Answers in Genesis - Sunday School - Spring: Lesson 5

Those videos. OK, cool. All right. Joe just reminded me that we are now finally in a lesson that we never covered last year.

So, I don't know if you guys know the history of this class, but we were like the, the beta class last year. And so we taught through a bunch of stuff to see if we want to do it church-wide, then we went church-wide. So, we've been like doing a big review of a lot of stuff we did last year. But this week, I actually had to work hard because we've never done, never done this lesson before.

So, from there, here on out, it's fresh material. Hopefully, I'm wondering if maybe we should take the adult class a little bit further into the summer. I don't know. We'll see.

so anyway, let's go ahead and pray and then we'll jump into our lesson this morning. Lord, thank you so much for just the time to be together, and to study your word. Thank you for, your great love for us, and thank you that you've made, your word so clear. you've given us everything that we need for life and godliness.

We know that there are things that are difficult to understand. but you, you've given us your spirit and you've given us a will to be able to, to study and to reach out. your word tells us that the glory of God to conceal a matter, but the glory of kings to search it out. And so we know there are great truths in your word and also in the universe that if we apply ourselves, we can discern.

Thank you, Lord, for your Son Jesus, his death, his life, his burial, and resurrection. we just pray that your spirit would guide us this morning in Christ's name. Amen. So, this morning, so we're gonna be talking about reshaping the earth.

The main question that I want to ask, we're gonna start by asking is, can we identify where the Garden of Eden was located? Africa, maybe. OK, that's a good, that that's a good answer. It's a common response.

What do you guys think? It's OK, so maybe somewhere in Iraq. That's a, that's a common response. OK, so you got the Tigers Euphrates because it describes those rivers, right, and Genesis.

Anybody else, bitch? Totally. Yeah, North Africa, could be all over the place. OK, why?

Because the OK. OK. That's, that's an important response. is cause there's a huge thing that, that happened that alters our understanding of the pre-flood world, and that is the flood.

You have this thing called the flood that happens, which, as we're gonna see this morning, seems to have caused a huge change in the world. And so we have the pre, the Noah's world before the flood, Noah's world after the flood. many biblical scholars suggest that a lot of the names that get picked up post-flood are just Noah and his kids renaming stuff according to the names of what they knew before the flood. It's like rivers that we're talking about, Euphrates and things like that.

Those were probably just names that they had. They get on the ark, they get off the ark, and it's just a completely different landscape now that's been just totally altered. And so they're just like, well, that river looks like the Euphrates, and that one looks like this and that, and that we're gonna call that the Tigris. So, we probably do have some idea of where the basic location of where the ark landed.

But as far as anything before the flood, the Garden of Eden, we're gonna suggest this morning. And try to demonstrate that we probably have no clue where the Garden of Eden was because it was completely decimated. The whole world was changed. And, and we'll, we're gonna make some suggestions why both some biblical clues, but also what many creation scientists are suggesting.

So, let's talk, we're gonna talk about reshaping the earth. next week, we're gonna be talking about the Tower of Babel. And I'm hoping to get to the ice age before the end of our class. We may skip a few lessons to get down to the ice age.

We'll see. So Say it again. Oh my goodness. Yeah.

Yeah, and it's, it's crazy. We're, we're gonna, when we get there, we're gonna be suggesting a view of the ice age that was popular. In the 1800s and earlier, but fell out of popularity in the late 1800s. But we'll get there.

That's, that's really important stuff. let's, we're, so we're in the middle of our seven seas, creation, corruption, and we're in like our third period of biblical history. We're calling catastrophe. and so this is largely about the pre-flood, what happened during the flood and the post-flood world.

So we're gonna do a little review, study God's word, talk about some application. Let's do some review from Dan's lesson last week. what were the approximate dimensions of the arc? In feet Does anybody remember the approximate, you don't have to get it exactly, but OK, we got 500 ft.

What else? Basically, 500 ft by about 85 ft, wide by about 50 ft high, right? Right in that neighborhood. Let's see.

And so, so this is, this is huge. the ark could hold approximately, was it, like 500 boxcars. so you're talking about a lot of material. So this is very different from, you guys probably saw the picture last week of, giraffes sticking their necks out of this little tugboat.

And so, we're, we're talking about a structure that is massive. You think about 500 ft, almost two football fields. Long, that's a pretty big structure. let's see.

Noah took representatives of all the land, dwelling air breathing animals on board. How many of each did he take? That's right. OK, so you had 2 by 2.

But 7 of every clean animal. Why would he take 7 of quote unquote, clean animals? OK, that's true of the 2 by 2. Definitely.

probably not. I don't think so. I don't think it has anything to do with just the number 7. There's a reason why it's connected to what we call clean animals.

