Introduction: The Ancient Earth
The first verse of the Bible makes this simple declarative statement:
"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." (Genesis 1:1 KJV)
There is nothing in this verse that tells the reader how God created the heaven and Earth, nor is there any indication given of exactly when He created the heaven and Earth except, "In the beginning."
Earth scientists estimate that the age of the planet dates back to about 4.5 billion years ago at the beginning of an obscure geologic time named the Hadean Eon. The name is from the Latin word Hades and is descriptive of what scientists theorize was the state of the Earth when it first formed.The prevailing theory is that the Earth accreted from rocks and dust orbiting the young sun. At first, the Earth's surface was covered by an ocean of magma that eventually cooled. When the planet's surface was cool enough, the water oceans were formed and things progressed from there.
The problem is, scientists can't know any of this for sure because there are no remaining rock formations from that far back in Earth's deep time geological record. Scientists also disagree about the source of the Earth's water and when it first appeared.
The Bible, however, does offer some insight into the conditions on the face of the Earth at that ancient time, but that information is not found in the first book of Genesis. It is found in the book of Job:
Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if thou hast understanding. Who hath laid the measures thereof, if thou knowest? or who hath stretched the line upon it? Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened? or who laid the corner stone thereof; When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy? Or who shut up the sea with doors, when it brake forth, as if it had issued out of the womb? When I made the cloud the garment thereof, and thick darkness a swaddlingband for it, And brake up for it my decreed place, and set bars and doors, And said, Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further: and here shall thy proud waves be stayed?(Job 38:4-11 KJV)
Although the Bible is not a science book, it can be trusted to be scientifically accurate when it speaks of things concerning science. In the above passage, the reader is told that the early Earth's waters came fromsomewhere inside the Earth itself and broke forth to flood the surface. We can deduce from the wording that the Earth's surface was cool enough for water to exist on the surface in liquid form, at that time. It also tells the reader that Earth's early atmosphere was a thick accumulation of gasses (but not specified) that obscured the sunlight. Scientists theorize that the Earth's early atmosphere was probably composed mainly of molecules of carbon, hydrogen, and sulfur (and little oxygen) that vented from the magma, but even that hypothesis is the subject of ongoing scientific dispute and refinement.
Although we previously said that there are no remaining rock formations from this period of Earth's natural history, geologists have found inclusions of very ancient crystals of the mineral Zircon embedded within relatively younger rock formations (only around 3 billion years old) that can still be found on the Earth's surface. What those crystals can tell us are beginning to shake the foundations of some prevailing theories about conditions on the Early Earth.
For example: In 2002 a Zircon crystal was found by Prof. Stephen Mojzsis of the University of Colorado that dates to 4.38 billion years ago. Further, a subsequent chemical analysis of that crystal revealed that it formed in liquid water. Here is a link to a short video from National Geographic that tells the story and explains the implications: Watch Video.
As the video presentation shows, a modern-day scientific observation confirms the validity of what God told Job and his companions concerning what the Earth was like when He first created it. Both the zircon crystal and the Bible testify that there was liquid water on the Earth at that ancient time.
The Bible has another important thing to say about the Earth's creation:
For thus saith the LORD that created the heavens; God himself that formed the earth and made it; he hath established it, he created it not in vain, he formed it to be inhabited: I am the LORD; and there is none else.(Isaiah 45:18 KJV)
This raises additional issues. In the Job 38:4-11 passage it says that God was not inhabiting eternity alone in those ancient days when He first formed the Earth. Also present are living entities who are figuratively called "the morning stars" that sang and "the sons of God" who shouted. The passage suggests these beings were quite enthusiastic about the prospect of God's handiwork. That is because these beings were destined to be the first inhabitants of the ancient Earth. But who were they? The Bible identifies them as Angels (see Judges 13:6 & Revelation 21:17) and Princes (see Daniel 10:13, 21 & 12:1).
The Spirit also reveals through the Scriptures that a significant event took place on the Earth somewhere back in deep-time that profoundly affected the destiny of many of these ancient beings and set in motion both physical and spiritual processes that would change the entire course of nature. We will discuss this matter in detail in later chapters. The important thing to understand for now is that these events in Earth's ancient history took place long before the Bible's seven-days of Genesis. In the chronologically of the Genesis narrative, they are consigned between the first and second verses of Genesis chapter one, along with whole of Earth's geologic history prior to the advent of modern man.
Study Overview
This study of Old Earth Creationism, the "Gap Theory" and Noah's flood deals with a variety of dispensational Bible doctrines and scientific concepts. The material covers topics and observations from multiple fields of study including geology, physics, chemistry, paleontology and meteorology. How the empirical observations (not theories) from these disciplines substantiate the narrative of the Holy Bible is the focus of this study. Considerable effort has been made to present this material in a format that is comprehensible to the widest possible audience.
This study also deals with various subjects of the Bible including literal history, Premillennial Eschatology, the doctrines of Salvation and eternal security of the believer, the origins of angels and devils, the structure of the Temple, the divisions of the body, soul, and spirit, the structure of the three (3) heavens and the Biblical systems of “sevens” (and other numbers). We also focus on the role of geology and the history of the lost rivers of the Garden of Eden and the future role of geology in prophecy.
The History of the "Gap Theory" of Genesis
and its Basis in Bible Doctrine
"For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standingout of the water and in the water: Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished: But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men."(2 Pet 3:5-7 KJV)
"And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters."
(Genesis 1:2 KJV)
On this site's index page we stated that 2 Peter 3:5-7 is NOT a reference to Noah's flood. There are only two (2) places in the entire Bible where the Earth is flooded by water. One is at the time of Noah's flood (Genesis 7). The other is at Genesis 1:2 where it speaks about the condition of the Earth at the time just before God said, "Let there be light." Now, if 2 Peter 3:5-7 is not a cross-reference to Noah's flood, then it MUST be a cross-reference to Genesis 1:2 (there is no other alternative - simple logic). And if 2 Peter 3:5-7 is a cross-reference to Genesis 1:2, then the Holy Spirit is calling your attention to something very significant that millions of Neo-Creationists are blindly overlooking. Specifically, that a glorious ancient world that God created in the distant past (Genesis 1:1), had long since been utterly destroyed; plunged into deep darkness and overflowed by a raging flood of great waters on a universal scale at the time of Genesis 1:2. The seven-days of Genesis that follow chronicle God's methodology of restoring the heavens and Earth and repopulating the world with living creatures, including modern man who is made in His image.There is a time-gap between the first two verses of the Old Testament. And this is not the only time-gap in the Old Testament; there are two (2) others. There is the "gap" between the first coming of the Lord Jesus Christ and His second coming. It is commonly called the "Church Age" or the "Age of Grace." The other is the 1,000 year Millennial reign of the King of Kings, the Lord Jesus Christ, here on the Earth between His second coming and the final great Judgment Day, followed by the creation of the New Heaven and Earth. The late Clarence Larkin referred to these Old Testament gaps as "Valleys" between the peaks of prophecy. His illustration is a schematic of his line of reasoning:
The time-gap in Genesis is obscurely declared but not detailed in the book of Genesis. It is the very first 'mystery' found in the Holy Bible. Knowing that there is a time-gap between Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2, and WHY there is a time-gap, will open a more perfect understanding of what the Creation narrative is actually saying. When you understand this truth, it cuts a clear path through the confusion of conflicting theories and interpretations that have occupied the ongoing Creation vs. Science debate. The essence of that debate will be discussed in a following chapter. For now, it is very important that we show you the Biblical clues that tell us why 2 Peter 3:5-7 is not a reference to Noah's flood.
Clue #1 - Compare the phrase: "the heavens and earth, which are now" to the phrase the "heavens were of old":
What does this mean? Ask yourself this question: When Noah's flood happened did it change anything in the upper heavens? Would a flood on the Earth's surface have any effect on the sun, moon, or stars high above? The obvious answer is NO. The heavens of Noah's days were the same heavens as in Adam's day; same sun, same moon, same stars, same planet Mars. FACT: Noah's flood had no effect on the upper heavens. All of Noah's flood's effects were confined to the Earth's surface and its atmosphere. And although the Bible speaks about the "windows of heaven" being opened and water coming down (Genesis 7:11), the context of that reference is the First Heaven, which is the Earth's atmosphere. That is where the rain comes from. Keep in mind that the Bible says there are three (3) heavens. (See 2 Corinthians 12:2). This will be explained in greater detail shortly. Again, note the contrasting comparison between the phrases the "heavens were of old" (before the waters of 2 Peter 3:5-7) and the "heavens and earth which are now" (after the waters of 2 Peter 3:5-7). If the effects of Noah's flood were confined to the Earth's surface and atmosphere, then Noah's flood did not affect or alter anything in the upper heavens, so logic demands that this verse must be speaking about an event other than Noah's flood. And Genesis 1:2 is our only other Biblical candidate.
Clue #2 - Notice also in the passage that the earth is said to be "standing out" of the water and "in" the water. In our English language these descriptive terms suggest that these particular waters were not confined to the surface of the planet; they overflowed the entire planetary system. The Bible says that part of the planet was "standing out"from these waters. That is to say, the sphere of the planet was partially "overflowed" and the location of the bulk of the waters was external to the Earth itself. The Bible says the planet was "in the water" of this particular flood (think of a round fishing floater bobbing in a lake). In other words, part of the Earth is protruding from the waters and not simply just covered by waters on the surface. The literal English wording of this passage does not describe a flood event confined to the Earth's surface. This passage describes a deluge that raged across the solar system, and beyond. Our solar system and outer space are the Second Heaven of the Bible's three heavens.
Try to draw this mental picture: Think of a dark and ruined solar system with water strewn throughout it like one big messy galactic spill. That is what Genesis 1:2 is speaking about. And imagine the planet Earth drifting awash in this roaring and rolling, formless mess. Where would such waters have come from? Well, it is an established scientific observation that aging stars create and give off lots of water. Certainly there must have been lots and lots of stars in the heavens that were "of old" and, if something had caused the entire cosmos to had gone dark, and the stars died, then there would be excessive water everywhere throughout space. If that was indeed the case, then all those extinguished stars would need to be reignited to be seen in our present heavens. Although many "Gap Theory" advocates believe that the sun, moon and stars we not affected, and were only being obscured by deep cloud cover until the fourth of the seven days, that interpretation does not hold up under closer scrutiny of the Scriptures. Why it does not will become clear as we examine the Genesis narrative by "precept upon precept" and "line upon line" (Isaiah 28:10).
Let's review:
"And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters."
(Genesis 1:2 KJV)
At Genesis 1:2 the heaven and the Earth are in darkness and great waters are upon the deep. If we interpret the deep to include everything in the physical universe (as opposed to God's heavenly realm far above (see John 8:23), then the situation becomes clear. Before any reconstruction of the heavens and Earth could begin, God had to do something with all that water scattered across space. That is why the Bible says that God "divided the waters" (Genesis 1:6-7). It was the first order of business after the Lord God turned on the work lights (Genesis 1:3) and began to clear up the mess. And this verse does not say that this division was between the waters on the Earth's surface and the clouds up in the sky, or describe the construction of some imagined "water canopy" above the Earth that later was the water source for Noah's flood. That is NOT what the Bible is saying:
"And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so."(Genesis 1:7 KJV)
History of the "Gap Theory" Interpretation
The Ruin-Reconstruction or Gap Theory interpretation of the Genesis narrative is this: The seven days of Genesis were indeed seven literal 24 hour days, but they are not a description of the original creation of all things (Genesis 1:1). Rather, they are a Divine special regeneration of the cosmos made from what already was here before the present world of Man. In other words, there are two (2) creation events in Genesis. The first is described in a one-sentence statement at Genesis 1:1 and occurred billions of years ago. The second occurred relatively recently and was accomplished in 7 days, and very detailed, beginning at Genesis 1:3. This is why the Bible at Genesis 2:4 says:"These are the generations [plural] of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens,"(Genesis 2:4 KJV)
This Ruin-Reconstruction interpretation of Genesis was the bread and butter Creation doctrine of the Protestant Fundamentalist movement in the early part of the 20th century. The interpretation has mainly been credited to the Scottish theologian, Thomas Chalmers, who began to preach it back in the early 19th century. However, there were theologians who also held this view long before Chalmers' days (See this link: documented evidence). Contrary to Young Earth Creationist allegations, Chalmers did not invent the Gap Theory as a compromise of the Word of God to accommodate science and the theory of evolution. That gap has always been in the Scriptures since the day Moses penned the book of Genesis. However, only in post-New Testament times and only after man's knowledge about Earth's natural history increased greatly, has the Spirit opened people's eyes to its existence. And only by rightly-dividing and gaining true knowledge through the Lord Jesus Christ can the reader start to comprehend the doctrinal significance.Keep in mind that from the days of the Apostles up through the Dark Ages, and until just a few centuries ago, a 6,000 year age for the heavens and Earth was accepted dogma in the institutions of both the Church and Academia. Up until then, the real age of the Earth was not a burning issue. However, after the Bible was published for the masses, and as the scientific evidence for an old Earth grew, so did the breech between the establishment Church and establishment science.
Thomas Chalmers, to his credit, refused to accept that the Scriptures had been broken by the growing body of geological observations of his time. He did not lose his faith in the accuracy of the Holy Bible, nor did he go into denial of the forensic geologic facts. As a Protestant theologian honest enough to realize the truth of those emerging observations, while remaining steadfast, faithful and committed to defending the Scriptures, Chalmers (and others) were inspired to observe the time "Gap" between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2 in the Creation narrative. And he did so many years before Darwin had published his On the Origin of Species. In other words, an Old Age for the Earth had already became an accepted fact long before Darwin and his theory came on the scene. Therefore, the argument that acceptance of an Old Earth is a compromise to Evolutionary Theory is simply not true and has no foundation in historical fact.
What we have in the case of Thomas Chalmers and the post Reformation times is an example of Progressive Revelation from the Holy Scriptures. That is, when the proper time came, the Word of God had once again proved itself timely and relevant to the level of scientific and Spiritual understanding of the day. That Bible is still just as timely and relevant today, and can still provide true and faithful answers to scientific discoveries that appear to challenge the fundamentals of the Christian Faith. The problem today is that people have, for the most part, abandoned faith in the infallibility of the Holy Scriptures.
As the world moved into the Industrial Revolution, and since about the middle of the 20th Century, there have been copious publications of new English Bible translations, each claiming to be an improvement on the one before it and each claiming to be better than the common King James Bible. This is the Bible that Chalmers and the main body of Protestant Fundamentalism used over the years to bring so many people to a saving knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. Although an in-depth study of this phenomenon is beyond the immediate scope of this study, it is important to point out that this departure from the old Authorized text has had a profound effect on the spirituality of the Fundamental Church. Since that time the Ruin-Reconstruction (Gap Theory) interpretation of Genesis has also been systematically relegated to the "Fundamental Doghouse" and displaced on the center stage of Creationism by the Neo-Creationists - the Young Earth Advocates.
Objectively looking at the Fundamental Church in historical retrospect, it is observed that as the juggernaut of Evolutionary Theory became a growing mainstay in academia across the latter half of the 20th Century, the Fundamental Church has increasingly retreated into a shell of denial and self-preservation. Having thrown aside their best source of Scriptural Authority and defense (the King James Bible), and with declining numbers who were scientifically educated and intellectually honest enough to deal with the geological arguments, the Fundamental Church has consequently lost the ability to effectively address the overwhelming body of evidence for an Old Earth from a true Biblical perspective. And, as a consequence, has also lost the ability to effectively minister the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ to the educated masses of today when it comes to the accuracy of the book of Genesis.
This falling away has precipitated the rise to power within Fundamental Christianity of today's Neo-Creationist power brokers. These are the militant Young Earth "Creation Scientists" like Hovind, Brown, Ham and Gish et al, who have beguiled the flock through emotional appeals to archaic traditionalism, presented in the new and improved wrapper of "Creation Science." The faithful are exhorted to put logic and reason aside and stand firm in the proscribed Party Line of Young Earth Creationism, all in the name of Jesus and 'Defending the Faith' against the "Evil Evolutionists" and the "Scientific Conspirators."
While their motivations and intentions are, without doubt, completely honorable and worthy in their own minds, they have embraced a fanaticism and collective group-think that has degenerated into a less than intellectually honest religious and political juggernaut in its own right. Full of pride and arrogance, and stopping their ears to any justification for an Old Age of the Earth (even Biblical), they proudly claim to be defenders of the Bible. But when confronted with rightly-divided Scripture on this matter, they will not hesitate for a moment to criticize the old King James Bible, or any variant of Greek and Hebrew Scriptures for that matter that contradicts their dogmatic paradigm of reasoning. This is unfortunate, but true.
Consequently, most "Christians" of today, regardless of denominational persuasion, can only agree on what the first verse of the Genesis states:
"¶ In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth."(Genesis 1:1 KJV)
And even then they quibble about whether the word heaven in the first verse should be singular or plural (BTW, it's singular in the King James Bible). And beyond that first verse all agreement quickly disintegrates and the battle for hearts, minds, and souls (and money) begins. (see 1 Timothy 6:10)
But criticism of the accuracy of the King James Version of the Bible is not restricted to the Young Earth Creationists. Even some traditional Gap Theorists claim that the second verse of Genesis was also badly translated in the KJV and would argue it should have been translated thusly:
"And the earth was (had become) without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. (Genesis 1:2 KJV)
This is unnecessary and unwise in either case, as doing so can lead to a slippery slope (consider Revelations 22:7-19).
Neither is it wise to dismiss the literal wording of Genesis in attempts to reconcile it to Evolutionary Theory. The school of Creationists known as Theistic Evolutionists generally hold that the Earth is very old and that life evolved as it was "Intelligently Designed" to do by the Creator. Their position on the interpretation of the seven days of Genesis is that each "day" represents an indeterminate period of geologic time that closely matches the progression of the Earth's theoretical evolutionary development over the millennia. But a literal interpretation of the Holy Bible's wording does not support this notion.
The key crux of correctly interpreting the Genesis narrative requires the reconciliation of these apparent contradictions:
1). How can the Earth be only 6,000 years old (according to the Bible chronology) when the forensic evidence of Geology and the fossil record reveals that the Earth is very ancient?
2). How could DEATH have only started with the fall of man about 6,000 years ago (according to the Bible) when evidence for death is found throughout the geologic ages?
3). How can Man have been on the Earth for only about 6,000 years (according to the Bible), when there is evidence of man-like creatures inhabiting the Earth for hundreds of thousands of years?
Any interpretation of the Genesis narrative, that cannot answer all these three key questions, is wanting.
Rightly-Dividing the Word of God
Let's begin by a thoughtful, logical and critical examination of the most hotly debated passage in the book of Genesis:"And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters."
(Genesis 1:2 KJV)
Most people gloss over this verse almost like it is not even there. Ask a random sampling of people on the street the question, "What was the first thing that God created?" and over 90% of the time the answer will be, "Light!"
"And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day."(Genesis 1:3-5 KJV)
And those 90% who answered "Light" are dead wrong, according to the Bible itself. Here is why. Let's apply some English grammar, common sense and basic science to the issue. Look at verse Genesis 1:2 and read it again. On the very first of the Genesis days, before God says, "let there be light," several things already exist. Specifically, 1.) the Earth,2.) waters, 3.) the "deep," and 4.) darkness.
From a scientific standpoint, two of the four things mentioned are physical matter. The Earth is already in the form of a planet and there are waters upon its surface. Whether the water is in a solid or liquid phase, its presence implies there is also an atmosphere on the planet. Since matter requires time and space (the deep) to exist, then the fundamental constants of physics (E=MC2) are established, which means the darkness only indicates an absence of light. Since these things appear to be so, we can also surmise that the Earth's lithology is already fully differentiated into the divisions of a crust, mantle and core structure. And, as confirmed by the phrase, "And the evening and the morning were the first day." The planet is a gravity well in space rotating on its axis at the rate of about 24 hours a day. All of that is in place BEFORE God says, "let there be light."
In response to this line of reasoning, Young Earth Creationists will then argue that God created the Earth "without form and void," (and we must assume also the waters and the space called the deep, and the concept of time) at the very beginning of the first day. But the Holy Spirit has a counter-argument to that objection:
For thus saith the LORD that created the heavens; God himself that formed the earth and made it; he hath established it, he created it not in vain, he formed it to be inhabited: I am the LORD; and there is none else.(Isaiah 45:18 KJV)
"And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters."
(Genesis 1:2 KJV)
Isaiah 45:18 tells us that the Lord God did NOT originally create the Earth in such a desolate condition. The word "vain" in Isaiah 45:18 and the term "without form" in Genesis 1:2 are from the very same Hebrew word (tohuw). These verses by themselves, when rightly-divided in either language, destroy the core premise of Young Earth Creationism. Genesis 1:2 compared with Isaiah 45:18 rules out God initially making the Earth as a formless mud ball, then turning on the work lights and starting the decorating process.
As the verse clearly says, the Earth was already there. Although it is "without form and void" on the surface of the planet and covered in waters, it is most certainly already the formed planet Earth. It even has a name...it's called THE EARTH. Since nowhere else in the Genesis narrative does the Spirit tell us about God establishing the Earth's geologic structure, we can safely assume that the planet's geology is already fully established, as well. Further, there is already nuclear decay in the mantle producing the heat that drives the Earth's tectonic and volcanic processes. And the dynamo at the Earth's core is already generating the magnetic field which protects the Earth's surface from lethal radiation.
And after seeing that all these things are already present, can we realistically be expected to accept the Young Earth Creationist's argument? Are we to believe that God went "poof" and made the planet Earth and its complex geology, the vast expanse of outer space, time, and lots of water, all at the very beginning of the very first day without a single sentence outlining this complex work? Especially since God then only says, "let there be light" and calls it a day? That seems somewhat out of character in light of the fact that God then spends another five full working days afterward on just the surface features with the Bible fully documenting the work in great detail. Did Moses sleep through that part of the lecture? I don't think so.
