“God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built. In it only a few people, eight in all were saved.” 1Peter 3:20
Do you remember playing “telephone” as a kid? Someone comes up with an original statement that they whisper into the next person’s ear. That person, in turn, tells the next until it goes all the way around the circle. At the end you have the last person tell what they heard and then compare it to the original to see how much it’s changed.
Less than 5,000 years ago there was a world-wide flood on this earth and only eight people survived it. Five generations later people had strayed so far from God they built a tower to make a name for themselves, so God confused the languages. Five generations after that God spoke to Abraham and from there the Jewish race was established who carried the promise of Messiah and were entrusted with the story of what actually happened in the early years of mankind. Moses was the one who finally wrote it down.
Most cultures that arose out of the original eight people eventually wrote down their version of what happened as it had come down from their ancestors. Today we have over 300 different versions of a flood story from people who live all over the earth.* After so many retellings it is amazing how similar they are. Of the over 300 accounts:
- 95% are worldwide floods
- 88% favor one family
- 66% the family was forewarned
- 66% it was the result of man’s sin
- 70% survival was by a boat
- 67% animals were saved
- 57% survivors landed on a mountain
- 35% birds were sent out
Georges Cuvier, the father of modern geology (he was the first who recognized mass extinctions in the earth’s past), maintained that catastrophes had happened in the earth’s history, the most recent being a world-wide flood. He wrote an essay called: “The Concurrence of historical and traditionary testimonies, respecting a comparatively recent renewal of the human race, and their agreement with the proofs that are furnished by the operations of nature.” To Cuvier the evidence of these testimonies meant there had to be an original. Noah’s flood is not a children’s story; it’s part of the history of our planet.
