Q6. Why Was Noah Spared the Flood?

Imagine that you pick up the New Paper one day to read the following headline:

"FATHER OF THREE FOUND NAKED BY SONS IN DRUNKEN STUPOR.
FATHER WAKES UP AND CURSES HIS YOUNGEST SON FOR EXPOSING HIM."

What impression would you form about this father and his son?

Now let's read Gen 9:20-24...

20 And Noah began to be a farmer, and he planted a vineyard. 
21 Then he drank of the wine and was drunk, and became uncovered in his tent. 
22 And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brothers outside. 23 But Shem and Japheth took a garment, laid it on both their shoulders, and went backward and covered the nakedness of their father. Their faces were turned away, and they did not see their father’s nakedness.
24 So Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son had done to him. 25 Then he said:
“Cursed be Canaan; A servant of servants, He shall be to his brethren.”

One of the most familiar stories in the Bible is regarding Noah and the flood.

What may not have been expounded in detail, however, was the event leading up to the flood (as well as the above event that happened after the flood).

I remember my Sunday School teachers telling us very simplistically that Noah was spared from God's judgement because the entire world was wicked and evil, whereas only he, his three sons Shem, Ham and Japheth and their wives were good and upright.

Yet we read in Gen 9 about how Noah got drunk one day and lay naked, and his youngest son Ham ratted on him. When Noah woke up, he placed a curse on the descendants of Ham.

This doesn't seem like the behaviour of persons who were good and upright, does it?

Noah was unblemished, just like those animal sacrifices.

So why then did God spare him and his family, yet everyone else had to perish in the flood?

For that, we need to read the account leading up to the flood.

In Gen 6:9, Noah was described as a "perfect man". The original Hebrew word is tamiym תָּמִים (Strong's 08549), which means "without blemish" or "unadulterated".

This same word is also used to describe the condition of animals that were acceptable to be offered unto the Lord under the Levitical customs.

Earlier in the same chapter, we also read about "unholy unions" between fallen angels and humans.

Gen 6:1-3 (Contemporary English Version)

More and more people were born, until finally they spread all over the earth. Some of their daughters were so beautiful that supernatural beings came down and married the ones they wanted.

What resulted from those unholy unions were gigantic freaks (or what some versions refer to as Nephilim).

Now why would these fallen angels want to do that?

For that, we have to go back to that first prophecy that took place in the Garden of Eden in Gen 3:15, where God said that Eve's seed would one day defeat the devil.

In response, Satan first tried to stop the seed by inspiring Cain to kill Abel.  Well, he failed to do so, because Adam and Eve went on to have other children, Seth being one of them.

So what did Satan do next?  He summoned his followers to corrupt the seed of Eve, hoping that it would prevent that prophesy from coming to pass!

But thankfully, God was again one step ahead of the evil one. Noah and his family were the only ones left who remained unblemished as pure human. He was asked to build the ark and take pairs of each kind of animal with him. The workings of the devil in trying to corrupt the seed of Eve came to an abrupt end when all the products of the unholy unions perished in the flood.

It was important for Jesus to be fully-man, in order that He could be a kinsman-redeemer to the human race.

Hence, if we "connect the dots" using the "scarlet thread", we will understand not only why God spared Noah and his family, but also why He had to send the flood to wipe out everyone else.

[See the blog entry entitled "Connecting the Dots Via the Scarlet Thread"]

In other words, Noah was spared not because he was without sin, but because he was the only unblemished specimen of mankind left on earth!

By the way, the genealogy of Noah is recorded for us in Genesis 5.

Adam
Seth
Enosh
Kenan
Mahalalel
Jared
Enoch
Methusaleh
Lamech
Noah

Note the hidden message in there, which is that "At the appointed time, the blessed God shall come down as a mortal man, acquaint Himself with sorrow and teach us that His death shall bring the despairing rest/comfort."

We see the genealogy of Jesus being preserved through the flood.

The lineage from Noah to Abraham as recorded in Gen 11:10-32 is as follows:

Noah
Shem
Arphaxad
Cainan
Shelah
Eber
Peleg
Reu
Serug
Nahor
Terah
Abraham

There is not much mentioned about the patriarchs between Shem and Abraham.

However, Abraham was told specifically by God that he would become a father of many nations. The devil heard this and hence began his dirty deeds in earnest again.

Next up, I will blog about what he tried to do to Abraham and Sarah to prevent the first prophecy from happening, and how God continued to outsmart him.

Q3. How Did Dinosaurs Enter the Ark?

Many of us must have read Science books or watched the movie Jurassic Park, and seen pictures of these awfully gigantic creatures known as dinosaurs.

Scientific evidence indicate that these massive animals existed at one stage in time in history.

In an earlier post, I mentioned that science and the Bible should not contradict each other.  If anything, science should support the Bible.

If that is the case, why is it that the Bible doesn't talk about dinosaurs?  And given their enormous size, how did they get onto Noah's ark?

Let me answer the 2nd part of the question first, i.e. how did dinosaurs enter the Ark?

For that, we have to first correct some of our own wrong impressions that have formed over the years.

Please do not capsize!

Sometime in August 2007, my then-cell group attended a talk by Creation Ministries International that was held in my church.

During that talk, the speaker told us that one of the reasons why people do not believe the Genesis account (such as creation, Noah's flood, etc) is because they have seen pictures of Noah's Ark drawn in cartoon form.

Usually, the Ark is no larger than a bathtub, with giraffes' heads sticking out from it, and appears so unstable that it can topple at any time, what less withstand a huge catastrophic flood.

