As it was in the Days of Noah (Part 7 of 0)

Objections Considered – Part 6

Introduction

In the previous article, we considered the section on the animals in the ark. It is one of the most scrutinized parts of Scripture. People wonder whether the things the Bible describes could actually have happened. There are three questions, in particular, that are often raised about the plausibility of the account. First, what about the dinosaurs? Were they in the ark? Second, how did Noah get all of the animals, especially those from faraway places, like Australia, and bring them into the ark? Third, how did all of the animals fit into the ark?

There are no definitive answers to any of these questions. But they are valid and worthy of thoughtful consideration. It is a good idea to think them over and to have a ready answer for an interested friend who might pose them to you. I am going to suggest some possible answers for you to ruminate upon. We will consider each of the three questions in turn.

What about the dinosaurs?

The Bible indicates that the world was a very different place before the Flood. People lived a really long time. There were giant humans. There were prob­ably giant lizards too. Perhaps they got to be big because they also lived a long time.

The environment may have been an important contributing factor to the size and longevity of the animals. There is an interesting, and somewhat challenging, passage in the Creation account that may offer some important insight into what the antediluvian world was like: “Then God said, ‘Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.’ Thus God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament; and it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven. So the evening and the morning were the second day” (Gen 1:6-8, NKJV).

It has been suggested that on the second day of Creation God took the waters that covered the earth and divided them into the waters that comprise the seas (i.e., “the waters which were under the firmament”) and a water-vapor canopy in the atmosphere (i.e., “the waters which were above the firmament”). That canopy could have protected the planet from harmful radiation, which would have al­lowed the inhabitants of the earth to live a lot longer. Plus, it could have resulted in a greenhouse effect that would have made the world a warmer place. Plants and trees could have been larger. (Perhaps that is where Noah got the wood to make the giant ark.) More abundant vegetation would have supported larger animals, such as dinosaurs.

So, were dinosaurs brought into the ark? It seems like they would have been if they were alive at that time. Of course, it would have made sense to bring smaller, younger members of the species into the ark instead of full-grown adults. That was probably the practice for all of the larger animals.

But then what happened to the dinosaurs? Well, one theory of the Flood is that the forty days and forty nights of rain were caused by the collapse of the water-vapor canopy. Indeed, Genesis 7: 11 states that “the windows of heaven were opened” during the Flood. That certainly sounds like a unique event in history, and the text supports that idea. The margin of the King James Version, and a number of other translations, render “windows” as “floodgates.” Once a floodgate is opened, the water that it restrains rushes out, and then it is gone. Once the canopy disap­peared, the world would have become a colder place, and the food on which the largest animals relied would have become scarcer. Perhaps the dinosaurs died off as a result.

Bringing the animals into the ark

So, how were all the animals collected and loaded into the ark? The account indi­cates that God directed them to come to Noah. God tells Noah that the animals “shall come unto thee” (Gen 6:20).

For many of these animals, their journey would have begun many months before the Flood came. But that is not unheard of in the Bible. There are other instances where God intervened in the animal kingdom to set the stage for an event many months before it actually took place. For example, the plague of locusts in Exodus 10 had its origins in unusually heavy rainfall that would have occurred in the Ara­bian Peninsula several months before the locusts arrived in Egypt. Female locusts lay their eggs in wet sand, and heavy rains in Arabia result in vegetation growth that protects the young locusts. It allows more of them to survive to adulthood. Modern locust swarms in the Middle East journey east at the speed of the wind. And Exodus 10: 13 records that God caused an “east wind” to blow that brought the locusts upon the Egyptians. That type of plague continues to happen to this day.

God’s workings in the animal kingdom to bring about His will are an important reminder that He sets the stage for events to happen in the earth long before they actually occur. Even as we wait for Christ’s return, God is active among the na­tions.1 Right now, He is laying the foundations for the events that will result in the return of Christ to the earth and the establishment of the Kingdom.

Returning to the subject of God causing the animals to come to the ark, some of them would have had to travel great distances. It is certainly possible that God created circumstances that would have permitted that to happen. It is also possible that the continents of the earth were a lot closer back then than they are today. So, for example, the distance between Australia and the Middle East back might not have been as far as it is now. And there might not have been as much water to cross. We know that plate tectonic activity causes the continents to move. Large movements are accompanied by earthquakes, mountain building, and volcanoes. It is possible that there were dramatic movements in the plates at the time of the Flood. These movements might have caused the continents to change from where they were in Noah’s day and to take something like the shape they have today. Those continental shifts would have been associated with earthquakes, and earthquakes can cause massive flooding due to tsunamis. (A “tsunami” is a series of water waves that result from the displacement of water from an earthquake or other source.) Indeed, on December 26, 2004, a tremendous undersea earthquake off the coast of Indonesia resulted in massive flooding throughout East Asia and beyond due to tsunamis. Almost without warning, communities were buried beneath waves over 100 feet high. Over 250,000 people died from the tsunamis that resulted from that earthquake, and lives were lost over 5,000 miles from its epicenter. (That is the distance between Detroit and Moscow.)

The effects of just that one undersea earthquake were staggering. Multiple, mas­sive earthquakes throughout the earth could certainly have resulted in worldwide flooding. In fact, the Bible indicates that tsunamis might have contributed to the Flood. According to Genesis 7: 11, not only were “the windows of heaven” opened, but also “the fountains of the great deep” were “broken up” at the time of the Flood. That latter phrase sounds like it could be a description of earthquakes and ensuing tidal waves. Plate tectonic activity at the time of the Flood could also have led to the creation of the fossil record as we know it. Animals caught up in the cataclysm could have been swept by torrents of water into fissures that had opened in the earth. They then would have been sealed inside as seismic activity continued to convulse the crust of the earth. Some fossil beds have the appearance of having been created under such circumstances. But assigning their origin to the Flood remains contentious, even among scientists who believe in the Genesis record.

Regardless of how exactly it happened, the Flood destroyed life on the face of the earth. Only those with Noah in the ark survived. But did the ark have sufficient capacity to hold all of the animals that it would have needed to carry? It certainly seems reasonable to answer “yes” to that question.

Was there sufficient space in the ark for the animals?

People have tried to estimate the number of land animals that God commanded to be brought into the ark. The numbers generally range between 25,000 and 40,000.2 (The estimates vary based on assumptions about the variety of animals that exist and whether some of those varieties could have re-emerged through breeding without explicitly being preserved in the ark.) It has also been assumed that the average animal in the ark was the size of a small sheep. Well, the average stock car can hold 120 sheep.3 So, if there were 35,000 animals in the ark that were, on average, the size of a sheep, it would have taken 292 stock-cars worth of space to hold them. But the ark had over 500 stock-cars worth of space in it. So, the animals probably occupied around 60 percent of the ark’s space. Some of the remaining space would have been used for food storage. But much of it was probably reserved for the people of the antediluvian world that God hoped to save.

So, space was not a problem for the ark. It was definitely big enough to do its job. And, in the end, the ark was not as full as God, or Noah, would have wanted. It was such a tragedy that so many people turned down God’s offer of salvation. In the next article in the series, we will consider the day when that offer was no longer available and God shut Noah and his family inside the ark.