Earth Center of the Universe: Noah's Ark and Noah's Flood

Welcome to the Preaching the Cross Radio Podcast, featuring the radio ministry of Pastor James W.

Knox of the Bible Baptist Church of Doran, Florida.

Our prayer is that these half-hour Bible study programs will bring the lost to a saving knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ and enable the saved to grow in the grace and knowledge of the Savior.

Now here's your host, Pastor James W.

Knox.

All right.

Good day.

Yes, it's me again, Brother James.

I greet you in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world, and I welcome you to the Preaching of the Cross Radio Broadcast.

30 minutes, one half hour.

Uh, we ask you to join with us, stay with us, listen very carefully.

We talk to you about uh biblical truth as it relates you and I in this present evil world.

We've been talking on the broadcast for the last six programs.

This will be program number seven, about this matter of the earth being the center of the universe.

As always, we got caught short last time.

There's just far more to be said and to be taught than we're able to do in the limited time that we have.

We were talking about the degeneration of the human race right up until the days of the Great Flood.

We were discussing the fact that the uh sons of God and fallen angels had cohabitated with the daughters of men and produced a race of superhuman giants which were responsible for incredible wickedness, violence, and corruption in the earth in the days of Noah.

The machinery of the universe moved on.

There were a few more years of triumphant and confident sin, but then the terrible, unalterable decree was passed.

God said, The end of all flesh has come before me.

Behold, I will destroy them with the earth.

Only one man in his family retained their integrity, realized the truth of the impending catastrophe.

Noah was a preacher of righteousness for one hundred and twenty years, but the world laughed at his earnestness, the world sneered at his fanaticism, the warning fell unheeded, and as our Savior described the scene, they did eat, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, and all the while the awful shadow that was to cover the earth crept steadily forward to the hour of man's doom.

No fact in the world's history is better substantiated than the flood, and nowhere do men show their ignorance and their folly more conspicuously than when they attempt to forget it, for they cannot consistently deny it.

In the first place, there is the biblical account, which we must believe, even if it were not substantiated elsewhere.

A man who does not read his Bible must admit that there is an unconscious authority in the unchangeable book as old as the centuries, a book which at this very hour is dropping from the press at a rate of 70,000 volumes a day in over 500 different languages and is acknowledged the bestseller of all time.

As a matter of fact, these bestseller lists are a great big lie.

Best-selling book on the face of the earth every single month of every single year is the authorized King James Version.

The flood does not occupy an isolated portion of the Bible.

Those who would attempt to relegate the early chapters of Genesis to the realm of mythology are overwhelmingly contradicted by other Bible writers who believed and testified hundreds of years later to the world's second great cataclysm.

Isaiah speaks about the flood in chapter 54 and verse 9 of his book.

Ezekiel regards Noah as an historical character in chapter 14, verse 14 of his book.

The writer of Hebrews speaks of this wonderful faith in the catalogue of Old Testament heroes in Hebrews chapter 11 and verse 7, while Peter twice refers to the awful catastrophes in 1 Peter 3.20 and 2 Peter chapter 2 and verse 5.

Hebrews 11 · chapter mention 2 Peter 2 · chapter mention

Most important of all is the testimony of Jesus Christ in Luke 17, 27.

Now we cannot believe that the great teacher of truth would proclaim a uh pre-verification, or that the all-wise Son of God would be ignorant of the facts to which he alludes.

Could the Son of God express a falsehood, or even through ignorance teach an untruth, he would be unworthy of our acceptance and devotion?

Notice too, the very important matter with which he associates the flood.

He speaks of it in connection with his second coming.

Now it was a very difficult matter for Christ to persuade the Jews and even the disciples that he would return to earth.

They did not want to believe that, and so it is inconceivable that he should abuse a recognized lie or even a myth to substantiate this truth.

If we deny the flood, we must repudiate the integrity of Scripture and the testimony of Jesus Christ.

There's no neutral ground.

If the flood goes, the Bible goes.

If the flood is a myth, Jesus Christ is untrustworthy.

But why should any man be so hasty and foolhardy as to say in his heart there was no flood?

Even without the word of God and the divine testimony of an all-knowing Savior, we possess more evidence of this world cataclysm than exists in the Battle of Hastings, the Battle of Waterloo, or the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

These are acknowledged by historians as among the decisive events in the world.

