Genesis 8:1-5
God remembered Noah, all the animals, and all the livestock that were with him in the ship; and God made a wind to pass over the earth. The waters subsided. The deep’s fountains and the sky’s windows were also stopped, and the rain from the sky was restrained. The waters receded from the earth continually. After the end of one hundred fifty days the waters decreased. The ship rested in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on Ararat’s mountains. The waters receded continually until the tenth month. In the tenth month, on the first day of the month, the tops of the mountains were seen.
It is amazing to me that the Bible mentions several sources of water for the flood: “the deep’s fountains,” “the sky’s windows,” and “rain from the sky.” Perhaps rain and the “sky’s windows” were the same, but perhaps they weren’t. Some uniformitarian scientists believe that there wasn’t enough water on the earth to cover it, but it sounds to me like not all of the water came from the earth.
It could also be that some of the water was taken off of the earth after the flood by whatever is meant by the “wind” that passed “over the earth.” The point is that God is capable of doing anything whether it be natural or supernatural.
It sounds strange in my culture to say that God remembered something. When the Bible says that God remembers something, it doesn’t mean that God ever forgets, or that something left his mind temporarily. I am told that this is just a Hebrew saying for the fact that God turned the focus of His attention back toward something. God always knows everything all the time, so His remembering isn’t like ours. It is amazing what God does for us that we don’t deserve. If I had been in that ship, I think I would have been pretty scared and remembered that I was a sinner just like the ones that were just destroyed. The fact that God would turn His attention toward me, makes me realize that God is the kind of God that gives people what they don’t deserve. As a part of Noah’s family, God was having grace on us by saving them.
The water took a little while to recede. This is probably when many of the earth’s massive flood-carved structures we see today were created. Even at very high altitudes, there is flood evidence. We read that this didn’t take millions of years. It only took months for the mountain tops to be visible again.