Was the Flood Worldwide?
Many people today think the Flood of Noah’s time was only a local flood, confined to somewhere around
Mesopotamia. But the Bible states clearly that it covered the whole world: Chapter 6, verse 7: And the LORD said, I will wipe mankind whom I have created, from the face of the earth; men and animals, and creatures that move along the ground, and the birds of the air; for I am grieved me that I have made them. It even covered all of the mountains (7:20). As well, if the flood was only local, God would have broken his promise repeatedly never to do it again (8:21-22).
Did a worldwide flood really occur?
The only way we can judge the validity of some event that has been claimed to have happened in the past is to look for changes in the present world that the event would have made. So if the events described in Genesis chapters 6, 7 and 8 really happened, what would we expect to see now?
- We would expect to see the earth covered by sedimentary rock, that is, rock laid down by water.
- We would expect to see stratification or layers of sediment which are indicative of material separating from water and preferably some indication that they were laid down quickly and in the one event.
- We would expect to see large fossil graveyards with a mixture of land based animals with sea creatures and vegetation as a result of a flood dump.
- We would expect to see coal, oil and gas deposits as a result of vast floating mats of vegetation being buried after being stripped from the land by huge tsunamis.
- We would expect to be able to see marine fossils/shells on the peaks of high mountains, since the Bible claims that all of the mountains were covered.
Over the next few Newsletters (blogs) we will examine each of these geographical features to see if they are present.
