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The Great Flood (Continued)
Genesis chapter 8
Genesis 8:1, 2: "And God remembered Noah, and every living thing, and all the cattle
that was with him in the ark: and God made a wind to pass over the earth,
and the waters assuaged.
The fountains also of the deep and the windows of heaven were stopped,
and the rain from heaven was restrained."
After the Flood had "prevailed" for 150 days, utterly destroying the "world that then was"
(2 Peter 3: 6) and leaving the remains of multitudes of dead organisms buried in its sediments
or still floating in its waters, God began to bring it to a termination.
He "remembered" Noah and the animals in the Ark (not, of course, that He had ever
forgotten them; the term is a Hebraism for "began again to act on their behalf"),
and was ready to start them on their way to the new life they would find in the new world.
Three specific actions were taken by God: He caused a when to pass over the earth,
He stopped the fountains of the deep from further eruptions, and He closed the windows
of heaven from further downpours (both were essentially emptied of their waters by this time).
The nature and effects of the "wind" need discussion.
This again is the word ruach and so could be translated either "wind" or "spirit,"
depending on context.
Its fundamental meaning (actually it is translated numerous different ways) is probably
something like "invisible force."
It is possible that the energizing power of God Spirit is intended here.
That is, in analogy to His work on the first day of Creation (Genesis 1:2), so now again,
with waters covering the earth as in the beginning, He exerted His creative power
once again to separate the lands and the waters (Genesis 1:9).
Most translators believe, however, that the context here suggests an actual wind,
God using a natural force providentially to accomplish His purposes.
As already discussed, the uniform temperatures of the antediluvian world would have
precluded strong winds.
With the vapor canopy gone, however, sharp temperature differentials would have
been established between equator and poles, and great air movements begun.
These would soon have been complicated by the earth's rotation, so that the present
complex system of atmospheric circulations would finally be initiated.
The early phases, in particular, would probably have been quite violent.
With nothing but a shoreless ocean, these winds would generate tremendous waves
and currents, and vast quantities of water would be evaporated,
especially in the equatorial regions.
Wind, waves, and an evaporation, however could hardly account in themselves
for more than a minor lowering of water level (unless the winds were so violent
as to sweep quantities of water clear off into outer space, which seems impossible
on a non-supernatural basis).
Somehow there must also be a drastic rearrangement of terrestrial topography,
with continental land masses rising from the waters, and ocean basins deepening
and widening to receive the water is draining off the lands.
This is exactly what happened according to Psalm 104:6-9:
"Thou coveredst it [the earth] with the deep as with a garment:
the water stood above the mountains.
At thy rebuke they fled, at the voice of thy thunder they hasted away
They go up by the mountainous; they go down by the valleys (or better, according
to the American Standard Version, 'the mountains go up, the valleys go down)]
unto the place which thou hast founded for them.
Thou hast set a bound that they may not pass over; that they turn not again
to cover the earth."
The first five verses of this psalm applied to the creation., but it is obvious that
verses 6 through 9 apply to the Flood, with an allusion to God's covenant with Noah
(Genesis 9:11) in verse 9.
During the Flood itself, the breaking up of the "great-deep" complex of subcrustal reservoirs
and conduits, the tremendous release of heat energy, and the outflow of great quantities
of water and magma undoubtedly left the earth's crust in a highly unstable condition.
Furthermore, the erosion of the antediluvian mountains and continents had resulted
in the deposition of great quantities of sediment in the seas.
Somehow, these great subterranean caverns, no longer pressurized, collapsed
and the surface elevations sank correspondingly.
Since these had been mainly underneath the antediluvian continents, to serve as the storage
reservoirs for their rivers, and since these continents had by this time been essentially
planed off by flood erosion, this means that they now came the bottom
of the postdiluvian ocean basins.
As they collapsed and the waters begin draining into them, the sedimentary strata
which had been deposited during the Flood in the antediluvian seas were now
left suspended above them, becoming the postdiluvian continents.
This was further augmented by an actual uplift of these areas because of
an isostatic readjustment.The sediments newly deposited on them were much less dense
than the earlier continental cores which had now settled into the former cavernous reservoirs,
and this required a lateral shifting of materials toward the new continents,
thus raising them still more.
Obviously the above outline of events is oversimplified and necessarily speculative,
but does seem to be the most reasonable reconstruction of what must have happened
in at least a general way, so far as the Biblical and scientific information
now available will allow.
The great winds and waves quite possibly could have been the "straw that broke
the camel's back," producing just the additional force needed to cause the collapse
of the empty caverns below, already on the verge of failure.
Genesis 8:3, 4: "And the waters returned from off the earth continually:
and after the end of the hundred and fifty days the waters were abated.
And the ark rested in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month,
upon the mountains of Ararat."
