Jesus was always quoting from Scripture. When he was asked about his coming (his return) and the end of the age, Jesus said, “As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man” (Matt 24:37).

Jesus then expanded on this statement. “For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man” (Matt 24:38-39). In spite of whatever warnings the Church might issue, the ‘wider world’ will be surprised and unprepared for the return of the Messiah. Clearly the coming of Jesus will not be ‘obvious’ to most people.

But is that all that Jesus meant? Or are there other lessons to be learned from the days of Noah?

The Ark

The ark was designed by God as a place of refuge and safety for those whom the Lord had declared to be righteous (Gen 7:1). The ark had many rooms (Gen 6:14), and obviously it had to be prepared in advance of the time of God’s judgment on the earth, just as Jesus said to his disciples: “In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you” (John 14:2).

The ark was covered inside and outside with pitch (Gen 6:14), and in Hebrew there is a bit of word-play going on here. The original Hebrew just uses consonants, and the Hebrew word for ‘cover’ consists of exactly the same consonants as the Hebrew word for ‘pitch’. The Hebrew word for ‘cover’ is ‘kaphar’, which is written using the Hebrew letters for K, F and R. The Hebrew word for ‘pitch’ is ‘kopher’, which is also written as K-F-R. So I guess this means that when Noah was told to cover the ark with pitch, we could also say that Noah was told to pitch the ark with pitch – or Noah was told to cover the ark with a covering. Either way, it’s effectively the same word in Hebrew. But there is more. Whilst the Hebrew text can be translated in a physical sense to say that Noah was told to cover the ark with pitch (which would clearly be a sensible thing to do in order to make the ark waterproof), the Hebrew text also has a meaning in a spiritual sense. The Hebrew word ‘kaphar’, which has been translated as ‘cover’, can also mean ‘to atone’ – as in making propitiation or atoning for sins. The Hebrew word ‘kopher’, which has been translated as ‘pitch’, can also mean an atonement or a redemption-price – the ransom price of a life.

In this spiritual sense, the covering that God provided for Noah was a foreshadowing of the covering that the blood of Jesus provides for all those believers who accept Jesus as their Lord and Saviour.

So we can read Genesis 6:14 on two levels. On a physical level, we can understand that God wanted to ensure a physical waterproof covering for Noah and his family, that would keep them safe and protect them from all the physical dangers of the flood. But also, on a spiritual level, we can understand that God wanted to provide Noah and his family with a spiritual covering, which was effectively their redemption-price or the ransom price for their souls. In this spiritual sense, the covering that God provided for Noah was a foreshadowing of the covering that the blood of Jesus provides for all those believers who accept Jesus as their Lord and Saviour. It seems to me to indicate that, when Jesus returns for his Bride, the faithful (and prepared) Body of Christ will be ‘raptured’ to a safe place under the covering of the blood of Jesus.

The Warning

God gave Noah seven days’ warning to get his household, including all the animals and birds, into the ark (Gen 7:1-4). It seems that the apostle Paul likewise believed that faithful and watchful Christians would understand when the day of the Lord was drawing near, since he wrote: “You, brothers, are not in darkness so that this day should surprise you like a thief” (1 Th 5:4). It is also written: “Surely the Sovereign Lord does nothing without revealing his plan to his servants the prophets” (Amos 3:7). The key issue is probably the dividing line between those who are watching out for the warning (and prepared at all times) and all the rest of the world – for whom “destruction will come on them suddenly, as labour pains on a pregnant woman, and they will not escape” (1 Th 5:3).

The Great Flood

God is always true to his word, and “after the seven days the floodwaters came on the earth” (Gen 7:10). Many readers of the Bible miss this clear statement. Many people assume that the flood came gradually as the result of forty days of heavy rain. However, the Bible does not say this, and actually forty days of rain would not create a world-wide flood anyway. The floodwaters came on the earth first, and then it rained for forty days. Nota bene!

