DWDP - Gen 8 : 4 The Search for the Ark

A single verse in Genesis launches a century-spanning adventure: did Noah’s Ark truly rest on the mountains of Ararat, and can it be found today? We trace the trail from ancient testimony to modern expeditions, weighing bold claims, failed climbs, and famous controversies along the way. From Josephus and Chrysostom to Frederick Parrot, James Bryce, and astronaut James Irwin, the mountain draws explorers with the promise of proof and the hope of closure. The Russian aviator tale unravels under scrutiny, and the Durupinar “boat” shape bends back to geology, reminding us how easily longing can outrun evidence.

As we sort through competing locations, shifting timelines, and personal testimonies—Georgie Hagopian’s cliffside Ark, Ed Davis’s wartime sighting—we step back to ask the deeper question: what do we really want to find? The Torah moves past the Ark without assigning it ongoing sacred power, and that narrative choice matters. Isaiah’s call to seek the Lord, not relics, reframes the search. The parable of the rich man and Lazarus presses the point: those who ignore Moses and the prophets won’t be convinced by spectacle. If the Resurrection does not soften a heart, no weathered beam will.

We don’t dismiss history, science, or the thrill of discovery. We honor them, and then place them in their right order. Faith stands on the living Word, not the hope of a perfect artifact; transformation comes through the gospel preached in the power of the Spirit. That’s the pivot of our conversation: from icy slopes and debated photos to the clear call to seek, trust, and speak. If you’re stirred by the mystery of Ararat, lean into the greater wonder—grace that changes lives. If this resonates, follow the show, share it with a friend, and leave a review to help others find these conversations.

Chapters

• 0:00 Opening And Scripture Focus
• 1:40 Ancient Traditions About The Ark
• 5:13 19th Century Ascents And Reports
• 6:32 The Russian Aviator Legend Unraveled
• 9:25 The Durupinar Site And Debates
• 11:29 Childhood Sightings And Astronaut Attempts
• 13:29 Ed Davis Account And Conflicts
• 15:23 Theological Pivot: What To Seek
• 18:09 Gospel Over Relics And Closing

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:02

Welcome to More Than Medicine, where Jesus is more than enough for the ills that plague our culture and our country. Hosted by author and physician, Dr. Robert Jackson.

