Morris, Henry: The Search For Noah's Ark

Thank you, Dave. I'm going to begin by referring not to Genesis, however, but to passage in the New Testament, Second Peter chapter three, by way of introduction to the message or discussion tonight. This is the last chapter, of course, written by the Apostle Peter, and the context here is in the last days. He looks forward to the last days, and he says this in second Peter three: this second epistle, beloved, I now write unto you, in both which I stir up your pure minds by way of remembrance. And just let me pause long enough to point out that he says to stir up your minds. I have to, uh, stress that these are, are days in which people like to have their emotions stirred up, and that's okay. But, uh, in the last days, he said, stir up your minds. It's time to really start thinking and understanding what's going on. But he's not talking about so much filling your minds with the secular philosophy and learning all the books. Somebody, uh, commented today that of the making of many books there's no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh. That's quoted from Ecclesiastes. That's true. Uh, I'm kind of a book wearer myself. I like to, to write books and read books and so on. I've got a couple thousand books, I guess, in my own little library, and I have read some of them. But what he's really talking about here is not all of the books in the libraries, but the book that you may be mindful of the words which were spoken before by the holy prophets. That's the Old Testament scriptures. And then the commandment of us, the apostles of the Lord and Savior, and that's the New Testament scriptures. So, in effect, he's saying that in the last days you need to fill your minds, stir them up, and fill them full with the word of God, the Holy Scriptures. Otherwise, you won't be able to really understand and meet the need of the last days. Next verse does talk about the last days, knowing this first, there shall come in the last days. I don't know what you f- believe about, uh, about the future things, the eschatology of the Word. Uh, I believe that we're in the last days and that the coming of Christ is very near. But whether you agree with me on that or not, I think you'd probably agree that we're closer to the last days than anybody's ever been before. And so... And so this, this, uh, admonition applies more to us today than it has to anybody before us. And I think it applies directly to us. He says, in the last days there are going to come scoffers walking after their own lusts and saying, where is the promise of his coming? Now, the promise of his coming, of course, refers to the promise of the coming of Christ, the coming back of God to his world, and it refers back to the original creation when the first promise was given. If you read back in the book of Genesis, how when God created the world and created man and put man in dominion over the world, and he had a perfect world for him, and everything was just ideal, but then, uh, man and woman both rebelled against God. God, therefore, had to curse the ground for man's sake in order that he might see his need of a savior, and, but at the same time he cursed the ground, he also gave the promise that someday he was gonna co- come back, he's gonna restore all things, make everything new again, and accomplish the purpose that he had in creation in the beginning. He's not going to fail. God never fails. So whatever he purpose he had in the original perfect world that he created, he's going to accomplish as he comes back again to make it all new. And in order to do that, he had to become man, and so he promised that the seed of the woman would come in order to destroy the serpent and all the works of the rebels against God. But as the ages have gone on, age after age and year after year, why the promise seems never to have been fulfilled. Of course, God did come in the person of his son, Jesus Christ, at the first coming, and he died and he rose again and ascended to heaven, and once again, though, he promised he was going to come back, and now it's gone on for e- for so long, and he still hasn't come. And so now, men are saying, well, forget about all that. You don't need to be concerned about a future supernatural consummation of the world and a termination of history. So where is the promise of his coming? Just forget about it. Now that's a... a strange attitude, an anomalous attitude for a creature to take with respect to his creator, if you really believed that there was a creator. But of course, people do that, and they take that position. And you know from your studies, from reading textbooks and literature that, although men have all sorts of plans for the future and all kinds of political involvements and movements and educational systems and all trying to work out plans for the future, uh, no one is really taking seriously in the educational world the possibility that there may be a supernatural consummation of history in the future, at which time all people will have to go before God and give an account. Men don't like to think of that, they don't like to face that, and so by all means possible, they try to avoid that if they can, and so they say, where is the promise of his coming? Now, in justification of such a position, they rationalize this way, that all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation. Since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation. Now I'm getting to the point here. This, you see, is a prophecy two thousand years ago of the dominance in the last days of the evolutionary philosophy, because that's what this is. All things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation. In other words, uh, all things that we now see, the things that are now continuing, have been operating and going on always in the past, even from the beginning of creation, not from the end of creation, but from the beginning of it, so that even creation is still going on, and everything that is involved in creation, the origin and development of all things, is still going on, and that's so that we can understand by the study of present processes in biology and geology and the other systems, we can understand how all things came to be, because all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation. Now, this is nothing more nor less than the doctrine of uniformitarianism, which is the prime, uh, key to the study of Earth history, as is taught in, uh, evolutionary studies, particularly in historical geology and paleontology and anthropology and astronomy and archaeology and these other sciences that deal with Earth history. We, it's believed that we can study present processes, project those into the past, and by those explain how all things came about. Uniformitarianism, and of course this also includes evolution, because if we're to explain the origin of all things, that means life, man and all the different forms of life, in terms of present processes of speciation and variation and sedimentation and so on. Now, the Apostle Peter predicted that this would be the dominant viewpoint even in Christendom and among those who know about the promised coming of the Lord, but who reject it in the last days. And of course, this is precisely fulfilled today. This is the attitude today in the intellectual, the scientific, the educational establishment. This is what, uh, we might call the evolution model of origins and development, that we can explain all things in terms of present continuing natural processes. Now, the apostle then goes on to say that that's wrong, and he suggests that the way to deal with this model is not to, uh, compromise with it. Many Christians have attempted to do that. They've tried to find some means of reinterpreting the Bible to fit the evolutionary system, the uniformitarian model, but in effect he says that's not the right way to do it. What you should do is to recognize that it's wrong, because he goes on to say, this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old and the earth standing out of the water and in the water, whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished. Now what he does, you see, is to define the creation model. All things do not continue as they were from the beginning of the creation, but rather the creation, the heavens and the earth, which were of old, came into existence by the word of God. The omnipotent, uh, God just spoke into existence the universe and all the systems in the universe. By the word of God, the heavens and the earth came into existence in old time. That's the creation model. There were supernatural creative processes that, that brought into being the basic categories of nature, and then accompanying that is the cataclysmic model. He says, the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished. That's the great flood. The world that then was, that's the heavens and the earth, which were of old time, referred to in the previous verse, being cataclysmed with water, because the word overflowed is the Greek word from which we get our English word cataclysm. So that's literally what it is, and and that word, whenever it occurs in the New Testament, in either the noun or the verb form, and it occurs about four or five times, always refers to the flood of Noah, great deluge, and to no other cataclysm. There's only