Approx 2340 B.C. - The Great Flood

All life on the land was drowned the scriptures say!

               Approximately 2340 years before Jesus of Nazareth was born, God became tired of the state of the world he had created.  He found only one family - that of a man named Noah (Noe)- to be righteous enough to save.  The reasons for this are not greatly explored in the Bible, but there was a great amount of violence on the Earth.  Exactly what form it took is unclear, but terrible trouble had been created by man's own evil and by certain angels deciding to leave their original form in order to live like 'super beings' on Earth.    

               Some non-Biblical writings relate that Noah tried to preach to these Angel/Man hybrids (the Nephilim) about obeying God and giving up evil ways and violence.  (And in possible support of this we find that Noah is called a preacher of righteousness in the Bible.)  But they wouldn't reform.  Their great strength made them arrogant and disdainful of such restrictions on their behavior.  Noah gave up, it is said, and moved away to another part of the earth out of fear for his life and his family's. 

               Some sources say that Noah's wife was named Na'amah.  The Bible (Genesis) for some reason mentions the lineage of Cain's descendants before the flood.  One of the last people mentioned in this line is a Naamah, given as a sister to Tubal Cain (the great worker of metals from whom the word Vulcan is thought to possible spring, by some conjecturers.)  Could Naamah, the descendant of Cain, be Noah's wife?  I suspect that if it were true I would have heard it preached or read something about it.  I haven't.  Yet it is interesting to note that Genesis does give a list of descendants of Cain, who I had once supposed all perished in the great flood.  But perhaps the line of Cain wasn't totally erased.  After all, God did not kill Cain, but banished him to be a wanderer, and marked him in some manner so that people finding him would not kill him. 

              Perhaps God had plans for Cain's descendants, despite that Cain was a murderer.  If we were to list the murderers that show up as prominent persons in the Bible, it would include Moses, who killed the Egyptian taskmaster, and King David, who had Urriah the Hittite killed.  And Saul of Taursus (known as the Apostle Paul) who worked to kill and imprison many of the first Christians.  

              It is an interesting note that angels, greater than us but fellow created beings like ourselves, have also been granted self determination and can sin.  Satan was able to mislead 1/3 of the angels into following him.  Two statements in the scriptures say that 10,000 times 10,000 of the remaining angels in heaven are seen at a certain time in visions by the writers - that makes 100,000,000 angels. (See Daniel 7:10 and Rev. 5:11 - be aware 'myriad' is a specific term meaning 10,000.  In some Bible translations you will see 'myriad' instead of '10,000')  So if that 100,000,000 represents the remaining 2/3 of good angels, then perhaps we would be right to suppose that 50,000,000 or more angels are at work in the army of Satan.  With a planetary population of 5 billion, that is about 1 bad angel per every 100 humans. 

              But, as a Christian, I am told that Jesus was provided as the sole and single path to salvation for anyone.  People that list themselves as Christians make up almost exactly 1/3 of the world's population, so the bad angels would therefore only need to be opposed against Christians in particular, and that would give a ratio of about 1 bad angel for every 33 Christians.  If you further suppose that only about 10% of Christians at any one time are really working enthusiastically for Jesus, then perhaps there is 1 bad angel to oppose about every 3 to 4 zealous Christians.  And angels are said to be greatly more powerful beings than a human.    

              Those in heaven serving God are a greater force than these, but none the less, we face our own innately evil inclinations and a considerable host of bad angels as we try to return to our Lord.  I believe that is why God and Jesus place such stress on following the good path laid out.  There really are many working to destroy humans as a way to show spite toward God.  These rebellious angels battled for the higher kingdom and lost, and now we humans grow up among them, living our lives as plants of imperfect grain among weeds.  And God treats it sort of like how armies treat an enemy that hides in a church or a school.  For the sake of the innocent the enemies are not destroyed.

