The Epic Flood Story: Exploring Noah's Journey

You're listening to The Bible Guys, a podcast where a couple of friends talk about the Bible in fun, in practical ways. Hey, welcome to the Bible guys. What oops? I am Chris and I'm Jeff. Yes, and so today we realized that on yesterday's podcast we didn't actually do the segment. Yeah, we totally blew it off because what I was trying to do is I was trying to fill in the gaps of this chapter that we skipped over. Yeah, and we talked about people living for a long time, and then it got us right into the story's so exciting. We just got we just got pulled away. And so yeah, you want to do both segments. Yeah, otherwise let's do it really fast. Okay, very fast. So social media minute. There's three of them. I'm gonna read the first one. This is yesterday's segment. Beth V. Wrote in and Sabeth just want to tell you both that I really enjoy watching you guys. Your friendship is so genuine and it's fun to watch you guys laugh together and everything else you do to bless us listeners. Thank you, that's nice. It's all a show. We don't like you to that's right, that's exactly correct. Number two, I wanted to thank you. This is from Zach Bhi. Zach, I wanted to thank you for taking the extra time to share your wonderful insight and stories with us. Your explanations have certainly helped me to understand some of the more confusing concepts in the Bible. That's that's awesome. Yeah, that's the whole goal. That's right, that's right. Yeah. Number three it comes from Aaron, who says love my daily dose of Christ and of course Jeff of course, of course, Jeff, of course, Jeff, Yes, of Chris and of course Jeff. Yes, thank you Aaron. You guys can make learning the Bible so cool and relatable. Thank you, Aaron. Cool. Yeah, boy, spent a long time since I've been called cool. No, no, no, she didn't say that. She said the Bible, learning about the Bibles, we make the Bible cool and relatable, cool and related. She said absolutely nothing. I want you to hear this clearly. Yes, she said nothing about you being okay, well, thank you Aaron, saying that we helped the Bible be more. That's right, that's right. And by the way, yeah, no, no, her days and of course, yes, Jeff, Yes, that's really the emphasis. Well, it's the emphasis. It is the Chris. It could be a period there, but it's a comma pencis and you know also Jeff two of course, of course, yep, that's awesome. Okay, So thank you guys. So there you go. That's Beth, Zach and Aaron you. So we're gonna squeeze in two segments since we skip yesterday, okay, and so this is a very quick segment, and it is a simple question called story time. And the question is this, this is funny. If you were in Noah's place and you had to take two of every kind of animal into the arc? Would there be any animals that you would say no to? Oh? Absolutely, if I have a choice, how about you? First of all, no, I didn't have a choice. Let's be clear about it, right right, God told him all of them. But you could, like, hey, could I suggest just yes if no, we're you know, compromise and say do I have a say in this? Who would I say no to? Well, definitely mosquitoes, that's my top yes, top of my list, yes, mosquite. And then I think some animals like you know, like I know spiders are important, but are they really that important? They're scary? Yeah, and that like the brown recluse spider, Like, can we just do without that one? That'd be bad. All the poisonous ones, yes, yeah, or the poisonous frogs, although they don't affect me. Oh Ana condas you get rid of they affect you. So you said you said, you said poisons frogs, Well, they don't affect me, Ana condas, like you just thought of a thing that affects Thinking of everybody else in the world, jess, all the people who get people try to go to the river, they try to get a drink, or the animals, the poor animals, and then here comes this Anacona coming up and just wrapping around everybody. You've watched too many movies? Yeah, well, okay, have you ever seen the movie Anaconda? No, with John Voight and Jennifer Lopez. I don't believe I have. It's it's so bad that it's good. Okay, Yes, I have not seen it. Yeah, well, so I was gonna say mosquitos, Yes, mosquitoes drive from nuts and I know that you know bats feed on mosquitoes. Yeah, so there's an issue there, But I don't know. Well, then I have no other animals that I wouldn't bring. I like them all. Really. Yeah. Yeah, I'm not a big fan of the poisonous snakes, but I think they're necessary. Okay, Yeah, why are they necessary? Because they get rid of rodents? Okay, and you know you can't have too many rodents because rodents carry so much disease. Man, let's just get them all. Let's get rid of the rodents, the poisonous snakes, and the mosquitoes, and and then bats. Oh well, how about that? Oh well, you know, it'd be interesting to see how our ecosystem would break down if if like that many things were removed from Yeah. Yeah, we're literally playing god here on this one, aren't we. Yeah, because everything's so interconnected. So the answer ultimately to that question, Desiree is no, I would not say no to anything because because we don't have one. If I could pick one, if I could pick one, I would still make mosquitoes, and then you would kill us all. I would I would risk it off. You would kill us all because who knows how this world would be effective? That's right, that's right. But all of a sudden, bats would die down and then all of a sudden, you have these bigger animals, and little you know, it would lead all like the lions and bees. Yeah, probably run in. The humans would die. It's probably it you kill the planet. Okay, all right then, no, no, I don't want to kill everybody on the planet. No, that's not what you said. Okay, you're right. Yeah. Hey, well they're starting over at this point, dude, that is true that they're starting over with God's creations safe in the boat. Yeah, but