19. The universal flood.

The Biblical teaching about the Flood (Genesis 6 and 7), which ended the primitive “pre-Flood” stage, raises important historical and theological questions. First off all, was the Flood mentioned in the Bible geographically universal? global? or was it only anthropologically universal, that is, affecting only the regions where the tribes described in Genesis lived?

            Putting together all available data — both Scripture and scientific — we lean toward the second possibility, in other words, that the Flood covered mostly regions in and around Mesopotamia, the Near East, Asia Minor and South of Russia. The Bible repeatedly states that the purpose of the Flood was to punish sinners and to cleanse the earth of all wickedness. Obviously the Arctic, Antarctica, Greenland, Australia, and the American continents, and many other regions on the earth, had little, if any, population at that time.

            Let us examine this topic now in more detail.