the following is used almost every time: #1093: soil, region, country,; earth, ground, land, world. Once we have #3625: part of the globe, the Roman Empire, Once #1919: worldly, in earth, terrestrial, Once #2709: The ground, subterranean, under the earth, Once #3749: earthenware, of earth, earthen. "And the flood was forty days upon the earth; and the waters increased, and bare up the ark, and it was lift up above the earth. And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth; and all the high hills, that were under the whole heaven, were covered. {Well so far so good. Everything is going to die and everything is covered, but in the next verse it says} Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail; and the mountains were covered." There are two possibilities of this specific verse. First of all 15 cubits are believed by most Bible scholars to equal approx. 22 ½ feet - in other words a foot and a half for each cubit. Now, if this means 22 ½ feet above the highest hill then the earth was covered. If it means 22 ½ feet above the location of the Ark, or where the Ark was built, then you are in trouble as the water would not have been deep enough to cover the entire planet. But let’s go on and read some other verses: "And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, and every man: All in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land, died." So far everything that we have read, is quite familiar to those who teach about The Flood and it does sound pretty complete. It sounds pretty complete as far as the destruction of everything outside of the Ark. And of course, we know, from the contents of the Scriptures that all of the animals and people inside the Ark did not die. After reading and studying God’s Word and trying to find out about The Flood, the real question which must be answered in order to understand history a little better, is this: when God said in His Word - "The Earth" - did He mean the planet Earth? Or did He mean the land? Did He mean the planet Earth, which would mean the entire earth? Or did He actually mean the land, which was being spoken about? Turn to Genesis 4:11-14 where in speaking about Cain we read: "And now art thou cursed from the earth...And Cain said unto the Lord, My punishment is greater than I can bear. Behold, thou hast driven me out this day from the face of the earth..." It is clear that Cain was only being driven out from the place where he was, to another place. But Cain said to the Lord "thou hast driven me out this day from the face of the earth." If we used just that phrase, one could easily assume that Cain was being removed off the earth entirely because it says from the face of the earth. But then the Scriptures show that Cain clearly understood what had happened. "And from thy face shall I be hid; and I shall be a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth." Here we have two things pointed out to us. Firstly: that the Scriptures are only concerned with a certain geographical area of the world. Cain knew this, otherwise he would not have made the proviso statement: "from thy face shall I be hid." This clearly shows that when Cain would move out of that specific geographical area, God would be no longer concerned with him, and he would be, in effect, hidden from God’s eyes. Secondly: that Cain clearly knew he was being driven from one area of the earth to another and not literally from off the planet Earth entirely - but merely from the land wherein he had been dwelling and that he would still be on the planet Earth. After The Flood in Genesis 11:1 we read "And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech." Now that’s what it says. It says, "the whole earth was of one language and one speech." Trying to interpret this in the same manner as the previous verses to mean a world-wide flood, we would have to assume that it meant that every person on the earth spoke one language because that is what it says. "And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there." Now they must be the people of all the earth. So if we follow the same line of interpretation we would have to assume all of the living people on the face of the earth spoke one language and they all came and dwelt in the land of Shinar. Archaeologists and scientists can provide no record of all the people of the earth living in the land of Shinar, about 2400 years before the birth of Christ. But let’s go on and read some more. This is the story of the angel bringing Lot out before the destruction of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah: "The sun was risen upon the earth when Lot entered into Zoar. Then the Lord rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven;….. And he overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that, which grew upon the ground. But his wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt." We know from the story that those who were inside these cities on the plain were wicked. God destroyed those two cities, Lot, his two daughters and his wife went out and his wife died and was turned into a pillar of salt or as some translations say, turned into a pillar of ashes. This left Lot and his two daughters alive. When we read verses 30 and 31, listen to what is said: "And Lot went up out of Zoar, and dwelt in the mountain, and his two daughters with him...And the firstborn said