been one worldwide cataclysm, and that was the cataclysm, the flood that came in the days of Noah, and he says the world that then was being cataclysmed, overflowed with waters, perished. And the word world is cosmos, the heavens and the earth as an ordered system. All of that was completely destroyed and changed, reworked and redeposited in the great flood. So the true model of earth history, according to the Apostle Peter, is the model which says that there was a special creation supplemented by a worldwide destructive cataclysm, in contrast to the evolutionary uniformitarian model of Earth, Earth history. So the Apostle Peter, in effect, defined for us two thousand years ago these two models of origins, which, by the way, we'll be debating tomorrow night, define them very well for us. Now, uh, we have a little bit of an insight here, you see. We know that the creation model is correct because the, uh, the scripture says so. We're not going to discuss the scripture tomorrow night. We're going to strictly deal with the facts of science, but we have a little bit of an advantage in, in that respect, you see. So that even though Dr. Gish and I just make a big mess of it and just, uh, get everything wrong and all like that, and that could happen because we're, we're, we're certainly fallible and subject to mistake. But even if we make mistakes, the creation model is still the true model because that's what the scripture says. And, uh, we have confidence that, uh, the world of God will ultimately give the same testimony as the word of God, once all the facts are in. Well, anyway, you see the importance of the great flood. It's not just, uh, an incidental tradition or, or myth or something of ancient history. It is, it is the great event in history which explains a great many of the phenomena that, uh, we study in the study of Earth history, especially those in the geological structure of the Earth's crust, because it is these that must have been affected profoundly by the Great Flood if it really happened. Now, let me just, before I get to the slides, if I can find it, read a couple of statements to kind of confirm that I'm not, uh, just getting this out of the air. Uh, this is from Dr. Carl Dunbar, standard textbook, Historical Geology. He says that the uprooting of the fantastic beliefs of the catastrophists, you see, the early geologists were those who did believe that the geological strata were formed by the Great Flood, but, uh, that went out about one hundred and fifty years ago. He says the uprooting of those fantastic beliefs began with the Scottish geologist James Hutton, whose theory of the Earth published in seventeen eighty five, maintained that the present is the key to the past, and that given sufficient time, processes now at work could account for all the geologic features of the globe. The present is the key to the past. Processes now at work, that is, all things that now continue, they can account for all the structures in the, in the Earth that have been formed in the past. This philosophy, which came to be known as the doctrine of uniformitarianism, demands an immensity of time. It has now gained universal acceptance among intelligent and informed people. And then he goes on in another place to say that although the comparative study of living plants and animals may give very convincing circumstantial evidence, fossils provide the only historical documentary evidence that life has evolved from simple to complex forms. Now, it's in the structures of the Earth's crust, that is the sedimentary rocks and the fossils, that we find the evidence for evolution. And these are interpreted in the framework of uniformitarianism, that is that, that rates of sedimentation as they occur today and other Earth processes can account for all these geological features. And this demands an immense amount of time, and so evolution involves an immense amount of time in a uniformitarian framework in which all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation. Now, the answer to that, you see, has to be in terms of the Great Flood, according to the Apostle Peter, and uh, we think that that is the key to the study of Earth history, that the- these great sedimentary features and the other geologic features of the Earth, uh, after the creation at least, have to be accounted for primarily in terms of the flood as well as its after effects and, and the ice age and so on that followed the flood and were essentially caused by the flood. Now, when I was going to college, mentioned today in one of the classes when I spoke on this, at the University of Minnesota, I minored in geology, and there we were taught that, uh, catastrophism was just completely out. Uniformitarianism dominated the scene at that time. Of course, that was a long time ago, but uh... in the, in recent years, there's been a real revival of catastrophism. Not on a worldwide scale, such as the Great Flood, but at least on a regional scale. All sorts of catastrophes are now talked about. Even the idea of continental drift is essentially catastrophic compared to former ideas of uniformitarianism. But, uh, still, there's a lot of resistance to this rejuvenation of catastrophism, and I thought I might just read this statement from Dr. Brown in the Journal of Geological Education, uh, B. W. Brown. He says, of late there has been a serious rejuvenation of catastrophism in geologic thought. This defies logic. If catastrophe is not a uniform process, there's no rational basis for understanding the past. He says, we must insist that the only just- justifiable key to the past is probability and the orderliness of natural process. If uniformity isn't the key, then there's no key in the rational sense, and we should all pack up our boots and go home. Well, I don't think it's that bad, but... at least he's concerned. He still wants to maintain uniformitarianism, you see. But the fact is, as further study has been devoted to the different structural formations of the Earth's crust and so on, whether it's, uh, sedimentary rocks, whether it's, uh, great Earth structures and folds and faults and, or whether it's, uh, such things as oil and coal, or evaporites or coral reefs, or any of these things, they simply will not lend themselves to explanation in terms of present processes operating at present rates. None of them will. And so more and more people, uh, we had the opportunity to talk to the US Geological Survey a couple of years ago out in Menlo Park on this subject, and the man who, uh, was in charge of the meeting, who's one of the nation's leading sedimentologists, told me afterwards that he thought we were right, that really every formation in the Earth's crust had to be explained by catastrophism. Uniformitarianism wouldn't explain anything. Of course, he didn't believe in a worldwide catastrophe, but he just bel- he he did think that all were formed by local catastrophes or regional catastrophes, and so everything that you see in the Earth's crust is a is a record of catastrophism. You may not see the intervening ages when nothing was happening, but everything you see is a catastrophe. Well, we think that we ought to go further than that and recognize that all of these separate catastrophes are really connected and continuous and interrelated, comprising finally a great complex of local catastrophes or a worldwide cataclysm. Well, I'll not, uh, labor this point anymore, but as we study the coal beds and, uh, oh, the fossil forests and everything else, you'll find that you really can't explain them in anything other than, any context other than some kind of catastrophe. Now, even recognizing this, geologists are still reluctant to go to the idea of a worldwide cataclysm. And you can understand why, because this would completely destroy the whole system of evolution. The fossil record interpreted in that uniformitarian context over long ages of time is the only real evidence for evolution. And that's, uh, why we believe that this search for Noah's Ark is important, you see, because if the ark is up there fourteen thousand feet up on Mount Ararat, as so many records and traditions and reported sightings indicate, now we don't know for sure it's there. That's, that's still a research project. We don't know it's there, and nobody knows just where to go to find it exactly. We think we know pretty well the, where it's likely to be, but nobody knows for sure. But if it is there, and if it can be ever documented that it's there, photographed in such a way that there's no doubt about it, then this will be overwhelming proof that there was a worldwide flood. It'll be a proof that, uh, just is open to everybody. Nobody can very well deny it, because the only other way an ark could get fourteen thousand feet up on Mount Ararat is for somebody to, I don't know, drop it from a spaceship or something like that, but otherwise you'd have to think in terms of a worldwide flood, and this means that there was a worldwide cataclysm, which then would mean that uniformitarianism is wrong, and Earth history must be interpreted in the context of the Great Flood, as the Bible indicates. And that's why we go to the trouble and expense and the danger of trying to, uh, confirm the existence of Noah's Ark on Mount Ararat. Now, the obvious reaction of the skeptic to this would be, well, what makes you