Encountering Noah's Ark (Part One): Digging for Truth Episode 95

hi welcome to digging for truth I'm your co-host Henry Smith Noah's Ark for many people even many professing Christians the account of Noah the Ark and the flood found in the book of Genesis is a mythical story or a story perhaps intended to tell some set of truths but the events themselves never really occurred as the Bible describes or perhaps as a depiction of a localized flood event or it's a story borrowed from ancient Near Eastern mythology or well you get the idea I think here at the Ministry of ABR we've maintained historically that these events recorded in Genesis 6 through 9 are actual events that occurred in history in real space and time now there are many objections against that perspective and that some of those objections center around the ark itself what size was it had it know if it the animals on the ark how did a people care for the animals what about kangaroos from Australia and so on well to help us unpack these questions to answer these questions and to navigate through them today I have a special guest joining us Tim Chaffee from Answers in Genesis he's joining us from the Cincinnati area Tim is the content manager of the Ark Encounter in Williamstown Kentucky and visitors can go there and actually explore and visit a life-sized replica of Noah's Ark and so Tim we welcome you to back to digging for truth thanks for being with us Henry thanks so much it's great to be with you yeah it's just a what a great time to be alive isn't it yeah it is is the Lord is good we've we're coming out of the cove at 19 crisis and we're thankful to God that we're here and we'll be talking about the Ark Encounter and sort of that it's reopened now and that's and that's going to be great but before we get to that let's just talk briefly about what you do let's set the stage for our audience the Ark Encounter and what you do there it Answers in Genesis maybe you give a quick blurb on that yeah you mentioned that I'm the Content Manager and that's for the attractions division of Answers in Genesis about the the Korea Museum and the Ark Encounter so I'm responsible for developing the content that people will will engage with as they go through the exhibits at both places so that can be the the writing for the signage that can be the maybe the audio or video scripts that they might see in some of the things and it's not like a one-man team I've got an assistant who is really an expert on the animals and so I got to give him all of the everything having to do with the animal let him focus on that and I focused on just about everything else related to the ark and then we rely on our team of experts you know when it came to geology I'm not a geologist at all and I don't play one on TV to me when I look at all the rock layers they're rocks I couldn't tell you the difference between a whole bunch of them yes but we have a geologist on staff and I was able to consult with him and the same thing in other areas as well you know that are outside of my area of expertise I got to consult with them and everything got reviewed by experts as well so we're making sure that we're teaching God's Word accurately faithfully and also teaching the science and history accurately as well well it's actually we want to encourage will be putting information on the on the screen for folks to encourage them to visit the Ark Encounter my family and I did a couple years ago and it was an excellent experience you could see the work that Tim and his staff and his colleagues have put into it now Tim before we go to the ark we do need to lay a little bit of foundational discussion about the the narrative itself the flood narrative because we want to talk about because that's our foundation it's the Word of God and why would we believe for example why it's a global global flood so let's just talk about some of the features in the narrative maybe you could start with a few key things about the the flood narrative that point to that conclusion yeah I think when you begin in Genesis chapter 6 God started telling us how wicked that world is and it gets to the point where you know the whole world is filled with violence through them that the thought every intent of the thoughts of man's heart was only evil continually and there's just this overwhelming sense of how wicked the whole world is other than Noah who found grace in the eyes of the Lord and it gets to the point where God was grieved that he had made man he's gonna destroy them or wipe them off the face of the earth and so when you start reading the flood account 13 times and account you read that all flesh was destroyed so I used that phrase all flesh thirteen times all in whose nostrils was the breath of life every creature on the land died over and over again you see this that is emphasized that it was all flesh well I don't think that there's any hermeneutical justification to say well I think when he's stressing all so many times it means really just the stuff in that region which is the alternative view you know people will say well it was just describing a regional flood or a local flood and it was still devastating but there's so many problems with that because as you you look at what Elsa talked about uh says all the high hills under the whole heaven were covered as the waters kept rising and rising well once all the