The 104th Psalm is
a beautiful hymn about creation that complements the
information given to us in Genesis and elsewhere in
the Bible. Here, as in other Scriptures, the origin
of the universe and our planet is not pictured as a
massive explosion (such as a Big Bang) but as an
orderly series of events in which everything was
crafted by the hands of an artisan, a Master
Builder.
Before the Fall
The early earth after
creation is nowhere pictured as a place of smoking
volcanoes, sulfureous fumes and violent quakes. The
Apostle Peter quite simply says that the earth "was
formed out of water and by means of water" (2 Peter
3:5). The whole purpose of creation was to produce
an environment-a habitat-for man. In fact, the
universe was designed for man to manage and govern
(Gen 1:26-31, Heb 2:6-8). All this has changed as
far as we are concerned-Adam forfeited his rightful
place as steward over the creation. The world we
live in has been ruined, and the human race in its
ongoing rebellion against God continues to require
interventions by God when He calls men into courts
of judgment. God's last major judgment was the Flood
of Noah-and this great disaster was actually not
very long ago in the history of our race.
Seventy-one
percent of the earth's surface today is indeed
water-the oceans average 3.8 kilometers
deep. Only 29% of the earth's surface is
land-whose average elevation is only 623
meters! If all the continents
and land masses were leveled into the sea using a
giant bulldozer, nearly two miles of water would
cover our entire earth. Glaciers and ice caps hold
about two percent of earth's water; were they all to
melt, sea levels around the world would rise 40
meters-a big problem for many large sea-level cities
should this happen. The earth's atmosphere today
holds only about two inches of precipitable
water-this is constantly being replenished by the
hydrologic cycle.1
Before the Flood
The earth before the Flood
of Noah was a very different place! Our long years
of educational brainwashing in the mythology of
evolutionary theory and an old-earth has numbed us
to the clear testimony of the Bible that God's
intervention in human affairs during the time of
Noah, the tenth man from Adam, changed things
forever on our planet.2
Since Old Testament chronologies are actually quite
complete, we can date the Flood as most likely
occurring between 2500 B.C. and 3400 B.C.- depending
on our choice of the Masoretic Hebrew text or the
Greek Septuagint of the Old Testament, respectively.
The earth before the Flood seems to have possessed a
uniform sub-tropical climate. There may have been no
rainfall, no ice and snow, and no major seasonal
changes. (For instance, palm tree fossils have been
found in Alaska, frozen warm-climate mammoths in
Siberia, and coal in Antarctica.) The oceans would
have been much warmer, and earth's rivers and
streams may well have originated in powerful
springs-such as the spring that supplied the four
rivers of Eden.
I personally subscribe to a
vapor canopy model of earth's atmosphere before the
Flood, which could have provided the greenhouse
effect for a worldwide mild climate. But vapor
canopy models are very limited by basic
thermodynamic considerations. In his classic
pioneering study,3
Joseph Dillow suggested a pre-Flood atmospheric
pressure at sea level twice the present value-a big
help to the extinct flying reptile Pteranadon, who
would probably not get off the ground in today's
atmosphere. But too much water vapor in the upper
atmosphere before the Flood would obscure the stars,
and even the sun and moon, because of perpetual
cloud cover. And for the atmosphere to support the
weight of additional water vapor, the surface
temperature would have to rise rapidly toward the
boiling point of water. Condensation of water vapor
during very heavy, prolonged rainfall would release
enormous amounts of latent heat of condensation.
However, in spite of these
difficulties, a modest vapor canopy - perhaps
holding 40 feet of rain water - may have existed
prior to the deluge of the Flood.
The
Flood
Most of the water for the
great Flood of Noah came from the so-called
"fountains of the great deep" (Gen 7:11). This
source of water is mentioned before the rain from
the "windows of heaven."
During the formation of the
earth on the second and third days of creation,
large quantities of water were evidently placed
between the earth's crust and mantle in what might
be called giant subterranean reservoirs. This water
was probably under high pressure to begin with
(causing artesian springs and geysers to abound),
but after the fall of man and the angels-when some
of the heavier atomic elements were apparently made
unstable by reduced nuclear binding forces so that
radioactive decay commenced - the shorter-lived
isotopes could well have heated the subsurface to a
point of criticality where it could scarcely be
contained by the strength of the overlying crust. We
mentioned this in last month's article as a possible
cause for the explosion of a planet where the
asteroid belt now is found.
Extensive volcanic activity
may have occurred at the same time-the fountains of
the great deep were thus broken open and volcanic
ash hurtling into the stratosphere could have
collapsed the vapor canopy by dispersing
condensation nuclei around which raindrops formed.4
[Incidentally,
gravitational compaction of the earth at the time of
earth's formation would not have raised the interior
temperature above 1000 degrees C, yet the earth's
core-present temperature about 4300 degrees-has
evidently melted and overturned in the past.