think that the, the, that it's up there, even if it ever existed, which most of them don't even believe. Noah's Ark to most people is just a, a children's coloring book or something. So most people don't even believe it existed. It's some kind of an old tradition or myth, but, uh, even if it ever existed, how could it have been preserved up there for several thousand years? And so they're very skeptical about it. But the fact is that over the past hundred years in particular, there have been literally dozens of reported sightings of Noah's Ark up on Mount Ararat. I was pretty skeptical about it myself when I first heard it, uh, thirty years ago. But there have been many, many of these reports, and as you go back into history, you find that the ancient historians also reported it, not only in the Bible. Josephus mentioned it as being up there in his day, and so did B- Berossus, the Babylonian historian, and Marco Polo mentioned it, and many, many others, so that, uh, and the, the Armenians who lived in that vicinity until they were, uh, essentially driven out of Turkey during World War I, uh, they all had traditions that it was up there, and there was a monastery there that was devoted to this, to, to Noah, and which claimed to have remnants of the ark, the wood from the ark in the monastery and so on, all sorts of, uh, belief that the ark was up there. And beginning about a hundred years ago, there ba- began to be more and more reported sightings of the ark from many different sources, from uh, Kurdish shepherds, from Armenians, from uh, soldiers and aviators in World War I and again in World War II, from uh, geologists that flew over the area and saw it, and so on. So there are all sorts of reports, but uh, none of them are well enough documented to be convincing. That is, no one or two or three of them would be very convincing. And the only real, uh, reason why we're so convinced that it's there is because there's so many of them from so many different sources and places and times, and they all seem to concentrate on the northwest slope of the mountain at about fourteen thousand feet up in, in a, in a stationary ice cap, a part of the glacier up there. And it just seems like where there's so many reports, there must be something to it. So, in nineteen seventy one, my son, who had joined our Institute for Creation Research, went over there on a preliminary, uh, trip to get acquainted with the local officials and to make a sort of a survey of the area. Then he got an expedition together in nineteen seventy two, and they spent several weeks up on the mountain. They got permits. Uh, they didn't find the ark, but they did have some exciting experiences, and the pictures that I'll show you tonight are, are those that he took at that time primarily. Other expeditions have gone over there. Some have gone over there in recent years without permits, and they've gotten in trouble with the government and caused the government to clamp down even more rigidly than they were. So it's very, very difficult to get permission now, to even get near the mountain, let alone get on it. And of course, you can never get permission to take air- aircraft or helicopters or anything like that there, so that it's a very difficult situation, not only topographically, but politically. But, uh, we still believe that there's good evidence that it's there. And so, uh, in time, the Lord willing, why, maybe it'll be found. Well, I think it's time now to to show you the pictures, so let me have the lights out and the slides on, and I'll try to run through these fairly rapidly. This is a map of Turkey, as you recognize. The, uh, Pan-Ararat is right here, right on the edge of Russia and Iran, so it's in a very sensitive area politically. One of the reasons why it's difficult. Now Now there. there are the mountains of Ararat. If you remember, the Bible says that the ark rested on the mountains of Ararat after the flood. There are two of them, and you can see they're both volcanic cones. They are old volcanoes, they're extinct now, but they're all, they are on a very active earthquake region, and there have been volcanic explosions, and one of those in eighteen forty gouged out a tremendous gorge in the north side of the mountain, and it was after that that these reports of the ark sighting began to be, uh, coming in. So apparently that exposed a ravine in which the ark was lodged up high on the mountain. Uh, the, to give you an idea of the size here, a little bit deceptive, it may not look so big in the picture, but the, the elevation of the material in the foreground here is about three thousand feet. The elevation of little Ararat on the right, which is near the foreground, Big Ararat's way back in the background on the left. Little Ararat is thirteen thousand feet in elevation at the summit, and Big Ararat is seventeen thousand feet high. So you can see from the plain of three thousand feet up to the summit of seventeen thousand feet, it's probably the highest mountain in the world in terms of immediate distance from the toe to the summit. So it's a very impressive mountain and very difficult. It's certainly, well, it's higher than any mountain in this country except in Alaska. So it'll give you an idea of the magnitude of the job getting up to the top of it. That's a little closer view, a telephoto view. This was taken in nineteen seventy one from the south side while it was, uh, this was in October, and as you can see, and even in the early fall, the mountain is covered with snow, and it's that way most of the year. It's only in the late summer that it melts back enough to, uh, expose the fourteen thousand, fifteen thousand foot level, and sometimes it doesn't do that. This summer, the snow never did go back enough to, uh, to expose the area where the arc is believed to be located in the ice cap. There's still a closer view, and that's, that's the western slope taken from the south side, and it's on the northwest slope on the other side that the Ahora Gorge is located, and that's where we believe that the Ark is located. Well, there's the Ark. Uh, this was a, a drawing made by an artist who followed the description given by an eyewitness of the Ark. This is one of the reports. This was made at the description of an elderly Armenian who died just a couple of years ago, but before he died, he told this story. He was in this country, he'd been driven out with his family in World War I, and he told how that as a boy, he made two trips with his uncle. His uncle took him up to where the Ark was, and he said it was fairly common knowledge among his people at the time. It was difficult to get to, but they did occasionally get up there. Said his uncle took him up twice and even let him climb up in the Ark and go inside of it and see the various, uh, rooms and so on that were there. And he described it for the artist to look like this. And of course, this corresponds pretty closely to the biblical description, so it may be a pretty good, uh, representation of what it actually looks like. It projects out of the ice when the ice melts back long enough at the end of a long hot summer to expose the prow like that. Now that's the team that went over there with, from our institute in nineteen seventy two. My son John on the left was the director, the leader of the expedition. Uh, the others, the uh next one next to him is uh John Sider from the Los Angeles area, and then John Bultema from Michigan. As you can see, he's an older gentleman, but a very rugged individual, makes his living scavenging operations in the Great Lakes. And then there's Roger Losier, who was a son of missionary parents from South Africa and who had climbed Mount Kilimanjaro there a couple times, so he was an experienced mountain climber. And then Bill Ellison on the right was a member of the San Diego Mountain Rescue Squad, so that was the team. And this picture was taken not on the summit of Mount Ararat, but on the summit of Mount Hood in Oregon, where they went to get their glacier training. That's Mount Ararat from the north side in the summer of nineteen seventy two. This was in, uh, late July, and you can see that the ice cap has melted back, uh, quite a ways now. And so that's where they were going. They, the, the, uh, all their trials and tribulations getting to this point, and the way the Lord answered many prayers in such a remarkable way, is told in his, uh, story Adventure on Ararat, if anybody's interested in reading that. But we won't go into that, just, uh... Well, this is the road to Ahura. They were able to get this van and, uh, get up to a little village of Ahora, which is the, uh, up on the sort of, uh, semi up on the summit, about ten thousand feet, and it's the nearest one to, uh, Mount Ararat itself. And this is their headquarters right outside the village of Ahora, and you can see the great Ahora Gorge on the mountain back in the background. These are some of the inhabitants. These are Kurds, and if you know anything about the Kurdish people, they, they're neither Turkish nor Iraqis nor Iranians, but they're in all three of those countries, and they are generally in rebellion against all three of them. They're very rebellious sort of a people. They, their language, they're in, uh, Turkish Kurdistan anyway, is, is sort of Turkish, but it's really their own language. But John