“And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth.”
Genesis 6:13

One of the most impressionable illustrations that public educators show as fact to American youth in science textbooks is the geologic column. This is a diagram of sedimentary rock layers showing an ascending order of life forms from bacteria and amoebas up to humans walking at the top. Names given to this sequence from the oldest at the bottom up to today are: Precambrian, Paleozoic (Cambrian, Ordovician, Silurian, Devonian ...), Mesozoic (Triassic, Jurassic, Cretaceous), Cenozoic (Paleocene, Eocene, Oligocene ...), and Quaternary (mammals, humans).

These sedimentary layers, up to fourteen miles deep on the Tibetan Plateau, are just that—stirred up earth sediments that precipitated out of water along with any flora and fauna that were caught in it. Three processes then turned these muds into rocks of varying hardness—cementing action (quickly), compaction, and drying out. I witnessed sedimentation once when we poured a new cement floor. That night a rainstorm washed water down the road ditches and it spread out over our new cement floor. We got brooms and swept it off. But as it dried in the following days we had a layer of mud. When the water had become still, its load precipitated out in a layer of sediment. Instead of 1/8 inch, the world’s rock layers are many feet deep from thousands of feet of water.

The facts are that the geologic column is not found even a fourth complete anywhere in the world. At the most, three to five layers may be in order and this simply shows ecological zones. Sea worms, seashells, trilobites, and such like that lived together on sea bottoms would be buried together. Higher would be fish, amphibians, and so forth, and at the top grouped together would be mammals. At Karoo, South Africa, millions of vertebrate mammal bones are mixed and fossilized together. In Cumberland Bone Cave, Maryland, bones of wolverines, bears, bats, mastodons, peccaries, tapirs, antelopes, groundhogs, rabbits, coyotes, beaver, and muskrat are all mixed together. Both tropical and cold climate creatures are found. At Agate Springs, Nebraska, there are bone beds in rock.

However, the facts revealed in a geologic study show the fossil rock layers in reverse order at times and large blocks “out of place.” An example is the Heart Mountain “over thrust” at Yellowstone Park in Wyoming. This deposit is a triangle thirty miles wide by sixty miles long. It is composed of fifty blocks of Paleozoic strata (Ordovician, Devonian, and Mississippian) sitting on Eocene beds supposed to be 250 million years younger! It is sitting nicely on a basically level fine line seam without any signs of stress or deformation just like it was precipitated there.

Ages are not written on fossils or rocks. Arbitrary conjecture is used to stretch their imagined evolutionary process back 600 million years. Circular reasoning is then used to determine ages. Paleontologists estimate the age of fossils by what rock layer they are in. For the age of rocks, a geologist may ask what fossils are in it. Neither the rock nor the fossil proves the age of the other.

Other out-of-place formations are the Lewis “over thrust” formation of Montana which includes Glacier National Park and Chief Mountain. It is a 15- by 135-mile extension of the Canadian Rockies from Alberta and is Paleozoic limestone resting in conformity on cretaceous shale. Many other places around the world contradict the geologic column. The Matterhorn of Switzerland is sitting on younger rocks and supposedly came from fifty miles away. The strata in the Mythen peak of the Alps from the bottom up is Eocene, Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous and is presumed to have been pushed to Switzerland from Africa. There is no physical evidence of these movements for any of these formations.

The Burial

The explanation of this colossal geologic burial is found in a historical book authored by Someone who was there. This book is available to everyone and is called the Bible. Although not all details are given, much is. Genesis chapters six to eight, Psalms, and Job reveal some of the processes at work in Noah’s flood. The Creator of the universe is master of the elements. When Jesus was here, the winds and the waves were subject to His command.

After a couple millennia into earth’s history, the wickedness of humanity had reached a crisis point. “And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually, ... The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence ... And, behold, I, even I, do bring a flood of water upon the earth to destroy all flesh ... and every thing that is in the earth shall die” (Genesis 6:5, 11, 17).

God instructed Noah to build an ark of refuge (Genesis 7). God then brought a male and female of all creatures into the ark with Noah. At the appointed day, “The LORD shut him in” (v. 16). “The same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened” (v. 11).

The rain continued forty days and forty nights until the waters were 23 feet above “all the high hills” (vv. 12, 19). The mountains were not as high as those that pushed up after the flood (Psalm 104:8). The present-day evidence supports the description of much turbulence and prevailing of the waters upon the earth as Noah’s ark and animals were borne up upon the face of the waters (vv. 17, 18). This rushing of water currents called turbidites continued another 150 days (v. 24). That is nearly half a year! It was well able to lay down sedimentary strata like we see an average of 2½ miles deep around the world.

“And every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both man, and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven; and they were destroyed from the earth: and Noah only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark” (v. 23). The rest were fossilizing in the sedimentary layers. They were buried rather quickly, according to evidences: clams are clamped tight shut, fish are found swallowing other fish, and the like.

Secularists like to portray the Flood as a myth, with Noah in a small tub of a boat with an elephant and giraffe peering over the side. An objective view of facts in God’s world and Word fits reality with God the Creator controlling circumstances. The ark was 75 feet wide, 45 feet high, and 450 feet long. It had a displacement of 43,300 tons and had a total of over 100,000 square feet on three floors. There was more than enough room for the approximately 20,000 different animal kinds that God brought to the ark along with their food for a year.

The Abatement

God remembered Noah and sent a wind to dry up the waters. “The fountains also of the deep and the windows of heaven were stopped . . . and the waters returned from off the earth” (Genesis 8:2-3). By the tenth month, the tops of mountains were seen. This rise of the continents and mountain building is indicated in Psalm 104:5-9 where it speaks of the mountains ascending and the valleys descending (v. 8) (original Hebrew). This allowed the waters to flow off into the newly formed ocean basins (v. 7) which now cover 70% of the earth’s surface up to seven miles deep. God “set a bound” by heights and depths and water seeking its own level (v. 9) to make dry land again for life to take up residence on. The first “lost world” was now in the sedimentary layers under their feet.

The earth was now open to the chill of space, and differing temperatures caused winds. New meteorological conditions changed the climate and brought on the “Ice Age.” The Book of Job is the oldest book in the Bible and speaks more of ice, cold, snow, and freezing than any other book. In this pluvial time, ice packs built up on continents, and present deserts were well-watered. These facts can be seen in surface features. Arabian lands, Israel, and North Africa dried up as the centuries passed. Genesis 13:10 and 14:3 speak of the Vale of Sidim (Sodom) as being well-watered like Eden but becoming the Salt Sea.

It is sobering to realize that God has forecast the same social conditions (we see today) and a world judgment by fire (Matthew 24:37-39; 2 Peter 3:3-7). We can be ready by accepting His ark of salvation – Jesus Christ.

Resources:
God’s Word the Bible
The Genesis Flood – Whitcomb & Morris
God’s Word on God’s World – Stauffer

From: Reaching Out

Language

English

Author

Elvin Stauffer

Publisher

Reaching Out

Topics

Science and the Bible