Many cultures from around the world have a story about the world being destroyed by a global flood.
Flood legends from around the world, this week on Creation Magazine LIVE!
Welcome to Creation Magazine LIVE! My name is Richard Fangrad. And I'm Calvin Smith.
Our topic this week is flood legends from around the world. The Bible is not the only account of a global flood.
Many cultures have stories about a global flood that are remarkably similar, in many details, to the biblical account.
Right, here's an example from the Aztecs of Mexico.
When mankind was overwhelmed with the deluge, none were preserved but a man named Cosh-Cosh and a woman called Shoki-Ketzel,
who saved themselves in a little bark and having afterwards got to land upon a mountain called by them Colcuacán.
There had been a great many children. These children were all born dumb, until a dove from a lofty tree imparted to them languages,
but differing so much that they could not understand one another.
Now that sounds like a garbled version of the biblical accounts of Noah's flood and the origin of many different languages or language families at Babel.
It's one of the many tales that describe a cataclysmic flood from diverse cultures, some of which are very remote,
like on islands in the middle of the Pacific, and separated geographically by thousands of miles.
We'll read more of these accounts shortly, but have a look at this chart listing some of them.
Across the top are a number of cultures from all over the world, and on the side you can see various details from the biblical account of the flood.
Now notice how many of the green squares there indicating the full representation of the biblical account,
even from locations that are really remote, like Fiji and Hawaii there at the end of the chart.
The obvious conclusion is that all these cultures originated from Noah's family who actually experienced the flood.
The memories of the actual account have been passed down, generation after generation and distortions have crept in,
as would be expected for the accounts that were not written down but were passed on orally.
There are a number of reasons that the Bible preserves the most accurate account, and we'll get to those reasons later.
But first let's continue with some of these other flood legends.
As we read these, notice the similarities to the biblical account.
There are several Australian Aboriginal flood stories for example.
This tells how, long ago, there was a flood that covered the mountains, so that many of the nirambungutias, or spirit men and women, were drowned.
Others, including Punjil, were caught up by a whirlwind into the sky.
When the waters receded and the mountains appeared again, and the sea went back into its own place,
the son and daughter of Punjil went back to earth and became the first of the true men and women who lived in the world today.
OK, so it talks about a mountain covering flood and all the people coming from the flood survivors.
Great similarities there.
The North American Indians have several flood stories.
One from the Choctaw tribe which tells how, long ago, men became so corrupt that the Great Spirit destroyed them in a flood.
Only one man was saved, a prophet whose warnings the people disregarded and whom the Great Spirit then directed to build a raft from sassafras logs.
After many weeks, a small bird guided the prophet to an island where the Great Spirit changed the bird into a beautiful woman who became the wife of the prophet
and their children then repopulated the world.
So that one has a few more details.
It mentions the corruption of people, that deity was going to send a flood to destroy all of them except a righteous man.
It mentions that his warnings about the coming judgment were disregarded.
He was told to build a raft.
The flood lasted for many weeks.
According to the biblical account Noah was on the ark for a year and 10 days, not just 40.
And it mentions that today's population came from him.
So that's quite a few details that are very similar to the biblical account.
There are a couple of stories from ancient China.
One is recorded in the Chinese Book of All Knowledge from Ancient Times.
Now that's a 4,320 volume collection that tells of the repercussions of mankind's rebellion against the gods.
And it contains this text,
The earth was shaken to its foundations.
The sky sank lower toward the north.
The sun, moon and stars changed in their motions.
The earth fell to pieces and the waters in its bosom rushed upwards with violence and overflowed the earth.
Another story from ancient China in the folklore of the Banars, a primitive tribe of coach in China,
tells of how the rivers swelled till the waters reached the sky and all living beings perished except two, a brother and a sister,
who were saved in a huge chest.
They took with them into the chest a pair of every sort of animal.
Now there's a sample of some of these flood legends and we'll continue with more after a short break.
Now much of the content on this week's show comes from a fascinating article that was in Creation magazine.
Now the magazine is long gone but you can read the article on our website at creation.com slash flood legends and we'll be right back.
Drop stones are rocks that have been carried and dropped into finely grained sediment.