The only common sense, logical, and truly Biblical conclusion that these things collectively tell us is that the seven days of Genesis were a reconstruction from the ruins of what was already there. It was a new "generation" of all things. The Word makes a statement of fact on the Earth's ruined condition and then proceeds to tell us how God regenerated all things. That is the simplicity and truth of the narrative. Man has been guilty of reading his own understanding into the meaning of Genesis, instead of just taking God at His word.
The Earth's geological history (which, by the way, God also preserved), tells us that this planet is very old. Therefore, there MUST be a Biblical explanation that confirms this observation and provides a Biblical reason why these things are so. And the Ruin-Reconstruction interpretation does exactly that. The Bible gives no specific time when God first created the heaven and the Earth (Genesis 1:1), but it does give the time when the Earth is found in this desolate condition and for the start of the seven, literal, 24 hour days. That time was, indeed, geologically very recently. In this respect only is the Young Earth Creationist fully correct. This is the context for the "gap" on which Ruin-Reconstruction doctrine is based. Exactly how long that time gap represents nobody can say for sure, but it most certainly could accommodate hundreds of millions of years, but a gap is most certainly there.
At this juncture the diehard Young Earth Creationist, still refusing to consider the Scriptural facts just presented, brushes reason aside and pontificates that the doctrine of this gap is nothing more than a compromise of the Scriptures to accommodate the long periods of time required by the Evolutionary model. This is their answer to anything, Biblical or Scientific, that allows for an old age for the Earth. Is this a valid argument? Not really!
The Earth is "without form and void" at Genesis 1:2 and in darkness. There is no indication of anything being alive on the surface of the Earth at this time, and that time is roughly about 6,000 years ago. Now, common sense and logic tells you that, if nothing was alive on the Earth at that point of time, then there could be nothing from which this world's life forms could have evolved. The literal wording of Genesis 1:2 rules out the possibility that anything (or anyone) living today evolved from anything that existed before the seven days. Every living thing today was made/created during the days of Genesis. This is why the specific phrasing of "after his kind" or "after their kind" is used by the Spirit in describing the Lord's regenerative work. There is no room for continuing Evolution. The implication is that what creatures live on the Earth today were modeled after the same pattern of living things that were alive on the Earth in the world before this one. There was a clean break in the genetic lines of descent. And, since there is not an unbroken genetic line of ancestry, there is no Evolution from the previous world to this one.
Again, remember the fact that when Thomas Chalmers began to preach about the Gap in Genesis (in the early 19th Century) it was well before Charles Darwin even published. So Chalmers' motivation never was to accommodate the Theory of Evolution because it had not even been proposed at that time. (Gee, I wonder why YECs don't bring up that fact.)
Have you never wondered why is there darkness present at Genesis 1:2 when the Scriptures say that God is light and in Him there is no darkness (1 John 1:5)? Where did Satan come from, and when did he turn against God? He was in the Garden of Eden, already an enemy of God, before Adam and Eve transgressed. So why is there no mention of that creature's creation or fall anywhere in the Genesis narrative? When were the Angels created? If man was made "a little lower than the angels" (see Psalms 8:5) then what are they and when were they made? What are the devils in the Gospels and where did they come from? These are the mysteries that the Gap interpretation of Genesis unlocks through prayerfully considered verses found throughout the Bible and the observation of many clues in the geologic record. This is all covered in greater detail later in the study.
The reader should keep firmly in mind that the state-of-the-art of scientific knowledge is constantly changing and completely disregards any input from the Holy Bible. To assume that the scientific theories of today are the end of all true knowledge is foolishness. Conversely, to shun and deny sound scientific evidence under the banner of "Defending the Faith" against “Evil Evolutionists” is equally unwise and foolish - a discredit to the Faith that claims to be the fountain of all truth.
As Christians dedicated to finding and defending the truth, we should make every effort to understand what the literal Biblical text is actually saying, by its own Scripturally-defined terms, before attempting to harmonize it with our current scientific understanding or traditional belief system.
God is the Divine Author of both the Scriptures and the Earth’s Geologic record. Both are from His hand. Both witness to historical and spiritual Truth. He established the principles and physics by which we can search out the answers to things preserved within the Earth’s geology. His Scriptures provide us with a definitive source of Authority and a faithful guide to verify the validity of those answers. Therefore, it is our firm belief that there cannot possibly be any real contradiction in facts between Geology and Genesis. Any such contradictions only arise within the flawed paradigm of our understanding, be it scientific or scriptural.
Let's be honest. Creationism will never find fair and equal standing and acceptance with the non-believing world’s accepted paradigm of origins. The truth of the Bible must be accepted by faith as the Word of God. The world has placed its “faith” in the Theory of Evolution and carnal reasoning. The supernatural intervention or acts of an invisible Divine Sovereign can neither be proved nor disproved by the scientific method. Regrettably, a large segment of Fundamental Christianity has placed its faith in an interpretation of Genesis which denies not only the historical facts contained within the Earth itself but, in some cases, the concise wording of the Holy Bible as well. A rightly-divided exegesis of the Genesis account, however, reveals the full truth when the geologic evidence is examined in the light of a truly literal Scriptural context.
Without the original Hebrew and Greek Bible manuscripts, (The originals no longer exist - only variants of copies.) one must either put his trust in the opinions of modern scholars or in a reliable Bible translation he can trust as a final authority in all matters. Without apology, we have taken a stand for the King James Authorized Version of the Bible as that Scriptural authority in the English language. This translation (and it is a translation) once command wide respect within the Fundamental Church. It still does in some faithful congregations.
Can the King James Bible translation be Trusted?
This is a hot-button question that raises even more heated controversy than the Creationism vs. Evolution debate. It is a question that has caused many church-splits and brings out the nastier side of Christian behavior and attitudes (all in the name of the Lord, you understand). And, these days, those that trust the Authority of the translation are callously branded and maligned as being King James Only believers by the majority of the flock of the church of the Laodiceans. (See: Revelations 3:14) Since this a subject matter that would require volumes to completely document, we will confine our discussion to where it deals with the book of Genesis.In the course of their work, the translators of the Authorized King James Bible (first published in 1611) were led to leave two subtle textual indicators within their final English translation of the book of Genesis to call the readers' attention to the doctrine of a time gap between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2. Keep in mind that this was done over 400 years ago, long before Darwin or the founding of the modern geological sciences. These indicators are not found in more recent English translations, because contemporary scholars say they were "mistranslations" of the Hebrew words. But were they really?
The first of these two "mistranslations" involves these two verses:
"¶ In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth."(Genesis 1:1 KJV)
"¶ Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them."(Genesis 2:1 KJV)
The word "heaven" (singular) in Genesis 1:1 and the word "heavens" (plural) at Genesis 2:1 are both from the same Hebrew word (shâmayim). Modern scholars insist that the word "heaven" in Genesis 1:1 should also be rendered plural; thus all new English versions say "heavens" in Genesis 1:1. Technically, that is not quite correct. The tense in the Hebrew is the dual. It is easily confused with the plural, inasmuch as Hebrew words take on an im" ending when made plural. Ha'shamayim looks like a plural word. However, the ayim ending is a special case called the dual. It always describes exactly two (unlike the strict plural), but the two are considered as one. We have a similar expression in English. For example, when we speak of a "pair of pants" or a "pair of glasses," we never think of these items as more than one despite the "s" ending on the nouns (normally a plural indicator). The AV1611 translators obviously knew this. As you study the materials on this site you will begin to understand their choices for certain English renderings.
In respect to Gap Theory doctrine, the implication is that there was a structural difference in the "heavens" of the old world (when the heaven and Earth were originally created) as compared to the three-heavens structure God established in the new world after the seven-days regeneration. That is discussed in greater detail later and will give you insight into the ambiguous phrase "no more sea" found at Revelation 21:1 after the Final Judgment. You will learn that it cross-references back to the dividing of the waters spoken of in Genesis 1:7 on the second creative day.
The second "mistranslation" concerns these two verses:
"And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth."(Genesis 1:28 KJV)
"¶ And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth."(Genesis 9:1 KJV)
The fur really flies over the KJV Bible translators' choice of English words in these two verses, but especially so in Genesis 1:28 of the creation narrative. Modern scholars (and most Young Earth Creationists) insist that the Hebrew word (male) should be translated as "fill," which certainly is one meaning of the Hebrew word, and it is rendered as "fill" instead of "replenish" in most newer translations. But in the case of Genesis 9:1 where Noah and his family are instructed to RE-populate an earth that has been wiped out by the flood, the word "replenish" as translated in the old KJV Bible renders a more accurate English meaning than does the word "fill." Because the KJV translators used the word "replenish" in both Genesis 9:1 and Genesis 1:28, on the surface this seems to indicate that the translators were pointing to a similarity in circumstances between Adam and Noah in their respective Divine commissions. If the word "replenish" stands in Genesis 1:28, then both Adam and Noah are told to repopulate a desolate earth after a major destructive event, specifically, a flood:
"And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters."(Genesis 1:2 KJV)
Since the flood of Noah's time was a judgment upon the world of that time, then a flood before Adam's creation would imply a previous judgment upon an old world order before the seven days of the creation narrative.
To insist that the word "fill" is the best rendering implies that the King James Bible translators did not understand the true meaning of the Hebrew word and "mistranslated"male in both those verses. But did they really? Just five verses before rendering male as "replenish" in Genesis 1:28, the same translators rendered male as "fill" in Genesis 1:22:
"And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth."(Genesis 1:22 KJV)
This fact shows that those translators most certainly knew the subtle differences in meanings of the Hebrew word male and were well aware of the interpretive implications of using the English word "replenish" in Genesis 1:28 and 9:1 in the King James translation.
Now, if these were the only places in the Scriptures that gave support to the "Gap Theory" interpretation that would be very skimpy evidence indeed upon which to base sound doctrine. But, as we have already pointed out, there are other literal wording considerations within the Holy Bible that raise valid interpretative issues. For example, there is the issue of the Biblical word "Generations":
Like mankind, the Bible says that the Earth and the heavens also have "generations" in their histories:
"These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens,"
(Genesis 2:4 KJV)
"This is the book of the generations of Adam. In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him;"
(Genesis 5:1 KJV)
"These are the generations of Noah: Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God."
(Genesis 6:9 KJV)
In all three of the verses above the word "generations" is defined as a line of descent, a family history from one generation to the next. The Hebrew word for generations is plural in all cases. If God only made the heavens and Earth once, as Young Earth Creationists would have you believe, then the term "generations" should have been in the singular, which it is NOT in either Hebrew or the KJV English translation.
The Holy Scriptures are clearly saying that the seven days' work was a new generation of the heavens and the Earth when God made the world of Man following the desolation found at the time of Genesis 1:2. Something similar will be done in the future. The Bible says there will be yet another generation of the heavens and Earth at the second coming of the Lord Jesus Christ:
"And Jesus said unto them, Verily I say unto you, That ye which have followed me, in the regeneration when the Son of man shall sit in the throne of his glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel."
(Matthew 19:28 KJV)
"Nevertheless we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness."
(2 Peter 3:13 KJV)
"For, behold, I create new heavens and a new earth: and the former shall not be remembered, nor come into mind."
(Isaiah 65:17 KJV)
The geologic and fossil records are the surviving evidence that God preserved for us to testify to the truth that the Earth is very old and was inhabited for a long period before the seven days of Genesis chapter one. Those records, written in stone, also provide evidence of a long reign of Death upon the old Earth and the end of the old world order by a universal destructive event.
Clearly, if we believe the literal wording of the Bible, there was indeed a universal creative event during the seven days of Genesis, about 6,000 literal years ago. But the literal wording of the Bible and the Earth's geology reveals that there is more to the story - it was not the original creation of all things. Understanding the time gap in Genesis opens a vast knowledge gap. You just can't rely on your own understanding or the traditions of man to obtain this knowledge. You have to TRUST THE BOOK.
"For my thoughts [are] not your thoughts, neither [are] your ways my ways, saith the LORD. For [as] the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts."
(Isaiah 55:8-9 KJV)
Previously on this page we stressed that in order to understand what the literal Biblical text is actually saying, it must be interpreted by its own Scripturally-defined terms. On the page that immediately follows we will discuss two very important Scripturally-defined terms, and the differences in conceptual meanings they convey. It is essential that students of God's Word comprehend these terms and differences in order to discern truth from traditional assumptions. These words are "Earth" and "World" and they are not same.
Understanding the Biblical Difference between
the Words "World" and "Earth"
The King James Authorized Version of the Holy Bible has its own internal set of words and definitions which are self-interpreting in their specific meaning and context. From Genesis to Revelation, translated from Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek manuscripts, the KJV Bible's English translation is an integrated whole throughout the sixty-six books.
The English words "world" and "earth" are different words and have distinct, separate conceptual meanings in the Holy Bible and the English language. These meanings are defined by the Scriptures when used in context. Understanding this distinction is CRUCIAL to rightly dividing the word of truth, for therein is found one of the keys to unlocking the paradox of the creation account of Genesis chapter one and the geologic evidence of an ancient Earth.
In the book of Hebrews, the Lord Jesus Christ is said to be the maker of the "worlds" (plural):
"Hath in these last days spoken unto us by [his] Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds;"
(Heb. 1:2 KJV)
"Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear."
(Heb. 11:3 KJV)
The Greek word in these two verses for "worlds" is '' (as in eon), which means an age or a perpetuity of specific prevailing conditions in time upon the face of the Earth. Therefore, the word "world," as doctrinally defined in our Bible, is NOT referring to other planets in outer space but to defined ages and prevailing conditions during those ages, be they past, present, or future.
The "Earth" is a planet. It is a spherical-shaped mass of matter in time and space. The "world" is the specific set of conditions prevailing upon the face of the planet Earth at a specific point in Biblical time. The Earth is a part of our present world, past worlds, and the future world to come (see Matt 12:32, Mark 10:30, Hebrews 2:5), but the Earth itself is not the whole "world." Our present "world" also consists of the stars in the sky, the trees of the field, the people, the cities of the nations, and the present evil world system on the face of the Earth:
"And it shall come to pass after the end of seventy years, that the LORD will visit Tyre, and she shall turn to her hire, and shall commit fornication with all the kingdoms of theworld upon the face of the earth."
(Isaiah 23:17 KJV)
"Who gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us from this present evil world, according to the will of God and our Father:"
(Gal 1:4 KJV)
The Earth itself is not evil, but it is cursed (see Gen 3:17-19). When Adam sinned, death entered the "world" of Adam, who had just been created on the sixth day and placed by God upon the face of the regenerated earth in that new world, the world of MAN made in the image of God.
"Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:"
(Rom 5:12 KJV)
Adam's newly created "world" was pristine on the surface. But under Adam's feet, entombed and hidden in the rocks of the planet, was the buried fossil record - God's material testimony to the truth of the existence of a previous world on the face of the Earth and a long reign of death across ancient ages past, long before the new world of Adam. This material evidence, there all along but only scientifically examined and understood by man over the past two to three centuries, now speaks to us today about the existence of that previously-created world (Genesis 1:1), which came under subjection to death, was eventually destroyed (Genesis 1:2), and then Divinely replaced by the present world (Genesis 1:3-2:1). That ancient world was under the stewardship of an anointed being; the covering cherub named Lucifer. Through Lucifer's sin of rebellion against God, that old world under Lucifer's stewardship was first subjected to Death and, through time, eventually died. At the end of its time, when the stars of the old universe, including Earth's sun, perished, their remaining hydrogen oxidized into waters as darkness (both physical and spiritual) took its final toll upon the ancient Creation. That is specifically what these two verses point to:
"And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters."
(Genesis 1:2 KJV)
"For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water: Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished: But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men."
(2 Pet 3:5-7 KJV)
The old world was the first "generation" of the heaven and the Earth (Genesis 1:1). The heavens and Earth "which are now" are the second "generation" of the heavens and the Earth. It is the same planet Earth but different worlds upon the face of the planet. This is why the Bible says:
These are the generations (PLURAL) of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens,(Genesis 2:4 KJV)
In the New Testament, this second "generation" of the heavens and the Earth is specifically referred to as "The Foundation of the World" and it is likened to a "conception." This will be discussed in the next chapter.
The misguided doctrine of Young Earth Creationism (YEC) demands that the universe and all things were first made only 6,000 years ago, and that there was no death on the Earth until Adam and Eve sinned. Romans 5:12 and Exodus 20:11 are cited as the "proof texts" of the YEC belief system. Therefore, by their simplistic interpretation of those two verses, they claim there is no scriptural proof of death before Adam and therefore no Pre-Adamite world. Since they deny a Pre-Adamite world, then all of the fossil record and the Ice Age must (according to their reasoning) be the result of Noah's flood. This is nothing less than classical Archaic Creationism presented in the new and improved wrapper of "Creation Science" and peddled on the claim of strict adherence to the literal wording of the Bible. However, as we have already started to document, that claim is not exactly the full truth.
The Bible is the word of God and God cannot lie! Spiritual principles are universal throughout all 66 books. Romans 5:12 and Exodus 20:11 are absolutely true, but only within the context of the full truth as defined within the Scriptures and by the Scriptures as a doctrinal whole. We will demonstrate this.
Exodus 20:11 states:
"For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it."
(Exodus 20:11 KJV)
Notice that "the sea" is set apart from the Earth in this verse as something separate. This is the contextual qualifier of the verse because the "Sea" spoken of here is the waters (or sea) above the firmament which was placed there at the time of Genesis 1:6-8 and which will no longer be there after the final judgment:
"And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea."
(Revelation 21:1 KJV)
Thus Exodus 20:11 is absolutely true - this present heaven and Earth, and that Sea above the firmament was indeed made in six days, just as the book of Genesis states. But Exodus 20:11 is not a reference to the first time creation of all things. Genesis 1:1 does NOT read:
"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth, and the sea."
Romans 5:12 states:
"Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:"(Romans 5:12 KJV)
Young Earth Creationists adamantly claim that a literal reading of Romans 5:12 proves there was no death or previous "world" before Adam, because they are willingly ignorant (the Bible's words, not mine) of the "world that then was" spoken of in 2 Peter 3:5-7:
"For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water: Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished: But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men."
(2 Pet 3:5-7 KJV)
In Romans 5:12 and 2 Peter 3:5-7 the term "world" in BOTH verses is from the Greek word kosmos and that is the Scriptural nugget of wisdom that puts Romans 5:12 into its proper context of interpretation. The kosmos was not destroyed by Noah's flood. (The Earth was only flooded.) Therefore 2 Peter can NOT be speaking of Noah's flood. It is telling about the destruction of a previous "world" or order of all things, the entire Cosmos. Adam did not live in that previous world. He lived (and sinned) in this present one.
Adam's sin brought death into his (our) world. Therefore, there is no contradiction between what the Bible says about Adam's sin and what the Earth's geology reveals in a long and ancient track record of death on this planet long before Adam. Using the spiritual principle that death comes by sin, as the Scriptures clearly say in Romans 5:12, we will show you from the Scriptures that there was a sinner on the Earth before Adam, in an ancient world that was here before Adam: Lucifer, a.k.a. Satan, the Dragon, the Serpent. Death came upon his ancient world when he fell - long, long before this present world, and the Earth's fossil record is the evidence of this truth, preserved by God (as a physical witness to truth) in the ancient rocks of our planet.
In the next chapter we will deal with the process whereby the old world was broken down and the new world was established by God during the seven-days by explaining the Biblical difference between the concepts of "Creation" and "Catabolism" in the Genesis narrative.
Creation or Catabolism?
What is commonly known as the Creation days of Genesis occurred over seven literal 24-hour days about 6,000 years ago, according to the chronology of the Bible. This does not mean that the Earth and heavens are only 6,000 years old. Many people think the seven creation days in Genesis are a description of the Earth's geologic history. They are not! The geologic record shows that the Earth existed long before the six days and long before Adam.
This begs the question: If these seven days were not the original creation of the heavens and Earth, then what were they?
The short answer is: The birth of a new generation of the heavens and Earth. It is an event the Greek Scriptures refer to as: "katabole"
In the King James Version of the Bible there is a key phrase in the New Testament that refers back to the seven days of Genesis. That phrase is: "The foundation of the world"
That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying, I will open my mouth in parables; I will utter things which have been kept secret from the foundation of the world."(Matthew 13:35 KJV)
This exact phrase is found in the following verses: (Matthew 13:35, Matthew 25:34, Luke 11:50, John 17:24, Ephesians 1:4, Hebrews 4:3, Hebrews 9:26, 1 Peter 1:20, Revelation 13:8 and Revelation 17:8), a total of 10 verse references. In each of these verses the English word "foundation" is translated from the Greek word katabole. Here is the Strong's definition of the Greek term:
katabolh katabole kat-ab-ol-ay' from 2598; a deposition, i.e. founding; figuratively, conception:--conceive, foundation.
The other New Testament verses where the English word "foundation" is found are: (Luke 6:48, Luke 6:49, Luke 14:29, Roman 15:20, 1 Corinthians 3:10, 1 Corinthians 3:11, 1 Corinthians 3:12, Ephesians 2:20, 1 Timothy 6:19, 2 Timothy 2:19, Hebrews 1:10, Hebrews 6:1, Revelation 21:19), a total of 13 verse references. In each of these verses the word "foundation is translated from the Greek word themelios. Here is the Strong's definition:
qemelioV themelios them-el'-ee-os from a derivative of 5087; something put down, i.e. a substruction (of a building, etc.), (literally or figuratively):--foundation.
There is one other translation of the Greek word katabole in our King James Bible that you need to see. It is found in the following verse:
"Through faith also Sara herself received strength to conceive seed, and was delivered of a child when she was past age, because she judged him faithful who had promised."(Hebrews 11:11 KJV)
It is very instructive to learn why the English word "foundation" in all the verses containing the phrase "foundation of the world" and the English word "conceive" in Hebrews 11:11 are both translated from the same Greek word, katabole. Why are the Holy Scriptures comparing the "foundation of the world" to a conception? That is the question we will explore on this page.
