3 - CONDITIONS BEFORE THE FLOOD

Prior to the Flood, the climate worldwide was warm and uniformly pleasant.

Even evolutionists recognize that coal was formed from deposits of massive amounts of vegetation, primarily trees. It is now known that large coal deposits exist today in the continent of Antarctica. This is another evidence of an earlier, worldwide warm climate.

The Antarctic once had an abundance of vegetation and large trees, as is shown by "widespread discoveries of coal and petrified wood." The Arctic regions were once tropical:

There are three factors in the atmosphere that provide us with whatever greenhouse-type climate we have today: ozone, carbon dioxide, and water vapor. If, prior to the Flood, one or more of these were more abundant in the air above us, a profound change in our worldwide climate would occur. The most powerful of the three is water vapor. Indeed, a lot of the water in our present oceans, came out of the skies at the time of the Flood!

A universal water-vapor blanket must have covered our planet in ancient times. It is called the "vapor canopy." The evidence is clearly available that tropical plants were once in the far north and south. Only a great increase in encircling water could possibly explain that earlier worldwide warm climate.

Apart from a massive increase in pre-Flood water vapor, the situation we find in the rock strata is unexplainable.

(1) Seamounts were first discovered by a naval captain during World War II. As a personal research project during trips back and forth across the Pacific, Harry H. Hess, commander of an attack transport, the U.S.S. Cape Johnson, kept his deep-water echo sounder turned on all the time. Continuous profiles of the sea bottom were recorded on graph paper. Analyzing the data, he discovered extinct volcanoes hundreds of feet beneath the sea with their tops flattened off.

None of them broke the surface of the ocean. The name "seamounts" was given to these formations. (An alternate name for them is "guyots.") What could have caused them?

Volcanic activity began before the Flood ended. The volcanoes in the basin of the ocean, which became extinct before the seas had filled, had their summits eroded away—flattened out—by storm and wave action as sea level reached those summits. The oceans kept filling and the horizontal tops became submerged, some distance below the surface.

This would also explain some of the coral atolls in the Pacific. Coral only grows near the surface, yet the remains of earlier coral are to be found deeper in the ocean. It has been said that low-lying and partially or totally submerged volcanoes, in the center of these coral formations, probably sunk at some time in the past. That is possible. Or they could have been covered by the rising ocean.

Oceanic volcanoes could also have blown their tops, as Krakatoa did a century ago; but such explosions would not lower the tops as far down as they presently are, nor would they flatten the tops. As the oceans neared their present level, infilling would slow and coral would have time to build atolls above those particular guyots.

(2) Similarities between plants and trees of now widely separated areas. Vegetation in Brazil has a number of remarkable similarities to that of western Africa. Climatic conditions may be the sole cause of this similarity of vegetation on separated continents. But the possibility that the South Atlantic in ancient times may not have existed as a broad ocean could also be a factor.

It is clear that remarkable evidence of a former worldwide Flood is abundant. Wherever we turn we encounter new insights into its effects. A sizeable amount of additional evidence will be found in the appendix (at the back of this chapter, Effects of the Flood, on our website). The Whitcomb and Morris book, The Genesis Flood, will also provide you with much additional scientific data on this topic.

4 - EFFECTS OF THE FLOOD

With the exception of its initial Creation, our world has been changed more by the Flood than by any other event in the history of this planet. There is hardly a place where you and I can look, which has not been drastically affected by the Flood and its immediate aftereffects: the deserts, the seas, the river canyons, the hills, the plains, and the mountain ranges. Here are several examples of these effects:

Here are four possibilities for the origin of continental shelves:

(1) The first or second point of sudden change may mark the ancient sea level.

(2) The second point may also mark the freeze point, the place where the gradually filling sea greatly slowed for a time as the rapidly obscuring volcanic dusts in the skies caused the polar areas to begin capturing large quantities of water and transform it into thick masses of ice. During that time of slower infilling, gigantic waves and storms could have eroded out massive sections.

(3) The first point edge of the shelves may also mark the point of orogeny (mountain building), the point where the continental blocks began uplifting and/or the—what is now marine—blocks lowered as the result of fault slippage.

(4) The water in the oceans rose to a certain height. Then, later, at the time of glacial melt, as the ice sheets melted, this water flowed into the seas and brought the water level up to its present height.

