I do have one more honest question that drives me crazy though. I was reading in another post of yours ,that you do not believe the Global flood was real? Luke 17:26 Jesus says: As it was in the days of Noah so will it be at the coming of the son of man. He talked as if Noah was a real person and time in history and Jesus talked as of the flood was real. you say no evidence or not much evidence has been found to prove the flood was real event.i am wondering how it is “you personally” can reconcile the two?was Jesus not real or not the son of God or imagining or speaking in parables? Maybe you can help me understand it more?What is your take on this subject?
this is a very serious question and conundrum for me to reconcile.
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Great question, @martin. I moved this to a new topic so the conversation isn’t distracted by other, non-related replies.
thank you.
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I think the flood described was ‘real,’ I just don’t think it covered the whole globe. No evidence has been found that a flood covered the entire planet. That doesn’t mean a flood never covered the entire known geography of the original audience, the ‘whole land.’
If I may jump into the middle of your conversation…I’m going to anyway. If I mention the ‘days of King Arthur’ I bet you can pretty quickly infer that my point is to reference a time of political turmoil and unrest. You do not need a literal King Arthur to exist in order to understand the truth behind what I say. Likewise, such a statement does not exclude a literal King Arthur. Whether he existed or not is neither the issue nor the point and a Western European audience would likely recognize that. (My apologies if you don’t fit that mold). This can certainly be a bit troubling to consider as Jesus had a divine nature and I most certainly do not. To that, I suggest if God has ever accommodated human understanding at a specific point in time then Jesus is allowed to keep his point simple without complicating the matter. Adding “…As it was in the days of Noah…who existed but the flood only covered a 20 sq mile area along the northern Tigris River…” kind of distracts from the the point. Coincidentally, I think this is hard question and its one that my wife and I talk over from time to time and we don’t always agree and that’s ok.
Respectfully,
Jim
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Thank you for your undertaking, however the bible in Genesis 6:11-13 clearly says the “earth” was corrupt Before God and the “earth” was filled with violence.So how do you get the earth from 20 square miles? Again I either must conclude the bible is foolishness or the people did not know what the earth was and how big it was and Jesus did not either even though he walked every where he went and even claimed to be the creator of it . Or, as I conclude "that it did happen, and science is either not aware of it or intentionally doubts it or is looking at the wrong places to prove it:slight_smile:
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Do you think ancient people really did know how big Earth was?
I am not for sure however Christ being the creator of the world as he claimed to be{John 8:58},he would have surly known,would he not?
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From our common questions page:
"The language used in Genesis 6-9 does not insist that the flood was global.
First of all, the Hebrew kol erets, meaning whole Earth, can also be translated ‘whole land’ in reference to local, not global, geography.
The Old Testament scholar Gleason L. Archer explains that the Hebrew word erets is often translated as ‘Earth’ in English translations of the Bible, when in reality it is also the word for land, as in ‘the land of Israel.’ Archer explains that erets is used many times throughout the Old Testament to mean ‘land’ and ‘country.’
Furthermore, the term tebel, which translates to ‘the whole expanse of the Earth,’ or the ‘Earth as a whole,’ is not used in Genesis 6:17, nor in subsequent verses in Genesis 7 (7:4, 7:10, 7:17, 7:18, 7:19).
If the intent of this passage was to indicate the entire expanse of the Earth, tebel would have been the more appropriate word choice. Consequently, the Hebrew text is more consistent with a local geography for the flood.
Moreover, in this period of history, people understood the whole Earth as a smaller geographical area. There is no evidence to suggest that people of this time had explored the far reaches of the globe or had any understanding of its scope.
For example, the Babylonian Map of the World, the oldest known world map, depicts the world as two concentric circles containing sites of Assyria, Babylon, Bit Yakin, Urartu, a few other cities and geographic features all surrounded by ocean. There are also small, simple triangles that shoot out from the ocean labeled as nagu or uncharted regions. Contextual evidence also suggests that Greek geographers developed comparable maps during the middle of the first millennium, where Greece was positioned in the middle of a circle surrounded by oceans.
These maps remind us that people were most familiar with the regions surrounding their homelands. Therefore, to say that something happened in the kol erets — or referring to “all people” (Gen. 6:13) — would have been an appropriate way of referring to the entirety of Earth and its population in a manner in which ancient Israelites would have been familiar.
Davis A. Young, author of The Biblical Flood: A Case Study of the Church’s Response to Extrabiblical Evidence, sums this up when he states:
“Given the frequency with which the Bible uses universal language to describe local events of great significance, such as the famine or the plagues in Egypt, is it unreasonable to suppose that the flood account uses hyperbolic language to describe an event that devastated or disrupted Mesopotamian civilization — that is to say, the whole world of the Semites?”"
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People have different views on this, but I don’t personally believe that the Son incarnate as Jesus was omnicient. I think he only had access to divine knowledge the way the rest of us humans do, through prayer and spiritual discernment and the intercession of the Holy Spirit.
People keep attempting to explain away what the Bible says,they should use the exact same fervor to explain away the false hoods of evolution and then we would get somewhere.
I will stick to the world was flooded by God and people are not smart enough to know it!
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Do you think the fervor to “shoot down” evolution has been lacking? It seems to me that no other theory in recent history has ever had so many people trying to poke holes in it — many with purely hostile motivation, and many from “friendly” scientific motivation who just want to knock over anything knockable so that what remains is stronger.
Interesting topic of conversation. I suppose that there could have been a global flood achieved through a global miraculous mechanism, followed by the miraculous elimination of all evidence that it happened, and the replacement of that evidence by an alternative history of the earth that could be observed by future civilizations. But what would that say about the nature of God and the validity of scripture that says creation reflects His glory and we can see evidence on God in it?
As to why does the Bible describe one, my thought is because it points to the sinfulness and depravity of mankind, and the provision of God’s salvation and renewal in a foreshadowing of Christ.
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Anthropogenic global warming/climate change runs a close second!
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Hostile motivation is not the reason evolution is false,DNA codes{Stephen C Meyer} and the fine tuning of the universe are enough to destroy evolution if people would just think about what it says, however people love lies and protect the idea of evolution because if not, their idea will unravel. Darwin had no idea what the cell was and what it contained while he was alive.Today we do know what DNA has and what it does and know that DNA is NOT evolved and that it can not evolve because information can not be added to DNA for it to evolve.
i do think the flood does have evidence that people do not want to consider.such as sea shells found on mountain tops.
Climate change and global warming are false too. how do i know you ask? I look at the live Florida beach web cams and they tell me that all is well on the Florida beaches.{they do not lie} if the fancy hotels were to be flooding it would be all over the news.The hotels could not operate if they had any mold in them. The health department would shut them down ,and mold is what would happen if the hotels were flooding at all. So I truly believe that the water rise /climate change/global warming is voodoo science and not real at all.the hotels are open for business and doing fine and dandy. that is not what I would expect if the water was truly rising.{please just think about what I said}
Why only marine fossils? If it was a global flood you would find fossils of land animals mixed in with the marine fossils.
The tectonic plate model deals with this nicely and explains a lot of other things that flood geology can’t explain.