But what do you find about those great contests in the annals of China and Indians in the traditions of the Mexicans or the North American Indians?

For the truth of these decisive battles and these historical events, we are altogether dependent upon the testimony of European or North American historians, while the flood is substantiated by the annals of four continents and many different nationalities.

Traditions of the South American Indian, the Mexican, composed of various races, the North American Indian, the Hindu, the Chinese, the Persian, the Chaldean, the Egyptian, the Greek, and the Scandinavian all unite to tell of this universal catastrophe.

The Greek tradition is one of the most detailed and beautiful.

They say the first age of the world was the golden age.

After the fall of man came the silver age, when cold seasons brought short days and unfruitful grounds appeared.

Then the Bronze Age followed, when men became savage and temper and wars began.

After this came the dreadful Iron Age.

Virtue left the world, and crime, dishonor, violence, and hatred filled the earth.

At a council of the gods, it was decided to destroy the inhabitants of the world.

Jupiter was about to launch a thunderbolt upon the earth, but fearing so vast a conflagration might set the heavens on fire, he resolved to destroy it by water.

He chained up the north wind and let loose serious benefits upon the earth.

The rain poured in torrents, Neptune heaved the land with an earthquake and dashed a mighty tidal wave over it.

Every living thing was destroyed, and all the works of man were swept away.

One mountaintop, Parnassus, was left above the water, and there a pious man, uh Deoctalin, D-E-E-E-A-L-I-O-N, and his wife Tyra, who had been floating on a raft, were grounded.

The north wind was let loose, the storms were driven away, and the sea retreated.

That's the Greek tradition.

The Lithuanians have a tradition that the god Ramsimus, finding the earth and grown wicked, sent the giants Wandu and Wijoth, wind and water, to destroy it.

They overturned everything in their rage.

Only a few men saved themselves on a mountain.

Pramzimus, who was eating a nut in heaven, let the shell fall on the mountain, the men crept into it, and the giants dared not touch it.

An ancient Parsi book states that the world, having become corrupted by Armon, the evil one, it was thought necessary to bring over a flood of waters that all impurity might be washed away.

Accordingly, the rain came down in drops as large as the head of a bull, until the earth was covered with water to the height of a man, and all the carpaters, C-R-R-K-H-K-R-F-A-D-E-R, the Carpaters, or creatures of the evil one, perished.

The waters then gradually subsided, and a new race was created.

The North American Indians believed that the great father of their tribes lived toward the rising sun.

Having been warned in a dream of a coming flood, he constructed a raft on which he saved himself with his family and some animals.

After floating for many months, the animals, which had the power of speech, murmured against him.

At last the new earth appeared, and he stepped down upon it with the creatures who thenceforth lost the power of speech as a punishment for their complaints against their preserver.

Perhaps the most remarkable tradition is that found by the Spaniards in Mexico, preserved in written form.

The first age of the world, called M Aston Acia Antonacia, A-P-O-N-A-U-I-U-H, or son S-U-N of the waters, was terminated by a universal flood.

A man named Coxcox and his wife with their children and many animals and seeds were saved on a raft of cypress wood.

When the great spirit, Tez Casha, ordered the waters inside, Coxcox sent out a vulture, which did not return, but remained to feed on the dead bodies scattered on the earth.

He then sent out a hummingbird, which returned, holding a branch in its mouth with green leaves upon it.

Now, where did these wonderful aspects get a written account of the flood so far from the cradle of the human race and the historic center of civilization?

There was a story current among the Indians of Cholula that the great flood took place 4,800 years after the creation.

Before that event, the world was inhabited by giants, and all who did not perish were transformed into fishes except eight persons who were preserved in a cave.

The most famous temple of Osirius was at Thebes in Egypt, which city was named from the temple.

Theva is the word translated ark, and in this temple, as well as in all those dedicated to Osiris, there was placed a sacred shrine in the form of a boat.

The city of Aphanana in Phrygia was formerly called Sipotos, the Ark, and a famous metal there evidently refers to the flood.

The Greek letters Noe are engraved upon it and identify the design.

The Chinese tell us that Fohi, F-O-H-I, Noah, was saved together with his wife, three sons and three daughters, or eight souls in all, while the Hindus report that Mabaharaka was saved with the seven Rishis, only means, again, eight in all.

