Can we trust the Bible that there was a literal global Flood? Find out with guests Eric Hovind and Jobe Martin along with hosts Tim Moore and Nathan Jones on the television program, Christ in Prophecy!
Tim Moore: Greetings in the name of Jesus our Blessed Hope, and welcome to Christ in Prophecy. I’m Tim Moore, senior evangelist here at Lamb & Lion Ministries.
Nathan Jones: And I’m Nathan Jones, Internet Evangelist. The Bible begins with these words in Genesis 1:1: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” And the Bible ends with these words in Revelation 22:20: “He, Jesus who testifies to these things says, ‘Yes, I am coming quickly.’” So, the Bible begins with a revelation and ends with a promise.
Tim Moore: But do you believe these words? Do you really believe them without reservation? For, if you do, then you are an exception to the norm, for the fact of the matter is that the vast majority of professing Christians do not accept the plain sense meaning of these verses.
The reason is that the beginning, Genesis and the ending, Revelation of the Bible are the two most abused areas of God’s Word. That’s because they have been spiritualized into meaninglessness.
This is a partial transcript and the source is from the Lion and the Lamb Ministries website here.
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In this first of four episodes of our Epic Battles series, Eric will prove why we can trust that when the Bible says that the Flood waters covered the entire earth, they indeed covered the entire earth. Afterwards, we’ll come back and answer some of the more hotly debated objections skeptics have about the book of Genesis. Here now is Eric Hovind.
Part 1- Eric Hovind’s Presentation
Eric Hovind: And that’s what brings us to these Epic Battles of the Bible: Genesis versus Revelation. What does the Bible say about the Flood? Because a secular interpretation of the Bible would say there was no global flood. I got to get in. We got to talk about this, okay? The Bible teaches us very clearly there was a global flood.
Now, we need to go here, so if you’ve got your Bible, open it up, Genesis 6 & 7. Let’s go here real quick. Genesis 6 & 7, you’re going to find this interesting. If you just do a reading of Scripture and you ask yourself the question: Is the Bible teaching a local flood or a global flood? Answer that question as we read this. Genesis 6, by the way, tells us why the Flood came. The Earth was corrupt before God, the earth was filled with violence. God looked at the Earth and behold, it was corrupt for all flesh and corrupted His way upon the Earth. And then God told Noah, He said, “Noah, at the end of all, flesh is, come the Earth is filled with violence. I’m going to destroy the world. I want you to make an ark. And Noah said, “Yes, sir.” And then he told his boys, “Boys go for wood.” Gopher wood, you get it? Is Gopher okay, never mind. Anyway, we know the story about how Noah built the ark. It took him quite a while, up to probably 70 or more years to build the ark. So, we know that he built the ark. We know he put the animals on board. Most people know the story of the Flood.
And then we get to Genesis 7, and it describes what this flood was actually like. By chapter 7:4 it says this, “I will cause it to rain upon the Earth, 40 days and 40 nights and every living substance that I have made, will I destroy from off the face of the Earth.” The waters increased by the time you get to verse number 17. “The waters increased and bare up the ark, and it was lifted up above the Earth. And the waters prevailed.” Now the word, prevailed, that means to conquer or to overcome, the waters prevailed. “They overcame and were increased greatly upon the earth, and the ark, once upon the face of the waters. And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth; and all the high hills that were under the whole heaven were covered. Fifteen cubits upward did the water prevail and the mountains were covered. And all flesh died that moved upon the earth both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, and every man: All in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land, died.”
Let me ask you a question, and then I want to read verse 23: Does this sound like the Flood was a local event, or does it sound like it was a global event? Sounds like it’s global based on the reading of Genesis 7. Verse number 23 kind of sums it up. “Every living substance was destroyed, which was upon the face of the ground.” Now there were things in the water, things in the sea that did not die. Not all the fish died. But both man, and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven; they were destroyed from the Earth; and Noah only remained alive, and they that were with him in the Ark.
