The Great Flood: A Tale of Judgment and Mercy

Show Notes

Episode 423: 
Join us in this enlightening episode of The Bible Guys as we continue our journey through the milestones of the Old Testament. In today's episode, we delve into the story of Noah, exploring the fascinating details of his life, the Ark, and the great flood. We discuss the longevity of early humans, the scientific and theological perspectives on why people lived for so long, and how these stories align with other ancient texts.

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You're listening to the Bible Guys, a podcast where a couple of friends talk about the Bible in fun in practical ways. Hey, we are here, and it is the third podcast recording for us and the third day of the week, right, and we are in a series where we're doing highlights of the Old Testament. The milestones. Were really gonna get that, right, the milestones of the Old Testament. Maybe that's it. Okay, I like milestone, milestones, mile markers. I like highlights, all right, whatever, milestones of the Old Testament. We're going to get it. I just I feel like there's only about two hundred more stories, so we're gonna have to figure it out between now and then. Yeah, I understand. So we are in Genesis chapter number six. Now, by the way, if you listened yesterday, we sort of ended with the murder of the First righteous Man, actually the first murder and all the Bible able and then we're sort of skipping over chapters four and five, which really just talk about the descendants of Cain. You know, he had Enoch and then and then you know, then there's so long lives, Yes, they have long lives. They give birth to south Adam and Eve have another so able or Kine now has another brother. And then there's some sort of lineage that gives, you know, from Adam all the way to Noah, because we are about to enter into the flood, that's right, which is a pretty massive event for humanity. And they lived very, very long lives. In chapter eight it says that Adam was one hundred and thirty years old when kin was born, right, and he died at nine hundred and thirty years old, right, And there's and there's the part that we said we were going to get to. Yeah, yeah, Then it talks about how you can go on down. All these other guys lived, you know, nine hundred years. It finally gets to Methuselah, and Methuselah was nine hundred and sixty nine years old, and then by the time Noah was five hundred years old, he was the father of Sham sham Ham and Jayfith. And then the story of Noah picks up right where Noah's about six hundred years old at this point, so they were just a young boys just getting into that's right. Right, he's middle aged at this point, that's where he's at. He's just starting the back nine. Yeah, that's right, the back nine hundred and so they lived a very long time. Yes, there's some interesting which can we just acknowledge how crazy that is for people who doubt the Bible and people who have a hard time swallowing that. Sure, Uh, it is pretty crazy to imagine humanity living that long. We're so fragile anyway, right, Yeah, Well we know some of the things, so we know that the body seems to be a perpetual living machine. And then something starts to happen where we suddenly start aging. So it's you're not aging. You're not aging, you're not aging, You're you're developing, developing, developing, developing. Then a switch flips in us, Well you're always aging, yeah, but you're not dying, which is very interesting. Rights our physical body remakes itself. The cells regenerate, they clean themselves, they realign their information, they do all the things, and the body seems to be this perfect machine for staying alive. And then suddenly something happens as we hit our prime, where all of a sudden we shift into a mode from that point on where our cells are not as efficient at cleaning, not as efficient at regenerating, not as efficient, and then eventually we age that seems to be aging, and then we die. So there's several things we know. Our environment has that impact on us. We know our food and what we take into us, our water and fluids that that has, and then the sun has a lot to do. We can't live without the sun, but the sun kills us too. So there's a lot of interesting things. I would say, if you really want to dig into why did lives last so long, then I think that there's a very viable argument, scientific argument for why answers in Genesis gives they're also the ones responsible for the arc encounter down in Kentucky, but they give a great model. One of those is because of the story of Noah. So the Bible says that a rain for forty days and forty nights and NonStop in order to cover the entire planet with water, that kind of water vapor environment around our planet would have radically cut down in the amount of UV without cutting down on the light right, and the UV is what kills us from the sun. It's one of the things that just destroys ourselves. And so what they're saying is, hey, you would have had a much higher constant concentration of oxygen. You would have had almost