A carpenter who built a full-on, life-sized replica of Noah’s Ark in order to prove God’s existence, has now revealed plans to sail it to Israel.
60-year-old Dutch carpenter Johan Huibers spent four years and $1.6 million crafting the boat, which also has some life-size wooden animals including a giraffe and gorilla.
It has attracted impressed onlookers since it was first placed in the Maas River, in the south of the Netherlands, back in 2012 – but Huibers says he has big plans for it.
The devout Christian said he embarked on the project “to prove that God exists”, and said he believes every word of the Bible.
Speaking to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, he said:
“My preferred destination for the ark is Israel.” Before adding that he’d read the bible ‘cover to cover’. Why bother, mate? Could have just stopped at the bit in the Old Testament where Noah gets a mention.
“This is a copy of God’s ship (Noah’s Ark),” he explained. “It only makes sense to take it to God’s land.”
In its current form, Johan’s ark is popular with visitors, with hundreds of thousands of tourists making the journey to explore the massive boat, which is longer than a football pitch and has five floors.
Johan says he built the ark as an attempt to ‘show people that God exists’, and that he wanted ‘children to come here and feel the texture of the wood, see the nails and see that is written in the book is true’.
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