Archives for 2023

Dr. Don Bierle, President

In the last three issues of the Happ-0-getics newsletter, I began a four-part series on evidence for the biblical global flood. In this final segment, I ask some key questions and challenge the time frame of geology. 

The most typical response of those who deny the biblical global flood is that it is a myth or only a local flood. That the text of Genesis is written as historical narrative (and not an allegory or myth) has been adequately defended by Hebrew scholars. The questions below are a challenge to those who teach a local flood.

1. Why was there a need for the ark at all? Noah and his family would only need to move to higher ground if it were only a local flood.
2. Why gather the animals and birds at all? They, too, could easily escape from the flood zone. 
3. God said the flood was a judgment upon all the wicked on the earth (Genesis 6:11-13). Surely, they were scattered widely enough and capable of escaping a local flood.
4. Did God fail at His task (see Genesis 6:17 — “…everything that is on the earth shall perish”)?
5. Does the Bible not tell the truth (see Genesis 7:23 — “…and only Noah was left, together with those that were with him in the ark”)?
6. How could the ark land on the mountains of Ararat from a local flood (Genesis 8:4)?
7. How would a local flood last about a year, and why would Noah need to wait about seven months after landing if it were only a local river flood?
8. Has God failed to keep His rainbow covenant (Genesis 9:8-17)? Many major and destructive local floods have occurred since then, which would violate His promise if He were only speaking of a local flood. 

Finally, the teaching that the universe arose billions of years ago, and that life on earth has been in continuous evolution for millions of years, conflicts with a “restart” by a global flood. Throughout all my education, I was instructed to believe that millions of years was required to form fossils, oil, rock layers, diamonds, petrified wood, canyons, etc. Scientific research has now discovered the conditions needed to form all these, and these conditions would all exist as the result of a catastrophic global flood (heat, pressure, sediment movement, and layering, etc.). We also know that it can happen in days, months, and years, and does not require millions of years. 

There is not enough room in this publication to provide more than a glimpse of the detailed evidence that exists. The reader who wants to have proof should read Ken Ham and Bodie Hodge’s book, A Flood of Evidence (Master Books, 2016), my source for this fourth segment.  

You can trust the Bible. Every denial of its truthfulness is shown to be false when all the facts are known. Jesus said, 

Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish, but to fulfill. For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass away from the Law, until all is accomplished (Matthew 5:17-18).