maybe maybe God could figure out how to do it a different way next time. God, do your job better. No, no, no, no, no, fast No. I did not say that he's he's doing fine without my input. This just lightning strikes podcast. Yeah, no, he's doing fine without my input. Okay, Okay, that was a good segment. We squeezed two in and the same amount of time that we would normally done one. Hey, two for the price. Yeah, sorry about yesterday segment, lovers, Yes, that's right. Okay, Well, today we're continuing on. As we mentioned, almost everything in the Bible is established in some form in the first eleven chapters the Book of Genesis, so we're kind of moving slowly first through these first several chapters. That's fine, yeah, absolutely. Genesis chapter seven, verse one says, when everything was ready, the Lord said to Noah, go into the boat with all your family, For among all the people on the earth, I can see that you alone are righteous. Take with you seven pairs male and female of each animal I've approved for eating and for sacrifice, and take one pair of each of the others. Also, take seven pairs of every kind of bird. There must be a male and a female in each pair, to ensure that all life will survive on the earth after the flood. Seven days from now, I will make the rains pour down on the earth, and it will rain for forty days and forty nights until I've wiped from the earth all the living things I've created. So Noah did everything as the Lord come on. And Noah was six hundred years old when the flood covered the earth. He went on board the boat to escape the flood. He and his wife, and his sons and their wives. With them were all the various kinds of animals, those approved for eating and for sacrifice and those that were not, along with all the birds and the small animals that scurry along the ground. They entered the boat in pairs male and female, just as God had commanded Noah. After seven days, the waters of the flood came and covered the earth. When Noah was six hundred years old, on the seventeenth day of the second month, all the underground waters erupted from the earth and the rain fell in mighty torrents from the sky. The rain continued to fall for forty days and forty nights. That very day, Noah had gone into the boat with his wife and his sons shem Hem and Jayfath, and their wives. Do I stop there, No, because we're picking up in verse number seventeen, So you can go to seventeen. I go to seventeen. Yes. With them in the boat repairs of every kind of animal, domestic and wild, large and small, along with birds of every kind. Two by two, they came into the boat, representing every living thing that breathes. A male and a female of each kind entered, just as God had commanded Noah. Then the Lord closed the door behind them. There you go, we got some bonus verses. Yeah, here we did. And so with them. With them in the boat were pairs of every kind of animal domestic in large, wild and small, two by two, they came into the boat. So they so the animals came by themselves, that's correct, which means God brought the animals to know, which means he wasn't some sort of like, h did you ever like see a dog catcher with a big net on the cartoons? They run around they're trying to what was that crocodile guy? What was that crocodile guy? Uh? Oh, Steve Irwin, Steve Irwin. Yeah, going out there catching catching animals all the day. That's not that's not what Noah was doing. God sent them. Yeah. And and so there's it's interesting that he talked about seven pairs of the ones for sacrifice. So here's what this means. Seven pairs of every bird, every kind of bird, every kind of bird. Yes, and and and anyway, I just wanted to not pass over the fact that for those forty days, Noah still was not what what's the word I'm looking for? He was not exempt from his sacrifice and his worship to godst right. So here he's going through the storm, and yet he continues to worship God. Well, you know that there's a sermon in there somewhere where you know, during the storms in our lives were not exempt from from worshiping God. So Noah's experiencing, quite honestly, the most horrific event physically in human history in terms of you know, weather and and tragedy and destruction and cataclysm, the whole thing, and yet he is still required to worship God and practice sacrifice. And so it's a good reminder for all of us that in the worst times of our lives, when tragedy strikes and when things are hectic around us and there's a storm going on, that you know, one of the best things that we can make a priority for is to continue to lean on and trust in and worship the God of the storm. Yeah, well that's good. Yeah, Well, let's just wrap up right there. That was a great one. Yeah, there you go. Yeah, and then and then it says seven days from now, and then it goes on to say that he was six hundred years old. Well, here's what most scholars believe is that it says before that he was five hundred years old when he had his kids, and then he was given instruction, and so now it says he's six hundred years old, which means that most scholars believe that it took him one hundred years to build this boat. So if it was just him and his family building the boat, that would actually make sense, wouldn't It makes sense to me. Yeah, like we're talking like pulleys and levers. Well, it's all woods. So they got to go do the logging. Yeah, they got to build this structure, support this structure. They got to make the you know, it's not like they had nails and all those kinds of things, so they would have had to make everything that held it all together. They'd have to make the tar, just everything. It would have taken so long. I mean, it's mammothist. What did it say. It's four hundred and fifty feet long, seventy five feet wide, forty five feet high. So for those of us who try to measure something that big, the only thing that we can probably get our minds around is a