DWDP - Gen 7:24 The Waters Prevailed

Water has a memory for anyone who has stood near a roaring river, but Genesis 7–8 asks us to reckon with something far larger: waters that prevailed on the earth for 150 days and a world that did not look the same afterward. We open the text, trace the timeline from the first burst of the fountains of the deep to the day Noah steps onto dry ground, and walk through why the account reads like history, not metaphor. Along the way, we use vivid, real-world images of floods and ice-laden torrents to help you imagine the scale of judgment—and the mercy inside the ark.

Together we explore the details that rule out a local event: months with no land in sight, an ark grounded on high ranges, and a full year before exit. We consider the post-flood changes Scripture records—defined seasons, rainbows as covenant signs, fear between humans and animals, and a marked decline in lifespan—and why later voices like Job, David, Isaiah, Peter, and especially Jesus, treat the flood as a universal, historical reality. We then tackle the implications for geology and fossils: widespread, rapid sediment layers, abundant marine remains far from coasts, and the rarity of human fossils without rapid burial. These patterns align with a short, violent cataclysm rather than slow, uniform processes.

The heart of the episode is a choice about authority. Do we ground our confidence in shifting applause or in a word that claims to outlast grass and flowers alike? We make a clear case for trusting Scripture’s reliability, not as an escape from questions, but as a way to face them with courage. If the flood warns of judgment, the rainbow reminds of mercy. Build your understanding—and your hope—on something that holds. If this conversation strengthens or challenges you, share it with a friend, subscribe for future episodes, and leave a review with your biggest question from Genesis 7–8.

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome And Scripture Focus
• 0:44 A Hard Lesson For True Believers
• 2:05 The Power Of Raging Water
• 5:08 Global Flood, Not Local
• 9:10 Timeline And Ark Details
• 12:15 Aftermath And World Changes
• 14:25 Writers And Jesus Affirm The Flood
• 16:10 Implications For Evolution And Geology
• 19:05 Fossils, Tsunamis, And Burial
• 20:45 Final Appeal To Believe
• 21:28 Closing Blessing And Resources

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:02

Welcome to More Than Medicine, where Jesus is more than enough for the ills that plague our culture and our country. Hosted by author and physician, Dr. Robert Jackson.