               In a certain Matthew 13 bible parable a sevant tells his master that weeds have been found growing among his grain plants in the grain field.  He replies to the servant that an enemy has done this.  The servant asks if he should pull them.  The master says 'No, because some good grain would be destroyed also.  When its harvest time I'll have the harvesters pull and bundle the weeds to be burned in the fire, and then I'll harvest the grain.'  

              In Matthew 13 there also follows from Jesus an explanation of what this parable means.   The weeds are those who are lawless or stumbling blocks, Jesus says.  I think he primarily means evil men, but such angels as oppose God by misdirecting men may also fall under the heading of 'stumbling blocks.'        

              Jesus himself affirms that the least of the beings in Heaven are mightier than the greatest man on Earth.  These fallen angels once 'looked upon women and found them desirable' (Gen Chap 6: v. 2) and took as many as they cared for to be their wives.  Outside the Bible's scriptures there are writings which say it was the women's long beautiful hair that so attracted the angels. Their progeny were 'the mighty men of old' , the legendary mythical figures from ancient times - their true stories now much distorted by the years. 

              They had great power and ability compared to man, and great egos as well.  They were the cause of much bloodshed in the preflood Earth according to some extra-biblical sources.  These hybrids were killed in the flood, but as to their semi-angelic spirits themselves, I do not know their current form.  I have believed - though not with complete certainty - that the demons of today and of all post flood history are the spirits of Satan's misled angels, and perhaps the spirits of their hybrid children.

              How much and how widely the pr-flood human gene pool was affected by their blood lines is unclear.  While it is said that Noah was 'perfect in his generation' it does not rule out that even his family members may have carried traces of this rebellious-angel blood.   Perhaps 'perfect in his generation' specifies only that Noah himself was of pure blood, but perhaps not his sons or their wives and children, or perhaps it means only that Noah's behavior was found to be 'perfect' among those living in his 'generation'.  Or maybe there are other explanations beyond those.  We know there were Nephilim after the flood, from the Book of Genesis. And the word Nephelim seems to refer to these Angel/Man cross breeds.  (Gen Chap 6: v.4)

              At any rate, Noah, and his three sons, Ham, Shem, and Japheth, along with their wives (they were apparently monogamous men, each bringing only one wife) were directed to build a boat to preserve life.  Following this gargantuan accomplishment God directed animals to enter the ark in pairs representing their 'type'.  (possibly type is similar to Genus as we divide life types).  Of certain 'clean' and edible animal types seven pairs were boarded instead of one pair.  And the ark truly was large enough to hold sufficient animal types to make this story absolutely plausible.  It was 300 cubits long, 50 cubits wide, and 30 cubits high.  Call a cubit 1.5 feet if you want, because this is close to what it was.  It therefore had 33,750 sq. feet per level multiplied times 3 levels.  Over 101,250 square feet.

              If you had 10 elephant sized animal types (hey, there could have been dinosaurs, etc., for all we know) and allotted them 1000 sq. feet per pair each (30ft by 33ft pens?), you have used up about 10,000 sq. feet, or only 10% of the space.  Then let's provide space for 30 animal types that required 1/2 the space of elephants (buffalo, rhino, hippo, cattle, etc.)  with 25ft by 20 ft pens of 500 sq. ft., totaling 15,000 square feet for these animals, and you have now used up a total of 25% of the space. Then make space for 100 types of animals that require 1/4 the space of elephants (sheep, goats, antelope, bears, wolves, etc.) and give them 12.5 ft by 20 ft pens of 250 sq. ft.  You have now used up only 50% of the total floor space. 

              So now if we allot another 25% of the total space for the sum of all remaining types both gargantuan (sauropods like brontosaurus - possibly juvenile pairs) and tiny, like insects, (and fit the bunnies with chastity belts) we have now dreamed up a scenario where a great many thousand of 'Genuses' could be housed in pens on the ark for the nearly 1 year trip, using only 75% of the floor space of the three main levels.  But we could also stack the pens.

              For really tall species (today only the giraffe is left, but back then, who knows?) you could take the last 75 feet of this 450 foot long ark and have an open part of the ceiling up from the lowest level to the floor of the third.  This would give something near to 30 feet of ceiling height; that would probably be plenty for a tall animal. 