In the Old Testament, what do you use clean animals for? Yes, we're talking about sacrifice and also eating. So, As soon as Noah and his kids get off the ark and his their wives, one of the first things to do is, is they worship, right? In the Old Testament sense, and they have a huge sacrifice.

They're actually killing many of these animals. So obviously, they're not gonna kill the ones where there's only 2. So they're killing the, the ones that have been brought on in sevens. But then also, some suggest that it probably provided food since you have this.

command to Noah in chapter 9 that now you can eat meat. Before that, there was no indication that human beings, at least were commanded to eat meat. Now, There probably were human beings eating meat because we know violence covered the whole earth, but it wasn't something that got sanctioned up until after Noah got off the ark. Did Noah have lions, tigers, cougars, leopards on the ark according to last week's lesson?

OK, that's a common idea, but we suggested something else last week. That's the question. It, yeah, exactly. Totally.

So, yeah, Allison. Excellent. Yeah, so right there in Genesis, God says he created animals according to their kind, which we're guessing is probably like equivalent to families. What scientists are suggesting is that a kind is probably equivalent to those species that can actually produce young together, so that they can, they can actually mate and then reproduce themselves.

So, lions, tigers, cougars, leopards, these are all species that can reproduce together. So that's, that's been the, the common viewpoint for a while now. And so, Noah would not have had to have taken like every single, subspecies, every single difference in a beak of a bird. He would only need to bring on the, the family unit.

And that all of the material that was necessary within that animal, all of the various varieties, just like in human beings. So the, the big example is humans, right? You got Noah, his wife, and then you got 33 boys and 3 girls. And it, it was out of that family that produced all of the different varieties that we see in the world today.

All of the different races, hair colors, eye colors, skin colors, that all comes right from the information that God had built inside of Noah and his family. Yeah, Ben. Yeah, it's, it's a, that's part of the, the difficulty is he created each animal according to its kind, and then it says, and then they reproduced according to their kind. So it seems like the word kind has something to do with reproduction.

That's part of why, both Bible scholars and scientists argue for kind being connected to reproduction. So, for instance, like, you're not gonna see an, an elephant and a zebra reproduce. Some zebra elephant thing, right? But a horse and a zebra can reproduce.

In all the different varieties of dogs, I think, I'm not, I, I think Dan probably showed the video like the dog, like all the varieties of dogs we have today, like, I think the video suggested that back in the 1600s, there were very few kinds in Europe, and then all the stuff that we see in today, the variety all descended from the 1600s, yeah, then. Like for instance Oh yeah. Totally. Totally.

Yeah. Yeah, totally. Yeah, same thing with bears. It's not like you needed a polar bear and you needed this bear and that bear, just like the bear kind.

And then all the information that was necessary, just like there was all the information necessary for racial differences and skin color and eye color was right there and Noah and his family. All the varieties that were necessary for the different varieties of bears were right there inside of that bear kind that came on the ark. I think Joe had something? Whatever Totally.

Yeah. And that's why if you guys remember Matthew McLean when he was here, when he was speaking, he talked about the idea. that the, the, the modern accepted theory is that everything evolves from one basically single-cell organism. And so you have just this tree, whereas he argues that what you actually see in the, in the geological strata in the, in In the evidence is that you have multiple, it's more like, how did he described it, it's like a, a big field of wheat.

So you have multiple branches that all have a, a starting point. And so he argues with other, other Christians that based on the evidence that we see is it, what you have in the flood reflects the evidence that's in, in archaeology is you go back to a certain point and you just see the starting of bears, and then it starts to branch off and you see varieties of bears, but you don't see You don't see any dissension from like this one cell organism or so on and so forth. I think that because of geological.

Geographical Like different climates Oh yeah.

eyes. that Yeah, totally. Yeah, it does seem like that God has, he's created, human beings and the various animals to be able to adjust their environment. And so you'll have certain animals will die off, certain animals will survive.

And, and so, so, Christian scientists who are trying to follow the Bible, we do not deny adaptation of, of various species. What we deny is that there's a slow progression of evolution from one species to another. And so, that seems to be borne out. outside of the Bible in the In the archaeological evidence.

All right. So, and then one final thing on that is just that is also just the very, the sizes of the animals, Christian Scientists are, they've run some studies on The various sizes of animals and that only 11% of, of the various kinds would be larger than a sheep. So the vast majority of the animals that would have come on the ark would be smaller than a sheep. And then even large animals like dinosaurs, this is guesswork, but very easily, God could have brought dinosaurs that were babies or young when they came on the ark.

It wouldn't, obviously, we don't have a full-grown brontosaurus. That jumps on the arc. Yeah Oh yeah, the Raptors. Yeah They're more like a chicken.

Or like a turkey. Yeah Right. Yeah, totally. Yes, there's a difference between Hollywood and what's actually in the strata.