football field, yeah, which is three hundred feet So it's a football field in the half, Yes, which is pretty crazy. Yes, with the width of a football field, and then three stories high, three stories high, but it's higher than three stories. But there's three levels, right, So a story typically is figured out at ten feet, so this is four and a half stories high, but there's only three levels, so God gave high ceilings in each of those, probably for draft and for you know, breathability, breathability and not to mention, you know, we don't know what it was like birds flying around? Yeah? Right, so yeah, so this idea that you know, let's answer this question. Okay, could all the animals physically? Is it possible for all the kinds of animals to fit in an arc? Yeah? So estimates and this isn't life application study Bible too, but I've read this before. The estimates are that almost forty five thousand animals could fit in the arc comfortably. Right. You'd have to be able to feed them during that time, right, So if you had juvenile animals specifically, you could easily contain forty to fifty thousand animals in there. Then the Bible says it's animals of every kind, which is a differentiation from every species. So you and I, right before this show started, it dawned on me that the Bible keeps talking about kind. But we asked, We asked Chat GPT, how many you know, Well, you asked Siri, didn't you, Sis? Yeah, you asked Siri, I asked Chat GBT, and they said between seven and eight million species are on the planet right, right. But then I was trying to get it to differentiate between because I asked how many kinds of animals around a planet? Right, and chat GBT responded back to me there are eight million species. And I said, well, differentiate between species and kind. And it wanted to give me this technical answer, scientific answer for species, but then said the term kind is unscientific, and I said, clarify it. So then it clarifies kind and gave kind of a scientific answer species being you can have multiple types within a species. You know, one bird has a bigger beak, the other bird has a smaller beak. Those are two different species. They can breed adjusting their right right now. One has you know, brown feathers on the shoulders and others have white feathers on the shoulders, same same kind of bird. It's just two different species. There's subspecies. So when I talked about eight million species, it's talking about all the kinds and then all the subspecies of those kinds. But the reality is, hey, let's go down to dogs. There are lots of species we would call them breeds now, lots of species of dogs, But ultimately it would only take a few maybe some wild African dogs and some wolves could create virtually all of the dogs through inner breeding, right through breeding, through the creating all the species. So the idea of kind in the Bible is those animals that can breed with each other. Dogs and cats can't breed with each other, right, so those would be two different kinds. So I wouldn't need a pug dog and a poodle and a wolf and a rottweiler, And I wouldn't need millions of the subspecies. I would just need the dogs that would be necessary to make all those subspecies. It would be the same thing with birds, it'd be the same thing with right those things. So then it's fewer animals that you would need. You don't need all eight million species on the planet. Or if you go back, then with all of the extinctions, there's probably ten, fifteen to twenty million species on the planet. Yeah, so it says there's six types of animals. This is what which would fall into those kinds, which which fall in those CAUs there's mammals, there's reptiles, amphibians, birds, fish, and insects. Yeah, so the ones that could fly and survive. You know, they could fly above and land on the top of the arc, or maybe they're flying inside the arc. Now keep in mind, the good news is all the fish could live in the sea, right, So no, it didn't have to have any fish in the sea, right, So that's one of the six kinds completely exempt from the arc. About fifty five hundred types of species of mammals is what it says. So it's it's interesting if the arc can hold would you say, forty forty five thousand animals, so that would give you twenty two thousand, five hundred couples. Yes, yes, yeah, so it's it's it is definitely feasible. And I think also I remember this actually as a kid, that actually we had this genesis and this is way before the arc experience, right, those experts. But back then we had this genesis expert and actually he came to answer the question, we're dinosaurs on the arc, and then you know, all these all these different types of things. But because he was a genesis expert, he actually said, not only were all the animals able to fit inside the arc capable of reproducing all the animals that exist today, but actually there's extra room. He said, believe it or not, there's actually extra room, which is crazy. But if you really do the math, that's what you come out with. Well, if you take all the different species, all the different kinds of cows on the planet, and then understand the reality is we only need two cows can make all the rest of those through breeding. Right, you just do that with all the different kind of animals. So you know, I told you I was arguing with chat GPT about this back and forth about kinds, and it didn't want to acknowledge kinds and it wanted to argue species. So then I finally asked, it is it true to say that while there are millions of species, there are only thousands of kinds of animals? And finally I said, yes, that statement can be considered genuinely generally true if kind is interpreted it as a broader careategory than species it is, which is exactly what I was trying to say, and kind then being a more general similarities such as basic morphology, ecological roles, or other broader characteristics, it's plausible to