              But how about all of those small species?  If each level of the ark was about 15 feet tall, couldn't you stack the little animals pens in many ways?  Maybe a column of terrariums could provide for stacking 3 to 10 types of small animals in sub-levels on each level.  Ventilation would have to be dealt with, lighting and cage cleaning would be important, but maybe all were thought of and provided for.  We don't know the technology level before the flood, but it ought to have been impressive.  And guess who was providing construction directions:  the Incomparable One.  God Himself provided the plans. 

              So, we only accounted for 75% of the floor space on the three main levels.  The other floor space could have been used for aisles, food storage, and human living area.  God could have caused these animals to slumber a lot and need little food.  They certainly wouldn't have been working very hard, so if stress levels were low they wouldn't have needed nearly their normal requirement of food.  Perhaps soothing elevator music was played.

              I wish that 3 or 5 Christian Universities would contact each other and challenge each other to a contest where, using some preagreed parameters of ark size, animal size, calorie usage and length of voyage, they competed to computer design an ark of the Bible's given dimensions whose architectural layout would house and feed the most animal types for the one year journey.  There could be a gold plated  'Ark' model that was the prize (like the Stanley Cup) and the school who won the competition could keep it each year.  And each year, new teams could try to better last year's winning design.

              I truly believe God told Noah and his sons to build it in the most intelligent manner conceivable for its use, and I bet that this contest would never produce a design as good.  But it would be a fun contest, and would produce a demonstration of just what is acieivable. Hey, somebody out there, why don't you get this started at your school?          

              Back to the flood:  Following the boarding of the animals and the closing of the doors an Earth cataclysm ensued, caused by God, which destroyed all flesh of the land and air.  Assumedly aquatic and microbial life forms survived on their own.  A flood of water covered the entire Earth.  An unprecedented 40 days of rain occurred.  Storehouses of water beneath the Earth's crust were loosed as well.  After about a year of being either afloat, or in the end beached somewhere in a mountain range but not yet able to leave the ark, the water receded enough that Noah and his family could disembark.  They could try to rebuild life again on a new and changed Earth. 

           Ancient writers of about 2000 to 2500 years ago tended to say that the remains of the ark are in what was Armenia then, probably Turkey now.  But its location is today still disputed and it perhaps remains unfound, though a search on the internet reveals that there are a couple of interesting candidates for the remains of this old ark which have been found in modern times.

              The flood was sent to rid the Earth of its evil inhabitants.  But there 'was some weed with the seed' in Noah's family, or something anyway, and so there were occasional recurrences of the angel/man hybrid called Nephilim, especially in the early centuries following the flood.  And giants, for instance, were not too uncommon for the next 3500 years of history, though they seem to have been constantly targeted by their smaller and somewhat insecure relatives to the point that they are virtually non-existent now.  Repeatedly charges of cannibalism are included with descriptions of the ancient giant peoples.  Perhaps for this reason as well they were hated.  And giant warriors were a gem in the collection of the ancient kings' armies, so I'm sure that more than a fair share of giant men fell in war.  It must have been pretty intimidating to face an athletic and well formed giant on the field of battle.  Today, for whatever reason, we may have little else but ordinary tallness genes at work in what we might refer to as our giants.  Their seed has passed almost completely into extinction. 

              But to those who think giants are fiction, consider that numerous ancient writers mention men and women of giant size and great ability who existed in post flood times.  Many cultures also preserved mention of them in myth and song.  Some of their deeds - if true - could hardly have been performed by a mere human.   Some of their heights are hardly to be believed.  Even in the last 200 years the skeletal remains of 8 ft to 15 ft persons are reported found, with many of those being in North America.  Ohio and Pennsylvania are often cited as states where finds were made, but California, Alaska, Minnesota, Nevada, and New York are also hosts to reported 18th and 19th century finds.  Some were documented in the newspapers of the time.  Are any of these reports true?  They may be.  I believe that at least some were true.  Maybe even most!

