Dear BLOG,
What do you say about the movie we watched yesterday? Was it entertaining or what?!
You ask, 'but is that what really happened then?'
I have to say, it does seem rather far fetched, so lets go check out a historical document of the event.
Lets see: Noah..hmmm, grandson of Methuselah...father of Shem, Ham and Japheth...yep, they got that right. But if we read Genesis 5: 32, the boys may have been triplets. Small differance really.(And Noah was five hundred years old when he became the father of Shem, Ham, and Japheth.[1]) But I wonder, Blog, if this verse is maybe, just a beside-the-point mention about the boys and is more a pointer to the fact that the next series of events - God's decision to wipe out the Earth came about when Noah was 500 years old.
Anyway, there are the next few verses that sums up what happens next:Genesis 6.
5 The LORD saw how great man's wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time.6 The LORD was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain. 7 So the LORD said, "I will wipe mankind, whom I have created, from the face of the earth--men and animals, and creatures that move along the ground, and birds of the air--for I am grieved that I have made them.8 But Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD.
9 This is the account of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked with God.10 Noah had three sons: Shem, Ham and Japheth. 13 So God said to Noah, "I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them. I am surely going to destroy both them and the earth.14 So make yourself an ark of cypress wood; make rooms in it and coat it with pitch inside and out.
Blog, now here is something interesting : 7:6 Noah was six hundred years old when the flood waters came on the earth. 7 And Noah and his sons and his wife and his sons' wives entered the ark to escape the waters of the flood. That's a good hundred years later! Obviously 1 old man and 3 younger men (with their wives) cannot build such a huge craft in a day, a week, nor even a month. Werent thier neighbours curious?
So here I see God giving everyone who cared to ask, a chance to escape the flood by changing their ways and putting their faith in God...No, Blog, I don't think God was an alien to them, nor did they have a hundred different representations of Him. After all, they were direct descendants of Adam and just 10 generations apart. With most of them living for 900 years each to see their great grandchildren and more maybe, and God still speaking to men directly, they couldnt have been ignorant of Him.
Lets move on: Noah obeys, enters, and God said: 7:4 Seven days from now I will send rain on the earth for forty days and forty nights" Now, that's Faith for you. In vs 16, you can see it says,16 The animals going in were male and female of every living thing, as God had commanded Noah. Then the LORD shut him in. And I guess that must be true, since the door had to be pretty big, too big for Noah to close on his own. Anyway, I can see his neighbours who till then had thought him and family 'strange' and had ignored his building works, now would probably be curious. Word spread like wild fire - "The Crazy guy's got locked in!" They might have knocked, then shouted, then as neither side could open the door, decided to leave Noah and his family be, or maybe they taunted him...7 Days later,...10 And after the seven days the floodwaters came on the earth.11 In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, on the seventeenth day of the second month--on that day all the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened.12 And rain fell on the earth forty days and forty nights.
Now Blog, we know with God in action, we dont doubt that it rained for 40 days and 40 nights, but ever wonder where all that water came from? Lets do a flash back to creation of the world:
genesis 1: 6 And God said, "Let there be an expanse between the waters to separate water from water." 7 So God made the expanse and separated the water under the expanse from the water above it. And it was so. There was a ceiling of water above! So the humidity on the surface of the planet was high, high enough to cause a heavy dew: Genesis 2:5 And every
6 But there went up a
Yes! You got it,Blog! Noah's neighbours did not believe him that it would rain, cos they..had...NOT...seen...rain! They could not believe that water would fall from the sky! Bbut neither had Noah, nor his family.
Yes, that is faith, Blog...Hope in things unseen.
Then the rest of it we know, the floods rose, it rained for 40 days and 40 nights, and Genesis 7: 24, The waters flooded the earth for a hundred and fifty days. Genesis 8:3 The water receded steadily from the earth. At the end of the hundred and fifty days the water had gone down, 4 and on the seventeenth day of the seventh month the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat.5 The waters continued to recede until the tenth month, and on the first day of the tenth month the tops of the mountains became visible.6 After forty days Noah opened the window he had made in the ark. 7and sent out a raven, and it kept flying back and forth until the water had dried up from the earth. 13 By the first day of the first month of Noah's six hundred and first year, the water had dried up from the earth. Noah then removed the covering from the ark and saw that the surface of the ground was dry.14 By the twenty-seventh day of the second month the earth was completely dry.
So that means, Noah was in the Ark was 1 year and 2 months!
So Blog, that is the truth behind Noah and his ark...Rock monsters? Ahh, that is a tale for another day...