The Bible makes it really, really clear this is not a little bitty local event. It was a global event. So, we have to answer the question: Was it local or was it global? I say according to Scripture, it had to be a global, a worldwide, an around the entire circumference of the Earth, 24,000 miles, all of it was destroyed by water. People say there’s not enough water out there to cover the whole earth. Well, 70% of the world’s covered by water right now. Yeah. And scientists have actually discovered there is more water inside the crust of the Earth than there is on the surface of the Earth. Yeah, there’s plenty of water to flood the entire world.
Now, I don’t think the mountains were as high as they are now before the Flood. I don’t think they had as big of mountains because we’ve had a lot of tectonic activity take place during and after the Flood, that helped create a lot of the mountains that we see. So, the water didn’t have to be above Mt. Ararat. The mountains weren’t as big as Mt. Ararat before the Flood. But if the Bible is clear that the waters prevailed above the highest hills above the mountains, 15 cubits; cubits is the distance from the tip of your finger to your elbow right there, 15 cubits above the highest mountain. Well, how could that be a local flood? I mean, it would have to look something like this to be above the highest mountain 15 cubits, but only be contained in one area. It cannot be a local flood, according to Scripture, it’s scientifically impossible. Now people are welcome to claim it’s a miracle. But the whole point of saying it’s a local flood is to adopt an idea that the Earth is old and naturalistic assumptions and avoid the idea of miracles. So, it just doesn’t fit. It doesn’t make sense.
Can I tell you why some people have decided to adopt the idea that the Flood of Noah’s Day is a local flood? And then I want to give you some really cool scientific evidence. Here’s what happened, in 1795 a guy named James Hutton wrote a book called “The Theory of the Earth.” In his book, he claimed that the Earth was very, very old. Now, before this time, people, although there had been some ideas of old earth scattered around throughout the last 1,000 years of human history and of writing that we can see, it certainly wasn’t the prevalent idea. Most people had pretty much a biblical worldview because you can add up the dates in Scripture and see that well, the Bible teaches Adam was 131 when Seth was born, Seth was 105 when Enos was born, Enos was 90 when Cainan was born. You can take those dates, add them up, and see about how old the Earth actually is. It’s not millions or billions of years old. We got about 2,000 years to Abraham, 2,000 years to Christ, and 2,000 years to today, about 6000 years for the age of the Earth. James Hutton said, “I think the Earth is a whole lot older than people think that it is.”
Then a guy who hated the Bible, a Scottish lawyer, read that book believed it. His name was Sir Charles Lyell, and he wrote a book called “Principles of Geology.” He invented the geologic column and said, “These layers of sediment, all these layers are actually millions of years old. They represent slow, gradual processes,” uniformitarianism that was taught in James Hutton’s book. James Hutton teaches the idea that the Earth is old brings about uniformitarianism. Lyell comes along and says maybe the geologic column is how these uniformitarianism timescales line up. And then Darwin comes along in 1859 and says, “Well, if that’s the case, maybe creatures evolved slowly and gradually,” and stole the idea from his grandfather and from others it had been around for quite a while and published it in his book “On the Origin of Species,” and produced for us the popular theory of Evolution. This is really what’s happening. James Hutton brings about uniformitarianism ideas, exact same thing the Bible said was going to happen. Charles Lyell takes those ideas, applies them to the layers to the Earth, Geology. Darwin applies it to Biology. And now, for the last several hundred years, people have been indoctrinated into believing that the Earth is old, and that those layers of sediment prove the Earth is old. And that there was no longer a global flood that makes sense of those sediments. Time is what makes sense of those sediments. And if we have time, then Evolution is possible.
Now even with time, Evolution is not possible. But those layers of sediments do not prove long periods of time, they prove a global cataclysmic flood. That’s what they really prove. Remember what 2 Peter said the scoffers we’re going to be ignorant of? They’re going to be ignorant of the Creation. They’re going to be ignorant of the Flood. And they’re going to be ignorant willingly of the coming judgment of God. Isn’t it interesting that in the last 200 years, that’s exactly what has happened? People have become willingly ignorant of the Creation, the Flood, and the coming judgment of God.
