Of Meteors, Ice Ages, and the Global Flood
Geology was my second love in college. I was one course away from a minor in geology, but couldn’t find a way to make it fit in my hectic 18 hour a semester schedule driven by my Naval ROTC requirements. In hindsight, it was a grace. After all, who wants to be a professional rock licker?
I arrived at Vanderbilt University with a God-given faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and a grace-enabled unshakeable trust in the Bible from Genesis to Revelation. While I was not exposed to much of Darwin’s theory or the accompanying geologic epochs (millions and billions of years) in high school (it was the late 80s /early 90s), Vanderbilt’s Geology Department deluged me in it. I was fascinated with their theories of how it took so ridiculously long to form all the geologic wonders of this world. And I learned much about how reasonable some of these theories can seem, if no other alternatives are ever presented or discussed.
But of course I arrived at the university with an alternative deeply ensconced in my mind and soul. It was so simplistic sounding, though, that I rarely had courage to even mention it to my peers, much less my professors. I wish I had been exposed to the work of Answers in Genesis and the Institute for Creation Research back in those days. But Henry Morris and Andrew Snelling were total strangers to me then. Turns out, what sounded so simple to me – that God flooded the entire earth with a massive catastrophe the likes of which had never been imagined – actually has good scientific backing!
You see, when you look at the Grand Canyon, or massive cave systems, or lakes, rivers, creeks and oceans, or jagged mountain peaks that clearly were thrust up from the deep, you are staring at evidences of the righteous wrath of a Holy Creator God! This likely explains why none of my atheist professors ever mentioned even the remotest possibility that the Genesis Flood was true. To admit such a thing, well, that would be too much to bear for sinful truth-suppressors who want to live as their own gods (see Romans 1:18-32). Nevermind the evidence of perfectly un-eroded rock layers all over the earth. Nevermind fossils of millions of dead things buried in rock layers laid down by water all over the earth. Nevermind petrified trees jutting through many multiple rock layers, all of which supposedly laid on the earth for millions of years. (That’s an old tree, I’d say!) Evidence be damned! We shall not admit anything in Genesis is literally true. For if we do, it might inevitably lead us to conclude if we do not repent of our sins and crawl by faith onto the Ark who is Jesus Christ, we too shall be drowned in God’s wrath. Come to think of it, this is pretty much how Jesus concluded the Sermon on the Mount (Matt 7:24-27).
A few days ago, I was watching a TV show on Volcanoes. I think it was on the Discovery Channel, but do not quote me on it. My teen daughter was nearby and I called her in the room quickly to discuss what they were claiming on the show. The scientists were examining lava rocks on Iceland. The lava had cooled and formed rocks in a circular shape. Very neat. Look kind-of-like large snails. The show then explained that the only place scientists had ever observed lava cooling into spherical shapes was under water.
Are you listening?
This phenomenon has only ever been actually observed happening under the oceans! But of course the show went on to claim emphatically that since these scientists knew this mountainous area had never been under water, they developed an elaborate theory of things that happened millions of years ago over aeons of time to somehow replicate what they have only ever observed happening under ocean water. Makes perfect sense to me! Deny the obvious conclusion. Throw true observational science under the bus in the name of the gospel of geologic epochs.
I recently read an article (https://phys.org/news/2020-07-texas-cave-sediment-upends-meteorite.html) about scientists having to go back to the drawing board regarding the cause of the Ice Age. For many decades, the theory was a meteorite hit the earth, causing the Ice Age. But sediment deposits in a cave in Texas now disprove the theory, showing instead that a “period of major volcanic eruptions” caused the earth to cool.
You mean something like “on that day the fountains of the great deep burst forth” (Genesis 7:11).
Volcanoes. Earthquakes. Geysers. 40 days of torrential rain. World-wide catastrophe. An earth covered now by water will inevitably possess a much cooler atmosphere. Much of it will freeze as the water subsides. And the ice will scar up the land and leave lakes and canyons as it too recedes back to its place closer to the poles.
Wow. Sounds simple. And true. But not because it makes better sense of the scientific data (though it clearly does). But because God said so.
Be careful who you trust.
“Let God be true though everyone be a liar” (Romans 3:3).
https://answersingenesis.org/search/?refinement=&language=en&q=ice+age+questions
by Keith McWhorter