Noah’s Flood & The Middle East Oil Prophecy | Genesis Bible Study

Welcome to Through the Bible with Les Feldick, a 30-minute walk through the Scriptures, teaching in-depth Bible truths that change people's lives. Now, here's your host, Les Feldick. Good evening. Good to have everybody back again, and we will pick up right where we left off last week. We're going to look a little more at the Flood and why the earth that now is, as the Bible calls it, is the result of all that took place during this, particularly the five months, 150 days, that the water was at its very deepest. It covered what at that time was the highest point, and that didn't necessarily mean that there were 14-, 15,000-foot mountains before the Flood, but whatever, it was a universal flood. There was no such thing as just part of the Middle East being inundated, but it was universal. Now, one of the arguments, of course, is, well, where did the water come from? Well, that's easily explained, as we did in the last half hour, that originally in Genesis 1, the earth was covered with water, and God removed half of that water, or at least a portion of it, put it up in the atmosphere, and the rest He made seas, and then it all came back down and covered the planet totally. The Scripture says in one place that even the highest point was 15 cubits under the surface of the water. But with all that was taking place, as we pointed out in our last half hour, the tremendous volcanic and earthquake activity, and again, we, especially living here in the Middle West, we just have no idea of the power that can be involved. Now, back in 1883, I think it was, there was an earthquake in the East Indies, in the area of what is now Borneo, or Java, called Krakatoa, probably the largest single eruption that this planet has ever known, this side of the flood. And as history gives the account of it, it was in a civilized area, and this thing had been building for several weeks, getting more evident, and still people didn't move away from it. In fact, they even scheduled tours up to the base of the mountain to listen to it. And then finally, I think it was one day in August, Krakatoa erupted, and in its eruption, the sound of it, the sound of it now was registered 3,000 miles away. Now, imagine if a volcano would, or any kind of a noise would take place in New York City, and it could be heard in L.A. Well, so was that one, but that was just one, and as a result of that one volcano, the whole atmosphere of the planet, once the dust started going around it, was affected, weather was affected, and that was just one. Now, multiply that, as one author has put it, by thousands and thousands of other great volcanoes, and you can just get a little bit of a picture. Now, earthquakes also come into the whole scenario, and when you've got earthquakes taking place underwater—now, you want to remember, the whole planet is now covered with water, and out of that water is coming all this volcanic eruption, but underneath you've got all this earthquake activity. The planet is in convulsions. Everything is changing, and we have to realize that all living things died. Normally, we think that the fish and the water creatures survived, but, you see, archaeologists have found humongous areas of accumulated dead fish that can have no other explanation but that they also died in Noah's flood. In fact, there are a few biblical geologists who give credit for our oil pools, crude oil. Not to the precursors of coal and so forth, the great vegetation that has decomposed and turned into oil, but rather they were great accumulations of fish, and so that our crude oil actually is precursed by these water creatures, but whatever. There's evidence all over the globe, and we know it right here in eastern Oklahoma. You can go into almost any high spot around here, and you can find oyster shell, and right along with freshwater shells, they find seawater shells, and in various areas, especially up in the northern part of the Midwest, the upper plains, Montana, and so forth, they have found areas of great, seemingly burial yards of all the great wild animals, all mixed together, and of course a few human as well. But there is ample evidence all around the planet that there was some tremendous event that totally tore this planet apart. When they speak of the ancient continent of Atlantis, I personally think it existed. I think that at one time the land mass was all single. There was no big division of oceans, and indeed if Atlantis was somewhere between South America and Africa, and it's on the bottom of the ocean, I have no trouble believing it, because all we know is that that pre -flood civilization was destroyed, the planet was completely renovated, and everything that's on the scene tonight, everything, our mountains, our rivers, our canyons, our Grand Canyon, our ocean beds, everything is the result of Noah's flood. And so everything has a new beginning. God