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Evidence of Catastrophic Biblical Flood Found in China?
CBN News 08-17-2016
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Chinese scientists have discovered new evidence that points to the biblical account of Noah's flood from thousands of years ago.
Archeologists uncovered the bones of children believed to have been trapped by a flood that ripped through the Yellow River Valley nearly 4,000 years ago. Their bones are dated back to time of Noah, leading some to believe these remains are evidence of the biblical story.
If the newly discovered flood is the one of Noah's times, it may shake what scientists originally believed about the Bible.
The discovery points to a massive flood that sent rocks and tons of sediment rushing into the Yellow River Valley. The flood was so big, it created a 660 foot damn that scars China to this day.
Some are not surprised by this discovery, saying there is evidence all around the world of an ancient catastrophic flood.
"There are thousands of feet of flood sediment all over the globe - evidence of a catastrophic global flood," Ken Ham, from Answers in Genesis, said.
Ham argues that the unearthing of evidence pointing to an ancient world-wide flood testifies to the validity of the Christian faith.
"If the Bible's true, it means God is Creator," Ham said. "It means God owns us. It means we have to be in submission to him. It means that we need to receive the free gift of salvation in Jesus Christ."
“For this is as the waters of Noah unto Me; for as I have sworn that the waters of Noah should no more go over the earth, so have I sworn that I would not be wroth with thee, nor rebuke thee.” Isaiah 54:9 (The Israel Bible™)
Illustrative: a replica of Noah’s Ark. (Photo: Shutterstock.com)
In two weeks, the doors to Noah’s Ark will open once again — but with a few key differences from the original Biblical story. This version of the “ark” is really an ark-like theme park in Northern Kentucky. Costing over $100 million, the park will be part entertainment and part religious education. Its owners established the Bible-themed park, called Ark Encounter, with the goal of convincing visitors that the Biblical story of the flood is a literal version of a historical event.
The new version of the ark was not intended to be a floating solution for divine flooding, since it has a concrete floor and is supported by concrete pillars anchored into the ground. Launching the ark would require a unique series of natural disasters culminating in a flood that engulfs landlocked Williamstown, Kentucky, 600 miles from the nearest beach. The ark is the showpiece for Ark Encounter, which educates visitors through elaborate exhibits and offers an adjacent Ararat zoo, zip lines, a 1,500-seat restaurant, and a gift shop.
The aptly named Ken Ham, president of Answers in Genesis (AiG), built Ark Encounter just a few miles from his Creation Museum, which attracts nearly half a million visitors a year and teaches a young Earth theory of creation. Ham is a powerful voice in his circle of like-minded Biblical literalists. Young Earth Creationism played an essential role in the ark project.
The reproduction of Noah’s naval wonder cost over $100 million and generated almost as much controversy as the original. The ark became the focus of controversy when, in 2014, Ham invited pop-scientist Bill Nye to debate the question, “Is Creation A Viable Model of Origins?” The scientific community was dismayed, claiming that by agreeing to the debate, Nye validated creationism, thereby handing a victory to Ham before any words were spoken.
The video was a viral sensation and Ham later announced that the publicity generated by the debate spurred fundraising, allowing the ministry to begin construction on the ark. Ham told the Lexington Herald Leader that the goal of the immense project was to show the true scope of Noah’s Ark, and that it’s possible to build a structure that could hold the 16,000 animals believers estimate survived the Biblical flood.
Even in the planning stages, controversy over the ark led to a prolonged court battle. The exhibit sparked concerns about separation of church and state after Governor Matt Bevin approved $18 million in tax breaks for the project, according to a report by Fox 17 Nashville.
Critics also objected to the park’s plan to hire only Christian workers. Potential employees must sign a “Statement of Faith” which disavows same-sex marriage, premarital sex and adultery. These conditions are acceptable for religious institutions, but AiG had applied to participate in the Kentucky Tourism Development Program. The conditions were approved after it was reasoned that the park was part of a religious institution and not a tourist attraction.In January, US District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky upheld AiG’s right to religious preferences in its hiring while still qualifying as a toruist attraction.
Though it has its commercial aspects, it is clearly Biblically inspired. Touted by its creators as the world’s largest timber framed building, it adheres to the dimensions described in the Bible.
And this is how thou shalt make it: the length of the ark three hundred cubits, the breadth of it fifty cubits, and the height of it thirty cubits. Genesis 6:15
A Biblical cubit (ama in Hebrew) is the length from the elbow to the fingertips of an average man. The exact length is unknown, but it is generally accepted to be between 19.8 – 20.6 inches long. Based on this estimate, the builders of the reproduction made their ark 510 feet long, 85 feet wide, and 51 feet tall.
Logs up to 50 feet tall were harvested from as far away as British Columbia and Oregon. All together, 3.3 millionfeet of wood, or 612 miles’ worth of planks, were used in the ark. As for the builders, instead of Noah’s sons, Shem Ham and Japhet, the new ark employed 75 Amish craftsmen and hundreds of other workers who had to be trained in traditional woodworking, Ham said.