Once the crust began to move (the previous land surfaces downward to form
the new ocean basins, the previous sea bottoms and their new deposits of stratified sediments
upward to form the new continents), the waters began to drain off the emerging lands,
"returning from off the earth continually."
The expression in the Hebrew indicates a quite rapid subsidence, as would be expected
under the circumstances just outlined.
As the new land surfaces rose up, they would presumably have been fairly level,
except for volcanic mountains and great batholiths (massive igneous upheavals,
such as the Sierra Nevada and many other coastal ranges) which had been pushed up
by the magmatic activity associated with the eruption of the fountains of the great deep.
Such ranges would, in the main, tend to be peripheral to the new ocean basins,
in effect outlining the previous subterranean cavernous reservoirs.
Except for these, the new continents would tend to be great plateaus of flat-lying sediments
dotted by volcanic cones here and there, modified in some areas by buckling
and folding of the strata during the process of uplift.
Depending on topography, vast interior continental lakes would exist for a time
and great rivers would form, scouring out great canyons rapidly and depositing tremendous
amounts of alluvium in their lower courses.
It is significant that, all over the world, interior lakes and seas show evidence
of much higher water levels in the recent past.
Rivers also everywhere show that they once carried much greater quantities of water
and sediment than they do at present.
These and related phenomenon provide steel further geologic evidence
of a worldwide Flood several thousand years ago.
Since it is not practicable to include extensive geological discussions in a Biblical commentary,
readers interested in the aspect of the subject are referred to the writer's book,
The Genesis Flood, for detailed treatment of such matters.
One of the volcanic mountains formed in an earlier period of of the Flood is Mount Ararat region,
including Mount Ararat itself (now 17,000 feet in elevation), a balance in what is known
as pillow lava rock formed under great depths of water.
The mountain also includes certain sedimentary formations containing marine fossils.
It was apparently on this mountain that the Ark came to rest as the Flood waters
began to abate after the 150 days.
Other mountains have been suggested, but the weight of evidence still favors Mount Ararat.
It is true that the entire region later was known as Ararat (Jeremiah 51:27),
which is the Hebrew form equivalent to the Greek Armenia (2 Kings 19:37; Isaiah 37:38),
and Scripture says only it that the Ark landed somewhere in the mountains of Ararat.
Furthermore, a rather large number of reported sightings of the Ark have come
from explorers or travelers on this mountain during the past century,
as well as during ancient and medieval times.
A number of modern expeditions have been trying to relocate the Ark
with an adequate documentation, something which all earlier reports have lacked.
Surely, this would be the most important archaeological discovery of all time,
if successful.
It is significant that the Ark is said to have "rested," as though it had been laboring
for five months in accomplishing its work of saving its occupants from sin and judgment.
This is the second mention of "rest" in Scripture.
The first was when God rested after His work of creation (Genesis 2:2, 3;
actually these are two different, though synonymous, Hebrew words).
If the Ark is a true type of Christ, has previously intimated, this is most appropriate.
As God "finished" His work of creation and the Ark "finished" its mission,
so Christ "finished" (John 19:30) His work of salvation.
It also was considered significant that the Ark rested on "the seventh day
of the seventh month."
In our discussion of Genesis 7:11, the reason why the exact date was given for the beginning
of the Flood ("the seventh day of the second month") was found to be uncertain.
A possible reason appears here in connection with the typological differences.
The Lord Jesus Christ rose from the dead also on "the seventh day of the second month."
The seventh month of the Jewish civil year (and this is probably the calendar used
in Genesis 7 and 8) later was made the first month of the religious year,
and the Passover was set for the fourteenth day of that month (Exodus 12:2).
Christ, our Passover (1 Corinthians 5:7), was slain on that day, but then rose three days later,
on the 17th day of the seventh month of the civil calendar.
Genesis 8:5-12: "And the waters decreased continually on till the tenth month:
in the tenth month, on the first day of the month, where the tops of the mountains seen.
And it came to pass at the end of forty days, that Noah opened the window of the ark
which he had made:
And he sent forth a raven, which went forth to and fro, until the waters were dried up
from off the earth.
Also he sent forth a dove from him, to see if the waters were abated from off
the face of the ground.
But the dove found no rest for the sole of her foot, and she returned unto him into the ark;
for the waters were on the face of the whole earth.
Then he put forth his hand, and took her, and pulled her in unto him into the ark.
And he stayed yet other seven days; and again he sent forth the dove out of the ark.
And the dove came into him in the evening, and, lo, in her mouth was an olive leaf
plucked off: so Noah knew that the waters were abated from off the earth.
And he stayed yet other seven days, and sent forth the dove,
which returned not again on the him anymore."
Securely anchored on the earth again, Noah and the others needed only to wait
until the waters receded enough for them to disembark.
But this took yet another seven months, so they were in the Ark slightly over a year
– 371 days altogether.
