The Flood

In the same podcast I referred to yesterday, Dr. Avram Shannon made an interesting observation about Moses 7:52 which, he said, “suggests that the flood could have been understood as a local flood rather than a worldwide flood.” The verse reads this way: “And he sent forth an unalterable decree, that a remnant of [Noah’s] seed should always be found among all nations, while the earth should stand.” He commented, “If Noah is the progenitor of the entire earth, then a promise that a remnant seed is found around the earth is not a meaningful promise, because all of the earth is a remnant of his seed.” It certainly does seem odd that the Lord would promise Enoch to always preserve a remnant of Noah’s seed if all on the earth but Noah, his wife, and their sons and wives would be killed by the flood. At the same time, the final verses of the book of Moses say this: “The earth was corrupt before God, and it was filled with violence. And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted its way upon the earth. And God said unto Noah: The end of all flesh is come before me, for the earth is filled with violence, and behold I will destroy all flesh from off the earth” (Moses 8:28-30). If the word earth really applies to the entire globe then these verses describe a worldwide flood. But Dr. Shannon suggested that the word earth might have originally meant land and not necessarily the whole of humanity: “It says in Genesis, the whole earth will be flooded. But of course the Hebrew there is going to be ‘erets, and ’erets means ‘land’. And so, you could translate that the whole land will be flooded.”

                Other scriptures do seem to suggest a worldwide flood. The Lord said this to His disciples: “But as it was in the days of Noah, so it shall be also at the coming of the Son of Man; For it shall be with them, as it was in the days which were before the flood; for until the day that Noah entered into the ark they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage; And knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of Man be” (JSM 1:41-43). Here He compared what happened at the time of the flood to what would happen at the time of His second coming on the earth. We know that His coming will certainly be experienced by the entire globe and that all the wicked everywhere will be destroyed, so His comparison seems to describe a flood was equally universal. Peter also wrote this: “In the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water” (1 Peter 3:20). He also said, “And [God] spared not the old world, but saved Noah the eighth person, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood upon the world of the ungodly” (2 Peter 2:5). If only eight souls were indeed saved, then the flood was ubiquitous. And the description in Genesis, at least as we have it now in the King James Bible, certainly suggests a total destruction of all on the earth except those on the ark: “And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, and every man: All in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land, died. And every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both man, and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven; and they were destroyed from the earth: and Noah only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark” (Genesis 7:21-23). Either way, what is important about this story is that we need to live so that we are, figuratively speaking, in the ark in these last days. As wickedness continues to increase around us, and the coming of the Son of God gets ever closer, our security lies in staying with the prophet in ark.