CHAPTER 9

The Genesis Flood

The book of Genesis tells us about three spectacular events which have taken place in history. Every creationist recognizes that these three events happened just as the Bible teaches. On the other hand, these three events are usually ignored or denied by the evolutionists, as if they never really took place. Sometimes Bible believers are ridiculed because they believe in these great events. In spite of what evolutionists teach, the world today gives unmistakable evidence that these three events really happened, and it is impossible to correctly understand and interpret the facts of science unless we recognize these three  supernatural events.

1) Supernatural Creation (Genesis Chapters 1-2).

As we have already studied in chapter 4, the Bible clearly teaches that CREATION took place about 7,000 years ago (see Chapter 6) during a six day period (see Exodus 31:17 and also Chapter 4), which we call the creation week. Nothing, therefore, is being created today! The work of creation is F_______________ (Genesis 2:1)! Scientists often say that "matter is neither being created or destroyed." No new matter is coming into existence! Today it is impossible to observe the CREATOR CREATING (see Chapter 3)! We can only observe the CREATOR’S FINISHED CREATION and we can thank God for how wonderfully and fearfully everything was made!

Evolutionists claim that the evolutionary process is still taking place today. They believe that the god of evolution is still able to produce higher and better and more complex forms of life, (if he has enough TIME). Many evolutionists believe that matter has always existed. 

Did the Lord Jesus believe in evolution or creation (Matthew 19:4)?  ________________________________________________  Not only did He believe in creation, but He Himself was the Creator (John 1:3; Col. 1:16).

2) The Fall Of Man (Genesis Chapter 3).

The great sin of Adam had amazing effects upon planet earth and even upon the entire universe. Because of man's terrible fall into sin, "the ____________   _____________ groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now" (Romans 8:22). As a direct consequence of the fall, a divine curse was placed upon the earth (Genesis 3:14-19). Today, as we study and observe the world around us, we discover that we live in a sin-cursed earth, filled with DISEASE, DECAY and DEATH! Explain how the following remind us of the Adamic curse:

a. Cemeteries
__________________________________________________________________

b. Hospitals
___________________________________________________________________

c. Convalescent Homes and Nursing Homes
___________________________________________________________________

d. Fossils
___________________________________________________________________

e. The Obituary Column in a Newspaper
___________________________________________________________________

f. Genesis chapter 5 (the tombstone chapter; see the common phrase: "And he died)
___________________________________________________________________

Will this curse remain forever (Revelation 22:3)?___________

How did Adam's sin affect you (Romans 5:12)? ________________________________________ Who is the only One who can counteract what Adam did (Romans 5:17-19)? _____________________________

3) The Worldwide Genesis Flood (Genesis Chapters 6-8).

God has carefully given to us three chapters in the book of Genesis describing the extraordinary flood which took place in the days of Noah thousands of years ago. Did such an event really take place? In this chapter, we will study this important flood which had such an impact upon this world that the earth has never been the same since!

1A. The Historicity of the Flood

Was the Genesis Flood a real historical event, or was it merely an imaginary story which was written in order to teach men spiritual lessons?  This very important question relates to the truthfulness of God's Word, the Bible.  Is the Bible true and reliable and trustworthy?  Can we believe that the events recorded in the Bible actually happened?  Is the Bible an accurate and inerrant record of history?   The God of truth would never mislead us. His Word does not misrepresent what really happened.  When we read God's description of a flood which covered the entire earth, we can believe every word of it.  God cannot _______ (Titus 1:2). 

According to Luke 17:27, did the Lord Jesus believe that a flood once came and destroyed the world? ______ As Christians, should we believe the same? _______ If the Genesis Flood never really happened, then Jesus was mistaken! Is it possible for the Son of God to ever be mistaken? ______ If the Genesis Flood was an actual historical event, then most evolutionists are mistaken! Is it possible for evolutionary scientists to be mistaken? ________

Did the writer of the book of Hebrews believe in Noah and the ark (Hebrews 11:7)? ______ Did Ezekiel believe Noah was a real person (Ezekiel 14:14,20)? ______ Did the Apostle Peter believe in the Genesis Flood (1 Peter 3:20; 2 Peter 3:5-6)? _______

2A. The Extent of the Flood

Was the Flood a worldwide flood (extending throughout the entire world) or a local flood (covering only a local area such as Mesopotamia)? Did the flood waters cover the entire earth, or just one small section of the earth?

Genesis 7:19-20 says, "And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the ______________; and ______ the high hills, that were ___________    _______   ____________   ______________, were covered. Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail; and the _______________ were __________________." The mountains under the whole heaven were covered! Does that sound like a local flood or a worldwide, universal flood? ________________________________________   If the highest ground is covered, what does that tell us about the lower ground?

