"I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life"

Father God, thank you for the love of the truth you have given me. Please bless me with the wisdom, knowledge and discernment needed to always present the truth in an attitude of grace and love. Use this blog and Northwoods Ministries for your glory. Help us all to read and to study Your Word without preconceived notions, but rather, let scripture interpret scripture in the presence of the Holy Spirit. All praise to our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

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Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Amazing Theories about the Biblical Flood




This paper (OK, so it’s digital; I’m old school) may well startle you in the ideas it presents. Most certainly, you have probably never heard some of them before. My career in meteorology has contributed at least in part to some of these ideas, otherwise they are a result of just studying the Bible with an open mind and spirit. Nothing here contradicts the Apostle’s Creed or the Nicene Creed.

The Book of Genesis describes a global flood that can hardly be interpreted any other way. Gen 7:19  The water prevailed more and more upon the earth, so that all the high mountains everywhere under the heavens were covered. Bible literalists have no doubt that it occurred. Flood stories exist in ancient cultures all over the world. A global flood may explain a large part of the fossil record as well as the production of oil.

There are problems with the flood theory though; ice core samples from Antarctica reveal annual rings that go back tens of thousands of years without any break in the pattern. Does this mean that the global flood didn’t happen, or that it was regional not global? Not necessarily. A global flood could have melted many years or decades of record in the ice core and we might never know.

For the purpose of this paper we will assume that the flood did occur and that it was global in extent – pretty easy to do since that’s what the Bible says. Why it occurred is explained clearly in Genesis; man’s ways were evil only and God decided to destroy mankind and remake it through Noah and his family. Also, there were angels who were abandoning their stations and somehow having sexual relations with the daughters of men.

In this paper we are going to look at how the flood came about, that is, the mechanics involved. How and why those mechanics came about is what is so fascinating. Did God employ some natural mechanics? He usually does. During the parting of the Red Sea, He created a strong wind all night. When He fed the Israelites quail in the desert, He brought them with a strong wind.


As children it becomes obvious to us that the geographic features of the earth seem to fit together like a puzzle. Remove the oceans, do a little twisting and shuffling and presto, it’s one big continent. Most everyone is familiar with the theory of plate tectonics – that’s science’s answer to the obvious geographic puzzle. Trouble is they believe that continental drift has occurred over millions of years; I think it happened in 40 days and 40 nights, or, at most, one year.

It rained upon the earth 40 days and nights to produce the flood that covered even the tallest mountains. The Bible says that it did not rain upon the earth prior to the flood. The flora was watered from springs, rivers and dew. In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve wore no clothes until after they sinned and then only to cover their shame. Consequently, there were no diurnal temperature extremes – not too hot in the day or too cold at night. We can then conjecture that there were no weather systems of any consequence.

So, how did it rain for 40 days and 40 nights without weather systems? The very stable temperature pattern could only have happened if there had been something in the atmosphere to prevent the heat from the earth from escaping. Cloudy nights are warmer than clear nights. The creation story in Genesis tells us that God separated the waters above the earth from the waters below the earth. This seems to imply that there were waters in the atmosphere. Of course, there is lots of water in the atmosphere which exists in the form of vapour. Sometimes it is visible as clouds, sometimes it is not. Even if it was not dense enough to be visible, it may have been thick enough to form the thermal canopy needed to keep the temperature comfortable.

Now we have a water source but in order to have clouds and rain we need a lifting mechanism. Air that is lifted cools and condenses forming clouds and eventually rain. Without frontal weather systems we have to look elsewhere for a lifting mechanism. This is where it starts to get really surprising.


I believe that the lifting occurred by the literal expansion of the earth. I believe that God expanded the earth as if He were blowing up a balloon. This would result in the tearing apart of the mega-continent into the current continents and their rapid movement into roughly their current positions. It also created the space for the great oceans to develop. All of that water had to go somewhere; much of it ended up in the oceans and much of it evaporated and returned to the skies but not nearly enough to produce the pleasant temperature patterns of pre-flood years.

Why would God do that? Are you ready for this? God destroyed all the people on the earth except Noah and his family, and since souls are not destroyed with our bodies, God needed somewhere to put what was probably a few million souls – He created Hell.

There is no mention of Hell in Genesis anywhere before the flood. There is a good question as to where the souls of lost people were kept before the creation of Hell; I don’t have an answer for that. But it is clear from many scriptures that lost souls go to Hell and that Hell is located deep in the earth.***

*** Matt 5:22,29,30; Luke 16:23; Eze 31:16
Eze 32:24; Num 16:30,33; Job 17:16; Job 24:19; Psalm 9:17