Man has the capacity to control or release great destructive power such as in the atomic bomb. When the first one was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, on August 6, 1945, it destroyed the city and took the lives of 80-100,000 people. However, when Mt. Saint Helens blew 1,300 feet of its top off on May 18, 1980, the power released was estimated to be 500 times greater than the Hiroshima bomb. The force from within the earth removed 1.5 cubic miles of material and sent a column of ash 16 miles into the stratosphere. The ghostly crater remaining; the moonscape pumice plain before it; and the mat of vegetation, logs, and animal carcasses that were left floating on Spirit Lake, were but a dismal relic of the beautiful mountain and lake that once stood there.

The Creator of the universe is of course the master of its powers!

The Mt. Saint Helens eruption was only a small reminder of the powers that God can unleash to serve His purposes. When the boat Jesus was sleeping in was endangered by a storm (in His humanity He got tired), He exercised His divinity and simply said, “Peace, be still . . . and there was a great calm” (Mark 4:39).

Evidence of Colossal Eruptions in History

Lava flows and ash deposits from the volcanoes in the Cascade Range show that much larger eruptions occurred there in the past. Ancient Mt. Mazama blew out over forty-two times as much pulverized rock and ash as Mt. Saint Helens. When it collapsed on itself, it produced what is now Crater Lake in Oregon.

Huge basalt lava flows 100 feet thick cover tens of thousands of square miles in the Colombia Basin of eastern Washington. On the Columbia Plateau of western Canada, they pile up 5,000 feet thick. These were likely poured out during and after the worldwide Flood judgment of Noah’s time (Genesis 7). Lava outpourings are found at various places in the world such as Iceland and the Deccan lava fields of India which are larger than the country of France.

Although the Mt. Saint Helens eruption was small compared to historic eruptions, it was heard nearly 700 miles away in Maple Creek, Saskatchewan. In a surprise move, it reached out in a lateral explosion that destroyed forests 17 miles to the north. Small preliminary eruptions of steam and ash were occurring after a small crater opened on the summit on March 27. The main blast occurred when the expanding north side of the mountain slid down in the largest landslide of recorded history.

A flow of super-heated steam (1,100°) and pulverized rock traveling at 200 mph then quickly overtook the landslide. It plunged into Spirit Lake and over Cold Water Ridge six miles to the north. The water in Spirit Lake splashed up the mountainside 900 feet, like in a dishpan. When it came back down, it brought thousands of trees, vegetation, soil, rocks, and any animals that were in the area. The bottom of the lake was raised 300 feet. The mat of debris on the top was so solid, it was reported in the news that the lake was gone — filled up.

The People in Harms Way

I visited the Johnson Ridge Observatory six miles north of the mountain in the summer of 2009, nearly thirty years after the eruption. I was amazed to see the shattered bases of large trees, knocked off above the ground. It is hard to imagine the force that broke off 500-year-old trees seven feet in diameter. Beyond the blasted area was the large blown-down area—86,600 acres of Douglas fir, cedar, and hemlock, were stripped bare and “mowed down like tall grass.” The visitors center is named in remembrance of David Johnston, who worked with the United States Geological Survey (USGS). He was on duty when the area was destroyed. He gave one hurried report “Vancouver, Vancouver, this is it!” before he perished.

About 60 people lost their lives, along with thousands of elk, bear, foxes, and other animals. All efforts by authorities to barricade the mountain against sightseers were bypassed by some. For some it meant a quick death. For others—they were well-paid for the series of pictures they got that show the mountain collapsing. Some of the people who perished were found still clutching their cameras. The FAA had put a five-mile flying restriction around the mountain but it was violated as much as seventy times a day! This makes one wonder what causes some people to court disaster like this.

Why People Court Disaster

Natural catastrophes in our world are beyond our control. But social catastrophes need not catch us unprepared or overcome us. We are glad to stay as far from danger as possible. God’s map for life is found in our Bibles. His Word teaches us the way of righteousness. “The wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be intreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy. And the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace of them that make peace” (James 3:17, 18).