unto the younger, Our father is old, and there is not a man in the earth to come in unto us after the manner of all the earth." "There is not a man in the earth". If you interpret this in the same manner as you might interpret the other verses, you would have to assume, with the limited knowledge that we have here, that what she meant was that all the rest of humanity had died - that there were no other men alive. Because she said, "there is not a man in the earth" to come into us in like manner. And of course you know the rest of the story. The girls went ahead and got pregnant by their father. Yet in verse 30 we know there were others alive because Lot "feared to dwell in Zoar." If there were no others alive but him and his two daughters what did he have to fear? Of course those who don’t want to accept what is being presented will cry out: "He was afraid of the animals." But the Scriptures don’t say that. And if one believes in a Universal Flood, then they have to believe that if there were animals that frightened Lot, the Scriptures would say so. At any rate, here, the Universal Flood advocates will be forced to admit, all mankind was once again destroyed except for Lot and his two daughters. As we continue on to Genesis 41 we find that Joseph is in Egypt, and we are coming up to the time of the famine. "And the seven years of plenteous-ness, that was in the land of Egypt, were ended. And the seven years of dearth began to come, according as Joseph had said: and the dearth was in all lands; but in all the land of Egypt there was bread." Following the same line of reasoning that has been followed up to now, this would mean that all the rest of the world was suffering from a famine or a dearth or drought, except for the land of Egypt. Verses 55-57: "And when all the land of Egypt was famished, the people cried to Pharaoh for bread: and Pharaoh said unto all the Egyptians, God unto Joseph; what he saith to you, do. And the famine was over all the face of the earth: And Joseph opened all the storehouses, and sold unto the Egyptians; and the famine waxes sore in the land of Egypt. And all countries came into Egypt to Joseph for to buy corn; because that the famine was so sore in all lands." We are arriving at a time when secular history is very specific, and we can study the ancient writings and get a pretty good idea of what was happening in those days. Of course, prior to The Flood, we recognize that there are few actual written records available and thus we are limited in our knowledge of that time in history. But, if we follow the same reasoning as in the previous verses, and if we interpret these Scriptures in the same manner as the advocates of a Universal Flood do, this very definitely means that all of the rest of the world was having a famine. Right? This would mean that the Americas, England, Australia, China, New Zealand and etc., were suffering from a famine or dearth. And that they all came to Egypt to purchase food. Which would have been impossible because the Scripture does not even recognize China or the rest of the world at this point in time. From the knowledge that we have gained from history and archaeology of this time after the flood, there are no indications of people from Asia, the Americas, the Eskimos, or anybody else from the opposite side of the earth going to Egypt to buy food. In fact, if one will study closely they will see that the only country involved in this famine was Egypt and the lands immediately surrounding Egypt. If you will obtain a map of that portion of the earth, you will clearly see, that everything we have talked about so far, has been in a relatively small geographic area in the Middle East. But, yet many still teach that The Flood was over all the earth. And now we have read also that the famine at the time of Joseph was over all of the earth. Yet there is no record of it in our secular history, of people coming into Egypt from the other parts of the earth to buy food. So to summarize thus far: 1). We have a Flood, which has covered all the earth. 2). We have had a fire, after which the survivors have stated specifically, that there were no other men left on the earth. 3). We also have a famine, which was a famine over all the face of the earth. Do we have, in truth, three things, which have either destroyed all of the populations of the earth or most of them? In fact, the last one leads us to believe that all of the people on earth, who did not go to Egypt, died. Therefore, everyone on earth died of the famine except for those in Egypt and the few, fortunate enough to be able to get to Egypt to get food. Now turn to the Tenth Chapter of Exodus where we will look at the plagues of Egypt, an episode most know quite well. Exodus 10:14-15: "And the locusts went up over all the land of Egypt, and rested in all the coasts of Egypt: very grievous were they; before them there were no such locusts as they, neither after them shall be such. For they covered the face of the whole earth..." Here, we have yet another plague, which covered the face of the whole earth. "...so that the land was darkened; and they did eat every herb of the land, and all the fruit of the trees which the hail had left: and there remained not any green thing in the trees, or in the herbs of the field, {where?