2.1
Reason for the Flood and Antediluvian World
According to the Bible,
the world was created by God in six, literal 24-hour days. After the Creation
(and the seventh day rest), man was given three positive commands and one
negative command. The three positive commands were: (1) be fruitful, multiply,
and fill the Earth (Gen. 1:28); (2) subdue the Earth and have dominion over it
(Gen. 1:28); and (3) tend the Garden of Eden (Gen. 2:15). The one negative
command was to avoid eating the fruit of the “tree of the knowledge of good and
evil” (Gen. 2:17). As every student of Bible history knows, Adam and Eve
transgressed the law of God and ate the forbidden fruit. For this sin, they
were evicted from the garden paradise and a curse was placed upon them (Gen.
3:16-19; Rom. 8:20-22). Outside the garden, Adam and Eve began their family.
According to Gen. 4:1 ff.,
it was only after their eviction from the garden that any conceptions and/or
births are mentioned. Apparently, since one of the original commands God gave
them was to reproduce, they did not remain in the garden very long before they
sinned. Their first two sons were named Cain and Abel. Cain murdered Abel, and
eventually went into exile, separating himself from the rest of the family
(Gen. 4:16ff.). Like two distinct streams, the two groups flowed along
side-by-side for more than a thousand years. Eventually, however, the righteous
married indiscriminately, being motivated by lust. The Bible observes that “the
sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them
wives of all that they chose” (Gen. 6:2). These marriages gave rise to people
who found themselves in total rebellion against God, as described in Gen.
6:5-7.
And God saw that
the wickedness of man was great in the earth and that every imagination of the
thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And it repented Jehovah that
he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart. And Jehovah
said, “I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the ground; both
man, and beast, and creeping things, and birds of the heavens; for it repented
me that I have made them” (Gen. 6:5-7).
At this point, it might
be prudent to point out that the period from Creation to the Flood was not just
“a few short years.” The truth is, the time span involved was approximately
1,656 years. During that period, people, especially those who lived to advanced
ages as did the patriarchs, would have proliferated and spread too many areas
around the globe. Man not only was endowed with far greater vitality of body
and mind than he now possesses (a point that may be inferred legitimately from
the great ages to which he lived), but inhabited a pristine world of
practically unlimited, unspoiled natural resources.[1]
Living longer under
such conditions also would mean that man was much more prolific than he now is.
Yet even in our age, when life spans are shortened considerably, 1,656 years
would be enough time to produce an enormous population. During the century
between 1830 and 1930, for example, the world population was doubled in number
(i.e., it increased by about 850 million people within a hundred years).
Imagine, given the antediluvian setting of a worldwide mild climate, great
vitality, longer life spans, and impressive natural resources, the increase
that would occur, not in 100 years, but in 1,656 years.[2]
2.2 The Sources of Water for the Globe
Covering Flood in Scientific Context
The Bible gives us
information about where the waters came from and where they went. The sources
of the water are given in Genesis 7:11 as “the fountains of the great deep”
and the “windows of heaven.”
2.2.1 The Fountains of the Great Deep
“The fountains of the great deep” are
mentioned before “the windows of heaven,” indicating either relative importance
or the order of events. What are “the fountains of the great deep”? This phrase
is used only in Genesis 7:11. “Fountains of the deep” is used in Genesis 8:2,
where it clearly refers to the same thing, and Proverbs 8:28, where the precise
meaning is not clear. “The great deep” is used three other times: Isaiah 51:10,
where it clearly refers to the ocean, Amos 7:4, where God’s fire of judgment is
said to dry up the great deep, probably the oceans, and Psalm 36:6 where it is
used metaphorically of the depth of God’s justice/ judgment. “The deep” is used
more often, and usually refers to the oceans (e.g. Gen. 1:2, Job 38:30, 41:32,
Psalm 42:7, 104:6, Isa. 51:10, 63:13, Eze. 26:19, Jonah. 2:3), but sometimes to
subterranean sources of water (Eze. 31:4,15). The Hebrew word (mayan)
translated ‘fountains’ means ‘fountain, spring, well.’ So, “the fountains of
the great deep” are probably oceanic or possibly subterranean sources of water.
In the context of the Flood account, it could mean both. If the fountains of
the great deep were the major source of the waters, then they must have been a
huge source of water. Some have suggested that when God made the dry land
appear from under the waters on the third day of creation, some of the water
that covered the earth became trapped underneath and within the dry land.[3]
Genesis 7:11 says that
on the day the Flood began, there was a ‘breaking up’ of the fountains, which
implies a release of the water, possibly through large fissures in the ground
or in the sea floor. The waters that had have been held back burst forth with
catastrophic consequences. There are many volcanic rocks interspersed between
the fossil layers in the rock record; layers that were obviously deposited
during Noah’s Flood. So it is quite plausible that these fountains of the great
deep involved a series of volcanic eruptions with prodigious amounts of water
bursting up through the ground. It is interesting that up to 70% or more of
what comes out of volcanoes today is water, often in the form of steam. In
their catastrophic plate tectonics model for the Flood, Austin and others (J.R.