We see many people today, especially youth, in careless pride throwing their lives away with drugs, immorality, disease, dangerous sports, and such like. The pride of heroism, and possible fame or lustful appetites is the way Satan draws souls to see how close they can get to danger and escape. Some from despair and lack of fulfillment terminate life in outright suicide.

Many today are also like the old man of the mountain, Harry Truman. Harry was the eightythree-year-old proprietor of the Mt. Saint Helens Lodge. He refused to leave his property on Spirit Lake despite official orders to evacuate. He said, “That mountain will never hurt me. When you live someplace for fifty years, you either know your country or you’re stupid.” By 9:00 AM on May 18, 1980, Harry was consumed by the flow that incinerated everything living within the inner blast zone and filled the south end of Spirit Lake. The lodge site was then buried under 300 feet of avalanche material.

Mr. Truman is not alone. When faced with the coming judgment of God many confidently state their denial of the event. Their apparent wisdom will finally be proved foolishness by the facts. Many admire the stubborn spirit of never giving up despite the disastrous results. Satan uses this rebel spirit in man to cause societies to self-destruct. Babel was the beginning of Satan’s false religious system (Genesis 10:10) and Babylon is the system God finally judges in the end (Revelation 18:18). The Prophet Jeremiah says it is Babylon “that made all the earth drunken: . . . therefore the nations are mad” (Jeremiah 51:7).

One wonders at times why nations such as the United States take self-destructive courses. People in rebellion against God’s rule in their lives are held on their way, intoxicated by the “golden cup” of pleasure (Revelation 17:4). Pride keeps many from changing course and admitting their error. They brazenly insist that it will all work out somehow and that the naysayers are old-fashioned. Rome was an example of the lust for luxury, violence, blood, and the pride of “the survivor.” There is little thought of the fear and agony of the weaker victims. This is the product of evolution’s “survival of the fittest” taught in America’s schools for three generations.

Then there are others who make their peace with their God. They find fulfillment, satisfaction, and challenges in Christian living and in family life. This is the noblest involvement and calling of God to preserve our race. The needs of all in a Christian community are met as husbands, wives, children, and the elderly humbly and with joy accept accountability and are faithful in their responsibilities.

The Christian qualities of repentance, compassion, and service are what bring peace and rest to the weaker among men, women, and children. The virtue of humility allows people to acknowledge they are wrong and change their beliefs for what is right. The child of God takes a safe course and stays far from danger, not out of fear, but from wisdom. If necessary, it is the child of God who can face danger, suffering, and death with the knowledge of God and steadfastness. “I am not ashamed: for I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed [my soul] unto him against that day [the judgment]” (Paul in 2 Timothy 1:12).

Sources:

Mount Saint Helens, the Eruption and
Recovery of a Volcano

, by Rob Carson
The Bible — by God, the Author of creation,
judgment, and redemption

Elvin Stauffer

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

Geologic evidence has been found in recent years for many catastrophes in earth history. Fire, water, and mass movements in the form of volcanoes, lava flows, tsunamis, earthquakes, floods, and asteroid impacts formed the features of our earth’s surface.

Evolutionary scientists have felt the challenge to deny that catastrophes played a major role in the earth’s formation. Yet, they hold doggedly to their uniformitarianism—that slow, weak process over long ages of time pushed up mountains and eroded canyons. But with new evidence, it has been proposed that earth history has been more like the life of a soldier—long periods of boredom and short periods of trauma.

The Lake Missoula Controversy

The alarm that Harlan Bretz and Joseph Pardee caused in the early 20th century by proposing that 500 cubic miles of water eroded the Grand Coulee and scablands of eastern Washington State illustrates the crisis evolutionists have encountered. This flood from ancient glacial Lake Missoula in Montana emptying in 48 hours would have been half the volume of Lake Michigan! Scientists were afraid geology would be “set back 125 years.” This was of course when Harvard and Yale still taught the Biblical creation/flood view in the earth sciences. One comment was, “This heresy must be gently but firmly stamped out.” However, today the majority of geologists accept the Lake Missoula flood although they have stretched it out over 50,000 years and dozens of floods.