Before proceeding further, please notice that the phrase "foundation of the world" is NOT speaking about the original creation of the heavens and the Earth. The Scriptures make this clear by this verse:
"And, Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the earth; and the heavens are the works of thine hands:"(Hebrews 1:10 KJV)
In the above verse, the English word "foundation" is NOT from katabole (which is akin to a conception) but it is translated from the Greek word, themelios (which is akin to a structure or base of beginning). This tells us that this verse is describing the time when God originally created the Earth. And, since the verse says this was "in the beginning," it correlates correctly with the very first verse of the Bible:
"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth."(Genesis 1:1 KJV)
Now, here is what we have established, so far: The seven days of Genesis are not the original creation of the heavens and Earth. The seven days are not a description of the Earth's geologic history. The seven days are a description of the "foundation of the world" (the world of man) and a process called katabole that is akin to a conception and a birth. Got that?
So, what exactly does the Greek term katabole (the English scientific use=catabolic) mean? In simple terms, it refers to a process of breaking something down and making something new as result. In order for a woman to conceive, her body must be able to breakdown the male's sperm in order to incorporate his DNA information (in the sperm's nucleolus) with her DNA (in the egg's cytoplasm) in order to conceive a child which has the DNA characteristics of both the father and mother. This is accomplished through a biochemical process called catabolism. If the female's body no longer produces the necessary hormonal chemistry to initiate this catabolic process, she cannot conceive. That is why Sarah, who was way past child bearing years, was able to conceive because God strengthened her body to do it. That is why the English Bible uses the word "conceive" as a translation of the Greek word katabole, because the English word perfectly describes the end result of a foundational biological process, even though the exact dynamics of that biological process was unknown to man at the time Hebrews 11:11 was penned. This is yet another Biblical example of "Progressive Revelation" of the Scriptures; it was an established scientific truth documented in the Scriptures by the Holy Spirit many hundreds of years before mankind would be able to comprehend the full meaning of what had been written.
Again, in biology, catabolism is generally used in the sense as the precursor to anabolism (the building up) as part of the overall process of metabolism. Once you understand that, then you realize that all those verses in the New Testament which speak of "the foundation (katabole) of the world" are talking about the breaking down (for the purpose of building up) of the new cosmos. That is, the Bible compares the "foundation of the world" to this biological process because of the scientific similarities. Specifically, because God took the remains of the original heavens and Earth, which had become broken down and were desolate at the time of Genesis 1:2, and though a Divine catabolic process used the remains of the old heaven and Earth to form our present heavens and Earth. The details of that process are given in the seven days of Genesis. And it confirms the truth of Genesis 2:4 that tells us that our present world, the one made during those seven days, is a new generation (offspring) of the original heavens and earth:
"These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens,"(Genesis 2:4 KJV)
In the case of human conception, the offspring usually bears many characteristics of both the father and mother, yet is also unique with its own characteristics. In the case of the new generation of the heavens and the Earth, it too would bear many characteristics of its parent, but be uniquely different in certain ways. We discuss these differences and similarities later in this study and will deal specifically with the differences of the living creatures on the planet, in both the previous world and the present one.
Before ending this page, I must give credit to whom it is due:
I first learned about the concept presented on this page after reading a book by D.V.M. Steven E. Dill entitled, "In the Beginnings" a book which is another defense of the Gap Theory of Genesis. Dr. Dill contacted me shortly after reading my book and suggested I read his, which I did.
In the section in his book entitled, The Gap Theory under the Electron Microscope he expounds at length about the word katabole and the connection to the seven days of Genesis. I was blown away after reading it, because it provided another Biblical and scientific verification to the Ruin-Reconstruction interpretation that is astounding.
I encourage you to read his book because he covers the subject in much greater depth and clarity than I can possibly communicate.
The 4th Day - Paradox of the Sun and Stars
Throughout this website we have sought to provide both Biblical and Scientific answers to the many issues which have evaded the reconciliation of Geology and Genesis and the doctrinal conflict between "Old Earth" and "Young Earth" Creationism. Having demonstrated that the Ruin-Reconstruction (Gap Theory) interpretation provides the superior, Biblically credible solution between what the Bible says and what the Earth's geology reveals, we must now tackle an elusive issue in the reconciliation process: Specifically, the sun, moon and stars of the 4th Day of the Genesis narrative:
And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years: And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so. And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also. And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth, And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good. And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.(Genesis 1:14-19 KJV)
Young Earth Creationists claim that the Sun and Stars were first "created" about 6,000 years ago on the 4th Day of Genesis, a claim that runs counter to empirical observations and the Biblical text. In fact, the word "create" is nowhere in the above passage. The word used is "made" and comes from a different Hebrew word with a different meaning. Of course, the YECs argue that the words are interchangeable, but they are wrong. The word "made" is correct and its meaning is precisely true. The days of Genesis describe a Divine restructuring of a previously existing heaven and Earth made through a process the Greek Scriptures define as katabole (Catabolism).
The constant of the speed of light and observations of our universe suggest that the stars we see up in the sky are old, very old - much older than just 6,000 years. Therefore, in order to defend their Young Earth Creationist doctrine against this widely accepted observation, Young Earth Creationists have proposed every counter-argument imaginable. These arguments range from changes in the speed of light, to time-dilation, to God deliberately making everything appear old just to trick all the "evil evolutionists" into believing the "lies of science" and receiving damnation for their unbelief. (Of course, that latter explanation would also make God a liar and a deceiver, but they never think that one through.)
In Gap Theory Old Earth Creationism we postulate that there was a previous world on the ancient Earth long, long before the world of Adam. Of course, such an ancient world had to have a Sun, a moon and stars shining up in the sky from ancient times. The Bible says there was a heaven "of old" (2 Peter 3:5-7), so the stars of that heaven had to exist before the seven days of Genesis, otherwise why the requirement for the sun and stars to be regenerated ("made") on the 4th Day? Of course, if we accept that the Lord God "made" the present sun, moon and stars from the remnants of the heavenly bodies that were previously here, then there is an element of truth to the argument that what we now see in the sky is not really as old as scientific theory would have us believe. The scientific observations are based on the assumption of an uninterrupted continuity of all things since the beginning of time. The Bible, however, tells the reader there was indeed an interruption in that continuity. Does this make God a liar? No, not when He directly tells you in his Word that an interruption of continuity occurred. You make God's Word a lie when you refuse to accept the full truth of the matter.
Scientific theory tells us that that when we look up into the sky at any distant star, we are in effect looking backwards into historical time. What you see when you look at a star one million light years away is what that star looked like 1 million years ago in time. In reality, that star may no longer be there. It could have exploded 500,000 years ago and you would not see that from Earth for another 500,000 years from today. Light travels at a velocity of 299,792,458 m/s and the distances between the Earth and the stars is measured in light-years.
In several places within this website we present our evidence that indicates the old Earth and heavens perished (passed into a state of coldness and ruin) about 13,000 - 10,000 radio carbon years ago. This is at a geological marker termed the Younger-Dryas cooling event which occurs at the end of the Pleistocene. We also postulated that when the stars in the heavens went dark and cold, some of the hydrogen of those dying stars produced great quantities of waters across the cosmos. Such a universal event would have produced a spectacular light show in the heavens (stars expanding into Red Giants and imploding into White Dwarfs, etc.) before the darkness and cold settled in. But when we look up into the heavens today everything appears normal, as if nothing of the sort even happened. Why is that? It is because of a Divine intervention into the workings of the cosmos about 6,000 years ago.
The reader should keep firmly in mind that the Lord God who established the observed physical laws of nature is not Himself in subjection to those laws. Our Bible is replete with instances where the Lord God supernaturally intervenes against the laws of physics and nature. Examples are the parting of the Red Sea (Exodus 14:21), the turning back of the shadow of the sundial (2 Kings 20:9), the stopping of the earth's rotation for about 24 hours (Joshua 10:12-14), the virgin birth of the God-Man, the Lord Jesus Christ. And then, of course, there is the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ from the dead. Do you believe that God did all these things? Then why should you find it incredible that the Lord God could not resurrect an entire dead universe and give it renewed life? The Lord Jesus Christ raised Lazarus from the dead and restored him whole, even after his body had been decomposing in the grave for four days (John 11:39). Could not the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the maker of all things (John 1:3), restore a dead universe and make it whole again? Most certainly!
Can such things be explained or defended scientifically? No. Do such things contradict the known observations of physics and chemistry? To the extent we presently know them, yes. Consequently, there are some things that just cannot be explained by appeals to science; there are many things that must be accepted on faith because they are beyond the comprehension of man's canal mind.
"But Jesus beheld them, and said unto them, With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible."(Matthew 19:26 KJV)
The Firmament, Third Heaven,
and Structure of Things Biblical
On the second day in the Genesis narrative the Lord calls for there to be a "firmament" in the "midst of the waters" to divide the waters:
"And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which wereunder the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day."(Genesis 1:6-8 KJV)
The term "firmament" and its identity has been one of the greatest puzzles concerning the Creation account, mostly because of its Hebrew definition:
Strongs Hebrew Definition # 7549: eyqr raqiya` raw-kee'-ahStrongs Hebrew Definition # 7554: eqr raqa` raw-kah'
from 7554; properly, an expanse, i.e. the firmament or (apparently) visible arch of the sky:--firmament.
a primitive root; to pound the earth (as a sign of passion); by analogy to expand (by hammering); by implication, to overlay (with thin sheets of metal):--beat, make broad, spread abroad (forth, over, out, into plates), stamp, stretch.
Most people interpret this to mean just the expanse of the sky (the atmosphere) or outer space, or both (which it is), but the full meaning goes well beyond that simplistic interpretation. The creation of the firmament is associated with the placement of some sort of structure.
Many modern scholars consign the term "firmament" as a relic of a pre-scientific culture and translate the Hebrew word raqia (rendered as "firmament" in the KJV) as a "dome" or "vault" in some modern Bibles. The problem that puzzles people is the implication in the Hebrew language of the firmament being a firm, fixed structure (FIRMament). That structure can be explained in the context of the Ruin-Reconstruction interpretation of Genesis.
Young Earth Creationists have interpreted the "waters above the firmament" as a theoretical water canopy which once surrounded the Earth but no longer exists (their source of the waters of Noah's flood). This is incorrect, and a concept that does not exactly hold water (pun intended) when closely examined within the literal framework of the Genesis narrative. The reason is because of what is said in this passage:
"And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years: And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so. And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also."(Genesis 1:14-16 KJV)
This verse says that the Sun, Moon, and Stars are IN the firmament. Therefore, applying the rules of grammar and logic, those waters that are "above the firmament" must be above the Sun, Moon and Stars. That means these waters are above the visible cosmos. For some this is a hard pill to swallow, but that is exactly what the Bible is saying.
"Praise him, ye heavens of heavens, and ye waters that [be] above the heavens."
(Psalms 148:4 KJV)
The Bible says that in the Lord Jesus Christ, the incarnate Word of God, all wisdom and knowledge is found (see Colossians 2:3). The same holds true for the Holy Scriptures, the written Word of God. According to the Scriptures, there is a physical/spiritual structure to the universe. The Apostle Paul makes reference to the importance of this knowledge in the book of Ephesians where he wrote:
"That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, May be able to comprehend with all saints what [is] the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God."
(Ephesians 3:17-19 KJV)
Pay close attention to the structure of the grammar. Paul is speaking about two different things in this passage. The first is the structure of things, "the breadth, and length, and depth, and height;" and the second is, "to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge." The important key word here is the conjunction "And" which separates the two clauses. In other words, Paul is saying there are two things the believer can and should know. 1) The dimensions and structure of all things, which can be defined. 2) The love of Christ, which is beyond full comprehension by man. A corollary to the truth of this passage is found in the Old Testament proverb:
"The heaven for height, and the earth for depth, and the heart of kings [is] unsearchable."
(Proverbs 25:3 KJV)
The firmament deals with the structure of the present heavens and Earth (Genesis 2:1), as opposed to the structure of the original heaven and Earth (Genesis 1:1). There is presently a three (3) heavens structure. In the old world of the original creation, there was a different configuration. Let's look back to Genesis 1:6 again and more closely examine that verse to determine that present structure and review something that we previously just touched on:
"And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which [were]under the firmament from the waters which [were] above the firmament: and it was so."
(Gen 1:6-7 KJV)
On the second day of the creation, the Lord God "divided" the waters (plural) of the great "deep" into two parts with a "firmament" in the midst. According to Genesis 1:10, both the waters that were upon the face of the Earth and the waters which He placed ABOVE the firmament He called "Seas":
"And God called the dry [land] Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that [it was] good."
(Gen 1:10 KJV)
This is important to understand. We know that the waters on the Earth are called "Seas" in the Bible, but there is also another "Sea" that is spoken of in the Scriptures, and that one is above the firmament. (Special note: Notice that the word "Sea" is capitalized at Genesis 1:10 in the KJV Bible). But, exactly where is "ABOVE" the firmament? During the seven days of the Genesis regeneration the Lord God defined Three Heavens. The first heaven is the Earth's atmosphere:
"And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl [that] may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven."
(Gen 1:20 KJV)
The second heaven is the vast expanse of the physical universe - outer space as we call it:
"And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:"
(Gen 1:14 KJV)
These two heavens constitute a continuum called the "firmament," and this firmament is collectively called "Heaven":
"And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day."
(Gen 1:8 KJV)
The Third Heaven is above this higher "Sea," and this higher sea is below the Throne of God:
"And before the throne there was a sea of glass like unto crystal: and in the midst of the throne, and round about the throne, were four beasts full of eyes before and behind."(Revelation 4:6 KJV)
Therefore, this particular "Sea" above the firmament is above the known physical universe. Since the sun, moon and stars are "in" the firmament this "Sea" MUST be above them. This is difficult for the science of man to fathom, but it is a Scriptural fact on cosmology. It represents a firm and impassable barrier between the world of man (below) and the abode of God (above). Here are some additional verses in the Bible which refer to this particular Sea:
"Praise him, ye heavens of heavens, and ye waters that [be] above the heavens."
(Psalms 148:4 KJV)
This is the "sea" that John saw in his visions:
"And before the throne [there was] a sea of glass like unto crystal: and in the midst of the throne, and round about the throne, [were] four beasts full of eyes before and behind."
(Rev 4:6 KJV)
This is a present "Sea" of separation that will no longer exist when God destroys the old world and makes all things new after the 1,000-year Kingdom of Heaven and the final judgment that follows:
"And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea."
(Revelation 21:1 KJV)
This is the sea that is spoken of in Exodus 20:11 and frequently quoted by Young Earth Creationists as a proof text to support their doctrine:
"For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it."
(Exodus 20:11 KJV)
That reference to "the sea" in the above verse is a reference to the sea established above the firmament NOT to any sea on the Earth. Look at the English grammar of the verse. The heaven and Earth are set apart as separate and complete entities as is "the sea." That sea above the firmament was not made until the second day. There is something even more important to notice about these waters above the firmament. Look again at the passage concerning the second day:
"And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day."(Genesis 1:6-8 KJV)
Something is missing there. Do you remember what was said previously? This work on the second day is the ONLY day in the Genesis narrative where the Lord does NOT say it "was good." Therefore, when you consider the statement the Lord makes in Genesis 1:31 where He says that all that was made was "very good"...
"And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day."(Genesis 1:31 KJV)
...it must be considered so in the context of circumstances. The context is the overall work of Reconstruction from Ruin and the preparation of the Earth and a new world for Man. The term "very good" does not mean "perfect," and the sea of separation placed between the world above and the world below was not good, but necessary. It would not be until the work of the Lord Jesus Christ on the cross that a way would be made for crossing that barrier (the sea, or waters, above the firmament).
That particular "sea" is represented (in type) by this object that was a part of the design of Solomon's Temple known as the "Molten Sea." (See 1 Kings 7:23 and 2 Chronicles 4:2.) If you look at a diagram layout of the Temple you will see that this sea is between the Altar and the main part of the Temple where the Holy Place and Most Holy Place was.
Here in the design of the Temple can be found in schematic form the structure of all things in type. The Altar where the sacrifices were made represents where the Lamb of God was sacrificed. It represents the world that is below (the Earth & the first and second heavens). The Molten Sea is between those two lower heavens and the "Third Heaven" where the true Temple of God is located.The Third HeavenThis now gives us a better understanding of what the Apostle Paul was talking about in the book of 2 Corinthians 12:2, where he speaks of a place called the "third heaven":
"I knew a man in Christ above fourteen years ago, (whether in the body, I cannot tell; or whether out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth;) such an one caught up to the third heaven."
(2 Cor. 12:2 KJV)
Although the "third heaven" is not directly mentioned in the Genesis narrative, the established structure of all things is defined in Genesis 1 and, when understood, allows us to comprehend exactly where and what Paul was talking about when he mentions the "third heaven" in his letter. It also gives the reader a better understanding of John's vision in Revelation 4. Again, when the Lord God divided the waters He created a boundary which presently exists between the two lower heavens (which constitute the firmament) and the third heaven (where the throne of God is). That boundary is that "Sea," and again that "sea" is above the two heavens of the firmament. It is also likened in places to crystal or smooth glass:
"And the likeness of the firmament upon the heads of the living creature was as the colour of the terrible crystal, stretched forth over their heads above."(Ezekiel 1:22 KJV)
The reason it appears like a smooth, crystal surface is because it is frozen:
"The waters are hid as [with] a stone, and the face of the deep is frozen."
(Job 38:30 KJV)
"And they saw the God of Israel: and there was under his feet as it were a paved work of a sapphire stone, and as it were the body of heaven in his clearness."
(Exodus 24:10 KJV)
It is also likened to glass:
"And I saw as it were a sea of glass mingled with fire: and them that had gotten the victory over the beast, and over his image, and over his mark, and over the number of his name, stand on the sea of glass, having the harps of God."(Revelation 15:2 KJV)
With this understanding of what exactly the Firmament is and the structure of all things that God made during the seven days, many things that were previously obscure suddenly take on real meaning and enrich the reader's understanding.
In summary, here is the structure of the physical world as it now exists from the face of the Earth upwards:
"That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, May be able to comprehend with all saints what [is] the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God."
- The lower sea of physical waters (our seas and oceans)
- The first heaven (the atmosphere)
- The second heaven (outer space)
- The sea above outer space and below the third heaven (a sea of separation)
- And above it all, there is the Third Heaven.
(Ephesians 3:17-19 KJV)
The structure of the heavens is a recurring theme throughout the Bible. It is reinforced (in typology) throughout the Bible. For example, it is likened to the floors of a building, which we call "stories," and sure enough, the same word is even used in the KJV Bible.
1. To describe the design of the heavens:
"[It is] he that buildeth his stories in the heaven, and hath founded his troop in the earth; he that calleth for the waters of the sea, and poureth them out upon the face of the earth: The LORD [is] his name."
(Amos 9:6 KJV)
2. This pattern of three (3) levels is also found is some other important things in the Bible, an example being the description of the design of Noah's Ark:
"A window shalt thou make to the ark, and in a cubit shalt thou finish it above; and the door of the ark shalt thou set in the side thereof; [with] lower, second, and third [stories] shalt thou make it."
(Genesis 6:16 KJV)
3. To describe the construction of the Temple:
"The door posts, and the narrow windows, and the galleries round about on their three stories, over against the door, cieled with wood round about, and from the ground up to the windows, and the windows [were] covered;"
(Ezekiel 41:16 KJV)
In the construction of Moses' Tabernacle in the wilderness there were three main parts: 1) The outer court, where the brazen altar of sacrifice was. 2) The Holy Place, where the candlestick, table of shewbread, and golden altar of incense were. 3) The Holy of Holies where the Ark of the Covenant was. Also note that between parts two and three was a curtain for a partition, which matches the "sea" above the firmament (in type) in the structure of the Three Heavens. It is no coincidence that all these Biblical things have a similar three-tiered structure. There is much spiritual insight to be gained in further study of those things:
Concerning the design of the Temple, keep in mind that Moses' tent Tabernacle and Solomon's Temple both had three (3) main parts:
- Three Heavens
- Three levels inside Noah's Ark
- Three floors in a section of the Temple
- Three sections to Moses' Tabernacle
As you can see, this theme of structure based on threes is consistent throughout the Bible. Even the structure of the Earth has three (3) main divisions: the core, the mantle, and the crust.
- The outer court
- The holy place (where the table, lamp and incense alter was, outside the veil)
- The Most Holy Place (where the Ark was, behind the veil)
Does the Universe really have a structure? When you go into outer space is there really any such thing as up and down, is there a top and bottom? Does the cosmos have a definite shape? We cannot observe such in our three-dimensional view of the universe, but is that all that is really out there? Not according to the Bible! In the words of Lord Himself there is a world above the one we live in and can observe:
"And he said unto them, Ye are from beneath; I am from above: ye are of this world; I am not of this world."
(John 8:23 KJV)
Just because we cannot observe or understand something does not disprove its existence.
"And the earth was ..." (Genesis 1:2)
As stated previously at the start of this study, at Genesis 1:2 the reader is confronted with the first mystery of the Holy Scriptures; a mystery which, when fully understood, reveals why the ancient geologic fossil record is fairly accurate and why the account of the literal seven 24-hour days of Genesis one is a regeneration of the heaven and the Earth and not the original creation. Let's quickly review the specifics:
"And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters."
(Genesis 1:2 KJV)
"For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water: Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished: But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men."
(2 Pet 3:5-7 KJV)
In Genesis 1:2 the Earth is said to be a lifeless and uninhabited planet, drifting in the cold and darkness of the chaotic remains of the old universe. The planet is submerged in water, and waters also rage around it and across a ruined universal abyssal. As you study the root word definitions and the English translation of the KJV Bible, a picture emerges of a former world that once existed, but now is totally destroyed and dead. Taking the words of the Bible at face value and reading the verses objectively, several facts become clear:
1) The context and time placement of Genesis 1:2 is one verse BEFORE God says, "Let there be light" (Genesis 1:3), where He begins the creative process of the famous seven days.
