Noah and the Ark
Noah, the father of Shem, Ham, and Japheth, built the Ark over a period of 120 years.
These are full sized models of the ark as visualized by the builders in recent years.
Seek the Truth with all your heart.
Adam was the first human father, but Noah can also be understood to be the father of humankind, since he essentially began the repopulation of the Earth through his sons Shem, Ham, and Japheth, and their children of 16 sons - daughters are not numbered - who they bore after the flood.
1,600 years after the fall of Adam and Eve, the earth had become full of sin, and people no longer called on the name of the LORD.
GOD decided to wipe out such a sinful world, and initiated the flood in approximately 2300-2400 BC
Noah was a preacher of righteousness, and was a wonderful role model to his children. He showed them that it is possible to walk with GOD in a society that is saturated with sin and rebellion, and to be obedient even in the midst of a mass of voices challenging GOD’s ways.
Because of Noah's walk with the LORD, he not only saved his sons and their wives, he gave the entire earth a second chance by accepting a 120-year long project to build an Ark that would save his family and the Earth's animals, a project that took great patience, persistence, perseverance, and faithfulness.
The Ark was 450 feet long by 75 feet wide by 45 feet high, with 3 decks, all built out of gopher wood.
Moreover, it took great strength of character to ignore those who mocked his preparations and ridiculed his prophetic insight into the end of the world, as they thought it to be.
Noah reminds us that our own fathers may have special insights, especially when it comes to our daily lives, overall wellbeing, and survival.
Scientific materialists and uniformitarians of today impose their philosophies on to the irrevocable evidence; and reject the compelling evidence of a global flood; just as Peter predicted. Similarly, the natural philosophers and wise men of the antediluvian world clung to their philosophies, despite the evidence that GOD gave them. They denied GOD’s existence because they did not want to acknowledge HIM. They adored nature and glorified humanity, but rejected GOD the Creator of it all, and did so in a very mockingly influential way.
The dazzling light of the angel who descended to close the door of the ark, confirmed that Noah’s warning was of divine origin, but at that stage it was too late for the evidence to have any effect on all the people who had rejected the whole purpose of the ark. The door was shut. The passing days of merriment and rubbishing of GOD’s warning, increased significantly. GOD had done everything HE could for these antediluvian people, and there was no point in allowing further grace.
As the rising waters lifted the giant boat, many of the doomed people blasphemed GOD who they had mockingly rejected.
In these end times when sin overtakes the world and the love of many grows cold, a GOD-ly father is a treasure, and such a father will not be like all the other ‘run-of-the-mill’ fathers; he will be a gift from Heaven.
Genesis 6:5 - 8:22 ‘The LORD saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the Earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time. The LORD regretted that HE had made human beings on the Earth, and HIS heart was deeply troubled. So the LORD said, “I will wipe from the face of the Earth the human race I have created – and with them the animals, the birds and the creatures that move along the ground – for I regret that I have made them.” But Noah found favour in the eyes of the LORD.
This is the account of Noah and his family. Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked faithfully with GOD, Noah had three sons: Shem, Ham, and Japheth.
Now the Earth was corrupt in GOD’s sight and was full of violence. GOD saw how corrupt the Earth had become, for all the people on Earth had corrupted their ways. So GOD said to Noah, “I am going to put an end to all people, for the Earth is filled with violence because of them. I am surely going to destroy both them and the Earth. So make yourself an ark of cypress wood; make rooms in it and coat it with pitch inside and out. This is how you are to build it. The ark is to be three hundred cubits long, fifty cubits wide, and thirty cubits high. (1 cubit = 0.5 metre = 18 inches.) Make a roof for it, leaving below the roof an opening one cubit high all around. Put a door in the side of the ark and make lower, middle, and upper decks. I am going to bring floodwaters on the Earth to destroy all life under the heavens, every creature that has the breath of life in it. Everything on Earth will perish. But I will establish MY covenant with you, and you will enter the ark – you and your sons and your wife and your sons’ wives with you. You are to bring into the ark two of all living creatures, male and female, to keep them alive with you. 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. You are to take every kind of food that is to be eaten and store it away as food for you and for them.”
Noah did everything just as GOD commanded him.
The LORD then said to Noah, “Go into the ark, you and your whole family, because I have found you righteous in this generation. Take with you seven pairs of every kind of clean animal, a male and its mate, and one kind of every unclean animal, a male and its mate, and also seven pairs of every kind of bird, male and female, to keep their various kinds alive throughout the Earth. Seven days from now I will send rain on the Earth for forty days and forty nights, and I will wipe from the face of the Earth every living creature I have made.” And Noah did all that the LORD commanded him.