SPEAKER_02: 0:16

Papa, can you tell me a story? Do you really want me to tell you a story? Well, you go get your brother and your sisters, and I will tell you a story. Welcome to Devotions with Dr. Papa. Gather round, gather your Bibles, and let's look into the written word which reveals to us the living word who is our Lord Jesus Christ. Today our scripture reading is Genesis chapter seven and verse twenty four, which says and the water prevailed upon the earth one hundred and fifty days. Now today's lesson is not for the faint of heart. Today's lesson is only for the true believers. This lesson is only for those who are convinced that every word of Scripture is inspired by God's Spirit. Today's lesson is for those who believe that the grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever. This lesson is for those who are convinced that the sum of God's word is truth. If you are a non believer and do not place much confidence in the reliability and trustworthiness of God's word, then you will find this lesson difficult to swallow. So hold on and let us review that verse again because it says and the water prevailed upon the earth one hundred and fifty days. That word prevailed in the original language equals the waters were overwhelmingly mighty. Now I know you have seen news reels of local floods, where rivers overflowed their banks, c carrying away trees, eroding the banks, sometimes even breaking up houses and taking away automobiles. And we are all in awe of the power of rushing water. I was once on a mission trip in Canada. The pastor who hosted us took us to his home, and I noticed that every house on the road where he lived was two to three hundred yards away from the riverbank. Now the the area between his house and the river was actually very, very picturesque and it was beautiful. And I asked him, Pastor, why does nobody build a house between your house and the river? And he explained to me, he said, Doctor, every year in the springtime, when there is the spring thaw, that river turns into a raging torrent. And he said the river overflows at its bank and the waters come all the way up to the road right in front of my house. And he said the waters are a raging torrent all the way up almost to my house. And he says we have to move away for two to three weeks and live somewhere else. And I said, Why? He says the noise is unbearable. He said there are ice flows that come down the river that are as big as a small house, and they're chock a block, and the ice flows rub against each other and they make so much noise as they rush down the river at fifty to sixty miles per hour, jostling against one another, and it makes the noise of two or three freight trains simultaneously going down the river and the noise is ear splitting. We can't sleep at night, we can't even talk or think the noise is so loud, and we just have to move away for two or three weeks until the spring thaw is over. And he said in the midst of all the ice flows we see trees and giant boulders, sometimes portions of someone's house that has been broken up and gathered up by the spring thaw, and sometimes even automobiles will be seen in the midst of all the ice that's rushing down the river. And he says we stand here and watch it filled with awe and terror at the ferocity of the spring thaw. Now, dear listener, imagine that occurring the world over, which is exactly what happened in Noah's flood. And no one could survive that. And in fact, that's exactly what God intended. He did not intend anyone to survive that flood. And he told Noah, I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the earth, from the face of the land. That's chapter six and verse two. And then in that same chapter in verse thirteen, then God said to Noah, The end of all flesh has come before me, for the earth is filled with violence. The original word is Hamos. The earth is filled with Hamas because of them. And behold, I am about to destroy them with the earth. And this is the third time that that word prevailed is used overwhelmingly mighty. And for a hundred and fifty days, this verse at the end of chapter seven tells us for a hundred and fifty days that this raging flood, this raging torrent was overwhelmingly mighty upon the face of the earth. The Bible tells us that the windows of the heavens were opened, making the heaviest downpour of rain, the fiercest deluge seemed like a foggy mist by comparison, and the heretofore never beheld rain fell for forty days. The fountains of the deep were broken up, releasing geysers that shot up to the heavens, making old faithful in Yellowstone Park look like a water sprinkler by comparison. Entire continents both rose and fell in convulsions in just a few moments of time. Mountains were thrust upwards towards thousands of feet, and mountains collapsed into the abyss. The cavernous cavernous cisterns of water underneath the earth were suddenly emptied, and then collapsed on themselves, creating the great ocean deeps. The entire surface of the earth was a raging, boiling cauldron of furious flooding waters that destroyed houses and mountains and eroded river banks and created grand canyons and obliterated all life, both human and animal and plant life, and this boiling cauldron was overwhelmingly mighty upon the surface of the earth for a hundred and fifty days. No local flood continues to rise for a hundred and fifty days, even after the waters began to abate and the ark grounded itself on the highest peak of Arat, as chapter eight and verse four tells us, it was another two and a half months before the tops of other mountains could be seen, as chapter eight and verse five tells us. After four months of receding waters, the dove that was sent out by Noah could find no place to land. Now let me ask you, does that sound like a localized flood? Of course not. It was over an entire year before enough dry land was exposed for Noah's family to exit the ark. And how do we know that? Because in chapter seven and verse eleven, it tells us that in the five I'm well let me let me read chapter seven and verse eleven to you so you'll know what I'm saying. Chapter seven, verse eleven, in the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on the same day, all the fountains of the great deep burst open. Alright, so there you go, six hundredth year, and then in chapter eight and verse thirteen, the Bible tells us now it came about in the six hundred and first year is when the water was dried up from the earth. So they were a whole year in the ark. So it was an entire year before the dry land was exposed for Noah's family to exit the ark. None of these considerations point to a localized flood. You have to decide if you want to accept the praise of men and bow before the altar of modern scientific scholarship, or if you will accept the praise of God and trust in his holy word. Now let me ask you, why else would we trust his account in Genesis? Let me make some suggestions. First of all, he promised Noah never to send such a flood again. If it were just a localized flood, then that promise has been broken hundreds of times because there have been hundreds and thousands of localized floods. You and I have seen localized floods. In fact, when I bought this property where I live today, within a few weeks of purchasing the property, the man who sold it to me called me and said, Doc, you need to come see the river below your house. Uh well, bel on the property where that you've purchased. He said, There's a hundred year flood going on at the river on your property. So I drove down here and sure enough, the