Noah's Ark and Flood-IAC Training Video

Genesis Apologetics

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In this video I'm going to show you how you can use the props in the IAC collection that deal with Noah and the Ark. So the first object we're going to take a look at is the biggest one of them all.

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It's an actual replica of Noah's Ark. Now this is probably my personal favorite of all the objects in the

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IAC collection because it's so visual and because it communicates the point so clearly about the enormous size of Noah's Ark.

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I view this model for teaching kids classes as well as for VBS. I've also used it even at a Christian concert and no matter where we use this prop it always seems to get the same reaction.

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People are always astounded to see how big Noah's Ark actually was. Now this model of Noah's Ark is about five feet long and it's designed after the exact dimensions given in the

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Bible but obviously scaled down quite a bit. This is actually a 196 scale model so the real

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Ark was about a hundred times bigger than this model of Noah's Ark. Along with the Ark the collection also includes two school bus models which you can see here that are to scale with the size of the

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Ark. Lining these school buses up next to the Ark definitely communicates to younger audiences how big

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Noah's Ark really was. That's really important because many kids are familiar with the bathtub

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Ark illustrations which really aren't very accurate when considering the size of the real

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Ark. So having this model and those school bus replicas will go a long way towards communicating the point that the

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Ark was really really big. Now when talking about how big Noah's Ark was you'll probably want to give your audience a reference for how big a cubit is and you can do that with this little measuring rod here.

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This is a cubit measuring stick and from the top of the handle to the tip of the rod is about 18 inches and 18 inches is about how long a common cubit was in the ancient

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Near East. So in talking to your audience about how big Noah's Ark is it would be good to have this little prop here to show them how big a cubit is so they can visualize how big

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Noah's Ark was. Now this Ark model is super detailed and as you can see one side of it is mostly peeled away so you can see what the internal architecture of the

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Ark would have looked like. You can see the different beams that make up the frame. You can see all three decks of the

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Ark along with the rooms that the animals are housed in. If you recall from Genesis 614

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God commanded Noah to make rooms or compartments in the Ark so you can actually see these in this

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Ark model. There's a number of animals that you can see displayed inside including down on the bottom deck near the center of the

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Ark you can actually see two juvenile T -Rex dinosaurs which you can point out when talking to your audience about how

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Noah could have fit young dinosaurs on the Ark. Now probably the best way to display this model for your audience is to have it on a five or six foot table with a tablecloth and during your talk you can walk around the table and you can point out different features about the

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Ark and then afterwards you can have your audience come by and take a look at it. Now one thing I do have to warn you about is this

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Ark model has many pieces that will very easily come off. Please do not let your audience touch it.

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Let them take a look at it but please do not let them touch it. We want to make sure this Ark stays intact for many more people to be able to use in the future.

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For younger audiences one way that you can make sure they don't touch it is to establish a visible line like setting a rope down in front of the table or maybe a piece of tape which you can just say is the no touching line so they're not allowed to go past that line so they can't touch the

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Ark. We just want to make sure that this stays intact for many more creation presenters to use for their presentations.

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Now one prop in this collection that's helpful for talking about how many animals would have been needed on the

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Ark is this book here called Mammalian Hybrids. As you'll notice on the cover we have a picture of a zonkey which is the cross between a zebra and a donkey.

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Now what crosses like the zonkey and the other crosses that are cataloged in this book show us is that the two animals that have been crossed together to create the new hybrid offspring are part of the same original animal kind.

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This is because God created animals to reproduce only more of their own kind so when we see two animals bred together to produce viable offspring even if those offspring are infertile because of genetic differences it shows that those animals descended from the same original kind that went on Noah's Ark.

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And so with all that in mind creation researchers are now estimating the number of animals that went on the

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Ark are probably only a few thousand animals not hundreds of thousands or millions of species only a few thousand animal kinds would have been needed to produce all the different types of varieties of animals that we have today.

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So the next couple props we're going to take a look at are a series of resin tablet replicas. Here is a tablet replica of tablet 11 from the

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Epic of Gilgamesh. It was discovered in the great library of Ashurbanipal in Nineveh and this tablet is important because it talks about the flood.

