Yes I stole the title from Colin's email as it's rather hard to top! So today's lesson was on Noah. We began with a demonstration of 3 YSA standing in a line at arms length, which with another 1/2 YSA would have reached from wall to wall. If we could get 85 YSA (better get baptising!!) then we would have a visual idea of how long Noah's ark was. So mathematically, if we times the length we saw by 28.3 then we would have the desired lenth. Colin prepared some very imformative charts to help us understand the size of the ark by comparison. For example, it was roughly the same size as an icebreaker boat, such as the Aurora Australis
which we frequently see docked in Hobart. We also could compare the size of the ark to the Starship Enterprise, Godzilla, and Captain Jack Sparrow's Black Pearl, amoung many others.
which we frequently see docked in Hobart. We also could compare the size of the ark to the Starship Enterprise, Godzilla, and Captain Jack Sparrow's Black Pearl, amoung many others.
So basically we gathered it was a fairly big boat - not comparing it to futuristic creations. Given this size it would not have been easy for Noah to be discreet about building this boat, in the middle of a very dry place with no preceding signs of great rain or flood. It is perhaps easy to understand why people thought him a nutter and mocked him, although as we read in Moses they were also a generally wicked people and had previously not hearkened to the words of the prophet - that, of course, being Noah himself.
We are unsure of how exactly Noah got all those animals on the ark, such as the ferocious tigers (not sure I would have volunteered for that job!), but after the flooding he also managed to get them off. Then after all that effort of preserving such animals for the period of the flood, Noah built an alter and took of every clean beast, and of every clean fowl and offered burnt offerings on the alter -(Genesis 8:20) in other words he had to kill some of those animals which he had worked so hard to preserve!! But this he did as an expression of thanks and obedience to the Lord, according to the law of sacrifice at the time. Now that's dedication! This is rewarded by the Lord by setting a rainbow as a token of the convenant which He then made with Noah.