2) Before God says, "let there be light" (Genesis 1:3) there are things present that must have been previously created. Specifically, there is water composed of hydrogen and oxygen, there is the Earth composed of myriads of elements and compounds and in a solid form recognizable as a planet which has already been assigned a proper name.
3) Third, and very important, there is something else already present at this time: DARKNESS! And it’s not just physical darkness (an absence of light) but also spiritual darkness (the absence of holiness and harmony).
When all these facts are taken into account, the following inescapable truths stand out:
a) The planet Earth and a ruined universe were already in existence before the creative process of Genesis 1:3 through 1:31 even begins. Earth had already existed for an unspecified period of historical time.
b) The physics of time, space, and matter are already established, which by extension means that the processes which regulate radioactive decay (the half-life principle) are also functioning and valid.
c) At some undetermined time in history past, Death and the powers of darkness first came into being, and this happened before the seven days and before the creation of the man, Adam.
In essence, what the Scriptures are collectively saying is this:
Long ago, in very distant times past, the Lord God first created the heaven and Earth (Genesis 1:1). But in the place in time referred to in Genesis 1:2, there has been a vast gap in historical time between those two verses of the Bible; a gap on the order of possibly hundreds of millions of years. In Genesis 1:1 we have a glorious heaven and Earth, but in 1:2 we see a decimated heaven and Earth. The bulk of the geologic column fits in-between 1:1 and 1:2, and the geologic time marker at Genesis 1:2 is the very end of the Pleistocene. The end of the Pleistocene (about 13,000 to 10,000 years ago) shows evidence of a global extinction event and a severe drop in global temperatures. We will elaborate further in following chapters.
So what exactly happened during this great gap of time between Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2, and why? Why was Death already in existence before the seven days and before Adam sinned? For clues to that answer we must look to the writings of the prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel. There, in the prophetic Scriptures, the Holy Ghost spoke through these men concerning the ancient origin of Satan, which is the key doctrine to unlocking this great mystery.
What the Spirit of Truth Reveals in the Words of Truth
In the passages below the prophets are speaking against the "king of Babylon" (Isaiah 14:4) and the "prince of Tyrus" (Ezekiel 28:2) who were renown mortal men of history. Prophetically, the Spirit is also addressing a man yet to come, the antichrist (see 2 Thessalonians 2:1-10). However, it is clearly evident from the content that the Holy Ghost is also speaking here against a spirit being; an ancient, unholy, and malevolent spirit that motivated the evil deeds of these historical and mortal men:"How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! [how] art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations! For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north: I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High. Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit. They that see thee shall narrowly look upon thee, [and] consider thee, [saying, Is] this the man that made the earth to tremble, that did shake kingdoms;"
(Isaiah 14:12-16 KJV)
"Thou hast been in Eden the garden of God; every precious stone [was] thy covering, the sardius, topaz, and the diamond, the beryl, the onyx, and the jasper, the sapphire, the emerald, and the carbuncle, and gold: the workmanship of thy tabrets and of thy pipes was prepared in thee in the day that thou wast created. Thou [art] the anointed cherub that covereth; and I have set thee [so]: thou wast upon the holy mountain of God; thou hast walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire. Thou [wast] perfect in thy ways from the day that thou wast created, till iniquity was found in thee. By the multitude of thy merchandise they have filled the midst of thee with violence, and thou hast sinned: therefore I will cast thee as profane out of the mountain of God: and I will destroy thee, O covering cherub, from the midst of the stones of fire. Thine heart was lifted up because of thy beauty, thou hast corrupted thy wisdom by reason of thy brightness: I will cast thee to the ground, I will lay thee before kings, that they may behold thee."
(Ezekiel 28:13-17 KJV)
The words highlighted in red speak of things that could not possibly be attributed to the actual acts of any human king or prince. No man in history has ever "walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire" or "fallen from heaven."
The name "Lucifer" means "light bearer" or "brightness" in the Hebrew sense of the word. This creature was the first steward over the Kingdom of Heaven in the day when the Lord God created the heaven and Earth (Genesis 1:1). It is important to understand that the "Kingdom of Heaven" is not something that just begins with the Gospels of the New Testament. The saga for the control and Kingship of the "Kingdom of Heaven" is the Bible's core theme, from Genesis through Revelation. The geography of this Kingdom is from the surface of the Earth below up to all things within the bounds of the firmament of heaven, the physical universe. This topic is discussed more in depth in a later chapter.
The start of this Kingdom begins back in ancient times when the Lord God first created the heaven and the Earth, as we are instructed in the book of Job:
"Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if thou hast understanding. Who hath laid the measures thereof, if thou knowest? or who hath stretched the line upon it? Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened? or who laid the corner stone thereof; When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?"
(Job 38:4-7 KJV)
At the ancient time of the original creation there was spiritual harmony and continuity throughout the newly created physical world of the Kingdom of Heaven. Physical matter and spirit were one under the stewardship of Lucifer, this anointed cherub. Being "anointed" indicates he held an office similar to the anointed High Priests of Israel, the mention of Lucifer's covering in an array of nine precious stones and gold is further suggestive of that comparison. These are not the exact same 12 stones that the High Priest of Israel wore on his Breastplate, but the similarities of such a covering signify that Lucifer was a priestly ruler over the old world of those ancient times. He was second only to the Lord God in power and authority over the realm of the whole Kingdom. Lucifer was a created being, created by God to serve Him as ruler of the Kingdom and leader of worship to the Lord.
But he was not satisfied with his glorious appointed station over all things in the Kingdom and eventually desired to be as "God" himself: "I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High."
Lucifer rebelled and transgressed against the Lord God and became the first created being to sin. Lucifer sinned a long, long time ago before Adam was even created. The earliest (thus first) documented sin (and documented in the Holy Scriptures we should add) occurred countless eons ago. It certainly happened before the Cambrian geologic period (about 500 -600 million years ago), because that is where we see an explosion of well-developed life forms in the fossil record. Things that are alive don't leave remains UNTIL they DIE. The Cambrian Explosion marks the first record of the death of very complex life forms to have died in the Earth's natural history.
But the sudden appearance of the remains of extremely complex life forms does not mean ancient life forms were only as old as the Cambrian times. There is evidence of lesscomplex, multi-cellular life from over two billion years ago, long before the Cambrian. And those newly discovered creatures are a totally different breed from what is found in the Cambrian fossils.
There is also geologic evidence that suggests the Earth was frozen over completely at the end of the Precambrian, as well. Since the 1960s, scientists have hypothesized that the Earth was subjected to severe glacial action between about 750 million and 580 million years ago. This is called the Snowball Earth hypothesis and it has been proposed to explain a number of observations in the geological record and was so severe that the Earth's oceans completely froze over at that time.
So, how are these events directly connected to the Cambrian Explosion? Some scientists today are postulating that the Great Unconformity was somehow the geologic trigger for the Cambrian explosion. Is it a coincidence that following the Snowball Earth the continents began to break apart? At that time in Earth's history the world's continental landmass was locked together in the configuration of a supercontinent called "Rodinia" that was clustered near the Earth's equator. This sequence of events: Millions of years of missing geologic record, a super Ice Age, the Cambrian Explosion of well-developed life and the breakup of Rodinia all point to the same vector in geologic deep-time. The events of that ancient vector, and the changes they wrought upon the ancient Earth, may have been a domino effect that was precipitated by Lucifer's rebellion and God's wrath upon Lucifer's earthly domain.
Allow me to digress for a minute and inject some parenthetical thoughts for your consideration. Make note of the association of Lucifer with the "stones of fire," and keep in mind that "fire" can be a physical and/or spiritual component:
"And Elisha prayed, and said, LORD, I pray thee, open his eyes, that he may see. And the LORD opened the eyes of the young man; and he saw: and, behold, the mountain [was]full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha."
(2 Kings 6:17 KJV)
"And the angel of the LORD appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush: and he looked, and, behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed."(Exodus 3:2 KJV)
"And out of the throne proceeded lightnings and thunderings and voices: and [there were] seven lamps of fire burning before the throne, which are the seven Spirits of God."
(Revelation 4:5 KJV)
"For our God [is] a consuming fire."
(Hebrews 12:29 KJV)
In the Hebrew language concordance the word for the stones spoken of as the "stones of fire" is eben eh'-ben, which suggests that these stones were more akin to building blocks or masonry than to natural rocks or burning volcanic brimstone. I believe this is significant, as it may be telling us that this covering cherub, Lucifer, was in the setting of some sort of spiritual structure of fire. Could this have been a ‘Temple of fire’ on the Earth? Again, as previously stated, this Lucifer also had a covering of diverse gemstones similar to the breastplate of gemstones worn by the High Priests of the tabernacle and the temple in Old Testament times. Are these similarities a coincidence?
Regardless, with his initial act of sin and rebellion, Death and corruption, like leaven, began to permeate the physical cosmos that was under Lucifer's stewardship to rule. It started in Eden, the Garden of God on the Earth, and spread like a cancer. Because Lucifer was the steward of the whole creation under heaven when he fell, all things under his rule were also subjected to corruption. Every life form then present, and those that afterwards came forth across Earth's natural history, had the sentence of death upon them. Their fossilized remains are the testimony, written in stone, of life's struggle under that sentence across the geologic ages. And over those vast geologic ages, the physical universe and all things in it eventually decayed and the whole system finally ran down and died, just prior to the regeneration of the Earth we find in the seven days of Genesis. And, from the very existence of such a Great Conformity in the geologic record, it would appear that all physical evidence of that ancient previous world of Lucifer was wiped clean from the Earth's surface by the wrath of God.
Scientists use the term Evolution to describe the observed progress of life forms on this planet as revealed in the fossil record. Darwin called it the survival of the fittest, and it does appear that more and more complex organisms took their place on the stage of history, but they did so by killing and adapting to the struggle against death. The dinosaurs came and went. All things died, and those creatures that came after them also died. So it continued across millenniums of historical time until the spirit of death overtook all things, including the stars across the universe. A few million years ago coldness and darkness began to increase. It was the onset of what we call the beginning of the last Ice Age, and it is the universe's eventual cold, dark, and completely dead condition that the Spirit describes in the words of the time period of Genesis 1:2:
"And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness [was] upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters."
(Genesis 1:2 KJV)
In the next chapter, we will look at some of the fossil observations that are suggestive of the violent end of the previous old world.
Observations of Geological Evidence for
the Death of the Old World
The geologic and fossil records are the surviving evidence, written in stone, that testify to the truth that the Earth is very old and was populated long before the seven days of Genesis chapter one. But does that record provide evidence of the sudden end of the old world by a universal destructive event before the seven days and before Noah's flood?
"And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters."
(Genesis 1:2 KJV)
(Genesis 1:2 KJV)
This certainly would appear to be the case. Throughout the geologic record there is evidence of mass extinction and geologic catastrophes. The theory that a giant asteroid struck the earth about 65 million years ago and thus precipitated the demise of the dinosaurs is now widely accepted as a fact. As recently as just a few years ago, that theory was scoffed at until the remains of an ancient crater were found in the Yucatan. That same school scoffed at Alfred Wegner's theory about plate tectonics "The Origin of the Continents and Oceans" back in the early days of the 20th century, but today that theory is considered the grand unifying theory of the geological sciences.
One of the greatest remaining mysteries to modern geology is found within the most recent episode of mass destruction which occurred in the geological age called the Pleistocene; the age just before the Holocene, which is the age of Man. This extinction event appears to be linked with the Ice Age. The evidence consists of vast "animal cemeteries" found in many places around the world, which seem to show a catastrophic and sudden destruction of life all across the planet only a few thousand years ago.
This evidence was documented by many back in the 19th century, but this evidence was mostly ignored by the leading scientists of the day because it did not fit into the prevailing scientific paradigm. This evidence is still mostly ignored today, although the Young Earth Creationists have seized upon it as proof of Noah's flood. It is actually proof of the flood which happened just before the time of Genesis 1:2, the time when all life on the surface of the Earth had been wiped out.
The best collection of the documentation on this event can be found within the paper "Catastrophe and Reconstitution" by the late Arthur Custance. I recommend you take time to read this paper. For those of you in a hurry, here is a sampling of references by several scientists cited within that paper:
On the general topic of animal cemeteries, one source wrote:
"The great problem for geological theories to explain is that amazing phenomenon, the mingling of the remains of animals of different species and climates, discovered in exhaustless quantities in the interior parts of the earth so that the exuviae of those genera which no longer exist at all, are found confusedly mixed together in the soils of the most northerly latitudes. . . The bones of those animals which can live only in the torrid zone are buried in the frozen soil of the polar regions." Penn, Granville, A Comparative Estimate of the Mineral and Mosaical Geologies, Vol. II, 2nd ed., London, 1825, p. 81.
In a reference to a site in Italy another wrote:
"In this sandy matrix bones were found at every depth from that of a few feet to a hundred feet or more. From the large and more apparent bones of the elephant, the rhinoceros, the megatherium, the elk, the buffalo, the stag, and so forth, naturalists were led by the elaborate studies of Cuvier and other comparative anatomists to the remains of the now living bear, tiger, wolf, hyena, rabbit, and finally the more minute remains even of the water rat and the mouse. In some places so complete was the confusion . . . that the bones of many different elephants were brought into contact, and on some of them even oyster shells were matted."
Fairholme, George, New and Conclusive Physical Demonstrations of the Fact and Period of the Mosaic Deluge, n.p., 1837.
Fairholme, George, New and Conclusive Physical Demonstrations of the Fact and Period of the Mosaic Deluge, n.p., 1837.
In one of his early writings, even Charles Darwin commented on what he saw in the fossils of South America:
"The mind is at first irresistibly hurried into the belief that some great catastrophe has occurred. Thus, to destroy animals both large and small in South Patagonia, in Brazil, in the Cordillera, in North America up to the Behring Straits, we must shake the entire framework of the globe. Certainly no fact in the long history of the world is so startling as the wide extermination of its Inhabitants."
Darwin, Charles, Journal of Researches, Ward Lock, New York. 1845, p. 178.
Darwin, Charles, Journal of Researches, Ward Lock, New York. 1845, p. 178.
A contemporary of Darwin commented:
"We live in a zoologically impoverished world, from which all the hugest and fiercest, and strangest forms have recently disappeared.... Yet it is surely a marvelous fact, and one that has hardly been sufficiently dwelt upon this sudden dying out of so many large mammalia not in one place only but over half the land surface of the globe."
"There must have been some physical cause for this great change, and it must have been a cause capable of acting almost simultaneously over large portions of the earth's surface."
Wallace, Alfred Russell, Geographical Distribution of Animals, Vol. 1, Hafner, New York, 1876, pp. 150, 151.
Wallace, Alfred Russell, Geographical Distribution of Animals, Vol. 1, Hafner, New York, 1876, pp. 150, 151.
From a book titled "The Mammoth and the Flood" by Sir Henry Howorth, the following are excerpts about data he gathered first hand in Siberia:
"In the first place, it is almost certain in my opinion that a very great cataclysm or catastrophe occurred . . . by which the mammoth with his companions was overwhelmed over a very large part of the earth's surface. This catastrophe, secondly, involved a widespread flood of waters which not only killed the animals but also buried them under continuous beds of loam or gravel. Thirdly, that the same catastrophe was accompanied by a very sudden change of climate in Siberia, by which the animals that had previously lived in fairly temperate conditions were frozen in their flesh under the ground and have remained there ever since."
"When the facts are stated, they are of such a nature as to be almost incredible and they are drawn from the works of such men as Wrangell, Strahlenberg, Witzen, Muller, Klaproth, Avril, Erman, Hedenstrom, Betuschef, Bregne, Gemlin, Brandt, Antermony, Liachof, Kusholof, Chamisso, Maljuschkin, Ides, Baer, Schmidt, Bell, Tatishof, Middendorf, von Schrenck, Olders, Laptef, Sarytschef, Motschulsky, Schtscukin, Maydell, besides the official documents of the Russian Government." Howorth, Sir Henry, Thc Mammoth and thc Flood: Uniformity and Geology, London, 1887. p. 47.
Henry Howorth had this to say on animal cemeteries:
"The most obvious cause we can appeal to as occasionally producing mortality on a wide scale among animals is a murrain or pestilence, but what murrain or pestilence is so completely unbiased in its actions as to sweep away all forms of terrestrial life, even the very carriers of it--the rodents-- including the fowls of the air, the beasts of the field, elephants, tigers, rhinoceroses, frogs, mice, bison and snakes, landsnails, and every conceivable form of life, and this not in one corner only but, as far as we know, over the whole of the two great continents irrespective of latitude or longitude."
"The fact of the bones occurring in great caches or deposits in which various species are mixed pell-mell is very important, and it is a fact undenied by geologists that whenever we find such a locality in which animals have suffered together in a violent and instantaneous destruction, the bones are invariably mixed and, as it were, 'deposited' in a manner which could hardly be explained otherwise than by postulating the action of great tidal waves carrying fishes and all before them, depositing them far inland with no respect to order." Howorth, Sir Henry, Thc Mammoth and thc Flood: Uniformity and Geology, London, 1887, p.180.
In concluding remarks Howorth had this to say:
"If animals die occasionally (in large numbers) from natural causes, different species do not come together to die, nor does the lion come to take his last sleep with the lamb! The fact of finding masses of animal remains of mixed species all showing the same state of preservation, not only points to a more or less contemporary death, but is quite fatal to the theory that they ended their days peacefully and by purely natural means."
"If they had been exposed to the air, and to the severe transition between mid-winter and mid-summer, which characterizes Arctic latitudes, the mammoths would have decayed rapidly. But their state of preservation proves that they were covered over and protected ever since."
"It is almost certain in my opinion that a very great cataclysm or catastrophe occurred by which the mammoth and his companions were overwhelmed over a very large part of the earth's surface. And that the same catastrophe was accompanied by a very great and sudden change of climate in Siberia, by which the animals which had previously lived in fairly temperate conditions were frozen . . . and were never once thawed until the day of their discovery. No other theory will explain the perfect preservation of these great elephants."
In summarizing his comments on Howorth and the other sources cited, Arthur Custance made these observations:
"Howorth even recorded a whale which was found entombed with the elephants, a discovery which Pallas confirmed--mentioning also buffalo in situ with the heads of large fishes."
"In spite of the fact that many of these authorities would now be considered quite out of date, so that their interpretations would almost certainly be rejected, the evidence itself remains undeniable; and it is difficult to explain it satisfactorily in any other way."
"Such, then, is the kind of evidence which is to be found all over the world of the sudden death of an enormous number of animals of very recent and modern times. Some of these creatures died in latitudes that were almost at once plunged into an Ice Age which preserved them by freezing. Some of them died in more temperate zones and were accumulated by the action of torrents of water sweeping hither and yon as the earth reeled, before the waters had been sufficiently gathered together in one place to expose the dry land. And, finally, some were accumulated and rammed together forcibly and indiscriminately into clefts in the rocks which served to sieve them out of the draining waters."
"The suddenness of the event is everywhere attested, in the Arctic by the extraordinary state of preservation of mammoths and other creatures, and in the more temperate zones by the very fact that predators and preyed upon came to a sudden end together. Even within the waters, the movements of silt and water-washed materials were sometimes so sudden and overwhelming that fishes were trapped before they had the few seconds necessary to react in a characteristic defensive way. Some bivalved forms, in fact, were overwhelmed so rapidly that they did not have time to close."
"Furthermore, we may conclude, I think, that the catastrophe which was worldwide profoundly affected world climate."
Custance, Arthur, "Catastrophe and Reconstitution" Custance Library Doorway Papers & Books on Interface between Faith and Science
Custance, Arthur, "Catastrophe and Reconstitution" Custance Library Doorway Papers & Books on Interface between Faith and Science
Although I do not personally subscribe to all the doctrines which the late Arthur Custance put forth in his vast collection of papers, I do feel that he presented a good argument for the evidence of a great universal catastrophe in the days before true man was placed upon the earth. Although the exact mechanics of the total event are not yet understood, there is ample supporting evidence for a vast and violent flood as the destructive agent; a flood BEFORE the flood of Noah's days. This would be consistent with the gap of Genesis 1:2 and the condition of the earth at that point in time.
Lastly, there is a more contemporary observation that I extracted from a published interview and story by Linda Moulton Howe of www.earthfiles.com and is reprinted here, in part, by written permission of the copyright holder. The full article, including graphics, is available by subscription.
12,000-Year-Old Human Hair DNA Has No Match With Modern Humans
© Copyright © 2001 by Linda Moulton Howe - All Rights Reserved.
October 28, 2001 Woodburn, Oregon - Human hair dating back to the last Ice Age ten to twelve thousand years ago was discovered in 1999 at an archaeological dig in Woodburn, Oregon between Salem and Portland. The Ice Age site is filled with the bones of elephants, sloths, condors and a bird with a 14-foot wingspan. The unidentified human hairs were found perfectly preserved a few feet underground and had enough follicles for DNA analysis. This week I talked with geology professor emeritus, William Orr, at the University of Oregon, about DNA efforts to match the Ice Age hair to any living hominoid species on earth today.
Evacuation units at Woodburn, Oregon Ice Age archaeological site were prepared and excavated. Some units were skim shoveled and then trowled so that animal limbs and fauna could be extracted without harm.
© Copyright © 2001 by Linda Moulton Howe - All Rights Reserved.
October 28, 2001 Woodburn, Oregon - Human hair dating back to the last Ice Age ten to twelve thousand years ago was discovered in 1999 at an archaeological dig in Woodburn, Oregon between Salem and Portland. The Ice Age site is filled with the bones of elephants, sloths, condors and a bird with a 14-foot wingspan. The unidentified human hairs were found perfectly preserved a few feet underground and had enough follicles for DNA analysis. This week I talked with geology professor emeritus, William Orr, at the University of Oregon, about DNA efforts to match the Ice Age hair to any living hominoid species on earth today.
