What Happened to Noah's Ark?

Genesis 8:3-4 The water receded steadily from the earth. At the end of the hundred and fifty days the water had gone down,  and on the seventeenth day of the seventh month the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat.

We believe the Bible is 100% truth and 100% accurate, therefore if it says that an object is at a specific location it should be there right? Well what about the Ark? The Bible clearly says where it landed, so why isn't it still there today?

Here is the shocking revelation...are you ready? It is still there!

There have been countless explorers who say they have spotted the remains of the ark on a Mountain in Turkey. On the TV Show, "Encounters with the Unexplained" they listed a  number of mountain climbers that date all the way back to 475 b.c. who claimed to have seen the hull of a huge barge, frozen in a crevice, against the mountain, visible only when the ice and snow melt.  In 1269 a.d. Marco Polo wrote in "Travels", that he had seen it, "Noah's ark rests high in the snowy reaches of Mt. Ararat.' In 1949 the U.S. Air Force took photographs of the Mt. Ararat site. The images revealed what seemed to be a structure covered by ice that fit the biblical proportions of the ark, but the pictures were held for years in a confidential file labeled "Ararat Anomaly." In 1975 a French explorer Ferdinand Navarra said he'd seen the ark at 13,000 feet and he brought back a 5-foot hand chopped wooden beam that he cut from the ice.  The wood tested in 3 different laboratories was found to be 5000 years old.  There was not the type of wood found in that area. In fact, there are no woods within 300 miles. Today in what's being called "Satellite Archaeology" various spacecraft are being used to take photos of the site, those pictures as well as declassified aerial and satellite images snapped by U.S. intelligence agencies have revealed some pretty amazing evidence. (Here is a photo taken of the site in by a Satellite in 2003)

  

                                                                             

   

Now unfortunately satellite archaeology is about the best we can do to validate this biblical account now because currently the Turkish government is denying requests by archaeological teams to explore Ararat. Wouldn't it be incredible if God preserved additional evidence to verify His word as we move toward the end?

But its not just geological and archaeological evidence that offer convincing proof, did you know that nearly every ancient civilization and culture tell the story about a cataclysmic flood that covered the earth? One historian suggests there are 272 mentions of a flood in other cultures.  Even the earliest written culture –the Sumerians, 3000 years ago had a written story of a man and family saved from a flood by getting into a boat. The Bible is a book of faith but there is empirical evidence to support it's validity. As one theologian wrote, "God isn't asking you to take an intellectual leap into the dark, He is asking you to humble yourself and take a step into the light." Carl Kuhl is a friend of mine and a great preacher in Baltimore he wrote, "Feelings and emotions can push us to Christ, but our logic and our brains must keep us there." I am so thankful that our faith is a logical one, not built on suspicion, but fact. The account of the flood isn't just a good bedtime story for kids, but it is a historical fact to be believed.

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Question From Chapter 1: Why Did People Live So Long

A common question that gets asked a lot when reading the opening chapters of Genesis is, "Why or How did the people live so long?"

That's a fair question to ask when very few of us today know anyone who makes it to a hundred, let alone 930 like Adam (Genesis 5:5), or 969 like Methuselah (Genesis 5:27). We learned that Noah lived to be 950.

Apparently the world was a drastically different place prior to the flood. Not just because peoples diets were different with out the discovery of trans-fatty acids and long before the fast food generation. But evidently the atmosphere was different as well because right after the flood you see an immediate decline in years lived, the next main figure after Noah is Abraham and he lived to be only 175, (Gen 25:7) then his grandson Jacob lived to be 147 (Gen. 47:28). Then Moses lived 120 (Deut. 34:7) And then centuries later, King David wrote in Psalm 90:10 about a modern life span that is applicable all the way to present day. "The length of our days is seventy years—or eighty, if we have the strength; yet their span is but trouble and sorrow, for they quickly pass, and we fly away."

Now how could people back in the opening chapters of Genesis (1-9) have lived so long; how is that possible? 


Some theologians contend that the earth's atmosphere prior to the flood was very different from that of today. They suggest the earth was once surrounded by a canopy of water vapor. Genesis 1:7 says, God…separated the water under the expanse (sky) from the water above it." 


Some scientists visualize water surrounding the earth similar to the system of rings that surround the planet Saturn. Those rings would be composed primarily of ice particles orbiting the earth. They suggest this thick water vapor would block out harmful radiation of the sun, create uniform temperature and humidity, eliminate Polar Regions, and make possible lush vegetation over the entire earth. 

I remember watching on the Discovery Channel once about the frozen mammoths discovered in Siberia and Antarctica. And how scientists were baffled because plants that grow only in warmer climates were found in the animal's stomachs. They concluded these Arctic regions sometime back in history had to be much warmer than they are now, though they offered no explanation how it was different then and why it changed.  


But scientists admit that the earth as we know it now, has not always been. There have been catastrophes that have greatly altered the surface of the earth. So it is speculated that one of the reasons people lived much longer prior to Noah's day was because atmospheric conditions were much healthier. With a warmer temperature, and humidity above the earth it created an atmospheric pressure, which would allow a person to live much longer. 


I remember reading an article on Michael Jackson years ago, in it he talked about how his greatest fear is dying, he won't even allow you to really bring up the subject in his presence, so for over 20 year, Jackson routinely slept in a pressurized oxygen chamber.

    

                                                     

  

He believed it would allow him to live to be at least 150 He said, "…when I sleep in my hyperbaric oxygen chamber…I awaken feeling like a new person." Well we now know that even those chambers can't thwart the devastating affects of drugs on the body. 


But according to many experts, prior to the flood it never rained, it was one consistent, warm, humid climate throughout the whole earth; in other words our planet was one massive hyperbaric chamber. Genesis2:5 says, "The Lord God had not sent rain on the earth,…but streams (KJV: a mist) came up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground." Proverbs 8:28 says, God "established the clouds above, and fixed securely the fountains of the deep."  


At one time, many experts' suggest places like Mammoth Cave and the Grand Canyon were designed by God to have been pressurized water reservoirs that would refresh the earth with a mist at night.  Genesis 7:11-12 describe the beginning of the flood.  "On that day all the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened.  And rain fell on the earth forty days and forty nights."  This is the first recorded rainfall.  


When the storm was over, a rainbow appeared for the first time ever, which suggests a dramatic change in the earth's atmosphere. So Noah was 600 when the rains came. And so I think the environment had something to do with it...