How could a just God destroy the whole world, every last man, woman and child, except for the eight souls who went into the ark? Some have accused the God of the Bible of being a moral monster for having done such a thing. However, if we wish to be honest in our criticism, we need to take a closer look at what happened way back when… and what we justify ourselves in doing, today. What I mean is this: the antediluvian era was ten generations long, and, according to its own chronology, the number of years from the creation of the first man to the beginning of the Genesis Flood was 1656 years. How many people could have been living by the time the floodwaters covered the earth (Genesis 7:10)? If we take the rate of population growth that would have taken mankind to increase from 8 souls to our present population or from the time of the Genesis Flood to today, and apply that same rate to the time of Adam to Noah or the population rate from creation to the Genesis Flood, the population would be approximately 41,515 people (give or take).[1]
In recent times from the beginning of the 20th century to the present day, we’ve justified ourselves in both world wars. World War I, which was promoted, as the war to end all wars, cost 16 to 20 million lives (best estimates), and the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II cost an estimate of 150,000 to 250,000 lives: men, women and children. Genesis 6:11 tells us that the world was filled with violence. Should the Lord have permitted this to continue? Would that have been the just thing to do? Who are we to judge God, and in doing so, we use only the little information that could be drawn from the first six chapters of the Bible?
According to the record, the floodwaters came upon the earth during the spring, 1656 years after Adam was created. It was on the 17th day of the 2nd month and in the 600th year of Noah’s life (Genesis 7:10-11). The fountains of the great deep burst forth and the windows of the heavens were opened, but what does this mean? What are the fountains of the great deep? One has to wonder what the earth looked like, prior to the Genesis Flood. Many believe our present seven continents broke away from a single landmass, sometime in the past. What would that have been like? Perhaps there was even more land, millennia ago, than we have today. An interesting statement concerning this time is, “Now no shrub of the field had yet grown on the earth, and no plant of the field had yet sprouted, for the LORD God had not caused it to rain on the earth… Springs would well up from the earth and water the whole surface of the ground” (Genesis 2:5-6). After its first mention in Genesis, chapter 2, the word rain isn’t mentioned again until Genesis 7:4. So, in the beginning, was it the Lord’s intention to have the earth watered by springs, and, if so, did it rain upon the earth for the first time during the days, when the floodwaters covered the earth?
If this supposition is true, then, in this context, the Genesis Flood was an extremely catastrophic event. It didn’t merely rain. The surface of the earth changed and broke up the single landmass, which eventually formed seven continents and numerous islands. The fountains of the great deep were broken up, the single landmass would have ruptured, causing land to sink and the waters “of the great deep” to rise above the surface of the land. Such a catastrophic event would have sent great clumps of land miles into the air, where its particles would have served to collect droplets of moisture, which would then fall to the earth in the form of rain, perhaps for the first time.
So, Noah and his family, eight souls, escaped the judgment of God, as they entered the ark, together with all the pairs of animals and birds that breathed the breath of life (cp. Genesis 2:7), and it rained for 40 days and 40 nights or from the 17th day of the 2nd month (Genesis 7:11) to about the 27th day of the third month—continuous rainfall! (Genesis 7:12-16).
The ark was on dry land, but the 40 days of continuous rainfall lifted it above the surface of the ground (Genesis 7:17). The floodwaters continued to rise, covering all the high hills of the earth. The waters rose 15 cubits or about 23 feet above the mountains of the earth (Genesis 7:18-20).
Therefore, all life that breathed in the breath of life, all of mankind and all the animals and birds, every living creature died in the floodwaters. Only Noah and those who were with him in the ark were saved alive through the floodwaters that covered the earth, and the waters covered the earth for about five months or for a period of 150 days (Genesis 7:21-24).
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[1] See my earlier study, The Genesis Flood and the Morality of God.
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