The Flood of All Floods
Most of us have seen news clips on television picturing flooded towns, with boats or helicopters rescuing stranded people from the tops of houses. Some of you might have even been in a flood and had your basement filled with water or your car buried underwater. As bad as these floods can be, the Flood in Noah’s day makes all the other floods look like tiny mud puddles. The Flood of Noah’s day was not a local flood that covered a small area of land like a city or a town. It was a huge, global flood that covered the entire world.
Genesis 7:19 explains that during the Flood of Noah’s day “all the high hills under the whole heaven were covered.” The most difficult thing for any flood to cover is a high hill. In fact, most floods do not cover high hills; they cover lower areas of land like valleys or plains. If the high hills were covered, then all of the area that was lower than the hills had to be covered as well. As we look closer at this verse, we see that all of the high hills under the whole heaven were covered. Not one single hill on the entire Earth was left dry. That would mean that the only dry area on the globe would have been inside Noah’s ark. The Flood of Noah’s day covered the whole Earth.
Although some people still suggest that Noah’s Flood was a local flood, ask yourself the following questions:
Why would Noah need to build an ark if the Flood was not universal? Why not just instruct Noah and his family to move a few hundred miles away?
Why go through the trouble of taking care of animals for a year on the ark if the animals could have just migrated to other areas of the world?
Why did God promise, “Never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of the flood…to destroy the earth” (9:11), if many thousands of localized floods have occurred since Noah’s day?
If Noah’s Flood was not universal, why did the apostle Peter compare the universal destruction at the end of time to “the world that…perished, being flooded with water” in Noah’s day (2 Peter 3:1-13)?
We are thankful that God preserved the facts of the worldwide Flood for us in the Bible. By sending the Flood, He showed us that He will not tolerate sin, but He will reward righteous people. Let us all live righteous lives like Noah, so that we can be together someday in heaven.
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