You know, after the Flood took place, we read in Scripture that Noah got off the ark he and his sons, they had children. After the Flood, a boy was born his name was Arpachshad, can you see that little guy in kindergarten? Hey, son, what’s your name? Arpachshad? Can you spell it? No, nobody can. Anyway, little Arpachshad I can see him sitting on Grandpa Noah’s knee, and saying, “Hey Grandpa Noah, how come we’re the only people in the whole world? And then Grandpa Noah could tell Arpachshad about the Flood, and Arpachshad could tell his grandson, and his grandson, could tell his grandson the story would get passed down from generation to generation. If there really was a worldwide flood wouldn’t there be legends about it today? Turns out there are more than 300 now, Flood legends around the world.
When Duane Gish wrote this book “Flood Legends,” there were 270. Now they’ve found over 350 legends around the world of people who have a story in their history of a man, his wife, three sons and three daughters building something like an ark, a structure, a vessel putting animals on board and then being the only ones that were saved from the global catastrophe, the Flood. Hawaii has a legend. The Chinese have a legend. The Babylonians have a legend of the worldwide flood. The Toltec Indians in America have a legend of the Flood. The Bible dates put the time of the Flood at 1,656 after the creation of the world. Well, the Toltec Indians were 60 years off. That’s not bad if it’s really a 4,000 year old legend. Lewis and Clark covered America. Crossing America, they met with many Indian tribes that had a legend of the Flood. And they had an annual ceremony to celebrate in remembrance of the Flood and the Ark that saved mankind.
Guys, these legends that are around the world are excellent evidence that it really was a global flood that destroyed the world. If you look at a map of Turkey, you’ll find on the east side Mt. Ararat. On a Turkish map this area is actually referred to as Nuh’un Gemisi, which means Noah’s Big Boat. You can go see Nuh’un Gemisi today five kilometers away. Noah’s Big Boat, that’s what they call this area.
Now, I think the best proof of Noah’s Flood is found right here in Scripture. God’s revealed Word to mankind is the best evidence you’ll ever get that it was a global, it was a worldwide flood.
One more for you. There was a guy named Sir George Frazer, who actually traveled the globe in his journeys and in his business, he wrote an impressive three volume set of negative commentaries on the Book of Genesis. He hated the Bible. In his three volume set, he spends one entire volume discussing the accounts, the legends that he had heard from around the world of the global flood. Just look at the table of contents of his book, as he collected for us what he thought would be damning evidence against the Flood. Turns out, it’s beautiful evidence for the truth of the Bible that there really was a global flood. Each one of these lines that go by represents one of the stories of the Flood that he saw around the world. Over 300 pages of Flood legends from a guy trying to discredit the Bible.
Listen your perspective really does matter. What perspective do you have? Is it the biblical perspective or is it a humanist perspective? Is it a biblical worldview; God created the heavens and the earth? Or is it an evolutionary worldview; man evolved over a long period of time? Hey, don’t be willingly ignorant. Don’t be dumb on purpose. God created the world. God judged the world with a flood. And God is coming again to judge this world. You and I included.
Where will you be on Judgment Day? Don’t be ignorant of the Creation. Don’t be ignorant of the Flood. Don’t be ignorant of the coming judgment of God. And don’t let anybody else be ignorant of that, either. Let’s spread the truth. Let’s tell people the truth of how God created the heavens and the earth.
Part 2- Epic Battles Q&A Segement
Tim Moore: Exactly right. Another theme. I’ve got a question for Eric. Alright. You threw a zinger at us. So, Eric I want to know, and a lot of people will ask, I can read the dimensions of this vessel that God instructed Noah to craft, the Ark, and the Lord motivated pairs of animals, and they were clean and unclean animals. How did they all fit on the Ark? Because with all the millions, and millions of species and creatures on the earth today, how could they possibly fit on the Ark? That’s the question many scoffers will ask. So, go to it brother.