perfect temperature on the planet. You would have had almost perfect food and water at that point because the world hadn't been polluted, and you would have had almost no negative UV, only the positive aspects of light, producing vitamin D and all those things in your body, And so it's not unreasonable. Then the animals would live much longer, get much bigger, trees would get much bigger, the leaves would be much larger, and humans would live much longer. All those things to me seem like the perfect environment for longer life. And I think if we could reproduce that today on Earth, I think you would see that. We do know that we can make plants bigger and animals bigger if we put them in perfect environments like that. So that may have been it, I think if you want to dig into a little bit more answers, and Genesis has a really interesting model that you can find on that. So anyways, here we go. Now we're going to pick up in Genesis chapter six, and it tells the story the begin of the story of Noah. Everything goes wrong at this point. It says, then the people began to multiply on the earth, and daughters were born to them. And the sons of God saw the beautiful women and took them, took any they wanted as their wives. And then the Lord said, my spirit will not put up with humans for such a long time, for they are only mortal flesh. In the future, their normal life span will be no more than one hundred and twenty years. In those days and for some time after, giant Nephthelites lived on the earth, for whenever the sons of God had intercourse with women, they gave birth to children who became the heroes and famous warriors of ancient times. The Lord observed the extent of human wickedness on the earth, and he saw that everything they thought or imagine was consistently and totally evil. So the Lord was sorry he had ever made them and put them on the earth. It broke his heart, and the Lord said, I will wipe this human race I have created from the face of the earth. Yes, and I will destroy every living thing, all the people, the large animals, the small animals that scurry along the ground, and even the birds the sky. I'm sorry I ever made them. Noah found favor with the Lord this is the count of Noah his family. Noah was a righteous man, the only blameless person living on the earth at the time, and he walked in close fellowship with God. Noah was a father of three sons, shem Ham and Jayfith. Now God saw that the earth had become corrupt and was filled with violence. And God observed all this corruption in the world, for everyone on earth was corrupt. So God said the Noah, I've decided to destroy all living creatures, for they filled the earth with violence. Yes, I will wipe them all out along the earth. So build a large boat from cypress wood. Waterproof it with tar inside and out, and construct decks and stalls throughout his interior. Make the boat four hundred and fifty feet long, seventy five feet wide, and forty five feet high. Leave an eighteen inch opening below the roof all the way around the boat. Put the door on the inside on the side, and build three decks inside the boat, lower, middle, and upper. Look, I'm about to cover the earth with a flood that will destroy every living thing that breathes. Everything on earth will die, but I will confirm my covenant with you. So enter the boat. You and your wife and your sons and their wives, and bring apa hair of every kind of animal, a male and a female into the boat with you to keep them alive during the flood. Pairs of every kind of bird, and every kind of animal, and every kind of small animal that scurries along the ground will come to you to be kept alive. Sure to take on board enough food for your family and for all the animals. So Noah did everything exactly as God had commanded him. Well there you go. Wow, And you know again, I'm a movie guy, so my my brain goes to, uh, what is it movies? No, no, hang on, we're Morgan Freeman played God. It was the first one was Jim Carrey. The second one was Steve Carrell. Oh my goodness, what is it? Oh? I forgot Bruce. Almighty Almighty was the Noah one. Yeah, that's right. And then but I remember Morgan Freeman playing God and he said, you know, he said, because it was about the arc. And he said, you know, most people think that the arc is a story of God's wrath. And then and then the lady says, well, what do you think it is? And he goes, I think it's a story of love. He says, you know, he says he brought the animals two by two. I thought to myself, I was like, holy cow, that is an interesting little because you know, when my son was born, we decorated his entire nursery and uh, Noah's art even the border on the wall, the wallpaper. Yeah, one of our kids was Noa's art, was it? And that we did the whole thing. Those aret and you know it's so cute because the animals are there two by two. You know, but this picture here is crazy because we do see God's love because he says his heart broke. Yeah, he was so sad. He was so sad he because of his love for humanity. Yeah, well, if we make it all about us, it's pretty horrible. Yeah, if we make it about God, this is how devastated God was. Oh you know what, that's a really good that. Yeah, that's a really good perspective right there. So yeah, so it's it's pretty devastating when when it's all about God, because the creator was heartbroken and said, I'm sorry I ever made them. How sad do you have to be to say that? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, you know, everything I'd hoped and planned their ruining. They're destroying it all, and it's because of sin. At this point, it said all they ever thought about and imagined was completely and consistently and totally evil. Yeah, right, consistently and totally evil, totally that's all they imagine was just evil at that point. Hey, I don't think we're far from that now, right right. But this is what God had said was, oh, my goodness, it's just in just a few thousand years, it has gone completely insane on this planet. And so they God said, it broke his heart. And then let's not glance over the fact that he says, my spirit, when I put up with humans for such a long time for their only mortal flesh. In the future, holy cow, in the future, the normal life span will be no more than one hundred and twenty years after the flood. After the flood, so when that canopy fell, yes, we lost, we lost a lot of the protection from the sun. So what is the oldest person ever recorded? The longest documented and verified human lifespan is that of Gene Common of France eighteen seventy five to nineteen ninety seven, a woman who lived to age one hundred twenty two years and one hundred and sixty four days. This is from Wikipedia, So one hundred and twenty two and a half. Yeah, there you go, all right, which is there was a guy who died just four weeks ago. He's one hundred and fourteen. Yeah, so right on the money, isn't it. So God says no more than one hundred and twenty years. Obviously she scooted under the two years one hundred and sixty six days, right, but yet, yeah, that's what God says. And so it's so crazy how these writings. So think about this, So this this was found a long time ago. Uh and well I guess by then humanity was only living that that long too, right, because this wasn't this was Yeah, so when Moses wrote it, yeah, they were bumping one hundred and ten. I think that's moses age, right something like that. Yeah. Well anyway, all that's pretty crazy. So yeah, just that that idea to me just blows my mind. I can't even imagine it, honestly, I really can't. Now we can't overlook the fact that this story, this flood story, shows up in other places, not just in the Bible. Uh, there are Sumerian I think it's in your in your in your Bible too, But there are Sumerian writings. There's the epic of Gilgamesh, right, there's an Akkadian story called Atrahasis Epic, and all of them are talk about the same. The Babylonian, Sumerian that kind of thing right there around Mesopotamia has stories very similar to this story. Sorry, the gods decide they're going to destroy the planet because of evil. They're going to flood it. They tell in this instance Gilgamesher. They tell the other guy, hey build a boat, save the animals, right, very very similar. So archaeologists would say when multiple cultures have the same legend, it's probably rooted in some kind of truth. Right, every culture on the planet, almost every every native culture on the planet has had dragon stories. The British did, the Germans did, the Russians did, but so did the Chinese, so did the South Americans, separated by oceans, right, have these stories of dragons. Probably there's some kind of truth A dinosaur, a flying reptile, something on that on that grand scale. That way, because it's all the cultures developed the same story independent of each other, right, And so a lot of times legends point to a core truth, maybe not the truth but a core truth, and the core truth is all of the cultures back then, in the ancient cultures seemed to point to in Mesopotamia, seemed to point to a cataclysmic flood that was caused by God and that one person and his family were the survivors. And of course that would have been known from the descendants of humanity, right because after the flood, Noah repopulates the earth, or I should say God allows Noah to repopulate the earth. So legends of these epic stories. Can you imagine having that story? I mean, my Lizza's grandmother used to tell us stories about the Great Depression and we would sit around and all of our kids would say, tell us, Grandma, what was it like about during the Great Depression and she and she said, well, one Christmas, we got an orange in our stocking and that was it, just one orange, you know, it was like what you know, and that was really her big treat. That was her story. And but can you imagine that story? So tell us, grandpa, what was it like to be the only family surviving with a bunch of animals and and uh, and listen, we haven't gotten to the actual flood yet, so we'll save that for tomorrow. But but you know this idea that you know, the idea that God had. Uh here, So here's the plan. We're going to build a