Secularists readily perceived the implications of accepting this. If a catastrophe explains the geologic formations in Washington, Idaho, and Montana, then will a quick washout be found for the Grand Canyon? And then, what about the 2½ average miles of sedimentary layers around the earth which have evidence of catastrophic burial!

The Grand Canyon Formation

Indeed, evidence of a water source has been found upstream from the Grand Canyon. With scientists who accept the Bible record leading the way, a computer-generated shoreline reveals that a body of water holding 3,000 cubic miles of water could have been retained. This is three times the volume of Lake Michigan.

Steven Austin has edited a semi-technical work, Grand Canyon, Monument to Catastrophe, which describes the evidence. Many interesting facts are given by fourteen scientists, such as the unreliability of radiometric dating. Volcanic lava flows, which spilled over the rim of the canyon and blocked the river, were dated older than the lava deposited in the layered strata of the canyon walls. This would be like icing a layer cake before it was made!

The Grand Canyon is a channel cut through what is called the “Kaibab upwarp.”

If the Grand Canyon were filled today, large lakes would form in the Colorado plateau basin to the northeast. Silt and mud layers are evidence of a large lake in eastern Arizona, also called ancient “Hopi Lake.” This is in the area of the Little Colorado River coming from the southeast. When Hopi Lake breached its dam through the Kaibab upwarp, this would have destabilized the larger lake to the northeast called Canyonlands Lake. When this lake breached its dam and cut out Marble Canyon, it would have been followed by Vernal Lake to the north, cutting a channel through Book cliffs. Or this could have happened in reverse.

All these lakes emptying through the Grand Canyon would have cut it down and kept it free of fill as we see it today. The delta deposits are along the Arizona/California border. These sediments create the rise that separates the Salton Sea trough, which is below sea level, from the Gulf of California in Mexico.

Hydraulic Forces described in Scripture

The Bible is not necessarily a science book, but what it speaks of is correct. The Bible is basically a record of God’s work of salvation, redemption, and righteousness, confronting Satan’s corruption of creation and the human race. But in some books of the Bible, especially Genesis, Psalms, and Job, we have many clues to past geologic processes.

In Genesis 7 we see the catastrophic flood described, which destroyed the first world. In Psalm 104 we can see the laws of hydraulics at work as the earth returned to a habitable state. The context is the Biblical Flood (compare Psalm 104:6 and Genesis 7:19, 20). Verse 8 shows continent building as “the mountain ascended and the valleys descended” (original Hebrew idea). A habitable place was again made for man, plants, and animals as the waters drained off the continents. Floodwaters are now held in 70% of the earth’s surface and the deep ocean trenches of the world. God “set a bound” (verse 9) by elevations (heights and depths) and water seeking its own level that it could not return to cover the land again. It was in this continent- and mountain-building in the years after the flood, that lakes were trapped, dams were breached, and water gaps were cut into mountains as “waters fled” and “hasted away” at God’s rebuke (see verses 6 and 7).

Hydraulic Erosion Forces

Breached dams always fall catastrophically. When water floods over a dam and erodes one foot, that is one-foot-deep water coming from the whole lake! Fast-moving volumes of water have phenomenal erosion power. Scientific experiments and historical flood events have demonstrated the forces that excavate solid rock. The Lake Missoula flood excavated the Grand Coulee through solid basalt and granite. Five hundred cubic miles of water were released, cutting the coulee 50 miles long, 1-6 miles wide, with walls up to 1,000 feet high. An estimated 10 cubic miles of basalt were removed.

A good modern example of hydraulic force was demonstrated in 1983 when heavy snowmelts threatened the Glen Canyon Dam above the Grand Canyon. Engineers were releasing 93,000 cubic feet of water per second to keep the dam from overtopping. When they raised the release rate of one 40-foot spillway tunnel to 32,000 cubic feet per second, suddenly large chunks of concrete and bedrock were thrown from the tube as the water turned red and the ground trembled. Immediately the tube was closed. Engineers found that the 3-foot steel-reinforced concrete wall was pitted and a cavity was cut at a bend 32 feet deep, 40 feet wide, and 150 feet long. It required 63,000 cubic feet of concrete to fill the hole. In the short time the water was running red (like the bedrock), it is estimated erosion was happening at 1,000 cubic feet per minute.

