Yesterday we learned the idea of millions of years came from a new way of looking at rock layers that rejected the eyewitness account of history in God’s Word. Now how did the church react to this shift?

Well, many scientists rejected it! They argued the Bible’s history could be trusted and the catastrophe of Noah’s flood made more sense of the evidence than the idea of slow and gradual processes.

But, sadly many other Christians simply accepted the millions of years. They said it didn’t matter what someone believed about the age of the earth. But their compromise had disastrous consequences. More on that tomorrow.

Have you ever wondered where the idea of millions of years came from? You see, for most of Western history people believed in a young earth because they respected the Bible as the history book of the universe. But about two hundred years ago there was a shift. People stopped viewing the rock layers through the lens of a global flood, and they started arguing that the present is the key to the past.

In other words, take the processes happening today and stretch them backwards. When geologists did this, they came to believe earth was very old.

But as we’ll see this week, it’s the Bible that gives us the true history of the world.

This whole week we’ve seen that the Genesis text is clear: Noah’s flood was global. But it’s not just Genesis!

Jesus compared his second coming to Noah’s flood. Now Jesus’ return isn’t going to be a localized event—it will be global, just as the flood was!

And the apostle Peter wrote that only eight people survived. If the flood was a local event, people outside the area would’ve escaped so the Bible would be, well, wrong!

You know, the only reason some Christians say Noah’s flood was local is because of millions of years of history. Instead of compromising with man’s ideas, let’s start with God’s Word and believe it!

Was Noah’s flood local or global? This week we’ve seen that Genesis makes it clear that Noah’s flood was global. And the size of the Ark itself makes it clear that God was sending a global flood.

Then, after the flood, God said the rainbow would be a sign of his promise that he would never again send another global flood. But if Noah’s flood was just a local event, well, God lied. There’ve been many devastating local floods since the flood of Noah’s day. So what did God mean by saying he’d never again send another flood? It makes no sense!

God’s Word is very clear—the flood was global! And God will never send another flood like it again!

This week we’re looking at the question “was Noah’s flood local or global?” Well, consider this: Noah’s ark was huge. At five hundred and ten feet long, fifty-one feet high, and eighty-five feet wide, the ark was a massive ship designed to hold two of every kind of animal, supplies for a whole year, and Noah and his family.

Now why would Noah need such a huge ark if the flood was just local? He and his family could’ve just packed up and left the area. And animals outside the flood zone would’ve survived so why did two of every kind need to come to the ark anyway?

No! The text of Genesis is clear: the flood was a global event!

Some Christians, including many pastors and Bible colleges, teach that Noah’s flood was just a local event, not a flood that actually covered the entire earth.

Now this doesn’t come from the text of Genesis. It comes from bringing evolutionary ideas from outside the Bible into the text. Here’s what the Genesis text actually says:

Over and over Genesis uses words like “all” and “every,” such as “all the high hills under the whole heaven were covered” and “all flesh died.” Now that doesn’t sound like a small, localized event!

The Bible is clear—Noah’s flood was a global judgment on sin, but God offered mercy.

I often hear from Christians who don’t believe Noah’s flood was a global flood. They’ll say it was just a local flood in Mesopotamia. But why?

Well, it’s not because of what the Bible says. Genesis is very clear that it was a global flood. The idea of a local flood comes from, well, evolutionary scientists!

You see, they believe the earth is millions of years old because of the rock layers. But if there was a global flood, those rock layers would’ve all been ripped up, erasing the “evidence” of long ages! So they can’t have a global flood.

Christians who say Noah’s flood was local are believing man’s ideas over God’s clear Word.

Yesterday we learned that the apostle Paul treated Genesis as literal history and as foundational to the gospel. Well, the apostle Peter did too!

In his letters he refers to the flood of Noah’s day as a historical event and that only eight people were saved. He even ties that past event to the second coming of Christ. He says that scoffers will deny Christ’s second coming because they also deny God’s supernatural creation of the universe and Noah’s flood.

The biblical authors took Genesis literally and we should too! After all, that’s how the text naturally reads . . . as a real historical narrative, well, from the very first verse.

One of the apostle Paul’s favorite topics to write about was Jesus and the gospel. And when he does this, he builds his doctrine of sin and salvation on the fact that sin and death entered the world through Adam.

For example, he writes that we needed the last Adam because of the sin of the first Adam that brought death. And, again, in a different letter, he writes that we all die because Adam brought sin and death into the world.

Paul always treats Genesis as literal history—and as history that’s foundational to the gospel message.

Yes, we can be confident that Genesis is literal history . . . well, from the very first verse!

During his teaching ministry on earth, Jesus frequently quoted the Old Testament. He mentioned Adam and Eve as the first married couple, Noah and the flood as a real event, Lot and his wife as real people who fled the city of Sodom before its divine destruction, and other accounts from Genesis and beyond.

This reminds us that, yes, Genesis is literal history. Many Christians today argue the first eleven chapters of Genesis were mythology but that’s not how Jesus treated those accounts! He speaks of Adam and Eve in the same way he speaks of Lot and his wife, Moses, or Jonah.

Genesis—it’s history from the beginning!