Eric Hovind: Yeah. Alright, you bring on the tough ones here. Actually, there is a lot of presuppositions, a lot of thoughts that we have that we bring to the idea of the Ark. And one of them is the idea that it was invented by Carl Linnaeus, all the different species and speciation. That is a very modern understanding of all the animals that we have today. Noah wasn’t dealing with kingdom, and phylum class order family gene of species. So, he wasn’t looking around going how many of each species do I need to bring. And while there are millions of different species, the Bible constantly refers to the kinds of animals, or baramin the originally created kind.
There is a fairly new science out just since they’ve been building the Ark Encounter in Kentucky, and a little bit before that where they have been trying to figure out what were the original kinds of animals? So, the dog, the wolf, and coyote, you look back and you go, well, they are different species but they are the same kind of animal. So, when you go back to the biblical word, which is what God uses to say Noah, you are going to bring two of each kind on the Ark, and not two of every kind in existence. For example, there is a lot of varieties out of the millions of species, a lot of those are fish, animals that live in the sea. Do you think you would need to take the animals that live in the sea on the Ark with him to survive a Flood? Please say, no. He wouldn’t need to bring the fish. Not going to need to bring any of those. There are millions of different insects. The Bible says Noah brough the animals in whose nostrils was the breath of life. They breathe through their nose or their mouth. Insects don’t breathe through their nose or mouth; he didn’t have to bring bugs on board the Ark.
There’s millions of species of bacteria. So, when you think of the millions of species, that includes all the fish, that includes the insects, that includes the bacteria. When you actually break down what the Bible teaches, how there were only the land dwelling animals, only those that breathed through their nose or mouth, and you trace it back to the original kinds, not all the different varieties, Answers in Genesis has actually done this study, they’ve got a sign at the Ark Encounter that shows and lists all the different kinds, 1,400, approximately, 1,400 kinds of animals. You could round up just to be safe and say 3,000. They put a maximum number of animals on the Ark at just over 7,000 animals, average size, smaller than a sheep. And I don’t know if you guys have ever been to the Ark Encounter in Kentucky, but you go check that thing out and you look at could this hold 7,000 sheep sized animals as the average size? No problem. They all could fit on one floor out of the three different floors of the Ark. There was not a problem for Noah to get all the animals onto the Ark. It was not a problem at all. I’m giving away a joke I normally tell there.
Nathan Jones: Wait a minute. Some of those dinosaurs are as big as houses, though, you are telling me that they get a giant Brachiosaurus fitting into the Ark?
Eric Hovind: Well, you’ve got to watch my Night at the Ark Encounter.
Nathan Jones: I did, it was good.
Eric Hovind: And we’ll show that it was actually the baby dinosaurs. I mean the big dinosaurs used to be little. Noah was over 600 years old, and God brought them to him. I think God was probably smart enough to know to bring a pink one and a blue one, that will be important when they get off to have babies. And so, I think it really does. When you look at the actual science, the actual data, it makes sense, and it really does fit. It is only people trying to read disharmony, or confusion into the Bible that we hear this idea that there are millions of animals that would have had to been on the Ark. Not even close. The maximum around 7,000 animals, and that is at the high end of the spectrum, probably less than that.
Tim Moore: I always worried if he had brought termites on board how he’d keep them from eating the Ark? But you are telling us that didn’t have to happen. So, I am relieved. And otherwise, all the varieties of cats we see today, he could have brought two cats and they created all the different variety that we have on earth today.
Eric Hovind: That is exactly right. Which is a whole another branch of science called epigenetics that is in the last 30 years has just totally changed, Darwin evolution doesn’t have a chance with the new science of epigenetics. And they are realizing animals have a built in ability to adapt to a new environment; it is not an evolved capability; it is a built in designed feature and it is destroying the Darwinian natural selection type slow millions of years evolution worldview.
Tim Moore: Beautifully said.