high hills are covered under the whole of heaven there's nothing to hold the water back meaning it's going to just continue to spread around the globe you have the the animal that were brought on board the ark if if it's just a regional flood don't you think the animals could have just moved out of the area and would even have to bother to bring them along that's particularly true about the flying creatures the Bible very clear Noah had to bring the flying creatures and yet if it's a local flood they can't they could just fly out of there there's no point in bringing the flying creatures and yet it's very clear he had to bring seven or seven pairs of each of the flying creatures which I think we'll talk about that in a little bit as well there is the New Testament tells us that only eight people survived the flood which is exactly what Genesis tells us Noah and his wife there are three sons and their sons wives Jesus compared the the judgment and his return to the judgment of the flood so if the flood judgment was just a regional or local judgment maybe that's what Jesus has in mind when he comes back maybe it's just gonna be a local judgment as well I think to me one of the most important reasons to understand that it was a worldwide flood is the rainbow you know God puts this in the sky and said this is a symbol of my promise my covenant with you that I will never again and he says it three times and there never again never again never again destroy the earth with a flood like this well if that was a local flood or a regional flood that every single time we see a rainbow every single and they're the local or regional flood today God lied and yet the Bible is very clear that that's impossible God you know yeah yeah that's good that's a good survey a Tim of those features in the text and you know you're really I feeI I've always felt all along and since the days of my when I was first concert' converted in my late 20s when you read that narrative the force of it just comes upon you have to make a decision as to whether or not you're gonna believe what the text says and then the affirmation like you said of the New Testament authors as well second second Peter is another example maybe you could talk about that briefly yeah and second Peter in chapter 3 Peter is talking about Christ's return and he's talking about how there's gonna you know they're gonna be scoffers in those days and they're gonna they're gonna hold this philosophy to all things continue as they were since the beginning and they're they're gonna mock the idea that Christ will return and Peter says that they deliberately overlooked this fact that the heavens existed long ago and the earth was formed out of water and through water by the Word of God and then he says and by means of these the world that then existed was deluged with water and perished that world died it's not talking about just a region of the world listed Peters talking about that whole the globe itself the whole entire world perish that an original creative world perished in the flood and then it's gonna happen again there's a coming judgment this time it's by fire in the beginning in the flood Noah's Flood God provided a means a physical safety in the ark for Noah and his family though they weren't saved eternally because they walked in the door of the ark but they were spared from the physical consequences of the flood and that's a great picture of the of what Christ had done for us and that is through this coming judgment that there's going to be by fire at the time God has provided a means of eternal salvation through His Son Jesus Christ yeah that's a perfect way to end our segment eight saved from the flood millions and millions saved through Christ and that's that's a picture of God's grace friends thank you for joining us today for digging for truth we'll be right back after this message in a culture of intense Bible denying skepticism associates for Biblical research exists to strengthen followers of Jesus by affirming the authority of the Bible our archaeological fieldwork and original research form a strong foundation in upholding the reliability of the Scriptures for students or anyone asking if they can really trust the Bible please visit our website and partner with us by joining our prayer team or financially supporting this ministry and thank you for standing with us [Music] hi welcome back to digging for truth I'm your co-host Henry Smith I'm here today with Tim Chaffee from Answers in Genesis and the Ark Encounter we're talking about Noah's Ark we're talking about the flood in the days of Noah now Tim we laid the foundation a little bit you know just briefly obviously we couldn't give a full defense of why the flood was universal let's let's move the discussion down to the ark itself I guess the thing to start with is how big was it yeah well I think that's a great segue because that's another argument for the fact that this is a worldwide flood if it was just a little tiny vessel which is all you would need if it was just a regional flood you just need a boat that's big enough for your family and maybe a few animals because most animals could get out of the region yet the Bible is very clear on how big the ark was it was 300 cubits long it was 50 cubits wide and 30 cubits tall while the cubit is this measurement from your elbow to the tip of your finger and we