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Papa, can you tell me a story? Do you really want me to tell you a story? Well, you go get your brother and your sisters, and I will tell you a story. Welcome to Devotions with Dr. Papa. Gather round and let us look into the written word, which reveals to us the living word, who is our Lord Jesus Christ. Well, today we're back in Genesis chapter 8, verse 4, which reads, And in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, the ark rested upon the mountains of Ararat. What I want to do today is I want to share with you some of the stories about where the ark rested on Mount Ararat, and some stories about expeditions to find the ark. And there are lots of expeditions that have taken place over the years of people trying to find Noah's Ark. I can't share with you all of the historical expeditions that have taken place, but I want to share with you some of those stories. Now, I want you to stick with me because I'm going to get to the end and I'm going to give you a biblical application for you to consider. The first part is going to be a little bit of history. The end will be our Bible lesson. So stay with me here and let's talk a little bit about Bible history. Well, I'm sorry, Ark research or ark expeditions. If you notice, after the flood subsided, the Ark is said to come to rest on the mountains of Arat. The first five books of the Bible, which is called the Torah, does not ascribe any particular holiness about the Ark, and so little attention is given to its fate after Noah's departure. In fact, there's no more mention of the Ark itself. According to the Talmud, which is some extra biblical writings that teach about the Torah. The Assyrian king Sennacherib found a beam from the ark, and reasoning that it was the God who delivered Noah from the flood, he fashioned the wood into an idol. This expands upon the biblical account of Sennacherib worshipping in the temple of Nisroch, interpreting the god's name to be derived from the Hebrew word Nesser in E S E R, which means beam. Now, opinions on the location of the mountains of Arat have varied since antiquity. Interpretations of the Noah story were influenced by the Aramenian flood myth about Massus M A S I S and the Syrian version about Cardu Q A R D U in Kordin until the locations became conflated. And so there are lots of conflict about where exactly the ark is located. The Jewish historian Josephus later described Carhe as the location of the ark, again claiming that the locals would show the remains to visitors. Jerome of Stridon translated Arat as Armenia in the Vulgate, whereas the Armenians themselves associated Noah's Ark with Carduin until the eleventh century. It's interesting that John Christostom, whenever he would speak to non believers, he would speak in this way. Have you heard of the flood, of that universal destruction? That was not just a threat, was it? Did it not really come to pass? Was not this mighty work carried out? Do not the mountains of Armenia testify to it where the ark rested? And are not the remains of the ark preserved there to this very day for our admonition? And you see, he used the ark, and it's resting in the mountains of Armenia as a means of apologetics and a means of evangelism. Well, let's move on and let's move to the 19th century. And it's interesting that the first recorded ascent of Ararat was led by a gentleman named Frederick Parrot, P-A-R-R-O-T, in 1829. And in his account of his expedition, he wrote that all the Armenians are firmly persuaded that Noah's Ark remains to this very day on the top of Ararat, and that in order to preserve it, no human being is allowed to approach it. And then another gentleman named James Bryce scaled Ararat in 1876. On his ascent, he discovered a piece of wood about four feet long and five inches thick, evidently cut by some tool and so far above the limit of trees that it could by no possibility be a natural fragment of one. He cut off a portion of the wood to keep and later argued that it might plausibly be a remnant of Noah's art. Although he admitted other possible explanations for the wood, he determined that no man is bound to discredit his own relic. Well then in the 20th century there was a Russian expedition, and this has been reported widely. In 1940, there was an article entitled Noah's Ark Found that appeared in a special edition of New Eden, one of several booklets published in Los Angeles by Floyd Gurley. The article was credited to Vladimir Roskovitsky and contained his account of discovering Noah's Ark on Mount Ararat about 1917, just before the Russian Revolution. According to the story, Roskovitsky was a Russian aviator stationed 25 miles northeast of Ararat. In August, no year was provided. He was ordered to perform a test flight of an airplane equipped with a new supercharger. Flying near Ararat, Roskowitzsky and his co-pilot spotted an enormous shipwreck on the shore of a lake on the mountain. His captain later identified the wreckage as Noah's Ark and submitted a report to the government, which then sent 150 soldiers to the site. The expedition's report was supposedly sent to the Tsar just days before godless Bolsheviks took over, causing the report to be suppressed and presumably destroyed to discredit all religion and belief in the truth of the Bible. Roshkovitsky, identified as a white Russian, is said to have fled to the United States to enjoy the freedom to pursue his newfound faith. The story is inconsistent with Russian history, as Tsar Nicholas II abdicated the throne at the end of the February Revolution, months before the Bolsheviks took power in the October Revolution. References to parachutes, oxygen cans, and superchargers in aircraft are rather