Can the flood mentioned in Genesis be proven?

Now, the catastrophe which destroyed these great animals, and heaped their bones together in masses, occurred since the creation of man. Not merely were vast multitudes of animals destroyed, but a whole fauna suddenly perished. Nothing like this has ever been seen on the earth. Very often pestilences sweep away great numbers of animals, but these murrains never destroy all the animals of one race entirely, over a widespread region. But at the time we speak of, the lion, tiger, hyaena, elephant, rhinoceros, and hippopotamus, suddenly and entirely disappeared from these northern lands, and were never seen there again. The way also that these great animals all crowded together in multitudes shows that some overwhelming catastrophe overtook them. In one spot in Oxfordshire the remains of no fewer than fifty elephants were found crowded together in one gravel pit! Similar instances have been found in other countries. There is no way of explaining such extraordinary facts except by admitting a sudden and overwhelming flood of water. More than this, the race of men living at that time (i.e., Paleolithic men) utterly perished along with the great animals, and no trace of them can be afterwards discovered. How are we to account for all this wonderful array of scientific facts? It is plain that geological science proves that, since the advent of man upon the earth, a tremendous flood period or era of diluvial waters has prevailed over a large portion of the world. The Biblical account of Noah's flood is, therefore, proved to be scientifically true, and once more it has been demonstrated that science, rightly interpreted, is in perfect harmony with the revelation of God. D. Lath Whitley.

From all this it is plain that if talented geologists in the past and in the present, have maintained and do maintain that the account of the Biblical deluge is in harmony with geology, it follows, that those who say that Noah's flood is contrary to modern science are not only wrong, but are completely ignoring some of the facts of geology.

The facts of geology which prove the truth of Noah's flood are found in the clays, sands and gravels of the Quaternary formation, and in the character of the remains of the animals which these beds inclose. The earlier deposits of the Quaternary Era are not referred to, as those were formed by ice and water during the Glacial Period, and it is only the later beds of the Quaternary Epoch that concern our argument.

This great catastrophe has also been denied and ridiculed. It is painful to mention all these denials, but it is needful to call attention to these attacks on the foundation of the Bible. Hundreds of men, who claim to be exponents of Christianity, speak of Noah as a myth and the deluge reported in Genesis as an unconfirmed event. Traditions of the flood are found among all nations and exhibit in many cases a very striking agreement with the divinely given record. These traditions are found in India, China, Egypt, and Greece as well as among the Chaldeans and Babylonians. Peruvians, Mexicans, Greenlanders, and the Teutonic races possess these traditions. Geology also gives the most decisive evidence of such a judgment by water through which the earth passed. The surface of the earth exhibits a deposit, which originated after a universal flood and which is called diluvial (flood) land. Vast quantities of bones and teeth of antediluvian animals, masses of rock and boulder, carried by the flood, are found in this diluvial deposit. Many pages could be filled with such evidences.

Time was when Modernists scoffed at the idea of the flood recorded in Genesis 7 and 8. The excavators come along. Professor Langdon worked at Kish, near Babylon. Sir Leonard Woolley excavated at Ur of the Chaldees, the place from whence Abraham came. They both at the same time came upon deposits which could only have been the result of a mighty flood. Dr. Langdon stated in The Times 18th March, 1929, that the thick alluvial stratum he had discovered in his opinion afforded "conclusive testimony that the Genesis story of the Deluge is historical." He said in The Times, 4th January, 1929:- "When we [viz., Sir Leonard Woolley and himself] made these discoveries we were loathe to believe that we had obtained confirmation of the Deluge of Genesis, but there is no doubt about it now."

1911 273 We constantly hear the narrative of Noah's flood attacked, and denounced as untrue. We are told that it is contradictory to modern science, that it never could have occurred, and that it is a mere myth. And yet, there were never more erroneous statements than these ever uttered, for a long array of scientific and historical facts can be marshalled in order, which prove to demonstration that the Biblical Deluge is not only a great truth, but is in perfect harmony with the teachings of modern science.*

Let us see the evidence for Noah's flood which can now be brought forward.