don't know exactly which cubit Noah would have used you know people will say well the common cube was 18 inches there seventeen and a half inches but the truth is there are a whole bunch of different measurements for the cubit throughout the ancient Near East and all of those are coming from a time much later than Noah so we had to figure out which one are we going to use and so what we did if you look at in Jerusalem Hezekiah Tunnel is built on a seventeen and a half inch cubed and so that's one of the shorter cubits within the ancient Near East so we took that cubed and then because so many ancient building projects were built on what's called a long cubit or a royal cubit where you're adding the width of four fingers to it we took one of the sorest of the regular cubits and then added to point nine inches to it we have a twenty point four inch long cubit which every one of the sorts of the long cubits that that makes sense yeah so that gives that means the Ark Encounter that we have down in Williamstown Kentucky is five hundred and ten feet long and 85 feet wide and fifty-one feet tall and of course it's sitting up on top of some pillars as well and then it's got the bow fin so the very top of that structure that you see is overall just over 100 feet tall so we're talking let's just talk about the length for a little bit so 500 feet for football fans out there we're talking about this is about one and two thirds football field in length almost right yeah I mean right yeah you're from the you're from Pennsylvania your your listeners will get that your viewers but I'm in the Cincinnati area they don't have any idea what a football field is but I grew up in Green Bay so I know what it is that's great a little for our fans out there but everybody knows what 500 feet is this is no you know life raft with a few animals on it we're talking about a massive structure that Noah had to build so so I guess the natural question would be was Noah and his sons and probably people they hired presumably to build the ark that they have the ability to construct a watercraft of this size yeah it's a great question and I think for you and me as Christians who believe that the Bible is inspired inerrant and authoritative well it tells us he did so we have complete confidence that he did but what happened so often is that we tend to look at that world through if I can say an evolution eyes blends you know the way that people have been taught history for the last 150 to 200 years is that ancient man was primitive and we're just getting better and better and better but what's really happening and what we miss because a lot of times we don't account for the flood and we don't account for another event that occurred within a few generations of that which the babel event you actually had a couple of what what I call technological resets so from the time of Babel whatever people understood at that time you're getting at least 70 different people groups that are splitting up and going off to different areas if I was part of that I'm probably gonna starve nobody gonna be hiring a writer at that point because you've got to be able to either grow food or hunt food or catch it you know fishing that kind of thing you gotta be able to build shelter yeah I'm not good at those things so I would have been in trouble but you you almost lose whatever technology was built up to that point and then with the the time of the flood you're looking at in Noah's time period the the highest most likely the highest technological level that they were able to achieve by that point because you've got at least 1,600 years of history up until that point right and how many things that they have learned how to do during that time and you know God tell them here's the dimensions you know here's the size of it and you give them a few instructions our approach to this was if the Bible doesn't tell us that something was done miraculously you know God did everything for him or gave him the whole blueprint you know then just assume that God prepared Noah with the ability the skills to do what he had to do and that's what we see in our own lives you know when God calls us to do something a lot of times he'd been equipping us for that task for years and years and years where we ever even know it yeah Paul would be another New Testament analogy his knowledge of the Old Testament Scriptures and his being trained as a Pharisee and all that was a preparation that God used when he converted him to bring the gospel to the world you know it's interesting because what you're talking about it really here especially when we get back into the early chapters of Genesis our paradigm conflicts they grow so somebody looks at did Noah's Ark can they go well people couldn't build about boat back then end of story but we're saying that not just the story is correct but the whole paradigm is different yeah that's exactly right in just a types I've touched on that issue of God preparing us I mean the same thing was true with me for four decades now I've been fascinated by the pre-flood world and reading is much like Han on that and studying it I had no idea that I was going to be the person writing all the signs in the Ark Encounter but yeah you know who did the Lord daily Lord did you know he was using those things to prepare me to do what I've got to do and it I love it it's great to