Was Noah’s Flood “Local?”
Few things about the Bible are as ridiculed by the world and misunderstood by Christians as the extent of Noah’s flood. Genesis 7:19 states that, “And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth; and all the high hills, that were under the whole heaven, were covered.” I do not know how a total global-covering event could have been described any more clearly. Yet for almost 200 years geology has been ruled by a paradigm of slow processes over millions of years. Since the flood described by the Bible was obviously worldwide in extent, it would have created the rock layers of the Earth, filled with trillions of dead animal remains (fossils), both rapidly and relatively recently.
But what about the popular idea that the Bible is describing a small regional flood? That idea is absurd if you take the Bible seriously. For instance:
- Why wouldn’t Noah have just moved? What is the point of a huge boat, large enough to hold at least two of every basic kind of mammal, reptile, amphibian, and bird on the planet?
- How would a local flood destroy “all flesh” upon the Earth? See Genesis 7:21.
- Why would Noah be told to bring birds? They could have easily escaped a local flood.
- Why did Noah and his family remain on the Ark for over a year and stay on the Ark for almost 5 months after it landed? This only makes sense in the entire world was a mud-slick and it took months to dry out and vegetation to regrow.
- How did the water cover “all the high hills” if it were a local flood? No known local flood has ever covered hills more than a few hundred feet tall – it just flows around them.
- How could it have rained so long? No rainstorm has ever lasted continuously for 40 days and 40 nights. One biblical possibility is that magma from the “fountains of the great deep” could have vaporized enough water to have accomplished such a catastrophe.
- God promised to never send such a flood event upon the Earth again, yet there have been thousands of “local floods.” Is God a liar?
There are dozens of other problems with the distortion of the Genesis flood account to twist it into a “local flood” event. Christians need to quit denying God’s Word in order to maintain credibility with an academic world blinded by an assumption of naturalism. There are reasonable answers to those doubting the authenticity of God’s Word, but only if it is accepted to mean what it obviously says.
For more geological evidence supporting the reality of the global flood described in the Bible, see Censored Science.
