With all the news reports coming out of Southwest Asia and Africa it has got me thinking about Noah’s flood. Perhaps this is the biggest single instance of drowning since the flood waters rose in Genesis 7? The reports now are saying something like 40,000 dead and rising. Over a million people displaced.
17 For forty days the flood kept coming on the earth, and as the waters increased they lifted the ark high above the earth. 18 The waters rose and increased greatly on the earth, and the ark floated on the surface of the water. 19 They rose greatly on the earth, and all the high mountains under the entire heavens were covered. 20 The waters rose and covered the mountains to a depth of more than twenty feet. [b] , [c] 21 Every living thing that moved on the earth perished-birds, livestock, wild animals, all the creatures that swarm over the earth, and all mankind. 22 Everything on dry land that had the breath of life in its nostrils died. 23 Every living thing on the face of the earth was wiped out; men and animals and the creatures that move along the ground and the birds of the air were wiped from the earth. Only Noah was left, and those with him in the ark.
24 The waters flooded the earth for a hundred and fifty days.
As I thought about this passage, I also thought about those who cose to believe that the world is very old. Each time I teach Genesis and the creation account I am reminded that arguers for the old earth keep making the earth older and older as time goes on. They say, there is simply no way that the earth is younger, because look at what we know about weather patterns and erosion. In order for “this” [pointing to something like the Grand Canyon] you would need billions of years of erosion. On and on they provide examples of today’s limited study to prove that the earth is older and older.
Unfortunately, they cannot account in their calculations for cataclysmic events in history. The erosion model falls apart when their own study shows that younger objects , carbon dating wise, lay below older artifacts. Explain that one with an old earth erosion model!
The events of December 26th were terrificly terrible. They are now saying that a 600 mile long fault line moved smuttiness. The magnitude 9.0 earth quake actually shook the earth from it’s orbit. Let me write that again… an earthquake [something using potential energy stored up in the earth’s crust] actually rocked the entire planets orbit.
Who sustains the earth? Who calculates gravity? Who stops a suddenly rocked planet from wobbling out of it’s orbit altogether? Who holds the earth at precisely the right angle so our seasons are sustained? Who tells the plates to move?
This earthquake, as severe as it was, only registered a 9.0 on a scale of 10. This small movement of 600 miles of sea killed 40,000 people in an instant. How many more could have been killed when God judged the earth during Noah’s time?
Some will blame God for this destruction. Certainly, in God’s infinite wisdom and power, He did allow this to happen. Yes you could say that He even authored for this to happen. And lots of people lost their lives. Disease is sure to set in and many more thousands will die of exposure, typhoid, malaria, dysentery, and the like. God will be blamed for the lose of life.
But will God be praised for the salvation of many of those men? I pray that He will be praised all the more as the day of the Lord approaches. I don’t think this is an event of Revelation proportion, but it is a foreshadow of what is to come.