be a part of it but yeah you're right it's a completely different paradigm when you're looking at starting from God's Word where you have God making Adam and Eve in the beginning and Adam lived in 930 years how much do you think how much knowledge do you think you could accumulate during that time and you know his mind probably operated a lot better than ours does you know we've got we're suffering from thousands of years worth worth of the of of sin and we don't live as long anymore we only live you know maybe a 9th or 10th of what they did yes yeah it's it's just a it's a completely different way of looking at if we start from Scripture rather than trying to apply our world on top of it these think it does make perfect sense what it's telling us and what in what I was getting it with that technological reset at the time of the flood the only technology that survived is whatever was in the ark at that point yes and if you had other people who were working on it that we're helping out with some of the technical details well those are lost too if it wasn't something that Noah and his family brought with them and so then they're gonna have to start over so even if they had you know different guilds for working with metals there all sorts of other things in the pre-flood world that all starts over after the flood you got to find the metals in the ground and so it's gonna take a while for for civilization to restart yeah and then it that makes it arced over again at Babel yeah yes makes a great deal of sense again but it's a different paradigm we want people to think about it about it that way okay folks don't go away we're gonna be right back with Tim Chaffee we're talking about Noah's Ark Bible and spade is a non-technical quarterly publication published by the associates for biblical research written from a scholarly and conservative viewpoint Bible and spade supports the inerrancy of the biblical record and as it must read for both the serious Bible student and anyone asking if they can really trust the Bible archaeological evidence properly interpreted upholding the history of the Bible subscribe today at Bible archaeology org [Music] hi welcome back to digging for truth I'm your co-host Henry Smith and I'm here with Tim Chaffee from Answers in Genesis we're talking about the Ark Encounter and the descriptions of the Ark found in Genesis chapters 6 through 9 now Tim we talked about the size of the Ark in our last segment paradigms thinking about paradigms worldview paradigms historical paradigms let's go go down a dig down a little bit further let's talk about the animals I guess the first question we get to start with is how did Noah catch the animals what is the text of scriptures say about that yeah you know the skeptics loved that question you know they joke about it do you really think that Noah went all over the world and found all these animals what if he forgot some you know and you get those kind of questions and I always whenever I talk about the subsequent with fellow believers I encourage them rather than just taking the skeptics word for it go back to scripture what does the Bible tell us about this there's no I have to look for the animals well in Genesis 620 the Bible clubs he didn't have to because God says of the birds after their kind of animals after their kind two of every kind of will come to you so the answer is right there God sent the animals to Noah he didn't have to go around looking for them yes and and so that brings in another big paradigm question now we didn't plan on talking about this but it's a natural segue they got there now the world as it exists now you've got Australia you've got Antarctica how did they get there but that's a paradigm question isn't it go ahead with that yeah it really is because in Genesis 1 when God creates everything in six days that tells us that all the waters were gathered together in one place which seems to imply that all of the land would have been together in one place and when you read Genesis 2 the land that's described there is like nothing else on earth today and the rate of that of the flood would have changed everything we've got presentations on flood geology or the different thing what's called them catastrophic plate tectonics the things that would have taken place during the flood of that original pre-flood cotton is ripped up and it results in what we know today so the reason we have seven continents today is a result of the flood and so if you have one landmass in the pre-flood world you don't have to worry about how could animals from different regions get back to where they are and so really again it's a it's a different paradigm where you're applying today's world assuming that it's the same thing and what happened what it was like before the flood and then saying well how could they get there so again you're not even taking into account the world lot yeah it's it's interesting as I understand it you can you can correct me if I make sure I get this right is okay the Genesis text indicates it's all one landmass and now we don't have one landmass well what's the event in history that happened that was most likely had explains that the flood and we know we can see the continents how they pieced together we know that India slam slammed up against Asia and formed the Himalayan mountains we're just saying it happened on a much faster