Troublesome Topic: PHASE 0.2 THE SITUATION BEFORE THE WORLD-WIDE FLOOD

CLIMATE

Had they ever seen rain?

Yes. I believe they had.

Some people may ask, “What about Genesis 2:5-6?”

Let’s look at it.

Allow me to strip those two verses of everything extra, leaving only the most important parts. It would read like this:  “Before every shoot of the field had sprouted, and before every plant of the field had grown, YHVH ELOHIM (read Adonai Elohim) formed the adam …”

The comment in Genesis 2:5-6 was not intended to communicate that it did not rain until the great flood, but rather, that it had not rained up to that point (before the creation of man). Rains came after man was present and ready to tend to the plants that grew in the garden. The patterns that would be standard procedure later on, were fully established by God at points of His choosing during creation week. Many Bible scholars today believe that most things functioned normally after creation week, including that it did rain between Adam and Eve’s exit from Eden and the great flood.

We do not know what the temperature was like before the flood. We do not know if they had winter and summer in some areas or not. There is much speculation about the pre-flood climate, but we really don’t know.

People who still hold to the Canopy Theory think that before the flood, the air was usually warm and moist everywhere. These same people say the level of oxygen was probably 30% in contrast to our 21%, and carbon dioxide could have been between 3 times and 7 times greater than today with mostly beneficial results. They say this combination would have created a greenhouse effect that caused the plants to grow faster and larger. That level of oxygen would have helped people heal faster and live longer. And it supposedly enabled animals and humans to have greater potential for gigantism.

However, the canopy theory has been largely disproved. Also, there can be other reasons for gigantism. A greater oxygen level has some benefits for humans, but long-term exposure to more oxygen also causes a number of serious health problems. It appears that the primary reason some people support these ideas is that the canopy model demands them, therefore I remain skeptical of their validity.

It is thought by Creationists that the oceans before the flood were shallower than our oceans today. They also had less salt and other minerals in them. The minerals currently in our oceans were added primarily by the flood, with a tiny bit of help from rivers since the flood.

TERRAIN

There were no tall mountains, only low mountains and rolling hills.

Most of the tectonic plates are very large, with only a few “smaller” ones in a few places. India, Saudi Arabia, Antarctica, Australia, and the Caribbean are their own plates. The North American plate includes part of Russia.

There was either one land mass at that time, or two or three land masses that were separated by narrow bodies of water. Even if there were a few small separations, it is still considered one supercontinent, typically called Pangaea. We don’t know the exact shape of this one continent, but I have relied on the map that Clarey shows in his book.

Imagine Australia, Antarctica, South America, Africa, India and Saudi Arabia all jammed together, some at strange angles. Also imagine North America being separated from North Africa by only a narrow sea. Imagine Greenland resting on its side on top of Canada. All these got pulled apart during the flood event.

In the maps Clarey uses in his book, Russia and the rest of Asia, as well as parts of Europe, disappear into confusion at the top of the map because he didn’t have good drilling data from those places. Therefore, as we move through this study, we should not concern ourselves with Europe and Asia, but rather we should focus on what Clarey does tell us from the rock layers that he studied carefully – Africa (with the Middle East), South America and North America.

The one large continent was surrounded by shallow seas. They are thought to have been shallower and extended out further than our continental shelves do today.

GOVERNMENTS AND LEADERS

We know that the reason for the flood was the prevalence of wickedness in mankind. Genesis 6:1-4 informs us that one of the key reasons that the wickedness was so prevalent was that the powerful, political geniuses that were leading the righteous people started marrying women from the large, powerful, genius families of the wicked in order to keep up in the genetic competition for size, strength and mental acuity. When the righteous leaders compromised in this way, things went downhill for them and their people at an alarming rate. I encourage you to also read my study series about the Nephilim, The Beginning of the Wickedness that Necessitated the Flood.

WORLD POPULATION

From a Biblical point of view it has been calculated that the world’s population just before the flood was between 750 million and 4 Billion! I think there were more wars back then than most people envision and possibly abortion also, therefore I tend to think it was around 2 billion. One of the reasons the population was so large was that people who live 900 years are alive at the same time as a number of generations of their descendants. For Adam it was 8 generations, for Cain it was probably more because he was pushing for larger numbers in his line.

SPIRITUALITY

The best way to describe the level of spirituality at that time is to say, “There was none, except for the family of that crazy man named Noah, but no one paid attention to him anyway.”

We think that things are getting bad today but consider how debased and violent things would have become if there were around 2 Billion people but only 8 God-fearing people in the entire world! Try to imagine the types of things Noah and his family had to go through.

TECHNOLOGY AND ADVANCED CULTURES

From things we know about life before and after the flood, I believe that before the flood they had:  Highly developed Iron works, megalithic construction,  a form of writing, well-planned cities, sewages systems, standardized money, successful brain surgery, at least they could relieve pressure in the brain without killing the patient, a source of power as useful to them as our electricity is to us, guidance systems for precise machining, high tech manufacturing, and possibly computing and some advanced form of transportation. The last two are more speculative on my part.

For more information about this topic I invite you to check out my study series called DON’T BE LIKE THE TECHNOLOGICALLY ADVANCED PEOPLE OF ANCIENT TIMES THAT DISAPPEARED. The first lesson in that study is – ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY IN ANCIENT TIMES

In the end, understanding their level of advancement does not change the effects of the world-wide flood, it only changes our mental picture of what things looked like. The moral and spiritual conditions were much more important.

The next lesson in this study is PHASE 0.3  SOLUTIONS TO PROBLEMS ON THE ARK