In Genesis 6-9, God brings a worldwide flood as judgment for the sin of mankind. After the flood, God promises never to send a flood like that again. It is clearly as worldwide flood as the wording of Genesis 7 illustrates:
The waters rose and increased greatly on the earth, and the ark floated on the surface of the water. They rose greatly on the earth, and all the high mountains under the heavens were covered. The waters rose and covered the mountains to a depth of more than twenty feet. Every living thing that moved on the earth perished. Everything on dry land that had the breath of life in its nostrils died. Every living thing on the face of the earth was wiped out…Only Noah was left, and those with him on the ark.
Each evolutionary model and those creation models that view Genesis as mythology do not recognize a global flood. The old earth creation models sometimes see the story of the flood as mythological and sometimes they see it as just a local flood. But there’s really no wiggle-room in trying to justify a local flood. The superlative words: All, Every, and Only do not allow for alternative interpretations.
Those that see it as a local flood, justify their claim of a local flood by interpreting that passage to mean a local flood. It was “worldwide in scale” to Noah’s world according to what they say. However Genesis 9 says:
Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life.
If this was a local flood, and God said that he would never again send a flood like the one he sent, would we not conclude that there would never again be local floods? And yet massive local floods have devastated areas around the world. According to scripture and history, the flood of Noah’s day had to be a worldwide flood.
God promised never to flood the entire Earth again. The rainbow is a sign of his covenant promise.
Jesus understood the flood of Noah’s day to be a worldwide flood as you can see from his words recorded in Luke 17
Just as it was in the days of Noah, so also will it be in the days of the Son of Man. People were eating, drinking, marrying, and being given in marriage up to the day Noah entered the ark. Then the flood came and destroyed them all.
I and 2 Peter also record the belief that the flood was a real and worldwide event in which only Noah, his family, and two of every kind of animal survived.
…when God waited patiently in the days of Noah whle the ark was being built. In it only a few people, eight in all, were saved through the water…
…if he did not spare the ancient world when he brought the flood on its ungodly people, but protected Noah, a preacher of righteousness, and seven others.
First of all, you must understand that in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires. They will say, “Where is this coming he promised? Ever since our fathers died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation.” But they deliberately forget that long ago by God’s word the heavens existed and the earth was formed out of water and by water. By these waters also the world of that time was deluged and destroyed.
We’ll come back to the worldwide flood again in the section regarding Scientific evidence that opposes evolution.
Back to the Creation Manifesto Outline
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