in control. He's sovereign. Do you think it was an accident that the Middle East ended up with the world's oil? Of course not. That was sovereignly designed because God from the very beginning has decreed that time as we know it would come to an end in the Middle East. We know that everything that is taking place in the Middle East tonight is tied to God's program of bringing things now to its culmination, and the only way it could be done is with this business of oil. Now, we like to think that we didn't go into that war because of oil, and I don't say that we did, but yet the whole world is concerned about the Middle East only because of that one commodity. Just stop and ask yourself, if there was no oil in the Middle East, would the world be concerned about those deserts? Why, of course not. But oil is at the center of everything. Now, I've mentioned before, we know that at some point in the future there's going to be a great Russian invasion of the land of Israel. We know that's going to happen. But the problem has always been, why will the Russians want to invade Israel? There's nothing there. And I've said for years, they're going to find something. Either going to discover a great deposit of gold because Russia is strapped for cash, or they're going to find a great deposit of oil. And in the last, next to the last Jerusalem Post, they have struck oil, and they are excited down in the Negev, and they think, and again, it's only projection, they think it might be one of the greatest oil finds ever. Now, if that comes to fruition, then you just mark it down, Russia's going to have her eye on that great oil reserve. And of course, the nation of Israel, with all of her technology and her ambition, they're the ones that can bring it to fruition. But whatever, everything that now is can only be traced back to the time of Noah's flood. Our whole Middle Western farm area, scientists and geologists like to tell us that it's all the result of great glaciers that brought all that great topsoil and came down about as far as central Missouri, and then they receded. Well, like I was telling my wife one night here a while back, you know, they can pull the wool over our eyes, and it sounds so good, but there's a lot of things that these people don't tell us. And I think you're all aware that glaciers are made up of snow and ice and dust and so on and so forth, but there's only one way a glacier can move, by gravity. It's the only way it can move, is gravitationally. But you know what they tell us? Glaciers that began in Canada have actually traversed elevations of over 2,000 feet in their move down into the Midwest. And some of those things, and they can't give an answer for it, so all you can say is it's ridiculous. We also know that glaciers were able to grind to powder great rocks and granite, and they just literally ground it. Then why in the world do you find in those same areas fossils, which are far more fragile, totally intact? They weren't destroyed in the glacial move, and they can't explain that. And so the best way is, I've been trying to tell my classes now for 20 years, you look at something on this old planet tonight, and you just tell yourself, this is the way God repaired it, or prepared it, when the water left the surface. He laid down all the great farm areas, he laid down the coal beds, he laid down the oil pools, the gas pools, he laid down the rivers, the canyons, all of these things came on the scene as this water began to leave. Next time you go to Grand Canyon, you ask one of the guides, well, how much deeper is the Grand Canyon now than when they first discovered it a couple hundred years ago? And he said, well, I don't know, probably an inch, if that. It hasn't gotten any deeper. Why not? I mean, if that thing was cut by wind and water and erosion, why isn't it still cutting it? Well, why not just be logical and say, well, as the waters left that volcanic disrupted surface of the earth, and it was probably molten, it was still soft, and just like if you were to take a pail of water and pour it on some fresh concrete, what would you do? Boy, you would just cut little tracks right through it, easily. And so I think of all these great canyons as this great rush of water began now finding its way to sea, and God brought the land areas up into view. All these things took place in just a short period of time, and the planet was now prepared for the great restoration of mankind. And it's the only logical way to realize that everything we have needed in our technological society, God provided. God has provided every bit of it. He's provided the great forest areas for our lumber. He's provided the farm areas for our grains and for our food. He's provided everything. And I've already made the point. He put the oil, the greatest part of it, in the Middle East because that's where the world is finally going to have to come together in that final great effort, which