from God to the animals would undoubtedly have made loading much easier and faster.
14 The popular perspective as to when God closed the door and sealed Noah and his family inside the Ark is seven days prior to the beginning of the Flood. However, this “sit-and-wait-a-week” view does not appear to be necessary, based upon the Hebrew text itself (Gen. 7:1–16). See Dr. Steven W. Boyd’s Answers Research Journal article, “The Last Week Before the Flood,” in which he argues that the animals came aboard during the seven days immediately before the Flood began. https://answersingenesis.org/the-flood/last-week-before-the-flood/ This view — where the animals began to come through the door of their own volition (Gen. 7:15) immediately after God’s Genesis 7:1–10 statement, and were all on board by the time He initiated the Flood seven days later , in keeping with both the text and a multi-day “caging/situating” timetable based on about 3,500 pairs of animals. What is clear from Genesis 7:7–10 is that God told Noah that the Flood would come in 7 days, Noah and family went in, the animals came, God closed the door, and the Flood overwhelmed the earth. Consider this estimate of the time required for the animals to enter. If there were roughly 1,400 biblical “kinds” yielding a combined total of 3,500 clean and unclean pairs of animals and an average of one minute between each of 3,500 pairs (3,500 pairs/7,000 animals from 1,400 “kinds” estimated by researchers for Ark Encounter/Answers in Genesis in May 2016), the procession would have required over 58 straight hours (2 days and 10 hours) with no breaks for Noah’s family to eat or sleep. If the animals came in only during 10 hours per day and there was still an average of 60 seconds between animal kinds to situate each pair, the procession would have lasted just under 6 days: 3500 pairs x 1.0 min = 3500 min / 60 min = 58.33 hours / 10 hours per day = 5.83 days. Alternatively, if there were 1,400 kinds with a total of 3,500 pairs and an average of only 10 seconds between each pair, the cavalcade would have lasted less than 10 hours — 3500 x .1666 min = 583 min / 60 min = 9.72 hours.) Regardless, sometime after the last animal pair entered the ark, God closed the door (Gen. 7:16). The eerie and awesome supernatural closing of the large and heavy Ark door may have been soon after the last animal, or it may have occurred sometime on the seventh day (Gen. 7:4 and 7:10). Exactly when the door was closed is not precisely revealed. However, at some point on the seventh day, the Creator and Savior of humanity unleashed all the fountains of the great deep and opened the floodgates of the heavens (Gen. 7:11). The greatest judgment ever to visit planet earth began, and “the world that then existed perished, being flooded with water.” (2 Pet. 3:6; NKJV).
15 Romans 8:29.
16 Genesis 6:20, 7:15–16.
17 Genesis 6:20 — animals will come to you to keep them alive.
18 “Caring for the Animals on the Ark,” by John Woodmorappe, Answers magazine vol 2.2 (published by Answers in Genesis), and online at http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/am/v2/n2/caring-for-the-animals. Many animals have a latent ability to hibernate or for their bodily functions to nearly stop for a time. The Bible does not reference such created capabilities, but if employed by God during the Flood, the daily workload of Noah’s family would have been even less.
19 Genesis 6:3. Also consider that there were other righteous people living during the 120 years leading up to the Flood, at the very least Methuselah and his son Lamech. Lamech died about 5 years prior to the Flood, and his father Methuselah — whose life spanned from about 240 years prior to Adam’s death, to the 600th year of Noah — died the same year as the start of the Flood. Methuselah’s death may have even occurred just prior to the start of the Flood.
20 2 Peter 3:7–13, 17; 1 Thessalonians 5:3.
—6—
THE WHOLE EARTH CHANGES
(c. 2349–2348 B.C.)
When the door closed, everything changed.
Noah and his three sons labored together for decades, and by God’s grace, they and their wives overcame great challenges in building the Ark. Now the ship was finished and loaded.
All four couples waited inside.
Imagine the array of thoughts and emotions that probably struck Noah’s family when, with no human assistance, the Ark’s thick door swung closed.
Outside, men and women may have stood in abrupt silence. Perhaps it was while some were laughing at the bizarre vessel and its eccentric builder that the great door unexpectedly sealed itself shut.
Scoffers are everywhere,1 and some in Noah’s day may even have been close relatives; parents or siblings of Noah’s daughters-in-law, the kindred of his wife, or of Noah himself. Thankfully, God closed the door. Noah did not have to decide when the unbelievers would be locked out forever.
Genesis tells us that Noah walked with God.2 In the Ark after the door closed, he may have been praying with his family as the earth began to quake. Perhaps lightning bolts filled the darkening sky as blasts of thunder announced the impending deluge.
On that day, earth essentially exploded as all the fountains of the great deep burst forth.3 One geophysics study suggests that superheated water and magma from underneath earth’s crust would have caused parts of the ocean to violently flash-boil and blast supersonic jets of steam thousands of feet into the air, then fall in pounding, wind-driven gales.4 We do not know if Noah’s family could hear screams of terror, but the worldwide judgment on man’s wickedness had begun.
Soon the timbers that steadied the Ark for decades began to fall away. Rising water enveloped the globe and released earth’s hold on the solitary wooden sanctuary. Animal sounds echoed throughout the ship and mixed with the words of the eight men and women on board. The creatures rested in safety while Noah’s family cared for them and for one another.
Meanwhile, everyone outside the Ark died and was wiped from the face of the earth.5 Clouds, rain, and volcanic ash darkened the sun. There were 40 days and nights of torrential downpour. As the worldwide cataclysm continued, life went on inside the Ark. But research reveals that far beneath the shoreless ocean, enormous ruptures in earth’s crust ran for thousands of miles. Billions of animals and plants were entombed in sediments that hardened into the rock layers we see all over the world.6
Water continued to flood into the depths, and the sea continued to rise. Earthquakes and fiery, magma-spewing volcanic eruptions ripped apart the original supercontinent, eventually splitting it into several smaller ones.7 Finally, on the 150th day, water covered everything, everywhere.8 The fountains of the great deep stopped and the ocean began to withdraw. It had been five months, and the Ark now came to rest on one of the mountains of Ararat.9
Nothing today is as it was before Noah’s Flood. Now, jigsaw puzzle shapes of distant coastlines remind us of the astounding judgment that transformed our planet.10 Pre-Flood cities, structures, and river channels are no more. Everything, even the place where the Garden of Eden had been, was wiped away11 by the violent waves of erosion and rapid movements of the continents. Only God’s Word adequately explains our planet’s past.
Now