boat and it's going to be this big and uh And by the way, that arc experience in Lexington that you referenced earlier, I was down there and I didn't get a chance to see it. I literally drove right by it, and I'm so angry I didn't get a chance to see it. So we'll have to go down there one day and just experience it. But but I've been told that the dimensions of this arc are you know, almost divinely brilliant, where it's it's exactly the right size that would have been needed. And people say, well what about you know, how could the elephants get in there? Well guess what they could have been baby elephants. Yeah, right, well, yeah, that's the answer with all of the big animals. Even if let's say, you know, you want to get really really technical, if you believe in a biblical creation, then the dinosaurs and humans would have been on the same planet at the same time. Yeah, maybe that's where the dragon legends came from. Yeah, but how do you get a dinosaur on the on the arc, well, babies would be the way to do that, right, and very small. Same thing with rhinoceroses. I was surprised. We were in East Africa one time, we were on a safari and we come around the corner and there were three huge, huge, like the size of our truck, or bigger, bigger than the size of our truck, rhinoceroses. And so I was just riveted by it. And then all of a sudden, a little baby steps out from around and it was only about two and a half feet tall, looked like it looked like I might have been able to pick it up. I bet it didn't weigh more than one hundred pounds. It's mom standing there probably weighed four tons, right, three tons, She was huge. But this little baby comes around the corner and looked not much bigger than like a great dane. And I'm like, okay, that's how you do it, right, right. You don't go get the five ton animal, you go get the one hundred and fifty pounds baby, right, that's what you do. And I let us down that trail. That's that's for not I love that though, that's for tomorrow. Yeah, well he told him go get animals. And so if you're wondering, how did he get the animals right? Right? Right? And they'll come too by two and God it says God brought the animals right, that's right. But as we were talking about, God is saying that he's going to destroy the earth, but Noah found favor. Think about this, I wonder what the Earth's population was at that time, like how many people would have been on the face of the earth. And it says Noah was the only human who was living blameless, right he was. He was the one with the pure heart. It wasn't as if he was perfect. They didn't say that, right, blameless meaning his heart posture was one who loved God and obviously followed him and was not being corrupted with things that were, like God said, totally and completely evil. Yeah. So yeah, here's one thing we blew over was the Nephtalites. By the way, yes, we didn't even cover that. Yeah, do you want to take a few minutes there In those days and for some time after, the giant Nephtalites lived on the earth. For whenever the sons of God capital g had intercourse with women, they gave birth to children who became the heroes and famous warriors of the ancient times. Yeah, so some people would say, Hey, these sons of God are angels coming down and having relations with human women, and that's where these giants came from. It's unlikely because Jesus talks about how the fact that angels are not don't are not married or given in marriage, right, So it seems to imply that they're non, non reproductive creatures. So I think that's unlikely, but it's probably more likely that it's Seth's line, who is a godly line, blending with Cain's line for some reason. But coming out of that, Hey, there's some big people, right, and we know that by the time you get to Goliath's age and in david Is or a thousand years later, you still have people that are almost ten feet tall, right, not all of them, but some there are some and you might go, oh, that's kind of weird. But hey, I don't know if you knew this. There's people tribes in Sudan and a couple other places where the average height of the men is almost seven feet tall. Average height is almost seven feet tall. Right, So even today we have when the average height the humans on the planet is like five six or something like that. Right, there are tribes that are almost seven feet tall. The women are over six feet tall. So if that's a fact, then it's not surprising to me that there would be some genetic anomaly that would create entire tribes of people. Sure, we know it's possible because there was the tallest man on Earth was almost as tall as Goliath. Yeah, well the tallest guy in the Guinness Book World records to me, because Goliath would have been taller than that guy, right right, right, right, yeah, but I mean on the yeah, yeah, but in modern times, so it was his name. I forgot his name, but Guinness brook will a record. This is this is why I love this. Yeah, who is the tallest man ever recorded in history? Oh, I didn't do it. It has to think about it. Who is the tallest man on Earth? Robert Pershing