Radioactive heating is believed to have supplied the
extra energy needed -
see
http://www.ldolphin.org/Early.html]
The Flood in Noah's time
was certainly a direct act of judgment by God on a
world which had become thoroughly and continually
evil:
"Then the Lord saw that
the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and
that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was
only evil continually. And the Lord was sorry that
He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in
His heart. And the Lord said, 'I will blot out man
whom I have created from the face of the land, from
man to animals to creeping things and to birds of
the sky; for I am sorry that I have made them.'"
(Genesis 6:5-7)
Since God is in full
control of nature-there are no "accidents" in God's
universe-the exact mechanisms the Lord used to
initiate the Flood need not preoccupy our attention.
Erudite scientific models for the geophysical
processes that accompanied the Flood have been
presented at three Pittsburgh International
Conferences on Creation5-
the proceedings are available and highly
recommended. Dr. Walter Brown's outstanding book on
the Flood, which can be found on the Internet,6
especially concentrates on possible mechanisms for
the bursting open of the fountains of the great
deep.
Was
the Flood Global?
The Hebrew language has
several words to describe ordinary floods, but
Genesis 7-11 uses the unique word mabbul
(found only elsewhere in Psalm 29:10). When Hebrew
scholars put the Old Testament into Greek, they
chose the Greek word kataklusmos, from the
verb "to inundate," in place of the Hebrew
mabbul. All the language of Genesis, and
especially the words of the Apostle Peter, give us
the clearest possible picture of a worldwide,
cataclysmic, universal disaster from which only
eight human beings escaped with their lives. Warning
of false teachers and strong-willed skeptics, Peter
tells us:
"For if God did not
spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into
hell and committed them to pits of darkness,
reserved for judgment; and did not spare the ancient
world, but preserved Noah, a preacher of
righteousness, with seven others, when He brought a
flood upon the world of the ungodly... Know this
first of all, that in the last days mockers will
come with their mocking, following after their own
lusts, and saying, 'Where is the promise of His
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all
continues just as it was from the beginning of
creation.' For when they maintain this, it escapes
their notice that by the word of God the heavens
existed long ago and the earth was formed out of
water and by water, through which the world at that
time was destroyed, being flooded with water. But
the present heavens and earth by His Word are being
reserved for fire, kept for the day of judgment and
destruction of ungodly men..." (2 Peter 2:4-5,
3:3-7)
Noah and his sons (and
perhaps some hired hands) probably had less than 76
years to build the Ark in which Noah's family and
selected animals were to find refuge from the Flood.
We know the size of the Ark from Genesis 6:14-16,
and many fine books have been written in recent
years7
analyzing the design and adequacies of this great
barge. The Ark is said to have landed on the
Mountains of Ararat in Eastern Turkey after the
Flood. Many amazing search expeditions<8
have been launched in our century, though all have
thus far been inconclusive.
There would be no need to
labor many decades building a boat to escape a local
flood-simple flight to the next valley or to a
nearby mountain would have sufficed. Nor would a
local flood require such an elaborate plan to save
representative animal species.
Scripture is clear:
the purpose of the Flood was to judge and destroy a
decadent, thoroughly evil human civilization that
probably numbered some billions of individuals -
along with their cities and all the infrastructures.
Noah escaped not because he
was blameless (justified by his faith as we are),
but because he (and his family) responded to God's
mercy and grace. A good many other individuals who
lived in the 1655-2255 years between Adam and Noah
no doubt responded to the gospel preached by Adam,
by Enoch, and by others who knew the Lord. But by
the time of the Flood, apparently the entire
"civilized" world had become totally unresponsive to
the offer of God's free salvation. Crazy Noah kept
on building his weird boat on dry land-far from the
ocean-in a country where it never rained! He
probably endured constant mocking, scorn and
ridicule up until the end. Noah's friends were
welcome to find refuge on the Ark by faith in God,
but no one else believed God's clear warnings.
"And all flesh that
moved on the earth perished, birds and cattle and
beasts and every swarming thing that swarms upon the
earth, and all mankind; of all that was on the dry
land, all in whose nostrils was the breath of the
spirit of life, died. Thus He blotted out every
living thing that was upon the face of the land,
from man to animals to creeping things and to birds
of the sky, and they were blotted out from the
earth; and only Noah was left, together with those
that were with him in the ark. And the water
prevailed upon the earth one hundred and fifty
days...." (Genesis 7:21-24)
The Ark finally landed on
the very same day of the Hebrew calendar that Jesus
Christ would be raised from the dead about three
millennia later in history, taking into account the
calendar change in Exodus 12. The subterranean
caverns of the great deep collapsed, so that the
waters receded into what are now our deep ocean
basins.
With the tremendous weight
of water removed from the land, isostatic rebound
allowed great mountains, capped with sediments, to
"float" up on the underlying mantle below the crust.
