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Noah and the Flood: Can we take the Bible seriously?

Read Gen 6:6-10 ; 19-24

At the movies recently has been the film Noah starring Russell Crowe. Some time prior to
the film being released, the story behind the movie was published as a graphic novel.
Jewish filmmaker, Aronofsky, the man who directed the film Black Swan, first put the
story out as a comic and then went on to turn his comic on Noah into a movie.
Now in this film, Noah and the other characters seem quite different to the way the Bible
speaks about them, and the way God is portrayed seems very different too. And there
creatures in the film the Bible doesnt mention at all strange giant creatures made out
of rock called The Watchers, whom Darren Aronofsky tells us in his film are angels who
originally sided with humanity against God, and for this were banished to earth and then
clothed themselves with rock. They end up looking a little like the rock giant in Never
Ending story or the Ents, the talking, walking trees in Tolkiens Lord of the Rings. In the
film Noah they come to Noahs defence against the rest of humanity.


Now the reason why the film is so different to the Bible is that Aronofsky never intended
to tell the Bible account. In fact, the Bible is not his text
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. Aronofsky draws on literature
outside the Bible and this is evident all the way through the movie: for example he gives
several of The Watchers, those rock giants, he gives them names: Semyaza, Magog, and
Rameel. Theyre all well-known demons in the Jewish mystical tradition, not only in
Kabbalah but also in the book of 1 Enoch
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.

So this raises some very interesting questions for us.
1. The 1
st
question is this: How do we know that the Bible isnt hiding some important
information from us? Maybe the texts outside the Bible like the ones Aronofsky uses
were deliberately kept out due to bias from the ancient Jewish or Christian dogmatists!
What if the people who put the Bible together had their own selfish agenda and here we
are today as gullible people whove swallowed hook line and sinker the story of Noah and
other stories as the whole truth. Maybe we should pay attention to George Gershwins
song from his musical Porgy and Bess It ain't necessarily so - the things that you're
liable, to read in the Bible, It ain't necessarily so.
Well that is the first question: Is the Bible reliable?
2. The 2
nd
question touches on science. The scientific establishment does not believe
that there was a world-wide flood, and that the story of Noah should not be taken
literally. Or if you want to still hang onto the story, then have the intellectual honesty to
at least modify it to fit with what the establishment believes perhaps the flood of Noah

1
Dr BrianMattson, SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL http://drbrianmattson.com/journal/2014/3/31/sympathy-for-the-devil
[Web, date of access April 2014]
2
Ibid Mattson
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was a very small local flood somewhere, and the story tellers embellished itand it
became this mythical legend known as Noahs Flood.
The issue of intellectual honesty comes up because the scientific mainstream will talk
about the facts made available from geology, or geophysics or from a scientific
understanding of earth history and from bio-diversityand then show how these facts
are in conflict with the Bible and a literal reading of Noah and the Flood.
But there is a third question.
3. the question is: But does it really matter? Why does it matter to Christians that these
questions are addressed? Ive been asked this: Mark why does it bother you so much?
Why cant you just let the Bible be what it is: a collection of stories and myths, and an
ancient book that teaches us to live better lives? Surely it can still do that job even if its
got big mistakes about the distant past? So what if there wasnt a world-wide flood? So
what if there wasnt an Ark?

Well my response to that is to say this: When I read the New Testament (the New
Testament was written after Jesus had died) I get some really clear teaching from the
New Testament about the Old Testament. In fact, I get the clear impression from the
New Testament that if the Old Testament is not literally true in matters pertaining to
history, then we have no basis for believing the New Testament to be true. In other
words, the New Testament is a house built on the foundation of the Old Testament. That
is how the New Testament sees things.
Now,of first importance to the New Testament, is that you and I learn that the death
and resurrection of Jesus happened in history, and that these two huge events are facts
as real as any facts from the rest of history.
And since the New Testament is a house built on the foundation of the Old Testament,
you will not be surprised to learn that the New Testament links the account of Jesus
death and resurrection to that of Noah and the Flood, and treats both as being factual
accounts.
Here is the house: Jesus death and resurrection.
Here is the foundation: Noahs Flood (well there are other Old Testament events that
also prefigure Jesus death and resurrection e.g. the sign of Jonahbut tonight we are
looking at Noah)