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This is the flood tablet and back in the 1870s when this tablet was first translated it really caused a stir in the archaeological community because of its many similarities with the

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Genesis flood. It also has many similarities with some other ancient legends called the

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Atrahasis epic or another story called the Ziusudra epic. And that's what this artifact is right here.

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This is actually the Ziusudra flood story. It's also called the Eridu Genesis or the

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Sumerian flood story and it's dated to around 1700 BC. You can see it's fragmentary.

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We don't have the entire story but from what we have it is very similar to the story in the Epic of Gilgamesh as well as the account in Genesis of the worldwide flood of Noah.

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So what sorts of things can you point out with these tablets? Well there's a couple things you can point out about them.

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First these stories share many striking similarities with the Genesis flood account. Now there's a couple ways to interpret these similarities.

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One interpretation is what many liberal Bible scholars claim and that is that these stories were what inspired the writer of Genesis who they say was not

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Moses but was a group of Israelite writers that were writing sometime after the exile who were trying to make up a story about where they came from so that they could establish that they were a

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But there's some serious problems with this idea. First why would the Jews who believed that the reason they were sent into exile in the first place was because they worship pagan gods borrow from the pagan stories around them like the

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Epic of Gilgamesh which is full of stories of ancient pagan gods? Why would they borrow stories about pagan gods when writing their own story about their relationship with the one true

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God? It really doesn't seem in character with what the Israelites believed at the time.

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Now the second problem is there are many striking differences between the pagan legends and the book of Genesis. First of all the

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Ark in the Epic of Gilgamesh story is actually a cube whereas in the book of Genesis the

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Ark has the dimensions of a modern cargo ship which have been scientifically proven to survive in the open seas.

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Also the length the flood is different between these stories. In the Epic of Gilgamesh it takes seven days for the entire earth to be flooded whereas in the book of Genesis the total length of the flood from the time it started to the time it ended is about 371 days.

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So the flood account in the book of Genesis is overall far more believable than the pagan stories which indicates that the

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Genesis account is the real true story whereas these are distortions and mixed memories.

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Now lastly stories like this are not limited to the ancient Near East. They're actually found all over the world.

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We have flood legends in China, in South America, in the Native American legends of North America.

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The Australian Aborigines have stories of a So if Moses or the writer of Genesis was borrowing these stories and adapting them why do we have so many similar stories all around the world?

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Doesn't that indicate that these stories all came from a common source? This makes sense because we all descend from those original three sons of Noah who came off the

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Ark so we all should have some shared cultural memories of a great flood that happened in the recent past.

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It makes perfect sense in light of what the Bible says. Now these artifacts are pretty small and lightweight so your audience can pick them up and look at them but I recommend that you have them pick them up and look at them over a table.

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Don't have them pick them up and look at them over a floor and that's because they're made out of resin so if you drop them there's a possibility they could be destroyed.

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So just make sure that you have your audience look at them over a table instead of looking at them over the floor just to keep them safe and make sure they stay intact.

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Now that we've talked about the real account of Genesis and how we know that the Genesis account is the original let's take a look at this original account.

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This is a fragment of a Torah scroll that contains Genesis chapter 5 verses 14 through Genesis chapter 9 verse 1.

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It's written on real animal skin with real ink and it's a very neat object to have out when talking about how

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Genesis records the real account of the flood. So let me just point out a few things about this scroll for you so that you can tell your audience about them.

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Now let me give you a very brief general overview of what is contained in this scroll. This scroll takes us from Genesis 5 18 all the way to Genesis 9 verse 2.

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So it contains part of the genealogy of Noah, contains God's instructions to build the ark, contains

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God's instructions to take on the animals, it contains the account of the destruction of the flood and the recession of the flood and the end of the flood with the family coming off the ark and God's blessing on Noah and his family.

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Now one thing I do have to tell you about with this scroll is that because it is written on animal skin the ink has not actually absorbed into the animal skin and so it can be worn off by using your fingers.

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So instead of using your fingers when examining it I would recommend that you use this little device here which is called the yad.

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Yad is the Hebrew word for hand and as you can see here there's a little hand on the tip of this yad and you can use that to point to certain letters or certain words that you might want to show your audience.

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So now that you've seen all the artifacts I just want to say one last thing and that is these are some really visually powerful artifacts and they will definitely help to bring your presentation to life.