Yeah. Yeah, Yeah. Yeah Totally. Yeah, totally.

so Oh yeah, totally. Yeah, God's design and given the ability to adapt and Yeah, it's amazing. Well, let's go ahead and study. let's take a look at some passes in the scripture.

let's open up to Genesis. 7. And so we're gonna, we're gonna try to We've looked at these passages in the past, but what we're looking for here. is evidence.

Of exactly how does the Bible describe The land mass before the flood, and how does the Bible describe the source of water in the flood? And, and how should that, or how could that impact our view Of the past. Now, all of this is based upon the idea that we've been promoting in this class from the very beginning is that the Bible gives us real history. The Bible is not just giving us fan fantasies.

The Bible is reporting real history. And so let's start in verse 10. And it came to pass after 7 days that the waters of the flood were on the earth. In the 600th year of Noah's life, in the 2nd month, the 17th day of the month, on that day, all the fountains of the great deep were broken up and the windows of heaven were opened and the rain was on the earth for 40 days and 40 nights.

On the very same day, Noah and his sons, Shamham, and Japheth, and Noah's wife and 3 wives, and the 3 wives of the sons with them entered the ark. And then every beast after its kind, all cattle after their kind, every creeping thing that creeps on the earth after its kind, and every bird after its kind, every bird of every sort, and they went into the ark to Noah 2 by 2, and all flesh in them is the breath of, that is in them is the breath of life. And those that entered, male and female of all flesh, went as God had commanded him, and the Lord shut them in.

So let's ask some questions of this text.

So first of all, what two sources of water are given in the text? There are two sources of water mentioned. Right, so yeah, there's fountains. That's one of them.

I think, yeah, so, so I think the fountains and springs seems to be one source and then the windows of heaven is another source. So it seems to be something coming from below. In something coming from above. Right.

Right. And there, there, that, there's actually a couple of different views on that, but yes, a lot of people would say that, Yep Yeah, totally. Yeah, and then some people would argue that this was the first time it rained. And that's actually, that's actually very possible.

now, does the heaven have literal windows? No, so this is obviously a figure of speech. Yeah, it's a figure of speech. The floodgates, oh, that's good.

The floodgates of the sky. So yeah, we're talking about a figure of speech that needs to be interpreted. How long did the rain fall, according to this text? That's right.

So we got 40 days, 40 nights of just continual rainfall. which is amazing. I don't know about, when it's been raining here lately in Marina Valley, if it just rains hard for like just 3 or 4 hours, you're in trouble, right? My backyard turns into Lake Berry.

Say it again. Yes, this is the word y. Yeah, it's not like 40, 40,000 years or something like that. how is the door of the ark closed?

That's right. So God shuts them in, and do we need to interpret any figures of speech? Definitely. So we've got the fountains of the deep, and I'll just cut to the chase.

you could look up these verses on your own, but basically if you were to look at Ezekiel 26 or Isaiah 51:10, the idea of the great deep, great deep is a common expression for the depths of the ocean. So there seems to be, some breaking forth from underneath the ocean, some opening up where suddenly, there's just this huge flow of water that begins to come from underneath. And then windows of heaven seems to be something has opened up that's causing great, amounts of water to come from above.

So both below and from above.

Now, let me just, from the curriculum, tell me your name again? Yeah, Kenny, that's right, Kenny. The canopy theory that Kenny that Kenny's talking about, the fact that there's water all around, that there had never been any rain on the earth, that's a real common theory and it's probably been one of the more dominant theories in Christian circles up until maybe about 10 or 15 years ago. the idea here is that Basically, is that it that it's had never rained before the flood.

although that's a little bit of an implication, if you remember what Pastor Milton, when he was preaching to that section, it, it's a little bit of an implication. There's different ways that you can go with, with the words in that passage. And so some of us suggested this canopy of water surrounding the earth that caused the rain. and so this idea was proposed to solve some scientific objections to the pre-flood, portions of scripture, but, it actually seems to cause more problems than, than, than solve problems.

And so I wanna suggest that while the canopy theory is held by a number of people, it's not something that we're required to hold by scripture. You can, you guys can take a look at it on your own, go on Answers in Genesis. What we're gonna be watching here in a moment is, is a video that actually proposes a different theory, and that is is that as the, as the, the deeps begin to sever, that the water that shoots up out of the ground is, is, is responsible for part of what, of the rain that actually comes down itself.

But that there was rain that was happening, even before the flood, but God causes all of the rain to come down at once.

So, with that, we're gonna go ahead and take a look at this video that just kinda gives, an animation look of, of what this might have looked like when the flood was initiated. Yeah, it's a real short, so we'll just take a quick look at it. All right. So that's a, a possible suggestion and, and we're gonna look at a couple of passes of scripture.

