Shadowland: Beginnings: Week 12

The Ark

• 7:1 "Come thou and all thy house into the ark." "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house" Acts 16:31
• 7:2-3 Seven males and seven females of clean beasts, and of birds.
• 7:3-4 "All the earth", also 6:11-13. The text does not support a "local" flood.
• 7:11 "all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened". The earths mantle transition zone between 410 and 660 km depth is composed primarily of RingWoodite. At that temperature and pressure, the ringwoodite is plastic (flows) and has hydroxide equivalent to 3 times the earths oceans worth of water dissolved in it. Breaking this up by, say, striking the earth with a massive object, would release great quantities of this water as steam. Psalm 104:6-13

  More speculatively, there was apparently a vapor canopy before the flood, but this alone would not have enough water to cover todays mountains. (But who knows how high the highest mountains were before the upheaval that caused the flood.)

• 7:16 "The Lord shut him in." The ark is a type of our salvation. Our security does not rest with ourselves, but with God. 6:16 - "the door shalt thou set in the side", the ark had only one door. There is only one way into our salvation, through Jesus who said "I am the door", and whose side was pierced. 6:14 - "pitch", is translated "atonement" everywhere else in the Bible. It literally means "cover". The ark was pitched within and without, possibly to preserve it as a witness. It stood as a witness against Noah's generation, and it will stand as a witness in the last days.

  The ark of Noah protected from God's wrath. (The ark of Moses is a type of protection from Satan's wrath; the ark of the Covenant from the condemnation of the Law.) The storm of God's wrath pressed on the ark, not on those inside, and on Christ, not on those in Christ. In Psalm 42:7 the Psalmist cries "All your waves and your billows are gone over me."

• 7:19-24 The text does not support a local flood.