In Peter's first epistle, he wrote, "God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built. In it only a few people, eight in all, were saved".
Peter writes in his second epistle, "[God] did not spare the ancient world when he brought the flood on its ungodly people."
A Global Flood view equates the word "world" with what we think of today as "planet Earth". This view also argues that all humans are sinners and therefore "ungodly people." This view sees the complete annihilation of all humans everywhere on the planet except for the 8 in the ark.
The Universal Flood view hones in on the idea that the scope of the effect of the flood was on the so-called "ancient world", that is, the world known at the time of the flood, from the perspective of Noah. In other words, it was not necessarily "planet-wide" in its effect, but universal in wiping out humans, who are argued to not have spread throughout the whole world at the time of the flood.
Both views struggle to identify compelling geologic data that can be used to demonstrate when and where the flood occurred. The Global Flood view has difficulty proving which historical, geological events belong to the Creation activity of God, which to the Flood, and which followed the Flood. The Universal Flood view has so far been largely unassociated with a specific historical, geological event, not being able to distinguish when this event happened.
Christians are by no means the only ones fascinated with the history human life on earth. Scientists at the University of Kansas provide fresh insight into a critical time in human history, known as the Last Global Maximum. The Last Global Maximum was the time during the last ice age when land ice had reached its greatest global extent. All this water bound up in ice caused global sea levels to be vastly lower. The implications of the changed topography of Earth at that time is summarized in Remnants of human migration paths exist underwater at 'choke points'.
One upshot uncovered by this research is that a sea-level hundreds of feet lower than today exposed an amount of land equal in size to the continent of South America. And this was not just any land - it was prime coastal property, the most likely place to find the most advanced civilizations of the time. To really uncover what human civilization was like 20 to 30 thousand years ago is going to require a new regime of marine archeology.
Another product of this research is a much more detailed look at the "choke points" of terrestrial navigation. These are the land bridges (narrow pieces of land that connect two land masses) and straits (narrow bodies of water that separate two land masses) that allowed humans to go from one place to another. These are the high traffic regions of the world and provide future marine archeologists with the most promising locations to search for the remains of ancient civilizations.
What will they be looking for? One thing mentioned in the article is boats! But to find them, research will have to go 400 feet underwater. Quoting lead author Jerome Dobson, the article relays this:
"How much technology was there?" [Dobson] said. "Were there boats? No boats have ever been found that were that old, but we know people made it from Southeast Asia to Australia 65,000 years ago. So, anthropologists surmise they must have had boats. Even when sea level was at its lowest, the individual hops they had to make were long enough that it would seem likely they had boats. In the new article, we study the history of boats of all kinds based on research published in reputable scientific journals. Maritime travel goes surprisingly far back. So now, what kind of evidence can we find of ports? No one has ever claimed evidence of ports that far back. Of course, ports on coasts 400 feet lower than today would be hard to find, and precious little underwater archaeology has been conducted at that depth. We need to treat boats and ports as unknown and look for the evidence rather than proclaiming whether it did or did not happen."
Now this has a fascinating bearing on the account of Noah building an ark, which is a kind of boat, and also the flooding of the world.
The Ages of Joy model posits that Noah built his Ark during the Younger Dryas and just in time to save him and his family from the big melt when the Earth warmed up. The warming earth and corresponding warming oceans support the idea of super storms delivering massive quantities of water in short periods of time, rapidly rising sea levels, and sudden sill collapses that block risen ocean water from entering areas that ended up below sea level. The period of time marked by the end of the last ice age afforded many just-right conditions for catastrophic flooding events that would be one-of-a-kind, unrepeatable events.
The following image is credited to: Grossman, Eric. (2008). Sea Level and its Effects on Reefs in Hawaii.