Evacuation units at Woodburn, Oregon Ice Age archaeological site were prepared and excavated. Some units were skim shoveled and then trowled so that animal limbs and fauna could be extracted without harm.
William Orr, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus in Geology, University of Oregon, and Director of the State Museum of Paleontology, Eugene, Oregon: "You can identify human hair, forensic criminologist types, can identify human hair from a single strand because of the granules and color and all that kind of stuff. You can distinguish human hair from all other hair just from a little piece of follicle."
DNA analyses of hair follicles found at the site have so far failed to find a match with any known human racial type living on earth today.
"We found several strands of human hair, long pieces a foot and a half long, black, long pieces of hair. And then if you can find the root of the hair that still has a follicle, you can do DNA on it. So researchers immediately sent the (Ice Age) hair off to a lab and they began to extract the DNA. Some of it was not so good, but a lot of it was well preserved in the oxygen-poor bogs of Woodburn. The geneticists found the hair didn't match any Asian hair DNA. It didn't match African, European. It didn't match anything. Dogma would be that Ice Age humans along the west coast of the United States would be from a Japanese population that is alleged to have come over the Bering Sea back twelve to thirteen thousand years ago."
"So right now we have DNA we can't track. We can't figure out what it's from. Apparently from a population we don't have today. They are gone. And it's only 11,000 or 12,000 years old. About that time period, there was a huge crisis in animals. The larger animals all disappeared and they disappeared in a wave. They disappeared first in British Columbia and then in Washington, Oregon, California and right on down. Some were still around until 10,000 years ago in Tierra del Fuego. So, it was like a wave of extinction at the rate of about 10 miles per year."
Howe: "SO THERE IS A MYSTERY ABOUT WHAT KILLED OFF ALL OF THESE MAMMALS IN WAVES TEN OR TWELVE THOUSAND YEARS AGO?"
Orr: "Oh, yes. In fact for my money, it's far more profound than the crisis that killed off the dinosaurs and a few other animals at 66 million years ago. This (western North American) was more sudden, more pervasive. It kind of selectively took the large animals in a short period of time."
Howe: "HOW DEEP DOWN WERE THE HAIRS FOUND?"
Orr: "The deepest ones were from ten to twelve feet, but a lot of them were from much shallower depths. It's an old stream bed and we just took a little auguring device to core down and began getting well-preserved hair out of the clays. The Woodburn stuff it's like putting it in a deep freeze, or a glad bag and freezing it. It's an anoxic environment (no oxygen). You wouldn't believe the insects come out with colors still. And as you watch them, the color changes from the iridescent blue-green back to a kind of dull black, just in the exposure as they oxidize before your eyes. Even the butterflies come out with pigment and then they just change color."
Howe: "IT'S ALMOST AS IF THEY WERE QUICK FROZEN?"
Orr: "Almost."
Copyright © 2001 by Linda Moulton Howe
All Rights Reserved.
"We found several strands of human hair, long pieces a foot and a half long, black, long pieces of hair. And then if you can find the root of the hair that still has a follicle, you can do DNA on it. So researchers immediately sent the (Ice Age) hair off to a lab and they began to extract the DNA. Some of it was not so good, but a lot of it was well preserved in the oxygen-poor bogs of Woodburn. The geneticists found the hair didn't match any Asian hair DNA. It didn't match African, European. It didn't match anything. Dogma would be that Ice Age humans along the west coast of the United States would be from a Japanese population that is alleged to have come over the Bering Sea back twelve to thirteen thousand years ago."
"So right now we have DNA we can't track. We can't figure out what it's from. Apparently from a population we don't have today. They are gone. And it's only 11,000 or 12,000 years old. About that time period, there was a huge crisis in animals. The larger animals all disappeared and they disappeared in a wave. They disappeared first in British Columbia and then in Washington, Oregon, California and right on down. Some were still around until 10,000 years ago in Tierra del Fuego. So, it was like a wave of extinction at the rate of about 10 miles per year."
Howe: "SO THERE IS A MYSTERY ABOUT WHAT KILLED OFF ALL OF THESE MAMMALS IN WAVES TEN OR TWELVE THOUSAND YEARS AGO?"
Orr: "Oh, yes. In fact for my money, it's far more profound than the crisis that killed off the dinosaurs and a few other animals at 66 million years ago. This (western North American) was more sudden, more pervasive. It kind of selectively took the large animals in a short period of time."
Howe: "HOW DEEP DOWN WERE THE HAIRS FOUND?"
Orr: "The deepest ones were from ten to twelve feet, but a lot of them were from much shallower depths. It's an old stream bed and we just took a little auguring device to core down and began getting well-preserved hair out of the clays. The Woodburn stuff it's like putting it in a deep freeze, or a glad bag and freezing it. It's an anoxic environment (no oxygen). You wouldn't believe the insects come out with colors still. And as you watch them, the color changes from the iridescent blue-green back to a kind of dull black, just in the exposure as they oxidize before your eyes. Even the butterflies come out with pigment and then they just change color."
Howe: "IT'S ALMOST AS IF THEY WERE QUICK FROZEN?"
Orr: "Almost."
Copyright © 2001 by Linda Moulton Howe
All Rights Reserved.
In reference to the remarks about the remains being preserved almost as if "Quick Frozen" this is extremely interesting, as such is consistent with the finding of WoolyMammoths from the same period in time whose remains indicate they too appear to have been quick frozen (many links can be found on the Internet which document that particular find). By interpretation, in the context of the Gap Theory doctrine, this is compelling evidence of a sudden and catastrophic end to life on this planet in the old world. If the sun (indeed the entire cosmos) of the old world suddenly went dark, by whatever agency, these findings would be consistent with such an event and the conditions on the Earth before the regeneration of the heavens and earth (Genesis 1:2).
Recently a nuclear scientist, Richard Firestone, reported finding "impact regions" on mammoth tusks found in Gainey, Michigan, which were caused by high velocity magnetic particles rich in elements like titanium and uranium. Firestone says that based on his discovery of similar material at a North American Clovis site, he estimates that comets (possibly produced by a relatively close supernova) struck the solar system during the Clovis period, roughly 13,000 years ago. This time frame, of course, closely correlates with the other evidence presented for an Extinction Level Event (ELE) on the Earth between approximately 13,000 - 10,000 years ago. Here is a link to the full article: "Comets Hit Early Americans, Scientist Says" There are additional links concerning such observations in the following chapter.
Life Forms Just Before End of Ice Age
and After Seven Days of Genesis
Your attention is called to the particular phrasing "after their kind" and "after his kind" throughout the narrative of Genesis chapter one. When the Lord God made the new world on the face of the old Earth during those seven days, the Scriptures seem to tell us that He filled the new world with many of the same KINDS of plants and animals that had been on the face of the Earth previously. Many were not replaced after their kind, however, but new ones were introduced in their place.
The geologic time frame preceding the six days of Genesis correlates roughly with the end of the great "Ice Age" at the Pleistocene/Holocene epoch boundary, which dates to about 13,000 - 10,000 radio carbon (C14 ) years before present (BP = "1950"). As mentioned previously, the geologic record reveals a mass extinction episode at this time in which hundreds of large and unusual forms of megafauna mysteriously perished from the face of the Earth. Gone are the Mammoths, Mastodons, giant ground sloth, woolly rhinos, rats the size of dogs, armadillos the size of Volkswagens, and about 200 other known species, including some very weird-looking creatures that raise thoughts of radioactive mutations. They all disappeared geologically recently, by the end of the Ice Age. Their replacement "kinds" of today's world are quite different in both size and morphology.
The leading scientific theory was that humans hunted these animals to extinction, but that theory is losing favor for lack of direct evidence.
(Top-half of composite Graphic base image [lef] from "Meteorology Today" by C. Donald Ahrens ?1994 West Publishing Co.)
Two important things should be noted from this composite graphic which shows the Earth's average atmospheric temperature (top part) and volcanic activity markers (bottom part) for the past 18,000 years BP.
1): There is a pronounced increase in indications of volcanic activity between the time when the megafauna extinctions begin (about 14,000 BP) that ends just slightly before the date of the regeneration of the heavens and earth (about 6,000 years ago- Genesis 1:2).
2): The end of the extinction phase terminates in a relatively sudden and dramatic drop in global temperatures, marked by the Younger-Dryas cooling event.
Clearly, the data indicate there were rapid temperature changes, an onset of intensive geologic activity, and probably changes in the levels of solar activity at this point in Earth's history. The latter fact is supported by reported fluctuations in radiocarbon concentrations in the Younger-Dryas cold period between 12,700 and 11,500 years BP. In sum, this was anything but a normal pattern of events.
Why would so many animals perish at one time (at the END of the Ice Age, when things were warming up) after surviving several thousand years through the harsh glacial conditions in the Pleistocene epoch? The scientific community is greatly divided on the issue. Some hold that they were killed off by "man" for food, by disease, their inability to adapt to a changing post-glacial climate, or some combination of all. This form of causal reasoning precipitates from a uniformitarian paradigm that is colored by our culture's preoccupation with political correctness and environmental issues like Global Warming.
Now a new theory on the cause of the Megafauna extinctions may hold the answer. Abundant tiny particles of diamond dust have been found in sediments dating to 12,900 years ago at six North American sites. This adds strong evidence for Earth's impact with a rare swarm of carbon-and-water-rich comets or carbonaceous chondrites, precipitating the Younger-Dryas. Here are a few links to recent reports concerning the effects of the Younger-Dryas event: Diamonds suggest comets caused killer cold spell - Comprehensive analysis of impact spherules supports theory of cosmic impact 12,800 years ago - New evidence that cosmic impact caused Younger Dryas extinctions.
Needless to say, the Biblical notion of a universal catastrophic destruction of all living things in the recent past and a Supernatural regeneration of the world by the Lord God is not something many men and women of science today would ever consider. So expect even more new theories to emerge as scientists continue to wrestle with this problem.
Would it not seem logical that a global event of this magnitude and severity, which wiped out the giant mammals, would also wipe out the humanoids that hunted them? Could a population of nomadic hunters quickly switch to an agriculturally sustained society, especially at a time when the Earth's average temperatures had plummeted sharply? I don't think so.
Keep in mind that according to the Bible, Adam and his linage began as tillers of the soil and herdsmen after Adam's fall. The first indication of hunting does not appear in the Bible until after Noah's flood. (See Nimrod, Genesis 10:9.) Consequently, if the Paleoclimate data are valid, and the Biblical time line of Adam and modern mankind is valid, then we must conclude it was not the descendants of Adam and Eve who hunted the now extinct mammoths. Those who did so were a race of manlike beings which were on the Earth before Adam and Eve; the Pre-Adamite race of hominids, not made in the "image of God," a fact which begs the question, in whose image were they made?
With the advent of the science of DNA testing, the supporting proof for this incredible hypothesis is coming to light, much to the consternation of the evolutionary uniformitarian school of human origins. For example, DNA testing of Neanderthal remains clearly shows that modern man is NOT descended from the Neanderthal. The DNA from three (3) different sets of Neanderthal remains showed that there is no genetic link between modern man and the Neanderthal. More recent studies of Neanderthal DNA and Neanderthal Skull Characteristics further confirm this finding. This is forcing the evolutionists to start looking even further back in the fossil record for a common "ancestor" or "missing link" branch from the primates. They won't find it. And guess what? They just identified ANOTHER one!
Recently the remains of an "anatomically modern human" (Cro-Magnon) found in Australia have revealed that it was at least 60,000 years old and had a mitochondria DNA generic marker which is now extinct. That is, nobody today is descended from that particular line of beings, at least on the female side. This find has raised serious debate between the "Out of Africa" and "Regional Continuity" evolutionary camps. Will future testing of other Cro-Magnon remains reveal similar DNA surprises? If the Bible is true, then the prediction is that they will.
Although there have been relatively recent reports of finding Neanderthal DNA segments in the DNA of some of the Earth's modern human population, this does not conclusively prove that Neanderthals and modern man mated sometime in the past. There is another plausible Biblical explanation concerning the exploits of the fallen angels (see: Genesis 6:2-6:4 & Daniel 2:43). Angels always appear as men throughout the Bible. And in order to create any offspring with human women they too must have unique DNA. If Genesis 6:2-4 is indicative of such behavior in Noah's days, and Daniel 2:43 hints of the same such behavior in more recent times (or the near future), then it is a stretch to assume those same "sons of God" could have been up to those same tricks with the bipedal biologics that inhabited the old world?
Evolutionary mainline science still cannot provide a fully satisfactory answer to origins of modern man. As the tools of science improve (e.g., DNA analysis) the mysteries only become more mysterious as is demonstrated by the above cases. Reasoning from a uniformitarian paradigm, and in reference to the above-cited pro and con cases of DNA connections to present humans, secular scientists will say that this only means those particular lines of humans must have been a branch of mankind that perished. They would have to make the claim that, as Evolutionary "theory" demands, that there was continuity of the human race. However, the link between the evidence from the past and present is still yet to be "scientifically" established. In fact, evolutionary research is finding just the opposite. Today scientists are claiming that human evolution has greatly accelerated, particularly since about 10,000 years ago. The truth is there are big morphological differences between "modern man" and "primitive man," and pronouncing a sudden acceleration of evolution is their only way of explaining the findings within the accepted evolutionary paradigm. The Bible has a better answer: Modern man is a new creation.
In another study that compared Neanderthal and modern human bone structures with those of the earliest members of the genus Homo, it was found that Neanderthals were a more 'normal' match than modern humans. This is just one more bit of accumulating data that supports the suggestion that modern humans are NOT descended from evolutionary ancestors; that modern man is a unique and a special creation, just as the Bible states.
The concisely parsed words of the Holy Bible say that there is a gap, or discontinuity, between the ancient world of the past (which included the Neanderthal) and the present world of modern man. The very existence of such a gap in the Genesis narrative is the unifying factor between the Bible narrative and all available empirical data. Specifically, ALL life on the planet perished near the Younger-Dryas marker, the planet was lifeless for a brief period, and then in a special Creative event (the 7 days of Genesis) the Lord God restored the Creation and made the world of true Man, Adam. Without knowledge that a "gap" existed, mainline science assumes that there was a continuum of life and attempts to fill in the blanks with the available evidence.
For review purposes, here is the Biblical sequence of events:
1) In Genesis 1:1 we have a general proclamation by the Spirit that God created the heaven and the earth. It did not evolve and achieve self-conscience awareness. God made it. He made it to be inhabited (Isaiah 45:18). Exactly when in time it was first created and inhabited is not revealed in the Scriptures.
2) In Genesis 1:2 we find the Earth in ruin, in darkness, and in the waters, which indicate a state of ruin and destruction but, nonetheless, the Earth. Waters and darkness are already there before God says, "..Let there be light." Exactly how long it was in that state is also not revealed by the Scriptures. However, the data from the Greenland ice sheet alone (which will be discussed in a later chapter) confirms that the Earth had already been around for at least 110,000 years. The rest of the Earth's geology reveals an even more ancient age.
3) In Genesis 1:3 we have the Lord God making a new world out of the ruins and restoring the face of the Earth and the functioning of the heavens.
Before dismissing this scenario as science fiction or Creationist pseudo-science, let's put this time in the Earth's geologic history into perspective in relation to the remarkable set of coincidental historical findings that date to the same period of time near the end of the last Ice Age, the Pleistocene/Holocene boundary:
a. This was the time when the long period of the Ice Ages abruptly ended and the Earth's climate suddenly warmed up considerably.
b. This was the time when Neanderthal vanished and Modern man appeared.
c. If "man" has been evolving for a couple of million years, and there were "modern humans" 60,000 years ago, why did it take him so long to develop things like city states, agriculture, arts, writing, structured social order, all of which only go back about 6,000 years?
d. Why did a few hundred very hardy species of megafauna, which had survived through the bitter conditions of the entire Pleistocene epoch, suddenly die off when things were just warming up?
e. Why is there global evidence of great volcanic activity in the late Pleistocene (including massive flood basalts), and why is there evidence of great tidal waves and vast animal death deposits in high mountain regions?
Is it just coincidence that all these things seem to have a common nexus in time? I don't believe so. All the facts and coincidences seem to point to a cataclysmic end of the old world at the end of the Pleistocene epoch, and this lends considerable support to the Bible's chronology of the seven days of Genesis and the special Creation of true Man.
Leaving behind the obscure and still mysterious events of the Pleistocene epoch and the geologic ages that came before it, let us now examine God's handiwork of the seven days of Genesis regeneration of life on the face of the Earth, according to the Bible. Since we have previously commented on the restored structure of the cosmos, we will now concentrate on the restoration of life forms on the planet's surface.
On the third day God replenished the Earth with vegetation:
"And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, [and] the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed [is] in itself, upon the earth: and it was so."
(Gen 1:11 KJV)
(Gen 1:11 KJV)
"And the earth brought forth grass, [and] herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed [was] in itself, after his kind: and God saw that [it was] good."
(Gen 1:12 KJV)
(Gen 1:12 KJV)
On the fourth day God made the sun, moon and stars from the ruins of the old cosmic order. The fact that the Bible says God made the vegetation on the third day and the sun on the fourth day causes Bible critics to point out that plants need sunshine to grow (photosynthesis), so the sequence can't possibly be true. Is this a mistake or is this unscientific? If the seven days of Genesis were literal 24-hour days, then there is no problem here. Since there were less than 24 hours between the placement of the vegetation (day 3) and the making of the sun (day 4), any farmer will tell you that all plants can survive 24 hours without any sunlight. This order (plants before sunshine) disallows the notions that the seven "days" are long periods of time or that the Genesis account roughly parallels the evolutionary record. It does neither. Think about that one.
On the fifth day He filled the oceans with fish and aquatic mammals and filled the skies with birds:
"And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that [it was] good."
(Gen 1:20-21 KJV)
(Gen 1:20-21 KJV)
Note of Interest: The wording of the passage says that the birds in our present world came forth from the waters, NOT the land. This shows that modern birds are not the direct descendants of the dinosaurs. Latest study: Scientists say no evidence exists that therapod dinosaurs evolved into birds.
According to the fossil record, there have been life forms in the Earth's oceans for millions of years. Many are long since extinct and new kinds took their place over the geologic ages. There are also fish that scientists thought were long extinct, but which have been found alive in southern oceans. The Coelacanth is the best known example. However, scientists have recently compared the fins of a fossilized Coelacanth with those of ones recently caught off the coasts of Africa and Indonesia, hoping to demonstrate Evolutionary development in the species over time. Guess what? It turns out it is not really the same primitive fish! Yep, that old fellow too appears to have been made "after his kind", as well.
Although the void and dark Earth as found at Genesis 1:2 roughly correlates with the end of the "Ice Ages," we cannot be exactly sure when (before the seven days) all prior marine life forms perished. The most likely marker would again be the Younger-Dryas time frame discussed earlier, the same as when the last of the megafauna perished on land.
In His creative restocking of the oceans on that day, God saw fit to include a fish akin to the old Coelacanth kind along with other kinds of fish which had populated the Earth's seas in the times immediately prior to the old world's destruction. On the other hand, many other ancient marine species were not reintroduced in the reconstruction.
Then there is the sea creature that God created that was not made "after his kind" but was introduced new and unique to this creation - the "great" Whale.
And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good.(Genesis 1:21 KJV)
Notice in the sentence structure of Genesis 1:21 that the creation of the "great whales" is set apart from the making of the rest of the sea creatures by a comma. Are the great whales a specific species of the whale like the gigantic Blue Whale, or is this a general reference to the suborder of Baleena or a particular size range? I'm not sure. There are small whales that look like dolphins like the Beluga Whale. And there is a larger animal we call a killer whale, or Orca, which is actually the largest dolphin. And then there is the "Whale Shark" which is not a mammal like the whale or dolphin (it is a really big fish). So the Biblical term "great whale" is somewhat ambiguous. Regardless, we can say with a high degree of confidence that according to the Bible, there are "great whales" swimming in today's oceans that where not on the Earth in the previous world.
At this juncture we should mention that there is a whale of a controversy these days about the evolution of the whale. Mainline science argues that the whale evolved from a wolf-like (some argue a hippopotamus-like) land creature and did so in a very accelerated period of time (about six million years) and very recently, geologically speaking. This is inconsistent (and just the opposite) of the evolutionary paradigm that all land creatures evolved from ancestors that originally came from the seas. Could it be that God's creation of the "great whales" threw such a monkey wrench into the fossil record of whale species that evolutionary scientists had to create a special rapid macro evolutionary scenario to explain the disconnect?
On the sixth day the Lord filled the new world with the land animals:
"And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so. And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that [it was] good."
(Gen 1:24-25 KJV)
(Gen 1:24-25 KJV)
All these living creatures and the vegetation are said to be made "after their kind" or "after his kind," and there seems to be a great emphasis placed on that point in the narrative. Now (and this is VERY IMPORTANT) see what else the Lord God did NOT make "after his kind" - Man:
"And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth."
(Gen 1:26 KJV)
(Gen 1:26 KJV)
This last use of the word "after" in relation to the creation of Man provides the true sense of interpretation of the word as used elsewhere in the Genesis narrative. If Man was made "after" God's likeness, the likeness of which was a pre-existing form or pattern, then this gives credibility to the notion that the vegetation and animals were made after the patterns of previously existing forms which were on the face of the Earth in the old world. This would explain the emphasis and number of references to "after his kind," much like the term "a thousand years" is stated and restated six times in Revelation chapter 20 to define the exact length of Christ's future Kingdom on the face of the Earth. Still, even after repeating the term "a thousand years" six times to make the point, amillennial and postmillennial eschatologists still overlook that truth.
