Can someone explain the reasoning behind the Great Flood?

Question

Okay, let's assume depite all historical and geological evidence that the Great Flood did occur.

Why didn't God just snap with metaphorical fingers and make all the "bad" people disappear? Why did he have to make a giant flood? Did the people he killed really deserve to die (the children and newborns?)

Noah was chosen as the cream of the human crop by God to survive the Great Flood, but did God not know that this is the same guy that would get drunk and naked after the first wine grape harvest? The same guy who would curse his own son's descendants for telling him to sober up a bit?

That was the best God could come up with? An angry, spiteful, drunkard?

Answer 1

Obviously he couldn't just snap his fingers, that would have made too much sense.

Based on the answers above, it's quite clear why Noah was chosen. He was the only one that was drunk enough to be fooled into it. And, who takes 116 years to build a boat?! Was he using his fingernails to shape the planks?

Answer 2

Noah, like many of us, was very imperfect, but then he became close to God. Remember that back then people lived a very long time (hundreds of years) and that Noah may have started off doing some wild and crazy things but settled down in his older years, as many of us do too. The lesson that I take from people like Noah and Moses and Abraham is that if God can love them and make them his chosen, then he can love other sinners as well--including me.

The flood was to cleanse the earth. It says in the Bible that people were corrupt and given to all kinds of depravity. Why did children have to die? I don't have the answer to everything but I would assume that they were probably being taught the morals of their parents. They would have just carried on the depravity to another generation.

Many Bible scholars also believe that the flood may have happened to protect the line of David, where Jesus would be born from, but that is speculation as the Bible doesn't really state this. I tend to try to stick with what the Bible does say rather than what it doesn't. When you start adding your own beliefs and inserts, that's when you get into trouble.

Noah loved the Lord and was obedient and found favor with God. I think it took him like 100 years to build the ark. There was no rain before then. So, here he is in the middle of dry land--not a drop of rain in sight--building a huge boat. I'm sure people walked past him and laughed at "crazy old Noah". But he patiently kept building and gathering and getting ready because God had told him to do so. It may be that God tried to tell others to get ready but they didn't listen or weren't obedient, but again that is just speculation.

I think the biggest point I am trying to make, in my chatty Cathy way, is that if God could love Noah that much, then why couldn't he love you just as much? Oh, wait! He does. He loves you so much that he sent his son to die for you.

Answer 3

God could have "Snapped" His fingers as you say. Why He chose to flood the earth? We can only speculate.
My idea is that we are washed in water (Baptized) to symbolically purify ourselves. God may have used a flood to symbolically purify the world from sin. Only God knows the truth to this question. As far as your question about Noah; he was just a human being like you and I, we all sin and fall short of the Glory of God. Noah must have been an extraordinarily Godly man if God chose him to re-birth all of humanity. No human being is sinless, only Christ Jesus in the flesh was and is sinless. Think about Noah this way: God tells him to build a huge ship, in the middle of the desert and Noah spends many years building this ship, his neighbors are calling him insane, his friends are ridiculing him, strangers are mocking him all the time. Yet Noah obeyed God and built this huge ship in the middle of the desert.
Such is Noah, a man after Gods own heart.
God Bless You....Peace.

Answer 4

You make a lot of assumptions not based on evidence. Did you know there are flood stories in every ancient culture that mirror the Biblical account? Did you know the geological and fossil evidence is more in the camp of sudden catastrophe rather than gradualism?
Your second set of questions also have presuppositions. If God had wiped out all the "bad" people, no one would have survived. Noah and his family were sinners, there was nothing in his life to commend himself to God. It was out of grace that God chose Noah and his family, not because they were great saints. God used a flood at His choosing. He could have used any method He wished, but He chose water this time. Why did He do it?

Gen 6:5 And Jehovah saw that the evil of man was great on the earth, and every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the day long.
Gen 6:6 And Jehovah repented that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved to His heart.
Gen 6:7 And Jehovah said, I will wipe off man whom I have created from the face of the earth, from man to beast, to the creeping thing and to the birds of the heavens; for I repent that I made them.

Answer 5

you seem to focus only on the negative!

Remember the guy who raised up 3 sons who also took wives who all were considered righteous and were on the ark,along with Noah and his wife?

How about the 116 years of labor to build a boat in a land that never experienced rain? And all of that while people were calling him names,telling him he was crazy.

And now this guy floats around on a boat full of animals, with no where to run for month after month.

I wonder how many people could do all of that if God came to them today and told them to do it.

Answer 6

Well, I guess your right. I give up. There must not be a God. I guess I'll just believe that we did come from monkeys. Which came from a little legged fish. And that there once was a great big ball of stuff that just magically appeared and then it went kablooey and the fall out made this universe and all of its' orderliness. NOT.

Answer 7

OK, these are some good questions, be we don't have the answer. No body does. I think God flooded the world because there was so much destruction in the world..oh ..kind of like now. There was so much hatred for God....like now. I guess an old drunkard was the best of the best...........................................

Answer 8

To each his own, have to find fault in something
Flesh realm, profits nothing
There is a higher walk, maybe you
could search for that

Answer 9

HITAN ( Democracy in Heaven )
--goal is to overthrow the CREATOR and install democracy in Heaven

The CREATOR was losing power, mankind was not follow him anymore; so he decided to slaughter mankind. Punish all those who oppose him

Answer 10

not much point in trying to answer your question, you've pretty much decided what you want to believe