To commemorate the Biblical flood which inaugurated the original, the Kentucky ark will have extended hours for the first 40 days and 40 nights.
Mark Looy, co-founder of Answers in Genesis, told Chatanooga news site Nooga that future plans at the park include a replica of a walled city from 2300 B.C., the Tower of Babel, a first-century Middle Eastern village, a journey through history from Abraham to the parting of the Red Sea, and a walk-through aviary.
The ark replica is not the first to gain global attention as a tourist attraction. Another landlocked ark, located in Hong Kong, was built as a Christian creationist theme park. A floating replica, built by Johan Huibers in the Netherlands, is scheduled to sail 5,200 miles this summer from its berth in Norway to Rio de Janeiro. Earlier this month, a half-size replica Huibers built collided with a Coast Guard vessel in Oslo Harbor while being towed to a new location.
Newest tourist attraction to tap into Christian curiosity
USA TODAY NETWORKJames Pilcher, The Cincinnati Enquirer June 23, 2016
WILLIAMSTOWN, Ky. — In less than two weeks, tourists can board a life-sized recreation of Noah’s Ark, an attraction advertised as the closest to the legendary ship of the Bible that modern civilization can build.
The insides of the 90-plus-foot-tall ark will feature a unique perspective on what life might have been like aboard the vessel, including a representation of Noah’s quarters and examples of the wildlife — dinosaurs! — that could have been saved from the flood described in the Book of Genesis. Dinosaurs died off about 65 million years ago, scientists say; the first human ancestors, long before the flood depicted in the Bible, appeared 5 million to 7 million years ago.
The ark, which opens July 7, is part of a new $92 million theme park in the middle of a Kentucky farm field 40 miles south of Cincinnati, one built with such painstaking devotion to biblical accounts that construction workers relied on an ancient measurement known as an Egyptian cubit.
It’s the latest example of the growing Christian tourism industry, which includes attractions celebrating or presenting history from a Christian point of view and often based on a literal interpretation of the Bible.
Theme parks, museums and other attractions are springing up all over the country, within the cluster of museums in the nation's capital and in places including the capital of family fun parks, Orlando.
Yet with such ambition comes tensions, both from within and without. In particular, the ark project is a lightning rod for its reliance on public tax incentives and because of a narrative that flies in the face of commonly accepted science.
Visitors will be told the earth is 6,000 years old and that the flood depicted in the Bible killed off the dinosaurs 4,500 years ago.
And some friction occurs because of a fundamental question: Are these tourist attractions ministries that function as businesses or the opposite?
Those behind the increasingly grand plans feel confident in their mission.
“More and more, Christians are saying the secular world builds its themed attractions, so why shouldn’t we as Christians build themed attractions to be able to reach people but to get the message out?” saidKen Ham, co-founder and president of Answers in Genesis, the group behind the Ark Encounter and also the Creation Museum that opened in Petersburg, Ky., nine years ago.
“That is our primary motive after all," Ham said.
Indeed, those with such motives are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on Disneyesque presentations nationwide that include these:
Broadway-quality stage shows featuring costumes made with nearly four miles of fabric, live animals and even a crumbling stage on which the hero Samson, of the Samson and Delilah story in the Old Testament's Judges 16, takes down his captors’ temple.
An animatronic Noah on the new ark answering visitors’ questions about what conditions were like during the 40 days and 40 nights of the biblical flood.
Millions of dollars worth of fragments from the Dead Sea Scrolls as well as the earliest-known printings and writings of ancient Bibles. Most of the money comes from the family that founded the Hobby Lobby craft store chain.
“Each place might have its own view of success in terms of money or attendance or the like. But it’s been clear that people are willing to pay money and show up for things like this,” said Sally Promey, a professor of American and religious studies atYale Divinity School in New Haven, Conn.
“But while they push what they do toward what mainstream America might call a museum, they risk losing their role as a Christian witness," Promey said. "So that is a constant dilemma for them.”
"Ye cannot serve God and Mammon," reads the Bible passage Matthew 6:24. Therein lies a question amid the rise of Christian tourism.
“We feel ourselves to be a ministry, but we recognize we need to use good business principles to keep it going,” Ham said. “We’re not in this to make money. Now we have to make money to be able to operate it, but we’re not in it as (if) we were an entertainment industry just to make profit.”
Another company that acknowledges this inherent tension is Sight & Sound, a live religious theater group that operates in Lancaster County, Pa., and in Branson, Mo.
“We have certainly been profitable over the last few years,” said Matt Neff, Sight & Sound's chief executive officer who declined to share specifics. “But that is not our end-all, be-all goal. A lot of those profits get sunk right back into the production and design of the next shows.
“Our goal has always been as relevant as possible to a broad audience while also honoring our commitment to the word of God," he said.