had studied Turkish for a year before going over there, and so between what Turkish he knew and they knew, he was able to communicate pretty well with them. And so they were pretty hospitable most of the time. They, they're shepherds primarily, at least in the daytime. And I read in the encyclopedia about the Kurdish people. They're very old people, been in that area for thousands of years, and according to the Encyclopedia Britannica, they're the, uh, people from whom, uh, Satan worship originated. They, they still have a form of Satan worship, and they believe in demons and jinns and so on. In fact, they believe that they, that Mount Ararat is guarded by jinns who will not allow anybody to go to the summit, and they say if anybody gets up to the summit, they'll lose their lives, and so they're afraid to go up more than about the twelve thousand foot level. They take their sheep up there in the summertime to graze, but they won't go any further. At least that was the story. Now, they're friendly most of the time, but not all of the time. That was a bullet hole in their van that resulted from a bandit attack by some of these people one night. They surrounded them and shooting bullets and so on. They were going to rob them, and uh, they were able to frighten them away with flare guns. That was the only kind of guns our team had, but at any rate, they're not always the friendliest. That was one of the problems, of course, is the, uh, is the people. And then several pictures here just of the general topography in the area. This river is flowing through a great fault that was opened up by an earthquake. Not a natural valley that was opened up by a great earthquake, and this area is subject to earthquakes, of course, quite a bit. That's not the River Euphrates, but, uh, the River Euphrates has its headwaters up on Mount Ararat, and the Tigris also very close by. It's a very old region, and this, according to the Bible, of course, was the region from which the present world population began. These are some of the volcanic strata that are around there. These are kind of tilted up, as you see, and they're that sort of thing apparently is all around there. Evidently, Vol- uh, Mount Ararat is a volcanic cone that was formed largely underwater because it's full of pillow lava, dense lava formed under high pressure, apparently underwater. But then afterwards, not all of it was formed during the flood, but maybe some of it afterwards, or at least it was uplifted later, and the whole region uplifted and tilted like this. And this is, these are probably remnants, these are volcanic rocks, probably remnants of one of the great explosions of the past. That sort of thing is all around that terrain, apparently. This is a view taken from one side of the Ahora Gorge to the other. Some of the rocks in Mount Ararat are sedimentary. Most of them are, are volcanic, but there are some sedimentary rocks, and marine fossils, by the way, right near the summit have been found. So it was all underwater at one time. This is up in the gorge itself. In fact, uh, you can see kind of in the background there's what, what might look like a thin waterfall. It's actually, uh, frozen. It's a glacier, but it's about one thousand feet high, John said. And the, then the molasses looking material in the middle is actually a glacier. It's called the Black Glacier. And the reason for the blackness is because there are continual avalanches falling down on it, especially during the summer. The whole mountain is very unstable because of all the faults and so on that have, uh, been through it, so that particularly during the summer, just almost continual avalanche activity, activity, which is another reason why it's quite difficult to climb. And the material right in the immediate foreground is also on top of the glacier. You can get an idea of the immense amount of debris that's on top of the glacier from that. So although, uh, if, and the camera, by the way, is pointing upwards, so it's a little bit deceptive as to the, uh, camera angle, but it's pointing upward and looking up towards the summit. Now there's a, a view of the Ahora Gorge in the background, and if you notice, there's a, towards the right, that, that ice cap thins out to where it's very shallow, and down immediately below that is a tributary ravine, or not a ravine, but a gorge, I guess, a clevity or whatever. Uh, and then that's called the Shehenem Dare. And John says the translation of that is something like the devil's box, something like that. And then off of that Shehenem Dare, there are a number of tributary ravines, and it was in one of these that the reports indicate that the Ark may be located, but probably in that ice up there. Again, to give you an idea of the scale, the Shehenem there is about a thousand feet high, and the thin ice cap up there at the very top there on the right, where it thins out, is about four hundred feet thick. Now, down in the, uh, foreground, getting up into the gorge, you can see a little white dot in sort of in the middle of the picture. That's a shepherd's tent. And Roger and John were exploring one day up in there while the others stayed back with the van, kind of trying to decide which would be the best way to go up. So they were up in there when they were attacked by a pack of wild dogs. These are sheep dogs that they, these uh, Kurds use to take care of their sheep, and apparently nobody can control them except their owners. And they're apparently half wolf or uh, immediately evolved descendants of wolves or something. And then, so they uh, they act much like the traditional stories, the wolves circle their prey, getting ready to drop in for the kill and so on. Well, that's what they were doing. And John and Roger said that they didn't know what, how they were going to get out of that because they didn't have any weapons. All they had were, were stones. They each had a stone, and they were afraid to throw the stones because then they wouldn't have any weapons, and so they didn't know what they were going to do. Just then the sh- the owner came up and drove the dogs off, and so he saved their lives, and as a result, they had to accept his hospitality. He invited them back to his tent up there, and he fed them some, some of his, uh, Kurdish yogurt. John said that they were sick all the next day, but, uh, they felt they had to be, be, uh, polite because of what he had done for them. And he was able to communicate a little bit with him, but as you can see, he has quite a few children, and there's several back in the tent that you can't see. Maybe you can barely see some of them. Some of them are teenage, uh, kids, and the, uh, John said he began to talk about how maybe they would make good sons-in-law, some of his daughters back there, and he, so he said as soon as he began to talk that way, they decided they couldn't understand Turkish anymore, and, uh, pretty soon were able to get away, but, uh. So that's another one of the perils on Mount Ararat. Now this photograph was not taken by our team, but rather by one of the earlier expeditions back about twenty uh five years ago, one of the search expeditions. They took a lot of pictures, telephoto views around the Ahora Gorge, and as when they came back into this country, they tried to study them in some detail, and they found this picture, and you can see that little object towards the center there, which seems to be alien to the landscape. And it looked like it just might be the ark. Again, the camera was pointing up. And so this is really quite high up in elevation. That summer, the snow line had gone way back, and so this was projecting out of the ice. You can't see the ice behind it there, except, well, maybe some of this black ice, but uh, at any rate, they thought this might be the ark, and so our team felt that they knew about where this was located, and when they got there, they would try, first of all, to find this object to see if it was indeed the ark. So that's what they were trying to locate. And this is a telephoto view taken up into the Cheyenne there, as you can see. You, you see this, that the glacier coming down through the middle of the picture. They tried to get up that glacier to, uh, get up into that area where they thought this object might be located. I think, uh, well, that's a closer view, a telephoto view of the Cheyenne there. Again, that ice cap is about four hundred feet, and the vertical drop off is about a thousand feet there below it, leading to the funnel out into the major guards down below that. Now, this is a telephoto view, and there again you see a sort of an object in the middle of the picture. Our team took this picture. That's on up, up, up towards the Cheyenne there, up in there, and they thought maybe that object might be the one they were looking for, so that's what they were trying to get up to, to, to see. But as they tried to get up that glacier, they found they couldn't do it because they were continually being, uh, forced to dodge boulders as they came bounding down the glacier. There were just avalanches all the time, and so they finally had to give it up. They just decided they'd never make it if they tried to get up that glacier, so they were going to have to go around on the outside and climb down over from the top. But they were trying to get to that object. Now, as