Those are the possibilities, but however it may have happened, it took the Flood to produce the continental shelves.

Later in this chapter, in the paragraph section "Mountain Building," indication is given that the mountains and continents rose both during the latter part of the Flood (late Pliocene) and again just after it (Pleistocene). This twofold uplift might help explain the two continental shelf point pauses in rising ocean levels.

The 100 million year estimate, given by *Hamilton in the above quotation, is based on the fact that coral can only live and grow near the ocean’s surface. Evolutionary theory has assigned those deposits to the late Cretaceous or early Tertiary, but a sudden infilling of water by the Flood could answer the point just as well. It is of interest that a full 30 percent of the oceans lies above those coral deposits on the submerged seamounts!

Evolutionists think that the cause was a lowering of the ocean basins. But that solution would only add 7 percent more water to those oceans! Something more beside seafloor sinking is needed.

Submarine canyons are yet another evidence that lower seas gradually filled and became our present large oceans. We will discuss these canyons later in this chapter.

With our present continents and deep ocean basins, if all the water in our present atmosphere were to suddenly fall as rain, it would cover the entire surface of the globe to an average depth of only two inches (*C.S. Fox, Water, 1952). Prior to the Flood, we apparently had a far greater amount of moisture in the atmosphere. That would have given a more uniformly warm climate to the entire world, and would explain why fossils of tropical plants have been found in the far north and south. Massive amounts of water poured out of the skies. In addition, large amounts of water apparently were released from within the earth. Because of that, we now have so much water in our oceans that, if the land were leveled out, "the Earth would be completely covered by water about 0.75 mile [1.2 km] deep" (Creation Research Society Quarterly, June 1987, p. 27). Another estimate figures it at 1.7 miles [2.7 km]: CRSQ, September 1987, p. 54.

Immense upheavals as well as sinkings of land must have taken place in order to provide a place to hold the oceans. If that had not occurred, the entire earth today would be under water and there would be no continents. Very frankly, this was an act of Divine providence. The ocean basins had to sink and the continents rise—or there would be no dry land after the Flood.

By the end of the Flood year, recorded in Genesis 7 and 8, "the valleys [basins] sank down" and the great masses of water which "were standing above the mountains" "fled" and "hurried away . . to the place which Thou didst establish for them. Thou hast set a bound [the shorelines] that they may not pass over; that they return not to cover the earth." Psalm 104:6-9.

You will find these diagonal canyons, cut into the continental shelves, out beyond the mouths of all the great rivers of the continents: the Colorado, Columbia, Amazon, etc.

Such colossal river currents could not run downward, if the oceans were earlier at their present height. Scientists cannot account for those canyons. Some suggest "turbidity currents," as the answer while others recognize that something far greater was involved.

Brown discusses their immense size and significance.

We consistently find valleys with small streams in their center, with evidences that once a very large river coursed down the center of the valley.

Then there are the massive flood plains, remnants of earlier gigantic river overflows. There is an enormous flat area on both sides of the Mississippi River. This is its flood plain, and it extends for many miles. In ancient times, this was part of a gigantic river, now referred to as the "Teays River."

One important result of all this was the burial of so much vegetation and animal life. There are places in our world where fossil-bearing sedimentary rock is several miles deep. From bottom to top, the sedimentary rock provides fossil evidence of a gigantic yet rapid catastrophe. Prior to the Flood this sedimentary strata did not exist.

Terrible storms raged during the Flood. Immense quantities of water were flowing, grinding, wearing away surfaces. Massive wave action took its toll also. All this resulted in an astounding rate of erosion, which produced sediments which resulted in the thousands of feet of sedimentary rock strata which we see today.

(2) The fossils and the rock strata indicate rapid deposition, due to a sudden worldwide Flood, rather than being slowly laid over a period of long ages. We discussed this in detail earlier in this chapter in the section, Fossils and Rock Strata. There are thousands of cubic miles of such materials; yet hardly any of it is being made today. The entire process took place rather quickly at some past time.

(3) The strata are confused and often crushed. If slow, uniform layering occurred as a result of erosional forces, the layers would also be uniform and fairly flat. As it is, what we see is the result of a terrific upheaval.