              Scientists often argue against the occurrence of a world wide flood, opting for localized ones to explain aberrant finds which suggest otherwise.  But they have to overlook a great deal of evidence to do so.  In a place called Karoo in S. Africa a deposit of hundreds of billions of larger type animal skeletons, jumbled and mixed into rock, is said to exist.  Lesser 'giant piles of bones' exist in other places around the world, being referred to as 'fossil beds'.  It's not hard to imagine giant mats of animal corpses floating in the floodwaters.  As for the ancientness of such a flood, there are now several known instances of pliable, leathery, unfossilized tissue being found in dinosaur bones, including T-Rex bones, attesting to a not so prehistoric demise.  And mountain peaks with mollusk shells on them are well known throughout the world, attesting to the height reached by certain waters (or perhaps in some cases to the amount some mountains have risen.)  So the water was very high, and it didn't happen millions of years ago. 

              Truly there are quite a number of evidences.  Researchers once gathered evidence of over 300 peoples that had a 'flood myth' as part of their cultural history.  Now that is a lot of peoples!  To put it in perspective, take this challenge:  ask yourselves how many peoples/tribes/nations you can even name.  If 300 peoples had a cultural history of myths supporting the observed existence of the evolutionary process I think scientists would call that overwhelming support for evolution.  But information that 300 cultures support the existence of a catastrophic world wide flood has not influenced scientists to adopt such a flood as a likely historical occurrence.  Go figure.  They have an amazingly stubborn resistance to God supporting, Jesus supporting, or scripture supporting information.  They are the ones that should see it most clearly of all!  But I believe things are finally changing, and many scientists that are believers are beginning to make their opinions known without apology.  Way to go people!!  

              The flood was devastating, but God offered us the sign of a rainbow afterwards.  Noah, a man of such very great faith, sacrificed some of the few precious pairs of clean animals (initially only 7 pairs of each 'clean' type survived the flood) as a burnt offering to God.  Smelling this good aroma God said that the rainbow would be a covenant between Himself and 'all flesh' to reassure all creatures that He would never again destroy the life forms of His planet using a flood of water.  He assured Noah that seed time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, and day and night would continue so long as the Earth remained.  God always keeps His promises, and this one is only dependent on the Earth's existence.

              It seems probable that a rainbow had not previously been seen in the skies, as it would have been odd to say it was the sign of a new covenant if it had, in fact, previously been a common sight.  We can well imagine that the world after the flood had a vastly different meteorological makeup.  Perhaps, as many suggest, this really was the first sighting of a rainbow.

              You can imagine what a relief it was to hear this promise from God to never destroy Earth in this manner again.  No modern person has witnessed the violent destruction of nearly all life on a planet.  But just look at the psychological impact of being mugged, taken hostage, being beaten, being a war survivor, etc., and how much treatment and counseling people sometimes need after such an ordeal.  This family was the sole survivor from an entire planet once teeming and full of animal life and humanity, and the powerful God that destroyed it all was still in charge.  They probably needed some reassurance.

              In those early post-flood days God commanded that they go forth and repopulate and recolonize the Earth.  He also placed all of the animals at their disposal at this time for food, etc., insisting only that the blood be drained before eating, because He said a creature's life was in their blood (and He would know!)  Far in the future this allusion that life was in the blood would take its probable intended form when man would be taught that their only hope of eternal life was from the sacrifice of the blood of God's son, Jesus.  Eternal life is in the blood shed to forgive sin, because it is our sin which separates us from God, our sin that leads to death. 

              The most destructive deed God was ever to perform was now completed, and He allowed the world to begin recovering.  A future worldly destruction - by fire - is prophesied and will surely come, but never again will so few as only eight survive one of God's punishments.  Some larger number of us will survive with God in heaven, for one instance, when that next planetary catastrophe occurs.  Revelation mentions 144,000 saints at one point.  But at the time of the tribulation, which will come much sooner, the scriptures say that men will become a rare sight on the Earth.