In water flowing over 20 miles per hour strong hydraulic forces are generated. (The Lake Missoula flow was estimated at 200 feet deep and 60 miles per hour over dry falls). Cavitation, plucking, and kolks can pulverize and move rock rapidly.

Hydraulic plucking occurs when high-velocity flows rip loose blocks of bedrock and move it along. Cavitation takes place when fast-moving water, over irregular rock, detaches and generates vacuum bubbles. When they hit the surface and explode, it is like sledgehammer blows that can pulverize rock. Kolks are like underwater tornadoes. The force from the low-pressure vortex exerts extreme suction of bedrock. Sapping structures are also seen along the walls of the upper Grand Canyon when the land rapidly detached from the emptied lakes.

Evidence of these catastrophic forces at the Grand Canyon show that it did not take hundreds of thousands of years for the Colorado River to slowly wear down the Canyon. Today, if the Grand Canyon were blocked at the 5,700-foot elevation, 30,000 square miles of lakes would form in the Colorado plateau.

Once again, we understand that God’s record in the Bible is a trustworthy account helping us to understand truth about the past, present, and future. “Speak to the earth, and it shall teach thee; . . . Who knoweth not in all these that the hand of the LORD hath wrought this?” (Job 12:8, 9).

Resources:
Catastrophes in Earth History, by Steven Austin
Glacial Lake Missoula and its Humongous Floods, by David Alt
Grand Canyon, Monument to Catastrophe, by Steven Austin

–Elvin Stauffer

The Lake Missoula Washout

I was recently in Washington state and visited the Grand Coulee and the channeled scablands of eastern Washington. I found books of information on the area at Dry Falls near the west end of the coulee. (The word coulee means “dry river.”) This area is the scene of colossal catastrophic erosion from an ancient glacial lake in Montana called Lake Missoula.

Lake Missoula was formed when a lobe of an ice pack from Canada pushed down the Purcell Pass and blocked off the Flat Head River in the panhandle of Idaho. Fast-melting ice sheets at this time, especially in the warming summers, were creating floods in North America and Siberia. When the lake got high enough to float and break up its ice dam (estimated to be 30 miles across and over 2000 feet high) it released about 530 cubic miles of water. It made a horrendous wreck of the area, along with any animals or people in its path. The noise of ice blocks, boulders, trees, and crashing water would have been tremendous, heard one half hour before it arrived. Unique “belt rocks” from the Lake Missoula ice dam area are littered along the path of the washout to the continental shelf in the Pacific Ocean at the mouth of the Columbia River. A huge piece of this rock (moved in ice) is also stranded down in the Willamette Valley of Oregon, 500 miles from its origin.

J. Harlan Bretz was the first scientist to recognize the story told by these geologic features. He presented a paper on his view of their formation by a catastrophic flood to a group of shocked geologists in 1923. The evidence was: huge erratic boulders, some as big as small houses, channels and cliffs eroded into bed rock, dry falls 350 feet high and five times as wide as Niagara Falls, large boulders on the high hills (moved there in ice), and huge gravel bars and silt deposits. There were broad ripple marks 35 feet high and 300 feet from peak to peak on fields where lakes emptied rapidly.

Mr. Bretz was thoroughly castigated and made an outcast in the geologic community. According to one writer, the geologists “based their arguments entirely on the received textbook gospel of slow processes, weak forces, and plenty of time”—uniformitarianism. He further says, “Most scientists go through life believing what they learned in college. They resent challenges to their settled beliefs and dislike those who present them.”

Many scientists today still strongly react to anything that looks like a reversion to the catastrophism of the Biblical creation/flood view believed over 200 years ago. They consider “scientific” geology to have started in 1790. This writer says, “To this day, most geologists consider it nothing less than heresy to invoke a catastrophic explanation for a geologic event.”