(4) Geologists well-know that rivers only cut through hard materials when they rush fairly straight down steeply slanted surfaces. In contrast, rivers that meander serpentinely are slow-moving waters going through more level land and can then only cut through softer materials. But what we find is evidence that, at some past time, meandering cut through, what is today, thick rock—at such locations as the Colorado River, in the Grand Canyon of Arizona, and the San Juan River in Colorado.

Evolutionists recognize that they were suddenly destroyed all over the earth and are unable to give a satisfactory reason why.

It has been suggested that the dinosaurs were killed by volcanoes, climatic changes, or the eating of their eggs by other animals. Yet far more delicate wildlife have survived volcanoes, climatic changes, and egg predators. Evolution has no answer to the extinction of the dinosaurs.

(1) No dinosaurs were taken onto the Ark. We have reason to believe that mankind was larger, stronger, and longer-lived before the Flood. It was seen best not to have these giant reptiles wandering over the earth’s surface afterward, when mankind would become smaller and weaker. Why would dinosaurs have been taken onto the Ark if they were only going to become extinct not long afterward?

(2) Some Creationists believe that some young dinosaurs may have been taken into the Ark and died out within a short time after the Flood ended. Other animals have become extinct after the Flood; dinosaurs could have also. It has been suggested that the cold climate that reigned for a time after the deluge caused them to die out.

A few of the dinosaur-type species were taken onto the Ark. This definitely included crocodiles, alligators, and komodos, and could also have included the young of what today are referred to as "dinosaurs." After the Flood the dinosaurs became extinct while other dinosaur-type creatures, the crocodiles, alligators, and komodos did not. There is some indeterminate evidence that some dinosaurs were alive for a time after the Flood.

A provocative recent discovery may provide additional insight as to the cause of the disappearance of the dinosaurs. One major short-term effect was a rapid cooling after the Flood, caused by volcanic air pollution which kept warming sunlight from reaching the earth for a number of years.

It is also of interest that a majority of the larger dinosaurs were vegetarians, and many of the carnivorous dinosaurs prayed upon other dinosaurs. This would explain why dinosaurs could exist on the earth contemporaneously with man—before the Flood and perhaps after it,—without being a major threat to him.

As with many animals, the dinosaurs apparently gathered into groups in time of danger. The rising waters of the Flood finally overtook and buried them beneath water and sediment. Today, we find their bones in so-called "dinosaur graveyards." The entombment of such vast numbers of these large creatures demands a terrible worldwide catastrophe.

The fact that they collected together in the crisis, before dying, indicates that they were drowned by the Flood rather than dying afterward. Tell those you meet that the dinosaurs are another evidence of the Flood and another denial of evolution.

In Wyoming, dinosaur bones were found "piled in like logs in a jam." In the Dinosaur National Monument in Utah and Colorado (the Morrison formation of the Jurassic), over 300 dinosaurs of many different types have been dug out.

Evolutionary theory declares that the "age of the dinosaurs"—and the death of the dinosaurs—occurred millions of years before man evolved on this planet. But there is clear evidence that dinosaurs and humans were living on earth at the same time. In chapter 13, Ancient Man, we went into detail on the events at Glen Rose, Texas, where human footprints intermingled with dinosaur tracks in the same stratum of mud—sometimes with human footprints on top of the dinosaur tracks. This is known as the Cretaceous Glen Rose formation, located in flat limestone beds near the small town of Glen Rose, Texas, and is found for some distance along the Paluxy River, west of town. The tracks occur in trails; and, in two or three instances, the dinosaur and human trails cross each other,—with two known instances in which human and dinosaur tracks actually overlap each other. Books and films of these tracks have been produced. (See the excellent book, Tracking Those Incredible Dinosaurs and the People Who Knew Them, by John Morris, 240 pp.)

There is a simple answer to the question of why dinosaurs are only found in the strata of the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous—the three divisions of the Mesozoic Era. On the basis of Flood geology, the answer is simple enough: They could run faster than conifers, trilobites, ocean corals, amphibians (such as frogs), plants, and fish, all of which we find in the so-called "Paleozoic Era"; but they had a more lumbering gait than the faster mammals and birds, which we find in the "Cenozoic Era."

(1) If the Flood had covered the highest mountains we have today, there would now be no exposed continents, because there would now be too much water in the world. (2) If mountain building had not taken place after the Flood, there would be no exposed continents now; since the waters covered the highest pre-Flood mountains (Genesis 7:20).

