There is a great divide between two major systems of belief on the biblical Flood in the days of Noah. There are those who say it is either a purely mythological event or else possibly a local or regional flood. Then there are those who accept the biblical record of the Flood as a literal record of a tremendous cataclysm involving not only a worldwide deluge, but also great tectonic upheavals and volcanic outpourings that completely changed the crust of the earth and its topography in the days of Noah.
Here are a few of the many biblical reasons for believing in the global Flood:
Jesus Christ believed the Old Testament record of the worldwide Flood. Speaking of the antediluvian population, He said: “The flood came, and took them all away” (Matthew 24:39). Evolutionary anthropologists are all convinced that people had spread over the entire earth by the time assigned to Noah in biblical chronology, so an anthropologically universal Flood would clearly have required a geographically worldwide Flood.
The apostle Peter believed in a worldwide hydraulic cataclysm. “Whereby the world [Greek, kosmos] that then was, being overflowed [Greek, katakluzo] with water, perished” (2 Peter 3:6). The world was defined in the previous verse as “the heavens . . . and the earth.” Peter also said that “God…spared not the old world, but saved Noah…bringing in the flood [Greek, kataklusmos] upon the world of the ungodly” (2 Peter 2:5).
The Old Testament record of the Flood, which both Christ and Peter accepted as real history, clearly teaches a global Flood. For example, the record emphasizes that “all the high hills, that were under the whole heaven…and the mountains were covered” (Genesis 7:19-20) with the waters of the Flood.
Since “all flesh died that moved upon the earth…all that was in the dry land” (Genesis 7:21-22), Noah and his sons had to build a huge Ark to preserve animal life for the post-diluvian world, an Ark that can easily be shown to have had more than ample capacity to carry at least two of every known species of land animal (marine animals were not involved, of course). Such an Ark was absurdly unnecessary for anything but a global Flood.
God promised that never “shall there anymore be a flood to destroy the earth” (Genesis 9:11), and He has kept His word for over 4,000 years, if the Flood indeed was global. Those Christians who say it was a local flood, however, are in effect accusing God of lying, for there are many devastating local floods every year.
General topics
- Was There Really a Noah’s Ark & Flood? (from The New Answers Book)
- Creation, Flood and coming fire
- Folded ferns
- Genesis and catastrophe (technical)
- Geologic Evidences for the Genesis Flood
- GlobalFlood.org (Dr. John Baumgardner’s work)
- Noah revisited
- Noah—The Man Who Trusted God
- Still searching for the truth (review of National Geographic Channel “Search for Noah’s Ark” special)
Does the Bible really claim that Noah’s Flood was global?
How do creationists answer critics who claim that the biblical account of Noah’s Flood was merely localized, not worldwide?
- The “bathtub” ark
- The battle for creation in our “conservative” seminaries
- Biblical evidence for the universality of the Genesis Flood (Technical, Origins 22(2):58–73, 1995)
- Can Flood Geology Explain Thick Chalk Layers? (Technical)
- Church leader “aghast” at belief in a worldwide Flood?
- Did Noah’s Flood cover the whole earth?
- Does Scripture require a global Flood?
- Flood cuts off Europe
- Grand Canyon?—what is the message?
- Ice cores vs the Flood (Technical)
- Noah’s Flood Covered the Whole Earth
- Proof of Noah’s Flood at the Black Sea? What has Robert Ballard really found? (critique of Ballard, Pitman and Ryan’s fallacious identification)
- Seven reasons why we should not accept millions of years
- Six days or billions of years . . . Does it make any difference?
- Startling evidence for Noah?s Flood
- They can’t allow “it”!
- Two Fighting Dinosaurs?
- Warped earth
- Was Noah a Martian?
Were the flood waters solely caused by rain, or something more?
How could there be enough water to cover all the mountains?
Was there a vapor canopy? What about catastrophic plate tectonics?
- Noah’s Flood—what about all that water?
- Get Answers: Plate Tectonics
What did Noah’s Ark look like? How did Noah and his family care for all the animals?
- Get Answers: Noah’s Ark
How could freshwater fish and land plants have survived a global flood?
- How could fish survive the Genesis Flood? (ICR Impact article)
- What happened to land plants during the Flood? (ICR Impact article)
Can an approximate date for Noah’s Flood be determined using the Bible?
How do creation and global flood legends from different cultures compare to the biblical account?
- Australian Aboriginal Flood Stories
- The BIAMI Legends
- The Cosmological beliefs of the American Indians (ICR Impact article)
- The Flood of Noah and the flood of Gilgamesh (ICR Impact article)
- Genesis according to the Miao people (ICR Impact article)
- Genesis and ancient Near Eastern stories of Creation and the Flood: an introduction (Semi-Technical, Christian Answers Network)
- Grand Canyon Legend
- Maori memories of the Creator
- Noah’s Flood and the epic of Gilgamesh
- The Original “Unknown” god of China
- What the Warlpiri Aborigines believe about the origin of everything
- A comparative study of the flood accounts in the Gilgamesh Epic and Genesis (Master’s thesis: Nozomi Osanai)