It should also be pointed out that Man was the ONLY living thing in Genesis (other than the whale) that was NOT said to be made "after his kind"; therefore he was new and unique. That uniqueness was in respect to being made in the image of God, which is not a physical, bodily trait, but more of the soul and mind, although it could also be in respect to the form of the angels, which always appear as a man. And unlike all the other creatures God made during the seven days, only Man was told to "replenish" the Earth (Genesis 1:28), which indicates that Man, made in God's image, was to replace the humanoids of the old creation. These humanoids obviously had a physical form biologically very similar to true Man in physical structure, but not in mind and soul as defined being after God’s likeness."
"And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth."(Genesis 1:28 KJV)
Summation: The truth of these passages and the emerging evidence affirms that true Modern Man is a newcomer to the face of this old planet. True Man, made in the image of God, has only been on the Earth about 6,000 years. He is a created creature, he did not evolve. Although he was preceded on the face of the Earth by lineages of humanoids of varying morphology closely approaching modern anatomical similarity, Adam and his descendants (us) are unique. That uniqueness is defined as creation in the "image of God," and that definition eludes scientific quantification.
In the next chapter we are going to critically examine the ongoing Creation vs. Evolution debate.
The Necessary Dividing Lines between Science and Faith
and the Vanity of the Ongoing Creation vs. Evolution DebateThe physical world we live in is governed by specific laws of nature that are understood from experimentation and observation. Those laws and principles were established by the Lord God Himself, and He said they were very good (Gen 1:31). Understanding how these laws govern the order and workings of the physical universe is the pursuit of good science. Readers should keep firmly in mind, however, that the Lord God, who established the observed physical laws of nature, is not Himself in subjection to those laws. The Bible is replete with instances where the Lord God has supernaturally intervened against the laws of physics and nature. Examples are the parting of the Red Sea (Exodus 14:21), the turning back of the shadow of the sundial (2 Kings 20:9), the stopping of the earth's rotation for about 24 hours (Joshua 10:12-14), the virgin birth of the God-Man, the Lord Jesus Christ, and all the miracles performed by Him when He was on the Earth. With God, nothing is impossible. The creative work of the seven days of Genesis is the first example of such Divine intervention in the Bible.
On the other hand, God sometimes uses the established natural laws and physical things of this world to accomplish His Divine purposes. Noah's flood is just one example:
"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."
(Gen 6:13 KJV)
Let us clearly state up front that the ongoing controversy of "Creation vs. Evolution" will never be resolved to the satisfaction of the secular scientific community. It cannot be resolved in a secular context regardless of the well-intended efforts of many on either side of the debate, or in between, because the current focus of the argument is emotionally and factually misdirected.
Armed with only the observations of current and historical geologic processes and other empirical data, and assuming natural history has been a continuum across billions of years, the present secular paradigms of geological and evolutionary theory are about the best belief system that the educated carnal mind of man could be expected to conceive and accept from the available physical evidence. Without the input of Biblical Authority, current theories are incomplete and many questions and mysteries remain unresolved, especially in relation to the origins of mankind.
Secular scientists are confident to point out scientific inaccuracies of the Bible because they have been led to view the Bible through the distorted lenses of traditional Biblical interpretation. What these scientists have successfully contradicted is traditionally-held Biblical interpretation; specifically, that all things were created out of nothing only about six thousand years ago, as espoused by Young Earth Creationists. However, when you get down to the solid core of what the Bible actually and truly says, Scripture compared to Scripture, there is no scientific evidence in existence today to refute what it actually says: All life, indeed an entire ancient world order, had already perished from the face of the Earth long before the seven days of Genesis. The rightly-divided Scriptures reveal that the seven days of Genesis are a REGENERATION of the heavens and earth, and that life on this planet has not been an actual continuum. Both the Bible and scientific data are most certainly in agreement on one very key point: This planet Earth is very, very old, and if God authored both the Word and Earth's geologic record, no real contradiction in fact can possibly exist. The fault MUST be interpretive on both sides.
Noah's flood and Divine creative intervention by a Holy God are not factored into the world's accepted origins model, because God can't be observed or quantified in a physical system or seen under a microscope, although the results of His work can be observed and quantified. For these reasons there is an unbridgeable gap between secular Empirical Science and the Christian faith in respect to both Creation and Noah's flood. Empirical Science is the pursuit of quantifiable facts and repeatable observations and is limited to the physical sphere of reality. From this purely physical perspective, the geological evidence appears to indicate that this planet and the life on it are the result of natural processes over time, and that the existence of all life forms and extinction must be credited to a natural process of random mutations and selection by nature itself. In such a paradigm of interpretation, the researcher's faith is in a theory or synthesis of theories which seems to best fit the observations.
The Christian, on the other hand, must also deal with spiritual things, which are just as real as physical things, but can only be seen through the agency of faith by the illumination of the Word of God. An honest born-again Christian (who is also a scientist) cannot be fully objective in an empirical perspective in dealing with the question of origins. The acceptance of God's Words on matters of original sin and supernatural agency hold us accountable to a higher interpretive system, a system which has no place of welcome in the institutional physical sciences of the world. No amount of compromise will be acceptable to either the Naturalist or Creationist extremes of each respective school. That being said please do not misunderstand. A lot of good knowledge emerges from the practice of good science and the scientific method, and there are a lot of good Christians who are scientists. But when it comes to matters of origins and the things of God, natural science (without God) is as much out of its depth in providing the full truth as the Young Earth Creationist who ignores solid scientific data.
"Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind." - Albert EinsteinBehind the scenes, however, the real driving issue between Naturalists and Creationists is not the existence of God. The real issue is whether all things were created by the Hebrew God of the Holy Bible and according to a designed purpose and specific time scale. The authority of the Bible and the moral issue of personal accountability to God are the hidden root of all contention in that debate.
Leaving behind the vanity and politics of the Creation/Evolution debate, those who have a well-grounded faith in the Scriptures and a good knowledge of the geological evidence (not theories) are in the better position to attain to a more perfect understanding of how all the pieces of the puzzle fit together. It is only when we accept God and His Words as the final authority in ALL matters that we are able to perceive the complete picture and resolve the "6,000 years problem" at the heart of the controversy. It is our goal through these web pages to provide you some of those answers.
The Bible will ALWAYS have an answer, although we may not immediately see it. For example, it was not until a few centuries ago that the Geological sciences had progressed to the point where the previously-accepted 6,000 year age of the Earth, which was dogma in both the institutions of Church and science, began to be questioned by what was observed in the geological record. Some theologians of the day who were honest enough to realize the truth of those emerging observations and were steadfast, faithful, and committed to defending the Scriptures, were inspired to observe the possibility of a time "Gap" between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2 in the Creation narrative. That "Gap" had always been there - ever since the day Moses penned the book - but not many eyes were open to seeing or understanding it until the time was right. It was already there when the Scottish theologian, Thomas Chalmers, first noticed and began to preach it in the early 19th century. Up until then, the real age of the Earth was not a burning issue. But when the proper time came, the Word of God once again proved itself timely and relevant to the level of scientific understanding of the day.
This is "Progressive Revelation" and it continues even in our present age. Here is another example of Progressive Revelation in the book of Revelation:
"And they of the people and kindreds and tongues and nations shall see their dead bodies three days and an half, and shall not suffer their dead bodies to be put in graves."
(Revelation 11:9 KJV)
The question is how could people all over the world, in different nations and places, all "see" these dead bodies on a street in Jerusalem at the same time? Certainly from the time John wrote it in about 90 AD, up to about the middle of the 20th century, nobody could understand how that would be possible. But today, with global satellite Television and Internet Web Cams, anyone today can understand how it is possible. The point is this: It was a truth that was not revealed to mankind until it was TIME, even though that literal truth had always been there in the Bible. The same holds true for the Genesis narrative. When it was time for man to learn about geology and Earth's natural history, and the full truth about origins, the qualifying verses and explanations were already there in the Genesis narrative and elsewhere in the Bible. It was TIME for those truths to unseal. It is now time for the Fundamental Christian Church to accept this paradigm shift.
This line of thinking is completely lost, of course, on the Young Earth "Creation Scientists" of today who preach that the original creation of ALL things occurred only 6,000 years ago. They also use Noah's flood as the catchall solution to explaining the Earth's sedimentary rocks. They claim that all the Earth's hydrocarbons (coal and oil) were made by Noah's flood. Some claim that most of the Earth's mountains were uplifted during Noah's flood. Some even claim that the Ice Age was precipitated by Noah's flood. Because their theology demands that all of the Earth's natural history be jammed into a narrow 6,000-year period, they are required to have the dinosaurs roaming the earth before the flood, side by side with mankind, and a few even have dinosaurs listed as part of the animals on Noah's Ark. The "Science" (see 1 Timothy 6:20) for support of this belief system is based mainly on appeals to anomalies, "what if" arguments, "water canopies" which defy the laws of physics, and a peculiar collection of urban legends. It is neither good science nor good Biblical interpretation.
I don't dispute that Noah's flood was real, because the Bible tells us that Noah's flood was real. In coming chapters we will discuss a flood model that addresses the real-world Scriptural and scientific requirements. The major point which must first be clearly understood is that both the Earth's geology and the Scriptures tell us that Noah's flood could NOT have been responsible for the earth's extensive sedimentary, metamorphic, and igneous petrology. Freshman level knowledge of the Law of Superposition and field observations of Angular Unconformities in folded mountain sediments say otherwise. But more importantly, the Bible itself witnesses against these false claims.
The notions of alleged major tectonic and/or volcanic activity at work during Noah's flood are conclusively shown to be false by the low levels of SO4 ions (acid) in the ice layers of the Greenland Ice Sheet, which can be correlated to the time of the flood. That same Ice Sheet contains a wealth of Paleoclimate data which show that all of earth's geologic history cannot be compacted into a 6,000-year time frame, especially when its layer history can be dated and traced back over a period in excess of 100,000 years and cross- verified with assorted proxy dating methods.
The full truth about Creation and Noah's flood for a faithful Bible Believer must fit all the observations and verses, not just some of them. The full truth is only revealed by a prayerful examination of the EXACT wording of the Scriptures, through the Spirit of Truth, and faith in those words combined with some common sense and reasoning (Isaiah 1:18). It also takes courage and trust in the Lord's Words and His wisdom, not yours, to see how it all fits together and standing against the majority position in such matters when necessary. You cannot disregard the full truth revealed by Genesis 1:2 and remain in denial, hiding your head in the sands of traditional interpretation.
Remember, in order to effectively witness to the lost, we must be able to demonstrate to the unsaved scientist or intellectual that one does not have to give up his/her brain to believe in Jesus and the Bible; to tell them that God published so that they would not perish. (Let the reader understand the play on the metaphor.) If you can deal with the facts on their turf and show them you know what you are talking about, then you have a better chance to convince them of their need for Jesus. An honest interpretation of the Scriptures and unprejudiced consideration of the geologic data will enable the Bible Believer to effectively witness.
In the next chapter we'll discuss some interesting things about the physical sciences and the number seven (7), a number that God uses many times in the Bible.
The Sevens (7) of the Bible
in Time and Nature
Sevens in Time
Why did the Lord God take seven days to make the present world, when surely an omnipotent God could have done so instantly, with a single word? The answer is so simple that it may astound you. The Scriptures say that there are seven Spirits of God (Rev. 3:1, 4:5, and 5:6). There are numerous places throughout the Scriptures where God denotes things in "sevens" or multiples of seven. The Bible also shows us that God uses "sevens" throughout the Scriptures to denote prophetic time. Examples:"Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt:"
(Genesis 41:29 KJV)
"And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt; and the famine shall consume the land;"
(Genesis 41:30 KJV)
"And thou shalt number seven sabbaths of years unto thee, seven times seven years; and the space of the seven sabbaths of years shall be unto thee forty and nine years."
(Leviticus 25:8 KJV)
"And they that dwell in the cities of Israel shall go forth, and shall set on fire and burn the weapons, both the shields and the bucklers, the bows and the arrows, and the handstaves, and the spears, and they shall burn them with fire seven years:"
(Ezekiel 39:9 KJV)
"Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people and upon thy holy city, to finish the transgression, and to make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up the vision and prophecy, and to anoint the most Holy."
(Daniel 9:24 KJV)
The very first use of "sevens" to denote time is found in Genesis chapters one and two. That very first group of seven days has delineated the days of the week since the beginning of human history. Man certainly has messed with the years and the calendars (so no man today can know EXACTLY what year it really is), but that seven-day week system has survived from Adam until today. No wonder - it was ordained by God from the beginning of this creation. The 7th Day was proclaimed as something VERY special from the very first two chapters of the Biblical account. Let us look closer at the importance of the Seventh Day in relation to time:
"And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made."
(Genesis 2:2-3 KJV)
"For [in] six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them [is], and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it."
(Exodus 20:11 KJV)
"It [is] a sign between me and the children of Israel for ever: for [in] six days the LORD made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day he rested, and was refreshed."
(Exodus 31:17 KJV)
"Six days shall work be done, but on the seventh day there shall be to you an holy day, a sabbath of rest to the LORD: whosoever doeth work therein shall be put to death."
(Exodus 35:2 KJV)
"And he said unto them, The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath:"
(Mark 2:27 KJV)
"For the Son of man is Lord even of the sabbath day."
(Matthew 12:8 KJV)
With the context of those verses in mind, look at the following verses:
"But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day [is] with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day."
(2 Peter 3:8 KJV)
"And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them: and [I saw] the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the word of God, and which had not worshipped the beast, neither his image, neither had received [his] mark upon their foreheads, or in their hands; and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years."
(Revelation 20:4 KJV)
The latter verse speaks of a time yet future, when the Lord Jesus Christ will reign on the Earth with man for a period of 1,000 years before the final judgment, the final destruction of Satan and Death, and the beginning of eternity future. What these verses tell us is that the seven 24-hour days of Genesis are a prophetic "type" which, when multiplied by one-thousand, gives us the length of time of the Biblical history of man from Adam until the end of time as we know it. In other words, 7,000 years is the length of all human history (but not all natural history) both past and future on this present Earth. The past part of that human history to the present is roughly 6,000 years according to the Biblical chronology. That means there are yet another 1,000 years ahead, which equates to a 1,000-year "Sabbath" of rest (day 7, see Hebrews 4:9) when the Lord Jesus Christ will return, reign, and rest from His redemptive work on the Earth as the King of Kings and Lord of Lords:
"Blessed and holy [is] he that hath part in the first resurrection: on such the second death hath no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with him a thousand years."
(Revelation 20:6 KJV)
"And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison,"
(Revelation 20:7 KJV)
"And cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal upon him, that he should deceive the nations no more, till the thousand years should be fulfilled: and after that he must be loosed a little season."
(Revelation 20:3 KJV)
"Jesus answered, My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but now is my kingdom not from hence."
(John 18:36 KJV)
Following that glorious "7th Day" 1,000 years of time, the day which follows will be a new first day, a new eternal beginning without end; like the next octave up the musical scale (more on that in a moment), so to speak:
"And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea."
(Revelation 21:1 KJV)
"And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And he said unto me, Write: for these words are true and faithful."
(Revelation 21:5 KJV)
It has been about 2,000 years (prophetic days 5 and 6) since the Lord first came to save us from the power of sin and death. That means that his return is VERY close. Keep in mind that although our modern calendar is already past the year 2,000, it has not really been a full 2,000 years since the first coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. The history of the Gregorian calendar reveals that there are years missing. Even before that, a year was skipped between 1 B.C. and 1 A.D. (There was no 0 year.) Although we can't set an exact date, we can be sure that the seventh prophetic day is soon to dawn upon this sin-cursed world, and the great tribulation (seven years) could begin at almost any time. Is this a faithful prediction? Certainly, because observance of the seventh day Sabbath was a part of the "Ten Commandments", a part of the LAW of God:
"And it is easier for heaven and earth to pass, than one tittle of the law to fail."
(Luke 16:17 KJV)
"An instructor of the foolish, a teacher of babes, which hast the form of knowledge and of the truth in the law."
(Romans 2:20 KJV)
"For the law was given by Moses, [but] grace and truth came by Jesus Christ."
(John 1:17 KJV)
Sevens in Nature
The Sevens of God can also be observed in the things of Nature. It appears that the physics and chemistry of nature are structured on such a base system. An example that almost everyone can relate to is Music. All the songs you hear on the radio are based on a musical system of just seven major notes:
If you pass sunlight through a prism, it produces seven colors - the three primary colors and four secondary ones:
(Picture courtesy of http://yourgemologist.com Click the picture to read more about the seven crystal systems)
"For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether [they be] thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him: And he is before all things, and by him all things consist."
(Colossians 1:16-17 KJV)
The Lost Rivers of the Garden of Eden
The quest for pinpointing the exact location of the Biblical Garden of Eden and the four rivers almost rivals the quest for the location of fabled Atlantis. And the theories that abound are almost as numerous as the interpretations of the seven days of Genesis. Before tackling this question let's review what is written in Genesis about the four rivers:And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads. The name of the first is Pison: that is it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold; And the gold of that land is good: there is bdellium and the onyx stone. And the name of the second river is Gihon: the same is it that compasseth the whole land of Ethiopia. And the name of the third river is Hiddekel: that is it which goeth toward the east of Assyria. And the fourth river is Euphrates.(Genesis 2:10-14 KJV)The Bible says that a single river flowed "out" of Eden and then does something that most rivers DO NOT do; specifically, split into four separate "rivers" downstream all fed from a common single river source. Almost all rivers start from a single source or are fed by multiple sources (tributaries). For example, the Ohio River actually begins where two rivers (the Monongahela and Allegheny) flow together at Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. The Ohio River terminates when it flows into the Mississippi river as one of that river's many tributaries. So the "names" of rivers are an arbitrary thing, usually denoting only a portion of a greater complex stream system, with one stream flowing into another, which in-turn, may flow into yet another. This pattern of rivers, as observed in nature, is just the opposite of what the Bible describes about the river of Eden.
For that reason, nobody has been able to look at modern maps of the regions mentioned in Genesis and figure out exactly where the Garden of Eden was, at least by the present topography of the lands of the Middle East. Only one river of the four, the Euphrates, is known by the same name in modern times. It presently originates in the mountains of Turkey and terminates when it flows together with the Tigris River near the Iraq/Kuwait border region. Many have speculated that the Tigris is the river Hiddekel.This has led to speculation that the Garden of Eden was located somewhere in Turkey. This is assumed because the present headwaters of the Euphrates River originate in Turkey, as do the headwaters of the Tigris.Others have proposed that the other end of the Euphrates River, where it meets the Tigris, may be the true location. This requires interpreting the Tigris river as one of the other three (the Hiddekel), then interpreting a tributary confluence of rivers as a river head, and then locating at least two more rivers (or old river beds) as the other missing two. Having done so, they then claim that the Garden of Eden was near present day Kuwait. This is a convenient solution, but not one supported by the literal wording of the Bible or the geological and geographical realities of what river "head" means, i.e. headwaters or source of origin.
You will notice that the present day headwaters of both the Tigris and Euphrates rivers originate very close to each other in mountainous terrain. Logically, one would assume that if two of the rivers started there, the other two must have done so, as well, if Turkey was the location of Eden. Neither the Pison nor Gihon rivers are ever mentioned again in the Bible. However, the Hiddekel River is:
"And in the four and twentieth day of the first month, as I was by the side of the great river, which is Hiddekel;"(Daniel 10:4 KJV)
This reference by the prophet Daniel comes from a vision he had while with the children of Israel during the Babylonian Captivity. This would put Daniel somewhere in the area of present-day Iraq and would make the present-day Tigris river a fairly good candidate for the "Hiddekel" river spoken of by the prophet, as it is the only other "great river" known in that region today. But the Bible says that this river "that is it which goeth toward the east of Assyria" and a historical map the location of Assyria, shows that the Tigris actually goes southeastward.We should keep in mind that the geographical area known as "Assyria" is not so easy to pin down. Although the Assyrian Empire was centered near Nineveh, the actual empire also extended into what is also present-day Syria and Palestine. However, lacking a better candidate, and knowing that the prophet Daniel was in that geographical area at the time of his visions, the Tigris appears to be the best possible modern-day candidate for the Hiddekel River.We now must search out the probable locations of the other two rivers. It is here that the theories that the Garden of Eden was either in Turkey or Kuwait starts to lose credibility.
First, let's identify the geographical region of the Pison river. The Bible says: "Pison: that is it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold" and gives us two good clues. There is a recently discovered "Fossil River" that runs from the western mountains of Saudi Arabia towards Kuwait. This now long since dry riverbed was detected by satellite imaging. Many have speculated that this may be the ancient Pison, as it has been dry since about 3,500 to 2,000 BC. Although Saudi Arabia could marginally qualify for the land of Havilah, the fossil riverbed that flows across it had its origins in the mountains bordering the eastern side of the present day Red Sea, south of Israel.
It should be pointed out that those mountains are mirrored by another range of mountains on the western side of the Red Sea. The Red Sea is a tectonic spreading zone (red) and part of the Great Rift system that runs from northward in Turkey, down through the Dead Sea, down through the Red Sea and southward deep into the African continent. Obviously, when that mountain range was split by the Rift the source waters of the proposed Pison river dried up.
But this proposed river path may be somewhat of a "red-herring" because it does not seem to naturally "fit" the overall pattern. An even better fit may be for the river to have flowed down what today is the Gulf of Aden south of present day Yemen (southern tip of Arabia). Yemen has both gold and onyx and the eastward trending fault branch from the Afar triangle would have been a natural riverbed in the days prior to Noah's flood (when sea levels were lower than today).