2 Peter 3:6 also describes the flood: "Whereby the ___________ that then was, being  _______________    ________    _____________, perished." Was the entire world destroyed by this flood? _______

Read the promise God made to Noah and his sons in Genesis 9:8-17. God promised that He would never again send a flood to destroy ______   _____________ (Genesis 9:11) and to destroy ______   ______________ (Genesis 9:15). Has God kept His promise? _____ Since the great flood in the days of Noah, has God ever sent local floods to destroy men and beasts? ______ 

Here is a description of some devastating local floods and other disasters caused by water:

Our nation will never forget what happened to Johnstown, Pennsylvania, in 1889, when 20,000,000 tons of water from Conemaugh Lake swept into the city and killed 2,200 people. The Ohio and Mississippi River floods of 1937 killed 400, left 1,000,000 homeless, and destroyed $500,000,000 worth of property. In South America, in May of 1970, an avalanche of water, rocks, and mud, rushing nearly 100 miles an hour down the slopes of the Andes, totally buried the Peruvian cities of Yungay and Ranrahirca with 14,000 inhabitants. Six months later, on the other side of the world, a ghastly 25-foot high wave driven by winds of from 100 to 150 miles an hour rolled in from the Bay of Bengal to annihilate the overcrowded lowlands of the Ganges-Brahmaputra River Delta in the dead of night. The death and destruction rank with the worst the world has known [not counting the Genesis Flood]. Whole islands were inundated. Families and villages were instantly wiped out by the wall of water.... The most reliable estimates put the number of dead at half a million, but the toll could reach a million. And throughout a 3,000 square mile area, 3,500,000 were left homeless (John C. Whitcomb, Jr, The World That Perished, p.69).

Did God break His promise to Noah by sending these local floods which have destroyed thousands of men and animals? _____ God did not promise that there would never be destructive local floods, but He did promise that there would never again be a flood to destroy ALL FLESH ON THE FACE OF THE EARTH, as there was in the days of Noah. Has God kept His Word? ________

3A. The Duration of the Flood

How long did the flood last? How long did the rain last (Genesis 7:12)?  ___________________________________________ When the rain stopped, did Noah and his family get out of the ark (see Genesis 7:24; 8:3-4)? _______ When the ark rested on Mt. Ararat, did Noah and his family get out of the ark (see Genesis.8:4-12)?_______ Actually, Noah and his family were in the ark for more than a year! Do local floods last that long? ______ Even very severe local floods may only last for a few days!

4A. The Survivors of the Flood

How many people were saved in the ark and able to survive this terrible judgment of God (1 Peter 3:20)? ______________________ Who were these eight people (Genesis 8:16)? ___________________________________________________________________________________ Were there any other survivors (Genesis 8:17,19)? ___________________________________________________________________________________

Use your imagination.  What if God were to send a contagious disease upon the earth that was so deadly that everyone on earth died except for eight survivors.  Suppose you were one of the survivors.  What would you think?  You would probably ask these questions:  Why did God destroy almost every person on earth?  What did man do to deserve such a terrible judgment?  If the punishment fits the crime, what crime did mankind commit? 

Read Genesis chapter 6.  What verses tell us of the terrible wickedness of man that brought about the judgment of a worldwide flood?  _______________________________________________________________

If we learn no other lesson from the Genesis Flood, we should learn this:  Man's wickedness results in God's judgment.  God must judge sin.  Sin cannot go unpunished.  As we think about Calvary's cross we learn the same lesson:  Sin cannot go unpunished.  In order to save us, God punished our Substitute.

As we think about Noah and those who were with him on the ark, there are several questions that people always seem to ask. Let's try to answer some these questions:

1) Why did some animals enter two by two and some seven by seven?

According to Genesis 6:19-20 (see also Genesis 7:9,15), how many animals of every kind were to come into the ark? ___________________________________ According to Genesis 7:2-3, how many animals were to come into the ark? ___________________________________________________________The animals which were taken by sevens were called C___________ animals (Genesis 7:2). What did Noah do with these clean animals after the flood (Genesis 8:20)? ______________________________________________________ If Noah had taken only two of every kind of clean animals, and then sacrificed them after the flood, all of the clean animals would today be EXTINCT!   To insure that these animals would be able to mate and multiply after the flood, additional clean animals were taken in order to be used for sacrifices.

2) How could all those animals fit into the ark?

Noah’s Ark was the largest sea-going vessel ever built until the late nineteenth century when giant metal ships were first constructed.

The dimensions of the ark are given in Genesis 6:15.