Even the Siki Islanders tell of eight souls being saved from the flood and landing at Magena.

Lucan points out that the nations are also in agreement regarding the date of the flood.

The Assyrians placed it at 2316 BC, the Greeks 2300, the Egyptians 2600, the Phoenicians 2700, and the Mexicans 2297 BC.

So also minute details declare beyond doubt a common source of facts.

The Indians record the introduction of animals into the ark and the warning interval of seven days.

The Babylonians tell her the pitching of the Ark with bitumen and thrice repeated release of birds.

Dr.

Johann Rehm of the Institute of Astronomical Calculation in Berlin, after 20 years of study and research, published a book entitled The Deluge in Legend and Science, in which he quotes accounts of the flood from more than 300 tribal forces.

In spite of much legendary obscuration, the main features of the biblical narrative appear again and again in this book, which, as we said, was the product of 20 years of careful study and research.

In 53 of these cases, the cause of the flood is said to have been man's wicked.

In 22, the anger of God.

The ark appears, 72 times the boat or ship, 23 times men are warned to get ready for the coming disaster.

42 times a mountain is mentioned on which the Ark landed.

In 10 cases, the sending out of birds from the Ark is recorded, and in 21 instances the rainbow appears.

Now, of course, you've always got your skeptics.

You always have had, and you always will have, but skeptics have attempted to explain such marvelous cooperation of the Bible account by saying that these legends are indiscinct and confused revisals of missionary teachings.

However, these traditions predate missionary enterprise.

And the proof of this lies in the fact that there is no recollection of Christ's crucifixion and resurrection, which would be the first and foremost truth to be stressed in Christian teaching.

An Indian chief said to one of the first Spaniards landing in Cuba, Why should we fight?

Are we not brothers?

Do you and I not spring from the man who built the great ship and rescued our race?

Hans Saden, in 1550, lived as a prisoner among the Amazon Indians for ten months, during which time they told him of a great flood which drowned all of their ancestors, so some escaped in a ship.

Francois Lenomar, L-E-N-O-R-M-A-N-T, Lenno Mars, professor of archaeology in the National Library of France, also enters into this question quite fully and comes to the following conclusion in his Beginnings of History.

He says, quote, we are in a position to affirm that the account of the Jain is a universal tradition in all the branches of the human family, with the sole exception of the black gray.

And a tradition everywhere so exact and so concordant cannot possibly be referred to as an imaginary myth.

No religious or cosmogenic myth possessed this character of universality.

It must necessarily be the reminiscence of an actual and terrible event, which made so powerful an impression upon the imaginations of the first parents of our species that their descendants could never forget.

End of quote.

Now you know what happened with Ham and his father Noah after the flood, and this would certainly explain why his descendants would not have been so readily introduced to the story of the flood and the subsequent history thereof.

You can understand why a certain and particular group and race of people would be void of this uh particular history in their own personal racial history, and yet that is just simply another evidence of the truth of this matter, the universality of this event among the peoples of the earth.

Byron C.

Nelson, not the golfer, but a writer who wrote a book entitled The Delude Story in Stone, which was published back in 1931, provides an interesting chart showing the representation of the principal ideas of the Biblical account of the flood in no less than 41 nations, tribes, and dialect.

Twelve of the outstanding features of the Genesis narrative find a parallel in more than one account, and in some particulars, like the destruction by water and the saving of a family, there is particularly and practically complete agreement.

Dr.

Nelson introduces such an abundance of evidence to support the Biblical account that one concludes the modern geologist is turning from the catastrophe explanation to the theory of uniformity and has utterly failed to prove his case.

In the Historical Flood, a book by Lieutenant Commander Trumper, after tabulating the many scattered records of the flood, perpetuated in some instances upon stone as if to impress upon posterity the awfulness of that event, he is led to conclude that whatever modernists may think about the flood, the ancients evidently regarded it as the greatest event in their history, and that such a profound effect postulates a profound cause.

That's the end of his quotation.

A profound effect postulates a profound cause.

Much of the evidence for the flood is of comparatively modern discovery.

It was in 1872 in the ruins of Nineveh that the Chaldean account was unearthed.

These play tablets date from the ages before Abraham was born and long before a word of the Bible was written.

The story is very similar to that of the Bible, even to the sending of birds out of the ark.

