Was Noah's flood really worldwide?

Christians genuinely disagree here—it's worth knowing the honest range of views rather than expecting one settled answer.

Some Christians read Genesis's language—"all the high mountains under the whole sky were covered" (Genesis 7:19)—as describing a literal, global flood covering the entire planet.

Others, often called "local flood" readers, point out that Hebrew phrases like "all the earth" are used elsewhere in the Bible to mean "everywhere within someone's experience," not literally the whole globe. On this view, the flood was real and catastrophic for everyone it affected—wiping out the known world of the biblical writers—without requiring simultaneous global geology.

Mainstream geology has found no evidence of a single flood covering the entire globe at once. Christians who hold a global flood generally respond by questioning standard dating methods; Christians who hold a regional flood see the scientific evidence as fitting Scripture read differently. Both positions are held by serious, Bible-believing Christians.