First of all there is the tradition of a great flood, which in ancient times was firmly held by the great nations of classical antiquity, and is believed today by many savage and heathen races, while it was also held by the ancestors of these savages long before they were influenced by Christianity.

How did this tradition arise? There must have been a cause. It cannot have been an invention, because it is found everywhere and amongst all races. It cannot have been a rain myth, because it is held by barbarous races in lands where the rainfall is slight. Besides this, the tradition as it is held by savage races, and by ancient cultured nations generally, says that the flood was a punishment for man's sin; hence the story could not have originated from the mere fall of rain. The only way to account for the flood story is to believe that some great diluvial catastrophe occurred, the remembrance of which has been preserved by many races of mankind.

1884 142 There is no longer need for controversy, even with the most sceptical of the small scientists, as to whether there has been a general flood such as that recorded in Genesis. The history of every ancient nation on the globe goes back (with more or less vagueness and mythology) to it. Plato amongst the Greeks, Ovid amongst the Romans, Berosus amongst the Chaldeans, and numbers of other heathen writers, bear witness of the universal tradition. Its story is inscribed on Apamean medal, Assyrian cuneiform tablet, and South American monument: but that is the smallest part of the external testimony. In any part of the world, from the transatlantic prairies to the pinnacles of the Himalayan mountains, if a man stoop down and question the ground under his feet it will tell him the same story of a great general inundation of waters; sea shells and marine fossils being found on the highest hills and indeed everywhere. The remains of tropical animals and plants have been washed up into these temperate climes, mingling with millions of rounded stone, "boulders" manifestly brought down from the frozen north imprisoned in icebergs, coming by reason of some mighty disruption in that ocean of ancient ice, which Nares calls the Palaeocrystine Sea. In the basins of London and Paris great numbers of the bones of tropical animals are found. In Kirkdale Cave, Yorkshire, are the bones of the hyaena, tiger, rhinoceros, tropical animals, mingled with the bones of the wolf, bear, and deer, of northern or perhaps arctic climes. In many places — especially in Britain — are found fossils of monkeys, cocoa nuts and palms lying within a short distance of boulder-stones and drift clays evidently dropped from floating icebergs. What else could have produced all this except the northward wash of a mighty deluge from the great southern ocean main, with the returning wash of the retreating waves?

When the warring and unstable waters retreated, they left behind, in rock and fossil, manifest and substantial witnesses for succeeding ages of what had taken place; so underneath the conflicting and uncertain deluge of the theories of geology are the hard and established facts of geognosy that nobody at this time of day thinks of questioning. Some geologists may give this or that reason (inconsistent, contradictory, or mutually exclusive reasons) for the above facts. But to one who believes the sixth chapter of Genesis the matter is plain enough — that God's word and God's world alike proclaim that there has been a general deluge. It is right to say that many eminent geologists used to believe this: geognosy reveals what is called a diluvial period in all lands. [ Strictly speaking, geognosy is the knowledge of the facts relating to the earth's crust; while geology (though in general loosely used) is the science founded thereon. Diluvial means violent action of water as contrasting with alluvial, the ordinary and continual action.]

86 The boldness of Dr. C.'s assertions, and the excessive carelessness of his statements and conclusions, are alike remarkable. He tells us that he does not believe in the deluge, because he does in geology. He has studied it in the Zulu country, and he now knows for certain (for Sir C. Lyell is infallible, if scripture and the Lord Christ be not) that a universal deluge could not possibly have taken place. Now Sir C. Lyell is unquestionably an able geologist, as well as the constant resort and refuge of infidels; but he has a system, and a system which geologists, less speculative and at the very least as able as he, entirely reject. Nor does he deny that the science is in its infancy. The ablest inquirers believe in a universal deluge; the latest researches tend to prove it. I say "tend," because no certain conclusions can yet be made from geology as to dates. I do not hesitate to affirm (and I am supported by the ablest geologists), that geological dates and periods stand on the most uncertain and unsatisfactory footing. Sir C. Lyell's system is utterly unsatisfactory — irreconcileable with the evident facts of the upheaval theory, which is generally admitted. Dr. C. assures us that a partial deluge is no better; so that in spite of universal tradition, scripture, the authority of Christ, who refers specifically to the deluge as true (Matthew 24:37-39), and much geological research, we are to have no deluge at all. I do not know that I should ever have noticed this point, as it is impossible to follow it out here, but as affording a proof of Dr. C.'s manner of reasoning. It was not partial, he says, because a flood that should cover Ararat must in due time sweep over the Puy de Dome, because water finds its own level! — that is to say, water 16,000 or 17,000 feet deep in a narrow locality must have been some 5,000 feet deep at thousands of miles distance, when it had spread that distance in every direction! And a man who reasons thus is to call in question the accuracy of scripture!