Baumgardner, D.R. Humphreys, A. A. Snelling, L. Vardiman, and K.. P. Wise) have
proposed that at the onset of the Flood, the ocean floor rapidly lifted up to
2,000 meters (6,500 feet) due to an increase in temperature as horizontal
movement of the tectonic plates accelerated. This would spill the seawater onto
the land and cause massive flooding, perhaps what is aptly described as the
breaking up of “the fountains of the great deep.”[4]
2.2.2 The Windows of
Heaven
The other source of the
waters for Noah’s Flood was “the windows of heaven.” Genesis 7:12 says
that it rained for 40 days and 40 nights continuously. Genesis 2:5 tells us
that there was no rain before man was created. Some have suggested that there
was no rainfall anywhere on Earth until the time of the Flood. However, the
Bible does not actually say this.3 Some have argued that God’s use of the
rainbow as the sign of His covenant with Noah (Gen. 9:12–17) suggests that
there were no rainbows, and therefore no clouds or rain, before the Flood. However,
if rainbows (and clouds) existed before the Flood, this would not be the only
time God used an existing thing as a special ‘new’ sign of a covenant (e.g.
bread and wine in the Lord’s Supper).
It is difficult to
envisage a pre-Flood water cycle without clouds and rain, as the sun’s heat,
even in that era, must have evaporated large volumes of surface waters which
would have to have eventually condensed back into liquid water. And droplets of
liquid water form clouds from which we get rain. The Bible uses ‘windows of
heaven’ twice in reference to the Flood (Gen. 7:11, 8:2). The term is used four
times elsewhere in the Old Testament: in 2 Kings 7:2, 19, Isaiah 24:18 and
Malachi 3:10. In all cases, it refers to God intervening in an extraordinary
way to pour out blessings or judgment on his people. ‘Windows of heaven’
is not a term applied to ordinary events. Clearly, in Genesis the expression
suggests the extraordinary nature of the rainfall attending the Flood. The rain
was extraordinary; like nothing anyone had seen before.
2.2.2.1 The Water Above
We are told in Genesis
1:6–8 that on the second day of creation God divided the waters that were on
the earth from the waters that He placed above the earth when He made a ‘firmament’
(Hebrew, raqiya,[5]
meaning ‘expanse’) between those waters.[6] Many
have concluded that this ‘expanse’ was the atmosphere, because God placed the
birds in the expanse, suggesting that the expanse included the atmosphere where
the birds fly. This would put these waters above the atmosphere. However, Gen.
1:20, speaking of the creation of the birds, says (literally), “let birds
fly above the ground across the face of the expanse of the heavens.” [7] This
at least allows that ‘the expanse’ may include the space beyond the atmosphere.
Dr Russell Humphreys has argued that since Genesis 1:17 tells us that God put
the sun, moon and stars also “in the expanse of the heaven” then the
expanse must at least include interstellar space, and thus the waters above the
expanse of Genesis 1:7 would be beyond the stars at the edge of the universe.[8]
However, prepositions (in, under, above, etc.) are somewhat flexible in Hebrew,
as well as English. A submarine can be spoken of as both under the sea
and in the sea. Likewise, the waters could be above the expanse
and in the expanse, so we should perhaps be careful not to draw too much from
these expressions.
2.2.2.2 A Water Vapor
Canopy
Dr Joseph Dillow[9] did
much research into the idea of a blanket of water vapor surrounding the earth
before the Flood. In a modification of the canopy theory, Dr Larry Vardiman
suggested that much of the “waters above” could have been stored in small ice
particles distributed in equatorial rings around Earth similar to those around
Venus. The Genesis 7:11 reference to the windows of heaven being opened has
been interpreted as the collapse of such a water vapor canopy, which somehow
became unstable and fell as rain. Volcanic eruptions associated with the
breaking up of the fountains of the great deep could have thrown dust into the
water vapor canopy, causing the water vapor to nucleate on the dust particles
and make rain.
Some have suggested
that the vapor canopy caused a greenhouse effect before the Flood with a
pleasant subtropical-to-temperate climate all around the globe, even at the
poles where today there is ice. This would have caused the growth of lush
vegetation on the land all around the globe. The discovery of coal seams in
Antarctica containing vegetation that is not now found growing at the poles,
but which obviously grew under warmer conditions, was taken as support for
these ideas.[10]
A vapor canopy would also affect the global wind systems. Also, the mountains
were almost certainly not as high before the Flood as they are today. In
today’s world, the major winds and high mountain ranges are a very important
part of the water cycle that brings rain to the continents. Before the Flood,
however, these factors would have caused the weather systems to be different.
