NOAH’S ARK – FACT OR FICTION?

The evolutionist would tell you the ark is a myth. It is important to him/her that it is merely a fable, for the ark, if it really does exist, is infallible proof of the impossibility of evolution. Why? Because the ark would validate the reality of the Genesis flood, the Biblical account of creation. The book of Genesis would be proven to be an actual historical documentation of the history of man in his infancy and not just a myth, as many claim.

Of the many creationists who believe in the Biblical account of life are a number who believe the ark has been preserved in the icefields of Mount Ararat in Turkey since it settled there after the flood thousands of years ago. There is much evidence to support this conviction. There is only space for a few compressed comments:

a) Noah, the flood, and the ark are validated by Jesus Himself. Jesus said (Matthew 24:38), “In the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark.” The ark is as real as Christ’s words are true.

b) Ever since man began to write, it has been written in many languages that Mount Ararat was the landing place of Noah’s ark. Many cultures have told of a great flood covering the earth and a man building a boat to escape that flood.

c) The people in the area have, and always did have, an awesome reverence for Mount Ararat. To them the mountain is holy. The Kurdish guides refuse to go close to the peak for fear of their lives. The Armenians held to a tradition that an angel guarded the ark. Obviously, the story of a flood and an ark had been passed through many generations.

d) The Bible states the size of the ark is approximately 450 feet long, 75 feet wide and 45 feet high. It is more like a box than a ship. The measurements have proved to meet twentieth century standards as a worthy sea vessel. (The American battleship Oregon was built on the same proportional dimensions, only one seventh smaller.) The total deck area (there are three levels) would be equivalent to twenty basketball courts and had the space of 569 train cars. Such a barge could easily carry a pair of each species plus the required fodder.

e) There have been many eyewitness accounts of sightings of the ark over the centuries. Though normally hidden in ice and snow, an abnormally hot summer will cause it to be partially exposed. Some of the sightings are as follows:

700 BC: Pilgrims came to scrape tar from the ark to fashion good-luck omens.

300 BC: Babylonian priests said the ark could still be seen.

30 BC: An Egyptian historian mentioned the ark. In the same year Nicolas of Damascus mentions the ark in his writings.

1269: Marco Polo wrote of the ark.

1829: A German physician reported seeing relics from the ark kept in a monastery located below the landing spot (since destroyed by a major avalanche). When Turkish authorities sent workers to build protective barriers against avalanches, workers reported seeing a ship jutting out of a glacier.

1876: British statesman Sir James Brice found a four-foot long, five-inch square hand-hewn timber near the landing spot high above the tree line.

1883: A Turkish commission sent to investigate the possibility of avalanches reported to have seen the ark, calling it “a gigantic structure.”

1902: An Armenian farmer tells of an experience as a young boy. He and his uncle discovered the ark, his uncle boosted him up so that he could walk the length of the ark. An artist has since drawn an accurate picture of the ark based on this eyewitness testimony.

1915: Russian aviator, Vladimir Roskovitsky, spotted the ark while flying in the area. The ark was mostly exposed and was in amazingly excellent condition. The sighting prompted an expedition by the Czar. Unfortunately documents and pictures produced by the 150 man team were either lost or destroyed by the Bolsheviks who at that very time overthrew the government.

1942: American flyers, flying from allied bases in Tunisia to supply Russia’s Red Army, reported several sightings of the ark.

1952: An American pipeline engineer reported sighting from a helicopter.

1955: A French demolition engineer and his eleven-year-old son found a hand-hewn square timber far above the tree line near the reported sightings of the ark. Tests revealed it to be about 5,000 years old, hewn and water-proofed by a man, and cut from a tree that could expect to be found in the Mesopatania Valley, thought to be Noah’s building site.

1969: A search team found seven more pieces of wood in the same area, the longest seventeen inches long.

1972: Photographs from an American satellite revealed a very large object at the exact spot of the many sightings.

1974: A long distance photograph was taken with a camera. The planking of the ship was distinguishable.

There have since been other reports of sightings of Noah’s ark. Noah’s ark – fact or fiction?