Wadlow. The tallest man was eight feet and eleven inches in height. So his answer is from Wikipedia, thank you. Yeah, and he lived in the He lived in the twentieth century, right, which is me which he was only ten inches shorter than Goliath, right right, He's nine feet tall. Right, eight feet eleven inches tall. Right, literally he could so Jack Hyles knew him by the way, and yeah, and he could reach up and his elbow would be above almost above the rim on a basketball hoop. That's what Tolly was thinking about. That He's nine feet tall, his elbow go a foot over his head, and he could reach above the rim stand a flat footed. So the fact that this existed, it doesn't surprise me at all. It's not a weird thing. And it didn't mean that it had to be angels that was breeding with women on that's right, that's right, because the sons of God were you know, Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel and Seth were a godly line from Seth was following God. Cain was not right, and that then you'd have good people and bad people, right, And that's what came out of that. So that's what I believe. Now we'll get people who will want to write about that because there's really it's fun to be a conspiracy theorist and go, oh no, this was angels and they were breeding with people and this is a whole new race of humanity and all that kind of stuff. I don't know that I think that's true. But I would say, so there's that element. There's also this design for the boat you referenced it earlier. It's exactly the right form The notes here in the Life Application Study Bible talk about how it was exactly six times longer than it was wide, which is the same ratio used by modern shipbuilders today. Wow. Right, So if you're going to be build an aircraft carrier, if you're going to build a cargo ship, if you're going to build an arc, you use the same formula. And here it is thousands of years before anything was ever built that big, and it's exactly the right right size. And then he built it with exactly the right you know, having the windows be all around the top at that top piece would pull all of the It created draft for the sake of getting air all through everything. It's just it was perfect. It was a perfect design for what humanity could do with their technology at that time. Yeah, and think about how far we've come in technology and studies and things like this, and nobody is like, to your point, we still haven't come up with anything better. Yeah, right, which is crazy. Yeah. Yeah, So let me finish with this. I was talking to a guy one time on a plane and he goes, he knew I was a Christian, and so he said, hey, so I struggle with this. Do you really believe in a flood? You see? Because the reason why I can't believe in the Bible, the reason why I can't believe God is because I don't believe in Noah. And he said, I have a it's impossible for me to believe. And there's I saw comedian recently do something along these lines too. It's impossible for me to believe that some old guy builds a big boat, two animals of every kind, and God floods the entire planet. I just can't wrap my head around that. I can't believe that. I said, so, you know we're talking about You're asking a guy who also believes a creator created everything. Right, This isn't hard for me to believe if I believe that a creator created everything. And he goes, well, I can't believe that either. I said, yeah, because it's so much easier to believe that everything came from nothing, right, And he started laughing and he goes, well, I don't know. And I said, so you understand it takes faith. It takes faith. But I'm not going to let you come and go, Oh, it's silly for you to have faith in this when you are the guy who's claiming that everything, not just on this planet, but in the entire universe came from nothing. Right, And he sat there for a man and I said, I have this little poem. I like the quote. Sometimes it says I was a tadpole when I began to begin, and then I was a toad with my tail tucked in. Next I was a monkey swinging from a tree, and now I'm a professor with a PhD. I said. He started laughing. I said, so, really, you know what you believe. What you're saying you believe is everything came from nothing, and now you're intelligent enough to even contemplate that concept as opposed to I believe an intelligence created it all and made me intelligent on purpose. And now I'm able to sit here and have an intelligent conversation with you while you reject that intelligence. That's what I believe. I said, that seems more reasonable to me than yours, and he goes, well, when you put it that way, right, So sometimes people will use the story of Noah to try to embarrass you as a Christian, and I would say it's not unreasonable if you believe in a creator, right, it's not. And it literally says the creator's heart was broken and he decided to hit the reset button, but his love and his grace was I'm going to preserve humanity in and through Noah. Yeah. Well, that is a great place to end, and we would pick up for the rest of the story tomorrow on the Bible. Guys,