Was there rain before Noah's Flood???

Genesis 2:5-6 tells us that before man was created, God watered the earth with a mist. Rain is not mentioned again until Noah's time in Genesis 7:4. The Bible is silent regarding rain between these two passages. One can only assume that there was no rain pre-flood era. The fact that the people were not the least bit concerned about a flood bears witness to this theory.

 

I can't remember where I read this.

One writer speculated that the reason people lived for several hundred years prior to the flood was that they were protected from the rays of the sun by that canopy of mist Pastor Bob mentioned. The sun had an apparent aging effect, according to him.

Would there be any validity to this speculation? I don't know.

 

I'm quite sure there WAS rain before the Flood. Noah never asked God, "What's rain?"

In addition, water evaporates, even when it's not very warm. It then condenses when it gets cooler and falls. There is no reason to think things were different before the Flood.

There is a clue after the Flood when God puts His rainbow in the clouds. It is the 'in the clouds.' This clue fits in with another which is not translated correctly in any of our modern versions. God states that "As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter shall not cease by day or night." This is from the ancient Alexandrian Septuagint, translated about 300 years before Christ. Thus, this is the way they understood this passage. If this is correct, what it is saying is that just as day and night have not ceased up to this point, now something new will not cease as well -- the seasons.

This is a clear indication that there was an axis tilt of the earth during the Flood. Physically, that makes sense, but that is another post. An axis tilt means the earth now has poles which get very cold for part of each year, and this not only indicates seasons will now occur, but this sets off the jet streams which will carry the clouds over land during the day, for daytime rain. It is that daytime rain which was not in existence before the Flood.

There is no reason to suspect that water did not evaporate from the seas, condense into clouds, and then fall when the night brought the coolness. But these clouds would have moved very little from where they formed. Thus rain over the seas during the night would have been quite normal, but would never have shown a rainbow in the clouds. There may have also been some showers over land, but they also would have been after sunset when the air cooled.

After the Flood, however, with the axis tilt, not only seasons were initiated, but wind currents would begin driving clouds over the land and rain during the day would have been started. This would have been a new and VERY scary thing to those first people off the Ark. So the Promise. It is not going to be a repeat of what you just went through. That won't happen again. Here is proof -- the rainbow in the clouds. That means the clouds are breaking up during the day and showing the breaking up of the sunlight as rainbows.

There is a possibility of a vapor canopy having existed which would have protected us from radiation. But if that were all there was to the long ages, it would not explain the very SUDDEN drop in ages not only after the Flood, but at the time of Peleg as well. There was about a 50% drop in life expectancy after the Flood, and then another 50% drop after Peleg, followed by a slow decline to about 120 years maximum, which is what we see today.

The one thing which can to something like this is exposure to radiation.

It is standard geological knowledge today that, regardless of which model you choose to work with, there were no radioactive elements in the crust of the earth to begin with. They were buried deep into or even under the mantle.

But they were decaying, causing enormous heat. In Genesis 2 we read that water was seeping up from the ground, watering the earth. Water does not move up on its own. It moves down. Up means pressure and pressure means heat. We read in Genesis 7:11 that ALL the great fountains exploded at once, and it is this which probably precipitated the most incredible rain the world has ever experienced. Ancient legends from other cultures say this rain was hot, and that would fit with the idea of exploding waters which had finally reached a critical point of heat and pressure (very probably triggered by a series of asteroid impacts). This exploding water would have carried up with it massive amounts of pulverized debris -- carring with it the first radioactive materials to reach the surface of the earth. Eight people on the Ark -- they were all exposed by the gamma radiation, for the Ark was made of wood and while wood will stop Alpha and Beta radiation, it will not stop Gamma radiation -- the deadliest of all.

If there were some kind of genetic mutation along some kind of hot spot (an area of the genetic material which is very easily mutated), or several, then we have the possible reason why ages decreased so suddenly after the Flood -- within one generation.

We see the same effect during Peleg's catastrophe, when the continents divided. This would not have been a quiet event. When the radio decay in the interior of the earth had driven out so much water, which had exploded, initiated the Deluge of Noah, the radio decay did not stop. Gradually the very rocks themselves were melting. When rocks melt, they gain 10% in volume, or, in a sphere, 18% circumference.

The Atlantic Ocean is 4,700 miles across near the equator -- and that is 18% of the earth's circumference. During the time of Peleg another series of asteroid hits (we still can see their craters stretching from Europe across to the Caribbean), triggered a massive 'unzipping' of the earth along the Atlantic Rift. This continued for one or two hundred years. The people who survived would have again been exposed to new amounts of radioactivity from the upwelling materials.

Again the lifespans drop, just as God promised in Genesis 6.

Job is probably Jobab, the thirteenth son of Joktan, Peleg's brother. If you look at the book of Job, you will find references to massive wind and firestorms, mountains being torn up, the ice age which followed, volcanism, the cave men, and watching the sea. Why watch the sea? Because the unzipping would have produced enormous tsunami action and the waters pull back before the tsunami hits, exposing the seabed, which is also mentioned in Job.