After 2 1/2 months, they could see the tops of the nearby lower mountains.
Forty days later Noah released a raven and (seven days later) a dove from the Ark.
The dove returned; but the raven, a scavenger bird with no qualms about resting
on unclean surfaces, stayed.
A week later, Noah sent out to dove again, which returned this time with a fresh olive leaf,
indicating that seedlings or cuttings from the hardy olive trees were already beginning
to grow again on the mountain sides.
The frequent references to "seven days" in this narrative (7:4; 7:10; 8:10; 8:12)
have suggested to some that these were Sabbath Days.
However, there was not an even number of weeks between the first of these
and the second of these; so this is doubtful.
The narrative is not completely clear on the chronological details, but it does seem
most likely that Noah sent out the raven on the 264th day after the onset of the Flood,
then sent the dove on the 271st day.
The dove sent out again, and return with a olive leaf, on the 278 day.
Genesis 8:13, 14: "And it came to pass in the six hundredth and first year, in the first month,
the first day of the month, the waters were dried up from off the earth:
and Noah removed the covering of the ark, and looked, and, behold,
the face of the ground was dry.
And in the second month, on the seven and twentieth day of the month, was the earth dried."
Seven days later, on the 285th day, Noah sent the dove out again.
This time the dove stayed away, showing that the land was sufficiently dry
and vegetation sufficiently established to support bird life.
Noah waited still another 29 days, to the first day of the first month
(314 days after the Flood began) to remove the Ark's covering (presumably a part of the roof)
and beheld the dry ground for himself.
However, he must have observed that there was still much water about
and a forbidding and barren landscape in general.
So he waited another 57 days, 371 days after the Flood began, before he determined
they could leave the Ark and undertake life in the new world.
This was on the 27th day of the second month.
These months were apparently 30 days in length, as is inferred from the data
in Genesis 7:11, 24 and 8:3, 4.
The Flood had started on the 17th day of the second month; so they were in the Ark
a total of 371 days, a period of exactly 53 weeks.
The New World
The world had not been annihilated by the Flood, but it was drastically changed.
As the apostle Peter says, "The world that then was, being overflowed with water,
perished" (2 Peter 3:6).
When they left the Ark that had preserved them through the year of God's awful wrath,
Noah and his family truly disembark on a new world.
The Ark had provided the bridge – seemingly fragile and easily demolished
– from the old cosmos to the terrible Cataclysm to the present cosmos,
"the heavens and the earth which are now" (2 Peter 3:7).
The lands that once had teemed with animals and people and lush vegetation
had been replaced by a desolate wilderness.
The air which formally was warm and gentle now moved in spirit and sometimes violent winds,
and there was a chill on the mountain slope where the Ark rested.
Dark clouds rolling about the sky, which had once been perpetually and pleasantly bright,
seemed to threaten more rains and and a recurrence of flood conditions.
At the same time, however, the earth had been purged of the wicked hordes
that had made its physical beauty only a mockery, and God had granted a gracious opportunity
for a new beginning for the children of Adam.
Some of the implied physical changes after the Flood are as follows:
1. The oceans were much more extensive, since they now contain all the waters
which once were "above the firmament" and in the subterranean reservoirs
of the "great deep."
2. The land areas were much less extensive than that for the Flood,
with a much greater portion of its surface uninhabitable for this reason.
3. The thermal vapor blanket had been dissipated, so that strong temperature differentials
were inaugurated, leading to a gradual buildup of snow and ice in the polar latitudes,
rendering much of the extreme northern and southern land surface
also essentially uninhabitable.
4. Mountain ranges uplifted after the Flood emphasized the more rugged topography
of the postdiluvian continents, with many of these regions also becoming unfit
for human habitation.
5. Winds and storms, rains and snows, were possible now, thus rendering the total
environment less congenial to man and animals that had once been the case.
6. The environment was also more hostile because of harmful radiation from space,
no longer filtered out by the vapor canopy, resulting in (along with other contributing
environmental factors) in gradual reduction in human longevity after the Flood.
7. Tremendous glaciers, rivers, and lakes existed for a time, with the world only gradually
approaching its present state of semiaridity.
8. Because of the tremendous physiographic and isostatic movements generated
by the collapse of the subterranean caverns and the post-Flood uplifts,
the crust of the earth was in a state of general instability, reflected in recurrent volcanic
and seismic activity all over the world for many centuries and continuing in some degree
even to the present.
9. The lands were barren of vegetation, until such time as plant life could be reestablished
through the sprouting of seeds and cuttings buried beneath the surface.
10. There is even a possibility that the earths rotation speed it up by about 1.5 percent
if the year was really 360 days long.