If this was indeed the Pison River, one of four that flowed out of the main one rising in the Garden of Eden, it does not correspond with the present-day headwater source of the Euphrates or Tigris up in Turkey. What's more, the geography of the last remaining river, the Gihon, further complicates the problem.The Gihon is spoken of as: "Gihon: the same is it that compasseth the whole land of Ethiopia" which is the African land area west of the Red Sea and southward. Of course, the political boundaries of what we call Ethiopia today were certainly different in Biblical times, but the general area is correct. And if a river formerly flowed down what is now the Red Sea basin and southward into Africa at the Afar Triangle, it would certainly fit the description of a river that "compasseth the whole land of Ethiopia." (Genesis 2:13)
If we have correctly identified all four rivers, we now have 2 rivers (Euphrates and Tigris) originating today out of Turkey and another running down what was is now the Red Sea south of Israel and deep into Africa, following the path of the present-day Great Rift system. For the moment, we will also include the previously discussed "fossil river" running through Saudi Arabia. Superimposing these on a map we see the following trend-line across the region:The yellow lines show the paths of the four rivers, as proposed from what we have discussed so far. You should note that we did not trace over the Euphrates and Tigris rivers to their present-day sources, but terminated them close to the Great Rift fault zone line. You will also note that we have not continued the proposed path of the "Gihon" beyond the top of the Red Sea, and have terminated the proposed "Pison" at the Great Rift fault zone line.All 4 of these rivers have one thing in common: All are connected to the Great Rift system. And that is the key to the mystery. Two rivers presently originate out of Turkey to the north and two other fossil rivers flowed south of Israel. The geographical "center" of these four points of flow is neither Turkey nor Kuwait; the center is somewhere near present day Israel and Jordan.
The Bible itself lends further credence to Israel (or someplace nearby) as the location of the Garden of Eden. If you run the name "Eden" through a search of the Bible, among several references the following ones provide some insightful clues:"Behold, the Assyrian was a cedar in Lebanon with fair branches, and with a shadowing shroud, and of an high stature; and his top was among the thick boughs. The waters made him great, the deep set him up on high with her rivers running round about his plants, and sent out her little rivers unto all the trees of the field. Therefore his height was exalted above all the trees of the field, and his boughs were multiplied, and his branches became long because of the multitude of waters, when he shot forth. All the fowls of heaven made their nests in his boughs, and under his branches did all the beasts of the field bring forth their young, and under his shadow dwelt all great nations. Thus was he fair in his greatness, in the length of his branches: for his root was by great waters. The cedars in the garden of God could not hide him: the fir trees were not like his boughs, and the chesnut trees were not like his branches; nor any tree in the garden of God was like unto him in his beauty. I have made him fair by the multitude of his branches: so that all the trees of Eden, that were in the garden of God, envied him."(Ezekiel 31:3-9 KJV)In this passage the Bible says that the Assyrian was in Lebanon. Spiritually speaking, the "trees" in this passage refer to men and leaders. Cedar trees are mentioned elsewhere in the Bible as references to Lebanon (Judges 9:15, Psalms 29:5 & 104:16, Song of Solomon 5:15, Isaiah 2:13, Jeremiah 22:23 and more).Notice also in the last of the passage that the Spirit associates the trees with "Eden" that "were in the Garden of God." Lebanon, although not a part of modern political Israel, was a part of the Biblical lands ruled by the Kings of Israel in times past. From this we can infer that the Garden and the source of the rivers of the Garden was somewhere close to the land of Lebanon.
Assuming this postulation is correct, that the source of the four rivers was somewhere near Lebanon, the interconnection of the river systems would need to be somewhat like the map below:What roughly emerges, if all four rivers are connected to the Great Rift fault system, is a complex river network emerging from a common point of origin that flows both north and south, with each north and south extension splitting into two separate streams, for a total of four rivers. That adds up to four separate heads.Of course, to propose such a reconstruction one would have to assume that the present day headwaters of the Tigris and Euphrates were not the main headwaters in ancient times. It is possible that there could have been older main tributaries previously flowing from Lebanon which were, at that time, the main headwaters of those two rivers.
But the so-called Kuwait River, which has been proposed as the lost river Pison, does not seem to match with the common denominator of the others, that is the Great Rift and branching fault systems. Based on the description of its path in the Bible which says, "compasseth the whole land of Havilah" and knowing from the geology of present day Yemen that onyx can be found there, then this part of the verse, "where there is gold; And the gold of that land is good: there is bdellium and the onyx stone" suggests an alternate path for the River Pison, to the south of Yemen, and that would give us the path indicated by the blue and yellow markings. And a southern path around Yemen puts the fourth river squarely back into the basin of the Great Rift system, flowing east from the upwelling Afar Triangle.
When all factors are considered (Bible text and geology), I believe the paths indicated by the dotted lines on the large map below are probably where those rivers flowed.This meets the requirement of Biblical text because the single water source, originating from high ground somewhere in or near present day Israel, hit the Rift Valley flowed both north and south along the path of the Rift zone, with both the north and south forks each splitting a second time when intercepting other fault zones.
Keep in mind that the course of rivers around and through the vicinity of the Great Rift fault system may have changed or dried up because of block faulting all along the Rift zone. Certainly Horst and Graben faulting along the Rift could, and would, change the surface topography. Horst and Graben faulting is defined as "elongate fault blocks of the Earth's crust that have been raised and lowered, respectively, relative to their surrounding areas as a direct effect of faulting. Horsts and Grabens may range in size from blocks a few centimeters wide to tens of kilometers wide; the vertical movement may be up to several thousand feet." But when did this happen? The most likely time frame would be in the years immediately following Noah's Flood. Keep in mind that the Bible says there was a significant geologic event that happened 101 years after Noah's Flood (The "Earth was divided" (see: Genesis 10:25 & 1 Chronicles 1:19). The Bible also describes what was probably tectonic/volcanic activity in the Rift valley in Abraham's days (the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah - See Genesis 19:28).
Imaging of the Dead Sea indicates that, at one time, the river bed of what is now the Jordan River once flowed across the land surface that is now at the bottom of the Dead Sea. This suggests that there was Horst and Graben faulting at the southern end of the present Dead Sea, which abruptly terminated the former flow of that river southward. And that stream was probably the feeder channel to the ancient Gihon River, which ran down the floor of what is now the Red Sea into Ethiopia and through the Rift basin south from the Afar Triangle. Supporting coincidental evidence for this is the fact that fish species down in the African Rift valley river and lake systems are very similar to those found in the Jordan River system:Note: The aquatic life of the African lakes and rivers belongs to the so-called Ethiopian zoogeographical region. According to Annandale, the explanation of the Ethiopian affinity of the fish fauna of the Jordan is that the Jordan formed at one time merely part of a river system that ran down the Great Rift Valley. The Jordan was one branch of this huge river system, the chain of lakes in East Africa represents the other; and together they opened into the Indian Ocean. See R. Washbourn, “The Percy Sladen Expedition to Lake Huleh, 1935, Palestine Exploration Fund, Quarterly Statements, (1936), p. 209. (Source website: The Great Rift and the Jordan)Now, returning to the general area of Lebanon as the Biblical location of the Garden of Eden and the water source for the four rivers, let us take a look at the present-day geology and topography of that area. This map shows a great deal of block faulting in the area of Lebanon just north of modern day Israel.Below is a satellite image of the entire area. You will note from the topographical relief that, had waters once flowed out of this area, they would naturally flow northward into the Euphrates Fault system river basin. At the time of the Garden of Eden the main headwaters of the Euphrates could have come from that direction. If the water flow at that time continued northward along the path of the Great Rift, it would also intersect the present-day Tigris river basin.STS41G-120-0056 Dead Sea Rift Valley, Israel and Jordan October 1984 Seen from an altitude of 190 nautical miles (350 kilometers)The prominent bodies of water along the Rift zone in this photo are the Dead Sea (bottom) and Sea of Galilee (top). They are connected by the Jordan River which flows south. Before the Earth was divided by the Rift, the mountainous land on both the Israeli and Jordanian sides were joined. You are looking at "ground zero" of what was once the Garden of Eden.
Here is another important point to remember. The Bible says that the river flowed out of Eden, but nowhere does the Bible give a geographical size for what constituted the actual area of Eden. Therefore, the actual source of the waters could have been south of Lebanon. More specifically, those waters could have originated in or near Jerusalem in present-day Israel, or even up welled from a massive spring under the sea of Tiberius.
The Israel/Lebanon region as the location of Eden and the lost river finds considerable support in the Bible. Support for this line of reasoning in found in the fact that God considers the land of Israel as His Holy land. It was upon one of the mountains in the "land of Moriah" (Genesis 22:2) where Abraham was told to sacrifice his son (a type of the Lord's sacrifice of Jesus). Solomon was told to build the Temple "at Jerusalem in mount Moriah" (2 Chronicles 3:1) and Jerusalem was where the Lord Jesus was actually crucified. By extension, we can assume that when God sacrificed an animal to cover Adam and Eve with its skin (Genesis 3:21), that animal was a Lamb (Revelation 13:8). Therefore, we can be certain from the typology that Adam and Eve, and the center of the Garden of God, were somewhere at or very near geographical Jerusalem.
Now, what exactly do those spiritual realities have to do with the location of the river of Eden? In the future, when the Lord Jesus Christ establishes His Kingdom and Righteous Temple in Jerusalem, the Bible speaks of a river flowing from below the Temple. The prophet Ezekiel spoke of seeing this in a vision:Afterward he brought me again unto the door of the house; and, behold, waters issued out from under the threshold of the house eastward: for the forefront of the house stood toward the east, and the waters came down from under from the right side of the house, at the south side of the altar. Then brought he me out of the way of the gate northward, and led me about the way without unto the utter gate by the way that looketh eastward; and, behold, there ran out waters on the right side. And when the man that had the line in his hand went forth eastward, he measured a thousand cubits, and he brought me through the waters; the waters were to the ankles. Again he measured a thousand, and brought me through the waters; the waters were to the knees. Again he measured a thousand, and brought me through; the waters were to the loins. Afterward he measured a thousand; and it was a river that I could not pass over: for the waters were risen, waters to swim in, a river that could not be passed over. And he said unto me, Son of man, hast thou seen this? Then he brought me, and caused me to return to the brink of the river. Now when I had returned, behold, at the bank of the river were very many trees on the one side and on the other. Then said he unto me, These waters issue out toward the east country, and go down into the desert, and go into the sea: which being brought forth into the sea, the waters shall be healed. And it shall come to pass, that every thing that liveth, which moveth, whithersoever the rivers shall come, shall live: and there shall be a very great multitude of fish, because these waters shall come thither: for they shall be healed; and every thing shall live whither the river cometh. And it shall come to pass, that the fishers shall stand upon it from Engedi even unto Eneglaim; they shall be a place to spread forth nets; their fish shall be according to their kinds, as the fish of the great sea, exceeding many. But the miry places thereof and the marishes thereof shall not be healed; they shall be given to salt. And by the river upon the bank thereof, on this side and on that side, shall grow all trees for meat, whose leaf shall not fade, neither shall the fruit thereof be consumed: it shall bring forth new fruit according to his months, because their waters they issued out of the sanctuary: and the fruit thereof shall be for meat, and the leaf thereof for medicine.(Ezekiel 47:1-12 KJV)And this corresponds with what John said about the New Jerusalem:
And he shewed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb. In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, was there the tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month: and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.(Revelation 22:1-2 KJV)
Since the original "Tree of Life" was in the Garden of Eden, does it not make sense that when the Lord makes all things new again the future "Tree of Life" would be restored to its proper place? And that place is in Israel, the same place upon the mountains of Moriah (Jerusalem).
Yes, the Bible tends to indicate that the river from the Garden of Eden originated in Judea and from there became four heads. A forensic study of the region's geology tends to support the theory over the alternatively proposed locations of Turkey or Kuwait. What we have not shown is a geologic model for the source of these waters originating from the area of Jerusalem. Keep in Mind that Jerusalem sits just west of the Great Rift Valley. It is quite possible that the legendary river of Eden originated from a massive artesian aquifer, the source of which has long since been disrupted by block faulting along the Rift. We know for a scientific fact that there is a considerable amount of "fossil" water under the Middle East in the deep-rock sandstone aquifers of the region such as the Nubian sandstone aquifers and equivalent formations.
Also keep in mind that in the days of Adam and Eve a "mist" went up and watered the face of the Earth within the Garden (Genesis 2:6). Fountains of waters (underground waters under pressure gushing upwards) would certainly be a logical source for the generation of such a mist and would be a logical feed-source for such a river. Certainly, we cannot exclude this possibility.
In summary, although the modern-day geology and topography of the Middle-East does not readily reveal the exact location of the Garden of Eden and the four rivers source, guidance by faith from the Holy Bible and a forensic study of the region's geology reveals the matter. The available data appears to suggest that present-day Israel was the central location of the Garden of Eden.
In the next chapter we begin our study about the dynamics of Noah's flood.
The Fountains of Noah's Flood and the Windows of Heaven
"And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth; and all the high hills, that were under the whole heaven, were covered. Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail; and the mountains were covered."
(Genesis 7:19-20 KJV)
If this flood was literal and global, then we are confronted with the "Mount Everest" problem. Located in Nepal, Mount Everest is the Earth's highest peak. It is also the highest peak in a range of mountains stretching across 1,500 miles and containing more than 1000 peaks higher than 20,000 feet.
Mount Everest is presently at a height of 29,028 feet above sea level and getting taller at the rate of about 3-5 millimeters per year. Assuming the tectonic uplift rate of the Himalayan range has been uniform since the days of Noah's flood, Mount Everest would have been only about forty-three (43) feet shorter (28,985 ft.) back in Noah's day. That is still a considerable height, equal to about 5.5 miles above present sea level. It would take a lot of water for the flood to reach that depth - more water than is presently above the crust of the earth. Where did so much water come from and where did it go after the flood?
Before answering that question, let's put this puzzle into perspective. Our Earth is about 25,000 miles in circumference. If it was compared to the size of a basketball, the Earth's crust would be about as thick as a sheet of tissue paper wrapped around it. In a global perspective, 5.5 miles of water above today's sea level is a relatively minute quantity, increasing overall circumference by only 0.044%. Of course, to people on the order of five to six feet in stature, 5.5 miles is a lot. The thing to keep in mind is perspective.
Many Young Earth Creationists espouse the theory that most of the Earth's mountains and sedimentary rock strata were formed underwater during Noah's flood by massive global volcanic and tectonic activity. They then conclude that because the mountains formed during the flood, not as much water was needed to cover the Earth to "fifteen cubits" above the highest mountain as Genesis 7:20 requires. Nice try, but no prize.
That answer does not meet the Scriptural or geophysical requirements, as the Bible clearly says that the mountains were already there, and by implication, the continents and tectonic plates were in their present-day locations, give or take a hundred yards to account for 4,000+ years of continental drift. Additionally, the alleged underwater volcanic and tectonic activity, on such a massive scale as proposed by Young Earth Creation Science models, would have produced a great deal of acid which would be detectable as SO4 ions in the Greenland Ice Sheet core record. That evidence is simply not there. This is covered in more detail in a later chapter.
Instead of taking the usual approach - that Noah's Flood could not have happened because of this fact or that fact - let's approach the problem from this angle: Noah's Flood did happen because the Bible is true, so let's try and find answers that can fit the facts, both scientific and Biblical. After all, Jesus Himself confirmed that the flood was a real event, so there must be an explanation. First, let us closely examine the exact wording of the Bible to begin determining the correct answers to this mystery.
"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 KJV)
Notice that the Lord says the agency of destruction would be the Earth itself. The planet Earth has three spheres: the core, mantle, crust (lithosphere), the seas (hydrosphere), and the air in the heaven above (atmosphere). All three played a part in the destruction of the antediluvian world, so the complete answer is not necessarily confined to just geology.
"In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and thewindows of heaven were opened. And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights."
(Gen 7:11-12 KJV)
"The fountains also of the deep and the windows of heaven were stopped, and the rain from heaven was restrained;"
(Gen 8:2 KJV)
According to the Scriptures, there were two (2) related sources for the rains and waters of Noah's flood. There were "fountains" of water coming up out of the Earth and there was water coming down from the "windows" of heaven. We will deal with the matter of the fountains first, as they began first and triggered a complex chain reaction from below the Earth's crust that then affected things far into the upper atmosphere.
Two types of water fountains occur in nature. One is called an Artesian well/spring. Artesian wells occur when a hole penetrates into the earth to a region where internal pressure causes the water to flow upward like a fountain.
The second type of fountain is called a geyser. Geysers occur when waters in underground chambers are heated by the surrounding host rock until the pressure and temperature cause them to flash to steam and erupt upwards. When the chamber is emptied, replacement water flows back into the chamber, the replacement water is heated, and the cycle repeats. An excellent example of this is seen in Yellowstone National Park's "Old Faithful" geyser.
According to what is written in the Scriptures, the fountains of Noah's flood may have been a similar form of geyser activity on a massive, world-wide scale, concentrated along the mid-oceanic ridge system. A careful reading of Genesis 7:6-10 seems to indicate that the flood waters were already rising for about seven days before the fountains "were broken up" (verse: 11).
"And Noah was six hundred years old when the flood of waters was upon the earth. And Noah went in, and his sons, and his wife, and his sons' wives with him, into the ark,because of the waters of the flood. Of clean beasts, and of beasts that are not clean, and of fowls, and of every thing that creepeth upon the earth, There went in two and two unto Noah into the ark, the male and the female, as God had commanded Noah. And it came to pass after seven days, that the waters of the flood were upon the earth. In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened. And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights."(Genesis 7:6-12 KJV)
Careful parsing of the above passage indicates that great amounts of water were already being added to the Earth's seas at least seven days before the rains even began. This means that sea level was already rapidly rising, flooding low lying coastal areas and sending panicked low-land inhabitants inland from the rising seas. Meanwhile, presumably up on much higher ground, Noah and his family took shelter on the Ark and waited, while the massive gopher wood vessel remained firmly nested in its construction frame, unmovable and secure until the rising waters lifted it from its resting place.
The great volume of water this early in the flood event could only come from massive undersea "fountains" beginning to breech the crust all along the mid-oceanic ridge system. But this preliminary out-flow was still insufficient to breech the ocean's surface. The volume of underwater displacement would, however, be sufficient enough to generate global tsunami (tidal waves) activity, quickly drowning inhabitants who lived near the seas.
Seven days into the flood the undersea fountains broke through the crust in full fury, and the pressure of the flow sent scalding columns of superheated waters upwards, breeching the ocean's surface and erupting skyward as a globe-encircling curtain of steam rocketing into the upper atmosphere. As the steam came into contact with the colder air it would condense and produce cloud cover and relentless rainfall on a planetary scale. This is precisely the sequence of events described in this part of the passage:
"In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened. And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights."
(Gen 7:11-12 KJV)
This first passage, at the beginning of the flood, says that the rains did not begin until AFTER the fountains of the great deep are broken up.
"The fountains also of the deep and the windows of heaven were stopped, and the rain from heaven was restrained;"
(Gen 8:2 KJV)
The second passage says the rains ceased only AFTER the fountains stopped. This is fully consistent with a geyser model.
As briefly mentioned earlier, the most likely geological location for the "fountains" (geysers) was along a narrow, globe encircling series of underwater Tectonic Plate boundaries called the mid-oceanic ridge, where the Earth's oceanic crust is currently spreading apart at the rate of a few centimeters per year. This continuous system of faults is seen on a map of the Earth's sea floors as running south down the middle of the Greenland Sea and the North and South Atlantic Oceans. It then extends eastward into the Indian Ocean basin, onward between Australia and Antarctica and into the great Pacific Ocean basin. It then continues northward along the eastern side of the Pacific basin.
The geysers' source would have been extensive underground reservoirs of magma supersaturated with water that had collected in the regions below the boundary of the oceanic crust and above the underlying mantle region. The next graphic is a simplified schematic cross-section of the Atlantic Ocean basin, with the mid-oceanic ridge at the center.
The underground region where this water-saturated magma would have collected is above a zone called the Asthenosphere, commonly known as the Mohorovic discontinuity. The behavior of seismic waves passing through that region appears to show relative liquidity as compared to the rock in the regions above and below it. See also: Keeping Earth's Plates Oiled
Graphic from http://www.geog.ouc.bc.ca/physgeog/contents/images/lithosphere.gif
Scientists are just now finding evidence to confirm the presence of large volumes of water deep inside the Earth, enough to fill Earth's ocean basins 10 times over (see also Earth Mantle 'Ocean': 3-D Seismic Model Of Vast Water Reservoir Revealed). Only a fraction of such an amount would be required to raise sea levels to meet the requirements of Noah's flood. By the way, long before scientists learned there were vast amounts of water under the Earth, the Bible already hinted at this fact (see Exodus 20:4.)If a large volume of water-saturated magma had pooled under the Earth's ocean basins, it is probable that the oceans were much shallower then as compared to the Post-Flood times of today. Earth's sedimentary geology is replete with evidence of shallow-water depositions. And that same geology reveals fluctuations in global sea levels across geologic time that greatly exceed what could possibly be caused by accumulations and melting at the polar caps. One of the possible explanations put forth to explain this mystery is "sea floor warping" and periodic accumulations and releases of waters from supersaturated magma, as proposed in this model and could account for this observation. In addition, it would be more likely that a rupture in the crust would occur, and these waters released, if the accumulation of magma below the oceanic crust was placing great upward pressure against the crust.
Therefore, we will assume that at the time just before Noah's flood the seas were more shallow than today. If this was indeed the case, then explaining how much of the flood waters rapidly receded becomes simple to explain.
Basic law of Physics: For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. After the great volume of waters which were formerly trapped below the Earth's oceanic crust jetted upwards, condensed, and fell into the regions above the oceanic crust, they quickly began to produce an accumulative great reverse-pressure on the thin crust of the ocean floor.
And that is the basic proposed geologic component of the Flood Model. In the next chapter you will learn about the complex chain reaction this triggered in the Earth's atmosphere and the resultant changes that sharply decreased the life-span of man on this side of the flood.
Before proceeding to other aspects of the event we need to address an objection to this geologic model posed by accepted plate tectonic theory: If sea floor spreading and volcanic activity along the mid-oceanic ridge has been ongoing for millions of years, what explains this anomalous eruption of waters at this particular point in the Earth's history? This is a fair question, for which I only have a Biblical answer.
