Where Did All the Water Go?

Part 3 of a 10-part series

Ever wonder what really happened during the Flood and where all the water went afterward? In this 10-minute splash of insight, Answers in Genesis Canada explores whether Noah’s epic boat ride was a local puddle or a planet-wide deluge. Spoiler alert: It wasn’t just a regional rainstorm. From Jacques Cousteau to Genesis, find out how the floodwaters didn’t disappear, but just settled into the oceans we still swim in today. With a mix of science, Scripture, and logic (plus a few jabs at evolutionary timelines), this episode tackles why the global Flood matters — and what’s at stake if we water it down.

Editor’s Note: The transcript that follows was automatically generated and lightly edited, so please be aware there could be typos or other small errors. The Stream is working toward a transcription service that does fast, accurate, and reliable work; thank you in advance for your patience!

(00:00) Previously on the Genesis Account of Noah’s Ark we explored the possible shape and construction of Noah’s Ark, and what its realistic ability to experience and survive such a catastrophic, worldwide flood would have been. Join us now as we explore, “Where did all the water go?” as well as answer questions as to whether Noah’s Flood might have been a local rather than a worldwide event, as some have proposed … in part 3 of the Genesis Account of Noah’s Ark… “And the waters receded continually from the earth.

(00:40) At the end of the hundred and fifty days the waters decreased” (Genesis 8:3). Most people don’t realize that, were its highest mountains and lowest valleys evened out, there is enough water in today’s oceans to cover the entire earth to a depth of over 1 and a half miles deep. Three-quarters of the earth’s surface is STILL covered with water, and there are low parts like the Marianas trench, and there are high parts like Mt. Everest, and we live on the high parts.

(01:07) Do you know who confirmed this? The famous undersea explorer, the late Jacques Cousteau. “Were the crust of Earth to be leveled-with great mountain ranges like the Himalayas and ocean abysses like the Mariana Trench evened out-no land at all would show above the surface of the sea. Earth would be covered by a uniform sheet of water-more than 10,000 feet deep! So overwhelming the ocean seems to be.

(01:32) ” Simply put, the water from the Flood is still in the oceans and seas we see today. And the majority of geologists observe, it does appear that the continents were at one time all “together” and not separated by the vast oceans of today. So there are very good reasons to believe these features likely formed during or since the great deluge, and that the Earth during Noah’s pre-Flood day didn’t have the high mountains or deep ocean trenches of today.

(01:58) The forces involved in the Flood were certainly sufficient to change the planet. Scripture indicates that God formed the ocean basins, raising the land out of the water, so that the floodwaters ‘returned’ to a safe place. Some theologians believe Psalm 104:7–9 may refer to this event, indicating how God ended the Flood—by raising the mountains and lowering the ocean basins so the water ran off the Earth to form the present oceans.

(02:25) Some creation scientists believe this breakup of the continent was part of the mechanism that ultimately caused the Flood, possibly associated with continental break up and plate tectonics. Some have speculated, because of Genesis 10:25, that the continental break occurred during the time of a man called Peleg.

(02:44) However, this division is mentioned in the context of the Tower of Babel’s language division, where God confused the languages of the whole earth in Genesis 10–11. So, the context points to a dividing of the languages and people groups, not of the land masses breaking apart. We must consider that if there were a massive movement of continents during the time of Peleg, there would likely have been another worldwide flood.

(03:07) But the Bible indicates that the mountains of Ararat existed for the Ark to land in them in Genesis 8:4; so the Indian Australian Plate, Eurasian Plate, African Plate and Arabian Plate had to have already collided, indicating that the continents had already shifted prior to Peleg. “And the waters prevailed exceedingly on the earth, and all the high hills under the whole heaven were covered. The waters prevailed fifteen cubits upward, and the mountains were covered.” (Genesis 7:19–20).

(03:40) Many Christians today claim that the Flood of Noah’s time was only a local flood, however, this isn’t because of a plain reading of the Genesis text or what the majority of Christendom believed prior to the later 1800’s. It is overwhelmingly because they have accepted the widely believed evolutionary history of the earth, which interprets fossil layers as the history of the sequential appearance of life over millions of years rather than the result of Noah’s Flood.

(04:07) Scientists once understood the fossils, which are buried in water-carried sediments of mud and sand, to be mostly the result of the great Flood. Those who now accept millions of years of gradual accumulation of fossils have, in their way of thinking, explained away the evidence for the global Flood.