of course we refer to primarily as Armageddon. And I'm kind of amused that when the Iraqi thing started, a lot of preachers started saying, this is Armageddon. No, this isn't Armageddon, not by any stretch of the imagination. Now, it's a preview. All I told my class was, now that just goes to show you how easy it is to believe that the time is coming when some great world leader will call the armies of the world together to the Middle East. But it won't be to get rid of Saddam Hussein. It's going to be to get rid of the Jew, first and primarily. And then, of course, it turns into the forces of the Antichrist and Satan trying to actually create a war with the coming of the Lord Jesus, and of course that's futile. But their whole premise to start with will be to bring the armies of the world to get rid of the Jewish problem. And now, I don't have to explain what that is. Every day's news is trying to deal with the Israeli and the Palestinian problem. Palestinians will tell us there's only one way to solve it, and that is push Israel into the sea. And bless their hearts, I know they want a homeland, and I can feel with them. But again, being a student of Scripture, we know that Palestine was deeded to the Jew. It's Israel's homeland, and God's going to see to it that they keep it. No one is going to drive the Jew into the sea. All right, so coming back now, then, if you will, to Noah's flood, I hope you've been asking yourself the question, well, now, if there was such turmoil, and with all these great tidal waves being caused by the earthquakes and the volcanoes, what about this ark? Even though it was built sturdily, and even though it was built of tremendous water-capable lumber, how did it survive? Well, do you remember I told you the last, oh, several weeks ago that the verb, when Noah and his family were getting ready to go into the ark, the verb from the Lord Jesus was what? Not go, come, come into the ark. So I think that I'm safe in saying that throughout this five, six months when the water was roaring, and this ark could have been tossed around like a cork and sunk many, many times, yet it was the very presence of Jehovah within that guaranteed that that ark stayed afloat. Now we won't take time to look at it, because these 30 minutes just go too fast, but you all know the account when Jesus and the Twelve were coming across the Sea of Galilee in that, it wasn't too small a boat, because after all, Jesus was evidently below deck, and a storm rose. And where was Jesus? I've already told you, below deck, but what was He doing? He was sleeping, and those storms on the Galilee can get pretty ferocious, because it's a shallow lake. Do you think that little boat would have ever sunk? Uh-uh. It would have never sunk. But see, the Twelve still hadn't gotten it through their thick heads who He was down there. And so they go down, and they wake Him up, and you know the account. And they said, Lord, we perish. Well, the Lord could have just said, well, let me sleep, we're not going to perish. But you see, so many times He would condescend to those Twelve, and so He did. He went up to the upper floor and upper deck, and what does He do? Calms the wind. The storms went down. But they wouldn't have sunk, because He was in the boat. And I think this is the same way if you look at the ark. When I explain the tremendous tidal waves, then someone has come and said, well, then how did that ark survive? The Lord was in it. Had He not been in it, it wouldn't have. But it does. And remember, it's not going to go anyplace. All it has to do is just stay practically in one place. Now we'll skip all these verses. You can read them in your leisure. But it rained for 40 days, no doubt about that. And then we come down to verse 24 of chapter 7. And the waters prevailed upon the earth. In other words, they maintained that deepest depth for 150 days. That's five months. Now if you can just, again, imagine not only what was taking place in the activity, but the pressure. The pressure that is now placed upon the surface of this planet by all this water. It's just beyond our comprehension. Now scientists, I think, have practically proven that you can take common garbage, and if you can put it under enough pressure, what can you make out of it? Well, a form of crude oil. And so if you can picture again the tremendous amount of vegetation that was on this beautiful earth. And remember there was pole to pole. It was a semi-tropical climate. So the vegetation that was on the surface would again be beyond our imagination. And all of that was just plowed under. And I've talked to coal miners who have worked in coal mines almost a mile deep. And he said, every once in a while you'll see right in that vein of coal the perfect outline of a tree, of a limb, of leaves. So they know that all this stuff at one time was living vegetation. And so all of this then became, under the pressure of this tremendous