Story of Noah

Scripture Reference:
Genesis 6:1 - 9:17
Noah's Ark and the Flood - Story Summary:
God saw how great wickedness had become and decided to wipe
mankind from the face of the earth. However, one righteous man
among all the people of that time, Noah, found favor in God's eyes.
With very specific instructions, God told Noah to build an ark for
him and his family in preparation for a catastrophic flood that would
destroy every living thing on earth.
God also instructed Noah to bring into the ark two of all living
creatures, both male and female, and seven pairs of all the clean
animals, along with every kind of food to be stored for
the animals and his family while on the ark. Noah obeyed
everything God commanded him to do.
After they entered the ark, rain fell on the earth for a period of forty
days and nights. The waters flooded the earth for a hundred and
fifty days, and every living thing on the face of the earth was wiped
out. As the waters receded, the ark came to rest on the mountains
of Ararat. Noah and his family continued to wait for almost eight
more months while the surface of the earth dried out.
Finally after an entire year, God invited Noah to come out of the
ark. Immediately, he built an altar and worshiped the Lord with
burnt offerings from some of the clean animals. God was pleased
with the offerings and promised never again to destroy all the living
creatures as he had just done. Later God established a covenant
with Noah: "Never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth."
As a sign of this everlasting covenant God set a rainbow in the
clouds.
Points of Interest from the Story:
God's purpose in the flood was not to destroy people, but to
destroy wickedness and sin.
With more detail in Genesis 7:2-3, God instructed Noah to take
seven pairs of every kind of clean animal, and two of every kind of
unclean animal. Bible scholars have calculated that approximately
45,000 animals might have fit on the ark.
Genesis 7:16 interestingly points out that God shut them in the
ark, or "closed the door," so to speak.
1

 The ark was exactly six times longer than it was wide. According
to the Life Application Bible study notes, this is the same ratio used
by modern ship builders.
In modern times researchers continue to look for evidence of
Noah's Ark.
Question for Reflection:
Noah was righteous and blameless, but he was not sinless (see
Genesis 9:20-21). Noah pleased God and found favor because he
loved and obeyed God with his whole heart. As a result, Noah's
life was an example to his entire generation. Although everyone
around him followed the evil in their hearts, Noah followed God.
Does your life set an example, or are you negatively influenced by
the people around you?
Fossils
Fossils (from Latin fossus, literally "having been dug up") are the
preserved remains or traces of animals (also known as zoolites),
plants, and other organisms from the remote past. The totality of
fossils, both discovered and undiscovered, and their placement
in fossiliferous (fossil-containing) rock formations
and sedimentary layers (strata) is known as the fossil record.
External mold of a bivalve
from the Logan Formation,
Lower Carboniferous, Ohio

1. Adpression (compression-impression) fossils

Compression fossils, such as those of fossil ferns, are the result of chemical reduction of the complex organic molecules composing the
organism's tissues. In this case the fossil consists of original material, albeit in a geochemically altered state. This chemical change is an
expression of diagenesis. Often what remains is a carbonaceous film known as a phytoleim, in which case the fossil is known as a compression.
Often, however, the phytoleim is lost and all that remains is an impression of the organism in the rockan impression fossil. In many cases,
however, compressions and impressions occur together. For instance, when the rock is broken open, the phytoleim will often be attached to one
part (compression), whereas the counterpart will just be an impression. For this reason, it has proved to convenient to have a combined term for
both modes of preservation:adpression.[21]

2. Bioimmuration

The star-shaped holes (Catellocaula vallata) in this Upper Ordovician bryozoan represent a soft-bodied organism preserved by bioimmuration in the bryozoan skeleton. [22]

Bioimmuration is a type of preservation in which a skeletal organism overgrows or otherwise subsumes another organism, preserving the latter,
or an impression of it, within the skeleton.[23] Usually it is a sessileskeletal organism, such as a bryozoan or an oyster, which grows along
a substrate, covering other sessile encrusters. Sometimes the bioimmured organism is soft-bodied and is then preserved in negative relief as a
kind of external mold. There are also cases where an organism settles on top of a living skeletal organism and grows upwards, preserving the
settler in its skeleton. Bioimmuration is known in the fossil record from the Ordovician [24] to the Recent.[23]
To sum up, fossilization processes proceed differently for different kinds of tissues and under different kinds of conditions.