Now, this is more like it.  Huge and stable.

Somehow, such wrong impressions can consciously or unconsciously discredit the Bible and relegate its accounts to mere fairytales or fables, and cause people not to believe the truth that can set them free.

Well, the truth of the matter is that the Ark that Noah built was very, very huge and very, very stable. It was the size of 81 five-room HDB flats (27 flats X 3 storeys high).

The giraffes' head did not need to protrude from the top, and there was sufficient room for the dinosaurs, hippos, elephants, as well as hundreds of other animals.

Panoramic photo of Ark replica located at Noah's Ark Resort, Hong Kong.

To truly appreciate how massive the Ark really was, I highly recommend that anyone going to Hong Kong make a trip to Noah's Ark Resort.  It has a full-size replica of the Ark built to biblical proportions.  My family went there in November last year, and it was a truly eye-opening experience for me.  A panoramic photo which I took is shown above.

Gen 6:19-20 says

19 You are to bring into the ark two of all living creatures, male and female, to keep them alive with you. 
20 Two of every kind of bird, of every kind of animal and of every kind of creature that moves along the ground will come to you to be kept alive.

From the above verses, we see that God had commanded Noah to take pairs of each kind of animal onboard.  Note that He said "kind", which means just a pair of rodents, a pair of felines, a pair of canines, a pair of bovines, a pair of equines, and so on.  

The next time we take the MRT, just take a look around and you will find not just Chinese, Malays and Indians but also Filipinos, Thais, Koreans and even Caucasians.  We speak different languages, embrace different cultures, and look very different from one another.  Yet, if we took a step back and ponder, we will realise that every single one of these people are all related to us through Noah and 3 his sons!

If we are able to comprehend and accept that all of us humans descended from the 8 humans on the Ark, then we should likewise also be able to concede that the pair of rodents Noah brought onto the ark would be the ancestors of my niece's pet hamster, my pet chinchilla, that rat you see scurrying in the nearby rubbish dump, and the squirrels that frequent McRitchie Reservoir.

The pair of felines onboard Noah's Ark would be the ancestors of the pet cats my sister keeps, that lion in the Singapore Zoo, and the cheetahs and tigers you see on Animal Planet.

The first pair of canines would be the ancestors of the pet dogs in my colleagues' house, as well as the wolves, foxes, and jackals that roam out in the wild.

So too, are buffaloes, zebras and yaks descendants of that pair of bovines, while zebras, hippos and donkeys are descendants of that pair of equines.

Let me digress here, but it is times like this that make me appreciate the Chinese language.

For example, rodents have the "鼠" character, hence
squirrel = 松鼠
chinchilla = 灰鼠
hamster = 仓鼠
guinea pig = 豚鼠

Bovines have the "牛" character, hence
rhino = 犀牛
buffalo = 水牛
bison = 野牛
yak = 牦牛

With that in mind, it would thus be entirely possible to fit all the required animals and birds on the Ark.

Note also that nowhere is it mentioned in the Bible that it was a requirement for Noah to bring on board adult animals.  Hence, a pair of juvenile dinosaurs would have sufficed, small enough to fit into the Ark.  After the waters had subsided, the animals would have come of age, left the ark and procreated, including the pair of dinosaurs.

Afternote: A brother asked how come there was a dove and a raven on board the Ark.  Thanks for your question, bro!  For this, let's look at Gen 7:2-3:

2 Take with you seven pairs of every kind of clean animal, a male and its mate, and one pair of every kind of unclean animal, a male and its mate, 3 and also seven pairs of every kind of bird, male and female, to keep their various kinds alive throughout the earth

The extra pairs of clean animals were meant for sacrificial purposes ("Then Noah built an altar to the Lord and, taking some of all the clean animals and clean birds, he sacrificed burnt offerings on it." Gen 8: 20).

Furthermore, Noah was asked to become an omnivore after he got off the Ark ("Everything that lives and moves about will be food for you. Just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything." Gen 9:3)

In Gen 1:6-8, we read that the atmosphere was surrounded by a firmament, and this probably kept the climate cool throughout the day (see Gen 3:8 where we read that "God was walking in the garden in the cool of the day").  This would have been ideal for animals such as the dinosaurs to live relatively free from harm.  After all, before the fall, death was an alien concept to God's creation.  It was because of man's original sin that death came about.

In Gen 7:11, we read that "the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened".  Water covered the entire earth, so God had to tilt the earth in order for the excess water to gather at the poles.  This tilting of the earth also resulted in the 4 seasons, and animals that could not adapt to the severe change in environment would gradually become extinct.  That may explain why we do not see dinosaurs anymore.

Now let's get back to answering the 1st part of the question, which is why did the Bible not mention anything about dinosaurs.

For that we have to understand that the term "dinosauria" only came about in 1842.  It was coined by scientist Richard Owen to describe what he considered to be "fearfully great reptiles".

The book of Job, which dates back to 2,000 B.C., mentions creatures such as "behemoth" and "leviathan" in chapters 40 and 41 respectively.  Just because that scientist chose to come up with the word "dinosaur" does not necessary mean that he was not referring to the same creature.  After all, many scientists are atheists who do not acknowledge that there is a creator God, and the lesser they make reference to the Bible, the better they think they will be.

So there you have it.  Dinosaurs entered the Ark as young creatures, and just a pair of its kind (from which other dinosaurs could come forth) would have sufficed to re-populate the earth.

Next up: Q4. Are there aliens in outer space?