conclude that there are thousands of kinds of as opposed to millions of species, and it reflects a less grand more generalized way of classifying living organisms, which naturally leads to a smaller number of groups or categories. So this is exactly what's happening here. This makes total sense to me, and I believe you know, again, answers and Genesis would say that there was plenty of room on the arc, plenty of room for living space, plenty of room for all of the animals. People would say, well, you know, one barn of animals. It creates a tremendous amount of waste. Sure, but you also had a door, you had windows, right, that would be your whole job is feeding the animals and cleaning the saws for the whole you know year or so that a little longer that you were in the ark. And I think that there was enough food. There was enough space for food. If you look at how huge is this millions of square feet of space right, it's thousands, tens of thousands of square feet of space. Make it very plausible that there was plenty of room for the food, for the living space, and for being able to haul all of these animals a time. So I read this as a totally plausible thing. Again, I believe in a creator, and so I don't think that this is an impossible thing. And then the Bible says that literally the rain came from above and below and below, which we don't really often think about, right, but it said all the waters from the depths of the earth. What does to say exactly says all the underground waters erupted from the earth, right, and the rain fell in a mighty and mighty torrents from the sky. So that's pretty crazy. It came from below and above. Yeah, so estimates show when you melt up polarized caps completely and that there is enough water in the oceans that depending on you know, if there were if you level out some of the depths through earthquakes and cracks and things like that, there's enough water in the oceans to flood all of the land on the planet. So you got to remember, through earthquakes, through tectonic shifts, the trenches get deeper, the mountains get taller, right, that's what's happening. But if you leveled those out a little bit, there's there's enough water to cover the entire planet. And so the Bible talks about it coming from underneath and from above, and when you combine those two pieces, now that's why we have to have the ice caps right, right, it would be because of that, and so it's it's I think very plausible. The math works. So while the Bible is not a science book, I can't find anything that is contrary to a plausible scientific response in the Bible like that. But the world can't find, right, the world can't find if they just have to disagree, but they can't show proof opposite. That's right, because if if it could have been disproven scientifically, like contradictory to science or physics or laws of nature, gravity or impossibilities outside of the miracle, right in the Bible, outside of the miracles, because obviously miracles are miracles, right, But if it could have been disproven, it would have been Why because thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people have you know, spent you know, maybe even up to their very lives trying to disprove the Bible, and none have succeeded, right, which is great. So again, well, it's not a scientific book. I've never found it to be inconsistent with anything it says about science. From the six days of creation in exactly the right order for life to exist on a planet, to even this there. It's plausible that the entire planet could be covered in water. It's not implausible. And then it's amazing. After this flood, life shortens, life longer when all that water was in the atmosphere before, Life less, now shorter. So in every area it makes sense to me. It's not a big leap, especially when you believe that there's a creator. So I think you can look at these these accounts and with confidence go, yeah, I totally believe it. The world will beat down on these stories because they can't disprove them, so they just try to make you feel bad about them, and I'm like, Nope, I wear it like a badge of honor. I totally believe it. So during the one hundred years that Noah built the boat, you would have to assume it doesn't talk about it, but you would have to assume that people would be asking questions, what are you doing, and he's saying, Oh, there's going to be this great rain that comes down now. Some people say this is the first rain mentioned in the Bible. Some people say maybe it was the first rain ever. Maybe there's no ink was said that during the in the garden there was no rain. It literally says that at the beginning not rained yet, rain had not yet come right, and that the water it was watered from the dew. Yeah. Right, So this idea, that's the assumption. If it is a first rain, then I imagine that crazy story, water is going to fall from this side this guy. So Noah doesn't have a single convert. There's not a single family that said, I believe, let me jump into the arc with you. So I mean they believed. I'm sure when it started happening. I can't even imagine that, you know, scenario or scene of people wanting to get into the arc. Let's not even go there with our brains. But the idea, though, is that not a single person, you know, believed enough? Apparently because one hundred years of building an arcs a long time for questions. Yeah. Hebrews eleven says that Noah warned the people there. It is right. I knew there was a no convict clause because it was by faith that Noah built a large boat to save his family from the flood. He obeyed God, who warned him about things that had never happened before. By his faith, Noah condemned the rest of the world, and he received the righteousness that comes by faith. That's the Hall of Faith. Yep, there you go. That's great. Well, hey, that looks like our time, so we will continue this epic flood story next time on the Bible. Guys,