B-log

In my previous post, I argued for the legitimacy of the biblical claim of a global flood that nearly eradicated humans from the face of the earth. The Bible says God preserved a remnant of eight people to repopulate the earth. Significantly, it also states that God gave the rainbow as an evidence that he would never again flood the earth as a form of judgment upon its inhabitants.

Skeptics scoff at this, explaining the rational process for the presence of rainbows. I don’t disagree with these explanations. However, I would suggest that the logical, scientific explanation for rainbows does nothing to discredit the faith belief in what the rainbow represents. In fact, I would submit that the explanation of a rainbows existence and the rationale for why rainbows exist are at least partially exclusive. But I digress.

Despite the phenomenon of rainbows, we continually experience flooding. Sometimes on a widespread scale. While the list of floods in the last fifty years is impressive, it’s interesting to note that there is no record of any second global flood. (Note, while many efforts are made to discredit the account of the original flood, much historic, geological, and anthropological evidence supports the biblical claim)

God never promised that there would never be another flood. He promised that he would never use flooding waters as an expression of global judgment. Some people want to suggest that God brought the earthquake and tsunami to Japan as judgment upon the nation for its pagan beliefs. First, I’ll say I’m not qualified to declare unconditionally and authoritatively that this is or is not an expression of God’s judgment.

I personally don’t think Japan’s calamities are a picture of God’s wrath. If it is, the United States should be in a collective state of woe for the impending judgment awaiting it (as a self-identified nation “under God”). Rather, I go back to my previous statement (made in prior posts) that we now live in a broken world with a significantly larger quantity of water cycling through its closed system. Consequently, catastrophic floods are a periodic and unfortunate phenomenon.

In my previous post, I mentioned that I believe there were two events that radically altered the earth’s environment. The first event was the original rebellion of man against God. That rebellion changed the earth from being a place of harmony and health into one of strife, labor, and difficulty.

This first event was the precursor to the second event. After the first event, humanity moved forward in its “new normal.” A family became a clan, the clans divided and claimed new territory. Populations grew and generations passed. 

Every person and every generation existed in the “new normal.” As each person died, it recalled the original rebellion. But as the population expanded and generations passed, the story was changed or forgotten. And as time passed, people grew more distant from God. 

The Bible says after ten generations, God determined to judge the world’s population for its rebellion (and the details of that can fill an entirely different post). He chose a global flood of waters as his means of judgment. 

Giving 100 years of warning, he set aside one lone family to escape the judgment. The patriarch of this family, Noah, began to build a boat (as God commanded) to withstand and endure the judgment. He did so in a world that had never seen rain. Everyone thought him a fool, called him a lunatic, and denied his claims. They likely reasoned that the world could never existed differently than how they had experienced it. Then the time arrived.

On the 17th day of the second month of Noah’s 600th year, waters fell from the sky for the first time in human history. It would be inadequate to think only that it rained. Instead, imagine a drenching rain where you’ve sought refuge under a tarp, tent, or canopy. You see the canopy sag as it becomes water-logged. At first, a few beads of water soak through, dripping overhead. Then, suddenly, without warning, the canopy rips with a load tear and you are blanketed by a sheet of water that literally knocks you off your feet. 

This is what the Bible says happened, except on a global scale. The Bible says that in the creation, God had blanketed the earth with a canopy of water. At this time of judgment, God released this canopy and its waters plummeted upon the earth. The volume of water overwhelming the earth is unimaginable, even in light of our modern-day comparative calamities.

Compounding the disaster, the Bible says that God caused the waters under the earth to spring forth. These were no bubbling brooks of natural springs. Its appropriate to think of violent earthquakes, oceanic volcanoes, and tumult that results in landscapes like Colorado’s Flatirons mountains. This was happening on a global scale. Oceans of waters from above. Geysers of waters from the ground. 

Chaos.

I see the videos of Japan’s tsunami sweeping parking lots of cars into and then through buildings. I see homes, offices, and stores instantly deconstructed as the unrelenting force of the waves pushes against and ultimately over them. I hear the stories of a man being found on a roof six miles out in the ocean, or of a dolphin rescued in a rice paddy one mile inland. And in light of the modern evidence, I have no problem reconciling while I will find an unbalanced boulder atop a mountain in the middle of the rockies, or sea life fossils in the middle of the continental land mass. There are two theories to explain these things…one is a billions and billions year-old earth where everything was as it currently is, and another is a much younger earth where an unprecedented, global flood changed what was to what now is.

I believe the latter theory.