Oceans would have forever covered the world if mountain building had not occurred—but providentially it did. (By "mountain building," we include not only the production of our present mountains and ranges, but also the raising of the continental masses,—which involved the sinking of the ocean basins.)

The ocean basins of our present world are much deeper than before the Flood; for they must now serve as reservoirs to hold massive amount of water which at that time poured from the skies and burst forth from the ground. Before the Flood, the sky had a thick water canopy of "waters which were above the expanse," and the ground had underground channels and aqueducts filled with "the waters which were below the expanse" (Genesis 1:7).

Not only are the ocean basins deeper since the Flood, but the mountains are higher also:

Mount Everest is 29,028 feet [8,848 m] above sea level, and the deepest part of the ocean (the Mariana Trench near Guam in the Pacific) is 35,810 feet [10,915 m] deep. The highest mountain is 5.5 miles [8.85 km] above sea level, and the deepest depression is 6.78 miles [10,914 km] below it!

Scientists have found abundant evidence of mountain building. They call it "orogeny." On the basis of fossil evidence, it is generally believed that most of our mountain ranges uplifted during the Pleistocene or late Pliocene (both of which occurred shortly after the Flood). This would agree with Flood events. A leading evolutionist geology expert writes:

Immense crustal movements occurred during the Pleistocene or late Pliocene. Mountains rose and basins sank. Water flowed into those basins, and under its great weight they sank still further. (A similar sinking occurred in Antarctica, which sunk under the weight of miles of ice piled on top of it.)

Scientists cannot provide a reasonable explanation of such ranges, but they do try to describe the results. The term, "folded mountains," is frequently used to describe this activity. This vast pushing together of earth masses was accompanied by terrific pressures on rocks that caused many of them to be crushed.

Folded mountains is but one of the two major types; the other is volcanic mountains. Both had their origin at about the same time, although volcanic activity on a much-smaller scale has continued since then.

Evolutionists theorize that mountains rise at a uniformitarian, very slow rate of 1 kilometer [.62 mi] each million years. But the theory does not fit the facts. The Cascades in the Pacific Northwest are one of the tallest ranges in America, yet geologists declare them to be the youngest mountain range in North America.

Much is involved in that sentence. Prior to the Flood, massive quantities of water were in the ground, and the fountains broke up—and geysered out. Enormous amounts of water were in the water vapor canopy overhead—and the windows of heaven opened—and it poured down.

It appears that the greater portion of the water in the Flood—now in the oceans—came out of the earth, not out of the skies. This upwelling of water in gigantic geysers caused violent upheavals on the surface, but also below it. The ground became tortured, crunched, folded, as it attempted to adapt to the immense forces unleashed. In addition, continents began to arise and seafloors began to sink.

(A remarkable insight about water in the ground, as an indication of a recent Flood, is to be found in "The Earth Hasn’t Dried Out Yet," in Appendix 5: "Things to Think About, in Effects of the Flood on our website.)

The Flood had begun. The fountains of the great deep had broken up, and water poured out. Soon lava began flowing out also. These volcanoes, in turn, produced several other effects which we will note shortly. The release of so much water caused immense low and high pressures within the earth itself. Gigantic cracks sent lava closer to the surface. Water pouring down these cracks hit the molten rock, and exploding jets of lava poured out at the earth’s surface, producing thousands of volcanoes.

Krakatoa was a volcanic island in the Sunda Strait, between Java and Sumatra. It had been venting for several days, when a lateral (sideways) crack developed. Seawater poured through that crack, and then went straight down the main vent hole. That caused the explosion.

Next to the Tambora explosion in 1815, the explosion of Krakatoa in 1883 was the most violent explosion of the past several hundred years. What would it be like to have a dozen Krakatoas going off at the same time!

It is clear that old lava flows are found not only on the ground but below it, yet in no instance are lava beds from ancient volcanoes ever found below the Cambrian level. The beginning of the Cambrian marks the beginning of the Flood. Thus volcanic action took place throughout the Flood, and afterward as well,—but not before.

Volcanic action not only occurred for a time after the Flood, but also during the Flood and as it was receding. We know this because of pillow lavas. This is a special rounded pillow-like shape that lava will form when ejected from a volcano underwater. Such lava is found in great abundance all over the world, including Canada:

The Krakatoa dust caused a definite lowering of worldwide temperatures for about two years. Enough dust had settled by then, that temperatures rather quickly began to return to normal. Yet Krakatoa was only one volcano. At the close of the Flood, when several thousand volcanoes were erupting at the same time, climatic conditions dramatically and quickly changed throughout the world. When they subsided, the climate could again warm up.