it turned out, they weren't able to get there, but uh, they were able to find pretty well that this object that they see in this picture was not the ark, it was just a stone formation of some kind. This is the glacier, the one on the left there, Finger Glacier on the outside of the mountain. They were finally able to climb up with the idea of going down over the top into the gorge down below as they, after they got up to the top. Now they got up early one morning with that purpose, John and Roger and John Bultema, the 3 of them, the other two were, had to be back with the van. They had to leave two back there all the time to keep all the supplies, otherwise they wouldn't have lasted more than an hour or so. And it was while these fellas were back there that they were attacked by that group of bandits one night. Anyway, they started out early one morning, three o'clock in the morning, got light soon after that in that latitude and location, and took them till about mid-morning, uh, when John says that they were climbing up, he heard a whistle, and he turned to see what the whistle was, and it seemed to be, it was a, it was a boulder whistling through the air aimed at his head. He said as it went over him, he ducked and it went over him, said it looked like a Volkswagen about sixty miles an hour. I don't know how he measured that, but at any rate, that was, that was his estimate. And he said then, uh, they were subjected to a, a whole series of these as a real avalanche descended on them, and they clambered up on the side. They, they had to climb up the glacier because the, the side, the footing was so treacherous because of the, uh, crumbly rock, as John calls it, that they couldn't climb that way, but they had to clamber up there to get out of the way of the avalanche running down through the middle of the, of the glacier. They spent some time dodging rocks, but somehow they were able to avoid, uh, being hit, and finally it stopped, and so they continued. They got up to that little island up in the center as the slope steepens. This was a, oh, in the early afternoon, I guess. And as they were resting there for a little bit, they heard another whistle, and they looked to see where that was. This time, however, it was a man over on the land side of the glacier, uh, pointing a rifle at them and telling them to get off the mountain or he'd kill them. And so, uh, they argued with him. They had permits from the military commander in the area to be up there, and, but he wouldn't pay attention. He says, no, you leave or I'll shoot. Well, they'd had so many evidences that, uh, God was blessing and leading, answering prayer, and so on, that they just felt that that wasn't God's will for them to leave the mountain until they found what they were looking for. So they just decided to ignore the man, turn their backs on him, and started to climb again. And finally they looked around, he was gone, and they still don't know who he was, but at any rate, he didn't shoot him. But just about that time, the sky got dark and snow began to fall, and this was, uh, late in the summer, but nevertheless, snow began to fall, and it got to be pretty heavy. John said it looked something like this. This is not snow, these are clouds, but he said it looked like this. They weren't able to take pictures during the snowstorm because it got to be so bad. It was so heavy, wind was blowing so hard that, uh, and the snow was so thick they could hardly see their hands in front of their faces. They were roped together, but they couldn't see each other, and so they were, but there was no, nothing to do but to keep climbing. And then it began to be an electrical storm. Lightning began to flash all around them. And John said that, uh, there was so much electricity, it wasn't as though the lightning wasn't coming down out of the sky, down to the ground like lightning does. It were, they were in the sky, it was just all around them, hitting everywhere, and said that the, uh, static electricity in the air was so great. Uh, John had a little mustache, that his mustache was sticking straight out. John Baltimore's beard was sticking straight out, and, uh, their ice axes were humming, and there's electricity everywhere, and lightning striking all around them. Well, they'd been told when they had their training not to ever get under a tree in a lightning storm on the mountain, but, uh, there weren't any trees anyhow to get under, so no... there was no place to go for shelter or anything. There's nothing to do but just to keep climbing. Well, they, uh... as they continued, John Buldoma stopped to rest a moment, leaned, leaned up against a big rock, and John went over to tell him to get away because he'd seen lightning hit that rock. Just as he did that, though, lightning struck it again. John tells how it blew him down the slope, off of the ground, down through the air. He was just sailing down the mountain through the air, and said it was the strangest feeling. Said that it was just as though he were being carried. It was almost comfortable. He was being, as it were, transported down, down, uh, through the, through the air, and he was expecting just to splat any moment, and that'd be the end, but says instead of that, gradually came down tangent to the slope and just began to slide down the, the, the glacier, was able to reach out and stop his slide on a, on a projecting rock, and so he, uh, of course, thanked the Lord for, for saving him. It was almost, uh, he said he couldn't help but think of the ninety first Psalm. He shall give his angels charge over thee to keep thee in all thy ways. They shall bear thee up in their hands, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone. But then he tried to, he went to get up, and he found he couldn't get up because there was intense pain in his legs, and he found he was paralyzed from the waist down with the electricity, the lightning. Not too many people live through being struck by lightning, but, uh, and he didn't get, uh, by without being injured. He was, he was hurt, and he couldn't move, and so, uh, there's just nothing he could do. His, his equipment, his ice axe and everything had been blown away from him too, so there's nothing he could do. And so he called for one of the other men to help him. He thought he was the one that had been struck by lightning. But then when he called for John Bultema, uh, he s- he finally heard John, and and John was also helpless. He'd been leaning up against the rock, and so that was where the lightning had really struck, and John said when when the lightning struck, John Bultama said that his hands and feet were just sticking straight out from the rock with his back against the rock, glued to it. He was finally able to get his feet down to the ground, and when he did, that completed the circuit, and that blew him down the mountain too. And he also was paralyzed. He thought his leg was broken, but it was just paralyzed. He couldn't move his legs either. And so they called for Roger, and they didn't hear from Roger, and they finally saw him way down further down the mountain. He had been blown down the mountain too, and he was face down, unconscious in a pool of blood. So, uh, it just looked like that was the end. And John said, well, of course he was, they were all Christians. He was ready to meet the Lord, but, uh, he'd just soon not yet, but... And so he, but he was ready, and he was, he was praying, and he said then he got to thinking that, after all, be no purpose. God has a purpose in everything he does. There'd be no purpose in getting them up there and answering all their prayers and giving them so many evidences that he was leading and so on, and then just let them die like that without anybody even ever knowing what happened to them. So he just figured that wasn't the Lord's will, and so that gave him faith to really pray for healing and help, and he asked the Lord to help him, and he began to, uh, first thing you know, he began to get some feeling in his legs. It wasn't an instantaneous thing, but, um, at any rate, after a little while, he was able to, uh, to move around a little bit. He still couldn't really walk, but just about that time, Roger regained consciousness. And Roger got up, and he wasn't paralyzed. He could move around, but, uh, he was in all of his, uh, coats and all had been blown away from him. He was very cold and in a state of amnesic shock, so that he didn't know, uh, what he was doing there, even who he was. John called to him, and he came up near him, but he wouldn't come close to him because he was afraid of him. He didn't know who he was and what he was doing there, didn't even like him, he said. But finally, John said he was able to persuade Roger to go get his ice axe, which he could see down the mountain a bit, and bring it to him, kind of toss it to him, and with, with the help of his ice axe, he was able to prop himself up and get up and then go help John Baltimore up, and the, and the two of them then were able to get, uh, Roger's heavy clothing back, his coat, and put that on him and get him warm. And the, and the two of them then were able to get, uh, Roger's heavy clothing back, his coat, and put that on him and get him warm. And when they did that, his, uh, memory or his, uh, consciousness returned, and he was okay other than that, so he