Bible Text: Genesis 6:6-7 | Speaker: Dr. Harold J. Sala | Series: Guidelines For Living | And the LORD regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. So the LORD said, “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them.” Genesis 6:6-7

Is it conceivable that centuries after Noah and his family entered the Ark, that the remains of the same should be found in the 21st century? It is not only conceivable but that possibility is growing. Satellite technology as well as visual photos of Mount Ararat reveal something at the 15,300 feet level on the northwest corner of this difficult-to-reach hunk of ice and granite. Described by researchers as “a baffling mountainside anomaly” there is something there that seems to defy identification.

Porcher Taylor, former security analyst and senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, was fascinated by the possibility that this just might be the remote remains of what Noah used to preserve life during the flood. “During the what?” some people ask in amazement, as though the biblical account of the Great Flood, a deluge that lasted 40 days and nights, was only a myth.

Surprising to some is the fact that over 250 flood legends have been identified, originating all over the world. Most of these flood legends are in basic agreement with what the Torah, identified as the Old Testament, says about the event.

Some describe the “anomaly” as simply being a quirk of nature, or a playful shadow, or as a Google news service reporter put it, “a human-made structure of some sort.”

Why not take a team of scientists and go find out first-hand what’s there? Whoa! That’s not so easily done, for both geographic as well as political reasons. First of all, Mount Ararat is located in Eastern Turkey on the borders of Iran, Armenia (formerly in the U.S.S.R.) and Nachivan. And all of those countries today are not “user friendly.” Simply put, they don’t want foreigners prowling around their turf. Furthermore, their governments are not cooperative with either scientifically or religiously motivated groups. There are no airports nearby, no shuttles that will take you to the site. Nothing.

But satellite imagery defies those barriers and lets us know that something is there. Just what, though, is uncertain. A website devoted to the exploration for Noah’s Ark says, “Many people believe that Mount Ararat is the place where Noah’s Ark landed, but the Bible does not state this. It simply says that the boat landed in the Urartian mountains, of which there are hundreds, although Ararat is the highest. Since Mount Ararat is the highest location in Urartu, some people throughout history have jumped to the unproven conclusion that it was the landing place and promoted that concept as a regional tradition.*

To make the situation a bit more interesting, let’s suppose that God in His providence should allow the fog, the politics, and the isolation to be pushed aside and researchers, doing DNA, demonstrated that the baffling mountainside “anomaly” should be identified as the actual ark that Noah used—ruling out graffiti or conjecture—what would be the implications? First, the actual size of whatever is there seems to approximate the size of the ark as recorded by Moses in the Torah.

Should we assume that a large number of unbelievers would start believing? That didn’t happen when the tremendously significant Qumran scrolls were discovered, starting in 1947 and continuing to this day. Many, no matter what the evidence, would choose not to believe in the biblical account of the Flood, because it brings them into confrontation with the authority of God’s Word and the reality of God’s judgment on humankind because of the sinfulness of the flesh.

Yet some would believe. Jesus, for one, believed in the Flood, using it as evidence for the judgment of God which is not only past but future as well. Verifiable evidence isn’t necessary to acknowledge the truth of Scripture.

Resource reading: Genesis 6

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* http://www.noahsarksearch.com/ararat.htm (as of April 28, 2016).