Late Quaternary sea level (after Lea and others, 2002) is marked by 100,000-year oscillations that on average range through 120 m (394 ft). Periods of warm climate like that of today are characterized by high sea level, while during glacial conditions like those of the last glacial maximum, sea level was 120 m lower than today. Sea level generally falls slowly over approximately 80,000 years toward lowstands, yet sea-level rise following full glacial conditions usually occurs rapidly in about 20,000 years (as indicated by the arrows).
During the period of human history, the most dramatic change in sea level has occurred in the last 20,000 years, making this the prime time period to search for evidence of Noah's Flood. Note, Noah's Flood is not the result of slow sea-level rise itself, but faster-than-normal sea level rise along with warming oceans primes the environment for a catastrophic event.
The Effect of Judgment
A flood event accompanied by sea level rise would act as a judgment on the ancient world. It would have forced people out of their coastal cities and dispersed them across the interiors of the world. It would also have choked off passage from one land mass to another and separated people groups from each other. These effects may have served God's purpose in constraining sin and evil and in destroying sinful cities and separating waring people groups from each other.
Under this view, the effect of the Flood will be catastrophic and regional where Noah was preaching to unrepentant, ungodly people. But a general judgment on the whole Earth could have been meted out at the same time. In other words, the Flood was not only Universal in terms of Noah's experience, but had Global impact in terms of those living beyond Noah's knowledge, experience, and preaching.
What the Bible Says
If we look back at our original Biblical texts, we see some clues to support this.
[God] did not spare the ancient world when he brought the flood on its ungodly people, but protected Noah, a preacher of righteousness, and seven others; 6 if he condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah by burning them to ashes, and made them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly 2 Peter 2:5-6
Here the "ungodly people" are contrasted to Noah as a "preacher". God protected Noah from the "ungodly people" meaning that they were a threat to Noah. Only the people living near Noah were a threat to him, and and only those living near him would have heard his preaching.
Furthermore, we see God working by way of example. God makes an example by destroying Sodom and Gomorrah. In the same way, the Flood of Noah would have been an example to the ungodly living in other places who would hear of God's judgment by a flood. The Flood of Noah may not have been the first great flood to happen, but Scripture indicates it was the last and perhaps most significant of its kind. Therefore, we should search for this event near the end of the Last Ice Age.
Re-examining our other Petrine passage we gain further insight.
God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built. In it only a few people, eight in all, were saved through water, 21 and this water symbolizes baptism that now saves you also—not the removal of dirt from the body but the pledge of a clear conscience toward God. It saves you by the resurrection of Jesus Christ, 22 who has gone into heaven and is at God’s right hand—with angels, authorities and powers in submission to him. 1 Peter 3:20b-22
We see here the purpose of the Ark is to serve as a symbol for baptism and salvation through Jesus Christ. Eight individual were save through water by the Ark. Those elsewhere in the world saved from the Flood by any other means, apart from faith, would save only their lives, not their eternal souls.
As Peter reflects upon and draws insight from the Biblical Flood narrative, he treats it an historical fact, just has he does the destruction of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. He also underlines that God worked in and through the Flood to make an example to the ungodly and to point people to the fact that salvation comes from God alone.
In writing for Ages of Joy, I promote the teaching that Noah faithfully communicated the actual events of a real flood that God warned him about. I believe that Noah built an ark to save his family, and that Noah preached to unrepentant sinners who went to their doom because of a lack of faith in God's warning and a rejection of God's moral requirements.
Conclusion
Future marine archeology may provide many more details about life during the last ice age. How many cities and how much technology lies buried under 400 feet of water? Someday we may know much more than we do now. But the Bible gives us key insight into that time and is a treasure of historical knowledge about a world now mostly lost to us. People may have been building boats since soon after Cain built the first city. That city and those boats, perhaps as much as 65,000 years old, may lie somewhere deep under water. Whether or not we ever find those boats and those cities, we can be thankful to Adam and Eve, and to their children, for passing down the stories of their lives until they could be written in the Bible for all people everywhere to learn from. May we all learn and may we all look to God alone for our salvation, through Jesus Christ.
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