The fountains also of the deep and the windows of heaven were stopped, and the rain from heaven was restrained;
God shut off the sources of the flood, stopping the fountains of the deep and the opened heavens, so that the waters began to go down. Noah and his family watched that receding anxiously while they waited inside the ark to leave, for Noah longed to be out on the earth again. To learn the state of the waters he sent out a raven that flew to and fro without bringing back the information he wanted, then sent a dove that found no resting place and came back to the ark, then after seven days sent the dove a second time. That second dove returned with an olive leaf in its mouth, bringing great rejoicing to the eight who had been so long shut up together. Though Noah could remove the covering from the top of the ark, he could not open the door that God had shut, so an angel descended and opened the door, and God spoke through the angel commanding Noah's family to go out and to bring every living thing out with them.
This is part of the inspired Old Testament history of a real Flood and a real Noah, which Christ affirms as true history. The Flood was God's destruction of the world, His judgment upon the earth because of its iniquity. God had provided the massive boat of the ark to save all who would hear the warning and turn from unrighteousness, and all were tested by the truth Noah preached; those who believed were saved, but only eight persons were saved.
The generation of Noah stands as a pattern for the age before Christ appears, and the sins increasing in the present are the same kind that brought God's judgment upon the earth in the Flood. That Flood history explains geological evidence that geology alone cannot account for, for it buried and preserved people, animals, and trees many times larger than those now living, leaving evidence that the antediluvians perished by a flood.
God shut off the sources of the flood, stopping the fountains of the deep and the opened heavens, so that the waters began to go down. Noah and his family watched that receding anxiously while they waited inside the ark to leave, for Noah longed to be out on the earth again. To learn the state of the waters he sent out a raven that flew to and fro without bringing back the information he wanted, then sent a dove that found no resting place and came back to the ark, then after seven days sent the dove a second time. That second dove returned with an olive leaf in its mouth, bringing great rejoicing to the eight who had been so long shut up together. Though Noah could remove the covering from the top of the ark, he could not open the door that God had shut, so an angel descended and opened the door, and God spoke through the angel commanding Noah's family to go out and to bring every living thing out with them.
This is part of the inspired Old Testament history of a real Flood and a real Noah, which Christ affirms as true history. The Flood was God's destruction of the world, His judgment upon the earth because of its iniquity. God had provided the massive boat of the ark to save all who would hear the warning and turn from unrighteousness, and all were tested by the truth Noah preached; those who believed were saved, but only eight persons were saved.
The generation of Noah stands as a pattern for the age before Christ appears, and the sins increasing in the present are the same kind that brought God's judgment upon the earth in the Flood. That Flood history explains geological evidence that geology alone cannot account for, for it buried and preserved people, animals, and trees many times larger than those now living, leaving evidence that the antediluvians perished by a flood.