3. Microfossils

Microfossils about 1 mm

'Microfossil' is a descriptive term applied to fossilized plants and animals whose size is just at or below the level at which the fossil can be
analyzed by the naked eye. A commonly applied cutoff point between "micro" and "macro" fossils is 1 mm, although this is only an approximate
guide. Microfossils may either be complete (or near-complete) organisms in themselves (such as the marine
plankters foraminifera andcoccolithophores) or component parts (such as small teeth or spores) of larger animals or plants. Microfossils are of
critical importance as a reservoir of paleoclimate information, and are also commonly used bybiostratigraphers to assist in the correlation of rock
units.

4. Resin fossils

Leptofoenus pittfieldae trapped inDominican amber, from 20 to 16 million years ago

Fossil resin (colloquially called amber) is a natural polymer found in many types of strata throughout the world, even the Arctic. The oldest fossil
resin dates to the Triassic, though most dates to the Tertiary. The excretion of the resin by certain plants is thought to be an
evolutionary adaptation for protection from insects and to seal wounds caused by damage elements. Fossil resin often contains other fossils
called inclusions that were captured by the sticky resin. These include bacteria, fungi, other plants, and animals. Animal inclusions are usually
small invertebrates, predominantly arthropods such as insects and spiders, and only extremely rarely a vertebrate such as a small lizard.
Preservation of inclusions can be exquisite, including small fragments of DNA.

Was It Sin?(Breaking Gods law)

Mrs. White describes the "amalgamation of man and beast" as a "sin" and a
"base crime," but why should the amalgamation of various species of
animals be thus described?
Note first that Mrs. White, in the chapter "Crime Before the Flood," is using
the word "crime" as loosely synonymous with "sin." The key word before
us, therefore, is "sin." And what is sin? It is transgression of the law of God.
This is often restricted in theological thinking to violations of the Ten
Commandments, the moral law. That Mrs. White frequently uses the word
"sin" in a much larger sense, as including any violation of so-called natural
laws, is evident from an examination of her writings. The reason she does
this is that she declares that these so-called laws of nature are as truly an
expression of the mind and will of God as are the Ten Commandments. For
example: "It is just as much sin to violate the laws of our being as to break
one of the ten commandments, for we cannot do either without breaking
God's law."--Testimonies for the Church,vol. 2, p. 70.
Now let us turn to the Bible record of the condition of the whole created
world, man and beast, before the Flood:
"And the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of
the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the
air; for it repenteth me that I have made them." Gen. 6:7.
Why should the Lord repent that He had "made them," the beasts and birds
and creeping things, as well as man? In a few verses farther on is found the
answer:
"And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh
had corrupted his [A.R.V. their] way upon the earth." Gen. 6:12.
"And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle,
and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, and
every man." Gen. 7:21.

The Plan of God for Eden

When God first made the world He placed upon it a wide variety of animals
and plants, distributed over hills and valleys, on sunny plain and in shady
dell. The picture was one of beauty and harmony in diversity. We can, of
course, only conjecture as to details of the Edenic world. The record
declares that God commanded that each form of life should bring forth "after
his kind." Gen. 1:24.
And the fossil records bear silent testimony that between the major forms of
life there appear to be no intermediary forms. There are sharp gaps instead.
Whether the Lord designed that His perfect earth should also preserve
distinctions between the more closely related forms of life, we can only
venture a guess. But if He placed all these more or less closely related forms
upon the earth, it would seem a reasonable assumption that He did so as an
expression of His divine conception of what a perfect world should be like.
We think this is even more than a reasonable assumption in the light of
specific counsel later given to Israel, as God sought to set up in this sinful
world a government according to the plans of heaven. Through Moses God
said to Israel:
"Ye shall keep my statutes. Thou shalt not let thy cattle gender with a
diverse kind; thou shalt not sow thy field with mingled seed: neither shall a
garment mingled of linen and woollen come upon thee." Lev. 19:19. (See
also Deut. 22:9-11.)
(taken out of Ellen G. White and Her Critics, pp. 306-322
http://www.whiteestate.org/issues/amalg.html