amount of water, the coal beds of today. And I think the oil pools, albeit if some think it's accumulated fish, I'm not going to argue with them. And by the way, I did want to pass this on. If anyone wants to read A Good Book on the Flood, one of the best I've ever read, and someone just gave me a copy here a month or two ago. It's by a gentleman by the name of Ray Winkle. I hope I've got that spelled right. And if you can't find it in a bookstore, you can call Concordia. Now, I'm not here to advertise anything, but Concordia Publishing in St. Louis. In order to get my copy, I just called him. I didn't bother to bring the phone number along. But if you're interested in reading A Good Book on the Flood, I think it's 15 bucks, if I'm not mistaken. And he's got all the bibliography of all the archaeological writers and so forth, which of course I couldn't give you in a time like this. But if you want to check me out, whether I'm exaggerating, he's got a good book on it with, like I said, all the bibliography that you could hope to ask for. All right, now then, as you come into chapter 8, verse 1, God remembered Noah. Now, that throws a curve at us because we say, well, if he's in the Ark with him, how could he forget him? Well, I don't think that's what's implied. But it was coming to the time now where God had to begin to move things forward on behalf of Noah and those things in the Ark. And so he makes a wind to pass over the earth, and the waters assuage, in other words, they begin to leave. Now, it isn't just the wind itself, because we know that from all the activity of these volcanoes, new surfaces are coming on the scene. The mountains are rising up, the rivers are being formed. And as you drive across the countryside, always be amazed. I mean, if you really get a look at this, always be amazed that most of the surface of this earth is naturally drained. Do you ever think about that when you drive through the country? How that as it rains, the water through all of its various little trickles and streams, all finds its way to a common place. On this side of the Rockies, of course, it goes to the Mississippi, but on the other side it goes to the Pacific. But you go all around the planet, and everything with isolated instances, I know, but everything is draining to the sea in a common creation. Well, this all happened at the end, then, I think, of Noah's flood. And so the waters return, verse 3, the waters return from off the earth continually. And after the end of 150 days, the waters were abated. In other words, they have reached their peak, and they're running to the sea. Verse 4, the ark rested in the seventh month, and on the seventeenth day of the month upon the mountains of Ararat. Now, that doesn't mean it's up on the top of Mount Ararat. Now, Mount Ararat is a rather high mountain. I think it's around 16,000 feet, if I'm not mistaken. That doesn't mean the ark was at the 16,000 point. You know as well as I do that when you call a mountain, like Mount Hood in Oregon, or even some of our mountains here in eastern Oklahoma, you consider all the ground down to the base and all the way around it. So, the ark could have rested at any level somewhere in the area of the great mountain Ararat. Verse 5, the waters decreased continually. Oh, they're flowing to the sea now. Maybe in some areas a little slower than others, but God's getting the surface ready for rehabitation. And they decreased continually until the tenth month, and in the tenth month on the first day of the month were the tops of the mountains seen. And it came to pass at the end of 40 days that Noah opened the window of the ark which he had made. Remember, there's only one, and it's in the roof, it isn't in the side. And it was a rather small one, only about, what, 18 inches by 18, something like that. And so he opens the window of the ark which he had made, and he sent forth a raven. And the raven went forth to and fro until the waters were dried up from off the earth. And it doesn't come back to the ark, does it? Now, I think the analogy here is, what kind of a bird is a raven? Well, it's like a vulture. It's a bird of prey, and it's something that, it's carnivorous. And so I think what you have here is this old raven goes out, and it doesn't come back because it could find ample of stuff floating on the water that had already died and was perfectly at home with him. But the next little bird he lets go is of a totally different sort. What is it? It's the dove. Now, in Scripture, we always associate the dove with the Holy Spirit. So the spiritual realm here as over against the natural. Now, remember what I told you several weeks ago, all through Scripture, you always have first the natural, and then the spiritual, first Cain, and then Abel, first Esau, and then Jacob, and first Saul, and then David, and all the way here, same way. First the raven, which spoke of the unregenerate person who is always