So You Believe in a Local Flood?
This was originally posted by Michael Oard in the Ask the Expert section:
It might be helpful to address each of his evidences in support of the Global flood. I have rearranged the Oard post as specific numbered points of evidence and reasoning. What are the possible responses of those who deny the Global scope of the biblical flood?
So, you believe in a local flood?
I suppose you have heard all those arguments from the historical account in Scripture of such things as:
- why have an Ark,
- why bring two of each kind of animal on the Ark if it is a local Flood,
- boats do not end up in mountains but go toward the ocean in a local Flood,
- why were the animals told to repopulate the earth if only local,
- the rainbow promise would make no sense in a local Flood, etc.
But I want to leave before you the words of Jesus in Matthew 24:37-39:
"For the coming of the Son of Man will be just like the days of Noah. For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and they did not understand until the flood came and took them all away; so willl the coming of the Son of Man be."
You undoubtedly have heard of this verse in which:
- Jesus believes the Ark was a real boat and
- Noah a real person.
- Jesus says that the Flood took them "all" away, [You probably believe that he was just referring to all those in a region from a local to regional flood, right?]
- However, many people overlook that last phrase and the context: "so will be the coming of the Son of Man." Jesus was telling of his second coming, and in Rev 1:7 it says that at his second coming, all eyes will see Him. In other words, it will be a global coming back. Well then, He would not us a local flood as an analogy for a global coming, would He? He would use a global event for a global second coming. Therefore, the "all" refers to all the people of the earth, whcih conservative population increase statisics easily show there there would billions of people on earth before the Flood.
Can we discuss and comment on these points of Mike Oard?
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Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Brian Guiley on -
What can I say, I know it was a Global Flood, but I'll keep an eye out if I can add anything. I like all of these reasons. My favorites include the rainbow, and the fact that the Ark landed in the mountains.
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Permalink Reply by Justin Mooney on -
Possible responses by local flood advocates:
(1) I believe it was Hugh Ross who suggested that the ark served as a sort of attention-grabbing podium from which Noah could preach, and as a symbolic warning of coming judgement
(2) Perhaps local floodists could try to reinterpret the universal terms to restrict the issue to animals in the region only, but I don't see how they can get around the suggestion of migration--especially for the birds
(3) Personally I don't find this one very persuasive. Could have brushed over the top of a mountain on the way to the ocean and gotten stuck
(4) Again, you could try to relativize the terms to a certain region (despite the implausibility of such an interpretation)
(5) Here its just a matter of supposing that the Genesis flood was less than global but in some way qualitatively different (perhaps in terms of its causes, for example) or just very much quantitatively greater than any local floods since.
You have already pointed out where local floodists might try to weasel out of the Matt 24 passage. I could also see them challenging the premise that humanity had spread across the globe, but they would have to appeal to unlikely scenarios to do so, it seems.
Also, another potential argument in favor of a global flood could be derived from 2 Peter 3:5-7. Appeal to the repetitive use of universal terms like "all" and "every" and "the whole earth" in the flood narrative has been used as argument for a global flood too. Likewise, so has the unique Hebrew word associated with the Genesis flood, I believe.
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Permalink Reply by Jim Brenneman on -
Responses:
(1) Hugh Ross and others - the Ark was just a stage prop, to scare people to repent, with the phoney threat of a coming world wide Flood, much like the threat of the end of the world, the mark of the beast, hell, and the Day of the Lord?
(2) The Flood wasn't for everybody, just like the Christian Faith isn't for everybody. You know, what ever turns you on baby.
(3) Water over the tops of mountains? No, just the ones between the embark point and the downstream destination of the Ark after it floated down the valley of Mesopotamia. And yeah somewhere down there, must have been called the Mountains of Ararat in the Olden Days. And see? This view presents an even greater miracle: The water was over the high mountains of the local region of the flood, but somehow did not extend to that elevation above sea level world wide. It only reached 4 or 5000 feet in a single limited region of the world. Marvelous and impressive miracle of defying the laws of hydraulics and gravity!
(4) All doesn't really mean all, and just the same "All" have not sinned, and the whosover promise of John 3:16 really is not for everybody, only for provincially minded western bigots who bound with that shallow notion of lostness and need of salvation.
