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Before the Flood, there was no rain on earth.
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When Noe built his Ark, the doomed people all around him mocked him (kind of like flat-earthers mocking others today) because they couldn't imagine what such a huge ship would be good for in the middle of land where there was no sea. There had never been rain, so they could not imagine rain. Even if they COULD imagine rain, they could not have imagined rain that would flood the earth giving buoyancy to a ship built on land.
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But when the rains came and the Flood waters rose, they cried outside the Ark to be saved, but it was too late for them.
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Today, we have rain clouds that give rain, but sometimes we have overcast skies where the sun does not shine through with power and brightness, because of the water vapor that obscures it. Even so, often times there is no rain on such days. The water vapor remains high in the atmosphere and does not come down to earth. That is a similar state as the skies before the Flood, when all the water vapor was held high in the atmosphere and did not rain.
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But imagine what it would be like on earth with most of the water now found in the oceans all suspended high in the atmosphere, kept from raining down by the power of God, e.g., by His firmament (the power of God). The air pressure on earth would have been three or four times as great. Instead of 14.7 psi at sea level, it could have been 50 or 60 psi. With such enormous pressure, life would have been different here.
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Perhaps you're not aware of the experiments done during the previous century where they kept primates in a pressurized environment, with greater oxygen content, and found that their life spans increased dramatically. Before the Flood, men lived much longer lifespans. I asked you before, and you did not answer, what was Noe's age when he began to build the Ark. So I'll tell you now. He was 400 years old. He spent his 5th century of life building the Ark. So being 400 years old, he was strong, mature, and able to build the Ark. He had the help of his three sons, who were all born in the same year. Why would a man 400 years old suddenly have three sons all in the same year? It is not spelled out, but they may have been triplets. He had one wife, not three wives. How could she have had three pregnancies in one year if not by triplets?
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With the vastly higher air pressure and probably much more oxygen in the air, just like the monkeys that today can be made to live vastly longer lives with such an atmosphere, the water held up high in the sky weighed down on earth making men live much longer lives.
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God works miracles, of course, but usually when He makes His power manifest worldwide for many years, it is through some natural means. The firmament holding back the waters without rain for several centuries could explain how God kept lifespans extended on earth until such time as He allowed the "gates of heaven" to open and thus allowed the rain to fall 40 days and 40 nights. The waters of the deep were opened as well -- the waters that had been welling up over the land in smaller rates to give plants their sustenance from creation until the Flood. Together, the rushing waters of the deep coming to the surface, perhaps due to the reduced air pressure consequent to the falling rain that alleviated the air pressure as the rain fell, along with the volume of rain water, is what made the earth to be flooded such that all the mountains were covered 15 cubits higher than their highest peaks. The mountains could have then risen as well, as geologists today say they do. In fact, during large earthquakes, mountain ranges have been measured to rise as much as 6 feet during one earthquake. That happened here in Los Angeles during the 1994 Northridge quake, when the San Gabriel mountains increased as much as 6 feet in elevation in one day.
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