could kind of take charge in and help the two of them continue. The storm was still going on, but, uh, so they started up again, and they finally got up to the summit. And the, uh, John said it was just really wonderful at when they got to the summit, they were just about completely exhausted. They just couldn't go any further, but just as they got there, the storm stopped and the sun broke through, and everything was beautiful. And so they sat down and had a time of thanksgiving and prayer, and said they had, they sang hymns, and it was just a wonderful time of fellowship and, and uh, and joy. And they were able to recover some of their food and so on, and uh, have a, have a meal and pitch their tent. And they spent the night there up on near the summit, that's the tent. Uh, it's not actually on the summit, but it's right near this, uh, sum- or the guard, the Cheyenne Dare gorge, overlooking that. The summit itself is over in the background on the right. And that's looking down the next morning where they'd come up from, and you can see the black line near the sum- uh, top of the picture there, that's the river Araxes on the border of Russia, back in the background. And they say that as you're up there, you can see the lights from the military installations in the, in the Russian city across the, uh, border. So you can understand why the Russians don't take, uh, very kindly to having Americans over there with cameras and, uh, surveying equipment and so on. It's very difficult to get permits for that, uh, reason. That's the rock that, uh, where John Baltimore was leaning against when the lightning struck. They went down the next morning, took this picture of it with Roger there. Said, as far as they knew, it didn't have a name, so they christened it Zap Rock. That's John the next morning there with the tent. And there he is, uh, roped up in order because that that's right on the edge of the gorge, and he said that every once in a while a part of that would cave off and crumble down into the ravine below, and so he roped himself up, and he felt that all he'd have to do after all they'd been through, that the devil was just trying to keep him from seeing the ark, and all he'd have to do would be get up next morning and go over and look around, there it'd be. But he said that we went over there and it just wasn't there, and he, they spent most of the day with their binoculars and cameras, uh, searching all that area, trying to find it, and, uh, they couldn't find it, didn't see any sign of it. And if it was down in that, uh, Cheyenne Dare in any of those gorges or anything, as they thought it, had thought it might be, they said they finally had to come to the conclusion that it couldn't be there because if it had been there, it would long since have been destroyed. This was such an unstable region, and, uh, everything is just continually falling off, and said besides that, nobody would ever been able to get up to the ark if he'd been down there. Many of the, of the stories and reports indicated people had gone up there, made measurements and so on. So, uh, he decided it couldn't be there. It'd have to be up in the ice cap still, and the ice just hadn't melted back enough for them to see it. That's looking across to the other side. You can get an idea of the way it looks. That's, that's that same ice cap, four hundred feet thick, and then the about the vertical drop off, and then funneling off down below. That's the funnel towards the bottom. This is looking straight down where he was standing. Uh, so they turned their attention up into the ice cap, and they felt that it would have to be up in there somewhere. And this is not the summit, but the summit is just a little beyond that on the right. But there was no point in going to the summit of the mountain. Many other people have climbed to the summit, not many, but some, and particularly from the south side, it's fairly easy to do, although not from this side it isn't. But, uh, none of the reports indicated that the ark was at the summit. This was where they were looking, so they felt... these are just some pictures of the scenery up there. They felt that it would have to be someplace where the ice cap was stationary. If it, if we're in the moving part of the glacier, and all year long, all the time, there is a permanent ice cap up there, so it would have to be in a part of the ice cap that was stationary, and also one that would occasionally melt back to expose the prow to fit all the stories. If it were not, if it were in the moving glacier, it would have been destroyed. Now, some possibility exists that some parts of the arc have been sheared off and carried to other locations. Some of the reports of wood that have been brought back, and some of the wood itself has been brought back, are from a different location further down, which might have been carried by the glacier downslope. But if the, the main part of the arc would probably have to be up in the stationary part of the ice pack, and he thought this might be a, a possible location because it was stationary here. And of course, this was several hundred feet thick, so the arc could have been down below their feet for all they, they knew. This is another location where it might be. Now, this is looking over the area where the French contractor Navarra found the wood. He would, he made two trips, several trips up there, but on two occasions brought back pieces of wood, which he said that had been cut off of a projecting timber at the bottom of a crevasse, and he said he could see, uh, um, more wood back inside, in the shadow of it at least, and the timber. This is the same location, the Paro Glacier. It's further down the slope. And this is some of the wood that he brought back. Now, this is the wood that has been, uh, widely publicized as being part of the ark. And it may be, uh, nobody knows for sure until we actually find the ark to see for sure. It might be something else, but it looks like it could be. It looks like it's a structural timber that's been hand, uh, tooled. This was the one that was dated by radiocarbon dating labs in Europe and America. Some of the labs indicated it was five thousand years old, some of them two thousand, some of them still less. I remember several years ago, about eight years ago, when I was still in Virginia, they, they called me, the search team that got this, asked me how come they were getting different values for their radiocarbon dates of the wood. I said, well, that just goes to show that radiocarbon dating isn't very reliable. You get the different dates for the same wood from different labs. But, uh, at any rate, the... the question of whether or not that is really part of the ark cannot be settled, of course, until we find the ark. May well be, though. There have been other reports of wood found up there. I talked to Dr. Knight, Hardwick Knight, an archaeologist down in New Zealand several years ago when I was there. He had been one of the men who back soon after World War II, had been crossing Mount Ararat, and this was a time when the glacier had melted back quite a bit, and it was just a big soggy mass of ice, and he ran across a big field of structural timbers. And he, he said they weren't all intact. It looked like he thought maybe part of a medieval gun carriage or something. Wasn't until later he began to think that that was part of the ark, but uh, at any rate, he did find these structural timbers up there, way up at the fourteen thousand foot. Or no, I guess that was about twelve thousand foot level that he found them. But, uh, there may be something to that. Well, this is another, they right about then, he said, another snowstorm began to come up, and they were out of their food anyway, so they went back down. And when they got back down, this was the time they found that the other group had been, uh, attacked by these bandits. And in the meantime, they had joined up with, uh, Mr. Cummings and, uh, Dr. Montgomery, who were, who was with the Cummings at that time, and they, they worked together for a little while, but then they separated again. And John, um, and John Bultema, the two of them that had been injured by the lightning, stayed down this time and sent the other three up to continue their explorations in those areas where they thought the arc might be located, after giving an- hopefully another couple of days of melting. So, uh, they went up, but that time, the second night out, they were attacked again by bandits. This time, however, the bandits did not frighten off, and they, uh, routed them out of their tent. This was at night. They were undressed in their sleeping bags, just in underwear, and, and they, the men took their bag, their sleeping bags, all their equipment, their tent, and everything. So they just left them up there, and there was nothing to do but to go back down the mountain. So, uh, they had to abandon the expedition at that point because takes, you have to have three people roped together on the glacier, and three sets of equipment were gone now, and only two left, and so they had to abandon it. But in the meantime, John and John Bultema wanted to do some further archaeological study in the area because there were many reports of very interesting archaeological sites. So that's what they did while that was going on. And this is one of them