Uniformitarianism Is Not New

Educators would like students to believe that slow evolution, over hundreds of millions of years, is the product of the enlightenment of modern science and new evidence. The truth is that spontaneous generation of life in a puddle of water and subsequent evolution is a reversion to beliefs held 2,000 years ago before Christianity swept across Europe.

Neither is this naturalism free from religion. The earliest Sumerian accounts of beginnings can be read on clay tablets. The “Babylonian Genesis,” called the “Enuma Elish” shows three gods representing three kinds of waters: mists, lakes, rivers and streams. It seems to portray the ordered world struggling up (evolving) out of a chaotic universe. Fighting gods kill one god and make the earth from the body, and man from its blood. Today some naturalists venerate the earth again as the body of “Ghia.”

The Bible also shows the base or origin of wickedness to be on the plains of Shinar (Zechariah 5:8-11). It was here that Nimrod likely received the Satanic cosmology (beliefs about the origin of the universe) channeled to him in his tower built to “the hosts of heaven” at Babel (Genesis 14:8-10; 11:1-4).

Naturalistic evolution followed down through the Greek philosophers and Roman gods. The Apostle Paul met these philosophies in the Epicureans and Stoics at Athens (Acts 17:18). The Epicureans were the materialists. They believed everything is just evolving matter. The highest purpose is to enjoy oneself (like many people today). The Stoics of Bible times were like the “New Agers” of today. They believed there was a spirit force in nature. They taught bodily discipline to get the most out of life—the athletic type.

Lucretius, a Roman poet and philosopher, wrote, “The atoms have been rushing everlastingly throughout all space . . . undergoing myriad changes . . . till they have fallen into the particular pattern by which this world of ours is constituted.” This is a typical expression of the uniformitarian “all things continue as they were” (2 Peter 3:4). His motivation was also a reaction to religion. Lucretius wrote the poem “to free humanity from religious superstition and the fear of death” (World Book Encyclopedia).

Conflicting Worldviews

When Christianity spread across Europe, replacing paganism’s long ages, and the Reformation broke the hold of religious orthodoxy, there also came advances in science. Newton, Louis Pasteur, Boyle, and others were believers in God who established natural law and order in the universe. In America, the Christian worldview of a creation and flood catastrophe were the principles in earth science believed by the founders of Harvard and Yale.

However, Charles Lylle wrote his principles of geology in the 1930’s. “He convinced many of how inconceivably long earth history has been” (World Book Encyclopedia). Public educators began to turn back to naturalism. With the publishing of Darwin’s Origin of Species in 1859, evolution got another boost. Teachers began to say again that all the diversity of plant and animal life in our ecosystem could self-organize from inorganic minerals. This is despite the knowledge today of more than five billion bits of information on a genome, which must be right for a normal human body. God’s Word calls this foolish and willful ignorance (Psalm14:1; 2 Peter 3:3-6) and “science falsely so called” (1 Timothy 6:20). It is philosophy (interpretation, not facts).

Harlan Bretz was invited to present his catastrophic explanation of the channeled scabland of eastern Washington state to the geologic society of Washington, D.C., in 1927. The prominent geologists at the meeting castigated Mr. Bretz to the point of insult. Some described it as an ambush or a lynching. A young geologist, Joseph T. Pardee, was at the meeting but, out of expedience, did not speak up. However, he told a colleague, “I know where the flood came from.” It would take over forty years until a majority of new geologists would accept Mr. Bretz’s view.

More Evidence—the Water Source

Joseph Pardee studied evidence of a great lake in Montana in 1909. Shorelines indicated that its surface covered nearly 2,900 square miles. He followed the shorelines to the panhandle of Idaho where they disappeared. He figured the ice dam must have been in this region. The lake was nearly 2,000 feet deep at its ice dam. He described it in a paper in 1910 and went on to other projects.