For instance, icebergs can carry and drop rocks on the ocean floor to be covered by further sedimentation.
Noah's Flood was a worldwide catastrophe that deposited much of Earth's fossil-bearing rocks.
However, within these rocks we find what appear to be drop stones.
This is often interpreted as evidence of previous ice ages, and since you can't have ice ages occurring during the flood,
this has prompted some to claim that drop stones disprove Noah's Flood.
However, drop stones can be formed by mechanisms that don't involve icebergs.
For example, floating tree stumps can have rocks entangled within them, which are then dropped on the ocean floor.
Moreover, recent research in the journal Marine Geology has shown that a large seaweed known as kelp
has a surprising ability to carry and drop sizable rocks, so drop stones don't disprove Noah's Flood.
To find out more from Creation Ministries International visit our website creation.com
If you've just tuned in, this week we're talking about flood legends from around the world.
There are at least 500 legends of a worldwide deluge.
Many of these show remarkable similarities to the details about Noah's Flood that we read of course in the Bible.
And we're going to read a few more, then we'll look at how the skeptics attempt to explain away the obvious conclusion that there really was a global flood as the Bible describes.
So, flood stories from the continent of Africa are rare, but one from Egypt tells of an ancient creation god, Tem,
who was responsible for the primeval flood, which covered the entire earth and destroyed all of mankind except for those in Tem's boat.
The Incas of Peru also had a tradition of a deluge.
They said that,
The waters rose above the highest mountains in the world, so that all people and all created things perished.
No living thing escaped, except a man and a woman, who floated in a box on the face of the waters, and so were saved.
The stories of the Teutonic tribes of Scandinavia are vivid and kind of terrifying when you read about them.
The imagery of these legends emphasizes the size of the cataclysm.
One of these tales describes the chaos of the world when,
The mighty wolf Fenrir shook himself and made the whole world tremble.
The aged ash tree Yggdrasil, pictured as the axis of the earth, was shaken from its roots to its topmost branches.
Mountains crumbled or split from top to bottom.
Men were driven from their hearths and the human race was swept from the surface of the earth.
The earth itself was beginning to lose its shape.
Already the stars were coming adrift from the sky and falling into the gaping void.
Flames spurted from fissures in the rocks.
Everywhere there was the hissing of steam.
All living things, all plant life, were blotted out.
And now all the rivers, all the seas, rose and overflowed.
From every side, waves lashed against waves.
They swelled and boiled and slowly covered all things.
The earth sank beneath the sea.
Then, slowly, the earth emerged from the waves.
Mountains rose anew.
Men also reappeared, enclosed in the wood itself of the ash tree Yggdrasil.
The ancestors of a future race of men had escaped death.
Wow!
So the big question is, how do people who don't accept that there was a global flood,
and this includes many people in the church today as well,
how do they explain all of these flood legends?
Because, again, the most reasonable explanation is that all these legends find their root
in the same global flood experience that is recorded there in Genesis.
We've read just a few of them and as we said earlier there are more than 500 of them globally
so it's really difficult to explain if there wasn't a global flood.
Of course, it's associated rebooting of the human population.
Well, they try to explain away these flood myths, as they are often referred to,
by suggesting that perhaps all of the peoples of these remote civilizations had different
flood experiences that, by chance, had all these features in common on which they based their stories.
That makes sense.
Actually, that's ridiculous.
Exactly.
All kinds of separate little floods all over the world result in remarkably similar global
flood accounts?
There's not a chance.
I don't think so.
They'll point to sketchy evidence of many fairly large local floods happening all over
the world thousands of years ago.
For example, Wikipedia, the user-editable online encyclopedia suggests that a few of
these local floods, it suggests some of them, being the basis for the flood accounts in
the regions in which they took place.
For example, it says,
It has been postulated that the deluge myth in North America may be based on a sudden
rise in sea levels caused by the rapid draining of prehistoric Lake Agassiz at the end of
the last ice age.
Well, you notice the tentative language here.
It has been postulated.
I mean, Lake Agassiz probably did drain after the ice age, but the ice age itself was the
natural result of the global flood.
We did a show on the ice age a couple of years ago and you can view it at creation.com
slash cml2-24.
