The Deluge of Noah’s Time
The Deluge of Noah's Time is another great difficulty. Here, again, the “higher critics” treat it as a mythical legend; and the “lower critics” concede it, but say that it must be local, prevailing in the Euphrates Valley, where some seem to think is the proper place for the Garden of Eden. (Others place it at the North Pole.) And yet the obvious, evident record of Genesis 6 declares that the whole earth was covered; that “all flesh, wherein is the breath of life” was destroyed; that, not alone were the windows of heaven opened, but that “the fountains of the great deep” were broken up, continents sank and rose, “the mountains rose, the valleys sank down” (Ps. 104:8, A. R. V.); that “all the high mountains that were under the whole heaven were covered;” fifteen cubits upward above the mountains the waters prevailed, and all animal life that was upon the face of the earth perished. This, and much more, are we told by the record of the Bible, and the traditions of widely separate tribes and peoples all over the earth confirm the story. But this does not necessarily mean that the waters were five miles high, above Mt. Everest of the Himalayas. Evidence all goes to show that the conformation of the earth was vastly different before the great cataclysm of the Flood. There was much more land surface, and much less water surface before the Flood. Much or all of the land sank; ridges of land became ocean valleys; ocean beds became chains of mountains. In the words of an apostle: “For this they wilfully forget, that there were heavens from of old, and an earth compacted out of water and amidst water, by the word of God; by which means the world [the cosmos, the arrangement, the order, shape, formation] that then was, being overflowed with water, perished,” and the antediluvian world is set in contrast to the conditions “that now are.” 2 Peter 3: 5-7. How futile, then, in the light of these facts, to attempt to locate the Garden of Eden, or any other pre-diluvian geographical point. The Deluge stands forth as a great fact of inspired history and tradition, even of the unlettered tribes of earth, to demonstrate that He who could make a world could unmake it; and that amidst the mightiest cataclysms of earth there is salvation for God's people.