The Flood Was Global

There is a great divide between two major systems of belief on the biblical Flood in the days of Noah. There are those who say it is either a purely mythological event or else possibly a local or regional flood. Then there are those who accept the biblical record of the Flood as a literal record of a tremendous cataclysm involving not only a worldwide deluge, but also great tectonic upheavals and volcanic outpourings that completely changed the crust of the earth and its topography in the days of Noah.

Here are a few of the many biblical reasons for believing in the global Flood:

Jesus Christ believed the Old Testament record of the worldwide Flood. Speaking of the antediluvian population, He said: "The flood came, and took them all away" (Matthew 24:39). Evolutionary anthropologists are all convinced that people had spread over the entire earth by the time assigned to Noah in biblical chronology, so an anthropologically universal Flood would clearly have required a geographically worldwide Flood.

The apostle Peter believed in a worldwide hydraulic cataclysm. "Whereby the world [Greek, kosmos] that then was, being overflowed [Greek, katakluzo] with water, perished" (2 Peter 3:6). The world was defined in the previous verse as "the heavens . . . and the earth." Peter also said that "God…spared not the old world, but saved Noah…bringing in the flood [Greek, kataklusmos] upon the world of the ungodly" (2 Peter 2:5).

The Old Testament record of the Flood, which both Christ and Peter accepted as real history, clearly teaches a global Flood. For example, the record emphasizes that "all the high hills, that were under the whole heaven…and the mountains were covered" (Genesis 7:19-20) with the waters of the Flood.

Since "all flesh died that moved upon the earth…all that was in the dry land" (Genesis 7:21-22), Noah and his sons had to build a huge Ark to preserve animal life for the post-diluvian world, an Ark that can easily be shown to have had more than ample capacity to carry at least two of every known species of land animal (marine animals were not involved, of course). Such an Ark was absurdly unnecessary for anything but a global Flood.

God promised that never "shall there any more be a flood to destroy the earth" (Genesis 9:11), and He has kept His word for over 4,000 years, if the Flood indeed was global. Those Christians who say it was a local flood, however, are in effect accusing God of lying, for there are many devastating local floods every year.