We should all be wary of cultural or secular attempts at Biblical storytelling. However, if Hollywood makes us look deeper into facts, then this is a good thing. ♦

There’s an upcoming Hollywood movie hitting the big screen in March 2014. The movie is simply called Noah.  With a star-studded team of actors and direction by a known box-office hit-maker, this movie is destined to turn heads as much for its anticipated special effects as well as for its controversial Biblical subject matter, Noah and the Flood.

Will it be mocking? Will it be true to the Biblical account? There are already reports of disputes between the studio and the director on the degree to which the film is accurate to the Biblical reading of events. An understandable debate considering the subject matter and the production source. It certainly will be interesting to see what ends up on the final reel.

Christians should be wary of cultural or secular attempts at Biblical storytelling. The heart may be willing, but the commercialized dollars may be overwhelming. My bet is for an altered story that waters down the truth and succumbs to secular pressures that will leave the Christian community less than satisfied. Nevertheless, I’ll reserve final judgment until the unveiled finished product.

Hopes Not High on Truth Telling
Which brings up the issue of truth telling. Truth is, even many Christians do not believe in the literal story of the Flood as told in Genesis 6-9. This is a curious fact given that the same Jesus they believe walked the earth as God incarnate also cited Noah and the Flood when teaching the disciples in Matthew 24:37-39.

Hard to have it both ways. Either Jesus was speaking Truth, or He wasn’t. If He wasn’t, then we’ve all got a problem. As C.S. Lewis pointed out in his book Mere Christianity, Jesus was either a liar, a lunatic (“on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg”) or He is Lord. Can we believe that Jesus was the Son of God and then slightly misguided when it comes to a literal worldwide flood? Because, after all (we tell ourselves and our secular friends) it could have been a localized flood, or He was speaking figuratively, or He didn’t really mean it literally, it was only a story, etc., etc.

That stance is weak and inconsistent. And it doesn’t hold water.

Flood Facts and Questions
Evidence shows that the earth has experienced a devastating worldwide flood, whose waters violently burst forth from under the earth’s crust. We won’t read this in today’s standard textbooks where explanations for many of the earth’s major features are scientifically flawed as they originate from a biased evolutionary perspective. There are actually strong arguments that a global flood with vast and unique consequences did actually occur consistent with the Biblical rendering. These arguments will be covered in future posts.

Whatever your current personal rationale, interpretation or perspective on the Biblical account of the Flood, you have to intellectually ask yourself some honest questions:

• What is the origin of one of the planet’s most dramatic features, the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, which wraps around the earth and is the world’s longest mountain range – 46,000 miles?
• Why are large fossilized trees found near the North and South Poles, some 24 feet long and 2 feet thick? How could so much vegetation grow where it is nighttime 6 months of the year? Were these cold lands once at temperate latitudes?
• What is the source of an Ice Age which requires extreme snowfall, cold temperatures and heavy precipitation? Heavy precipitation can occur only if oceans are warm enough to produce equally heavy evaporation. How could warm oceans exist with cold atmospheric temperatures?
• What did God mean by fountains of the deep? (Genesis 6:11) – Was it more than simply 40 days of a heavy rain storm?
• If the Grand Canyon was carved out by the Colorado River over millions of years, where is an expected gigantic river delta where the river enters the Gulf of California? Where did 800 cubic miles of dirt go?
• Why have there been sightings of an Ark-sized structure in the mountains of Turkey (Ararat)? Ancient historians such as Josephus wrote that the Ark existed. Marco Polo also wrote the Ark was reported on a high mountain in central Armenia. US U-2 planes and satellites have photographed what the CIA calls the “Ararat Anomaly.”
• Why have there been legends of a great flood widely diffused over the world (Australia, India, China, Scandinavia, America)? The earliest people of China, 4000-5000 years ago, brought with them stories of past events found in the early chapters of Genesis.
• Why does every major mountain range on earth contain fossilized sea life (shells on mountaintops) – far above sea level and usually far from the nearest body of water?

A Secular Culture’s Blind Eye
If a culture ignored, for any reason, a past event as cataclysmic as a global food, major errors or misunderstandings would creep into science and society. Add over a century of Darwinian evolutionary explanations of millions of years to fossil layers, geologic features, even the universe, chemical elements, heavenly bodies, earth and life itself, and the stage is set for a fully secularized culture that scoffs at stories in ancient religious texts like the Bible. The movie Noah should be cinematic fun; the real intrigue is in stirring and stimulating factual and scientific truth seeking.

Do you believe there was a real global flood? 
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In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, on the seventeenth day of the second month—on that day all the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened. And rain fell on the earth forty days and forty nights. – Genesis 6:11-12

Categories: Archaeology, Creation, Evidence, Evolution, Faith, Jesus, Old Testament, The Flood, Theology

Tags: Ararat, biblical perspective, fountains of the deep, global flood, Ice Age, Jesus, Mid-Atlantic Ridge, noah, Old Testament, religion, the movie