satisfied with the things of the old life. Well, what about the dove? Let's look at it quickly. The dove found no rest for the sole of her foot, and she returned in the ark. That dove wasn't going to lie on some old rotting carcass. It just wasn't at home on it. And so it couldn't find a place to rest, and it came back to the place of safety. And so Noah pulled her in. Then verse 10, and he waited another seven days, and again he sent forth the dove. And this time, verse 11, the dove came in the evening, low in her mouth was an olive leaf plucked off. It's a sign of what? New life. Now, this dove, the spiritual aspect, is finding that which she could identify with. And so she comes back with this signal that new life is coming on the earth. Now, don't sit back and say, how can that be so quickly? I told you also several weeks ago, all you have to do is go out and look in the area of St. Helens, and you're from out there in Oregon, and I'll bet you know it as well as anybody, that that area has come back so fast after the terrible eruption of that mountain just, what, ten years ago now? So, if God speeds things up, then this all becomes so believable. And remember, with Him, nothing was impossible. And so the dove comes back now with something that signifies the new creation, the new life. Then verse 13, and it came to pass in the six hundred and first year, in the first month, the first day of the month, the waters were dried up from off the earth. Now, before you read any further, I always like to ask the question, unless you've been in my classes, how did Noah and all his creatures in the ark, how did they get out? Oh, everybody says, well, they opened the door. Oh, no, they didn't. God had shut that. And just like in the life of the believer, now remember, this has got to carry all the way through. A believer doesn't go out of this life the same way he came in. Not into the spiritual life. Now read on. How did they get out of the ark? And Noah removed the what? That's the roof, isn't it? So how'd they go out? They went out the top. They didn't go out the side. They went out the top. They went up. And if the ark rested in a crevice, like some people think it did, they walked out on ground level. But in the spiritual realm, once you and I enter into the ark of safety, there's only one way out. Which way is it? It's up. Oh, isn't that beautiful? That's the only way we're going to go someday. We're going to go up. We're not going to go back into the old life. We're going to go up. Whether it's in the rapture, and I think it's getting close, and when we're suddenly translated, or whether we do have to go through the valley of death and someday wait for resurrection, whatever, that's the direction we're going. We're going to go up. And so the only way out of the ark was through the roof. Noah removed the covering. And I've been amazed over all the years of teaching, I've never found anyone that could answer it for me until I showed it to them. Now this goes to show how easy it is to read something and never see what we read. Because it's there, plain as day, that he removed the covering. All right, now let's move on again quickly. And behold, the face of the ground was dry, now verse 14, and in the second month, and the seventh and twentieth day of the month, the earth was dried. Now that's a year and one month, and I think in ten days, if I'm not mistaken, but it's a little over a year from the time of that sudden destruction until now the new earth is making its appearance. Then let's move on quickly. And verse 18, Noah went forth, his sons, his wife, and his son's wife with him. Every beast, verse 19, they all went forth out of the ark. And now then in verse 20, we have a whole new beginning. Noah takes one of the seven, remember the sacrificial animals, he took in by seven, and he takes one of them, and he built an altar, and he offered burnt offerings on the altar. The Lord smelled a sweet savor. And then verse 22, here's where we're going to end for tonight. Verse 22, while the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease. You don't have that kind of language before the flood. There were no such thing as seasons before the flood. There was no such thing as weather. It was constant. And so the flood changed all that. One scientist has put it that that's probably when the earth began its seasonal tilt, so that we consequently have now our seasons. Thank you for watching Through the Bible with Les Feldick. Through the Bible is a partner-supported ministry. If this program has been a help to your study of the Scriptures and you'd like to see others enjoy the teaching, your support would be greatly appreciated. Write to us at Les Feldick Ministries, Route 1, Box 760, Kenta, Oklahoma, 74552. Or call 1-800-369-7856. Remember, all programs are available in printed form, audio cassette, and videotape. Be sure to tune in next time to Through the Bible with Les Feldick.