While a lot of modern people want to separate theology from history, in the New Testament the two are inextricably tied together. The history doesn’t mean anything unless it’s interpreted correctly, and the theology has no foundation if the history isn’t accurate.

Many Bible skeptics regard Genesis 1–11 as mythical, copied from Enuma Elish, the Epic of Gilgamesh, and other such ancient writings—so not only is it a primitive myth, it’s not a particularly original one, in their view. We’ve often written about the characteristics of Genesis that show it claims to record history.

Sadly many believers have bought into various compromising interpretations of the Flood narrative, but as Christians, aren’t we supposed to believe what Jesus did? And it’s easy to extend that to believing what the apostles that He appointed and inspired by the Holy Spirit to author Scripture believed as well. If Christians don’t believe the Bible, in what sense are they ‘Christ followers’? So let’s look at what Jesus believed and what the New Testament tells us about the circumstances surrounding Noah’s Flood.

The World at the Time of Noah

In Noah’s day, Jesus tells us that people were going about conducting ‘business as usual’ until the Flood came: “in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark, and they were unaware until the flood came and swept them all away” (Matthew 24:38–39). But it wasn’t a pleasant place to live—the culture was so immoral that Peter called it “the world of the ungodly” (κοσμῳ ἀσεβῶν, kosmō asebōn, 2 Peter 2:5). There were even angels who sinned at that time (2 Peter 2:4) by deserting their proper positions (Jude 1:11). While the New Testament doesn’t specify exactly what this sin was, it fits in nicely with the assertion in Genesis 6 that the ‘sons of God’ took wives among the ‘daughters of men’—in other words, angels taking human wives¹ and fathering the Nephilim.

The Ark and Its Passengers

The author of Hebrews says: “By faith Noah, being warned by God concerning events as yet unseen, in reverent fear constructed an ark for the saving of his household. By this he condemned the world and became an heir of righteousness that comes by faith” (11:7). Peter says that only eight people were saved in the Ark (1 Peter 3:20): Noah and seven others (2 Peter 2:5). Absolutely everyone else was killed in the Flood (Luke 17:27).

The Extent of the Flood

The Flood of Noah destroyed the entire human civilization that existed at that time (Matthew 24:39; Luke 17:27; 2 Peter 2:5; 3:5–6). The scope was global, and so severe that the earth was, in effect, reversed to its state on Day 2, before God created dry land—the whole earth was covered with water. This is strongly stated by 2 Peter 3:6, which says that the kosmos was destroyed in the Flood, pointing to its global extent:

What was destroyed was “the world of that time,” which contrasts with “the present heavens and earth” that are mentioned in the next verse. While the focus of the destruction is certainly on the human beings inhabiting that world … the destruction extended to the whole “world” as the merging waters undid the work of Gen 1:6–10, returning the creation to a watery chaos and concomitantly destroying those living things that were created after Gen 1:10.²

So not only was the Flood anthropologically universal, as most ‘progressive creationists’ would allow, but according to the New Testament it was global.

The Promise

A rainbow surrounds God’s throne in Heaven (Revelation 4:3) as a constant reminder of His promise to Noah never to flood the earth again. The concept of a global Flood is often ridiculed not only by secularists, but also by Christians who doubt its historicity. But God promised not to send another Flood like the one He sent in Noah’s day. If it was just an extremely disastrous local Flood, God would have broken His promise because there have been innumerable catastrophic local floods.

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