Other Wikipedia explanations include,
Excavations in Iraq have revealed evidence of localized flooding at Shurah Pak, that's
modern Tell Farah in Iraq, and various other Sumerian cities.
So we're going to be right back with more attempts by Bible skeptics to avoid the obvious
that the Bible is just true.
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what the text means.
Unlike most commentaries, it includes the additional step of providing cutting edge
scientific support for the history recorded in Genesis because its author, Dr. Jonathan
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Since science confirms the truths in God's word, if both are properly interpreted, this
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what Genesis really means.
Order your copy at creation.com.
On this week's episode we're talking about the amazing similarity of hundreds of flood
legends from cultures all over the world.
We were just reading some attempt to explain them away as found on Wikipedia.
Adrian Mayer promoted the hypothesis that global flood stories were inspired by ancient
observations of seashells and fish fossils in inland and mountain areas.
The ancient Greeks, Egyptians and Romans all documented the discovery of such remains in
these locations.
The Greeks hypothesized that earth had been covered by water on several occasions, citing
the seashells and fish fossils found on mountaintops as evidence of this history.
Well that's nice.
If those little flood events or the discovery of marine fossils on mountains were the spark
for these flood legends, how do you explain the amazing similarities between them?
Bible skeptics' attempts to explain global flood legends just don't hold any water.
Pun intended.
Another Wikipedia comment reads,
Another hypothesis is that a meteor or comet crashed into the Indian Ocean around 3,000
or 2,800 BC, created the 30-kilometer or 19-mile undersea Burkle crater, and generated a giant
tsunami that flooded coastal lands.
OK, how does that work?
If it actually happened, firstly, how did it result in a story about humans being evil
and violent so the Creator sends a flood, but there's someone who's good and is
allowed to survive, to repopulate the earth, and then secondly, how did the same story
circulate all over the globe?
Those are two major problems for the Bible skeptics.
For the first one, they've suggested some events that might result in the flood story.
However, their attempts really, I mean they're pretty lame.
But even if that was solved, it's the similarities between the stories that they actually have
no answer for.
Right, OK, so let's outline those similarities.
Funk and Wagnall's Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology and Legend stated, under the heading
deluge or flood, a world cataclysm, during which the earth was inundated or submerged
by water, a concept found in almost every mythology in the world.
And it goes on to describe the bare bones of the usual deluge story as follows.
The gods, or a god, decide to send a deluge on the world, usually as punishment for some
act, broken taboo, the killing of an animal, but sometimes for no reason.
Certain human beings are warned, or it comes without warning.
If warned, the people construct some kind of vessel, a raft, an ark, a ship, a big canoe,
or the like, or find other means of escape, climbing a mountain, or a tree, a growing
tree, a floating island, calabash, a coconut shell, a turtle's back, crab's cave, etc.
And sometimes also they save certain things essential to a way of life, such as food and
rarely domestic animals.
Then the deluge comes in, rain or a huge wave, a broken container or opened, a monster's
belly punctured, etc.
Bird or rodent scouts are often sent out, but this is not universal.
When the deluge is over, the survivors find themselves on a mountain or an island.
Sometimes they offer a sacrifice, not universal, and then repopulate the earth, recreate animals,
etc. by some miraculous means.
So there's a list of details that these flood accounts have in common, but it seems
like the Encyclopedia and Wikipedia, they always seem to feel the need to reassure readers
that, as Wikipedia put it, a worldwide deluge such as described in Genesis is incompatible
with the modern understanding of natural history, especially geology and paleontology.
Well actually, the reality of the global flood, as the Bible records, is the key to understanding
ancient history, the origin of nations and languages, the size and demographics of the
current population, the nature of the fossil record, and the large-scale geologic structure
of the entire earth.
We did an episode with some of the details on those things on those topics last year.
You can watch it online at creation.com slash CML5-06.
In addition to that, the Flood is the key to understanding the age of the earth debate.
The global flood dramatically accelerated geologic processes at today's rates of erosion
or sedimentation, continental drift, mountain building, etc.
It probably would have taken millions of years.
But the Flood accelerated all of those processes.
As Bible believers, we shouldn't be surprised that people both inside and outside the church
reject the global Flood and try to dismiss the mountains of evidence for it.