Let's go back to Genesis one. to get a little bit of a flavor for why we've got like one continent in the video. The only thing I don't like about that video from a biblical standpoint, can anybody guess what? Oh no, I love drums.

What, what are you talking about, Brian? Genesis 6 that says that the condition of mankind was that all of his thoughts were only evil continually and violence covered the earth. So when they're kinda like showing a mom and her child just playing games and people in the market, I don't imagine that that's the pre-flood world at all. I'm thinking of like apocalyptic Mad Max, just total craziness.

Where people are just killing each other and raping each other and it's just nuts. And so, and so instead of people playing games and stuff, you've probably got people who are right in the middle of like having some big old gladiator blood fast right before the, the, the flood occurs. I, I don't think the flood's coming down on mankind while they're just kinda hanging out just doing cool things with their family. Yeah.

Yeah, it could be, could be. They, Answers in Genesis has some suggestions on some of the design, which, they admit is not necessarily biblical or unbiblical, but we'll, we'll take a look at that here in a second. But yeah, I, yeah, I think it was probably pretty rustic looking. pitch everywhere and all that stuff.

When you first met me, I was playing the drums. That's probably the 1 of 3 times I've ever done it. Where was I, was I playing, where was I playing the drums? Over there at the RBC.

Wow. Little known fact. I can actually keep 44 time. OK, so let's, let's look at Genesis one.

Verse 9. Yeah, 9 and 10. This so back to the creation, let, after God had created the earth, it says, let the waters under the heavens be gathered together in one place and let the dry implied land appear. And it was so, and God called the dry land earth and the gathering together of the waters he called seas.

So this suggests to many Bible scholars as well as creation scientists. That, so God creates the earth and it's just, just covered with water. Then probably God causes the land, part of the land mass that's underneath the water to rise and causes land to appear. And it's, it's hard to read too much into this text, but it just says land.

I guess theoretically, Moses could have said, various land masses or various continents, whatever, but some people read in here just one big land mass. In other words, maybe perhaps just one continent. so you have, and so, for the whole earth to be covered with water pre-flood, part of the implication is, is while there are hills or quote unquote mountains, we're not talking about Mount Everest before the flood. We're not talking about, the Himalayas.

the great mountains, the Sierras, the Himalayas, creation scientists are suggesting. are a result of the flood, not necessarily part of the pre-flood world. So that, that's, one, another response to people that argue like where did all the water come from? Well, first of all, the pre-flood world, there's nothing that says the pre-flood world had the same land structure that we have today.

In fact, what we're, what we're arguing is that, is that when the great deeps were broken up, There was a significant impact on the Earth. And so let's, let's talk about a few things here. And then we're going to, let me see, when are we gonna hit Psalm 104? a lot of Yeah Yeah.

Totally. Yeah, totally. There is so much so. Oh yeah.

I, I've, I've seen that by firsthand experience. I don't know if how many of you get, oh yeah, you got well water. Any of you guys ever, any you guys ever do any backpacking, any backpackers here? OK, Yeah, Geysers Hot Springs.

I remember going up to the Sierras at a place, there's a, a lake up there called White Chief Lake outside of, gosh, I'm forgetting the name of it. You can actually drive up to it out, out of, out of Porterville. We, we hiked, we hiked. I took a group of teenagers, like delinquents, in this camp I used to work for.

We hiked like 25 miles into this area and we came in at night. We, I wasn't sure where we were. And then we wake up, I go on this ridge and I see these senior citizens walking up this path to us. I'm like, man, I thought I was in the middle of nowhere.

These people just drove up here. And but anyway we did some hiking around this White Chief Lake and went down into some caves and there's just streams all over the place. I, I, I would never do it these days. I don't know what I was thinking but Yeah, we went climbing in there.

We had flashlights and we tried to leave a little bread trails so we could find our way out. But I was an idiot. I'm like, what if it's like huge some storm happens, we're down in the middle of these caves, down there at White Chief, Mike Berry drowns. It's on my In my, it goes in the paper or something.

So anyway, so you've got, so these land masses or one big land mass, the great deep comes up. So, let me give you a couple quotes here from our curriculum. in 1859, the year Darwin published his famous book, Antonio Snyder proposed that the continents had been connected at one point in the past. He looked at the way the coastlines of the continents appear to fit and proposed that the continents had moved apart during the flood.

So this whole idea of Pangaea, have you guys, you guys ever seen Ice Age? Right? And I, ice age promotes in a cartoon form this idea of Pangaea, this one continent. Well, that, that theory was proposed by a Christian, before Darwin and before the idea of gradualism.

he, he, he saw it as part of the flood. As he began to look at the way the continents seemed to fit together, he argued that there was, that the, the breaking apart of the great deep perhaps caused this huge breaking apart of this one land mass. and then later it was secular scientists that suggested that the continents had drifted apart slowly. This idea was later embraced by many scientists as the ocean floors were explored.