A similar explosion occurred in the East Indies in 1815:

Amid the eruptions, explosions, and pollution of 10,000 volcanoes, the poles froze and the animals, in the far north, were overwhelmed by the cold. One of these was the mammoth, a type of gigantic elephant.

Not only mammoths but a number of other animals were rapidly frozen. Here is one scientist’s listing of the different species which were quickly frozen:

One field zoologist, *Sanderson, tried to visualize the possible circumstances that could have caused such quick-frozen specimens as he had seen in the far north. The animal remains appeared to have undergone both the effects of violent storm conditions and rapid freezing.

Violent winds would help explain why we find large quantities of remains clumped together, either frozen in hollows in northern ground or as fossils contained within pockets in sedimentary strata farther south. The lack of sunlight from volcanic dust overhead would bring on both the intense cold in northern latitudes, as well as violent storms that would reach down into warmer areas in the south.

What could cause all this? *Sanderson, a non-believer in the Genesis account, decided the storms and sudden freezing was caused by gases and smoke shooting skyward from large numbers of volcanoes! Here is his vivid description!

The freezing of the poles had two major effects. (1) Vast quantities of water were locked into ice in the polar regions, and (2) Sheets of ice slid southward partway down the continents. Popularly known as the "ice age," this is scientifically known as the period of glaciation. It was not until the Flood receded that the ice sheets could begin their inexorable march southward. The ice sheets made the air above them extremely cold.

Evolutionists declare that it requires many thousands of years for ice caps to form, and that their very existence is an evidence of long ages. During World War II, a squadron of eight P-38 Lightning fighter planes left a U.S. Army air base in Greenland, headed for Britain. But a blizzard forced them to turn back. Although they crash-landed, all the pilots were rescued. In 1988, the U.S. Army decided to salvage those aircraft. But, instead of dusting off a little snow from them, as they expected, the airplanes were found to be buried under 250 feet [76.2 m] of ice! (*Life, December 1992).

These massive ice sheets were caused by two factors: (1) The darkening of the skies by volcanic dust, and (2) the loss of earth’s thermal blanket. This was the water vapor canopy in the atmosphere that formerly gave our planet a continual "greenhouse" effect.

The falling of snow stored enormous amounts of water in the form of ice. Today the remnants of it are found primarily in Greenland and Antarctica, but also in northern Canada and northern Asia. If this stored water was suddenly released, all the great seaports of the world would be covered by the seas.

Research scientists have discovered that hardly any snow falls in the Antarctic. From the standpoint of rain and snow, it is "the driest continent on the planet." Yet the ice in Greenland is over a mile [1.6 km] deep, and in Antarctica it is as much as five miles [8 km]. Originally these great polar ice caps must have been much larger. When did all that snow fall on the Antarctic continent?

During the ice age, so much snow was falling that glaciers were formed which flowed outward toward the equator:

The Canadian ice sheet, growing from the northeast, left much of Alaska and the Pacific slope unglaciated but extended southward until the rim of the ice stretched over much of the northern United States. At its maximum southern extension, the boundary of the ice stretched from Seattle, Washington, over to Bismark, North Dakota, and then veered southeastward, following close to the line of the modern Missouri River, past Omaha and St. Louis, then eastward past Cincinnati, Philadelphia, and New York, stopping at the southern edge of Long Island.

These glaciers scoured, scored, and polished solid granite. In other places they left dumps of sediments along their sides (lateral moraine) and also where they finally stopped (terminal moraine). The glaciers really left their mark on our planet!

One example of the impact of these glaciers is to be found in the Canadian Shield and the Great Lakes in America. The ice as it moved southward scoured thousands of square miles of bare granite in Canada and cut out the Great Lakes. These lakes were originally much larger than today.

(At the present time, an increase of world carbon dioxide, primarily from burning of fossil fuels, threatens us with a "greenhouse effect" and a melting of the glaciers; whereas the opposite trend toward pollution of the atmosphere, by dust and smog, throws particles into the air that screen sunlight from the earth, resulting in a cooling effect. Experts are generally agreed that the warming trend may, at present, be the more powerful of the two.)

