THE ARK AND THE DARKNESS: UNEARTHING THE MYSTERIES OF NOAH’S FLOOD

THE ARK AND THE DARKNESS is a documentary promoting a Global Flood perspective of the story of Noah’s Ark in the Book of Genesis and a young earth view of the Earth’s Age, while supporting a strong Christian view of salvation through Jesus Christ. THE ARK AND THE DARKNESS presents a vigorous defense of its support for a Global Flood rather than a Local Flood, though its defense of a 6,000-year-old earth seems less comprehensive and therefore not as convincing.

The movie opens by giving a dramatic summary of its view while presenting an overview of the text of Genesis from Genesis Chapter One to the story of Noah and his family in Chapters Six through Nine. If we don’t understand the first judgment of God on mankind in the story of Noah, the scholars ask, then how can we understand the final judgment when Jesus Christ returns?

During this section, the movie discusses the effects of the Fall of Man and the increasing wickedness of mankind, culminating in God ordering Noah to build the Ark. The scholars then discuss the stability of the structure of the Ark and its capacity to hold 1400 kinds of land animals, or about 7,000 animals. After the destruction of the old world by the Great Flood, the scholars note that, after the Flood, there was an “exponential decay curve” in human lifespans. They contend that the gradual lifespan decay was the result of habitats being destroyed, the loss of nutrients from the earth’s original vegetation, and genetic mutation.

From there, the movie gives a lengthy description of Post-Flood geology, including the rapid separation of the continents, the formation of the deep sea trenches and the combination of sea and land fossils in locations across the globe. The scholars contend that the fossils were deposited in a wave of giant tsunamis from the cracking open of the underwater seabed and the eruption of underwater volcanoes during the year that Noah and his family spent on the Ark. They also note that some tree fossils are found standing up and span several geologic layers. Secular scientists think the layers represent millions of years, but this would be impossible. Therefore, the tree fossils standing upright confirm their traditional model of the Great Flood. Other fossil findings that confirm the traditional understanding are the discovery in the 1980s of soft tissue collagen inside some fossilized dinosaur bones. These findings confirm the movie’s view that the Earth is only a few thousand years old, not the hundreds of millions and even billions of years that secular scientists propose.

The movie also discusses the Tower of Babel story from Genesis 11 where the Triune God goes down among the tower builders, confuses their language and scatters them across the globe. The movie mentions that the different people groups and their languages resulting from the scattering totals about 70 different language groups, while modern linguistic scholars believe there are about 94 language groups. The movie’s narrator says the proximity of these numbers is noteworthy.

The final part of THE ARK AND THE DARKNESS presents the Gospel of Jesus Christ, who died for our sins and rose from the dead to grant eternal life to those who believe and trust in Him. The final section ends by quoting John 14:6 and 3:16.

THE ARK AND THE DARKNESS perhaps gives the best defense of the traditional Global Flood view of Noah’s Ark than any other movie. The arguments are relatively convincing as well as fascinating. The movie spends less time, however, defending its view that the earth is only about 6,000 years old. Its defense of such a young age is much less comprehensive and, thus, less convincing.

THE ARK AND THE DARKNESS also briefly presents a Dispensational view of the End Times and the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. This view is even more disputed and thus more controversial than the movie’s views of the Great Flood and the Age of the Earth. The subject also seems rather tangential and irrelevant to the movie’s central focus, the Great Flood.