Noah's Ark silver coins Silver Eagle. The famous biblical narration of Noah’s Ark was selected as motif for the bullion coin. The Genesis flood narrative tells how God punished mankind with a flood because of their sin, with the exception of Noah and his family. God tells Noah that he is sending a flood and gives him detailed instructions for building an ark (a large boat) and taking aboard two or more of every animal species. God later floods the entire planet under water, but Noah is saved alive inside the ark, along with his family and a remnant of all the world's animals.
Noah later Christian thought, the Ark came to be compared to the Church: salvation was to be found only within Christ and his Lordship, as in Noah's time it had been found only within the Ark. St Augustine of Hippo (354–430), demonstrated in "The City of God" that the dimensions of the Ark corresponded to the dimensions of the human body, which corresponds to the body of Christ; the equation of Ark and Church is still found in the Anglican rite of baptism, which asks God, "who of thy great mercy didst save Noah," to receive into the Church the infant