There once lived a man called Noah. Noah was a good man, blameless among the people of his time, and he was righteous before God. God found that all the people on the Earth were corrupted and violent and he was very displeased with them. So he decided to destroy them all. But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. God asked Noah to build an ark from cypress wood. Lord gave the entire detailed specification for the ark and how it has to be built. He told Noah that he is going to bring a flood upon the Earth and was going to destroy everything on it that had life. But he made a promise to Noah that he will not destroy Noah and his family since he was the only good man in his eyes.
Noah did everything God had commanded him to do and completed building the ark. Then God asked Noah to bring his entire family into the ark. He also asked Noah to bring in 7 of every kind of clean animal, 2 of every kind of unclean animal so that they can be preserved. The Lord made all the animals come to Noah two by two and they all entered the ark. Once all the animals and Noah’s family entered the ark, God shut the door of the ark. Then he made rain to fall on the Earth for 40 days and nights. All the springs on the earth also opened up. The waters rose and covered all the high mountains on the Earth to a depth more than 20 feet. Every living thing on the Earth perished including birds, livestock, and wild animals along with the entire mankind. The ark floated on the water and finally came to rest on the peak of the mountains of Ararat.
Then God sent a wind over the Earth and the water started to recede. It took almost 150 days for the water to dry upon the Earth. Noah opened a window of the ark and sent out a raven, and it kept flying back and forth until the water had dried up from the earth. Then he sent out a dove to see if the water had receded from the surface of the ground. But the dove could find no place to set its feet because there was water over all the surface of the earth. So it returned to Noah in the ark. He waited a few more days and again sent out the dove from the ark. When the dove returned to him in the evening, there in its beak was a freshly plucked olive leaf. Then Noah knew that the water had receded from the earth. He waited seven more days and sent the dove out again, but this time it did not return to him.
When the water dried up from the earth, God asked Noah to bring his family and the animals out of the ark. God blessed Noah and his family and made a promise that he will never destroy the entire mankind again by flood.
Archaeological Evidence of Noah’s ark
While routinely examining aerial photos of his country, a Turkish army captain suddenly gaped at a picture… There, on a mountain 20 miles south of Mt. Ararat, the biblical landfall of Noah’s Ark, was a boat-shaped form about 500-515 feet long. At 7,000 feet, in the midst of crevasses and landslide debris, the explorers found a clear, grassy area shaped like a ship and rimmed with steep, packed-earth sides. Its dimensions are close to those given in Genesis: ‘The length of the ark shall be 300 cubits, the breadth of it 50 cubits, and the height of it 30 cubits,’ that is, 450x75x45 feet. The Turkish government officially confirmed that it was Noah’s ark.