Noah was six hundred years old when the floodwaters came on the Earth. And Noah and his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives entered the ark to escape the waters of the flood. Pairs of clean and unclean animals, of birds and of all creatures that move along the ground, male and female, came to Noah and entered the ark, as GOD had commanded Noah. And after the seven days the floodwaters came on the Earth.
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.
On the very day Noah and his sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, together his wife and the wives of his three sons, entered the ark. They had with them every wild animal according to its kind, all livestock according to their kinds, every creature that moves along the ground according to its kind and every bird according to its kind, everything with wings. Pairs of all creatures that have the breath of life in them came to Noah and entered the ark. The animals going in were male and female of every living thing, as GOD had commanded Noah. Then the LORD shut him in.
For forty days the flood kept coming on the Earth, and as the waters increased they lifted the ark high above the Earth. The waters rose and increased greatly on the Earth, and the ark floated on the surface of the water. They rose greatly on the Earth, and all the high mountains under the entire heavens were covered. The waters rose and covered the mountains to a depth of more than fifteen cubits. Every living thing that moved on land perished – birds, livestock, wild animals, of all the creatures that swarm over the Earth, and all mankind. Everything on dry land that had the breath of life in its nostrils died. Every living creature on the face of the Earth was wiped out; people and animals and the creatures that move along the ground and the creatures that move along the ground and the birds wiped from the Earth. Only Noah was left, and those with him in the ark.
The waters flooded the Earth for a hundred and fifty days.
But GOD remembered Noah and all the wild animals and the livestock that were with him in the ark, and he sent a wind over the Earth, and the waters receded. Now the springs of the deep and the floodgates of the heavens had been closed, and the rain had stopped falling from the sky. The waters receded steadily from the Earth. At the end of the hundred and fifty days the water had gone down, and on the seventeenth day of the seventh month the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat. The waters continued to recede until the tenth month, and on the first day of the tenth month the top of the mountains became visible.
After forty days Noah opened a window he had made in the ark and sent out a raved, and is kept flying back and forth until the water had dried up from the Earth. Then he sent out a dove to see if the water had receded from the surface of the ground. But the dove could find nowhere to perch because there was water over all the surface of the Earth; so it returned to Noah in the ark. He reached out his hand and took the dove and brought it back to himself in the ark. He waited seven more days and again sent out the dove from the ark.
When the dove returned to him in the evening, there in its beak was a freshly plucked olive leaf. Then Noah knew that the water had receded from the Earth. He waited seven more days and sent the dove out again, but this time it did not return to him.
By the first day of the first month of Noah’s six hundred and first year, the water had dried up from the Earth. Noah then removed the covering from the ark and saw that the surface of the ground was dry. By the twenty seventh day of the second month the Earth was completely dry.’
Then GOD said to Noah, “Come out of the ark, you and your wife and your sons and their wives. Bring out every kind of living cre5ature that is with you; the birds, the animals, and all the creatures that move along the ground; so they can multiply on the Earth and be fruitful and increase in number on it.”
So Noah came out, together with his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives. All the animals and all the creatures that move along the ground and all the birds; everything that moves on land, came out of the ark, one kind after another.
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. The LORD smelled the pleasing aroma and said in HIS heart. “Never again will I curse the ground because of humans, even though every inclination of the human heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures as I have done.
“As long as the Earth endures; seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease.”
Genesis 9:11 ‘I establish MY covenant with you: Never again will all life be destroyed by the waters of a flood; never again will there be a flood to destroy the Earth.’
Luke 16:31 ‘He, (Abraham) said to him, ”If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.”
Luke 17:26-27 ‘Just as it was in the days of Noah, so also it will be in the days of the Son of Man. People were eating, in marriage, marrying and being given up to the day Noah entered the ark. Then the flood came and destroyed them all.’
Hebrews 11:7 ‘By faith Noah, when warned about things not yet seen, in holy fear built an ark to save his family. By his faith, he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness that is in keeping with faith.’
GOD chose Noah as being the only husband and father, together with his wife and three sons and their wives, who HE intended to save from a wicked world which HE planned to destroy with the worldwide flood.
It has been found, in recent times, that the ratio of the ark, being six times as long as it is wide, is the best ratio of length to width (6 to 1) for the stability of ocean tankers, in all conditions; which is additional evidence that GOD knows the best for everything.
The rainbow is GOD’s sign that HE will never again use a worldwide flood to destroy sinful humanity.
HE has other ways of dealing with the problem, which next time will involve fire, and that storm is coming, and once again all unbelievers and mockers will be destroyed.