So, there is more
than enough room in the ark for representatives of large modern-day
classifications of animals and provisions to care for them. God could use the
much-changed environment after the Flood to lead to rapid speciation as all of
the characteristics required for variation within a kind are included within the genetic code already implanted by God.
However, this produced a variety of cats, dogs, alligators, and pea plants and
there is no evidence that if you introduce mutations into a group of flies that
after thousands of generations that you still won’t have just very messed up
flies and not lizards. The only way modern scientists can make their
macroevolution happen is to divide creatures up into ever smaller groupings and
say triumphantly if a fly develops characteristics of its own due to
environmental pressures within the restrictions of its genetic code that it
becomes something other than a fly. The fact is, all of the tools required for
variation within a kind is already
given by God in its genetic code. After all, have we not created many dozens of
breeds of dogs within Animal Husbandry over the past 2-300 years and yet they
are all still dogs and no new creature has been created?
You are, of
course, free to look for the remains of the ark but there is no need for there
to be any. It was, like the great fish
of Jonah 1:17, specially prepared for
a specific purpose. Looking for relics is a poor preference rather than reading
and believing God’s word.
There was one door
into the ark, the physical salvation of mankind. Christ is the one door by
which we can have eternal life and be saved for eternity. There are so many
great sermons to be had from this one passage. The ark was the vehicle by which
a small remnant of mankind was saved. Christ is the vehicle by which a remnant
of humanity is saved for eternity.
Verse 17 tells us
that all flesh, wherein is the breath of
life will die. Breathing is a significant action in God’s determination of
what is living. Think of some things that we call life that do not breathe air,
the act of respiration being a foundation of God’s definition of life. Think of
things that have no sense of self-identity, no souls, that are driven merely by
chemical impulses. Perhaps some things that mankind defines as living are mere
biological machines with no soul and no spirit.
But, clearly, some
creatures other than man to have a soul and a spirit or mind. Here is one
statement about souls.
Job
12:10 In whose hand is the soul of every
living thing, and the breath of all mankind.
Here is Solomon in
his humanity questioning whether there is any difference between a man’s fate
and a beast’s.
Ecclesiastes
3:21 Who knoweth the spirit of man that
goeth upward, and the spirit of the beast that goeth downward to the earth?
It would be useful
to contemplate what God calls living without
reading our definitions back into it. But, sadly, mankind all too often creates
a God in his own head that is merely a reflection of himself and his own
self-worship and has no interest in contemplating how the God of the Bible
looks at a thing.
Everything that
breathed air that did not have a place on the ark, was to physically die in
this deluge. The verse clearly states that everything in the earth that has the breath of life shall die. All air-breathing land-animals die and must be preserved
by representatives in the ark.
God makes a
covenant, and there are several covenants in the Bible, with Noah and his
family, promising them survival. He orders Noah to save at least two of every sort of creature, synonymous with kind, a classification discussed
earlier. He also commands provisions to be brought into the ark for them.
Noah,
being the man that he was, followed God’s instructions to the letter.
No comments:
Post a Comment