It also mentions the wickedness of a giant race, thus substantiating the teaching of the Bible that superhuman creatures inhabited the earth and were the occasion of its awful abominations and violent wickedness.

The Sumerian narrative of this awful catastrophe was unearthed as late as 1912 and deciphered in 1916.

It dates back twenty-one centuries before Christ, and is in the language of the earliest known inhabitants of Babylon.

Thus we have a record reaching as near to the flood itself as we are to the Reformation.

And according to the discoverers, the actual composition, apart from the tablets on which it is written, must be very much earlier still.

A reference has already been made to the large place the ancients gave to the early events of Earth's history and the constellation figures which they traced among the stars of the heavens.

Next to the oft-repeated figure of the serpent and his conqueror is the large number of constellations in which their fear and imagination reminded the ancients of the story of the flood, and the covenant made with those saved in the ark that the world would not again be destroyed by water.

The eleventh sign of the zodiac is a query, which is pictured as a man bearing a water pot, the contents of which are poured out in a deluge of water which spreads like a river over the sky.

Nearby is the largest of the southern constellations, a great ship, which appears to the northern observer as resting upon the horizon.

Just above is a raven perched on the stretched-out body of a reptile.

A figure of a centaur, Revelation chapter 9, appears to have just left the ship and is represented as offering up an animal on an altar.

Revelation 9 · chapter mention

And these four constellations are represented the Ark, the raven sent out by Noah, the sacrifice offered after leaving the Ark, and the continued influence of the satanic beings, which were present, the Bible says, before the flood and after that.

The cloud of smoke from the altar is seen in the bright coiling wreaths of the Milky Way, and right in the midst of that cloud is festival of Sagittarius the archer.

See the Antichrist for detail.

It is possible that this can be mere coincidence.

Or was it intended that even the eyes of a modern generation might behold a memorial of this awful catastrophe and the covenant God made with Noah and his children forever?

God said in Genesis 9.13, I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth.

So every time the man beholds the rain bow in the cloud, he sees a testimony of God's promise and the testimony of the flood which necessitated that promise being given.

Now not only has the evidence of the world's second great catastrophe been indelibly written in God's Word and in the memory of an isolated and scattered people, but in the third place it is firmly established by its telltale relics.

You may walk upon the ancient battlefields or among the ruins of antiquity and find the remains of the world's former conflicts and civilization, but none of these can compare with the multitude of tombstones scattered all over the earth to testify to the universal sepulchre of the human race.

The crust of our globe is a great cemetery where the rocks are tombstones upon which the varied dead have written their own epitaphs.

The reading of these epitaphs is the business of geology, and the record is only too often that of a sudden and violent death.

Almost every country on the globe can furnish unmistakable proof that the dry land and the ocean have not always been as they now are.

Sometimes it is a bed of seashells a mile or too high on the mountainside.

Sometimes it is a whole forest of trees buried half a mile or more below the ground with a thick bed of ocean coral spread over it.

Sometimes it's the remains of a luxurious semitropical life that once prevailed away up in what is now the Arctic region.

Sometimes it is a great mass of unearthy-looking animal bones packed together in such abundance and preserved in such a marvelous state as to indicate a whole herd of these enormous groups entombed at once.

These are the telltale evidences of the world's greatest graveyard, the existence of which can be explained only by a universal catastrophe that overthrews the human race.

Now it is true that modern geologists have endeavored to explain this extraordinary testimony, the relics of a former world, by advancing the theory of uniformity and succession of ages, but George McCready Price has indeed demonstrated that the latest evidence disproves this modern theory of geologists and brings geology back to the flood as the only satisfactory explanation of this huge sepulchre of the earth.

In this connection, Professor Price says, quote, the general fact of there having been a great world cataclysm is now as well established as the destruction of Carthage or the burning of Moscow.

End of quote.

Such well known geologists as Dana and Soup are agreed that.

Testimony the rocks would indicate a great catastrophe in nature, while the perfect preservation of the mammoth and rhinoceros, tropical animals, and the ice of northern Siberia would indicate a sudden change of climate and a watery grave.

If there had been no cataclysm, the creatures would have died, their bodies would have been decomposed or devoured by other animals, and little would remain to tell their life story.

The fossils of modern creatures are conspicuously incomplete when compared with the perfect remains of prehistoric monsters.

