Where Did All the Floodwaters Go?

When you're going to drain a swamp, you have a pretty good idea about where the water is going to go. Things are mighty different when draining a flooded planet. Believers, mockers, and inquirers want to know where all that water went when the Genesis Flood was done with and the Ark settled on the mountains of Ararat. I'll allow that it's a fair question, and it seems common. God pulled a giant drain plug at the bottom of the ocean —

"Quit playing, Cowboy Bob!"

Well, it is a kind of funny picture. The answer is actually simple — at first. The mountains rose, the ocean floors went downward. Water ran off the continents and formed the oceans. Now, I have a skeptical nature, and I don't want to present you with something that seems to be pious assertions. While the Bible is inerrant, models from creationists, evolutionists, or whomever else are not above reproach. Is there evidence to support the Genesis Flood model?

Mt. Everest from space image credit: NASA (usage does not imply endorsement)

People occasionally object, "How could the waters have covered the highest mountains?" That's where the subject gets interesting. Some people think that mountains were pushed up when continents collided, but there's much more to it than that. There is physical evidence that the mountains did rise (for example, marine fossils way up yonder on Mt. Everest), and that the ocean floor has become much deeper. The mountains we see now are not at the same height during the Flood. Learn to say "differential vertical tectonics" and amaze your friends.

If scientists and us regular folks could strip aside uniformitarian (long age) assumptions and just look at the evidence, it would be readily apparent that not only did the Genesis Flood occur as is narrated in God's Word, but that Earth is much younger than secularists want to believe.

Many ask: “If Noah’s Flood really covered the whole earth, then where did the water go?”

This question has a simple answer, and once we understand what happened and how, we can see the reality of the biblical Flood all around the world.

The floodwater is in the oceans

Actually, the Bible tells us where the water went. By Day 150 of the Flood catastrophe the floodwaters had risen until they covered “all the high mountains under the whole heaven” (Genesis 7:19). After that “the waters receded from the earth continually” (Genesis 8:3), a process that took about seven months.

As the water receded from the continents it must have flowed into the oceans. It only takes a quick look at a globe of the earth to appreciate that the water indeed sits in the oceans. The Pacific Ocean alone takes up almost half the earth’s surface.

To read the rest, surf on over to "How did the waters of Noah’s Flood drain off the continents?"