} through all the land of Egypt." Yet the phraseology or terminology is identical to what we have read before. They covered all the face of the whole earth. In Ezekiel 39 all of the Israelites were killed. Did you know that all of the Israelites were dead in Ezekiel’s day? Well Ezekiel the prophet said so. Talking about this end of the age battle, he said: "And the heathen shall know that the house of Israel went into captivity for their iniquity: because they trespassed against me, therefore hid I my face from them, and gave them into the hand of their enemies: so fell they all by the sword." Thus Ezekiel is telling us that all of the Israelites had fallen by the sword. As I said earlier, I am not trying to be frivolous about this thing. I am simply trying to show you, that when the Bible talks about something happening over all of an area or all of something or over all of the earth, it does not necessarily mean that every single solitary person on every inch of the entire planet was involved, because if it did, we have already had more than four total destructions or almost total destructions. Turn to Ezra and we will show you, after we state the point, the location of the flood according to the Bible! "Now in the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, that the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah might be fulfilled, the Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus, king of Persia, that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom, and put it also in writing, saying, Thus saith Cyrus king of Persia, The Lord God of heaven hath given me all the kingdoms of the earth..." Now we are arriving at a point in history where we can easily verify the things that have happened in the Scriptures by referring to secular written history. There is no way for us to know what Cyrus was thinking or what God Almighty was thinking when He put it in His Word, but we know from secular history that Cyrus’s kingdom never extended more than a thousand miles from his capital city. He had a tremendous kingdom, but the Bible says that God had given him "all the kingdoms of the earth." Yet we know, and no minister tries to prove otherwise, that Cyrus never ruled over China or North America or South America, or even over Africa. They know better. They know just how foolish such teaching would be. Because it would not take long for their flock to realize that they were teaching a falsehood. Turn to Daniel. You know that Daniel was a high official in the Babylonian Kingdom, and after the Lord had shown His protection and favour to him, in Daniel 6:24 we read: "And the king commanded, and they brought those men which had accused Daniel, and they cast them into the den of lions, them, their children, and their wives; and the lions had the mastery of them, and brake all their bones in pieces or ever they came at the bottom of the den." Darius was so pleased with the actions of God and His apparent protection of Daniel, that this was what he did. Then, in verse 25, we read: "Then king Darius wrote unto all people, nations, and languages, that dwell in all the earth..." That is what is says. God’s Word says: "Darius wrote unto all people, nations, and languages, that dwell in all the earth; Peace be multiplied unto you. I make a decree, That in every dominion of my kingdom men tremble and fear before the God of Daniel." What was he talking about? Commonsense tells us, that when Darius wrote to all the people on the earth, he was writing to all the people in his kingdom! And his kingdom, we know from secular history and from God’s Word was rather limited compared to the entire planet. It covered an area contained in that relatively small geographical area, where most of the Bible action takes place. It did not extend beyond it. Not a single bit of the previous history has gone outside that small geographical area of the Middle East. Now turn to the New Testament to the book of Luke, where we read of the reason that Joseph and Mary came to Bethlehem. Luke 2:1-3: "And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed. (And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.) And all went to be taxed, every one into his own city." You see what happens if one interprets the scriptures the same way all the way through the Bible. Now we have Caesar Augustus ruling over the entire world. Which is absolutely not true. He never ruled over Germany. He never ruled over all of the British Isles. He never ruled over the Americas. He never ruled over Japan. He never ruled over Asia, nor any of the other countries of the world. Do you not see now how silly is the argument of those, who would have us believe that The Flood was universal? Because according to the way they interpret the Scriptures, they would have all the Indians in North and South America going into their cities to be taxed. They would have all the Chinese going into their cities to be taxed. They would have all the Japanese going into their cities. Countries that never knew Rome existed until hundreds or thousands of years later. They would have you believe that. Because right here in the Scriptures it says "All went to be taxed, every one to his own city." It is clear that this Scripture is not talking about the entire planet Earth, but rather is talking, once again, about a certain geographical location in the Middle East. For another point turn to the book of Acts. Did you