anachronistic for the given time frame. Nevertheless, the story became very popular and was widely reprinted. By 1942, however, at least two publications had retracted the story. Inquiries to New Eden about the article were referred to Benjamin Allen, the source of the story. However, Allen had not intended for the story to be published until it could be corroborated, and he resented the embellishments Gurley had added. In October 45, he described the version of the story he told to Gurley, and this is what he wrote. In conversation with him, I had given him a few details originating from two soldiers in the czarist Russian army during the First World War. They were deceased many years ago. The story by these soldiers came to me from their relatives of how a Russian aviator had sighted a suspicious looking structure in one of Ararat's obscure canyons. Infantrymen were sent on foot to investigate and their officers, and they decided it must be Noah's Ark, with one end sunk in a small swamp. These were the only details they gave. Allen said that 95% of the new Eden article, including the name Vladimir Roskovitsky, had been fabricated by Gurley, who issued an apology at his request. Despite Gurley's retraction, interest in the Russian aviator story persisted as attention turned to verifying Allen's version. Real estate agent Errol Cummings, who learned of the Roskowitsky story in 1945, was particularly inspired to investigate the possibility that Noah's Ark had been discovered. In November 1945, he founded the Sacred History Research Expedition for the purpose of investigating the matter. And through his research, he later came to be considered the dean of American Ark Hunters. Cummings discovered a new lead in an article from a 6 October 1945 issue of the Russian language magazine Rosella, which was similar to Gurley's Roskowitzky account. The Rosya article, written by former Russian officer Alexander A. Kor, K-O-O-R, placed the Tsar's expedition in December 1917 and described the arc as measuring 500 feet long, 83 feet wide, and 50 feet high. Korr's version ended with the rumor that the expedition's report was intercepted by Leon Trotsky, who had the courier shot. Cummings later contacted Coor, who said he had served in the Aberat region in 1915 and heard of the Arc expedition from fellow officers he met in 1921. This was enough to convince Cummings that Coor had not simply plagiarized the New Eden article. An amateur archaeologist, Korr also claimed to have discovered cuneiform inscriptions at Ararat describing the story of the flood. Following his correspondence with Cummings, Korr would take an interest in promoting the discredited book of Veles. Well, that's the end of that particular episode. Well, let's move on. There's another report of the Durapinar site during a 1959 geodetic survey of Turkey, an anomalous shape near now I have to have a little help with this, Dogo Boyazil was identified by Lihan Durapinar of the Turkish Air Force and Sevket Curtis of Ohio State University. The size and shape of the object resemble a boat approximately 400 feet long and 150 feet wide, inviting speculation that it could be Noah's Ark. Evangelist George Vanderman organized an expedition to the site in 1960, which determined that the shape was a natural geologic formation. Interest in the site was renewed by Ron Wyatt, who visited the site in 1977, again in 1979 and again in 1984. Based on Wyatt's promotion of his research, the Turkish government declared the site a national park in 1986. Geophysicist John Baumgartner and salvage expert David Fasold strongly advocated that the site was in fact Noah's Ark, but both of them eventually broke with Wyatt to express misgivings about their findings. In 1996, Fasold co-authored a paper with geologist Lawrence Collins, asserting that the site cannot have been Noah's Ark, not even a man-made model. Well then here's another interesting story about a gentleman named Georgie Hagopian, H A G O P I A N Hagopian. In 1970, American Armenian American George Georgie Hagopian reported that his uncle took him to see Noah's Ark twice during his childhood. Different accounts of his story place the first sighting in 1902, 1906, or 1908, with the second incident occurring about two years later. According to this account, the moss-covered ark lay on the edge of a cliff so that only one side was accessible. Hagopian said that many other boys in his childhood community told him that they had seen the structure as well. The Talk Origins archive takes issue with the apparent ease with which these children supposedly reached the Ark in contrast with the difficulties reported by other explorers. By Hygopian's estimate, the Ark was over a thousand feet long, six hundred to seven hundred feet wide, and over thirty-five feet high. To reconcile this estimate with traditional interpretations of the Ark's side, John Warwick Montgomery suggested that dimensions regularly appear greater than they actually are to small children. However, Hygopian's recollection of an 18-inch window, which is consistent with traditional views, is accepted as a precise estimate by Violet Cummings. Hygopian said that his uncle wanted to keep a piece of the art, but was unable to cut into the wood using a knife or a blast of gunpowder. He adamantly rejected Ferdinand Navarra's claim to have found fragments of the ark. Attempting to reconcile the two claims, Montgomery raised the possibility that the ark was not uniformly petrified. Hygopian, however, believed the entire structure was absolutely petrified and that Almighty God would never permit the ark to be cut and broken up. It's also interesting to note that James Irwin, the eighth person to walk on the moon, an astronaut, tried