And it's become the common belief today. rather than happening slowly over millions of years, models based on the Bible suggest that the continents moved apart very rapidly during the flood as Snyder had proposed. While the details of such models are tested, it is important that we hold loosely to the scientific models and hold fast to the clear truth of the scripture. It's a very important point.

this is an interesting idea and, and I think it has a lot of, a lot to commend it. But there's interesting ideas that Christians have come up with to explain biblical data in the past that later after further investigation proved to not be the best explanation. So I always want our foundation to be on the Bible and then scientific models just like Matthew McLean said a few weeks ago, there are approximations of truth. We, we do the best we can to approximate what we think might be the case.

And so this idea of one land mass with the breaking apart of the deep, it seems, it seems to make sense. and so we call this catastrophic plate Teutonics. So this, this would be a Christian Science term is, Christians follow a theory of, of catastrophic movement, whereas the, the dominant viewpoint today is what we call uniformitarianism. Uniform what?

Uniformitarianism. The idea is all the processes that we see today have happened, happened at the exact same rate into the past. And that catastrophes, there's never been catastrophes like the flood or anything that would cause these rates to change or to speed up at any point in time. you basically have three philosophical theories that all, just about all scientists buy into today.

They cannot be proven scientifically. They, they're just starting points. The first one is naturalism, that everything must be explained by natural causes. There's no supernatural.

OK, so naturalism. The second thing is uniformitarianism. That everything happens at the exact same rate. So if we see a river flowing down in a valley, and if we can measure how much, if we can measure how much land mass is, is, is being removed in that river, then you can extrapolate that in the past and say, well, this must have been going on for 10 number of millions of years.

so that's gradualism. the 3rd 1 is, uniformitarianism. No, no, that was uniformity. The, the 3rd, the 3rd 1 is gradualism.

Gradualism is the idea that everything happens slowly, not rapidly. Those things aren't necessarily proven scientifically, they're just starting points. As Chris as Christians come to look at the world from a biblical worldview, we argue that there is natural, but there's also supernatural causes. We argue for catastrophism, that all the processes that we see aren't necessarily the same processes that have happened in the past, and we don't believe that everything has always happened gradually.

We argue from the flood that some things have happened very rapidly. And so, those are all philosophical things that really don't have anything to do. With, with science itself. Most scientists refer to the movement as continental drift and suggest it occurs slowly over millions of years.

A biblical model suggests that most of the movement happened in a matter of months and could be better called a continental sprint. I like that idea. I like that versus the continental drift. Oh yeah.

Oh, totally. And process Oh yeah. Yeah, just go up here into the San Bernardino Mountains and see what happens when they have, when we have our flash flood warnings and things like that. And so, just to, you, put that onto a flood.

if you guys wanna see a really good article that we won't talk about in this class, that talks about the pre-flood world, and he actually, this guy actually argues for an intermediate state. where everything's underwater and then it begins to spread apart. Andrew Snelling, this is one of the professors that Matthew McLean really is big on. he loves this guy.

Anyway, so you can go check out this article, Noah's Lost World. It's on answers in Genesis. Let's take a look at Genesis 8. Genesis 8, go ahead and open up there.

And we'll take a look at this section. This is very interesting. Then God remembered Noah, and every living thing and all the animals that were with him in the ark, and God made a wind to pass over the earth and the water subsided. The fountains of the deep and the windows of the heaven were also stopped.

So those two sources of, of water stopped, and the rain from heaven was restrained and the waters receded continually on the earth, and at the end of 150 days, the waters decreased. Then the ark rested in the 7th month, the 7th day on the mountains, on, of the month on the mountains, plural of Ararat. And the waters decreased continually until the 10th month. In the 10th month or the 1st day of the month, the tops of the mountains were seen.

So it came to pass at the end of 40 days that Noah opened the window of the ark, which he had made. Then he sent out a raven which he kept going to and fro until the waters had dried up on the earth. So let's, let's make some observations. what did God cause to happen in verse 1 and 2?

Yes, we have basically the, the source of the water is stopped. and what day of, of the flood did this occur on? No cigar. Close though.

Yeah, that's a good guess. Verse 3. Yeah, 150th day. Good.

And what happened to the water level at this point? What did the water level begin to do? Yeah, it began to re recite. So, you guys know that parents know this, your kids get in, they take a bath, you say, hey, time to get out of the bath.

They pull the plug. What happens to that water? starts so it's going somewhere, right? Gravity is gonna bring that water.

And if you guys have ever built a sand castle on the beach, water comes in, and when, when the tide comes in, you can make this wonderful sand castle and then it comes up, destroys it all, and then it has, it starts returning back. So imagine, water, covering the entire earth, and then it begins to go somewhere. What is lots and lots of water gonna do as it begins to move and go somewhere? Say it again.

