How Did Noah Build The Ark

It is the most seminal moment in the history of the world. The building of the Ark by Noah is a moment that has and will live with civilisation until the end of days. It is a moment in human history that is still being debated and talked about across the religious world from Christians to Muslims and on to Mormons and beyond. It is a moment that almost every culture in the world have a legend about and it is a moment that we as Bible believing Latter Day Mormons see as divinely appointed and divinely inspired. As the world stood on the brink of destruction God command that an Ark be built to save the righteous and the pure.

 

However even after all that is written and spoken about the building of this great spectacle it still amazes me and I shake my head when I read or hear some of the comments people make concerning the building of the Ark. Some of the arguments given are amazing and and I want to address a few here in my sermon to try and explain our position on how Noah and what Noah was able to use in building his Ark, because to many people are still stuck in the mind set that we are the greatest civilisation that has ever lived  upon the earth and they ask with this in mind how such a thing was possible.  Some of the arguments people make are, how could Noah have built the ark without using modern tools, it's impossible. Noah wouldn’t have had the adequate tools he needed to do the job! Didn't ancient man use stone on stone to build. Besides the fact that we don’t know what tools Noah had, we point out that many people wittingly or unwittingly have an evolutionary view or evolutionary influenced view of the history of mankind. Many think Noah must have been some primitive person using primitive stone tools. When God made man, man was made highly intelligent in the image of God. Genesis 5:31-33 tell us that within a few generations people were making musical instruments and working in brass and iron. By the time of Noah, and with people living for hundreds of years before the Flood, who knows what sort of knowledge was accumulated and the kinds of sophisticated technology that might have been developed? We stand by the conviction that the civilisation of Noah was a type two civilisation that it was very advanced and would have had tools and other impressive technology that we would be jealous of even today! It is important for us to remember that we don’t know how ancient people built many of the stone structures in Great Britain, Europe, South America or even the remarkably constructed Egyptian pyramids. The ancients obviously had technology at a level that we just aren’t aware of, as it seems no record was kept or the records were destroyed. In this area of ancient technologies, we need to think in terms of a Christian Latter Day Mormon worldview based on the history in the scriptures and when the scriptures give us an insight in to advanced technologies we should embrace that idea and not be jealous but rather praise them and embrace the idea that we are not the highest that the children of God have ever been.

 

But still again and again we hear their problems and their evolutionary based history shouting above the evidence and the recorded history. What about cranes and metals, Noah didn’t use metals because it would have been too early, man didn't use metals back then. Well the Bible does not tell us whether Noah did or did not use cranes made of metal. From a Christian Latter day Mormon worldview, ancient people, including those living before the Flood, would have been highly intelligent, and no doubt would have understood about remedial things such as leverage. Noah may have had ingeniously designed cranes and levers that would make us stand in awe today!  Yet again we know what the Bible says about metal it did exist and man did work it in fact, in Genesis 5:31-32, just a few generations after Adam, we read, “And as for Zillah, she also bore Tubal-Cain, an instructor of every craftsman in bronze and iron.” So if they were using bronze and iron then, by the time of Noah people may have developed all sorts of sophisticated uses of metals. Noah may have used more metal than we do today. However we know why these question keep being asked, because mans mind has left the road that God put them on and has gone down a road of corrupt science. Our answer is simple. Where are we ever told what tools Noah used? There is no mention in the Bible or even any hint as to what tools Noah used. So the answer to this argument is, we don’t know what the tools were, and no one knows! So why do you keep making that argument? Well we know!

 

Yet another argument that is made is that it took Noah took 120 years to build the Ark, First of all, we don’t know how long Noah took to build the Ark. The 120 years reference in Scripture (Genesis 8:5) is not in the context of Noah building the Ark. The best explanation of the 120 years seems to be that it was the length of God’s patience, and then He sent the Flood. Shem was 99 when the Flood ended and he came out of the Ark, this indicates that when God spoke to Noah about building the Ark, he already had sons and they were married. So it seems logical to say that the Ark took fewer than 99 years to build. Second, Noah may have taken quite a number of years to build the Ark. Perhaps Noah took several years to build the Ark to give plenty of time to warn the population that they needed to believe God’s Word, that he would indeed flood the earth. Noah Built his Ark because God said there was a flood coming he didn't say when he just said it was coming and we don't know how long he took to build it, but the important thing is he did build it. Yet they still say again and again there’s no way Noah could have built a wooden ship that size, especially not by himself. Actually, there are records going back over 2,000 years of ancient wooden ships as big as and even bigger than the Ark. It’s just that we are not used to seeing such massive wooden ships today, and, therefore, many people think it couldn’t be done! Also why do they think he did it alone, Noah had his three sons to help him, and there’s no reason to doubt he would have hired people as well has having help from God in the form of Angelic helpers. We don’t know what materials Noah did or didn’t have, as we are not told and we don't know how he built it or how long it took. According to material experts, the ancient Egyptians who are the descendants of Noah’s grandson Mizraim/Aegyptus used a highly advanced form of concrete while constructing the Great Pyramid. We do know that Noah used timber to build an Ark, and we are given the dimensions in Scripture. We know it was built to float because a massive Flood was coming and that all we need to know.

 

However time and time again these arguments are made and more than ever even more absurd arguments are made, like how did he fit all the animals of the world in that one boat, how did he get the whales in. I could go one. Much of what is said about the Ark and its construction by these so called men of knowledge is utter rubbish and they do all they can not to look at the text of the scriptures to find answer but continue to look at other texts like the epic of Gilgamesh which is nothing like the story of Noah. It is our duty to educate the world and bring them to an understanding of the Gospel of Jesus Christ through the scriptures and through fact not fiction. We believe in our church that our past pre-history is littered with great achievements and technologies, that we have been high beyond the starts and brought low again to learn from our mistakes many times in human history. We are told that the world will be as it was in Noah's day before Christ comes again and I believe that means more than just sin and evil but that it also refers to our achievements in technology as well.

 

Let us not be out done by these naysayers, but rather let us cling to the sure word that is God and try him and see if he will indeed bless us with the knowledge and answers we need to understand these wondrous things.

In The Name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

Matthew P Gill

First Elder & Prophet