These Flood legends are just one piece of evidence among many that the history recorded
in Scripture is accurate.
And the reason we shouldn't be surprised is because the Bible tells us that people
will deliberately overlook the Flood.
In other words, they will deliberately reject clear and obvious evidence for a global flood.
In 2 Peter 3, 5 and 6 we read,
For they deliberately overlooked this fact, that the heavens existed long ago, and the
earth was formed out of water and through water by the word of God, and that by means
of these the world that then existed was deluged with water and perished.
You know, I'd like to point out to people that, for Christians, if they're saying
that Noah's Flood was a local flood, it wasn't global, and those are what the millions
of years believers would say.
You can't have a global flood and millions of years.
And so Christians say, well it's a local flood.
Well what this prophecy would then say was, in the last days people were going to come
and deny a local flood.
But nobody denies a local flood.
Everybody denies a global flood.
So that doesn't even make sense.
The Bible also tells us that people will scoff at a global flood.
But that's not all.
People also ridicule those people who believe what the Bible says.
Even people who self-label as Christians mock Christians who stand up for what the Bible
says about a global flood.
We see that.
And there's no shortage of hatred heaped upon those who follow what Jesus taught.
And He taught that there was a global flood.
But that too shouldn't be surprising.
In John 15, 18-20 Jesus said,
If the world hates you, remember that it hated me first.
The world would love you as one of its own if you belonged to it.
But you are no longer part of the world.
I chose you to come out of the world, so it hates you.
Do you remember what I told you?
A slave is no greater than the master.
Since they persecuted me, naturally they will persecute you.
Many people hate the truth and they scoff at people who love the truth.
If you take a stand for truth, especially for biblical creation and a global flood,
you've likely experienced various levels of persecution.
But be encouraged by the persecution.
Remember that Jesus said,
Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.
Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven.
That scoffing and ridicule you get for believing what the Bible says is storing up a reward for you in heaven.
It is.
You know, it's a good deal.
So we'll continue talking about the truth of a global flood after a short break.
Copying the work or design of another person without giving them due credit is called plagiarism.
But even though plagiarism is widely regarded as a terrible thing,
ironically it has actually inspired a whole new field of science known as biomimetics.
As the name suggests, biomimetics involves mimicking or copying designs seen in the biological world.
For instance, the geometric eyes of lobsters have inspired X-ray telescope design,
and the amazing properties of spider silk are inspiring chemists in the production of ultra-strong materials.
Since scientists are continually uncovering excellent examples of design in nature that are worth copying,
isn't it reasonable to conclude that our creator must have designed them?
And if they are copying the work of a creator and not giving him due credit, isn't that just another form of plagiarism?
Romans chapter 1 speaks of those who do not honor God for what He has created.
To find out more from Creation Ministries International visit our website creation.com.
Well our subject this week is flood legends, and there are hundreds of them all over the world,
and their existence can't be explained except by the fact that there really was a global flood, just as the Bible describes.
Yes, now here's something to consider.
The existence of all these flood accounts from cultures all over the world aren't disputed by skeptics.
They're not saying that those accounts don't exist.
Their challenge is to try to explain them away, or to try to explain them being the result of something other than a global flood.
They aren't able to do that very well of course.
So here's a question from maybe a little different perspective.
How would Bible-rejecting skeptics react if there were no flood legends and the only place a global flood was recorded was in the Bible?
Well in that case then the skeptics would question how the memory of such an awesome event could be lost in so many cultures.
They'd attack the Bible's account of a global flood.
The bottom line is, flood legends are expected if the flood happened.
In other words, the situation we have today, that cultures all over the world have distorted memories of a global flood, is exactly what would be expected if there really was a global flood.
But people who reject God's Word, or at least those who reject the history the Bible records concerning a global flood, attempt to ignore or minimize the massive amount of evidence for it.
And why is it rejected? Because a global flood means that the fossil record isn't millions of years old.
That's the main reason why Christians and non-Christians reject or distort clear evidence for a global flood so they can keep clinging to the poorly supported notion that the world is millions of years old.
Ironically, that's the main issue in the origins debate. It's not creation versus evolution, it's the age of the earth.