Allow me to point your attention back to the seven days of Genesis and the restoration of the Earth and heavens during the six days of the Lord's work. Just before the Lord began His work, the Earth and the solar system were strewn with waters (Genesis 1:2). The Lord then divides the waters from under the firmament from those He placed above the firmament (Genesis 1:6). Then, on the following day He causes the waters remaining on the Earth's surface to be gathered into one place so that the dry land appears (Genesis 1:10). Exactly how the Lord accomplished this is not said, but it seems logical that He somehow made some of the water go underground. This is hinted at in an obscure comment in the Book of Proverbs that may shed some light on the matter.
In Proverbs chapter Eight (8), the Spirit of Wisdom is telling how it has been with the Lord since before He first created the heaven and Earth, and also with Him at the time the Lord did the regeneration work of the seven days. In reference to the latter the following is said:
"When he prepared the heavens, I was there: when he set a compass upon the face of the depth: When he established the clouds above: when he strengthened the fountains of the deep: When he gave to the sea his decree, that the waters should not pass his commandment: when he appointed the foundations of the earth:"(Proverbs 8:27-29 KJV)
This passage seems to indicate that through some agency not clearly understood, the Lord caused some of the waters on the Earth to go underground. The reader will note that in the days of Adam the vegetation of the Earth was watered by a mist that came up out of the ground:
"And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew: for the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground. But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground."(Genesis 2:5-6 KJV)
This "mist" seems to indicate that there was a great deal of heated water present under the Earth and relatively close to the surface, or at least making its way to the surface at various places in order to produce this mist. The Divine reconfiguration of the Earth's geology at this particular time is the only possible explanation. Surely the Lord knew that He had created an unstable situation that would eventually cause the flood centuries later in the days of Noah. Granted, this is not a scientific answer, but one that is theologically sound given our understanding of God's omnipotence and foreknowledge.
The bottom line is that the geologic conditions that produced the massive geysers of Noah's days, however they came about, no longer exist. Therefore, there can be no repeat of this activity on such a great scale (See Genesis 9:15 for confirmation). In other words, the very mechanics and conditions that produced the great flood event self-destructed upon completion of the flood event cycle, thus the geologic changes became permanent. So, unlike the "Old Faithful" geyser, this was a one-time event.
In the next chapter we will discuss why the age-span of mankind greatly decreased after the flood. We will also explain how Noah and his family, to say nothing of all sea creatures, survived being par-boiled by the heat released when the massive geysers erupted in the middle of the Earth's great oceans.
More on the 'Windows of Heaven' of Noah's Flood
(Genesis 10:25 KJV)
"And unto Eber were born two sons: the name of the one was Peleg; because in his days the earth was divided: and his brother's name was Joktan."
(1 Chronicles 1:19 KJV)
Many theories have been proposed to scientifically explain this phenomenon. Possible explanations for the decrease in human life spans range from an increase in the amount of radiation reaching the Earth's surface after the flood to changes in the atmosphere's pressure or composition, or a combination of factors.
An analysis of the graphs reveal that Noah, who was born 600 years before the flood, lived only 350 years after the flood but had a total life span of 950 years, which was only 19 years less than Methuselah. His son Shem, who was born only 98 years before the flood, lived 500 years after the flood but had a total life span of only 598 years, or about 2/3 the life span of his father. This data suggests that the level of physical body maturity at the time of the flood may hold the key to understanding the long life spans of antediluvian mankind. In other words, children remained children for much longer, reached puberty much later, and their bodies stayed much healthier through a greatly extended adulthood before the flood.
Support for this assumption comes from the Bible chronology and the notations of when pre-flood men fathered their first offspring. Observe in the record of the Generations of Adam (Genesis chapter 5) and note the ages of listed men and how old they were when they begat their first children: Seth 105 years, Enos 90 years, Cainan 70 years, Mahalaleel 65 years, Jared 162 years, Enoch 65 years, etc. See that pattern? It tends to indicate that men did not become sexually mature until at least 60 or 70 years of age. And those who had their first children many years past that maturity point (i.e. Jared 162, Methuselah 187, Lamech 182, and Noah 500) probably restrained from procreation for social or religious reasons. The bottom line is that pre-flood men of the age of 50 to 60 years were physiologically equivalent to today's teenagers.
In researching the cause of these greatly expanded pre-flood age-spans, my first inclination was that this must be somehow connected with the functioning of the human pituitary gland. But what was different after the flood that could cause the aging process to accelerate? I considered increased amounts of solar and cosmic radiation in the post-flood world as a possibility, but the existence of C14 in organics dating from the times of Adam and even before him ruled out cosmic radiation. I considered the possibility that perhaps the atmosphere of the Earth back in those days may have filtered out some other form of solar radiation. This could have been part of the answer but did not seem to be enough by itself.
Then recently, while reading an article about Hyperbaric oxygen (HBO) therapy for treating injuries, a possible answer came in a bolt of inspiration: Could it be that the reason men lived longer in pre-flood days was because the Earth's atmospheric pressure was considerably higher back then and that man was originally made to thrive in a higher-pressure atmospheric environment?
In Hyperbaric therapy, a person is placed in a pressurized chamber and the air pressure is increased 1 to 2 times that of normal sea level atmospheric pressure (14.7 psi). Under the increased air pressure more oxygen gets into the bloodstream. This process seems to accelerate healing of wounds, promotes tissue repair, and even favorably affects metabolic rates and the performance of the hormonal systems. In fact, in researching the subject, there appears to be a wide range of medical benefits from living in a pressurized environment. It almost seems to be something that should be natural. So why isn't the world like that today if such conditions are so naturally beneficial? Perhaps before the flood, it was the natural order of things.
Some of our Young Earth Creationist brethren have also reached the conclusion that the antediluvian world had a much higher atmospheric pressure. They also cite the benefits of hyperbaric oxygen as a possible contribution to the longevity of pre-flood mankind. Good for them (every once in a while they get one right), but then they attribute the increased pressure to presence of their mythical "water canopy" that they say God placed above the Earth's atmosphere when He divided the waters (Genesis 1:6) and was the liquid water source for the "windows of heaven" component of the flood. They are wrong on both of these assumptions.
What is needed is an antediluvian atmospheric model that, unlike their "water canopy" assumption, does not violate the laws of physics and can explain how the Earth's atmosphere became reduced in volume.
Since we have no idea what the actual atmospheric pressure could have been back then, let us assume a figure of about 1.5 to 2 atmospheres (14.7 psi X 2 = 29.4 psi). That would be a range in which the hyperbaric benefits would be close to optimum without the effects of nitrogen narcosis or oxygen toxicity (about equal to scuba diving in 25-30 feet of water).
We next need to determine the total weight of the additional atmospheric gas, and in doing the math we find that the present weight of the atmosphere is 4.99 X 1014 tons. Double that and you have the total weight of an additional atmosphere. Of course about 75% of the additional gas would accumulate close to the ground within the lowest 12 -15 kilometers, so the total height of the upper atmosphere's edge would still be close to what it is at present. Although that total tonnage is quite mind-boggling, it only represents about two millionths of the Earth's total mass; the Earth's gravitational pull would be slightly increased, but not by very much.
One possible additional benefit of a thicker atmosphere would be a reduction in the amount of harmful radiation reaching the Earth's surface. Solar radiation is not a simple, single entity. It actually comprises many forms such as electromagnetic radiation, X-rays, gamma rays, and high-speed particles like electrons, protons, neutrons, and atomic nuclei. This factor, combined with the HBO effect, could have been the difference that allowed antediluvian mankind to reach the great ages declared in the Bible. The full verdict is still out on this matter.
We need to address two other issues: 1) How did Noah's family in the Ark and the marine life in the seas escape being fried by the tremendous volume of heat released by the global geyser activity, and 2) How was the atmosphere reduced to present pressure levels? Let us answer the second question first.
When the "fountains" (a belt of geysers along the global oceanic ridge system) began on the Earth, creating the world-wide cloud cover and heavy rains, beginning seven days into the flood sequence, the heat energy from those geysers would have naturally traveled upward as a column. Upon encountering the colder air in the upper atmosphere, the steam would condense and rain would be precipitated. We're talking about rapidly soaring thermal air currents on a massive scale that would also drag heated atmospheric heavy gasses (oxygen - nitrogen, etc.) upwards into the higher elevations, as well. As all this heat accumulated in the upper regions, the sphere of the Earth's atmosphere would expand, pushing outwards and further away from Earth's gravity-well. If through this heating the atmosphere distended enough, portions of it would be ripped from Earth's gravitational field by the sun's solar winds. Those gases would be lost into space. Consequently, after the flood and after the heat source abated, the upper atmosphere would began to cool and shrink back to more normal size. But with great volumes of atmospheric gasses lost through this process, remaining air pressure at sea level would be reduced to present levels.
As for how Noah's family and Earth's marine life survived, they were protected by the dense cloud cover and the heavy rains. For a couple of reasons, the critics are incorrect in arguing that the heat from the geysers would fry everything on the surface of the Earth. First, heated air rises and most of the heat from the geysers would be dissipated high above the Earth's surface. Second, radiant heat (infra-red) from the ascending mix would not travel far horizontally, because of the heavy precipitation falling below the cloud cover. That cloud cover would act as a shield from the heat accumulating in the regions above the cloud cover.
And at this juncture another important point should be made. All the waters falling from the heavens would have been FRESH WATER. Because salt water is denser than fresh water, a large fresh water "lens" would have formed on top of the saline ocean basins and especially over submerged continental areas. This fact can go a long way in accounting for the survival of fresh-water fish and some forms of vegetation. The Bible says that at least one olive tree survived in the earth and sprouted fresh leaves after the flood waters subsided (see Genesis 8:11). If olive trees could survive those conditions, certainly the old Bristlecone pine trees could as well.
That completes this proposed flood model. Is this a farfetched model? You be the judge. It is only a theory, but meets the requirements of the literal wording of the Bible and does so through the agency of observable scientific principles.
In the next chapter we will discuss the days of Peleg" and post-flood world.
Sea Level & Major Geological Event After Noah's Flood
Question: Noah's Ark came to rest on a peak of the "mountains of Ararat." This is a mountain range situated between the Black and Caspian Seas in southern Armenia. The Bible does not say that the Ark came to rest atop Mount Ararat in Turkey. More likely, as indicated by the travel direction of the people who migrated into the place called Babel (see: Genesis 11:2), the Ark came to rest on a mountain top farther to the east near the present-day northern Iraq/Iran region. That fact could also explain the flood legend in the fabled Epic of Gilgamesh that predates the writing of the books of Moses. But how did humans and animals quickly migrate to the other continents like Australia and North America, which are presently separated by the seas?
To begin to answer this important question we must examine another lesser-known, but important event that occurred on the Earth about one hundred years after Noah's flood:
"And unto Eber were born two sons: the name of one [was] Peleg; for in his days was the earth divided; and his brother's name [was] Joktan."
(Genesis 10:25 KJV)
(Genesis 10:25 KJV)
"And unto Eber were born two sons: the name of the one [was] Peleg; because in his days the earth was divided: and his brother's name [was] Joktan."
(1 Chronicles 1:19 KJV)
(1 Chronicles 1:19 KJV)
In the Hebrew language the name 'Peleg' means a dividing by a "small channel of water" and is also root associated with the meaning of an earthquake. The Hebrew word used as 'divided' in the passage means to "split" something. According to the Bible genealogy, this man named Peleg was born 101 years after the flood. No doubt this Peleg was so named because of an event of great significance to the people living at the time he was born.
The fact that this dividing event is mentioned by the Holy Spirit in TWO places in the Scriptures, and that the EXACT number of years between this event and the flood is also recorded, alludes to the importance of these passages in the interpretation of post-flood history.
Some Creationists have interpreted this event to be the division of the North and South American continents from the European and African continents by the Atlantic Ocean after the flood. But a division of such magnitude at that point in geologic time would invalidate our previously proposed flood model. It would also invalidate accepted paleomagnetic data which supports gradual sea floor spreading at the mid-Atlantic ridge. Besides, the Atlantic Ocean is no "small channel of water" between land masses. Obviously, that is not the answer we are looking for.
After examining the Hebrew meanings, a more plausible alternative interpretation would be that it describes an earth-splitting event such as a valley opening in the ground and filling with water. That could have happened anywhere along the Dead Sea Rift zone (discussed in detail later) and may have been associated with a delayed adjustment of the Earth's plates in response to the rapid subsidence of the sea floors by the flood.
In theory, when the weight of the waters of the flood forced the sea floors downward to fill the void left in the magma chambers beneath, strain would have developed between the oceanic and continental portions of the crustal plates. Consequently, tectonic pressures were redistributed. About 100 years later the strain and pressure redistribution may have caused the Earth's crust to rapidly rent in weaker places, much like a piece of ridged plastic which can be stretched and deformed. It will eventually snap if the strain remains constant. An abrupt further change in sea levels could possibly accompany such an event.
Looking at world relief and tectonic maps, one possible location of the effects of this Peleg event is found in Middle East. It is called the Afar Triangle.
If you will examine the relief map (above), you can see where there was a geologically recent rent of Saudi Arabia from Africa. This is a fracture in the continental crust and is different from deep ocean divergence zones. If you will look closely, you can see where a mountain range was sheared and dragged apart.
The Afar fracture is a three-way split, which some geologists believe is caused by an upwelling magma plume, for lack of a better engine. The area on the African continent running south from that fracture locus is the Great African Rift Valley which runs down into the middle of the African continent. The area going north runs along the bottom of the Red Sea, up into the Dead Sea Rift area of Israel, up the Jordon river valley, and continues northward. This Peleg event is most likely a local reference to a widening of that Rift somewhere near or north of Israel.
The next image is a view of the Afar Triangle’s tectonic features. In all likelihood, this Rift system was already active before Noah's flood, but Noah's flood triggered renewed activity. I state that because the path of the Rift from Israel continues to run south for the entire length of Ethiopia. It seems to match the described path of the river Gihon, one of four that flowed from the Garden of Eden.
"And the name of the second river is Gihon: the same is it that compasseth the whole land of Ethiopia."(Genesis 2:13 KJV)
If that is true, then there has been considerable tectonic activity since the Garden of Eden, and Noah's flood may have been just a contributing driver of latter changes.
Now, as for how man and animals got to places like Australia and the Americas, it is possible that they migrated there on dry land during the 101-year interval between the flood and the subsequent plate settling. Possibly, sea levels may have risen quite a bit since the post-flood migrations began, and even more after the Days of Peleg. An examination of the geology of the region between Indochina and Australia shows that the sea between the two continental masses is relatively shallow.
The same is true of the Bearing Straits separating Alaska from Russia, where the waters are only about 50 feet deep between the tip of Asia and North America. It is theoretically possible that in the 101 years following the flood, and before the events of Peleg's days, narrow land bridges (which today are submerged) may have still existed between many places across the globe. The fact that the ruins of many ancient cities in the Mediterranean Sea area, which postdate the time of Noah's flood and are found underwater today, tells us that global sea levels have increased by several meters since those cities were built, or there has been wide-spread subsidence since then. Regardless, an appeal to present-day sea levels is not a valid argument against post-flood migrations to regions now inaccessible across dry land.
Assuming that some land bridges existed briefly after the flood by whatever mechanism, the question is: Did man and beast have sufficient time to migrate from the resting place of the Ark to other continents before the dividing? Well, let's do the math:
If you calculate the distance from eastern Mesopotamia to the tip of Australia and divide it by 100 years, you will find that both man and beast would only have to migrate less than 80 miles a year (0.21 miles a day) in order to reach Australia; less than 55 miles a year (0.15 miles a day) to reach North America via the Bearing Straits; and less than 48 miles a year (0.13 miles a day) if a land bridge (or possibly an ice bridge) existed across the northern polar regions. Those average daily distance requirements are much less than most people walk each day in their normal routines. The data support the Scriptures.
"These [are] the three sons of Noah: and of them was the whole earth overspread."
(Genesis 9:19 KJV)
(Genesis 9:19 KJV)
Shortly after the Ark landed on the mountains of Ararat, the families of mankind spread across the world. At that point in time mankind all spoke a common language and the bulk of them appear to have migrated westward, although it is safe to assume that some settled near the place where the Ark came to rest, and the oral tradition of Gilgamesh and the flood probably originated with the latter. Those people who did migrate westward are spoken of in Genesis 11:1-2:
"And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech. And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there."(Genesis 11:1-2 KJV)
That land of Shinar is Babel (Babylon), and there the Bible says the Lord confounded their language and from there they scattered out across the face of the Earth.
Recently, linguistic researchers have put forth the results of studies which tend to indicate that all the Indo-European languages originated in ancient Turkey. Although the given time frame of this occurrence is off by a few thousand years (and is probably conjecture), it is very interesting to see that otherwise it is in close agreement to where the Bible tells us what happened at Babel in the post-flood world.
Other Evidence of Geologically Recent Sea Level Changes
The geology of the Earth's oceans shows evidence of major, and in some cases, rapid fluctuation in sea level across recent geologic history. Such evidence can be found in areas near the continental margins. In the Atlantic Ocean, just off the New England coast, there is an underwater mountain chain that shows this.
The New England Seamount chain stretches about 1,600 miles southeast of New England. This chain has more than 30 major peaks, all a kilometer (3,281 feet) or more below the surface. There is evidence to confirm that the tops of these seamounts were once at or above the surface of the ocean in the relatively recent past. Deep-sea dredging of some of these seamounts brought up Eocene (37-58 mya) limestone, which is of shallow water origin. In a subsequent visit to the seamount in the research submarine Alvin, there was the first eyewitness observation reported of dead coral. (Coral only grows near the surface.) Rock samples were also collected which contained bits of dead algae (which only grows within 100 meters of the surface). The conclusion is that these seamounts have either subsided on the order of one kilometer since the Eocene, or that sea level has changed drastically since the Eocene.1
Research references: 1). J.R. Heirtzler, et al, "A Visit to the New England Seamounts" American Scientist 65 (1977) 2). Wolfgang Schlager "The Paradox of Drowned Reefs and Carbonate Platforms" Bulletin of the Geological Society of America 92 (1981), 3). Harold L. Levin "Contemporary Physical Geology", Crustal Deformation and Global Tectonics, page 290, figures 9-38 & 9-39, (1981)
This conclusion, however, presents a logical problem to mainline science, as coral reefs grow at known rates that would easily stay ahead of geological subsidence of the seamount. They would stay ahead of sea floor spreading by continental drift, and they would stay ahead of gradual elevations in sea level, as assumed under Uniformitarism Earth Science paradigms. The New England Seamounts are not unique. Similar recorded occurrences of finding shallow water sediments, reefs, and carbonate platforms in deep water regions have been recorded in many other places in the Earth's oceans, so the New England Seamounts are not an isolated anomaly. Since gradual processes are inadequate to explain the New England Seamount observations, or observations elsewhere, the alternative conclusion is that either the sea floor sank catastrophically, or that extraordinary volumes of water were added catastrophically, or both.
A combination of sea floor downward warping AND increased sea level resulting in deeper ocean basins following Noah's flood, would appear a plausible explanation for finding shallow water sediments in deep water regions today. Is there other undersea evidence to support this theory? Yes! It should be noted that the tops of the submerged New England Seamounts are at the same approximate depth as the edge of the Continental shelf, which is also at a depth of about 1000 meters worldwide.
This edge is called the Continental Slope, a zone where the sea floor plunges sharply downward to the Continental Rise and the even deeper abyssal plains. This slope's contour, worldwide, delineates the actual edges of the continents.
All of the world's continents have their closest "fit" at the present 1000-meter sea level depth if you put then back together like a giant jigsaw puzzle. Although the thicker and relatively lighter granitic continents have drifted apart over time, they essentially have retained the same general shape in respect to their contact with the thinner and heavier basaltic oceanic basins.
Along the outer edges of the relatively flat Continental Shelf, near the Continental Slope zone, are numerous underwater "canyons" which cut downward sharply into the floor of the shelf. These canyons are similar to ones cut by fast-flowing waters eroding away rock as observed on land when the flow gradient is very steep. For example, in a portion of a river that drops 800 feet in five miles, the water speed and erosion power is much greater than a portion of river that only drops eight feet in five miles.
Over 80% of the canyons on the edge of the Continental Shelf can be directly traced back across the relatively flat plain of the Continental Shelf, following now submerged river beds, to the mouths of rivers that exist today. This reveals that most of the underwater canyons are clearly extensions of those same present-day rivers, and those canyons were likely cut when the continents stood higher above sea level. In the NOAA graphic above you can see these canyons on the edge of dark blue area.
If the Earth's ocean level was 1000 meters lower before Noah's flood, the canyons are easily explained by the force of the river waters running off the flat land of the present Continental Shelf (which would have been above sea level at that time) and down the relatively steep edges of the continental slope. The rivers would have eroded deep channels in the rock, at the edge of the shelf, as they plunged sharply downward to the antediluvian sea level. High-velocity turbidity currents carrying silt and rock particles could further erode the canyons in post-flood times after they were submerged below today's prevailing sea level.
The existence of the submerged river beds across the shelf indicate that at some time in the past, the Continental Shelf was above sea level, and rivers flowed gently across those coastal plains until they reached the edge area. Near the edge zone the gently flowing rivers turned into cascading rapids and falls, the accelerated flow and sediment load further eroding the deep canyons.
Combining the drowned reefs of the New England Seamounts and the submerged river beds of the Continental Shelf, we have observable physical evidence that supports the flood model. The data suggest both that the floors of the great ocean basins sank to greater depths and that sea level is about 1000 meters higher today than it was before the flood.
In the next chapter we will discuss why the Earth's sedimentary deposits were made well before Noah's flood and are not, as Young Earth Creationists claim, proof of Noah's flood.
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