If people repented in Noah’s time, would there have been enough room for them on the ark?
Room for the penitent on the ark?
35 thoughts on “Room for the penitent on the ark?”
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The repented, having been warned, could have built their own boats. In other words, time to repent ran out long before the actual flood. It’s part of the allegory to convey a clock is running and there is a unknown point of no return in life’s journey for a sinner to avoid G-d’s judgment.
Genesis 7:17
Genesis 7:24
Genesis 8:3
One of these things is not like the other…
Once you’ve got enough food for two of every animal for 150 days (or was it 40?) AND the actual animals themselves, I’d be surprised if you haven’t already filled your three hundred cubits by fifty cubits by thirty cubits worth.
Repentant or not, I reckon the smell on the Ark alone would’ve killed ’em off.
What I would like to know is how they kept animals happy together. Sorry, I digress. Our female cat is ballistic the last few days just because her very best friend/father of her babies was gone for a day being neutered and she, of course, didn’t recognise him. Not being the cat expert, I didn’t know this would happen. Needless to say, it is not a happy week in our household keeping these two apart so she doesn’t kill him off as quickly as she would like (yes, this is literal).
Back to the topic at hand. Sure, there would be room if needed.
The flood story is completely symbolic. Does anyone think otherwise? (And by that I actually mean to ask if there is any official church doctrine to suggest otherwise).
It’s so ludicrous it has to be, but we already argued on another thread and I’m doubtful that many views have changed.
see:
https://www.ourthoughts.ca/2006/02/16/the-flood-allegory-exaggeration-or-literal-world-wide-disaster/
Why would the flood story be ludicrous? God can do whatever He wants.
Hmmm, well I won’t argue with you (at least not deeply) because I am not a scriptorian scholar, but why couldn’t the whole earth flood? As far as I know, it is literal and for a purpose.
Perhaps a flood would not have been needed if the people had repented. Perhaps.
Even if only 3 or four repented but the rest hadn’t?
I don’t want to completely open up the whole argument again, but have you considered how large the ark would have to be for the herbivores alone? … that and the mystery of where the water went would be two of the big arguments against a literal world-wide flood.
Maybe the ark was bigger on the inside than the outside, you know, like Dr. Who’s telephone booth, it stretched into another dimension or something.
Also maybe there is no evidence of a world wide flood because God wants us to have doubt… No, I mean faith.
And maybe, just maybe, God turned all the left-over water into hydrogen and oxygen.
There Rick. Now do you believe?
Or then again, maybe it’s just a symbolic story about trying to be a good person when everyone else isn’t and that if you do, things will work themselves out for the best. At least that’s what I get from it.
Are you suggesting that if you believe the story of the flood as being real, then believing Dr. Who’s telephone booth can stretch inside but not outside is just as believable?
The Daleks would be the sons of perdition perhaps.
Dr. Who made a show call “The Ark In Space”.
Perhaps Noah and his family were on the Ark and everyone else was in the Tardis. (Dr. Who’s telephone booth/time travel machine)
A few days late, I know, but here is a link to a web site listing some of the logical problems with accepting the flood story in Genesis as literal:
Flood Problems
Now I’m not saying God can’t do anything He wants to do, but I am saying that in order for the Genesis flood to be literal, He would have had to pull off a whole lot of extra miracles and break a lot of the laws of physics (such as changing radioactive decay rates). He also would had to have removed all geological evidence for the flood. It simply doesn’t add up.
Yes, I know. And He follows natural laws too. You know something interesting, while doing our companionship study last night. I never realised this before, but when the Red Sea was parted for the Israelites, it wasn’t done instantaneously, but it happend in a period of several hours, due to the power of the wind and the direction it was going in. The Lord did that part of it and let the wind do its work. I never picked up on that part of it before (should have!)
Does this mean that God can heat a burrito up so hot that even He can’t eat it?
Of course, rick. He’s burned entire cities; why wouldn’t he be able to burn up a burrito? :)
Mary, that’s an interesting insight into the parting of the sea. I’ve probably glanced over that wind part every time I’ve read it. I always have this mental picture of Charlton Heston waving the staff and the walls of water start to spring up.
Ditto on that, JM. That’s the media for you. ;)
I don’t think God can do that since everything he does is perfect, therefor he would only make the perfect burrito.
There’s two ways to part a sea – you can move the water, or just raise the land.
I reckon the latter is much easier than the former.
I just say this so God can save himself a bit of effort if he ever need to be parting seas again.
Leave it to an atheist to be God’s advisor.
Hey, I’m looking out for everyone/thing.
If He’d have asked me in the first place, I could have saved Him a lot of effort in several of the episodes in the Bible…
Sometimes, it’s good to have someone to bounce ideas off of… God should know that.
JM
Yes, me too. I never noticed that until last night. It was an eye opener for sure! Makes a lot of sense too. :)
If you go to the ward library and check out the picture on crossing the red sea, the picture shows two high walls of water being held back and people walking between them.
Is it wrong to imply to little children (or adults) that a lie is the truth? Should SLC require their pictures to depict the truth?
It’s not a lie according to the Bible.
Pewsitter
Before they entered, it took several hours (overnight) for the walls of water to be formed. But they did travel on dry ground and with walls of water as Kim reference.
The question becomes how high were the walls of water? The picture portrays in my humble opinion a wall forty to fifty feet high with a narrow passage. The wind to hold that much water would be a Cat 5 Hurricane.
I remember one time while I was in Europe I was by the seashore on a bay and the bay was full of boats, during the night all the water left the bay and all of the boats were sitting on dry ground. I could see the ocean on both sides and an land in front of me. I came back that afternoon and the bay was filled with water and all the boats were floating again. It was pretty windy that day. I could have walked across the bay but not in the afternoon.
I believe God works within the laws of nature. Is it wrong to mislead people with pictures as opposed to being accurate?
There is no indication in the scriptures that the wind was still blowing when the Israelites crossed the sea bottom.
Maybe the water was frozen?
Can anyone rule out the Frozen Red Sea Theory?
Frozen Red Sea sounds like a drink.
Kim Siever said: “There is no indication in the scriptures that the wind was still blowing when the Israelites crossed the sea bottom.”
Are you suggesting the LDS picture is a correct representation and the LDS church wants us to believe that two 40 foot walls of water stood there by themselves?
I have no idea how correct the interpretation is.
loretta
If the people in Noah’s time would have repented. There would not have been any flood.
Since there was no flood, what was the reason the story about Noah was made up and put into the Bible? Was it to make Abraham and his children special perhaps?
I don’t think anyone is saying there was no flood. There is doubt there was a global flood, but not necessarily that there was no flood at all.
I wonder how literally to interpret the term “wall” of water, just as I wonder how literally to interpret the whole story. Some have suggested that the flood destroyed that portion of the earth that was known to Noah, and to man, at the time, and that such a portion might have been rather small. I don’t know; I’m open to these ideas and others. On the other hand, I don’t want to put too much faith in my own incredulity: Is the idea of a great flood, with a huge variety of life being preserved in an ark, any more implausible than the idea of a man being executed by crucifixion, lying dead in a tomb and then rising on the third day? Is it any more implausible than the idea of a woman being healed merely by reaching out and touching the hem of a rabbi’s garment? Because I believe in miracles, I don’t rule out the idea that the flood happened exactly as Genesis says in every detail.