The Devotional Journey: Bible Reading 5
Yahweh judges the world with a global flood
Read Genesis 7:1–8:22.
We continue the account of the Flood. Yahweh brought a global judgment on all the evil, rebellious people of the world. Every part of the planet was covered with water and all the people who did not believe God’s warning about the coming judgment died in the floodwaters. And all the air-breathing animals not in the ark also died.
The flood judgment lasted a year. When the waters finally subsided, Noah and his family emerged onto dry ground. The world was completely different from what they had known before. The landscape had been reshaped with newly formed continents with new mountain ranges, valleys and other features. And there were now new oceans, seas and bodies of water. Noah and his family would restart mankind on a changed planet. Yahweh’s original plan for mankind, as His image bearers, would continue. Noah and his family would repopulate the earth and look after it well to glorify God.
Here are some interesting facts about the Flood to ponder:
1. The global flood happened about 4,300 years ago (from 2349 to 2348 BC).
2. Seventy percent (70%) of the earth’s crust today is sediment leftover from the flood.
3. All around the world the rock layers are in straight lines (e.g., the Grand Canyon). This uniform appearance around the globe tells us these sediment layers were formed globally and quickly as silt, sand and mud settled, layer after layer, in the Flood and then hardened into rock layers. What’s more, there is no evidence of bioturbation (soil disturbances caused by plants and animals) in the layers, showing that the layers were laid down one after the other rapidly without any interference from plants and animals. (This would not be the case if the layers were laid down thousands or millions of years apart.)
Photo: Mather Point at Grand Canyon by Bigmacthealmanac, CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons.
4. There was plenty of room on the ark for all the animals that Yahweh brought to Noah. Christian scientists estimate there were about 1,400 main “kinds” of animals on the ark, so there was a total of around 6,700 individual animals. (As a reference, a biblical “kind” is approximately like the term “family” or “order” in scientific classification.) From these animal kinds came all the animals we have in the world today. For example, when Noah went on the ark, he took one pair of the canid (dog) kind. From that pair of canids came all the other canine species like wolves, jackals, coyotes and later, breeds of domestic dogs. Isn’t it incredible that God put the genetic diversity in that first pair of canids so that so many species and breeds could emerge?
5. The floodwaters from the global flood are still here on the earth today. The Bible says that God caused the mountains to rise higher and the valleys to sink lower than before the flood began, so He created deep, large oceans to store all the floodwaters (See Psalm 104:6–9).
6. The Bible says Noah’s ark landed somewhere in the mountain ranges of Ararat. This is in the Middle East, in or near Türkiye today.
It is sobering to consider the global extent of God’s judgment of evil and rebellion on the earth. As the Creator-Owner, and as the righteous Judge, Yahweh had every right to exercise judgment on His rebellious creation.
At the same time, it is wonderful to behold God’s mercy. He saved eight people, Noah and his family, because they believed in Yahweh. Everyone else on the planet was judged in the floodwaters because they did reject God.
Today, let us thank God for saving us from eternal separation from Him. He provided one way to be saved: faith in Christ. Thank God that He has led us to come to know Him and be saved by Him.
And let us be sober-minded about the way Yahweh judges evil. The Bible says that in the future, God will judge the world globally once again, to bring another complete end to evil and sin in the world. He is not a powerless God, but an all-righteous God who is patient. At His timing, He will put a stop to evil globally.
As image bearers of God, let us learn to live in ways that will bring Him glory and get others interested to know Him as well.