know that if all of the people did not die in the famine in Egypt, then they are going to die in another famine, which is related in Acts: "And in these days came prophets from Jerusalem unto Antioch. And there stood up one of them named Agabus, and signified by the spirit that there should be great dearth throughout all the world: which came to pass in the days of Claudius Caesar." Now we are down to about 1900 years ago, where we have excellent written secular history, and no one, not even the most ardent Universal Flood advocates would dare to declare that all the world had a great dearth or famine. Yet if one interprets these Scriptures in the same way, then there must have been a famine over the entire planet 1900 years ago. And secular history failed to mention such a catastrophe. Search out the Scriptures, think and reason, not just patting yourself on the back and thinking what wonderful knowledge you have. That you have all the truth, and no one else has any. That is false. No one, not me, not you - no one has all the truth except Almighty God. We are laying a foundation, so that you will fully understand what we are presenting, that the interpretation is not true, that when the Bible says all the earth, it is talking about the entire planet. The entire Bible only encompasses one small geographical area of the Earth when it is speaking historically. It is only when it is speaking prophetically that it is speaking about other parts of the world, and then it is only concerned with the Children of Israel. And we don’t mean the Jews when we say that, for they are no part of Israel. They are mostly of Japheth, Esau, and Khazars. Turn to the Second Book of Peter. For we will now look at verses which are quite often referred to when the Universal Flood advocates talk of The Flood again. And remember as we read these verses also, that so far, the history written down in the Word of God has still not moved outside of the area of one small geographical portion of the Middle East. All the way from the Book of Genesis to 2 Peter we have been talking about one geographical location. Peter is referring to the flood: "For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment; And spared not the old world, but saved Noah the eighth person, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood upon the world of the ungodly; And turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah into ashes condemned them with an overthrow, making them an ensample unto those that after should live ungodly." God brought in the flood upon the world of the ungodly. And we would state again that this doesn’t necessarily mean the entire planet. First of all you must remember and understand the principle upon that God operates, which is, that sin is the transgression of the Law. And where there is no Law there is no transgression. God does not destroy peoples unless they have the Law and violate it. And you can read this far in the Holy Scriptures and you will not find definite and conclusive evidence that God’s Law was ever preached beyond the confines of that small geographical area of the world. God’s Law, as far as the Scriptures relate, had not gone out to the other parts of the planet. So The Flood was brought in upon the ungodly. Again this does not necessarily mean all the world - the entire planet, as we have already shown quite clearly, we believe. Of course there will be skeptics, such as one of the thieves who was crucified next to Christ and who railed and mocked Him as they died. "For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old {notice he was talking about people being destroyed who were ‘willingly’ ignorant, and definitely disobeying the Word of the Lord}, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water: Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished." But this does not necessarily prove a world or planet wide Flood. Now make no mistake here for we know these verses can not be used to preach or teach a limited Flood, but the Universal Flood advocates almost always use them and so we must recognize they are there. Turn to the Book of Joshua, which we believe will show you the bounds of Noah’s Flood. You must understand that this was happening to Joshua approx. 500 years after Shem. So we are talking about a period of time which was 500 years after one of Noah’s sons who was actually in the Ark during the flood. We are not talking about Joshua doing something a 1000 or 2000 years after the flood, but only about 500 years after it. He has called all the people of Israel together. He’s old and knows he is going to die. "Joshua gathered all the tribes of Israel to Shechem {a city between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River - this is where this event took place}, and called for the elders of Israel, and for their heads, and for their judges, and for their officers; and they presented themselves before God. And Joshua said unto all the people, Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, your fathers dwelt on the other side of the flood in old time, even Terah the father of Abraham, and the father of Nachor: and they served other gods." Now we have read, in part, the Bible through several times and never realized what is being presented here. Every time I read it, I always thought in terms of time. Your fathers dwelt before the flood. But