In my previous post, I mentioned that I believe there were two events that radically altered the earth’s environment. The first event was the original rebellion of man against God. That rebellion changed the earth from its utopian origins to its dystopian present, replete with destructive storms.
This first event was the precursor to the second event. After the first event, humanity moved forward in its “new normal.” A family became a clan, the clans divided and claimed new territory. Populations grew and generations passed.
Every person and every generation existed in the “new normal.” Each person’s death recalled the original rebellion. As the population expanded and generations passed, the story was changed or forgotten. As time passed, people grew more distant from God.
The Bible reports that after ten generations, God determined to judge the world’s population for its rebellion (and the details of his judgment can fill an entirely different post). He chose a global flood of waters as his means of judgment.
Giving 100 years of warning, he set aside one lone family to escape the judgment. The patriarch of this family, Noah, began to build a boat (as God commanded) to withstand and endure the judgment. He did so in a world that possibly, had never seen rain fall from the sky. Who knows what people thought of Noah or even said to him over that 100 years of ark-building. That no other people were allowed to join him on the boat allows for the fair assumption that they likely reasoned that the world could never exist differently than how they had experienced it. Then the time arrived.
On the 17th day of the second month of Noah’s 600th year, waters fell from the sky an a way unprecedented in world history.
It would be inadequate to think only that it rained. Instead, imagine a drenching rain where you’ve sought refuge under a tarp, tent, or canopy. You see the canopy sag as it becomes water-logged. At first, a few beads of water soak through, dripping overhead. Then, suddenly, without warning, the canopy rips with a load tear and you are blanketed by a sheet of water that literally knocks you off your feet.
This is what the Bible says happened, except on a global scale. The Bible says that in the creation, God had blanketed the earth with a canopy of water. At this time of judgment, God released this canopy and its waters plummeted upon the earth. The volume of water overwhelming the earth is unimaginable, even in light of our modern-day comparative calamities.
Compounding the disaster, the Bible says that God caused the waters under the earth to spring forth. These were no bubbling brooks of natural springs. Its appropriate to think of violent earthquakes, oceanic volcanoes, and tumult that results in landscapes like Colorado’s Flatirons mountains. This was happening on a global scale. Oceans of waters from above. Geysers of waters from the ground.
Chaos.
With each new violent storm, we see a new library of videos of violent winds pushing walls of water, sweeping parking lots of cars into and then through buildings. Homes, offices, and stores instantly are deconstructed as the unrelenting force of the waves pushes against and ultimately over them. Stories are shared of a man being found on a roof six miles out in the ocean, or of a dolphin rescued one mile inland.
In light of this modern evidence, I have no problem reconciling why I will find an unbalanced boulder atop a mountain in the middle of the rockies, or sea life fossils in the middle of the continental land mass. In this, I see evidence of God using nature as a means of both judgment and new beginnings.
B-log 