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● Gen 7:19-20 . .When the waters had swelled much more upon the earth,
all the highest mountains everywhere under the sky were covered. Fifteen
cubits higher did the waters swell, as the mountains were covered.
NOTE: If we take the liberty to arbitrarily assume that the cubit of Noah's
day was 18 inches; then fifteen of them would equal 22½ feet.
Q: Is it possible that the Flood was local rather than global?
A: Well; the problem with that theory is: the waters breeched the highest
mountains by 22½ feet. So then, if perchance Noah lived in a geographic
basin, the waters would have overflowed the mountains surrounding him
and kept on going.
But the water would start spilling past Noah's area long before it breeched
the tops of the highest mountains surrounding him because mountain ranges
aren't shaped smooth, level, and even like the rim of a domestic bath tub.
No; they're very irregular and consist of high points and low points; viz:
peaks, valleys, canyons, saddles, and passes.
Thus mountain ranges make poor bath tubs because you would lose water
through the low points before it even had a chance to fill to the peaks. In
point of fact, were the sides of your bathtub shaped like a mountain range;
you could never fill it. And in trying to; just end up with water all over the
floor.
22½ feet may not seem like a lot of water but when you consider the
diameter of the Earth, that is an enormous amount when its above the
highest mountains. How high were the highest mountains in Noah's day?
Nobody really knows. But just supposing the tallest at that time was about
equal to California's Mount Laguna east of San Diego; viz: 5,738 feet above
sea level-- about 1.1 miles. Adding 22½ feet to that comes out to
approximately 5,761 feet.
The amount of rain it would take to accumulate that much water in only
forty days would be something like 6 global feet of depth per hour.
To put that in perspective: the lobby of the Empire State Building in New
York city is approximately 47 feet above sea level. At 6 feet per hour, the
lobby would be under water in less than eight hours. The whole building,
lightening rod and all; would be under water in just a little over ten days.
The new One World Trade Center would be gone in about thirteen.
Q: From whence did all that water come?
A: The atmosphere alone holds about 2,900 cubic miles of water at any
given time; with the balance of Earth's 340 million cubic miles of water
stored in oceans, rivers, lakes, ice caps, glaciers, permafrost, and the
ground. Relatively little ground water is stored in subterranean voids. Most
of it is soaked in tiny pores and cracks in soil and rocks.
Almost all ground water resides within five to ten miles of the surface. Water
below that depth is chemically bound in the rocks and minerals and not
readily accessible; but can be released as a result of geologic processes such
as volcanism. But for the Flood, water above and beyond the earth's
indigenous sources was necessary.
There's an abundance of water out in the cosmos. In an article I found on
the internet dated July 22, 2011; astronomers have discovered the largest
and oldest mass of water ever detected in the universe-- a gigantic cloud
harboring 140 trillion times more water than all of Earth's oceans combined.
Well; I'm pretty sure that's a sufficient quantity of water to inundate the
earth to a depth required for the Flood.
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