that is not what it is saying, is it? It says: "Your fathers dwelt on the other side of the flood." And then it gives the names of their fathers. "Terah, the father of Abraham." If you think about it for a minute it will dawn upon you that Terah didn’t live before The Flood. Terah lived just before Abraham, long after The Flood. Yet the Scriptures say that Terah lived "on the other side of the flood." Now if you will read this several times and "think" you will realize that Joshua is not talking about "time." He is talking about "geography!" He is telling them "WHERE THEY LIVED," not when they lived! Now listen carefully to what he says: "...and I took your father Abraham from the other side of the flood, and led him throughout all the land of Canaan, and multiplied his seed, and gave him Isaac." Turn to Genesis 11 and we will show you where Terah, Nachor and Abraham lived. Genesis 11:10: "These are the generations of Shem: Shem was an hundred years old, and begat Arphaxad two years after the flood." Then it goes down and gives all of the descendants of Shem. And two hundred and twelve years after the flood we read in verse 24: "And Nahor lived nine and twenty years, and begat Terah." Yet in Joshua 24, Joshua says, "your fathers even Terah," which Genesis 11 said was born two hundred and twelve years after the flood, "lived on the other side of the flood." And then it talks about bringing Abraham. "And Terah took Abram {Abraham} his son, and Lot the son of Haran his son’s son, and Sarai his daughter in law, his son Abram’s wife; and they went forth with them from Ur of the Chaldees, to go into the land of Canaan; and they came unto Haran, and dwelt there. And the days of Terah were two hundred and five years: and Terah died in Haran." Joshua said in Joshua 24:3: "And I {Almighty God} took your father Abraham from the other side of the flood..." Now it is very apparent that Abraham did not live before the flood. So if God brought Abraham from the other side of The Flood, what is He talking about? Well he is telling us that he, Joshua, standing at Shechem is on one side of where The Flood was; and Abraham living in Ur of the Chaldees was living on the other side of The Flood. And there is no doubt that he is talking about The Flood of Noah. So if you wish to know where The Flood of Noah was, then get a good map of that part of the world in old times and look between Ur of Chaldees and Shechem and you will see the geographical area of the flood. Now the scriptures tell us to have a second witness. So we will turn to a well known verse for this second witness. I believe that God has laughed at those who espouse a Universal Flood, and has revealed its location in one of the best known verses in the Bible, as a jest. To see if we would search out the truth for ourselves. Or would we grope in blindness. "And if it seem evil unto you to serve the Lord, choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood {Not ‘before’ the flood, but ‘on the other side of the flood’}, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord." Most ministers will read this and say "Well I don’t know what you people are going to do, but I am going to serve the Lord." Yet right here in that very commonly used verse is the double or second witness that Joshua knew he stood on one side of The Flood, and that Abraham was born and raised on the other side of The Flood. We realize this is a futile effort for most Christians because they do not want to know the truth, because they would rather believe a lie than the truth. God said this was so: "A wonderful and horrible thing is committed in the land; The prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests bear rule by their means; and my people love to have it so..." This is one of the reasons that Hosea declared: "My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge: {why?}: Because thou hast rejected knowledge..." And if you will read the Scriptures carefully and honestly you will see that God destroyed the old world because of RACE MIXING (MISCEGENATION)…………… NOAH'S FLOOD WAS NOT WORLDWIDE By the late Bertrand Comparet, U.S.A.
AMONG the many mistaken and unscriptural notions, commonly taught in nearly all churches, is the idea that the flood mentioned in the Bible, covered all the earth. It states everybody on earth was drowned excepting Noah and his family, who escaped death by being in the ark. Many churches have firmly insisted the Bible says this, when there is ample proof the flood was not worldwide. With this teaching the churches have destroyed the faith of multitudes of people. They have made atheists or agnostics out of hundreds of thousands of people who might have become active Christians, if they had only been taught the truth about the Bible. In Genesis chapter 6, we read that Yahweh found the people so corrupt He regretted He had ever created them, so He decided to wipe them out by a flood. He
First let us see what the translators have done to what Moses originally wrote. Remember the King James Bible says that the rain was upon the earth and the waters increased greatly upon the earth and all flesh died that moved upon the earth. Definitely not! Remember that in Genesis 4:14, when Yahweh has driven Cain away in punishment for his murder of Abel, the King James Bible quotes Cain as saying,
