God's Show Time

Noah and his family went on board the Ark. The first miracle God performed is that He gathered the land animals. God brought a pair of every unclean animal and seven pairs of every flying creature and clean animal to Noah. There were wild animals and tame animals, large animals and small animals, furry animals and scaly animals, slithery animals and creeping animals, and every kind of bird. The animal parade was truly God’s show time!

What Is an Animal Kind?

An animal kind is a grouping of different animals that can have babies together. Noah took aboard a male and female of every animal kind, not two of every animal. So, for example, Noah could have taken two wolf-like dogs, but not two poodles and two cocker spaniels and two collies. From the two wolf-like dogs could have come all the varieties of dogs after the Flood.

By taking representatives of animal kinds, there were far fewer animals on the Ark than you might expect. These early animal kinds might have looked pretty strange, but from them came all the animals we know today. Creation scientists think there were fewer than 7,000 animals total on the Ark, which represents about 1,400 different animal kinds.

The cattle kind displayed in the Ark Encounter

Were Sea Creatures on the Ark?

No, when God gave the list of animals that Noah was to include, sea creatures were not mentioned. God knew enough of them would survive the Flood since their natural home is in water.

Illustration by Cory Godbey

Were Dinosaurs on the Ark?

Absolutely! There were about 60–90 different kinds of dinosaurs living on the earth before the Flood. God said take two of each kind of air-breathing land animal. That included dinosaur kinds, so that’s what Noah did.

The rebbachisaur kind displayed in the Ark Encounter

Was There Enough Room on the Ark for All These Animals?

Oh my, this Ark was huge! It could carry the same load as about 450 semi-trailers! Experts say that the animals could have occupied less than half the space in the Ark, leaving plenty of room for food.

The second place where a miracle was seen was that God was in charge of the door. The timing of this water catastrophe was totally under God’s control. It appears that God gave Noah seven days to load up the animals that had gathered, and then He shut the door as the catastrophe was ready to begin.

God started the Flood
in two different ways.
One was familiar,
the other unknown today.

The “fountains of the great
deep broke open,” we’re told.
Then buckets of rain fell!
What a thing to behold!

Puddles grew to ponds.
Ponds grew to lakes.
Lakes grew to rivers flowing
wildly . . . goodness sakes.

Before they knew it, the Ark was afloat,
And everything drowned that was not on the boat.
It was a horrible happening of unimaginable proportion!
It was a water catastrophe that caused worldwide destruction!