Still, the missions can come into conflict.
“When it comes to evangelism, there is always a tension between being in the world and of the world,” said Stephen Prothero, a Boston University religion professor. “The people behind these efforts have a big struggle between keeping their eyes on heaven and doing worldly things to attract bigger audiences or crowds or followers.
“Sometimes, the secular world pushes back hard, too," Prothero said.
When Ham talks about Disney-style quality, he isn’t kidding, and neither are many other operators of Christian-themed attractions.
They say they have learned from the past, including the ill-fated Heritage USA theme park founded just outside Charlotte, N.C., by former evangelists Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker that folded in 1989 after Jim Bakker became enmeshed in a sex scandal and went to prison for tax evasion.
Gone are the hokey passion plays from local churches, or hand-painted signs advertising the chance to see ancient relics from the Holy Land, or even the old cheesy “Bibleland” theme parks of old.
Can the new digital-era attractions compete with the likes of Universal Studios, Six Flags, Kings Island, or even Disneyland or Disneyworld?
Consultant Dennis Speigel said is at least one theme park is available within a 2½-hour drive of every major American city.
“Theme parks and even museums live on repeat business. … How can these attractions manage that if they are not making enough money to reinvest in new features?” asked Speigel, a Cincinnati-based theme park consultant who helped found Kings Island about 25 miles northeast of Cincinnati and oversaw the closure of Heritage USA nearly three decades ago.
Adults will pay $40 each to see the ark, and tickets for kids 5 to 12 will cost $28. At the Creation Museum adults pay $30 each, and children ages 5 to 12 pay $16 though the museum does have special on through June 30 for kids. Answers in Genesis is offering combo tickets for both attractions, just as secular sites do.
According to some estimates, the market for religious travel worldwide, including trips to holy sites abroad, approaches $20 billion with about half of that from U.S. customers. One 2008 survey from the Travel Industry Association found 1 in 4 U.S. travelers would be interested in taking a religious-themed vacation.
At 510 feet long, 80 feet wide and more than 90 feet tall at its highest point, the ship is the largest free-standing timber frame structure in the world.
It will hold up to 10,000 people in a pinch, and will feature three decks of exhibits that range from Answers in Genesis’ belief that the Great Flood explains a lot of modern geology and paleontology, to re-creations of how Noah might have survived.
And since the ministry believes dinosaurs existed at the time of the flood and were all but wiped out, smaller versions of the extinct creatures will be included.
The Ark Encounter is the brainchild of Answers in Genesis, which Ham helped found with two other Americans, Mark Looy and Mike Zovath. A lifelong believer in creationism, Ham is a native Australian who came to the United States in the early 1990s to help found the ministry.
The group espouses that all that happened in the opening book of the Bible is literal history.
“The reason we’re really building it is that we wanted to impact as many people as we can with the truth of the word of God,” Ham said. “As Christians, the Bible tells us to go and contend for the faith.
“And Noah’s ark is very well-known around the world, so this seemed to be the logical next step," he said.
Indeed, the ark is not the group’s first foray into using a major attraction to tell its story. Answers in Genesis' Creation Museum in Petersburg, visible from Interstate 275 and just the border from Ohio, opened in 2007 and draws about a quarter million visitors annually after pulling in more than 400,000 its opening year.
In early 2014, Ham squared off there against Bill Nye, “The Science Guy,” in a creationism vs. evolution debate that was broadcast worldwide on the Web.
Nye wrote recently in email that he wasn’t allowed to see the entire museum but that what he saw was “troubling.”
“It’s important to note also that this is not a museum as such,” Nye wrote. “There are no artifacts. It’s a series of exhibits with models and mannequins depicting a world that never existed; the displays are completely inconsistent with what we know of the ancient Earth.”
The ark is a for-profit enterprise. And as such, it will receive tax incentives from not only the state of Kentucky but also tax breaks from the local county and city governments. That angers some civil-rights activists and those who espouse the separation of church and state.
“They are using an amusement park setting to be proselytizing and that is dangerous territory,” said Jim Helton, American Atheists’ Union, Ky.-based regional director. “And now we’ve given them public money and we are allowing them to discriminate against Jews, against LGBT folks, against Catholics, you name it.”
Initial estimates say the ark park, about halfway between Lexington, Ky., and Cincinnati will draw 1.4 million to 2.2 million visitors in the first year. Some worry that local roads might not be ready even as the long-term economic windfall could be impressive.
It remains an open question whether the ark will float as a business over the long haul or whether or the overall Christian tourism market will keep up its growth.
“These places are less than several decimal points less than 1% of the overall market,” amusement park expert Speigel said. “And the odds are against most of them.”
That doesn’t deter Ham or others like him. As he stands near the mammoth ark structure, he said Christians deserve their own destination tourism attractions.
“Why shouldn’t we be able to build a place like Disney with that sort of quality for millions of people?” he asked.