So what did Cain do, climb into his rocket ship and take off for outer space? Of course not!! He was not driven from the face of the earth, and he never said so, only the translators said so. The word Cain used was ad-aw-maw, meaning the ground. Yahweh had told him that his farming would no longer be successful, so Cain said, "Thou hast driven me off of the ground." You have probably noticed that Cain's descendants today are not farmers, they run pawnshops and other money lending institutions. When we come to Genesis chapter 7 where it is talking about the flood, wherever it says the flood covered the earth, the Hebrew word used in the original writing by Moses was eh-rats, meaning the land. The flood did cover the particular land where it occurred. It was a local flood, which covered one particular region or land, not the whole earth. Notice that it specifies, "Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail; and the mountains were covered." In ancient times two different lengths of the cubit were in use. The sacred cubit of 25 inches and the common cubit of 20-5/8th inches. Therefore, the waters rose above the tops of the mountains it is speaking of either 25feet 9inches or 31 feet 3 inches according to which cubit you use. If this meant that all the mountains on earth were covered, the waters would have to cover Mount Everest, which is nearly six miles high. Therefore, all the earth would be covered by water six miles deep. In that case, where could it have run off to If six miles of water covered the whole earth, then all nations must have been completely exterminated. However Babylonian, Egyptian and Chinese history runs right through this period without a break. The Bible gives the date of the flood as commencing in 2345 B.C. and ending in 2344 B.C. In lower Sumer, later called Accurate history of China begins nearly 3000 B.C. The Shu King historic record of China shows that King Yao came to the throne in 2356 B.C., 11 years before the start of Noah's flood, and ruled China for many years after the flood. During the reign of Yao, the Shu King reports that the Hwang Ho River, which drains the mountains and a great basin in Sinkiang province, had excessive floods for three generations. Here again, there was no break in history.The Chinese nation was not wiped out. Its own records show it continued in existence right through the period of Noah's flood. Therefore, the Bible is correct in stating the flood covered only eh-rets, that land. The translators are wrong when they change the meaning of what Moses really wrote in Genesis chapter 7, and say the flood covered all the earth. This leaves us ready to inquire where the flood did occur. For this, we will have to start with Adam and Eve and trace where they and their descendants went. They started out in the Garden of Eden. Genesis 2:10-14 tells us that a river went out of Eden and this river divided into four streams. It names these four rivers. Pison and Gihon, neither of which can be identified among the rivers existing today. Hiddekel, which is the ancient name of the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers. The Tigris and Euphrates rise in what is today extreme south-eastern Turkey, a little north of modern Iraq. Making some allowances for the fact that many rivers have changed their courses considerably in the passing of several thousand years, this still placed the Garden of Eden at the northern end of ancient Akkad. When Adam and Eve were driven out of the garden of Eden, Genesis 3:24 tells us Yahweh placed cherubim with a flaming sword at the east side of the garden of Eden, to keep Adam and Eve from returning and having access to the tree of life. If this guard was to accomplish anything, it must have been placed between Adam and the Garden of Eden. So we see that Adam and Eve were driven out to the east. From Eden, Adam's course would naturally have led him across northern Iran, around the southern end of the Caspian Sea, into what was formerly called Chinese Turkistan and today is known as Sinkiang province in the extreme west of China. In the southern part of Sinkiang there is a great basin, rimmed by high mountains on all sides, with an outlet on the eastern end of it, through the mountains where the headwaters of the Hwang-Ho river, the Yellow river rises. This basin is nearly all deserts today, but it bears evidence of a fertile and heavily inhabited past. Explorers have found ruins of ancient cities, uncovered by the drifting sands of the desert. Also the known geological structure shows, in ancient times at least, beneath this desert lay enormous underground natural reservoirs, caverns filled with water. It is the same geological structure, which furnishes artesian well water in many parts of the world today. These underground reservoirs were covered by waterproof layers of rock, which kept the waters beneath from overflowing out on the land surface above them. In this mountain rimmed basin, then a fertile and well-populated land, Adam and Eve, or at least their descendants of a few generations later, settled. You, who study these lessons, already know that Adam was not the first man. He was only the first man of the present white race. Adam and Eve found this land to which they had come already populated by an Asiatic people, among whom they had to live. Through the following generations, the inevitable happened. Wherever there is integration, intermarriages and mongrelization of the races follows. If Yahweh had no purposes in mind, which could not be properly served by the Asiatic and Negro races, there would have been no reason for Him to create Adam. Neither could the purposes which Adam and his descendants were intended to serve be fulfilled by a mongrelized race. The consequences of this mongrelisation are described in Genesis 6:5