It's gonna erode rapidly, that water is gonna take a lot of stuff with it, and it's going to do a lot of reshaping. where did the ark rest? Yes, we have the mountains of Ararat. It doesn't say Mount Ararat itself.

It says the mountains of Arra. By the way, Spock found Noah's Ark. Did you guys know that? Leonard Nimoy found it in the 1970s, but for some reason, we haven't been able to get in there and take a real picture.

I don't know why. What's that? You have that on video? Yeah, I found Noah's Ark, yeah.

how long did the waters continue to decrease? Until about the 10th month? And then we have the tops of the mountain scene, and so on and so forth. so lots of interesting stuff going on here in this part of our text.

So we have the waters increasing, then we have the waters decreasing. And then we're seeing the tops of the mountains. And, and then we have the arc that begins, that is resting on the mountains of Arat. Does this mean that, that we can go to Mount Arrat in modern Turkey and find it?

a couple of suggestions on this, and I think I sent you guys an article on this last night that I thought was really, really good. I one, it talks about mountains, we're talking about a chain. Two, we're not even sure that what NOAh would have called Ararat are the, the same mountains that we call Ararat today. You need to remember, just like, Let's see, New England.

is, people come over to the colonies and they call this place New England, right? Because they remember England. there's a place here in Los Angeles, an area of Los Angeles that I just found out about that my grandparents used to live in. It's a, it's a part of Los Angeles called San Antonio.

It's not a city in and of itself, but it's an area that's right near Dodger Stadium called San Antonio. Why did they call that area San Antonio? Probably because they used to live in Texas, and I know my grandparents lived in Texas, came over to this part of California in the 1800s, settled, and said, we're gonna call this San Antonio. And so, Yeah, Sunnymede, exactly.

So that happens all the time. So wherever the ark landed, it could be the mountains of Ararat. It could be that Noah called this area Airatt, and then later on, many, a couple of generations later, people looked at some mountains that reminded them of Noah and the flood, and they called it Air rat. We don't know.

The other thing is that, I think it's Andy Snelling is the one that wrote about this, is that Mount Arra in that area, it's, it's very volcanic. And so, there's several things that could have happened to the ark. It could have been covered in volcanic blasts after the flood. the other thing that could have happened is if you're Noah and his, if he starts having a bunch of kids, what do you think they're gonna do when they look at this big old ark that on the, on top of a mountain that doesn't have any use anymore for water and you need to build a house?

What are you gonna start to do with that wood? You're gonna start tearing that thing down, using it to build your homes, maybe using it for firewood to make food, and so. Yeah, unless there's already wood there, which we don't know how long it took for trees to grow back and things like that. So the likelihood, we don't, we don't know any of this for sure.

It's a speculation. My guess is that the ark was dismantled over time after. Otherwise, unless the ark was buried in eararth, it could not have fossilized. To get a fossil, it has to be buried.

And, otherwise, it would have been corroded or people probably would have used it for other things. It is interesting that, one article that Snelling was referring to, if people said if they could, what's the, what's the most significant archaeological find that you would love to see, the number one listing in the secular magazine was Noah's Ark. No, they did not. That was a show that, in search of that Leonard Nimoy used to host where they made lots and lots of money on all kinds of spurious evidence.

Yeah, it was just kinda like, back then, like people, I guess, couldn't really, it was difficult to get into Turkey. And so they were just kinda trying to show satellite photos and all kinds of like interviews of people who said they had seen it and all this nonsense. And yeah, there's never been any Any verifiable information of a finding of Noah's Ark. Although they have found glass bones, if you go on snopes.com, they have found glass bones.

That's, that's a nonsense too. Yeah, Snubs, yeah. OK, let's go ahead. Let's take a look at this, this final video about the shape of the arc, and then we'll come back and wrap some things up.

And again, this is scientific speculation. OK, so this, this actually was the predominant viewpoint for the explanation of the fossils and stuff before the late 1800s, as we suggested even with Snyder. Antonio Snyder being the first one to suggest the the one big land mass and so on. I don't know if you could see in the, in the video where it showed the bent layers in the rock.

It's hard to get the perspective on how big that is, but if you look down in the lower right-hand corner, there's little tiny people. So, this is hundreds, hundreds of feet of, of mud that had been calcified. The only way that you get bent, stuff like that is a bit soft at first, and then it's able to bend. So, the idea of this just happening very, very, very slowly over millions of years doesn't work.

How do you get bends like that over millions of years? It just does not work. And so that's not to say. That, that every, that we have every answer out there from a geological perspective.

and so on, and the Bible does not require you to be able to answer every single question that some skeptics can have. But I think what we are seeing Is that even from a geological perspective, there's good rational reasons for the flood. How is it that you get land deposits from the Appalachians down in the Southwest? How is it that you have sea, fossils up at the 1 mile above sea level?