(5) God's stated purpose of destroying every living thing that he created isn't really accurate, and the Command of Jesus to preach the Gospel to all creation, doesn't really mean all creation, since obviously Hindus and Taoists and Animists don't need the gospel, and they are not really part of the Creation of which Christ spoke in Matt. 28:19-20.
Things I never learned when I studied and taught Hebrew.
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Permalink Reply by Brian Guiley on
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AIG put the chapter on the flood from "Old Earth Creationism on Trial" today. Lots of good stuff there, or more precisely, here: http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/oect/prosecution-extent-flood
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Permalink Reply by Lou Hamby on -
Brian--
When God created earth.... it must have been fully formed? In order to put the sheets on the bed you need the bed, I assume mountains, valleys, rivers, grasslands jungles etc.????? Then living creation could be applied to the eco-niches that God had planned for each and every animal, which was our pre-flood diversity... So why is there a need for long term eons of time for development of the earth, the base for which all life was built on? If God is who he is then time is not an issue for Him, not meaning long time, but meaning short time is no issue for an omnipotent and omnipresent God from making creation? Genesis should be clear with respect to the orignal creation and what must have went into it.
So what if the newly formed earth with creation looked like that of age....?
On the counter wise us YECS have hundreds and hundreds of unanswered questions? I much more respect a few on here that when asked a certain question said we just don't know but we are looking into that and so and os is doing this work on it. I think some of the YEC questions should supersede putting anyone else on trial for their ideas when we have tons of our own?
I also notice that some of the issues and articles used by YECs are theoretical lack of a better word but these arguments are being used and perpetrated as facts? People are arguing for a young earth and there are many factual things about that argument one could and should use, but I am also disappointed at some of the inferences even by experts that imply an evolutionary study implies fact about certain YEC ideas.....cheers!
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Permalink Reply by Brian Guiley on
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Lou,
The title of the book represents, among other things, the way the information is presented. It presents a position (prosecution) presents a rebuttal (cross examination). And examines the claims/ideas on both sides. I recommend reading it, this chapter in particular deals with theological and real implications of a global flood/local flood.
We've gone round and round on your conception of creation and that everything had to be created just the way it is now after God's original creation. I don't think we're going to be able to change your mind on this point/limitation/requirement that you put upon God. Yes he could have made it that way. He could have used evolution, if he wanted to. God is all powerful, and is not limited in either direction timewise. What we must understand is him being able to doesn't mean he did. We must trust him and what he says. We must trust he knows how to communicate. You're position is like unto the geologists that everything we see now must have been the same 'back then'. Why is this true? Why must the past be the same as the present? I see a world lush with life and not only variety realized, but variety potential, with and without man's intervention. Animals change with, and without God's intervention. Man himself has moved from agricultural to urban environments. All these things I see God knowing and planning for, from the beginning, but not having implemented, by necessity, all at once.
I think you feel we've limited God by allowing adaptation, whereas I see it the other way around, and I see your concept as imposing restrictions on God that aren't there.
Again, I don't think we're going to come to an agreement on this issue, as you're very committed to having all your 'eco-niches' all the time. So you bend God's word to your idea, and find ways that it 'may' say something else. If it can really be interpreted such different ways, and no way of saying which is correct, then it would seem God isn't able to communicate very well.
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Permalink Reply by Lou Hamby on
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Wow! Brian that was a mouth full of misrepresentation???? Apparently you don't have clue in China as to what I have said?
I see a world lush with life and not only variety realized, but variety potential, with and without man's intervention. Animals change with, and without God's intervention.
I think you feel we've limited God by allowing adaptation.
In short Brian without running thru stuff again, you need to read what I have inferred closer.....
You certainly entitled to say it how you see it, but the questions I have asked I have not received answers for some of it, so you "will" eventually need to have an answer some of those questions????
I do not limit Gods creative acts or biblical actions....As you say God can do anything, but Brian I have been very very very clear as to what and how animals do change in time. Go back and read what I said.