to visit the Ark multiple times, but was unsuccessful. He led multiple expeditions to Ararat, raised lots of money, but was never successful in his attempt to find the Ark. And then there was a gentleman named Ed Davis. He was an optometrist and an Ararat explorer. Don Shocky, who was also an expedition gentleman trying to find the art, learned in 85 that Ed Davis had spoken to his church about seeing Noah's art during World War II. He invited Davis to speak at an Archathon convention that he organized in 86 in Farmington, New Mexico. Davis was interviewed extensively about his story by Shockey's organization and later even subjected to a polygraph test on behalf of uh James Irwin, the astronauts High Flight Foundation. In 1943, Davis was a sergeant in the United States Army Corps of Engineers stationed in Hamadan to work on the Persian corridor between two parts of Iran. And according to Davis, during this assignment, he befriended a local driver named B.A.D.I. Body and his father, Abbas Abbas, who claimed to have visited Noah's Ark atop the mountains near their village. And around July the 1st, Abbas Abbas invited Davis to join them in one such visit, saying that enough snow and ice had melted to partially expose the ship. Upon reaching doomsday point on the mountain, Davis said he saw the ark, which first appeared as a huge rock formation covered by fog. It was lying in a cove, lake, within a canyon below his position, and broken into two portions. Abbas Abbas claimed that the Ark had been whole in his youth and had only broken apart within his lifetime. Ark researchers disagreed about whether Davis' experience involved Mount Ararat in Turk Turkey's Agen province. Davis said the mountain he visited could be seen from his unit's base in Hamadan, but Ogon is 400 miles away. The first published version of his account described Badi and Abbas Abbas in Kurds, which is consistent with the story about visiting a village in Ogden. However, a footage in footage of his original interview, Davis says the villages were lures, L-U-R-S, an ethnic group in western Iran. Several different mountains in Lorestan are identified by the Lures as the landing site of Noah's Ark. Well, I think that's enough. There's a lot of different stories. I don't really have time to tell you all the other accounts, and there are multiple other expeditions that have tried to go to Avarat and Reach the Ark and I would encourage you to just look it up on the internet and you can find these other accounts of people trying to find Noah's Ark. And it's a very interesting story. But let me just give you my assessment of all of this. Ark expeditions cost tons of money and years of time. It requires lots of permits from the Turkish government. And none of us will probably ever be involved in an ark exploration expedition. So what does God tell you and me to search for? Well in Isaiah 55 and verse 6, the Bible tells us to seek the Lord while he may be found, and call upon him while he is near. You see, we are instructed to seek for the Lord, not for archaeological relics. Besides, what does our faith rest upon? Does it rest upon archaeological finds or does our faith rest upon the Word of God, which is forever established in the heavenly places? Do you remember the parable of the rich man and Lazarus that Jesus gave to us in the book of Luke? Do you remember that the rich rich man being in torment begged Father Abraham to send someone to his five brothers so they would not come and end up in this place of torment? And what did Father Abraham reply? He said, They have Moses and the prophets. He said, Let them hear them. Other words, let them heed the word of God. But the rich man replied, No, but if one returns from the dead, they will repent. And then Father Abraham replied, If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, they will not be persuaded if one rises from the dead. And how true that is. You see, Jesus, our Lord, rose from the dead, and still the unbelievers and the God haters refuse to believe. Do you really think that finding the ark, Noah's Ark, will change their hard hearts? Will finding Noah's Ark persuade unbelievers to finally bow their knees before the great throne of God? Will finding Noah's Ark cause the God haters to suddenly love our Lord Jesus Christ? No, of course not. It is only the power of the gospel, the power of the Word of God, preached and empowered by Holy Spirit that changes men's hearts. Brothers and sisters, do not be weary in well doing. Do not shrink back from preaching the gospel message. Be consistent in your testimony and persistent in proclaiming the truth about be about proclaiming the truth about salvation in Jesus Christ. Remember, the word of God is like a lion. It doesn't need to be defended, it merely needs to be released. I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first, and also to the Gentile. You're listening to Devotions with Dr. Papa, and I trust that what I've just shared with you has been full of interesting facts, but more important that it impresses upon you that finding relics and Noah's Ark is not going to be the thing that changes the hearts of men. It's the gospel message about our Lord Jesus Christ, shared and preached in the power of the Holy Spirit. Ultimately, that is what changes the hearts of men. I'll be back next week. Until then, remember that Jesus loves you and your doctor loves you.

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Thank you for listening to this edition of More Than Medicine. For more information about the Jackson Family Ministry or to schedule a speaking engagement, go to their Facebook page, Instagram, or webpage at Jackson Family Ministry.com. Also, don't forget to check out Doctor Jackson.