Well, if you're looking at it from an evolutionary standpoint, you say, well, just millions and millions of years ago, that land mass was below the ocean. And the problem is, is that there's lots of evidence for rapid decay, not just gradual decay. And so And so, these are some of, of the arguments that are being met, made. Let's go ahead and, and finally open to Psalm 104.

And if you don't have a copy of your Bible, I think I have this on our PowerPoint, yeah. While this is, this psalm is a piece of poetry. It goes back to the creation and it begins to go through, not just the creation, but it seems to also refer to the flood. So we'll start here in verse 600, I'm sorry, Psalm 104, Psalm 104.

So, the psalmist says you covered it. That is in context, the land, the earth, with, with the deep, as with a garment, the water stood above the mountains. OK. At your rebuke, they fled and at the sound of your thunder, they stood, they took flight.

The mountains rose, the valley sank down to the place that you appointed for them. You set a boundary that they may not pass so that they might not again cover the earth. Now, if this is speaking of the flood, This gives some very interesting information. we know that God at some point caused land mass to rise during creation.

But, but the floods did, but the floods eventually covered that land mass. Here in verse 9, it says, you set a boundary that they may not pass, so that they might not again cover the earth. So whatever's happening here, it's something that never happened again. so it doesn't seem like it could refer to the creation because, once you get to the flood, the flood does cover the entire earth, at least according to Noah, Moses.

And so, verse 8 is what is particularly interesting is that you have the, the, at rebuke they fled, the sound of your thunder, they, they took flight. The mountains rose, the valleys sank to the place where you appointed them. This, many people argue, and I, I'm, I'm one that's in this camp, that this is a look into, the geology of the flood. is that you have this great flood, the, the, the deeps open up.

There's this huge, mass amounts of water that are released both from below and from above. And, and that God in His processes causes the mountains to rise, to cause the waters to recede, and then the valleys are made low. And so as mountains are rising and waters receding, It, it, that gives explanation to some of the incredible canyons that you see throughout the world, particularly things like the Grand Canyon. And, And so you just have this huge movement of land.

Now again, this isn't a poetic portion of scripture, but just because it's in a poetic portion of scripture doesn't mean that we're, with everything in there is just meant to be taken metaphorically because it talks about the creation right from the very beginning. Later on, it, it's giving literal information, so it's definitely praise. But he seems to be giving literal information in that praise. So if the earth was totally reshaped, can we ever find the Garden of Eden?

Let's go back to our initial question. No, I would say no. So, it seems like, and there, there are a lot of implications in this speculations in this lesson. But basically, whatever are the geography of the world was before the flood, it seems like it was completely altered after the flood.

Therefore, we could, there's no way possible for us to know where the Garden of Eden is, even some, say it again. Yeah, it, yeah, it was wiped out in the flood. Even things like the Tigris River and these various rivers that are named, that, that's probably completely gone. Those are names that they just get picked up and then they're reattached to new rivers post-flood, yeah.

Oh my goodness. Totally. So wherever it was. there's a good chance that the climate that sustained it.

Yeah. Yeah Yeah, it's crazy. Say it again. Yeah, exactly.

Well, well, when we look at the lesson on the ice age, a lot of Again, this is all before the gradualism, uniformitarianism, naturalism that came in the late 1800s. But the ice age was proposed to be a post-flood occurrence by many scientists before the rise of gradualism. And so, we'll be looking at this lesson in a little bit, but the ice age is a relatively recent phenomenon. That is a post-flood type of occurrence, probably.

And so, yeah, there's, there's just some really interesting stuff here. Let's, so, let's just do some application and then we'll pray. So we've seen from the text, that as we look, that the rock layers and fossils we see spanning the globe are explained by the by what the Bible reveals about the flood. If there was a global flood, we would expect to find billions of dead things buried in rock layer laid down by water all over the earth.

That's exactly what we see. Yeah, I gotta say it with an accent like Ken Ham. Yeah, I gotta sing the song. we would expect to see erosional features that can only be explained by truly massive amounts of water moving across the continents like Devil's Tower in Wyoming, Grand Canyon, Ayers Rock, and others around the globe that stand testament to this flood.

Do biblical geologists have all the answers to explain every aspect of geology of the earth in light of the flood? No, just like no scientists, there's mysteries that every scientific theory has. And so, in this lesson, if you were to ask Andrew Snelling, if you were to talk to Matthew McLean and say, are you able to explain all of the data on our globe based upon what we see in the Bible, he's gonna say, no, there's questions we still don't know the answers to. That's just part of science, is we're trying to approximate the truth.

Our ultimate basis for truth is the Bible. When we look at science, we're trying to approximate the truth. We're given probabilities, but we're not attaching ourselves too tightly to any of those theories. Exact, yeah, that's true.