Evolution is so full of holes scientifically that even non-Christians, people who have no allegiance to biblical truth, are pointing out how ridiculous it is.
At creation.com there are more than 10,000 articles by scientists and researchers from all over the world dealing with many, many areas where evolution fails.
We're at the point now where refuting evolution is sort of a no-brainer really. It's easy to refute evolution.
Right, but the age of the earth is the issue that ultimately destroys the gospel.
I mean if the rock record is really millions of years old that means it existed before Adam sinned.
But the Bible says that death came as a result of Adam's sin.
Jesus' death on the cross then pays the price for sin and death is the penalty for sin that was established when Adam first sinned.
So the world before Adam was described by God when he finished creating is very good.
Right, but the fossil record is not only a record of dead things, including dead humans, but also many terrible diseases including cancer which would have caused pain and suffering.
There are fossil thorns.
Could all those things have been there at the end of creation when Adam and Eve were already there and when God called his creation very good?
Of course not. The solution is the fossil record must have been established after Adam sinned, not before and after the curse was pronounced on creation.
The global flood taking place about 1600 years or so after Adam sinned is a perfect mechanism for producing the fossil record and encapsulating all of the bad things that are the result of Adam's sin.
But if the flood produced the fossil record then it obviously can't be used as evidence for millions of years.
There's an either-or situation here right?
So it can't be both the result of a global flood and the result of slow deposition over millions of years.
And because many people today have bought into the millions of years and are not aware of the massive evidence for a young universe, they cling to the notion that the fossil record is millions of years old and that destroys the gospel.
If there was death and all of these bad things before sin then death isn't the penalty for sin and Jesus' death didn't pay for anyone's sins since there really is no connection between death and sin.
So it's the millions of years, especially how it affects your understanding of the flood and the fossil record that is the main issue for Christians because it's the main issue for the gospel.
And we'll be back with more news tonight...
What are the theological consequences of adding millions of years to Genesis?
How does it impact doctrines such as the gospel, sin, the atonement?
Refuting compromise is the most powerful biblical and scientific defense of a straightforward view of Genesis.
Loaded with scientific support for a recent creation in six real days, it demolishes all attempts to twist the biblical text in order to insert millions of years, bringing clarity into an area usually mired in confusion.
Must reading for Bible college students and anyone involved in church leadership or teaching. Get your copy at creation.com.
We're talking this week about evidence for the Flood in the form of hundreds of flood legends from cultures all over the world.
And one of the most well-known flood legends is the Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh.
Like the other flood legends it has many similarities to the biblical account.
But the biblical account predates the Gilgamesh epic.
Moses very likely compiled portions of Genesis from tablets that may have been written by Noah himself or Shem, Noah's son, who were eyewitnesses obviously of the Flood.
And the biblical account is far superior.
Even the order of sending out birds is logical.
Noah realized that the non-return of a carrion feeder like a raven proved nothing, while Utnapishtim, the hero of the Gilgamesh epic, sent the raven out last.
But Noah realized that a dove was more logical when the dove returned with a freshly picked olive branch, so Noah knew that the water had abated.
And its non-return a week later showed that the dove found a good place to settle.
Also, the arc construction in the Gilgamesh story is a nine-story cube.
Not very seaworthy, it'll float, but the biblical arc dimensions produce a very stable vessel.
The biblical account is the original, most accurate.
The Gilgamesh account is the inaccurate one.
So to conclude, the cultural memories of a world-destroying flood, obviously altered by centuries of telling and retelling, provide powerful worldwide evidence consistent with the reliability of Genesis.
They are an exciting reminder of the way in which the true history of the Bible connects with the real world of today.
And there's so many other evidences for a global flood as well.
That's what we do at Creation Magazine.
And on this show, Creation Magazine Live, or I should say Creation Ministries International, Creation Magazine, Creation Ministries, that's what we do.
Actually, you can see kind of the heart of the ministry, the thrust of the ministry, by looking at Creation Magazine, by Creation Ministries International.
You can look at a free copy, go to creation.com slash free mag, you can look at a digital copy there and flip through it online, the pages flip over and all kinds of stuff like that.
So that's our flagship publication.
Next week on Creation Magazine LIVE! Does the Bible condone slavery, abuse or mass murder? See you next time.
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