Tuesday, January 8, 2019

The Landing of Noah's Ark






Over time,the world has come to regard the Biblical account of Noah's Ark as myth. At best, it’s a good children’s story equivalent to something from the pen of Dr Zeuss.  But in the consumer world, this myth makes money. Toy manufacturers sell models of bulbous boats where all the animals line up two by two to file past Noah at the loading ramp. As innocent as it may appear, this telling of the story undermines the Genesis account, discouraging for the most part, any serious examination of the real evidence that has been visible since the waters receded. Tragically, the Christian church is divided on the value of proving up this archaeological  evidence  that supports the certainty of the Genesis Flood. However,despite these facts, the evidence is there, and it’s undeniable !

The use of steel in shipbuilding is relatively new. One thousand foot tankers are now common. The longest wooden vessel ever built was 330 feet and sailors found that it flexed alarmingly in heavy seas. Contrary to the opinion of the myth makers, Noah was far advanced as a marine engineer. Evidence in eastern Turkey, confirms Noah’s ship was 515 feet long and that fact predates all the knowledge man has accumulated building wooden ships. It’s clear then that Noah’s Ark was not a  rectangular box built of wood, but  a ship with a huge upturned bow and stern, built of reeds  and cemented together with a bitumen like  substance called “gopher."
Secondly, common to all vessels is a means of propulsion. No vessel is safe drifting without power. Sharp coastlines, show no mercy. But the Ark had no means of propulsion. So this vessel, was planned with the confidence that it would drift on an endless sea with no possibility that it would collide with land.
Thirdly, wind together with giant seas can capsize a ship with no power, turning it  broadside to the waves and rolling it over. The Ark, would need a means of preventing  this.…..which compels us to look at the final  piece of  evidence that proves Noah’s Ark was real and that it , preserved Noah and his family while God recreated the world  beneath the flood waters. 

Emergency sea anchors, suspended in the water from one end of an unpowered ship, will keep it “ in irons” always facing the wind and waves. Noah used at least 12 large ship stones or sea anchors, carefully sized so that their mass would  keep his vessel  "in irons". They were wedge shaped and carefully suspended in the water below the ship at different depths by large ropes called hawsers. These were threaded through carefully carved holes at the top of the stone, using an arc which was proportional to the size of the hawser.
The thickness of the hawser was proportional to the size and weight of the stone. The placement of the holes close to the top of the stone conclude that the hawsers were only able to suspend the stones when immersed in water. The weight of the stone suspended in atmosphere would break the hawser out of the hole.
The stone’s shape was also important. If the shape or the means of  suspension produced instability, the spinning would destroy the hawser and the stone would disappear into the depths. Loss of too many stones could mean loss of the ship.

 So from the evidence, it’s possible to conclude that an unpowered vessel, not equalled in size and length until modern times, suspended multiple ship stones to prevent destruction by wave action, and this vessel did not encounter land for a year.


After a year afloat, Noah knew the waters were receding. Land was  beginning to emerge. When several of the ship stones  began bumping the ground below the ship Noah knew he had to beach the ship and quickly. The water, receding  towards the  present ocean basins would soon accelerate between the emerging land masses . If Noah allowed the Ark to  be subject to a current, he had no means of steering  to avoid destruction. If he relied upon the ship stones to hold the ship in one place, the current would eventually drag the ship, and the stones would break, as they bounced along the bottom. Both scenarios would have resulted in the loss of the ship. 

So several jolts felt throughout the Ark one morning, signalled all aboard that the land was not that far below them. That was enough for Noah to command his crew to lower the stones to the bottom and stop any further drifting . Then, with preparations made,  he cut the hawsers, and let them fall to the bottom .  This action reduced the draft of the ship to 20 feet making it possible to propel the ship across the surface towards a mountain they could see on the  distant horizon. The Ark mound has not told us just how that  was done but for certain, some urgent means of propulsion was employed to  move the ship the  21 km. The ancients named the mountain Noah saw, the Wall of Heaven, or Heroes Abode. It would have been the only land that Noah could see when he  brought the Ark to a stop. An unpowered drift ship, controlled only by ship stones discovered  6000 feet above sea level, confirms flood waters covered  the earth. 

Today, there are  9 stones high on the Armenian plateau, 21 km’s from the Ark mound. They stand at the Kurdish village of Arzap for all the world to see . The name in the ancient Armenian language means  “touch the earth,” a reference  to Noah’s decision to stop the drift of the ship by lowering the stones to the bottom.
For centuries, the evidence has been there. Many generations of Pilgrims have  visited the site and carved Christian symbols onto the flat surfaces of the stones. 
Many ancient  cultures  reference the flood in their folk tales. 