Jobe Martin: Yeah, and you talked about cats. Well, okay what did the lions eat on the Ark? Well, we think lions are meat eating animals. No. No. During World War II when we were sending our meat over to feed our soldiers in Europe they were feeding the big cats soybeans, they did fine. So, when did God tell the big cats, “now you can eat Noah if you can catch him.” That was Genesis chapter 9. So, they were still eating Genesis 1:29-30 they are still eating plants, now the curse has happened, the Fall is here, maybe we make the wrong thing, he wasn’t supposed to, but for the most part they are all still eating plants. All Noah needed on the Ark was hay, he didn’t have to have freezers full of frozen rabbits to feed the lions or the wolves, they are still all eating vegetation.
Nathan Jones: And it is interesting from the Revelation perspective that when the Millennial Kingdom comes the animals will stop being meat eaters.
Jobe Martin: That’s right.
Nathan Jones: And they’ll actually be back to eating vegetation.
Tim Moore: Now we get back to Jobe. Let’s give him a hard one.
Nathan Jones: Yes. I’ve got one for Dr. Martin. The Epic of Gilgamesh, I’ve heard critics say predates the Genesis account, therefore Genesis stole the Creation account from a pagan source. Is that true?
Jobe Martin: That’s not true.
Nathan Jones: Okay.
Tim Moore: Short answer.
Jobe Martin: Well, there’s a theory, I’m not sure it’s a theory, I think it’s the truth, it’s called the Tablet Theory. And you’ll find all the way through those early chapters of Genesis, this is the generation of, and this is the generation of, these are the generations of. I think it was all written down and given to Moses, because the way that that formula goes through there, these are the generations of, these are the generations of. Adam probably wrote some, and then probably Noah, and then Noah’s sons, and you can follow it all the way through. And so, I think it was all written down before the ancient Epoch of Gilgamesh ever showed up on the scene.
Tim Moore: And not just written down but handed down.
Jobe Martin: Oh, yeah.
Tim Moore: All the peoples in the early era on the earth would have had a collected memory of that experience which is why it shows up in many cultures.
Jobe Martin: And I think the tablets were preserved. I think Moses had those tablets; I think that was part of what was going on back there. And so, he actually could refer back to the writing of Noah, to the writing of Shem, Ham and all those things, well, not necessarily Ham, I don’t think it says that about Ham. But anyway, it is all there. So, not the ancient Epic of Gilgamesh is taking off from what the Bible said, what God said of the original creation.
Tim Moore: Fantastic. Eric any thought?
Eric Hovind: It is interesting, you look at the similarities between the Epoch of Gilgamesh and the biblical account and there are a huge number of similarities. They were actually found on 12 large tablets, and they were originally discovered in the mid-18th Century, or 19th Century, in the mid-1800’s and they date back to about 650 BC. They are obviously not the originals because they have been found, these kinds of things have been found on tablets that are from around 2000 BC. So, its really interesting. It seems like this is a perversion of you know it’s got some things right, and some things wrong of what the real story was, which we actually have recorded for us by Moses in the Bible. So, we’ve got the beauty of having the truth of this, and that’s what I love. It’s another one of those things of are you trying to find a problem with the Bible, and using something that was discovered to say that therefore the Bible is not true, or are you trying to find harmony? Because the similarities, because they both have a man who was righteous who built a boat, escaped a worldwide, global I should say as I was saying in my talk, global flood. So, you look at the list of similarities and it is really, really impressive.
Tim Moore: Very true.
Closing
Nathan Jones: Well, Tim, I sure wish we had the extra time to show Eric sailing us down the Colorado River using the Grand Canyon and the Geologic Column as proof of a Global Flood. Well, folks, you can get the entire Epic Battles Conference on a 3-DVD album for gift of $25 or more and that includes shipping. Just contact us at the number you see on the screen or order online at lamblion.com.
Tim Moore: And while you’re on our website, check out our upcoming annual conference titled “Storm Warning: The Urgency of the Rapture.” The Prophecy Pros Jeff Kinley and Todd Hampson will be joining us here in the Dallas area on July 22nd and 23rd. We’d love for you to join us as well.
Nathan Jones: In our second episode of this Epic Battle series, Nathan will address a controversial debate from the book of Revelation, “A Literal 1000-Year Kingdom.” We’ll see you back next week, Lord willing. Godspeed!
End of Program
