“As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. 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.”
Matthew 24:37-39 (NIV)
Noah’s ark is usually viewed as a children’s story, taught through a multitude of children’s books filled with colorful illustrations of animals entering the ark in pairs. Most adults don’t think of Noah’s ark as a historic event, but I learned some interesting facts after watching a documentary from the perspective of Christian geologists and paleontologists.
The Grand Canyon contains information that spans over millions of years, but within the layers of sediment, there is a mystery that only a scientist would recognize.
The layers of rock are divided into Precambrian and Cambrian layers.
All Geologists and Paleontologists, who study these limestone rock layers, identify each layer of limestone as correlating to a time period. The Precambrian layers show life steadily existing over millions of years, but a Cambrian layer contains a mystery.
There is a gap in a Cambrian layer that was caused by some type of catastrophe of a global magnitude. Then, in the layer after the gap, many animal fossils suddenly appear fully formed, as if they were dropped onto the earth all at once. It’s a mystery to scientists but it fits the biblical account of animals that suddenly disembarked from the ark, back onto dry land.
That same gap, followed by a similar animal fossil layer, appears in the limestone layers across the world, not just in the Grand Canyon.
Scientists named that mystery layer as, “The Great unconformity.”
Christian paleontologists and geologists share the opinion that the Great unconformity is a result of the global flood of Noah.
Jesus talked about the days of Noah and the great flood, as if it was a known historical event, not a fictional story. He compared the days of Noah to the days before His return, predicting the same mindset among people, as in the days of Noah.
This is not meant to scare us since the words, ‘Fear not’ or ‘Do not fear’, are mentioned in scripture over 300 times. Jesus said that those who believe, without seeing, are blessed. We are blessed because we don’t require science to prove what we already believe, but it is nice to know when science and scripture validate each other. The second coming of Jesus and the story of Noah’s ark are similar, in that both have happy endings for anyone who believes.
Lord, thank you for how your word is occasionally validated by science. Help us to always live by faith, and to believe even when we don’t see. Amen