There is no known law by which the enormous graveyard of these marvelously preserved fossils could be produced unless a sudden catastrophe overtook an earth teeming with light.

The violence with which the flood rent and tore the earth has probably never been conceived by the human mind.

All the fountains of the Great Deep were broken up, the Bible says.

The Earth's crust was rent and let through waters, thus losing volcanoes.

These by undermining the solid crust of the earth, through oceans having laterally shattered the granite foundations of the world, not only would the uprush of emerging oceans tear and destroy the earth, but the enormous rush of water rolling over the earth day and night, and then subsiding would create changes in the earth's crust, as Professor Seuss would think.

Also, this great mass and volume of water falling from the Great Beam in heaven would pound the earth and uh break it into pieces.

In the meanwhile, the surface of the world would be shattered and dislocated beyond all conception.

Twice every day, due to the attraction of the sun and the moon, the waters would be rolled up into a great tidal wave sweeping around the earth at the rate of 1,000 miles per hour.

Professor J.

F.

Quisdom has estimated that these tidal waves would reach a maximum height of six miles at the equator every 150 days, which coincides remarkably with the mention of that period twice in the biblical account of the flood, Genesis 724 and Genesis 8.3.

Geography, in teaching that three-fourths of the Earth's surface is water, and one-fourth land, has failed to impress the fact that the average depth of the ocean is far greater than the average height of the continent.

In fact, the former is about 13,000 feet, and the latter but uh 2,250 feet.

So that there is in reality fifteen times as much water below sea level as there is land above sea.

Hence, we can gain some conception of what tremendous power would be exerted once the mighty oceans were permitted to leak their founds and defy the Creator's decree, hitherto shalt thou come, but no farther, and here shall that crowd waves be saved.

Psalm 104.

In this connection, Professor Price says, quote, our confidence in this hypothesis of the part played by tidal action is much strengthened when we examine the record of the rocks themselves, for it seems to me that nothing but the hypnotizing suggestion of a perverse theory could prevent any competent observer from reading a record of tidal action in almost every one of the great geological deposits.

End of foot.

Professor Charles Dana says the earlier climate of the earth abruptly terminated and the cold became suddenly extreme as of a single winter's night.

Consider the woolly mammoth.

This great prehistoric dinosaur, locked in ice, is found perfectly preserved, in some cases standing erect, frozen so suddenly that its very flesh is untainted.

It even has uh food still in its mouth, and when its flesh is exposed and thawed out, it's devoured by wolves and bears.

It hasn't been spoiled.

Over many parts of the earth, such prehistoric monsters are found in the ice rind of a submerged world, some with undigested plant life still in their stomachs and in their mouths.

The perfectly authenticated discovery of Dr.

Hurz in Eastern Siberia in 1901 of a hairy mammoth held in preservation by ice is a case in point.

The hair was yet on the skin.

Undigested food was in the stomach and in the mouth, so well preserved that it was analyzed botanically.

The flesh was eaten by the dogs, the fat was used in the lamps of the natives.

Here then was an animal regarded as a of a subtropical species, grazing in his accustomed haunt in the north, suddenly overwhelmed by a colossal fall of water, which was in turn suddenly frozen, and this animal was preserved in an icy vault of this generation.

Why?

How?

Well, if you believe the Bible, it's right to God sent a great flood.

The great weight and mass of this uh water not only threw the earth into a chaotic condition, but the great weight of this water threw the earth out of the orbit that it then knew in its relation to the sun, and the great catastrophic uh judgment which fell upon the earth resulted in the death of all that had breath in its nostrils, saving Noah, his wife, three sons, their wives, and the animals that were safely with them in the ark.

We're going to have to take some more time on the next broadcast to talk about this proof of the universal flood, but my friends, the proof is everywhere you look.

Scientists trying to disprove the Bible and get rid of it everywhere they look.

The Bible is proved, the Bible is accredited.

Now, when Jesus says that the days of Noah were a pre-view that he was coming again, that he was going to judge the earth again in righteousness, my friend, you better find that ark of faith through the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, flee in through the door, and be saved.

There's no other salvation because there's no other saviors.

Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.

Thanks for tuning in today.

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Knox Sermons, our sermon audio page, Bible Baptist Land, or our website, Bible Baptistland.com.

Until next time and throughout eternity, may Jesus Christ be praised.