We find the word there mistranslated earth is the Hebrew word eh-rats, which only means the land, that particular land. There is a reason for using this Hebrew word. This was the place where integration and mongrelisation had taken place, with its degenerative effects as compared to the qualities possessed by each race separately. We find confirmation of this in the reason why Yahweh spared Noah. In Genesis 6:9, the King James Bible tells us Noah was perfect in his generations, a meaningless phrase. When anything in the King James Bible fails to make good sense, it is a sign that you should go behind the mistranslation and see what the words were in the original Hebrew or Greek. The word here translated generations was the Hebrew word toladaw, which means ancestry. Noah was perfect in his ancestry, a pure bred, not a mongrel. Noah and his family were the last remaining pure-blooded Adamites in the world. Therefore, Yahweh needed to save them to carry out the purposes He had planned for the Adamic people. The mongrelized people among whom Noah and his family lived must be removed, or they would be a trap which would eventually lead to the complete end of the pure-blooded Adamites. Have we had any other evidence to support our view that this was the region where Adam and Eve and their descendants settled? Yes. Remember that Adam and Eve were driven out of Eden to the eastward. Later, when Cain murdered Abel, and as a punishment was banished from the land where Adam and Eve lived, Genesis 4:16 tells us
The Hebrew word nod means wandering. In the upper Tigris and Euphrates valleys, north of Eden, these rivers were running swiftly downhill from their mountain sources. Therefore, they cut deep channels in the ground. Even today we can find the traces of the ancient diversion dams, built by the ancients, to raise the water level up close to the surface of the ground. Then they would not have to pump it so high to get it into their irrigation canals. Farther to the south, in the lower Tigris and Euphrates valleys where the slope was no longer steep, the accumulation of silt picked up by the rivers where they ran swiftly, was now settling to the bottom of the riverbeds, constantly raising the level. Every high water season, the rivers overflowed their banks and flooded the valleys.This is exactly the same as we have in our own Mississippi valley. These annual floods washed away the people's houses and sent them fleeing to higher ground. Therefore it was correctly called the land of Nod, the land of wandering. Here Cain settled. and taught the people to build high dikes along the river banks, just as we have done along the banks of the Mississippi river. This enabled them to stop the annual floods, so they could now build permanent cities of good houses, in the lower Tigrisand Euphrates valleys, the land then called by its own inhabitants Sumer, and later called Chaldea. In a very few places the Bible calls it the Plain of Shinar. Cain went back westward from where Adam and Eve lived. It was thus that Cain started his great empire. Yes,Cain is a well known historical character, found not only in the Bible. However, he is known in history under another name. Cain established an empire, which extended from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean Sea and even took in some of the larger islands in the Mediterranean Sea. Some day I will tell you about Cain and his empire but that is another story. Another bit of evidence is found in Genesis 11:2, which tells us that after the flood, Noah's descendants journeyed from the east, until they came to the land of Shinar. Therefore, they must have come from some place east of the Tigris and Euphrates valleys. The only place where such a flood as the Bible describes could have occurred, eastward from the Tigris and Euphrates valleys, is this mountain basin in Sinkiang, which I have been talking about. More evidence is found in the high water mark found in many places along the mountains, which rim this basin, showing at one time this basin was a lake, extending to this well marked shoreline. The mountains which rim this valley were not fully covered, for many of them range from 16,000 to 25,000 feet in height and one even rises over 28,000 feet. But, within the basin are several smaller mountains, which could be fully covered by a flood held within the higher rim of the valley. This basin, through which flows the Tarim River and which is sometimes known as the Tarim Basin in southern Sinkiang, is identified as the site of Noah's flood. In the King James Bible Genesis 7:11-12 reads:
A more careful translation makes it clear what really happened. In Moffatt's Modern English translation we read:
Smith and Goodspeed's American translation says:
A great earthquake broke up this waterproof layer of rock over the immense, water-filled abyss or cavern beneath this Tarim Basin, causing the floor of the valley to settle and allowed the enormous underground reservoir to overflow and submerge the valley floor. The great earthquake in the Himalaya Mountains several years ago produced similar effects in some places. Of course, the 40 days of torrential rains added to the flood. This filled the valley high enough to submerge the mountains, which were inside the valley, exactly as Genesis 7:19-20 says. Don't be misled by the mistranslation:
The word mistranslated heaven is the Hebrew word shaw-meh, meaning the sky. Since this Tarim Basin is somewhat more than 350 miles wide by more than 650 miles long, all the sky visible from anywhere near the center of this valley would cover only this valley and therefore only those lower mountains which were within the valley itself. What about Genesis 8:4 reading:
Sometimes failure to translate can be as misleading as mistranslation.Most people understand this to mean Mount Ararat in Armenia, some 1,600 miles west of the Tarim Basin. This is not what the Bible says. First of all, note it reads "mountains of Ararat", mountains being in the plural, while Mount Ararat in Armenia is only a single peak. However, Mount Ararat in Armenia was known until comparatively recent times as Mount Massis. Nobody had ever heard of it being called Mount Ararat in Bible times. Furthermore, the Hebrew word ararat means only 'the tops of the hills'. Therefore, correctly translated, Genesis 8:4 only says the ark came to rest upon the top of the high hills, some of the lower mountains which were within the valley. A recent newspaper report mentions an expedition, equipped with the latest electronic equipment, which is going to Mount Ararat in Armenia to find the ark. The expedition will melt the ice, which covers what they think is the ark, by coating it with black powdered carbon.They won't find the ark because it isn't there. Several expeditions have gone to Mount Ararat to find the ark. Some of them got within sight of a mass on the side of the mountain, which, from that particular point of view, looked to be shaped somewhat, like a ship. That point has been very carefully inspected from the air by airplanes flying over it very closely. It has proven to be nothing but a ledge of rock, which does give a silhouette, shaped like a ship, when seen from the right direction. I need not mention the many places, such as the Grand Canyon etc., where similar ship rocks can be seen and none of them are Noah's Ark. When we carefully examine the whole affair, and correct the mistranslations, we find that there is no conflict between what the Bible really says and either science or history. In fact, there never is any such conflict; it is only the preachers who find themselves contradicted by either science or history. This is only because they either won't take the trouble to find out what the Bible really says, or they have made the mistranslation a supposedly sacred church doctrine and now they are stuck with it. Don't let any church shake your faith in the Bible.The Bible is always right, even if the preachers are often wrong. Let's remember another thing, the Chinese historical records. The Shu-King records that during the reign of King Yao, at a time beginning about the date of Noah's flood, the Hwang Ho River carried excessive floods for three generations. Drainage out of the Tarim Basin to the eastward would have been carried off in the Hwang Ho River and would account for this. Now we come to another false doctrine taught in many churches. Since nobody survived in all the earth except Noah and his family, everybody now living is a descendant of Noah and related by blood, no matter what race they belong to. We have already learned the flood did not cover the whole earth, but only one valley about 350 by 650 miles in size. The flood did not interrupt Chinese history although they do report purely local floods in the Hwang Ho valley where the waters were draining off. We have seen that the flood does not interrupt Egyptian history, so the continent of Africa was not touched by it and the Negro race continued unaffected by it. It would be absurd to think Noah and his wife, both of them being white, could have one white child, one Negro child, and one Chinese child. Remember in Genesis 1:11-25, when Yahweh created the world and its inhabitants and made the laws governing their reproduction. He did not make it absurd chaos, with whales giving birth to cattle and fish hatching out of birds' eggs. His law, several times repeated for emphasis, is always that each creature must bring forth strictly after its own kind. The churches that teach this false doctrine of everybody being descended from Noah, never got it from the Bible, that is in any true translation of the Bible. As Moses wrote it in the Hebrew language, under divine inspiration, the Bible correctly tells that Noah's descendants went out into a world already populated by people who had lived right through the time of the flood and were still going strong. Ferrar Fenton's Modern English Translation gives this correctly. In Genesis 10:1-5 we read about the descendants of Noah's son Japheth
Genesis 10:20 tells of the descendants of Noah's son Ham:
Genesis 10:31 completes it:
So never let anybody tell you the Bible consists of the fables of a primitive people. It is perfectly consistent with all true science and all true history. |
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