I believe the flood was all over the earth, wherever man was. There is no mistake. People have called the universality in question, using general terms, as if it only covered the inhabited earth. But scripture says, "the mountains were covered," "and the tops of the mountains were seen," and so on; this looks like universality. You must let in a miracle in any case: and so it is all one after all. Suppose Mount Ararat, fifteen or sixteen thousand feet high, in northern Armenia, was covered; well, if the waters were not all round, and away too, they would have run off, and covered somewhere else; there must have been a miracle anyhow. The universality of the flood, absolute universality, seems to me to be positively meant and intended, because of destroying the world that then was. God puts an end to the whole system of the world. It was as complete a judgment of the earth and all that was on it, on the part of God, as it will be presently by fire. Everything in the whole order and system of the world that had life perished, "the earth standing out of the water and in the water, whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished": so Peter tells us, and anything that enfeebled it I should not admit: all mere physical things are consequent upon it. Either reject the word of God, or else Mount Ararat was covered. As to universal destruction, everything in the world was put an end to. The world that then was is distinct from the world that now is; and this is of immense moral import to us. God says He will never do it again, but the next time it will be by fire.

This judgement of God upon the earth, when the whole world had become corrupt before Him, has often been thought to be a subject full of difficulties, the principal of which it may be well to consider. First, as to its extent, was the flood universal? Language can scarcely be more explicit than is the scripture on this point. We read that "all the high hills, that were under the whole heaven, were covered. Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail; and the mountains were covered. And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, and every man: all in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land, died. And every living substance was destroyed . . . . and Noah only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark." Gen. 7:19-23. After the flood God said He would not any more smite 'every thing living,' as He had done, Gen. 8:21; "neither shall there any more be a flood to destroy the earth." Gen. 9:11: cf. also 2 Peter 2:5; 2 Peter 3:6-7. Words cannot be plainer than the above to signify a universal deluge: the world that then was is distinguished from the earth that now is, and it is easy for faith to accept God's statement. It was a miracle, and it would require as great a miracle to cover all the high hills in one district only, without the water flowing to other parts, as to submerge the whole earth. The quantity of water required to cover the whole earth could easily be formed by God the Creator of all things, and be dispersed into its elements afterwards.

As to the flood itself, the account given (Genesis 7:11 — Genesis 8:14) is quite explicit, both as to its duration and its dimensions. The tremendous rain lasted for 40 days and 40 nights. The waters prevailed from the 17th day of the 2nd month to the 17th day of the 7th month, when the ark grounded on the mountains of Ararat. On the 1st day of the 10th month the tops of the mountains were seen. On the 1st day of the 1st month of a new year the waters had vanished from the face of the earth. On the 27th day of the 2nd month the earth was sufficiently dry for the occupants of the ark to go forth from it — one year and 10 days having elapsed from the onset.

Its dimensions were such that "all the high hills, that were under the whole heaven were covered." This seems to indicate that it was universal, and it is certain that nothing of a local nature could possibly have lasted for so long. Moreover the breaking up of "the fountains of the great deep" very possibly involved great changes on the surface of the earth: in other words, the configuration of continents, mountains, seas, etc., may have been very different in the antediluvian age from their present form.