The Flood

Posted : 31 Oct, 2011 07:47 AM

All animals once were herbivores, since neither man nor beast ate animal flesh prior to the great flood.



Genesis 1:29-30 And God said, �See, I have given you every herb that yields seed which is on the face of all the earth, and every tree whose fruit yields seed; to you it shall be for food. Also, to every beast of the earth, to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, in which there is life, I have given every green herb for food�; and it was so.



Both Adam and the beasts are given the herbs and fruits to eat. So man and beast were all vegetarian. However, God changed things after the great flood. Why? The nature changed and animals needed food to survive.



What happened? God saw how great wickedness had become and decided to wipe mankind from the face of the earth. However, one righteous man among all the people of that time, Noah, found favor in God's eyes. With very specific instructions, God told Noah to build an ark for him and his family in preparation for a catastrophic flood that would destroy every living thing on earth. With more detail in Genesis 7:2-3, God instructed Noah to take seven pairs of every kind of clean animal, and two of every kind of unclean animal. After they entered the ark, rain fell on the earth for a period of forty days and nights. The waters flooded the earth for a hundred and fifty days, and every living thing on the face of the earth was wiped out. Finally after an entire year, God invited Noah to come out of the ark. Immediately, he built an altar and worshiped the Lord with burnt offerings from some of the clean animals. God was pleased with the offerings and promised never again to destroy all the living creatures as He had just done. Later God established a covenant with Noah: "Never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth." As a sign of this everlasting covenant God set a rainbow in the clouds.

Thus billions of animals were buried quickly and formed fossils. This is when most dinosaur fossils formed. Could a meteorite impact or impacts have been the trigger that initiated the Flood? The answer is: yes. A meteor strike caused dramatic climatic changes much like �nuclear winter�. There is no doubt that the earth has been impacted by meteorites in the past. However, most of the impact craters we observe were made in sedimentary layers that are believed to have been laid down during the Flood. This evidence would tend one to think that as least some of the meteorite impacts occurred during the later stages of the Flood.



So let us see exactly what Scripture says about the cause of the Genesis Flood. In the six hundredth year of Noah�s life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of the heavens were opened. Genesis 7:11

According to Scripture, the Flood started with the ocean depths bursting open and causing huge fountains to shoot high into the atmosphere. Then the windows of heaven were opened and rain poured down on the earth. A devastating meteorite collision could cause the Flood to appear. Thick sedimentary rock formations that span many thousands of square kilometres, implying mind-bogglingly powerful catastrophic flood conditions of global dimensions not paralleled by anything seen today.



One of the most common theories is that the original earth possessed a water canopy consisting of vapor (most common interpretation) or ice that surrounded the earth above the troposphere and potentially up through the stratosphere. Most probably that a meteorite broke the water canopy and caused the radical change of climate. So, the vapor canopy is the source of the water required to explain a global flood.



There is a verse about the initial lack of rain when God created the earth (in Genesis 2:5,6) that may relate to the issue:



"�for the LORD God had not sent rain on the earth and there was no man to work the ground, but streams [or mist] came up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground�"

"�for the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground. But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground."

The use of the rainbow as a symbol of a new covenant in Genesis 9:11-17 is often used as justification for a declaration of no rain on the earth before the Flood. The climate before the Flood was much warmer than after. The supposed vapor canopy is thought to have generated a stronger greenhouse effect, thus warming the earth. Water vapor in today's atmosphere certainly helps keep the earth many tens of degrees warmer than if the atmosphere completely lacked water. Most people do not realize that water vapor is perhaps ten times as strong a greenhouse gas as is carbon dioxide. The justification for a warmer pre-Flood climate is usually the fossil record: there are many deposits of tropical plants and coal in the polar regions.



After the Flood (in Genesis 9:2-3) God says to Noah, And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be on every beast of the earth, on every bird of the air, on all that move on the earth, and on all the fish of the sea. They are given into your hand. Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. I have given you all things, even as the green herbs.



So, God allowed people to eat animals.

Why?

Because of the climate change it was difficult to survive. The life of people was not the same as in the Eden Garden planted by God on earth. And even animals started to eat each other to survive.

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