Flood

The account of Noah and the flood is so familiar that we tend to take it for granted. I often still read it with the same eyes I had as a child.

But the other day I saw this picture, and it got me thinking about the flood. Which was kind of a random connection. But as I saw how high Mount Everest is and the pressure at the bottom of the deepest part we know of the ocean, it amazed me. And I remembered something about the flood. The Bible says that the water came until it rose 20 feet over the tallest mountains, and then stopped. (Which in and of itself is pretty amazing. I'd always kinda thought God just covered up all the places people lived. But he had a clear plan to cover the whole earth, and then stop. 20 feet relative to 30,000 is pretty close.)

Now, we don't know that Everest was the tallest mountain at that point, or that it was the elevation it is now. Same goes for the ocean floor. The earth's topography would have been drastically altered by the flood waters. But for imagination's sake, let's say that Everest was then as it is now.

That means that the deepest part of the ocean (as far as we've measured), was about 70,000 feet under the surface of the water. That's almost double the depth of the ocean now. And when you think about the fact that the atmospheric pressure down there now is 1,100, and how dark it is...think how much pressure it would have been down there with twice as much water on top.

Which also means that the pressure of what we know as sea level would have been the same as the pressure of our ocean floor. And the same darkness. People didn't just drown, their bodies were crushed by the pressure. And think of what that pressure must have done to the earth's form! Fossils of trees have been found vertically buried in the ground, probably pushed down by the pressures of the flood.

The Bible says that water burst out of the earth in addition to the rain. It didn't rain 30,000 feet of water in 40 days. (That would be some heavy rain!) And I once heard a speaker talk about how there's clear evidence of a place (I forget where) where it appears as if water burst forth in massive amounts. And that force is what caused Pangea (the united mass of continents) to split into our 7 continents. And imagine how much the ark would have been rocking on the surface of the water with those kinds of major plate shifts going on! It would have been much worse than the greatest tsunami we know of! That's some scary stuff!

Then it took another 110 days until the waters receded enough for the ark to land on Ararat at an estimated elevation of 15,500. Which means that in 110 days, nearly 15,000 feet of water receded. That's 136 feet a day!

I could go on, but I try not to make my blogs too long. Suffice it to say, when you think beyond the pairs of animals and the quaint picture of giraffes peeking out a porthole, there was some pretty amazing stuff going on below the surface of the water. And that just captivates me. I love seeing the Bible come to life as I see things in a totally different way.