Documentary
2024 / 110 minutes
RATING: 7/10

The Ark and the Darkness starts off with a bang, with the opening credits showcasing what the world might have looked like as the Flood’s waters rose. The most haunting image is the last one, of a wolf bounding up a rocky terrain, trying to find somewhere high enough to escape the rising seas.

Then the experts arrive to present the problem this documentary will answer: that the Church is embarrassed by the Flood. It’s a Bible passage too often ignored or even rejected because many Christians think Science has disproven it. The implications go far beyond these few chapters because if someone chooses Science over the Bible here, where does it stop? What about when Science proclaims we evolved? Or that death came before  Man ever showed up? Shucks, we now even have Science tellings us guys can become girls. And the kicker is, Science also tells us that the dead don’t rise. So if Science is your ultimate guide to what’s true, then your Savior did not rise, and your faith is futile (1 Cor. 15:17). So, as Dr. John Sanford puts it, “What is at stake is, Heaven or Hell.”

But what if God’s infallible unerring eyewitness account is your guide? What The Ark and the Darkness sets out to show is that the Bible is trustworthy, and that ideology blinds the scientists who say otherwise. There is more than the secular way to do Science, and the facts as this documentary lays them out, one after another, fit well with the Bible’s Flood account. Those with eyes to see will be amazed at what Science really says when it isn’t being twisted towards godless ends.

What’s most striking in the film are several short CGI scenes involving the Flood, but the real value is in what the experts are saying. Some of the evidences they present for the Flood include:

• Polystrate fossils – Some fossilized trees extend upwards right through strata that is said to have been laid down over millions of years. But if it really took that long for the layers to build up and bury the tree, the tree would have rotted away long before. The better explanation is that these layers were put down rapidly over a short period of time during the Flood
• Bended and folded rock layers representing millions of years – Rocks don’t bend; they shatter. So these layers must have still been soft when they were bent, which again doesn’t make sense if they were laid down over millions of years. It does make sense if they were laid down rapidly.
• Elastic tissue in dinosaur fossils – Recently, soft tissue has been found in dinosaurs that are supposed to be millions of years old. That doesn’t make sense. It does make sense if the dinosaur tissue isn’t nearly that old.
• Hundreds of Flood traditions around the world – You’d expect an event that reduced the planet to just one family to be talked about and passed on to their children and children’s children. And it was: there are worldwide flood traditions in cultures around the world. Lots of things get changed, but the gist isl there.

That’s just the tip of what they tackle.

Caution

There are a couple of cautions, both of which involve talking with too much certainty.

Caution #1 comes right at the end of the film. At around the 95 minute mark, three minutes are taken to lay out a dispensational take on the Earth’s last days. It’s presented as if that’s the one official Christian take on the end of the Earth, and it most certainly is not. The film then ends with a gospel presentation which is done well but seems targeted to any non-Christians who might be watching, and I just don’t think too many non-Christians are going to be watching a documentary about the Flood. So if yours is an all-Christian audience, then you may as well stop it at 95 minutes to get the group discussion going a little sooner.

A bigger caution concerns that number of times variations of the phrase “…exactly as the Bible suggests…” pops up. The word “exactly” is the problem here, because it gives the impression that we know it happened just so. The followup “suggests” takes back that certainty, while still leaving the same impression. We know, for certain, that God created in 6 days. We know, for certain, that the waters covered the Earth. But what went down under the Flood waters? Well, here’s a really interesting film exploring all that might have happened. These researchers provide all sorts of compelling reasons to believe that they may be on to something with their theories of how the Flood mechanics might have taken place. But there are variations on this general theme that might have happened instead. So… a little more humility would have helped things, with more “might haves”s instead of “exactly”s.

There’s some irony here, because talking too confidently is largely the sin they are trying to correct – the world’s secular scientists speak as if they know this and know that, when what they are really doing is taking more and less informed guesses.

Conclusion

The picture on the promotional material of a drowning dinosaur had me wondering whether this would be an amazing CGI visual treat showing the Flood liked we’d never seen it before. Turns out, there is a little bit of that, but this is a telling film with all sorts of experts chiming in. That makes this a wonderful resource for anyone who wants to know how the Flood might have, in geological terms, manifested.

But it also means this isn’t really a family movie night sort of show. Too many talking heads.

You can watch it for free below, though with commercial breaks. I like free, but there really are a lot of commercial breaks, so renting or buying it on DVD could be the better option. Find more about that commercial-free experience at GenesisApologetics.com/ark.