Why are young people leaving the church? Dr Purdom shares that the church has not taught Christians to defend their Christian faith. An instance is the account of Noah’s ark and the flood. Non-Christian friends asks a small boy who regularly attends church: how can Noah’s ark take in so many animals? Where did all the water come from to submerge the entire earth in water? How could a big dinosaur enter Noah’s ark? As he grows older, and when he could not answer these questions, he begins to think that the Bible is just a book of untrue stories.
The truth, however, is that the Bible is amazingly accurate. The account of Noah’s ark and the global flood fit the facts of science. Some points in the presentation are noteworthy. Noah’s ark is not what is often depicted in story books which would make the ark look impossible to survive the ocean waters. The fact is the Bible provides us the dimensions (510 feet long; 85ft wide; 51 feet high). It is a massive ship. A Korean constructed a scaled size ark and put it out to the sea. It was sea-worthy and is very stable.
But could the ark house so many animals? Research has shown that the total number of animals would not exceed 7,000 animals. Thus, the ark can house all the animals Noah brought in. What about dinosaurs? Noah would have selected young dinosaurs so as to ensure that they had the ability to reproduce. These young dinosaurs would have been the size of a cow. Thus, dinosaurs can enter the ark. It is not the large dinosaurs which entered the ark. Those dinosaurs would be very old and were no longer productive. Noah would not have selected old dinosaurs which are large. Dr Prudom also provides evidence that, as Genesis records, the flood is global. That is, the entire earth was submerged in water and not just some parts of the earth. She provides evidence from the studies of rock layers and fossils (remains of an animal or plant preserved in rocks). The rock layers we see in many parts of the world do not need to take millions of years to happen. This has been shown by the eruption of Mount Saint Helens on 18 May 1980. During the eruption, the catastrophic conditions created similar rock layers in just hours. Thus, the rock layers observed in many parts of the world do not need millions of years of slow processes to happen, as what some scientists believe. These rock layers could have been created by a catastrophe like the global flood, whose catastrophic conditions would be similar to the eruption of Mount Saint Helens in 1980.
Evidence from fossils also show that a global flood could have happened. Many scientists believe that fossils are millions of years old because they take millions of years to form. But the discovery of a dinosaur fossil shows this need not be the case. In this dinosaur fossil, scientists found soft tissues in a dinosaur bone. This seemed impossible to many scientists because, as these scientists believe, dinosaur fossils are at least 65 million years old and soft tissues cannot last millions of years.
At most they last only 100,000 years. A better explanation is what the Bible records that this fossil was preserved during the flood in Noah’s time: the tissues are only several thousand years old and were quickly preserved under catastrophic conditions like the global flood.
Some details in the above excerpt may seem a little hard to understand. But that is not because it is really hard but because I did not explain some things in more details due to space constrain. The English congregation will view the video on 3 October 2021 during Sunday School at 9:30am (the Chinese congregation has viewed the video). Please be punctual. During that time, you can ask questions and teachers will be there to answer your questions. Please come and learn. Then you can explain to your non-Christian friends how science confirms the Bible. We pray that they will come and believe in Jesus as their Saviour too.