Yet geologists have no adequate explanation for what caused this glacial activity.

Next we consider the ten thousands of now extinct volcanoes that, at some earlier time, blew up and poured forth lava, bombs, and dust all at about the same time. The result was not a two-year cooling, but an ice age that lasted for an indeterminate length of time. When the volcanoes subsided, the dust settled, and much of the planet warmed up again. This brought a rather rapid receding of the glacial sheets.

Evidence for a rapid warming up has been obtained from examination of deep-sea sediments, river delta silting, shoreline indications, and pluvial lake desiccation (drying up). Rapid changes in each of these reveals a rather quick climatic warming.

Sudden warming would quickly increase melting of ice, draining of glacial lakes, and water runoff through the rivers, onto the deltas, and into the oceans.

(The "11,000 year" number, given in the above article title, comes from radiocarbon dating; but as we learn in chapter 6, Inaccurate Dating Methods, the actual date would be much less.)

It is radiation from the sun that warms the earth. A greenhouse effect exists that helps to hold in that heat. This is caused by water vapor, carbon dioxide, and ozone in the atmosphere. The Flood removed much of the water vapor and locked large amounts of carbon into fossils, coal, and oil. With the greenhouse effect greatly weakened, and the sunlight blocked by volcanic dust, the glacial sheets moved southward. But the volcanoes added more carbon to the air and it remained after the dust settled. Sunlight could again penetrate and water vapor was slightly restored. So a warming up occurred.

It is of interest that so much evidence is being found that points to a worldwide change in temperature and climate, that a new theory has been developed to explain it. Calling it turnover pulse hypothesis, *Elisabeth Vrba of Yale says that there were many climatic changes, and each one killed off some species and, in some unknown way, magically triggered the sudden evolving of new ones. She has gathered data from all over the world indicating that at least one massive climatic change occurred at some time in the past.

Before the Flood, the climate was warm from pole to pole, and was caused by the vapor canopy and certain other factors. No high mountains existed, and there were only broad rivers and small seas. Dinosaurs were alive, but the largest of them were plant eaters, and the fiercest may have occupied themselves with attacking the vegetarian ones (just as the gigantic sperm whale only attacks the giant squid, while ignoring the other ocean creatures). Yet, either way, because of man’s sin "the earth was filled with violence" (Genesis 6:13)—probably both by man and beast, and between them.

The Flood began all at once, as the rain fell and reservoirs of water beneath the surface burst forth. Enormous cavities were found in the ground, where the water had collapsed inward. The geologic balance was upset and gigantic cracks opened, letting water pour back downward into pools of hot magma farther below.

At the same time, the ocean basins began lowering and/or continents rising to some extent. More lowering and rising would occur later. Water would have been the calmest in the far north and south, and ocean currents would have been the slowest there.

Terrific storms occurred, and the water level continued to rise. Rapidly flowing water, massive wave action, rapid sedimentary coverage, water deposition and suction action, gigantic mats of vegetation, volcanic fire and lava, seismic ("tidal") waves—all worked together to wreck havoc.

Marine animals were washed up by the roiling waters and covered by "Cambrian" sediments. More marine animals were covered by "early Paleozoic" gravel, sand, and clay.

The slowest land animals and some fish were buried in "Silurian" dirt. By now the waters were higher and began covering the seed plants with "Devonian" soils.

Soon, the rising waters reached the conifers and buried them beneath "Permian" deposits. The slowest of the lumbering dinosaurs were overtaken next, and were covered by "Triassic" soils.

By now the storms had become so violent that animals were thrown together into pockets and "fossil graveyards" became common.

Eventually, the "Jurassic" and "Cretaceous" sediments had buried the last of the dinosaurs, and the fleeter mammals were being overtaken and buried by "Tertiary" earth. Then the last of them were entombed underneath "Quaternary" sediments.

Almost no humans were buried, almost no apes, and relatively few birds. Why? Because they knew how to keep going on to the very end, apes and man could climb to the very highest points and cling to trees and rocks. And when the end came, there were no more burials, only a sinking through seas to the ocean floor beneath where they would decay away or be eaten by fish still alive in the ocean.

As the waters advanced, earth movements increased, and these, along with the violence of storms and volcanic action—resulted in "discontinuities"—locations where an arrangement of vertically-stacked strata would end, while horizontally next to it a differently-arranged strata pattern would begin.