on the south side of the mountain near the little village of Dogabiazet, high up on the slope there, you see that cave or whatever it is. That's a vertical wall there, but they were able to climb up and get up into there. Now, this is a very old, uh, cave or whatever, and there are reports of it. You can find them in old books going way back, and the people in the area say that that's a pre-Hittite cave. Now, you know something about the Hittite Empire, I guess, which ruled Turkey for a long time, way back in the time of Abraham even, and before that. So if it was pre-Hittite, it's pre-Abraham, and that's what the people claim it is. And, uh, here's a closer view, and you can see on the two sides, uh, two figures of what look like, uh, well, some might call them interplanetary astronauts or something, but, uh, what they really are is priests with priestly mitres and headdresses and, uh, and robes. And the one on the left is stretching out his arms, and only the little remnants of the legs of the sacrifice, sacrificial animal is left. Older pictures show the full animal that have been, that were published back in the Middle Ages. So this is a picture of two men offering a sacrifice, apparently, or, or carving, rather. And it, you can't help but think of the story of how Noah offered sacrifices after the flood. But whether that's what it represents, of course, we don't know, but the remarkable thing is that this is a very old site, and archaeologists, of course, have found Turkey a, a mine of archaeological treasure, and they've been explored all around Turkey, but not this area. For some reason, they've almost left the Ararat area completely alone. And that's an amazing thing, because Mount Ararat is the place which would have the oldest records of human civilization if the biblical record is true, that would be the place where people first lived. So you'd think that they would explore that, but they just haven't, and this cave, although it's been there for a long time, apparently hasn't been explored. They, uh, went inside, and this is a flash picture inside. They didn't have anything but just the flash camera and no other equipment. And you can see this is looking down a stairwell. You can see the columns there that used to support the stairs going down, but all the debris filling it up, nobody's taking the trouble to clear out the debris or find what's down there. The following summer, they went back and weren't able to get permits to climb the mountain, so they spent the time doing archaeological study, and they were able to find another entrance to the, to that cave that nobody had found before and were able to get in it. And these pictures are some of those that were taken inside this, this very old, uh, cavern or whatever it is. John said there was evidence on the walls that there had been at one time, uh, white plastering with the carvings on it, but most of this had been eroded away and was just part of the debris. And there were many rooms and tunnels and, uh, hallways and so on. And this is right at the very end of it, as far as they would could go. John is not standing up there, he's on his stomach because the debris is almost gotten up to the ceiling. Well, that would be a, a, I'm sure a very fruitful location for archaeologists to go in there with, uh, excavation equipment and dig that out and see what's there. I think you would find some very interesting things they did, and hopefully we'll be able to do that someday, if we ever get the funds and permits and so on. This is another one. This is on the western side. This is a very old, uh, what looks like an altar. Now, this had been found back, uh, in World War I by Colonel Kure, who was the commander of the Russian military unit that apparently went into the Ark. Remember the story how the Russian aviators saw the Ark from the airplane, and then the, uh, they sent a delegation of soldiers up there, and they found it and went in it and measured it and so on, but then they took the report back to Moscow, got there just the day before the Russian Revolution, and so whatever happened to the report, nobody knows. At least this is the story. Now, we don't know whether that's all true or not, but Colonel Kour, we did meet him, and I talked with him myself. He died about three years ago, and he was a commander. He wasn't on the trip up to Mount Ararat, but he he he was a commander when they took it up there, and he said he knew that they had found it, and uh, he himself was a sort of an amateur archaeologist, so he spent his time exploring the area, and he found this altar and some of the inscriptions on it. But since that time, nobody much had seen it, as far as we know. It's very far back, but they were finally able to locate it, and uh, it looks like an old altar. This is a closer view, and you see, uh, down in the foreground, this stone with the eight crosses on it, and you can't help but wonder what that is. A closer view of these crosses. These are not Christian crosses. The cross as a religious symbol, of course, goes way back before the time of Christ, and they tell us that these are Sumerian crosses. Now, we don't know what that is, but you can't help but wonder and think about possibilities and, uh, speculate. And it is true that many of the old Armenian names for the topographical sites and the towns in that vicinity have names that are associated with the number eight. And the, the Armenian people say that the reason why that is, they, they believe that they're the direct descendants of Noah, and that they've lived there ever since that time, and so the reason why the number eight was used because there were eight survivors of the flood. Noah and his wife and three sons and three wives. But then there's another very intriguing possibility too, and this is sheer speculation, so don't take it as anything but that. But, uh, one of the old apocryphal books, I think it's the Book of Jubilees. I have this, but, uh, there are several of these, and I forget, I keep forgetting which one it is, but anyway, I think that's it. Anyway, it t- it has quite a bit to d- to tell about the world before the flood. And among other things it says, now this is apocryphal and probably not historical, but there may be some historical tradition associated with it that might be valid. At any rate, one of the things it says was that when God told Noah to build the ark and to go on the ark with his family and all, one of the things he said was to take the body of Adam and not let it be destroyed by the flood. Adam had been, had died, of course, and been buried, presumably. And so, according to the record there in the Book of Jubilees, Noah took Adam's coffin on the ark so that it could be, be re- reburied after the flood. Well, if he took Adam's body, it would be reasonable he would also take that of Seth and Enos and the other antediluvian patriarchs in the line leading down to Noah, because these were the great eight preachers of righteousness that Peter mentions in Second Peter chapter two. And you see, there were ten patriarchs before the flood, but two of those, Noah and Enoch, didn't die before the flood. Eight of them did, so there would be eight men to transport across the, uh, waters on the, on the ark. Well, so it may be that that's what the number eight represents, but as I say, that's just speculation. And if you think of a better speculation, well, at any rate, here are eight crosses, whatever that represents, and they're very old. They also found other rocks with inscriptions. Here's a closer view of, of that, and nobody can read that so far as we've been able to find. Colonel Tour had some of these translated at the University of Chicago back in his day, and he said that they said that this was a story of the flood. But we've had this taken to UCLA and University of Chicago and other places where they're specialists in these Ugaritics and Semitics and so on. And the people there tell us that it's very interesting, and they'd like to know what it says, but they can't read it. They say it's some kind of a intermediate script between cuneiform and hieroglyphics. At any rate, it's very old and pre-Hittite, and be nice if we could read what that says. They found a number of these too that seem to be, uh, basins for maybe priests to wash their hands or something before offering the sacrifices around the altar. Here's another ruin not too far away, similar construction, definitely some old temple or shrine or something. There's a closer view of some of the, uh, construction. You see how they fit the rocks together and all. And here's some of this same type of, uh, writing or whatever it is again on that. Well, there are many other very fascinating archaeological sites in the area that even if we don't ever find the ark, it would be very interesting to explore some of these and try to determine who really lived there in those very early ages before the Hittite, what their culture might have been, and so on. This is the satellite picture that was publicized several years ago, a couple years ago, which supposedly showed the ark on Mount Ararat. We were able to get the photograph finally, and there it is. And maybe you can see the ark. It's a little bit hard to distinguish. Uh, this is Mount Ararat right there. And by blowing that up and magnifying it, uh, people say they can