Pacolet River had overflowed, and it had the water had come above the riverbank and it had had come forty, fifty yards up into the to above the river banks, and in fact the water was twelve feet up an oak tree above the riverbank, and it was so loud you could hardly talk because of the noise that the river was making. And I agreed with him, that must be a hundred year flood. Well, I'm here to tell you that hundred year flood has happened five times since I've owned this property. But that's a localized flood. And if God promised Noah not to produce a localized flood, well, he's broken that promise many times over. Well, after the great flood, everything changed on planet Earth. We then had sharply defined seasons as verse twenty two and chapter eight tells us. We then began to have rain and rainbows as chapter nine, verse thirteen and fourteen describe. And then there was enmity between man and beast, chapter nine and verse two. We'll get to that another day. And none of that happened before the flood. Everything changed after the flood. And even man's longevity, his lifespan, began a long, slow decline. In Genesis chapter five, which we discussed a month or so ago, the men before the flood lived eight hundred to nine hundred years. But then in Genesis chapter eleven, we see a genealogy where the men at the beginning of that genealogical record lived four hundred years, but by the end of the record they were only living a hundred and thirty years. Now biblical scholars believe that that's because the water canopy that existed before the flood that protected men from the sun's radiation disappeared because the windows of the heavens were opened, and all that water canopy that protected men before the flood was gone. And now men's longevity, their lifespan suddenly began to shrink. And by the time of Abraham, folks only lived 150 to 130 years. Well then the other thing that I point out to you is that later biblical writers accepted the fact of a universal flood. Job, King David, Isaiah, even Peter in the New Testament, all of them made reference to the flood, and when they did so, they all accepted it as an historical and a worldwide universal flood. And then here's the biggest biggest thing. When Jesus referenced Noah's flood in Matthew, he spoke of it as a historical and universal worldwide event. And in fact, when he spoke of his return and the coming worldwide judgment, he utilized Noah's flood as a sign of his return and the coming worldwide judgment. In fact, he used the flood as a type, a picture of the coming worldwide judgment. And what was the phrase that he used? You remember? He said just as in the days of Noah, so will the coming of the Son of Man be. Now let me ask you a final question. What are the implications of a worldwide flood? Ponder that for a moment. What are some of the implications of a worldwide flood? First of all, I want you to understand that it is exactly counter to the expectations of the god hating evolutionist, whose theories require a uniformitarian deposition of sediment on the Earth's crust over millennia of years, over millions of years. There is no room in evolutionary theory for a world destroying flood that would deposit sediment worldwide in a matter of days, in fact two hundred plus days to be exact. So let me ask you the question, what would a worldwide flood predict? What would you expect to see with a worldwide flood such as Noah's flood? Well, you would expect to see a uniform sediment deposition around the entire globe deposited rapidly. You you would expect to see that uniform deposition over the entire globe. Not just in certain spots, but pretty much everywhere. And in fact that's what we see when the geologists dig down around the globe. You you see that very same uniform deposition in uniform layers, regardless of where they quote dig down around the world. And in fact, that's what you see in the Grand Canyon. My family and I were there last summer, and you see those those same layers deposited uniformly all the way down deep, deep down, a mile deep in the Grand Canyon. You'd also expect to see fossils, and I'm talking about lots of fossils, mostly marine life. Why? Well because there's more marine life than any other species of creature on the planet. You'd expect to see crustaceans with their hard shells, and since they are the most abundant life form on the planet. And you'd expect to see them just about everywhere, even in the middle of the Sahara Desert. And that's true. When geologists dig down deep in the Sahara Desert, guess what they find? Well, they find the crustaceans, even in the middle of the desert. And you wouldn't expect to see very many people or animals. Why is that? Well, it's because they decompose rapidly. They don't have a hard shell like the crustaceans. And they would unless they're rapidly buried in some manner, you wouldn't expect to see animals or humans. Now let me point out something to you. Some of y'all remember the the huge tsunami that hit Southeast Asia about ten or fifteen years ago. I think it was I don't remember the exact year, but it over a hundred thousand people died in that tsunami. But here's the thing that struck me. Forty six thousand plus people out of that hundred thousand were never found. Their bodies were never found. They just disappeared. They disappeared into the ocean. And that mere fact shows me that in the flood, Noah's flood, the people, the animals, they just disappeared in that flood. No fossils, no remains, just decomposed. And we have to ponder that reality. And then there's the formation of fossils. It requires rapid burial and lithification, meaning turning to stone, or else they are destroyed by decomposition or by scavengers. The great flood in Noah's day provides just that scenario. Now, here's the conclusion of the matter. Either God spoke the heavens and the earth into existence or he did not. Either he destroyed the world by a worldwide flood. Or he did not. Either his word is true and forever established in the heavenly places, or it is not. Either Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God, who was resurrected from the dead, or he is not. You and I only know these things because of divine revelation through God's word. And you will have to choose to believe in God's word or not. As for me in my house, we choose to believe. And the challenge for you is to make up your own mind whether you will believe these things or not. And I'm going to have to leave that with you. That's your choice, dear friend. And that's what devotions with Dr. Papa is all about. I challenge you to gather your copy of God's Word and to look into it because I'm convinced that it is a living word, and that it points us to the living Christ. I encourage you to take your word, read it, and study it for your very own self. You're listening to Devotions with Dr. Papa. I thank you for listening, and please remember, God loves you, Jesus loves you, and your doctor loves you. Till next week, may the Lord bless you. Real good.

SPEAKER_00: 21:25

Thank you for listening to this edition of More Than Medicine. For more information about the Jackson Family Ministry or to schedule a speaking engagement, go to their Facebook page, Instagram, or webpage at JacksonFamily Ministry.com. Also, don't forget to check out Dr. Jackson's books that are available on Amazon. His third book, Turkey Tales and Bible Truths, and his father's biography on Laughter Silvered Waves. The story of a country doctor, a family man, a patriot, and a political activist. This podcast is produced by Bob Sloan Audio Productions.