“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” (2 Peter 3:5, 6).

Geologic evidence confirms that a hydraulic or water catastrophe stirred up the earth’s surface and destroyed the plants and animals of a previous world. Sedimentary layers with fossilized life-forms in them lie an average of 2½ miles deep around the world. They are up to 14 miles deep on the Tibetan plateau.

Examples of Water Cataclysms in Geology

Secular scientists had reason for concern in 1923 when J. Harlen Bretz and Joseph Pardee described evidence for a 48-hour quick washout of the Grand Coulee and channeled scablands of eastern Washington State. The ancient shorelines of glacial Lake Missoula in Montana showed that 530 cubic miles of water suddenly gushed across Washington, dumped into the Colombia River, and deposited rocks on the continental shelf of the Pacific Ocean.

The politically correct uniformitarian view was that slow, weak forces over millions of years formed the features of our earth’s surface. The prominent geologists of Mr. Bretz’s day adamantly opposed a catastrophic explanation. It took a new generation of geologists after Bretz’s detractors died off to accept the facts of the huge Lake Missoula flood. The same bias sidelines the works of recent Creation scientists who propose a catastrophic washout of the Grand Canyon. If the Grand Canyon would be filled today, lakes would be retained that hold 3,000 cubic miles of water. That is three times the volume of Lake Michigan!

Evidence for a Global Flood

Compared to the Grand Coulee and the Grand Canyon formation, the evidence for a sudden worldwide hydraulic event is extensive.

1. Coal layers worldwide show vegetation (tree leaves, tree trunks, ferns, stems, and roots) were buried fresh, preserving leaf details. (Leaves would wilt in a day.)
2. Fossil tree trunks through several layers of rocks show that the layers they extend through could not be millions of years apart.
3. Closed clams, delicate jellyfish and suchlike show burial had to be quick before any decay took place. Things like this don’t die and lie there until fossilized.
4. Multitudes of fish fossils are found. Fish rot quickly and are devoured by other predators. Dozens of fish are found swallowing other fish, proving a sudden burial.
5. Large and small dinosaur fossils are found around the world. Over three hundred museum-quality specimens were taken from the Red Deer River Valley of Alberta alone.
6. Mammal graveyards are found around the world.
   1. Cumberland Bone Cave in Maryland. The bones of dozens of species of mammals from bats to mastodons are found mixed together in the rock walls. Animals that today are found from the Arctic to the desert to the wetlands are found together—wolverines, grizzly bears, peccaries, tapirs, antelopes, ground hogs, rabbits, coyotes, hares, beavers, muskrats, and reptiles.
   2. Lignite beds of Geisetal, Germany.Here is a mixture of plants and insects from all climate zones. Leaves are in such fresh condition scientists could study chlorophyll. The stomach contents of beetles were studied.
   3. The bone beds of Karoo, South Africa. Paleontologists estimate millions of vertebrate animals are mixed and fossilized together in the Karoo formation.
   4. Agate Springs, Nebraska. A rock slab from this stratum is on display at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. It is a mix of bones from many species jumbled together. Extinct and present-day animals are found together. Rhinoceroses, camels, giant boars, glyptodonts, and many others. In these cases, they would have rotted and washed for some time to become detached, mixed, and buried.
   5. Many other animal, plant, fish, dinosaur, and insect graveyards include: the extensive Sicilian hippopotamus beds, the great mammal beds of the Rocky Mountains, the dinosaur beds of the Rockies, Black Hills and Gobi Desert, and the amazing fish beds of the Scottish Devonian layers.

These examples and many more show that this earth is truly a catastrophic graveyard. It is willful ignorance that does not connect this hydraulic earth evidence with God’s historic record in the Bible.

“The waters prevail[ed] . . . and the mountains were covered. And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, and every man: All in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land, died” (Genesis 7:19, 22).

We could discuss crystals, geodes, and agates formed in cooling hot mineral solutions, petrifaction of wood, dinosaur footprint tracks in quickly hardening lime mud; coal carbonized under the pressure of rock-forming mud in the absence of oxygen. Such deposits are not occurring today. Neither are masses of animals being laid down and turned to fossils.

The Water Source

The erosion features of the Harlan Bretz’s Grand Coulee and channeled scablands of eastern Washington needed a water source. This was found in Joseph T. Pardee’s glacial Lake Missoula in Montana. So also the global flood needed a water source. These bodies of water are described in the creation of the first world.

The reservoirs of water that were released and stirred the surface appear to have been held in a water vapor blanket above the earth’s atmosphere (firmament), and below it on the earth and under the earth (Genesis 1:7). The first world had a different hydraulic cycle by which mists and artesian-type wells watered the land (Gen. 2:5-10). Apparently the waters went out and sank into the earth, returning to the great deep, which supplied the wells. A warm humid environment is described in which mists came up and kept things wet.

It was these two water sources that were released when God “brake up for it my decreed place” (Job 38:10): and in one “day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened” (Genesis 7:11). It rained for forty days and all the high hills and mountains were covered. The waters also prevailed exceedingly upon the earth—150 days, that is nearly half a year! (vv. 19-24).

The sedimentary layers and geologic features that we observe today are the expected result. We see mountains pushed up (the highest Himalayan mountains have seashell fossils on top), canyons eroded, and seven-mile-deep ocean basins holding the floodwaters. Only 30% of the earth’s surface is above water.

The Aftereffects

The following period of glacial ice sheets is also the necessary result of opening a warm world to the chill of space. Secularists cannot produce an ice age by slowly cooling the earth because cold air doesn’t hold much moisture. Only a sudden change that left the earth with warm oceans and chilled continents could provide the mechanisms to unload the oceans onto the continents. Regular, intense storms from evaporating warm ocean waters precipitated as rain and snow on the cooler continents.

According to meteorologist Michael Ord’s computer calculations, it took five hundred years for the glaciers to reach their maximum and two hundred more years for a fast melt. The change came as the oceans mixed and cooled toward the poles and volcanic dust and gases from the flood breakup dispersed, allowing the summers to warm up.

It was at this time of glacial melt that there was massive flooding across Siberia and North America. This is when J. T. Pardee’s Lake Missoula formed. When it broke through its ice dam, it eroded the Grand Coulee and scablands of Washington State described by Harlan Bretz.

Bias Against the Evidence Today

The latent issue of rebellion against God is the same today as it was in the geologic conflict over the Lake Missoula flood in the early 1900s. Atheists are getting more brazen today, putting up anti-God billboards this past Christmas. “Praise Darwin, Evolve beyond belief (in God)” and other blasphemous statements were displayed. This just shows the long-suffering, patience, and mercy of God, bearing with much long-suffering the blasphemy (Romans 9:22). This knowledge of geology and the fossil record has only been exposed in the last 150 years as a warning that God does act in the real world and will judge His enemies again.

“The world that then was . . . 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 Peter 3:6, 7).

Sources:
The Genesis Flood – Whitcomb and Morris
Glacial Lake Missoula – David Alt
Grand Canyon, Monument to Catastrophe – Steven Austin
An Ice Age Caused by the Genesis Flood – Michael Ord

–Elvin Stauffer