1. Hybridization with a similar specie
2. Man's tampering.
3. Fossil record which you can't get around shows fully formed species showing up immediately and the're development of "change" as ou might imply shows no change. No if I am wrong about that, then how Do YOU explain the thousands of living animals with fossil records that have not changed??? Hybridization does take place rarely in nature but it does, so I have never ever implied that animals can't change, I just gave you a definition of if they do this is how it came about. Including my recent comment to Dr. Purdomes examples that were indeed hybridization but not adaptive variation.
So now if I am so wrong about this whole thing of God creating nature as it says in Genesis (which seems strange for a YEC) can you give me examples of any fossil record animal that has changed since the flood? Can you give me a observation of any animal that exist today that has changed, other than through hybridization or man's tampering?
Lastly, where in the bible is adaptive variation mentioned or supported? It is theoretical which I am not putting down this down, but you certainly think I am, I understand this being worked just like the log mats after the flood, and some kind of explanation for the insects.....
Lastly when God said be fruitful and multiply don't you think that the biblical expectation was the same at the flood dispearsion as it was at creation???
So you can misrepresent what I said but the burden of this discussion which I fully intended not going there if you look at my original comment to you is ON YOU!! Where is your evidence? I have been given everything from the stickleback fish, to the Iguanas, and the Italian wall lizards....all articles from AIG. Your upset at me because you don't want someone to ask these questions? Is that it?
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Permalink Reply by Jim Brenneman on
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This thread is about responding to arguments against the Global Flood, that is this thread is about rebutting the local flood fallacy.
Usually those who hold to Old Earth "creationism" have no reason to embrace the Global nature of the Flood. It is valuable to show the fallacies of the OE view of origins, since there is no room for the thousands of feet of strata in the biblical time frame, apart from the Global Flood.
Again: There is no room in time for the laying down of hundreds of strata, thousands of feet in dept within the time frame of the 6000 years since creation, as presented in the Bible - apart from a single diluvial mega disaster.
The global flood view does need any explanation for the dispersion of insects. The Bible does not represent them as being destroyed in the Flood. We will keep going over this as long as opponents of the biblical narrative keep bringing up insect dispersion as if were some fatal blow to our "theory." Raising the insect issue shows one's thorough unfamiliarity with the clear specifications of Scripture of the criteria for making the passenger list on the Ark. But I guess this is to be expected from those who can make words mean whatever they want them to mean in their reading of the Flood account.
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Permalink Reply by Brian Guiley on
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Lou,
I've given you many examples, you waive them all off, or say because they're different they had to be made different, and couldn't adapt to be different. You waive off 'man's' tampering, as if man coud cause something to occur in the genetic code of species that God didn't build into the animal in the first place. You site your own knowledge of animals and your own ideas about their 'requirements' and because of it deny the universality of the flood. Which brings us back to the reasons indicated in the article cited.
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Permalink Reply by Jim Brenneman on
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(By the way, Lou doesn't believe in Old Earth)
The Topic of this post is REFUTING THE LOCAL FLOOD EXCUSE
Brian, some people have a decided inability to stay on topic. You will notice that they can only bring up the same lame arguments that they have raised over and over for months, faulty notions that have been answered numerous times.
I find this to be the case with Old Earth Proponents, and with deniers of the Global Flood. It is just that their position is so weak and ill-supported by Scripture and the facts of science that they always resort to amassing a pile of straw, thinking the sheer volume will make up for the fluffy weakness of the particulars.
I am guessing it won't be long till we start hearing about the present tense verbs of Genesis 4 again, while we will see passed over and disregarded God's stated purpose for sending the Flood - to destroy His creation, Man which He had created (Gen. 6:5-7) and to save Noah (and his family ALONE) of his entire generation (Gen. 6:8-9). That is waived.
And while they consistently ignore the plain statements of Scripture, they are horrified that we ignore their "FACTS OF SCIENCE staring us right in the face." What is incredible is how they think that this backwards approach is normal and proper - as if our understanding of scripture is to based on the "solid" evidence that is set in the stones of the earth, their fallible interpretations of observations of nature. Meanwhile any plain statement of Scripture remains a mere "view," "opinion," "theory," "interpretation," and fallible. Science is fact. Scripture is opinion and ignorance, like the poor ignorant "flat-earthers."