time scale but the ideas are sort of similar as am I am i explaining that well or correctly yeah yeah that's exactly right then that's why if people would look up CPT a catastrophic plate tectonics there'd be explanations that are much better than I could give and yes a guy named dr. John Baumgartner did some of the initial modeling for this and he's a brilliant researcher and it's it's beyond my level of expertise I can tell you that about how all of those things work but yeah that's the model is that it was during the flood that we get the breakup of that continent and results in pretty much what we see today there still would have been some shifting after the flood but yeah several decades or so yeah but it but I think the main the main point for our audience is not familiar with this is we can't take what we observe in the present and assume the past was exactly that way and when you have a catastrophic event like the flood it changes the dynamic of everything and I think that's the main thing just to get us thinking that way even if even if we don't know the science yeah well that's exactly what second Peter 3 tells us isn't it yes you know that they deny the creation they deny the flood they mocked the return of Christ in their philosophy is that the way things are now the way that they've always been they all things continue the same from the beginning they're denying the flood and unfortunately in our day we're kind of trained to think that way to that the way present processes are going is the way it's always been and really that's the philosophy behind evolution the billions of years that's called uniformitarianism yes yeah and and we had your colleague dr. Snelling on for a couple years ago to talk about the geology of the world and how it's explained by the flood at cash trophic processes now Tim we got about two minutes left what I would like you to do is just sort of talk about the animals a little bit how many came on the ark and you know payers and sevens and all that other kind of thing and that'll just sort of set us up for our next episode we're good you'll be back for part two so about two minutes please all right yeah and Genesis six that tells us that two of every kind would come to Noah and then in the next chapter God elaborates or clarifies and said that there would be seven or seven pairs of the clean animals and the flying creatures now some people think that that means just the clean flying animals and some people think it's all of the fly animals but then somebody will say seven pairs rather than just seven and the reason for that is the hebrew language literally states seven seven a male in his female well should that be interpreted as seven or seven pairs and the the Bible that we have today are kind of split 50-50 on that what we had to do it make a decision at the Ark Encounter every time we had a choice between a lower number and a higher number for the animals we always went with a higher number because we're trying to show how could these fit on the ark and if we always picked a lower number somebody would accuse us of cheating yeah so when you do that and again we're dealing with animal kinds not different species you know so when you think about dogs today you know you got your common dog but then you've got wolves and coyotes and dingoes and foxes those are all different species and there's several different species of foxes so those are all still part of the dog kind so no I just need to dog you don't need two of every one of those things and when you understand that principle there are fewer than 1,400 kinds in that Noah would have had to bring on board the ark and that's including those that are still around today and those that have gone extinct since the time of the flood and then when you when you multiply that by two for all of the unclean animals and by 14 which is what we were using you end up with fewer than 60 fewer than 6800 animals I think it's 67 44 or something like that and that's probably an over estimate based on how we were doing things okay well that's very good Tim so I think what we'll do is we'll build on that a little bit more in our next episode folks and I'm talking about the animals Tim thank you for being here for part one setting this aged talking about this we wanted to do two episodes because we wanted to take our time with it's so utterly important for Christians to know that they can trust the account given in Genesis 6 so Tim will be back for the next episode and friends I just want to wrap up with this thought you know when we read this account and there's so many voices out there telling us that we can't trust it we should trust in the Apostles in the New Testament and Jesus who affirmed the historicity of the flood and even though we don't have all the particular answers of how it happened that it did happen and it was a world defining cataclysmic event that changed the world and points to the Lord Jesus Christ and we hope that you'll consider that today as you think about this momentous event called the flood thank you for joining us today [Music] [Music]

Channel: Associates for Biblical Research

Views: 4,198

Rating: 4.8041959 out of 5

Keywords: Noah's Ark, Flood, Ark Encounter, Genesis 6-9, Jesus, Bible, Christianity, Gospel

Id: O8a1DNYXobo

Length: 26min 0sec (1560 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 19 2020