10. The Flood God's Purpose for Man

Chapter 10
The Flood

There were 1656 years between Adam and the flood of Noah, which was a total of nine generations. During that time, it was normal for man to live close to 1000 years. Adam lived 930 years, and his great, great, great, great, great. great grandson, Methusalah, who was the longest living recorded man in history, lived to be a total of 969 years. While that length of time between Adam and Methusalah seems extremely long, it must be noted that Adam was alive long after Methusalah was born and he didn’t die until shortly before the birth of Noah.

It is estimated by some biblical scholars that between 150,000,000 and 500,000,000 (million) people were on the earth at the time of the flood, with a large portion of them being giants. [i].  Wickedness flooded the earth.  All but Noah’s family was wicked in their ways at that time and many of them were either giants or had the seed of one in their bodies.

Noah

God found one righteous man upon the earth and his name was Noah. Noah was of the pure seed of Adam, coming from the line of Seth, and he loved God and trusted in Him.  As such, God considered him righteous. We have established that Noah was "perfect" in his generation, and discovered that "perfect" meant without blemish. As such, we know that Noah and his seed was of the pure stock coming from the seed of Seth, not from any seed of any fallen angel of Satan.

God told Noah that he would allow sin to continue only another 120 years upon the earth, and then all sin would be destroyed, which would include all of mankind and everything that crept upon the earth. Because Noah was a righteous and "perfect" man, he was allowed to continue on the earth. God then commanded Noah to build an ark to preserve him and his family (Gen 6:13-14).  

Weather Conditions at the Time of the Flood

The earth did not give forth rain from the clouds in the sky at this point of time. The earth was surrounded by a the dome, creating a greenhouse effect. [ii] Deep within the earth was water, which fed underground springs and dew upon the earth, so then rain was not necessary to water the earth (Gen 1:6).  In addition, lakes and rivers flowed upon the earth.

The ark in the sky - or dome - in the sky gave a permanent cloud covering in the lower atmosphere. The earth was filled with water below, as well as in caverns, having lakes and streams that created dew points, humidity, saturation, and condensation upon the earth. Between the atmosphere, called the troposphere, the dew from the earth and sky, along with the waters below and lakes and streams, the earth produced a more favorable environment for life which allowed living things, including mankind, to live for a very long period of time.

Weather temperature did not vary much throughout the whole earth before the Noahic flood. In fact, science has reported that the average temperature before this flood was between 60-70 degrees Fahrenheit. Less than 2% of the sun’s light penetrated the thick canopy that covered the earth. [iii] The desert areas that we see today were once well watered, swampy and humid. The cold arctic regions of today were also once lush and tropical. This gives us just a small taste of what the earth was like before the flood of Noah. It becomes much easier to understand then why man, animals, and plant life could live much longer on the earth.

The ark

Noah was commanded by God to build an ark, even though rain was something he nor any other human being had ever seen or experienced. The Bible does not state that Noah questioned God - it only states that Noah was a righteous man, obedient to his God in spite of his ignorance as to why He was commanded to build an ark.

God gave Noah every detail on how to make the ark - what kind of wood to use, the shape, measurements, as well as the entire layout. The ark was built out of gopher wood, and the measurements of the ark were 450 feet long, 75 feet wide, and 45 feet high. There was a roof on top, with a narrow strip of 18 inch windows at the top. Its size was similar to a World War II battleship or cruise ship of today. Up until the last century, Noah’s ark was the largest boat ever built. God created it to be unsinkable, able to withstand a ravenous global flood. Many have created a scaled-down replica, verifying it truly to be unsinkable. Only God could have designed such an ark.

According to the book "In Search of Noah's Ark by Balsiger and Sellier, many people have claimed to have spotted Noah’s ark on top of Mount Ararat from the air. There have also been a few who have climbed the mountain, now being illegal to climb, coming back with pieces of gopher wood from the ark. The wood was still solid almost 5000 years later.