At the end of his career, Pardee returned and studied Lake Missoula again. He published an excellent paper in 1942 of a catastrophic emptying of the lake in about 48 hours. Water would have gone over Dry Falls 200 feet deep at 60 miles an hour. The lake may have been dammed and released a few times until the ice sheets retreated north to stay. Aerial photographs show lake bottom ripple marks so big they were hard to recognize from the hills on the ground. Mr. Pardee did not mention the channeled scablands, but the lationship was so glaringly obvious it could not be missed. Harlan Bretz had his water source!

It took about forty years, until 1962, when a group of leading geologists toured Lake Missoula, Grand Coulee, and scabland areas. Afterward, they sent Harlan Bretz a message, “We are all catastrophists now.” But his harsh critics kept up their opposition into the 1970s.

Pride Destroys Objectivity

Once such a firm position is taken, it is a major blow to pride to acknowledge having erred. Bretz’s critics went to their graves insisting that weak forces and slow processes over long ages produced the Grand Coulee and channeled scab-lands. This was their textbook uniformitarian gospel from Charles Lylle, “The present is the key to the past” in understanding geologic processes. Mr. Bretz, however, outlived his detractors, nearly reaching 99 years old.

The likely reason Bretz’s explanation finally received wide acceptance is that they are still rejecting the young earth chronology of the Bible. Secular scientists hold to millions of years of geology for the average two-mile deep sedimentary layers around the earth. These also have evidence of live burial of fossils and catastrophic deposition. The standard geologic column is still accepted with its hundreds of millions of years. They still see many “ice ages” and dozens of Lake Missoula washouts over 15,000 years ago.

God, who was there, still describes the only way the oceans could unload onto the continents for an “ice age” in His record to us—the Bible. Many evidences support this sudden world climate change described in the Bible. We find evidences for rain-fed lakes and well-watered deserts in the African Sahara and American west. Evidence shows that the Arctic and Antarctic were also warm grasslands where large mammals flourished.

Resources:
“Glacial Lake Missoula and Its Humongous Floods” – by David Alt
“Grand Canyon, Monument to Catastrophe” – by Steve Austin
“The Troubled Waters of Evolution” – by Henry Morris

Elvin Stauffer

We realize, of course, that a one-dollar bill and a five-hundred-dollar bill are vastly different in the marketplace. Except for the cost of printing there is little similarity. But there is another similarity not recognized by most of the business world. In God’s sight stealing one dollar is just as wrong as stealing five hundred dollars. The exact amount is not as serious as the sin itself. Furthermore, most thieves of large amounts began their stealing with only a dollar or even less.

Behind stealing there is yet another sin we could call the “root of theft.” This is the sin of covetousness or what the Bible calls the “love of money.” To covet (yearn for something that is not ours to have) one dollar is also just as sinful as to covet five hundred. One does not need to be rich to covet. The problem is worldwide. People from the very poorest countries testify to the prevalence of covetousness in their lands. When someone asked a man from the Dominican Republic whether people were as materialistic or covetous there, he replied, “Yes, they are, but in America people just hide it better.”

Covetousness is also rampant in the more prosperous countries, but in different ways. Young people often want “things” they see other people with. Some will even steal to get it. Sometimes people want other things such as fame and popularity and will run down other people or do almost anything else to get it. Many crave another person’s body and commit immorality to get it. No wonder the Bible says, “But they that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition” (1 Timothy 6:9).

Covetousness, regardless of the amount coveted, is so dangerous because it gets us into trouble with the law and with other people. More importantly, it gets us into trouble with God. It also takes our eyes off God who supplies our needs. Covetousness also leads to a host of other sins. It leads to family troubles (Proverbs 15:27), immorality (coveting another person), misery, and, in the end, disappointment.

Covetousness leads us away from God and the good things that God has for us. God wants us to find our thrill and joy in Him and not in “things” that will simply pass away or become worthless. Even fame, reputation, and good looks will all fade away and become useless. “For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows” (1 Timothy 6:10).

The cost of covetousness is far greater than the value of anything that can be coveted. The loss is for today and for eternity.

Roger Berry