Johan’s Ark

Posted by Jesus on May 1, 2007

You know I’m not generally inclined to discuss matters outside of the USA because most of my followers live in the good ol’ Red, White and Blue. Today is one of those rare occasions where a story from a far off and perhaps even fantasy land has caught my attention. A man in Holland, Johan Huibers, has crafted an Ark. It’s a lot like the one Noah built a while back. Matter of fact it’s eerily close to the one Noah put together. I’m not completely sure yet, but I think this might end up being another one of Dad’s practical jokes.

But even if it’s not you’ve got yourself one heck of a boat over there in Holland. It’s big enough to fit a whole zoo full of paired animals, though it’s not really anywhere so large as Noah’s original monstrosity. It’s kind of a scale model, really. The fact is that Noah’s boat was so darn huge – I mean you have to remember, both Dad and I were kind of feeling the whole human-to-almighty interaction thing out, we didn’t know yet how gentle a hand to use with you people – in any case, Noah’s boat was several orders of magnitude larger than it needed to be after Dad got done “helping” him along. There’s no way anybody today could build as big a boat as Noah’s was originally. The whole thing is still the centerpiece of our Museum of All Creation and Art right off the main stretch of Heaven Avenue in Heaven City. We were originally intending to leave it there for you to find and use as proof of our existence, but you would’ve been able to see it looming over Sicily from most of Europe, so it got brought up here instead.

From the article:

Life-size models of giraffes, elephants, lions, crocodiles, zebras, bison and other animals greet visitors as they arrive in the main hold.

“The design is by my wife, Bianca,” Huibers said. “She didn’t really want me to do this at all, but she said if you’re going to anyway, it should look like this.”

A contractor by trade, Huibers built the ark of cedar and pine — biblical scholars debate exactly what the wood used by Noah would have been.

Huibers did the work mostly with his own hands, using modern tools and occasional help from his son Roy. Construction began in May 2005.

Noah built his primarily out of pine, but he used a few different things. There were some trees before the flood that didn’t come back after. They were huge, looming things, miles tall and sitting on bases the size of entire football fields or smallish Wal-Marts. After Noah went overboard with his build Dad culled the rest of the big trees to keep you all from constructing a humongous crossbow, His only weakness. Don’t tell Him I told you that though, ok?

More from the article:

In fact, Noah’s Ark as described in the Bible was five times larger than Johan’s Ark.

But that still leaves enough space near the keel for a 50-seat film theater, where kids can watch the segment of the Disney film “Fantasia” that tells the story of Noah.

Another exhibit shows water cascading down on a model of the ark. Exhibits on the third level show ancient tools and old-fashioned barrels, exotic stuffed animals, and a wax model of an exhausted Noah reclining on a bed in the forecastle.

Genesis says Noah kept seven pairs of most domesticated animals and one breeding pair of all other creatures, plus his wife, three sons and three daughters-in-law together on the boat for almost a year while the world was deluged.

As mentioned previously, Noah’s boat was way more than five times bigger than this one. If the one Johan here built was a little Bass Boat skimming across the water at Lake Fork, Noah’s boat would be West Virginia. The size differential is so enormous that if we’d left the original Ark there all who saw it would likely die of confusion.

What Noah didn’t have was a 50-seat theater or a wax museum or pretty little waterfalls. He and I have often talked about what he would have wanted, if he could have taken any one thing on the Ark with him besides his family and the zillion animals. In every case, no matter how I frame the circumstances, Noah wants slaves. Managing the feeding and waste removal for an Ark the size of every shopping mall in the Northern Hemisphere combined was serious work for the handful of people on board. Even with an operation of several hundred slaves there would have been mass animal casualties. The few species you have on Earth now are those which were resilient enough to go days or weeks at a time without food, eat one another in the worst of times, and sit through an entire flood in their own poo. You can count yourselves lucky that you don’t have to deal with some of the animals which didn’t make it.

More from the article:

Under sunny skies Saturday, Huibers said he wasn’t worried about another biblical flood, since according to Genesis, the rainbow is the sign of God’s promise never to flood the world again. But he does worry that recent events such as the flooding of New Orleans could be seen as a portent of the end of time.

Huibers said he hopes the project will renew interest in Christianity in the Netherlands, where churchgoing has fallen dramatically in the past 50 years. He also plans to visit major cities in Belgium and Germany.

Let’s be clear on something. The rainbow was a sign of two things. First, it signified the end of the flood. Second, it was a sign of Dad’s promise that the world would never be flooded in that same manner again. If He wanted to flood the world in pasta or cover the planet in brake fluid He could, and Genesis would still be right. And we’ve talked about flooding such as that in New Orleans already – it’s indeed a sign, and it very well might mean that it’s time to start putting your own little Ark together. I mean, as long as it’s your intention to run from the best thing that could ever happen to you.

In any case, I just wanted to recognize this really cool Ark model built over in Holland today, and to point out that there are still Creationists who try to push the envelope. This is the kind of thing which we need to see more often, too. When are some of you finally going to start up the sacrifices again? How about bringing back slavery, like Noah keeps on suggesting? How long is it going to take for Creationists to move past Genesis and into Leviticus and Deuteronomy and start managing their own lives in the real, Creationist sense? Where’s the stoning of children, the silence of women, and preteen marriage? I’m just saying, you know, here’s a fellow who went out of his way to build an Ark, what have you done lately?

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