While he lived on earth, Jesus Christ, also confirmed  the story of Noah and the flood. After all, He was there, for He is Eternal. In his time on earth, He fulfilled the Father’s plan to save sinners. He lived perfectly, became the acceptable  sacrifice to pay for their sin, and rose from the dead to claim His authority to judge all who have ever lived. The final judgement by fire will consume the world we know in preparation for the new one He has promised
On that day, yet future, on what ground will you stand  ?

Friday, January 4, 2019

Failure: Israel

Israel is a unique country-perhaps the most unique in the world. Inserted illegally into the Middle East by virtue of a UN mandate, it enjoys the tacit support of most of the western world. How did this happen?

How do a group of people, exert an overarching influence over the morality of the world in order to gather the support necessary to steal a country from its ancient owners? Obviously, there must have been powerful factions with their own agendas that collectively brought it about. The Zionist lobby and their erstwhile ally, Christian Zionism is the best short answer. Collectively, they exerted influence in all the right quarters to bring the United Nations to a day, when they would consider it a reasonable decision to divide the holy land up between the Jews and the Arabs. The resolution was never accepted but the Zionists in Palestine went ahead anyway, and by violence and terror, slaughtered and evicted over 700,000 Palestinians to establish a nation they now call Israel.

In observing this for over a half a century of my lifetime, it’s occurred to me that there are facts available that if carefully exposed would vaporize the Zionist support, at least among thinking peoples.
First of all, throughout the West, everybody knows that the Jews are the people of the
Christian Bible. The story of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and their progeny is well known to Jews, Christians and Muslims throughout the world. As the story goes, the Jewish nation was founded when God himself spoke with Abraham and told him that the people who would descend from him would be as numerous as the sand on the seashore. He also told him that a Redeemer / King would be among them - a Saviour that would fulfil the promise made to Adam in the garden, that the Enemy of man, the Devil, would one day be destroyed.

The story of the Jews' relationship to God unfolds progressively throughout the Old Testament showing how the Almighty watched them multiply into a million strong people who were slaves in Egypt. By divine intervention, and through his servant Moses, He brought them out of Egypt, through the Red Sea and to the foot of Mount Horeb, where he gave them the 10 Commandments and the ceremonial law. They were indeed a special people set apart for some purpose yet unknown to the world. But the world around them knew all about the miracles and the deliverances the Hebrews had experienced. The intelligent among them feared the Hebrew’s God.

In all of this miraculous history, God made promises to His people----Conditional promises.
2 Chronicles 7:14 if My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land.
Note the condition. All the  promises often accompanied by the word eternal are also conditional. On the surface it seems to be a contradiction. How can a promise made today be conditional and eternal at the same time?
Abraham and the spiritual remnant among the Hebrews knew the answer. There was a transition inherent in the promise to the church of the Old Testament which they understood. The promise of an earthly land, based on conditional obedience would be fulfilled eternally for the church in the glory of an eternal land- the new heavens and new earth yet to come. The majority of the Jews in the temporal land would fail the obedience test and forfeit the earthly promise of the eternal. When one understands this, the promises of the Old Testament can indeed be conditional in this earthly life and eternal in the life to come. To  qualify, you have to find yourself by faith, part of the spiritual remnant.

That said, the Hebrews of the Old Testament had the blessing of God in their midst. He appeared to them regularly in the tabernacle worship. He supplied their food and clothes. He interceded for them constantly when faced with enemies. But the record shows that they constantly rebelled. In God’s very presence and with all of the historical evidence continually rehearsed  in their ears, they rebelled against God and forfeited the conditional earthly blessings He had promised.

I submit that this was Gods plan, not that he willed their rebellion, for God cannot will evil. Rather He allowed their fallen nature to work the rebellion that is resident in the human heart. For 1400 years, He stayed with his earthly people and his church- the faithful remnant among them- constantly correcting them, forgiving them and restoring them, until it was clear to all the world, that even with God's very presence among them, they could NOT keep the 10 Commandments. Their very nature (ours too) was incapable. As the writer to the Ephesians says, they were "dead in trespasses and sins".

So God remained silent for 400 years. But at the precise moment of history, He sent the Lord Jesus Christ to become the final sacrifice that would suffer the penalty for His church, past present and future. He even permitted his earthly people, the carnal Jews, to be the instrument that would put the God-Man to death - the final blasphemous act that would prove to the world that no people, no matter how privileged could, on their own escape the death sentence inherent in their human nature.
The Law cannot be kept by anyone, and that irrefutable fact, drives all mankind ultimately to the cross and the Lord Jesus Christ. Galatians 5:22.

A few years later, in 70 AD, all the prefigurements of the ceremonial law were ended with the destruction of the temple and the scattering of the people. The two purposes for the existence of the temporal Nation of Israel were at an end.

Postscript : so what is this impostor Israel doing in the land that was once promised conditionally to Abraham’s natural seed? They are a deceptive fiction, skilfully introduced by the Devil to create war and turmoil in preparation for the final act of mans rebellion against God - the New World Order.