Now someone here tonight may not yet believe that Jesus rose again bodily from the
dead. Someone invited you to come along, and you might not yet be convinced that
there is a resurrected man who has a human body capable of sitting down at table with
us tonight, if he so wished, and eating dinner with us a resurrected man right now
ruling from the throne room of heaven. Some of you might not yet believe this
But even if you dont yet believe that, you need to know that the New Testament believes
that.
Dont get those two things confused. What the Bible teaches - lets first get that sorted
out, then the question of whether I believe what the Bible teaches my response to that
teaching.
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We must first find out what the Bible is, and then what it teaches, and then decide
whether we believe it or not, and then ask if we will only believe it on Sundays (or at
other convenient times for us), or whether we will believe it so that our lives are changed
forever, and Jesus becomes Saviour and Lord. Which is what He really is.

Now you might ask me: Mark, can you show me from the New Testament that Jesus
death and His Resurrection are linked to the account of Noah?
Well I can. One of the New Testament writers is the apostle Peter.
See 1 Pet 1: 18-22
Now listen to Peters second letter
2 Peter 2:5 and then 2 Peter 3:3-7

The clear impression from Peter is that the flood killed off all of humanity and all land
animals, except for 8 people and the creatures taken onto the Ark.
Notice that a world-wide flood is correlated with a literal creation in Genesis chapter 1,
and with the waters of creation. There were vast waters at the beginning when God
made the world as described in Genesis Ch1, and those waters were available for God to
destroy the world as described in Genesis 6. Why would God need the vast waters of
creation if Noahs flood was just a local flood? (One might also ask why build a huge Ark
for a local flood..it was a gigantic ship by any standardsand then why bring animals to it
if it was a local floodthat would be so misleading on Gods part)
But notice also that a world-wide flood is correlated with a future world-wide judgement.
However, the waters of Noahs flood according to Peter will seem like nothing when
Gods final judgment is unleashed on the Last Day.
And Peter, who wrote these two letters in the New Testament, wants you and me to see
not only that Noahs Flood points ahead and guarantees a much worse catastrophe still
to come, but that the Ark pointed to Christ, and that by his death and resurrection we
have an Ark to carry us safely through the waters of Gods destruction on the last day.

Peter is also very anxious that people dont believe stories that are made up.
See 2 Peter 1:16-18
And Peter is very anxious that you connect Jesus to the Old Testament
2 Peter 1:19
Notice the building of Jesus on the foundation of the prophets.

Its a big problemthis business of myths and stories and legends versus true history.
See 2 Peter 2:1a, 3a

What is God like? How do you think of him? The film by Aranofsky paints an unflattering
picture of God (and he is entitled to his opinion, and the film is an art film, its not meant
to be a theology 101).
But in your picture of God, what is likely to be the outcome if you had to die and stand
before Him to give account of your life? Even if you dont believe that as yetstill think
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about it just as a thought experimentwhat do you think would happen if you had to
appear before the Biblical God, and stand in His Presence on the Last Day as an ordinary
human being who had no real connection with anything to do with Jesus.
Peter likens that experience to Noahs delugeand on the Day you will have need of an
Ark to carry you safely into heaven.

What is so wonderful about the way the Bible talks about God is that although he must
bring justice and judgemnt (he is after all the Judge of all the earth) he waits patiently. He
is patient says Peter, so dont go thinking that patience means he wont do it.
And this God also provides says Peter. God has provided a way of escape.
The Ark is Gods idea. Jesus as a ship of rescue is Gods idea.
What we need is not us living good livesbut for God to come and save us.
The Flood is God acting in judgement. The Ark is God acting in mercy.
Noah was baptised by the Flood which washed away the Old world.
Noah was baptised via the Ark too, which enabled the Flood to carry him to a new
heavens and a new earth.
The same God does both.


But now what about question 1.
The 1
st
question I raised was this: How do we know that the Bible isnt hiding some
important information from us?
Well obviously we cant tonight read through the Kabbalah and 1 Enoch and all the other
literature outside the Bible.