Meanwhile they pass over, ignore, deny, and dismiss with a wave of the hand that very loud and insistent evidence which is thousands of feet thick, with of hundreds of fossil-filled strata. How did these strata and fossils find their way to our earth within the 6000 years of the planet's existence?
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Permalink Reply by Lou Hamby on
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JIm you said:
How did these strata and fossils find their way to our earth within the 6000 years of the planet's existence?
Lou said:
There is an answer that is an alternative to yours....:0)
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Permalink Reply by Lou Hamby on
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Brian Guiley said:Lou,
I've given you many examples, you waive them all off, or say because they're different they had to be made different, and couldn't adapt to be different. You waive off 'man's' tampering, as if man coud cause something to occur in the genetic code of species that God didn't build into the animal in the first place. You site your own knowledge of animals and your own ideas about their 'requirements' and because of it deny the universality of the flood. Which brings us back to the reasons indicated in the article cited.
Brain--I am asking you to answer my question and I say again, please give me examples of any animal that has adapted and the linkage for that. IF man tampers with two dogs a horse a cow...I did not wave that off period!! You are misrepresenting what I said. I wholly understand that domestication has been born out in animals and plants for thousands of years, and have said this time after time after time..... And yes all animals have DNA and it is possible to create a new animal of the same kind by hybridization. However, when you talk of an Iguana kind (ARK). breeding with a female of the same kind, the results are going to be the same animal kind which is exactly what the bible says (do you believe that?). A dog begets a dog. I have clearly stated and used the example of Goode's Horned lIzard that a flat tail horned lizard can and did breed with desert horned lizard due to the rarity of their two distributions over lapping in the Southern California Arizona desert. THe results is another honred lizard which like the dog examples is a combination of the two. Now Adaptive variation is different... And here's why. And this is why Dr, has a hard time answering my response back---is hybridization I clearly have stated happens. But when you look at an iguana wanna be kind on the ark, and insinuate from that paring your going to get 13 different types of iguanas, simply knowing their blood lines having been sequenced will tell you they have separate blood lines? The fact of the matter Brian, is the only answer of the 13 iguanas I can think of is God, in the original creation? Now do you call that being unbiblical? So either they went on the ARK, which I am fine with or ? My point is the DNA has laws, the laws of DNA are shown forth in the fossil record, in the diversity compared to the fossil record that now exists. also how is that your ARK kind could produce 13 different species of iguanas and then those 13 species started up breeding only their kind, only??? Don't these questions and observations stick out like a sore thumb?
So Brian you are the one that chose to go here, so where is the biblical evidence that God used adaptive variation as an agent of animal change after the flood? Since you seem to be literal in your acceptance of Gods Word, I ask you when God says be fruitful and multiply is there any sense in which that inferred anything but standard procreation as it did in the original creation? I asked you to provide an example of any animal in time the has changed since God created them?
When you change DNA then you change the animal---and I agree 100% that that avenue is through hybridization??? Adaptive variation is not hybridization and it is a theory that you want to camp out on and insinuiate that any other view (even if its biblical) is unacceptable, but yet after several tries I have clearly stated and agreed with you on dogs and man and hybridization which is clearly and scientifically what takes place with domestication. But all you need to do is use my example of the iguanas and find that they have separate family lines, not because of Taxonomy, but their morphology, eco-niche requirements, there eating habits and food sources are all different and they are a total reflection of Gods ingenious creation of diversity. Now you can keep on identifying me as some agent of falsehood, but this is more Biblical and straight forwardly traceable right back to Gods original creative acts, that I don't see how you can keep trying to support a theoretical inference that doesn't have any factual base, and assume that this is even possible, because it has never been observed, there is no linkage from an ancestor....
I hope your not upset, but I tried to also ask the experts and they sent me off on a wild goose chase looking at articles that they say imbibed the adaptive variation, when I came back and explained that I was already aware of these works as someone who studies herpetology, there is no inference of adaptive variation taking place. In all cases hybridization or identical DNA markers on the populations?? How much more clear can I be?
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