2.2.2.3 A Major Problem
with the Canopy Theory
Vardiman recognized a
major difficulty with the canopy theory. The best canopy model still gives an
intolerably high temperature at the surface of the earth. Rush and Vardiman
have attempted a solution,[11] but
found that they had to drastically reduce the amount of water vapor in the
canopy from a rain equivalent of 12 m (40 ft) to only 0.5 m (20 in.). Further Modelling
suggested that a maximum of 2 m of water could be held in such a canopy, even
if all relevant factors were adjusted to the best possible values to maximize
the amount of water stored. Such a reduced canopy would not significantly
contribute to the 40 days and nights of rain at the beginning of the Flood. Most
creationist scientists have now either abandoned the water vapor canopy model
or no longer see any need for such a concept, particularly as other reasonable
mechanisms could have supplied the rain.[12] For
example, in the catastrophic plate tectonics model for the Flood, volcanic
activity associated with the breaking up of the pre-Flood ocean floor would
have created a linear geyser (like a wall) of superheated steam from the ocean,
causing intense global rain. Nevertheless, whatever the source or mechanism,
the scriptural statement about the windows of heaven opening is an apt
description of global torrential rain.
2.2.2.4 Where did the
waters go?
The whole earth was
covered with the Flood waters, and the world that then existed was destroyed by
the very waters out of which the land had originally emerged at God’s command
(Gen. 1:9, 2 Pet. 3:5–6). But where did those waters go after the Flood?
There are a number of
Scripture passages that identify the Flood waters with the present-day seas
(Amos 9:6 and Job 38:8–11, note ‘waves’). If the waters are still here, why are
the highest mountains not still covered with water, as they were in Noah’s day?
Psalm 104 might suggest an answer. After the waters covered the mountains
(verse 6), God rebuked them and they fled (verse 7); the mountains rose, the
valleys sank down (verse 8) and God set a boundary so that they would never
again cover the earth (verse 9).[13] They
are the same waters! Isaiah gives this same statement that the waters of Noah
would never again cover the earth (Isa. 54:9). Clearly, what the Bible is
telling us is that God altered the earth’s topography. New continental
land-masses bearing new mountain chains of folded rock strata were uplifted
from below the globe-encircling waters that had eroded and leveled the pre-Flood
topography, while large deep ocean basins were formed to receive and
accommodate the flood waters that then drained off the emerging continents. That
is why the oceans are so deep, and why there are folded mountain ranges.
Indeed, if the entire earth’s surface were leveled by smoothing out the
topography of not only the land surface but also the rock surface on the ocean
floor, the waters of the ocean would cover Earth’s surface to a depth of 2.7
kilo meters (1.7 miles). We need to remember that about 70% of Earth’s surface
is still covered by water. Quite clearly, then, the waters of Noah’s Flood are
in today’s ocean basins.
[1]
Thomson Bible pp. 1992, 1995, 265-275
[2] Bert
Thomson, The Global Flood of Noah (Montgomery, Alabama: Apologetics
Press, 2005), 14-16.
[3]
Evidence is mounting that there is still a huge amount of water stored deep in
the earth in the crystal lattices of minerals, which is possible because of the
immense pressure.
[4] S.A.
Austin, Catastrophic plate tectonics: A global Flood model of Earth history
([n. p.]: Proc. Third ICC,1994 ), 609–621.
[5] In
trying to disparage the Bible, some skeptics claim that raqiya describes
a solid dome and that the ancient Hebrews believed in a flat Earth with a
slotted dome over it. Such ideas are not in the Bible or in the Hebrew
understanding of raqiya.
[6] J.P.
Holding, Is the Raqiya (Firmament’) a solid dome? Equivocal language in the
Cosmology of Genesis 1 and the Old Testament: A Response to Paul H. Seely,
Creation 13 ([n. p.]: [n. p.], 1999), 44–51.
[7] C.
Leupold, Exposition of Genesis, Vol. 1, (Grand Rapids, MI, US: Baker Book House, 1942), 78.
[8] D.R.
Humphreys, A Biblical Basis for Creationist Cosmology (Pittsburgh, PA:
Proc. Third ICC, 1994), 255–266.
[9] J.C.
Dillow, The Waters Above (Chicago: Moody Press, 1981).
[10]
Movement of tectonic plates could also explain the polar occurrence of such
warm-climate plant remains.
[11] D.E.
Rush and L, Vardiman, Pre-Flood vapor canopy radiative temperature profiles
(Pittsburgh, PA: Proc. Second ICC, 1990), 231–245.
[12] Of
course we may never arrive at a correct understanding of exactly how the Flood
occurred, but that does not change the fact that it did occur.
[13] The
most natural translation of Psalm 104:8a is “The mountains rose up; the valleys
sank down” (ESV+, NIV, NASV, GEN-a, HNV). However, some commentators think that
this refers to Creation Week events.
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