How long was it?    _____________________
How wide was it?   _____________________
How tall was it?      _____________________

A cubit was about 18 inches (1½ feet).  [It is the distance from the elbow to top of the middle finger of an average man.] Can you give the above dimensions in units of feet?

How long was it? _____________________________
How wide was it? _____________________________
How tall was it? ___________________________

Thus, the ark was 1½ times as long as a football field (which is 300 feet long)! One writer has estimated that the total volume (inside space) was 1,396,000 cubic feet. Imagine waiting at a railroad crossing while 10 freight trains, each pulling 52 boxcars move slowly by, one after another! That is how many boxcars could fit inside the ark (520)! There was plenty of room for Noah, his family, the animals and food for them all (John C. Whitcomb, Jr., The World That Perished, p. 23). 

The ark was a huge barge.  Inside there were three floors or three decks with 95,000 square feet of total floor space. There were probably thousands of "rooms" or compartments in the ark (Genesis 6:14), more than enough space for every air-breathing animal in the world.

Read Genesis 7:13-16. Was there room for everyone before God shut the door? ________ If God designed the ark, do you think He would make a mistake and design it too small? __________

3) How did Noah get all the animals into the ark?

Did Noah have to chase after two rabbits and wrestle with two gorillas in order to get them to come into the ark? According to Genesis 2:19, who brought the animals to Adam? _______________ Do you think the same Person was able to bring the animals to the ark? _________  We have many examples in the Bible of animals obeying God's commands.  After each passage of Scripture, write down what animal obeyed God:

Numbers 21:5-6 ______________________

Exodus 16:13 _____________________

Jonah 1:17 _____________________

Mark 1:13 (these creatures never harmed the Lord!) __________________________

Matthew 17:27 ______________________________

Can you think of other examples?

4) How could Noah and his family live with so many animals in a floating ark for over a year?

Would eight people be able to feed and take care of all those animals? What about the sanitation problem? Who would carry away the manure? These are some of the questions people often ask.

Were Noah and his family all alone in that ark, or was some other Person with them (Genesis 7:1,16)? Was God able to feed and take care of the children of Israel for forty years in the wilderness (Deuteronomy 2:7; 8:2-4; 29:5-6)? _______ Is the same God able to feed and take care of Noah, his family and the animals for one year in the ark? ______ Is that same God able to take care of our needs today (Philippians 4:19)? ______

Note: It is also possible that God could have reduced to a minimum some of the bodily functions of these animals.  It is even possible that they could have gone into some kind of state of  hibernation. Consider, for example, the bodily process of reproduction. Two rabbits entered the ark and one year later only two came out! Is this normal?

5) How could Noah construct such an ark?

Who gave Noah the blueprint for the ark (Genesis 6:14-16)? _______________________ Does God give good directions and instructions? ________ Did Noah follow those instructions (Genesis 6:22)? _______ When we do what God tells us to do, that is called FAITH (see Hebrews 11:7)!

How long did Noah have to build the ark (Genesis 6:3; compare 1 Peter 3:20)? ____________________ How long did it take to construct the great temple in the city of Jerusalem (John 2:20)? _____________________ Noah had almost three times as much time to prepare the ark!  It was an enormous building project, but Noah had the time to do it, and God provided the blueprint and gave detailed directions.

5A. The Geological Implications of the Flood

If there really was a universal, worldwide flood in the days of Noah, lasting over one year, and covering earth’s highest mountains, then this would have been the most significant geological catastrophe that our world has ever experienced! If thunderstorms and hurricanes and earthquakes and tornadoes can bring such destruction and cause violent and sudden changes in the features of the earth, what would a worldwide flood have done? Even local floods can have disastrous effects upon the surface of the earth. Here are some recent examples:

"Modern river floods have been known to carry boulders weighing hundreds of tons for great distances in a matter of hours and to excavate deep gorges and to sweep away entire forests. A single brief flood in the San Gabriel Mountains near Los Angeles eroded and redeposited up to 100,000 cubic yards of debris from each square mile of the watershed. At Rherbourg, France, a breakwater was composed of large rocks and capped with a wall 20 feet high. Storm waves hurled 7,000 pound stones over the wall and moved 65-ton concrete blocks 60 feet.

Now if local floods can accomplish such destruction in our modern world, what may be said of a flood so gigantic that it rose above the very highest mountains and swept over the entire earth for twenty-two weeks before it even began to subside? Obviously, every movable object would have been swept away and the crust of the earth would never be the same again (John C. Whitcomb, Jr., The World That Perished, p. 69-70).