see an object which is alien to the, uh, topography, but it's kind of doubtful. However, it's quite possible that such ti- uh, satellite photography like this, it is known that it's possible to take pictures with infrared equipment or even just photographic equipment, which have good enough resolution to show an object that size, if it were there. But, and we have various contacts and so on in the government agencies, and uh, many of them say that it's quite possible that pictures do exist of the Ark, but the trouble is they're all classified, and so far we haven't been able to, to get them, get access to them, if they exist. So it still remains uncertain. Well, there's the mountains again. Uh, that's the way they look now, I guess. There's that, uh, telephoto view again. Uh, uh, one woman, when she saw this picture, said, well, you could see the jinn up there guarding that mountain, like they said. Maybe you can see it. At any rate, it did seem like our, our group, uh, were being continually thwarted by Satan, but at the same time providentially helped and delivered by the Lord, and there's a spiritual battle as well as physical difficulties, apparently, in finding the ark, just as there is in anything else in the Lord's work. But someday, I think that's all the, uh, picture so we can have the lights again. We feel this way, that the evidence exists that the ark is there. We can't be sure, either yes or no, until it's a- until we're actually able to get up there and really make a thorough search. They were able to find a lot of places where it wasn't and eliminate a lot of possibilities. But, uh, we don't know for sure that it's there. But all the evidence indicates that it is, and if it is there, as the evidence indicates, then you'd have to say that it must have been providentially preserved, because otherwise the glaciers and the avalanches and the earthquakes and so on, and just the process of decay would have long since eliminated it. But all the evidence indicates it's there, and if it is there, therefore God must have kept it there. And if he has kept it there, God doesn't do anything capriciously, he must have a reason for it. So what could be the reason why he's kept it? Well, if you can think of a better one, okay, but the only one I can think of is that he's preserved it to be a testimony in the last days. Now, if it is found, I've already indicated something of the tremendous impact it would have on the scientific world as well as on the religious world. It would certainly confirm the story of the Ark. It wouldn't be a children's coloring book anymore. It would be a real event of history, and it would have a profound impact. Of course, the confirmed skeptic would find some way to explain it away, no doubt, but it it wouldn't be easy to do, and most people, I think, would be profoundly impressed, and many people who would like to believe in the truth of God's word and the truth of creation and his coming and all the rest, but who have been intimidated from it because they have felt that the weight of scientific and scholarly opinion was all against them. Uh, now I think that that would be the means of, of, uh, satisfying many, many people, and it would be a great evangelistic impact as well. Well, at any rate, it would, it would be appropriate for God to, to reveal that as one last sign before the coming of the Lord. I don't know, that's just a thought. You can't help but think, though, of the scripture which says, in fact, the Lord Jesus said in Luke seventeen, as it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be in the days of the coming of the Son of Man. They were eating and drinking and marrying and giving in marriage until the day that Noah and his family entered into the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all. Well, one day in the past, the world was destroyed by water. Peter says that the world that then was overflowed with water perished. But he also says the heavens and the earth which are now are reserved unto fire, and someday the heavens and the earth which are now are going to be destroyed by fire. The elements are going to melt with fervent heat, and the earth also and the works therein are going to burn up, it says down in two Peter three ten. And he's going to make this whole earth new again at the time of his second coming. I won't go into all the details of eschatology there, but, uh, somewhere along that line, while this old earth is going to be subjected to a purging fire and all the age-long effects of the curse, all the evidence of death, the fossils and so on are going to be burned out of it. God's going to make it new again, and we, according to his promise, as Peter says in two Peter three thirteen, look for a new heavens and a new earth wherein dwell righteousness, and that one will last forever. There's another verse in Hebrews eleven six which says, by faith Noah, no, eleven seven, I guess it is. By faith Noah, being warned of God of things never seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house, whereby he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness which is by faith. He prepared an ark to the saving of his house. Not only he was saved, but his family was. God says, Noah, because you've been obedient before me in this generation, you come and all your family into the ark. And he did, and they were spared. Well, he prepared that ark not only to the saving of his house, but to the condemn- condemnation of the world. And as it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be in the days of the Son of Man. So it just may be that as the ark was a condemnation of the world in the days of Noah, maybe it will again condemn the unbelieving world in the days of the coming of the Son of Man. That's speculation. You can accept it or reject it, whatever it's worth. It'd be appropriate. God might just do such a thing as that. But you see, if it is there and if it is going to be revealed in God's good time, in order for it to be revealed, somebody's got to be there for him to reveal it to. So that's why we feel like we've got to keep trying, even though it is dangerous and expensive and difficult to do. Either we don't care who finds it, whether it's us or one of the other groups, just as long as somebody is there when it's God's time to make it known to the world. So that's the story of the search for Noah's Ark. Any questions? Yes. Her question had to do with other flood traditions, and of course there are scores, more likely hundreds, of flood traditions around the world. And usually the explanation is that although they s- they think that some of them might have just been, uh, stories that missionaries brought as they carried the gospel to other lands, but it is strange that these people would have stories of the great flood in their traditions and not about the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ. If missionaries went to other lands, they'd sure tell about that, and they ought to remember that, but what they remember is the flood. My son-in-law and daughter are missionaries in New Guinea, about far back as you can go, way back in the interior of New Guinea, with a primitive tribe, doesn't even have a written language. That's one of the things they're doing, they're linguists trying to, to get the, uh, get their language and then give them the Bible. And they were, they found that they have a story of the flood in their traditions, and it's similar in many respects to the story of the Bi- in the Bible, although it's different too in many respects. And that's true with all these different stories. They all have certain similarities to the Bible, so many similarities as to indicate that they do have a common source, but differences, such differences as to indicate that, that they've been separated from that common source for a long, long time. But it is true that you find these records all over the world, and the only real explanation is that all of the different tribes and people of the world have a common source. Now, of course, you could still say that, although maybe they all came from the common source, it was because all of the tribes and peoples around the world all came from a common source back in Babylon or somewhere, and without there being a worldwide flood. But that won't, uh, check because by the standard methods of dating and and whatnot, there have been people in all parts of the world, uh, many thousands of years before any reasonable date for the flood. So I think that's a real good point. The the ev- the universal evidence of flood traditions is a strong evidence that, that there was a worldwide flood, and that all mankind has come from the same ancestry not too long ago. Yes. When are you planning on going back up? We have the expedition ready to go, have the equipment, the personnel. What we don't have is the permits. Have, as I say, some groups have gone in the last couple of years without permits and got in all kinds of trouble and made it very, very difficult for anybody else. So we don't know, we just, but it does seem to be easing off a little this year, and one group did get a permit to go this summer, apparently, but it wasn't a good summer to go because the ice was too far down. Well, you've been very patient. I think probably we better not prolong this any further, so thank you very much, Dave.