At any rate, that is one probable explanation for the change in lifespans of the human race.

 

No......

Ed

 

...and Ed knows b/c he was there...

ICXC NIKA
-

 

Helen,

To say there had to be rain pre-flood because Noah did not ask what rain was is supposition and not proven fact.

 

no.

Genesis 2.

1. Recall that Moses is the one telling the story and both he and his readers know what rain is.
2. Recall that in Genesis 2 when Moses says it had not yet rained on the earth -- rain is a "known"
3. Genesis is not an exhaustive account of every word spoken for the first 1600 years of earth's history.

 

Well, what hair I have left is about all white, and I do get some "Senior citizens" discounts on some things in some places (as well as a lot of letters from the AARP), but still, I'm not quite yet "older than dirt".

So, Ed knows because the Bible says -

That's how I know.

Ed

 

If there were a mist so heavy that there was never any change in ground moisture required to make plants grow, and there were bodies of water (the waters were divided from the land), the sun would still have done some good, but darkness would only have been slightly darker than 'light,' and the moon could not have been seen at all-- yet it is previously referred to as a night's light.

 

The moon can be seen in the afternoon sky -- even today.

Mist is said to have watered the grown -- but it does not say that it was constant for the entire 24 hour period. It is likely that it had a tidal cycle

 

Folks, if you read your Bibles, you will find that Genesis 2:5-6, the implication is that the ground was watered by the mists, streams, or whatever translation you prefer, BEFORE the shrubs had sprung up and before man had entered the picture. There is no indication about after being the same. In fact, the phrasing itself indicates that rain was probably normal after the shrubs and then man were on earth.

Standing, I should not have been flip with the first part of that reply. That is all it was, not a 'real reason.' If you read the rest of the post you will see my reasoning.

In the meantime, the only thing the Bible actually indicates is that there was no rain during the daytime within the sight of man before the Flood. That is the point about the rainbow in the clouds.

The fact that the rainbow could be seen before that in mists on the ground, or waterfalls, or even hoses (why shouldn't they have had them?) or fountains is not eliminated by the Bible, as God tells Noah that He will set His rainbow in the clouds, not that He is making something Noah has never seen before.

We get so used to the traditions and what people have told us different things mean that sometimes we simply do not actually read the Bible for what it is saying.

 

you have to admit that having the rainbow given by God at the flood and having the statement in Gen 2 about "no rain" fits perfectly with a "no rain before the flood" image.

It also helps explain why a warning of a flood would not have been regarded at all by anyone in Noah's day.

------

but as you note in your post above -- the bible does not emphatically eliminate the possibility of rain pre-flood, it just leaves a lot of other things to explain if you go down that road.

It is one of those "details" where we do not have enough data to be emphatic one way or the other.

So we do some guessin'

in Christ,

Bob

 

I understand your reply, Bob, but there is a problem we have to deal with if we are going to say no rain before the Flood.

Did water still evaporate? If so, where did it all go? You have to account for several thousand years' of evaporation or try to offer a new physics!

 

I think water evaporated. I think it evaporates today even on days where we have no rain. We also have fog and they may also have had fog.

With a water canopy of some sort they may not have had the same amount of intense vaporization -- might have been more gradual and the air may have been more humid.

However "just guessing" I think there was a water cycle just not in the form of rain and without the intensitity of rapid vaporization in some places with dry arid dehidration extremes in other areas that we have today.

 

The Bible says the mist watered the ground... not rain. The mist that rose from the earth watered the earth... but there was no rain upon the earth.

Had there been rain before, the people Noah preached to would have understood the severeness of the flood that was coming.

But the Word of God says they 'knew not until the flood came and destroyed them all.'

They did not know what rain was for it had never rained.

 

Not sure how often it is that SFiC and I agree - but this is one of those times.

Though I still have to say - there is some guessin' on all parts.

in Christ,

Bob

 

Question for all those debating the issue of rain vs no-rain --

I have to conclude that this particular discussion group can not in any way be evolutionists because this entire topic requires us to take the Bible seriously EVEN in Genesis.

in Christ,

Bob

 

Yes, it evaporates all the time. Today the wind currents move it so we don't always see the clouds forming above us. But without the wind currents provided by the axis tilt, the clouds would have to form above and eventually they would have to cool, as it is cooler every night than every day and then what?

Nor does it matter how slowly it evaporated. We are talking about over TWO THOUSAND YEARS of evaporation! This, with the mists or streams coming from the ground....

Where in the Bible are we supposed to check our common sense in at the door? Unless someone is going to propose and support an entirely new physics for an antediluvian world, it had to have rained, at least at night over the sea, before the Flood. The hydrologic cycle is a for real thing!

As far as the vapor canopy goes. If it existed it existed HIGH above where our clouds are now -- probably in the thermosphere, hundreds of miles up. If it were lower, life could not have existed on earth. ICR has run computer model after computer model and keeps coming up with that conclusion regarding a low vapor canopy.