If there was a global catastrophe where only eight people survived, wouldn't there be stories told about it? Yes, there would.
There are actually hundreds of stories and legends about a worldwide flood, in nearly every ancient culture. They can be found in historic records all around the world. According to Dr. Duane Gish in his popular book Dinosaurs by Design, there are more than 270 such stories, most of which share a common theme and similar characters.
Remember, they didn't have the internet, or telephones, or even the postal service to be able to send messages to each other about this epic story. The only way they could all have a legend about a similar experience was that it actually happened and was passed down as a tale from their ancestors.
In the Bible, we learn that Noah’s descendants stayed together for approximately 100 years, until God confused their languages at Babel. As these people broke up into smaller groups and move away from each other, they all took the history and lesson of the flood with them to pass on to their future generations.
Genesis 11:5-9- And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded. And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech. So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city. Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the LORD did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the LORD scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.
The devil wants to convince people that the flood never happened so he can make people believe the Bible is untrue. If the flood never happened, why are there stories about it in ancient cultures all over the world?
People in ancient cultures, such as Sumer, Babylon, and Egypt, have written stories of the destruction of sinful mankind in a disaster, which usually involved a great flood from which only a small group of people survived. Some even include references to the rainbow.
Hawaiians have a flood story that tells of a time when, long after the death of the first man, the world became a wicked, terrible place. Only one good man was left, and his name was Nu-u. He made a great canoe with a house on it and filled it with animals. In this story, the waters came up over all the earth and killed all the people; only Nu-u and his family were saved.
Another flood story is from China. It records that Fuhi, his wife, three sons, and three daughters escaped a great flood and were the only people alive on earth. After the great flood, they repopulated the world. In fact, the ancient Chinese character for boat was made up of the root symbols for vessel, eight, and people.
As the story was passed from one generation to the next, the details would get distorted or exaggerated, but they all contain the same idea- the entire world was destroyed by a flood!
The Babylonians have a few different flood stories, but the most notable is in the epic of Gilgamesh. In this story, the Babylonian god Ea sends a flood to destroy humanity, except for Utnapishtim and his family. Utnapishtim builds a boat and saves animals and the seeds of all living things. Finally, he lands on a mountain in what is now Kurdistan. Ut-napištim releases birds to check if there is land in sight, and there was. He sacrifices once he leaves the boat.
In Greek legend, When Zeus, the king of the gods, resolved to destroy all humanity by a flood, Deucalion constructed an ark in which, according to one version, he and his wife rode out the flood and landed on Mount Parnassus. Afterwards, they offered a sacrifice and asked how to renew the human race.
In the Mayan culture, the people of a certain stage of creation became unruly and gave up proper worshiping of the gods. This angered the gods, and the rain god Tlaloc decided to flood the earth to destroy its human inhabitants. Only a good couple, Tata and his wife, Nena, were to be spared.
The Cree people, natives of Canada, say that God sent the flood because people became completely disobedient. But a good man named Wesaketchan “built a large raft on which he boarded all his family, as well as a pair of all the birds and all the animals.” The man sent out a raven and a dove, the latter of which “returned with a piece of clay in its legs. The man concluded that the earth was quite dry, and he landed."
In western Canada, we find a multitude of peoples with traditions that testify to the truth of the Genesis record. Among these, the Lillooet people, in 1905, told anthropologist James Teit their sacred tradition. A man named Ntci’nemkin “had a very large canoe, in which he took refuge with his family.” The floodwaters rose “until all the land was submerged except the peak of the high mountain called Split. The canoe drifted about until the waters receded, and it grounded on Smimelc Mountain.” When the waters went down, the survivors came out and repopulated the earth.
The Michoacáns told the first Spanish colonizers their account of the flood in which their Noah, whom they called Tezpi, “embarked in a spacious ‘acalli’ with his wife, his children, several animals, and grain, the preservation of which was of importance to mankind. When the great spirit, Tezcatlipoca, ordered the waters to withdraw, Tezpi sent out from his bark a vulture.” This bird did not return to him, finding many carcasses to eat from. Then, “Tezpi sent out other birds, one of which, the hummingbird alone, returned, holding in its beak a branch covered with leaves.” The man, seeing that fresh vegetation was growing on the earth again, left his vessel “near the mountain of Colhuacan.”
The Cabécar seemingly have combined the memory of the garden of Eden and the flood. They spoke of a magical tree, a woman who was bitten by a serpent, a test by a god named Sibu to see whether the people obeyed him. Sibu “saw that all the earth’s inhabitants behaved very badly, that they forgot and denied that he was the one who had created them. So he sent the flood. The majority of the people had died, having drowned in the punishment. But others who “kept the commands” of Sibu were helped, and were enabled to build an enormous raft, by which they survived the flood and waited until the waters subsided.
There are many more, but from just these few we can see that ancient civilizations knew about both creation and the flood, and that the flood was a punishment for the wickedness of mankind. How could so many cultures have a story about the exact same thing if it is all just a myth that never happened?
Job 22:15-16- Hast thou marked the old way which wicked men have trodden? Which were cut down out of time, whose foundation was overflown with a flood:
Jesus talked about the flood while He was on the earth. It was not a story told to appease curious children, but a warning that judgment came in the past and would come again in the future.
Luke 17:26-27- And as it was in the days of Noe, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man. They did eat, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, and the flood came, and destroyed them all.
People want to say that the flood was a myth because they don't want to think of themselves as sinners which will one day be judged. But the Bible says that God will judge everyone- even the angels.
II Peter 2:4-5- For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment; And spared not the old world, but saved Noah the eighth person, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood upon the world of the ungodly;
One day you will meet the Lord God Almighty. You can choose to meet Him now as through Jesus Christ as your Savior, or you can choose to meet Him at the Judgment.
Joshua 24:14-15- Now therefore fear the LORD, and serve him in sincerity and in truth: and put away the gods which your fathers served on the other side of the flood, and in Egypt; and serve ye the LORD. And if it seem evil unto you to serve the LORD, choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.
The choice is yours.