Scientists who take God at His Word believe that some of the earth's most remarkable and spectacular formations can be better explained in light of the Genesis Flood.  One such example is the Grand Canyon. To think that this massive canyon was formed over a period of millions of years by the Colorado River slicing through it does not make sense.  It is better to understand that this canyon was  formed rapidly by the powerful forces of a much larger body of water (perhaps a massive amount of water suddenly released).  A similar canyon, though on a much smaller scale, was formed as the result of the Mount St. Helens volcano in 1980. This was an amazing example of how a canyon can be formed as the result of a catastrophe and it doesn't require thousands or millions of years.

6A. The Flood and Fossils

Fossils (the hardened remains of animals or plants) are not usually being formed today. When an animal dies, its body decomposes or is eaten by other animals. Today when a fish dies, it does not become fossilized; but usually other animals will eat the dead fish. "The buffalo carcasses strewn over the plains in uncounted millions two generations ago have left hardly a present trace. The flesh was devoured by wolves or vultures within hours or days after death, and even the skeletons have now largely disappeared, the bones dissolving and crumbling into dust under the attack of weather" (Carl O. Dunbar, Historical Geology, p. 39). Did lions ever roam around Palestine (Job 38:39; Proverbs 22:13; 2 Kings 17:25)? ______ Yet, no fossil of a lion has ever been found in Palestine (John C. Whitcomb, Jr., The World That Perished, p. 76)

How then were most of the billions of fossils of plants and animals formed? Could it be that most of the fossils were formed as millions of plants and animals were destroyed in the Genesis Flood and then buried in mud and fossilized? Scientists agree that most fossils were formed by water, even those fossils that are found on the tops of mountains!

7A. Spiritual Implications of the Flood

Why do most scientists and geologists reject the idea that there was once a universal, worldwide flood on planet earth? The answer is this: If there actually were such a flood, then there really is a GOD IN HEAVEN WHO CAUSED IT!! If the Genesis Flood actually destroyed all sinful men from off the face of the earth, then this proves that God is a GOD OF JUDGMENT! If God hated sin in the days of Noah, does that mean that God still hates sin today? ________ If God judged sinful men in the days of the Genesis Flood, does that mean that God is able to do the same today? ________ Today, unbelieving men are saying, "Where is the ________ of  _______________" (Malachi 2:17). The Genesis Flood reminds all men that THERE IS A GOD OF J___________________!

In 2 Peter 3:3-4 we are told about a group of MOCKERS. Do these mockers believe that Jesus will come again to judge the world? _______ Do they believe that God will step into history to judge sinners just as He did in the days of Noah (2 Peter 3:4-6)? _______ It has been nearly 2000 years since Christ went back to heaven, and the promise of His coming has not yet been fulfilled. How do we explain this? Please do the following MATCHING:

Was God longsuffering in the days of Noah (1 Peter 3:20)? _______ How long did God wait before He brought the waters of the flood (Genesis 6:3)? ________________________________ Is God longsuffering towards us today (2 Peter 3:9)? _______ How long has God waited in this day of grace before bringing judgment upon a sinful world?  It has been about two thousand years since wicked men crucified Christ. We do not know for sure how long it will be before God brings cataclysmic judgment upon this world, but it may be soon.  The judgments that God will bring upon this world during the tribulation period are described in Revelation chapters 6-19.  The fire judgment that God will bring upon this world after the thousand year kingdom of Christ is described in 2 Peter chapter 3.

How many doors were on the ark (Genesis 6:16)? ________ At the end of the 120 years, what did God do (Genesis 7:16)? __________________________________ What happened to all the people who did not go through this door (Genesis 7:21-23)? ___________________________________________________________________
Were there many who went through this door (1 Peter 3:20)? ______ 

How many doors of salvation are there today (John 10:9; John 14:6)? _________ Who is the door (John 10:9)? ____________ What will happen to those who refuse to go through this one door (Luke 13:3,5)? _____________________________________ Do many people go through this door (Matthew 7:13-14)? _______ Has the door of salvation been shut yet, or is it still possible to enter in (2 Corinthians 6:2; Revelation 22:17)? ________________________________________

HAVE YOU ENTERED IN? NOW IS THE TIME TO ENTER; TOMORROW THE DOOR WILL BE SHUT!!!

One door, and only one,
And yet the sides are two!
Inside and outside,
ON WHICH SIDE ARE YOU?

Are you in the ark of safety? "IN JESUS I AM SAFE EVERMORE!!" "There is therefore now no condemnation to them who are IN CHRIST JESUS!" (Romans 8:1)  Jesus Christ is our ARK OF SAFETY. Flee to Him. Find your refuge in Christ.  Those who are OUTSIDE are not safe at all.  They are unsaved and unsafe. 

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