Noah's Flood: Global or Local?

This month we are continuing our Tampering with Genesis discussion (started in the past two monthly articles) regarding the ramifications of straying from the straight-forward, historical view of Genesis. The previous column revealed how accepting the notion of millions and billions of years (as is believed by most scientists today) introduces death and suffering into Gods creation long before Adam sinned, which clearly contrary to what we read in Romans 5:12 and other passages.

This month we will highlight one additional conundrum that occurs when attempting to insert millions and billions of years into the creation account. It has to do with Noahs flood. If you were to ask most Christians to briefly describe the flood account, they would most likely tell you that it was a world-wide flood that wiped-out all life outside the ark, except for some marine creatures that could survive in the waters (and this would be an accurate description, according the Scripture Genesis 6-8).

However, those who believe that the Earth is billions of years old, cannot accept this account and still be consistent with their belief regarding the age of the Earth. We will now examine the reasoning behind this.

According to modern geology, the Earth is approximately 4.6 billion years old and its major geologic features have formed over hundreds of millions of years. Christians who believe that the biblical account of creation did not take place in 6 literal days be ...