A Dutchman has built a replica of Noah’s Ark to biblical proportions, following a dream his homeland would be flooded.

Johan Huibers, a wealthy businessman, used the ancient measurement of the cubit — the length of a man’s arm from elbow to fingertips — to build the vessel to the dimensions specified in the book of Genesis.

The finished craft — which has just been opened to the public on the Merwede River in the Dutch town of Dordrecht — is 300 cubits long (about 450 feet or 137 meters), 50 cubits wide (about 70 feet or 21 meters), and 30 cubits high (about 45 feet or 14 meters).

Huibers has filled his ark, which will operate as a “Bible museum,” with life-sized plastic animals and an aviary of live birds to give visitors more to interact with.

“We want to tell people about God,” Huibers told AFP. “We wanted to build something that can help explain the Bible in real terms.”

It is not Huibers’ first ark. He completed his first, a half-scale replica of Noah’s Ark, in 2004, and used it to take tourists on canal trips, before beginning work on a full-scale version in 2008.

The origin of the project stems from a dream Huibers said he had in 1992, in which the low-lying Netherlands was flooded by the North Sea.

Read more and see photos of the finished Ark: http://us.cnn.com/2012/07/30/world/europe/johans-ark-noah-dutch/index.html?c=&page=1