In this lesson, we will look at the causes of the flood, the results of flood, and then science connected with the flood.
The causes of the flood are listed in Genesis 6:1-13. The first cause of the flood is listed in verses 2 through 4. The sons of God took the daughters of men to be their wives and produced giants as their offspring. The sons of God here should be understood as angels. For this usage of the phrase, “sons of God” see Job 1:6. This has nothing to do with the line of Seth and the line of Cain joining. The mixture between unbelieving women and believing men does not produce giants. It does produce confused children and unsaved grandchildren but not giants. This interpretation is also confirmed in Jude 6 where it says, “6 And the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day.” Also, you may want to look at Psalm 82.
In addition to the wicked corruption of flesh that angels and women produced, the scriptures also say in verse 12 that all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth. This may be alluding to the mythological creatures such as centaurs and minotaurs, which are a combination of human and animal. It seems that flesh had become something very wicked which God never intended. This should at least give us great pause today when we think about science without morality and what some scientist have begun to do in the area of genetics. Look at what the movies are preparing us for when we have spider man and the X men. Hollywood movies are again preparing us for the wicked corruption of flesh by making our heroes, men of renown, corruptions of God’s order for flesh. This may be part of what the scriptures mean when it says both in Matthew and in Luke that the coming of the Son of man will be like the days of No’e. The closer we get to the return of Christ the greater corruptions of the flesh will be.
These same perversions happened after the flood. Giants were in the land of Canaan and this is probably the main reason that God told the Israelites to wipe out every Canaanite without distinction.
The second reason for God’s destruction of the world by a flood is given in verses 5 and 6. Every imagination of the thoughts of man was only evil continually. The whole world was focused in their hearts on evil designs. Perversion was in and the only thing that was out was righteousness. It seems to indicate in verse 3 that God alerted Noah 120 years before the flood took place. Noah is called a preacher of righteousness. The world was so wicked and corrupt before the flood that no one repented at Noah’s preaching save his own family. It is hard to imagine the God of mercy that I know being grieved so much by man’s wickedness that he was sorry that he had even created man.
The third reason that God destroyed the world with a flood is connected to the first two reasons. Verse 11 says that the world was filled with violence. Wicked hearts and corrupt flesh produced great violence. It seems that Cain’s murder of Abel was the norm. Romans 1:28 – 32 describes the world before the flood and actually many people of today. Romans 1:28 says, “And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient.”
After God washed away the filth of the world with the worldwide flood, there were many resulting changes in the world and also in mankind. I would like to discuss some of these changes next.
The first change that we see is that man’s lifespan decreases rapidly after the flood. Many of the men listed before the flood lived to be over 900 years old. After the flood the lifespans get shorter and shorter until they level off at our present day levels. Something interesting to notice is that when you look at the chronology given in the Bible, Shem, one of the sons of Noah, is still alive after Issac is born. In fact, he outlives Sarah, Abraham’s wife and is alive when Issac and Rebeccah are married.
The next change that we can see from the scriptures is that man could now eat meat. Genesis 9:3 gives man the ability to eat meat but he cannot eat blood. This restriction against eating blood has remained in effect until today.
As I said in our second lesson, the person with the evolutionary worldview has as his foundation that all things continue as they were. The person with a biblical worldview recognizes that there have been certain cataclysmic events that have changed the world in a moment. The flood is one of those events.
The evolutionist sees the Grand Canyon as formed from zillions of years of the Colorado River slowly eroding layer by layer. The biblicist interprets the formation of the Grand Canyon as a result of the after effects of the flood (a massive movement of water released at one time). The question the evolutionist needs to answer (and they cannot) is where is the sediment that should have settled from a slow moving river carving over millions of years. It should be at the exit point of the Colorado River. A massive amount of water moving through at one time would push the sediment out before it had a chance to settle.
The biblicist also sees the fossil record as confirmation of the flood account. What we would expect to find from the results of a worldwide flood is billions of dead things laid down by water all over the earth (a direct quote of Ken Ham from AIG) and this is exactly what we do find. Fossils are formed from the unique conditions produced by the flood.
I want to consider one other event mentioned in science from the biblicist point of view. The event is the ice age. Evolutionists see multiple ice ages occurring through the ages of the past. The biblicist would interpret the one ice age as a result of the worldwide flood. The conditions that are needed to produce a worldwide ice age are very warm oceans to produce the extra evaporation needed for the extra precipitation (snow) and very cold land masses so the extra precipitation falls as snow much closer to the equator than normal. The thing that would cause these two conditions to happen simultaneously is worldwide volcanic activity. Genesis 7:11 says that, “all the fountains of the great deep were broken up.” Volcanic and seismic activity broke up the earth’s crust.
Massive underwater volcanic activity would warm the world’s oceans and land based volcanic activity would produce large amounts of ash which would cool the landmasses by blocking sunlight. The biblicist has the scientific explanation for the very unique circumstances that produced the ice age.
As we finish our discussion of the worldwide flood described in Genesis, it should be noted that most of the ancient cultures of the world have a record of the flood in their literature. The epic of Gilgamesh is probably the most famous of these non-biblical accounts. The Chinese language, today has in its symbols a record of certain facts of the flood.