In light of all that we've studied in this lesson and the flood as a whole, do you expect yourself to know all the answers to every question a skeptic might ask you about the flood? Do you? No, you should not feel that pressure. The Bible never says you need to be able to answer every single question that somebody brings up to you.

It's not what the Bible says. You need to be ready to give a reason for the hope that lies within you and talking to people in gentleness and in fear, respect. If somebody asks you a question, you don't know the answer to it, a great thing just to say is, man, that's a great question. I don't know.

Let me see if I can find out. That earns, when, as I'm in conversation with people, my conversations always go better when there comes a point where I'm willing to say, gosh, I, I just don't know. Then if I try to plug ahead and pretend like I know. Or just get louder in the debate.

just say that's a great question. I don't, I don't know. When I was watching Matthew McLean over here after he spoke a week, whenever that was, a month ago. It was just such a great example to me to see him interacting.

We had a number of, I think, Emily's professor came and there was a few other people, scientist people. And a lot of times he knew answers and he would share it with them. And other times he, he did, he goes, that's a great question. We're still trying to figure that one out.

No, we don't really have the data on that. And, and it's OK to do that. It's OK to admit that we don't know. What if you don't know the answer to someone's question related to flood, geological features, just like we just said?

why can't we trust, why can't we trust that the flood was a real event that truly reshaped the earth? Why can't we trust that? Yeah, cause ultimately, we have an eyewitness who is God Himself. God is the only one that's, that can really tell us that this is what happened.

I was there. I saw the whole thing happen. I caused the whole thing to happen, and he's revealed it to us in his word. I was watching, have you guys ever seen Buster Keaton?

He's one of my favorite silent film stars. And there's this film called The Navigator, where he's on this boat and he doesn't realize that his girlfriend is also on the boat and they're running around the boat trying to find each other and then you, you have this wide pan where you see them running around the boat and they can't find each other cause they're always on the opposite side. Which is the, which is the big problem with us who are finite is you could run around the universe and, and not find another person and say that person doesn't exist because you're always on the opposite side of the universe.

But God's the only one that's omnipresent, omniscient, and so if he says something is true, we can know that it's true because he can be at all places, at all times, he knows all things, whereas you and I can't.

We can only approximate truth in and of ourselves. finally, last couple, how can we understand, how can an understanding of the flood help us understand more about the character and nature of God? He's incredible. the, a god that can actually cause water to shoot up out of the ground, totally reshape the planet.

That can destroy every single being, every single human and air breathing animal, and restart the whole thing, reboot it. That's a pretty powerful God. It shows that he's a God of justice, judgment, but also a God of mercy that he was willing to save, no one his family, and restart the human race, and that he hasn't brought his judgment yet on us, since then. It's just amazing.

And we can use that to share the gospel. Any final Questions you guys have or comments? Yeah. That is a great point.

I forget, Gosh, I was just reading that the other day that, yeah, blessed are those who have not seen and yet believed. That's really the favorable position, right? is, is that we, we look at what God's word says like little children, we say, God, I believe what your word says. And, and then we find out that his word just demonstrates itself over and over again.

It's a great point, Ken. Any other questions you guys have? Yeah, Oh, Right. Yeah.

Yeah Yeah. Yeah, you see, yeah, it's amazing where you find, fossils of sea creatures. I know there's different parts in the Sierras. We, you see evidence of that and there's a place up towards Bakersfield that's a megalodon.

Really? Wow. That's crazy, which reminds me, Matthew McLean invited us to go digging with him. I keep forgetting to, I need to follow up with him, yeah, cause he, he had put out an invitation if anyone wants to go dig with him.

Is that what it was? OK. Somebody send me a little reminder and I'll, I've got it on one of my things to do lists somewhere. I think it's either this one or this one.

Yeah, or one of the other ones, yeah. Well, God, God's amazing. Let's go ahead and pray. Lord, we thank you so much for your power and your goodness, and, we thank you for your word.

Also, we just thank you for brothers and sisters. who have, various knowledge of science and geology that help us understand the geological processes and, we just pray, Father, that You would help us to humbly grow in our knowledge of your word and, in our application of it, and in our sharing of it with gentleness and fear, just, just depending upon you to do the work in people's hearts. Thank you for the gospel that we see revealed in the flood, that while our sin is deserving of judgment, and at that time, I did receive judgment, you are in the business of saving, bringing people.

By faith, who come by faith onto the rescue of the ark, the rescue of Christ, we throw ourselves upon you, knowing that we are not righteous in and of ourselves, but we thank you for the righteousness you've granted to us.

We pray, Lord, that in our generation that we would see many more people be saved. In Christ's name, we pray. Amen. All right.

God bless you guys. Next week we'll be talking about the Tower of Babel, so please come for that. That's gonna be a killer lesson.