(04:27) After all, if the rock layers seen around the world were laid down slowly over millions of years, they couldn’t be the result of a global flood which would have reworked and redeposited them. Hence, many compromising Christians insist on a local flood. Secularists generally deny the possibility of a worldwide Flood at all, despite the clear evidence for it seen all over the earth.

(04:50) If they would think from a biblical perspective, however, they would see the abundant evidence for the global Flood in the massive layered sequences of rock teeming with fossils that are the result of God sending a judgement to destroy all flesh on land… Perhaps it’s as someone once said; “I wouldn’t have seen it if I hadn’t believed it.” For those who claim to believe in the truth of the Bible, they should understand that in accepting the secular timeframe and denying the truth of a global flood, there are far-reaching spiritual consequences to consider. Why?

(05:20) Because those who accept the evolutionary timeframe, with its slow fossil accumulation, also rob the Fall of Adam of its serious consequences. They put the fossils, which testify of disease, suffering, and death, before Adam and Eve sinned and brought death and suffering into the world. But if the fossil record with all of its recorded death and suffering occurred millions of years prior to Adam sinning, then God must have used death to create! Therefore, it couldn’t have been Adam’s sin that allowed death and suffering into the creation. What then is Jesus to save us from?

(05:57) Under this scenario, how could a Christian answer why there’s so much pain and suffering in the world if God is good and yet He used diseases like cancer to ‘create’? How then do you determine which parts of the Bible are true? If God’s going to one day restore the world to its previously unmarred state, as it was pre-Fall, if it’s going to be full of death and suffering the way it was in the beginning then how are we even going to know the difference? Many believers don’t seem to understand that in accepting the secular timeline,

(06:27) they also undermine the meaning of the death and resurrection of Christ. Such a scenario destroys the meaning from God’s description of His finished creation as “very good.” Deuteronomy 32:4 says every work of God is perfect. It is actually an attack on the very character of God to believe He used billions of years of death and suffering and disease and called it very good at the end of His creation.

(06:54) In addition to that, there are also many other logical inconsistencies in changing the flood account to a local event that make belief in the Bible seem weak and arbitrary to the skeptical world. For example: If the Flood only affected the area of Mesopotamia, as some claim, why did Noah have to build an Ark? He could have walked to the other side of the mountains and escaped.

(07:16) Most importantly, if the Flood were local, people not living in the vicinity of the Flood wouldn’t have been affected by it. They would have escaped God’s judgment on sin. In addition, Jesus believed that the Flood killed every person not on the Ark.

(07:33) What else could Christ mean when He likened the coming world judgment to the judgment of “all” men in the days of Noah in Matthew 24:37–39? Bible skeptics have picked up on these inconsistencies and used them to attack the authority of the Bible and the Gospel itself, ever since they first appeared. For example, the famous atheist Thomas Huxley pointed them out very soon after the church began adopting these compromise positions rather forcefully when he said: “I confess I soon lose my way when I try to follow those who walk delicately

(08:05) among ‘types’ and allegories. A certain passion for clearness forces me to ask, bluntly, whether the writer means to say that Jesus did not believe the stories in question, or that he did? When Jesus spoke, as of a matter of fact, that “the Flood came and destroyed them all,” did he believe that the Deluge really took, place, or not?” And these aren’t the only theological problems with trying to adopt the idea of a local flood.

(08:32) In 2 Peter 3, the coming judgment by fire is likened to the former judgment by water in Noah’s Flood. A partial judgment in Noah’s day, therefore, would mean a partial judgment to come. And several more practical inconsistencies abound as well. For example, if the Flood were only local, how could a local flood have waters rise to 20 feet above the mountains as mentioned in Genesis 7:20? Water seeks its own level, so it couldn’t rise to cover the local mountains while leaving the rest of the world untouched.

(09:05) And there’s more. At the end of the great deluge, the Bible says God put a rainbow in the sky as a covenant between God and man and the animals that He would never repeat such an event. However, there have been huge local floods since then, many in recent times in Bangladesh, Indonesia, and Japan.

(09:25) So, if Noah’s Flood had been a local flood, God would have repeatedly broken His promise never to send such a flood again. In effect, God would have lied. But the fact is, although there have been massive floods since then all over the world, but never has there been another global Flood that killed all life on the land.

(09:52) So according to the Bible- Noah’s Flood was a worldwide event… Join us next time as we uncover the physical evidence of Noah’s Flood, and explore whether the Ark has ever been found… in part 4 of the Genesis Account of Noah’s Ark…