Also, a bottle of anointing oil, blended with olive oil from the Holy Land will be given free of charge.

Martyn Bradbury, posting on the Daily Blog, has some questions about it all.

P.S. The small print says the Ark is a replica. Read more

Johan Huibers' Biblical boat complete with wooden animals, was constructed four years ago at the cost of nearly $1.6million (over £1million), and is currently a popular attraction in Dordrecht, south of Amsterdam.

It is estimated that the cost of sailing the vessel 5,000 miles across the Atlantic Ocean in time for the sporting event would be around $1.97million (£1.36million), according to a California non-profit organisation set up to help the determined Huibers realise his latest goal. Read More

Then you need to be quick to bag yourself a house, garden, chapel, wooden ark and panoramic views of Christchurch's coastline.

A nearly 3-hectare section on Clifton Hill had proved to be a "tough sale" for the past couple of years, Harcourts agent Joy Butel said, but the property's luck may be about to change.

A "major Christchurch property player" had expressed serious interest in the iconic section. Continue reading

Robert Ballard, who discovered the wreck of the Titanic in 1985, said his evidence of the flood in Genesis comes from the depths of the Black Sea off the coast of Turkey.

He and his team were investigating a controversial theory, proposed by two Columbia University scientists, that the Black Sea was once an isolated freshwater lake surrounded by farmland — until it was flooded by an enormous wall of water from the rising Mediterranean Sea.

Four hundred feet below the surface, the team unearthed an ancient shoreline, proof to Ballard that a catastrophic event did happen in the Black Sea.

By carbon dating shells found along the shoreline, Ballard said he believes they have established a timeline for that catastrophic event, which he estimates happened around 5000 BC. Some experts believe this was around the time when Noah's flood could have occurred.

"It probably was a bad day," Ballard said. "At some magic moment, it broke through and flooded this place violently, and a lot of real estate, 150,000 square kilometers of land, went under."

In the Netherlands, John Huibers spent three years building a replica of Noah's ark exactly as outlined in Genesis.

The vessel — 427 feet long, 95 feet wide and 75 feet high — now floats in the waters of Dordrecht, just south of Rotterdam, and is receiving up to 3000 visitors a day.

Inside, visitors can find a virtual petting zoo of a variety of domestic animals, including horses, sheep, dogs, rabbits and birds. In the absence of more dangerous animals, such as alligators and lions, or other creatures that Huibers was not able to obtain for the display, plastic models stand in their place.

Huibers says the ark serves a serious purpose. "We want to tell people about God," he says. "We wanted to build something that can help explain the Bible in real terms."

Sources:

ABC News

Christian Post

Christian News

Image: Brian Banmiller