Noah spent 120 years building this huge ark, which if you recall is the exact time God had told Noah He would put up with man and his evil ways (Gen 6:3).  During that time God was also preparing the earth to receive the flood.  God worked through the natural instinct of animals to draw themselves toward the ark.

The Animals Came Forth

Noah did not have to go searching for pairs of animal life to bring on board the ark. Instead, God brought a male and female of every kind of animal and bird to him.  At the right moment in time, God then led them into the ark (Gen 6:18-19).  God was about to do a new thing.  As instructed, Noah then brought with him his wife, three sons, and their wives into the ark. 

 Noah Was a Preacher of Righteousness 

Noah’s obedience to God and His righteousness stood out among the people around him. He was ridiculed, but Noah preached God and holiness, even though no one seemed to have listened. (2 Pet 2:5; Gen 6:9).  Looking back, we see that the earth was filled with two different kinds of evil.  The minds of the people had turned against God and was very evil in the sight of the Lord.  Then there were the giants (or Nephilems) upon the earth that came out of the seed of the fallen angels who were filling the earth with evil.  God had to do something to the earth so that the pure seed of Jesus could come forth.  Thus, a global flood was about to take place that would bring on new beginnings.  Because Noah had the pure seed of Adam’s son Seth in him, Noah and his family could then re-populate the earth to bring on the forth-coming Messiah, just as God had promised in Gen 3:15.

The Flood

Noah was 600 years old when the flood came, which was 1656 years after the fall of Adam and Eve. The clouds burst, and the earth opened up, and it rained for forty days and nights. The earth was covered with water, killing all manner of life. Only Noah and his family, along with one set of every bird and animal life were spared. For five months the water remained unmoved upon the earth.

Two and one half months after that, the ark rested upon Mount Ararat; however, it took until the tenth month before the tops of the mountains became visible as the water receded into the earth or vaporized back into the sky.  During that time Noah kept sending a dove out to see if there was any land for it to rest upon. The dove, however, kept coming back. It took one full year for the land to dry up enough for the dove to settle on land, and almost another month before the animals could leave the ark.

A total of fourteen months were spent on the ark. In very closed quarters of the ark, Noah and his family cleaned stalls, fed the animals, and lived life while waiting out the flood until the earth could be lived on again.

God’s Promise

The Lord gave a promise to Noah that He would never again curse the ground because of man. He sent a rainbow in the sky as a covenant to him (Gen 9:13-17).  

Weather Conditions Changed

Following the flood, the weather conditions changed dramatically. There was no longer a heavy mist in the sky to cover the earth, which then created more heat and dryness from the sun. The dew coming from the earth had changed with water settling in caves in the lower parts of the earth instead of distributing evenly within the earth. Plants throughout most of the earth no longer grew to be the enormous size as before, and man also began to dry up and began to shrink in stature. The life span of man began to decrease rapidly.

Mans' Life Span Changed

As was noted earlier, before the flood man lived close to 1000 years. That now had come to an end. The first generation after the flood, man lived to around 400 years old. Later generations lived 200-250 years, and kept decreasing rapidly to about 75 years, of which seems to be the average life span of man today.

During the 1656 years since the fall of Adam and Eve and the flood, sin caused man’s capacity for learning to slowly shrink. What started out as 100% full use of man’s brain in Adam, the learning capacity narrowed, to where man was using only a small portion of his brain. Today, man uses only 6-9% of his full brain capacity. As an unregenerate man, knowledge, wisdom and understanding has become extremely limited. Such a waste!

Satan Wasn’t Through Yet

God’s desire in the bringing of the flood was to stop Satan’s fallen angels from corrupting the seed of Jesus coming forth and to preserve righteous mankind through the seed of Noah. Satan, however, wasn’t through with his plans.

Click here to view Chapter #11 - Sin Continues

End Notes

[i] Dakes, Finis. Dakes Annotated Bible. Pg. 62. Old Testament
[ii] Balsiger, Dave and Sellier, Charles E. Jr. In Search of Noah’s Ark. Sun Classic Books. Los Angeles. 1976.
[iii] ibed