The Layers of Time

While working on some repairs today, I had a pleasant ongoing conversation with a co-worker. He's about 19, and an interesting young man. Somehow, we got onto the subject of catastrophism and Noah's ark. We had started out talking about the movie, "Jurassic Park", and that led to a discussion of dinosaurs and when they actually existed and whether or not man and dinosaurs ever coexisted.

He asked me for an explanation for the extinction of the dinosaurs. I suggested the Biblical flood and he seemed fairly skeptical of anything like a worldwide flood. We talked about the presence of dinosaurs on the ark, and how I believed that the drastic climactic change after the flood soon left the world an inhospitable place for any such creatures who had left the ark. The subject grew into a discussion about Evolution vs. the Biblical version of mankind's introduction to the planet.

It is best to consider this; Isaiah, Ezekiel, Jesus, Peter and the author of Hebrews all spoke about Noah as a real person. The author of Hebrews, Peter and Jesus spoke historically of Noah and the flood, his being divinely warned of the flood and the building or existence of the ark. If Noah did not exist, if he was merely a character created by a Jewish writer for an object lesson, then Isaiah, Ezekiel, Jesus, Peter and the author of Hebrews would all be wrong, and the Bible would just be a collection of clever stories.

When I said something like that to him, his whole attitude changed, because that was something he hadn't considered, and as I do, he believes the Bible to be the word of God. We have some rather vast doctrinally differing points of view, but he believes that Jesus is the Son of God, and for the most part, I think he believes the Bible to be true. Viewed in such a way, the account of Noah took on new significance for him. I believe that he will probably look into all of this for himself.

To believe that there was a huge worldwide catastrophe, a flood in particular asserts that such an event is the primary reason for the deposition of the various layers present in the geologic column, as well as much of the rock formations we see all around us.

There are plenty of scientists around, and even Biblical scholars, who will say that Noah's flood was only a localized event. If that were the case, the divine warning to Noah from God would have been to take a "hike," not to build a boat. Noah could have simply left the area. He had plenty of time. The fact is, until the 1700s, the flood of Noah and smaller regional floods were what people believed to have deposited the sedimentary layers of rock that we see today.

Despite what skeptics have been saying over the last couple of hundred years, the 1980 eruption of mount St. Helens and even the tsunami of 2005 clearly show that canyons can be carved out very suddenly----much more quickly than many ever imagined, and that sedimentary layers can also be laid down quite rapidly, and that this happens easily when certain catastrophes occur.

To put forth that sedimentary deposition only occurs over long geologic periods of time would not only appear to be inaccurate, but it would also have to be classified as speculation, because no one alive today was around for those long geologic time periods. A catastrophe can be observed however, and the more catastrophes that are observed, the more geologists and scientists must come face to face with the possibility that the Biblical account of the flood is true.

I have only taken a few lower altitude flights where the weather permitted me to see wonderful views of the countryside, but in those opportunities, I could see the earth's crustal features, and it is so plain to see, flying hundreds and hundreds of miles, how it has been shaped by massive natural events.

Even the "geologic column", which is used by so many Evolutionists and geologists to prove that the Earth is so much older than it is, is actually evidential data that supports the Biblical flood account. Few people realize that such things as fossilized trees found in the upright position, standing through multi-layered sedimentary formations actually attest to the fact that the layers could not have accumulated over long geologic periods. Archaeologists have even found whale fossils in similar positions, perpendicular to the multiple layers of sediment they are encased in. The layers that surround these fossils are supposed to be representative of many millions of years. That just isn't possible in those cases.