(Mountains before the Flood were most likely much
lower than they are now.) Seeds sprouted, life began
again, and Noah and his family left the Ark to
repopulate the earth under a new covenant with God
(Gen 8:18-9:17). Four men and four women, who knew
and loved the living God personally, began to
repopulate the earth. They started with only meager
resources and animals from the Ark - plus the
bountiful grace of God
After the
Flood
The
post-Flood climate was now very different - assuming
the collapse of the vapor canopy. An ice-age
followed. Earth's original one continent broke up
and spread apart (rapid continental drift)- either
during the Flood-or as some believe during the days
of Peleg, perhaps 100-600 years later.9
The dinosaurs, once contemporary with men, rapidly
died out, quite possibly from a separate disaster
not long after the Flood. Storms, natural disasters
and great seasonal weather changes set in during the
years immediately following the Flood as well.
Everything was
different, yet life survived, recovered and
proliferated. Great civilizations were built up
again in a matter of only hundreds of years.
Next month our
plan is to look at world population statistics and
growth rates for both the ancient world and for the
past few hundred years, especially guided by the
vast pre-Flood knowledge accumulated by the eight
Flood survivors with life spans of 300+ years and
the long life experiences of post-Flood peoples with
similar longevities. The mathematics and census data
lead to an inescapable conclusion: Our earth has
surely again reached a critical time on God's
calendar of events for world history. Another great
and terrible judgment most certainly lies just
ahead. As God provided an Ark of Refuge in the Days
of Noah, so He invites all to find eternal safe
harbor and refuge through a personal relationship
with His Son, Jesus Christ the Lord. We are invited
to come "into" the Body of Christ by faith and
thereby to find rescue and everlasting life.
"And just as
it happened in the days of Noah, so it shall be also
in the days of the Son of Man: they were eating,
they were drinking, they were marrying, they were
being given in marriage, until the day that Noah
entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed
them all. It was the same as happened in the days of
Lot: they were eating, they were drinking, they were
buying, they were selling, they were planting, they
were building; but on the day that Lot went out from
Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven and
destroyed them all." It will be just the same on the
day that the Son of Man is revealed." (Luke
17:26-30)
Time is running out!
* * *
**NOTES**
-
Michael J.
Oart, An Ice Age Caused by the Genesis Flood,
Institute for Creation Research, Box 2667, El
Cajon, CA 92021, 1990 (
http://www.icr.org/ ).
-
For a
history of how evolutionary theory and old-earth
geology developed as parallel world-views that
sought from their inception to replace a
Biblical world-view, see Ian T. Taylor, In
the Minds of Men: Darwin and the New World Order,
Bible-Science Association, PO Box 260,
Zimmerman, MN 55398-0260 (1-800-422-4253).
-
Joseph
Dillow, The Waters Above: Earth's Preflood
Vapor Canopy, Moody Press, Chicago IL,
1982.
-
Setterfield, Barry, Creation and Catastrophe,
80-page monograph plus color wall chart.
Summary:
http://www.ldolphin.org/catastrophe.html.
-
Proceedings of the [1st, 2nd, and 3rd]
International Conference(s) on Creationism,
Creation Science Fellowship, 362 Ashland Ave.,
Pittsburgh, PA 15228.
-
6. Walter
Brown, Ph.D., In the Beginning: Compelling
Evidence for Creation and the Flood, Center
for Scientific Creation, on-line or in book
form:
http://www.indirect.com/www/wbrown/.
-
John
Woodmorappe, Noah's Ark: A Feasibility Study,
Institute of Creation Research, Box 2667, El
Cajon, CA 92021, 1990 (http://www.icr.org).
-
Noah's
Ark Home Page (B. J. Corbin), http://www.beachin.net/~bjcorbin/noahsark/;
The Search for Noah's Ark (Matthew
Kneisler),
http://users.aol.com/mkneisler/noah/nahome.htm
; The Noah's Ark Project (Douglas
Peterson),
http://user.mc.net/dougp/noahs_ark/ :
Christian Information Ministry (Noah's Ark,
Creation, Theology; Richardson, TX)
http://www.fni.com/cim/index.html .
-
Watson,
John A., "The Division of the Earth in Peleg's
Day: Tectonic or Linguistics,"
Creation Ex Nihilo Technical Journal,
Vol 11, Part 1, 1997, P.O. Box 6302, Acacia
Ridge, D.C. Queensland 4110, Australia.
Flood
Related Web Sites:
Creation Evidence Museum (Dr. Carl E.
Baugh),
http://www.creationevidence.org/ ;
Creation, Dinosaurs and the Flood
(Charlie Liebert),
http://www.sixdaycreation.com/ ;
The Paluxy Dinosaur/Man track
Controversy (Glen J. Kuban),
http://members.aol.com/Paluxy2/paluxy.htm .
**ADDITIONAL RELATED RESOURCES**
 |
Flood of Noah -
Chuck
Missler
Discover the
surprising answers to these questions and
learn what Jesus meant when He said: As the
days of Noah were, so shall the days of
thecoming of the Son of Man be.
Click for more information - CD Audio
|
 |
Genesis -DVD CD
Rom- MP3 Multi Media Commentary -
Chuck Missler
Recent
breakthroughs in the fields of physics,
technology and biology led Chuck Missler to
update and re-record this wonderful study in
Genesis.
Click for more information - DVD-MP3 on
CD-ROM |
|