There are a good few potential causes of the flood (and it is quite likely it was caused by a combination of a number of them). One particularly fascinating explanation came to light around 2005, when a number of eminent scientists gathered evidence that there was a mighty cosmic impact in the Indian Ocean around 4,800 years ago.¹ There are four massive wedge-shaped geological features, called chevrons, which can be found near the southern tip of Madagascar. They are formed from marine sediment and cosmic impact debris that was deposited several miles inland from the Indian Ocean. Other chevron-shaped deposits like these can also be found at other locations around the Indian Ocean, including places in South Africa, India and Western Australia. The sheer size of all these chevrons around the Indian Ocean indicates the action of mighty tsunami waves generated from somewhere in the Indian Ocean – and the chevrons all point back to a massive undersea crater, called the Burckle Crater, which is on the floor of the Indian Ocean about 900 miles southeast of Madagascar.

The Burckle Crater is 18 miles in diameter, and it lies beneath 12,500 feet of water. Core samples taken near the crater have a marine and cosmic composition that is similar to samples taken from the distant chevrons, and all the evidence points to the crater having been formed as the result of a very large cosmic impact.Approximate location of the Burckle crater In other words, something like a comet or an asteroid smashed into the Indian Ocean and blasted its way down through well over two miles of seawater. When it reached the ocean floor, it still had enough power to carve out an impact crater 18 miles wide. The whole earth would have shuddered from the impact, which would have caused a mighty earthquake well beyond anything we could imagine, and the aftershocks would probably have continued for many weeks if not months. Since the impact was in the ocean, it would have generated a formidable tsunami wave, maybe anything up to a mile high, with further tsunamis caused by the aftershocks. The initial tsunami wave would have swept out in all directions across the earth. The wave that swept northwards from the impact zone would have raced up the Persian Gulf, and then it would have continued northwards up the Tigris-Euphrates valley, picking up Noah’s Ark on the way, and sweeping it northwards to the mountains of Ararat – a very plausible explanation for how Noah’s Ark could have travelled so far north. The cosmic impact in the Indian Ocean would also have forced a very large quantity of seawater a long way up into the atmosphere. Some of the seawater forced up into the atmosphere would have been in the form of super-heated steam, generated by the intense heat created when the comet or asteroid started to burn up as it came through the earth’s atmosphere. The vast quantity of water and steam forced up into the higher reaches of the atmosphere would then have come down as rain over an extended period of time, which the Bible tells us was forty days.

Jesus said that “the stars will fall from the sky” (Matt 24:29), and this is exactly how the ancients would have described comets or asteroids impacting the earth.

Many Bible chronologists estimate that the flood probably occurred between 4,300 and 4,500 years ago, although some scholars do extend that period up to 5,000 years ago. The international scientists who have been investigating the Burckle Crater estimate that it was probably formed between 4,500 and 5,000 years ago, which is in the same ‘ball-park’. Another different group of scientists, who had been looking at the formation of the canyon in Zion National Park in Utah in the USA, reported in 2016 that Zion canyon was formed by a massive catastrophic landslide 4,800 years ago, which also created a vast lake that remained for 700 years. Because this second group of scientists seem to be in denial of the biblical flood, they actually failed to make the connection that the mighty cosmic impact which caused the Great Flood (plus the flood itself) was the most likely cause of the massive landslide and the creation of the vast lake – so perhaps they should read their Bibles and have more faith in the Word of God! However, their date of 4,800 years ago, give or take a few hundred years, is the most likely date of ‘Noah’s’ flood.

The End of the Age

How does this relate to the return of Jesus? It seems that God’s judgment in the days of Noah was probably executed by means of cosmic impact, and I believe that God’s judgment at the end of the age will also be executed by means of cosmic impacts. Jesus said that “the stars will fall from the sky” (Matt 24:29), and this is exactly how the ancients would have described comets or asteroids impacting the earth. Furthermore, the scientist and author Dr Jeffrey Goodman 2 explains that the descriptions of the bowls of God’s wrath in Revelation 16 are consistent with the effects of multiple cosmic impacts upon the earth. “As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man” (Matt 24:37).

Let us continue to watch, as Jesus said more than once, and let us be prepared for his return.

Endnotes

¹See, for example, https://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/14/science/14WAVE.html
²The Comets of God, by Jeffrey Goodman PhD, (2010) especially chapters 6 & 7.