But this is where Aronofskys film is so helpful. The picture of God and of Noah are so
different to the Bible picture. This is so important. From the film you do get some idea
of the God that the writers of the Kabbalah and 1 Enoch believed in.
Well he is the creator, but when he became upset with Adam and Eve for rebelling, he
decided to wipe out all human beings.
And the nature of their rebellion? Well, in this Jewish mystical literature outside the
Bible, the Serpent appears who is another lesser god, and he promises Adam and Eve
true wisdom, deep knowledge, and along with it the possibility of becoming God. The
Serpent is a wise and good character and offers Adam and Eve something that the
Creator God is withholding. So in the film Lamech, the father of Noah, has in his hand
some skin from the serpent from the Garden of Eden. Noah is meant receive this sacred
relic, but the villain of the film, Tubal-Cain, arrives and steals the snakeskin, and Noah is
deprived of whatever benefit the serpents skin could give. So the serpent is good for
offering knowledge and with it divinity, but the Creator is mean and nasty. He didnt
really even want Noah and his family to survive.
He just wants the animals to survive.
And God the Creator wont speak to Noah or anyone.

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Well, the God you read in the pages of the Bible can speak and does speak, and I wish to
single out one reason for you tonight (there are many other reasons) why books and
writings like 1 Enoch are not in the Bible.
The reason why they are excluded is because the picture they paint of God does not fit
the God that Jesus revealed to us.
In Jesus we see what God is like. Jesus was patient, kind, merciful, able to get angry, able
to warn of future, able to perform miracles. In Jesus we learn that the entire Old
Testament was getting ready for him.
Jesus name means God is salvationHe is Gods appointed way of rescue.

These other writings are excluded also because they give a misleading picture of the devil
and other characters like Noah. In Jesus we learn that the serpent, the devil, is a real
creature who tempts us with a wisdom that has at its core a terrible lie. It is a lie about
God. And it is a lie about us. The devil says that if you rebel against God and live as you
please, you will become like God, and be very wise. The serpent says God will not bring
you into death or eternal deathwhich is Hell.

Peter was right there are plenty of stories out there, and they deny the truth about
God, especially the truth as seen in Jesus.
If you take the time to read the accounts of Jesus and the New Testament, and then read
the other literature outside the Bible, you will see why you can be sure the Bible is not
withholding important information from us by suppressing other literature.




Now for that other question.
I said earlier that the 2
nd
question touches on science. The scientific establishment does
not believe that there was a world-wide flood, and that the story of Noah should not be
taken literally.

Turtle illustration:
A scientist was giving a talk on origin of the cosmos. He explained how there was at the
beginning a Big Bang which spewed out the fabric of space-time and spewed out matter,
all of which later became the universe that we see today. He was confronted after the
meeting by a little old lady who told him the Earth rested on the back of a huge turtle
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.
"But, my dear lady", said the man "what holds up the turtle?"
"Ah", she said, "that's easy. He is standing on the back of another turtle."
"Oh, I see", said the scientist, "but tell mewhat holds up the second turtle?"
"It's no use, mister", said the woman, "It's turtles turtles turtles, all the way down!


3
This story is attributed to by some American Philosopher William James, by others to Stephen Hawking
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I can sympathise with the speaker in that story. If you are a logical person, and you want
to get to the bottom of things, its frustrating when people argue with you and appeal to
just-so stories. Even worse, if you know something about how the world really is, doesnt
your heart sink when you realise that the person youre talking to prefers to believe
myths and fairy tales?

But let me re-tell that story about the turtles. Im now going to give you another version
of it.
A scientist was giving a talk on the origin of the cosmos. He explained how the universe
had always existed, forever and ever an eternal uncreated cosmos. The scientist
explained that the universe had no beginning.
After the talk a little old lady confronted him and said she thought the universe just had
to have beginning.
The scientist shook his head:
My dear lady, if there was a beginning, what came before that? If there is an egg,
where is the chicken that laid it?
The old lady replied: There is no chicken to lay this egg!
The man was incredulous: As a scientist I know that everything has a cause. So what
youve got is chickens laying eggs that become chickens that lay eggs and it goes like that
all the way down forever
The little old lady replied:
As an astrophysicistIve done the calculations about energy production in the sun. The
sun and other suns in the universe are burning fuel and have a limited life-span. The
universe cannot possibly be eternal, and I can calculate more or less when these
luminaries began to shine

Now lets compare those two stories briefly. Apart from a lesson about little old ladies,
what I tried to illustrate is that the way you explain things makes a big difference. If its
turtles all the way down, we want to laugh. How silly! Part of the problem is that the
little old lady seems to believe that the earth is truly on the back of a sequence of real
turtles out there in space.
But wait a minute. If the little old lady meant that you have a sequence of ideas that
support each other i.e. this concept supports this concept which supports this concept
just like turtles all the way down well then, that way of saying things is quite logical.