Soon there was a worldwide sea; for the waters had covered the highest mountains, which never had been high to begin with (Genesis 7:20).

Gigantic mountain building now began in earnest. The lowest basins had been first to fill with water and, under its weight, began to settle. So much water had been taken out of the ground that it was structurally looser. Water flowing down volcanic cracks caused massive explosions. As the waters covered most of the earlier volcanoes in the oceans (now called seamounts), seawater would flow down vent holes—and cause terrific explosions, which would blow off their tops.

As the Flood receded, under the impact of all that was taking place, the great ocean basins lowered and the continents rose higher—all part of a balancing act that scientists call geostasy. Once or twice there was a pause that caused our present continental shelves. This occurred either while the oceans were initially filling or later, as these mammoth earth movements were taking place.

Sinking pressures, rising pressures, and lateral pressures—resulted in gigantic folding. And huge mountain chains were lifted up. The Appalachians probably arose earlier, for today they show evidence of having been rounded by Flood waters. Many other ranges were pushed up. One of the last ranges to arise was the northern Cascade Mountains in Washington State, for they show little evidence of Flood erosion.

As more and more dry land appeared, volcanic ranges also arose. Belts of volcanoes encircle the Pacific Ocean, run through the Mediterranean, and elsewhere.

The glacier sheets advanced outward from the polar regions. These probably covered much of Europe, Asia, and North America for several centuries before receding. But even after they did, few civilizations were able to enter those colder areas until they warmed up sufficiently. This did not occur until just before the time of Christ.

While the northern latitudes were wrapped in colder weather, Egypt, the Near East, and India had ideal weather. It was probably similar to Southern California, although with much better rainfall.

The gradual warming of the planet resulted in several major effects that began just after the time of Christ: (1) The Near East, where civilization had once been centered, slowly became a hot, desolate wasteland. (2) Warming up, northern Europe gradually filled with racial groups, which then invaded and conquered the Roman Empire. (3) Europe became the center of civilization in the West. (4) The Near East became a dry, nearly treeless desert.

The Flood was so universal and cataclysmic in its cause, scope, and results that it has had lasting effects on the earth, the sky, and all life forms from that day to this. It is impossible to discuss Creation and evolution without giving close attention to the Flood and its powerful effects.

EVOLUTION COULD NOT DO THIS

GRADES 5 TO 12 ON A GRADUATED SCALE

1 - Discuss and contrast the theory of uniformitarianism with the fact of catastrophism.

2 - Select one of the following topics and write a report on how it points to a former worldwide Flood: (1) the existence of sedimentary strata and fossils; (2) why smaller, slower fossils are found lower in the strata and larger, faster ones are found at higher levels; (3) the fact that fossil deposits were laid down so rapidly; (4) the fact that, beginning with the lowest fossil strata, the Cambrian, there is such a vast amount of fossils, yet below it there is next to nothing; (5) the existence of polystrate trees; (6) coal and oil deposits; (7) the origin of graded bedding; (8) unity of the strata; (9) strata sequence and overthrusts.

3 - There are several evidences of what conditions were like before the Flood. In a brief paragraph or two, discuss one of the following: (1) pre-Flood climate; (2) pre-Flood atmosphere; (3) pre-Flood oceans.

4 - The Flood affected the entire world, and it was mentioned in later records. Select one of the following topics and write a half-page article on it: (1) Flood stories; (2) Noah’s name in world languages; (3) the Flood in Chinese; (4) the size of Noah’s Ark in the Biblical record; (5) Flood chronology in the Biblical record.

5 - The Flood exerted the most powerful effects on our planet of any event since the six-day Creation. Select one of the following topics and write one or several paragraphs explaining how one of these effects points us to the Flood: (1) continental shelves; (2) seamount corals; (3) submarine canyons; (4) existence of the oceans; (5) higher lakes; (6) larger rivers; (7) immense erosion and sedimentation; (8) sedimentary strata; (9) varve dating; (10) dinosaurs; (11) mountain building; (12) subterranean streams; (13) volcanism; (14) volcanic pollutants; (15) glaciation; (16) increased tropical rainfall for a time afterward; (17) sudden warming.

6 - Write your own Flood model, indicating the possible sequence of events during and after the flood.