The second story also shows how the shoe can be on the other foot. I based this re-telling
on a true story. In 1938 the Nobel-prize-winning chemist Walther Nernst said that
universe was eternal and had no beginning (which is what nearly all scientists believed
back then).
Nernst was insistent and he said:
Anyone who puts forward an age for the universe is automatically being unscientific.
But someone confronted Nernst.
But Dr Nernst, I have done calculations showing the age of the sun,.
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whereupon Nernst became angry and retorted: You cant have a hypothesis which
contradicts the foundations of science, and one of those foundations is that time is
eternal

The point of these two stories put side by side is to give us tonight an illustration and a
warning.
The warning is that up till about 1950 scientists held to an eternal universe called the
Steady State theory, and they didnt like the Big Bang theory (not the TV show), and they
regarded it as religiously motivated: it sounded too much like something from Genesis,
and they werent excited either that one of the Big Bang founders was a Roman Catholic
priest
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As it so happens, the Big Bang is now the theory the establishment believes, and the
Steady State theory is ignored. In fact, our media treat it as the truth. However, there
have been and still are some leading astronomers
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who reject the Big bang, and still
interpret all the data of observation quite happily within their version of the Steady State
theory.

If all this intrigues you and you want to know more there is a brilliant videogo to
YouTube and type in The Universe - Episode 1 - The Cosmology Quest

My warning though is that the theory that reigns supreme today and which people
gullibly believe as the truth, can be replaced just like that tomorrow. The scientific
establishment used to deny that asteroids hit the earth. Grootfontein and the Arizona
crater were treated as due to something else. The scientific world only changed its mind
finally in 1994, when Eugene Shoemaker showed everyone the comet hitting Jupiter.
Today scientists deny a world wide flood. Tomorrow that opinion could change. Just
remember that facts of science are remarkably pliable and vary according to the
theories that harness them.
Pity to push the Bible aside as a bunch of old stories and take a current theory as
absolute truth. Pity to stake your eternal destiny on scientific opinion.

The illustration from the two stories tha I wish to bring is that when scintists reconstruct
earth history, and when they say there never was a world wide flood, and when you hear
it said that the Bible wasnt written as a scientifit textbook (true), please understand that
it is entirely possible (if you feel the desire to do it), to construct a plausible scientific
account that accommodates the Bible and makes room for a wordl wide flood. In fact, if
youre starting point is that the Bible might well be true, and so you set out to find all the
evidence out there that would fit an account of a wordlwdei deluge, you would be

4
In the 1920s and 1930s almost every major cosmologist preferred an eternal steady state universe, and several complained
that the beginning of time implied by the Big Bang imported religious concepts into physics; this objection was later repeated
by supporters of the steady state theory. This perception was enhanced by the fact that the originator of the Big Bang theory,
Monsignor Georges Lematre, was a Roman Catholic priest. Arthur Eddington agreed with Aristotle that the universe did not
have a beginning in time, viz., that matter is eternal. A beginning in time was "repugnant" to him. (Wikipedia Big Bang)
5
Sir Fred Hoyle, Geoffrey and Margaret Burbidge, Halton Arp, and Jayant Narlikar and others
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amazed. And that includes a lot of what constitutes the fossil record. Im not saying that
most scientists would accept your account, but I am saying it can be done. Science is not
just about truth. It is that some of the time. But a lot of the time science is about
inventing theories that explain how this world could come to be if there was no creator
God to interfere.
Nobel Prize winner Richard Lewontin has expressed this setiment well:
The primary problem is not to provide the public with the knowledge of how far it is to the
nearest star and what genes are made of, for that vast project is, in its entirety, hopeless.
Rather, the problem is to get the public to reject irrational and supernatural explanations of the
world, the demons that exist only in their imaginations, and to accept a social and intellectual
apparatus, which is Science, as the only begetter of truth
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Conclusion

Aronofskys film actually is Gods gift to our society, and to us tonight. How so? Well the
film has allowed me to put Noah on the agenda for tonight. And to make you realise that
if you dismiss the Noah account on the basis of some the silly ideas in the film, or if
dismiss the Noah account on the basis of it going against the reigning scientific theory,
then you are making a dangerous mistake.
Noah speaks of Christ, and Christ speaks of a God who will save any who turn to him to
be saved!

The door of the Ark is still open. But when God shuts that door, its too late.
What is your decision?











6
Billions and Billions of Demons" The New York review Jan 9 1997