Scattered around on the land surfaces were occasional rotting carcasses and skeletons
of the animals and people doomed in the waters of the Flood, a vivid reminder
of the ungodliness of the antediluvian world and the fate from which God
had delivered the survivors.
Since the new land surfaces probably had been formed mainly from the prediluvian seas,
filled with sediments and then uplifted, much such remains were buried in the sediments
beneath the land surfaces.
The sediments were rapidly being lithified, through the eroded and dissolved cementing
agents present in the waters that had deposited the sediments, thus becoming the great bits
of fossil-bearing sedimentary rocks that are now found everywhere around the world.
The fossils so preserved were not heterogeneously dispersed throughout the sediments,
but were generally deposited in a certain statistical order, from the more simple
marine invertebrate organisms on the bottom to complex land vertebrates in the top.
This is the order of (1.) increasing elevation of natural habitat, with fossil assemblages
tending to be buried in association with the same ecological communities in which they had lived;
(2.) increasing ability to flee from the encroaching Flood waters;
(3.) Increasing resistance to hydrodynamic forces and therefore an increasing tendency
to be transported farther in deposited more slowly.
So, in general, at any one locality, there would be a definite tendency for similar kinds
of animals to be buried at about the same levels, and for different kinds to be buried
in order of increasing size and complexity.
This order is exactly what is commonly found in the sedimentary rocks
(with many statistical exceptions, of course, as is to be expected by such catastrophic
phenomena as were occurring during the Flood), and thus clearly confirms the prediction
based on the Flood "model" as outlined in the Biblical record.
However, it has been deplorably misinterpreted by modern uniformitarian geologists
to teach a gradual evolution of life (from simple marine invertebrate organisms
to complex land vertebrates) through long geological ages.
Evolutionists have arranges the supposed "geological ages" in a supposed chronological order,
purportedly extending vertically upward through the "geological column" of sedimentary rocks
deposited above the crystalline rocks on the bottom.
The fossils found in these rocks proceeding supposedly from simple to complex,
comprise their best evidence for the period of organic evolution.
So, if the fossiliferous deposits are mainly records of the Flood year, instead of millions of years
of upward evolutionary struggle, the entire evolutionary system is scientifically bankrupt.
Therefore, there is little wonder that the concept of the geological ages is defended
with such fervor, and that "flood geology" is ridiculed or ignored.
We should also recognize that nowhere in the world does the so-called geological
column actually occur.
It is possible for any vertical sequence of these "ages," or any portion of them,
to exist in any given locality.
Any age may be on the bottom, any on top, and any in between.
The contained fossils – rather than vertical superposition or any other physical features
of the formation – constitute the controlling factor in the "age" assigned it.
Thus the theory of evolution is assumed in building up the geological column,
and then the latter is taken as the main proof of the theory of evolution!
The fossils in this geological column, however, speak eloquently of death, and therefore
they must have been deposited after Adam's fall and God's curse.
So, both the Biblical and scientific data, rightly understood, show that the earth’s
great fossil graveyards must for the most part have been buried by the Flood
and its after-effects.
The record in the rocks is not a testimony to evolution, but rather to God sovereign power
and judgment on sin.
Genesis 8:15-19: "And God spake unto Noah, saying,
Go forth of the ark, thou, and thy wife, and thy sons, and thy sons's wives with thee.
Bring forth with thee every living thing that is with thee, of all flesh, both of fowl, and of cattle,
and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth; that they may breed abundantly
in the earth, and be fruitful, and multiply upon the earth.
And Noah went forth, and his sons, and his wife, and his sons's wives with him:
Every beast, every creeping thing, and every fowl, and whatsoever creepeth upon the earth,
after their kinds, went forth out of the ark."
A year and seventeen days earlier, God had said to Noah:
"Come thou and all thy house into the ark" (Genesis 7:1).
But now He said: "Go forth of the art, thou and thy wife, ad thy sons,
and thy son's wives with thee."
These two commands are not contradictory, but complementary, reminding us
of two complementary commands of Christ.
First, He said: "Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden,
and I will give you rest." (Matthew 11:28)
This command (all the more meaningful in light of the fact that "rest" was the very meaning
of Noah's prophetic name) is but the preparation for His great command:
"Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature." (Mark 16:15)
The Ark had been like the great sheet-fold, with Christ the door, through whom
the sheep "shall go in" to be saved, but also, through whom, they shall "go out,
and find pasture" (John 10:9).
The animal occupants, awakened from their long rest in the Ark, were also brought forth
and instructed to "breed abundantly" and to "multiply upon the earth."
They and their progeny gradually spread out from Ararat, migrating and multiplying
over many generations, until they found environments and biologic communities of plants
and other animals suited to their needs.
The Scripture is clear in insisting that "every beast, ever creeping thing, and every fowl,
and whatsoever creepeth upon the earth, after their kinds, went forth out of the ark."
All of the earth' s present dry-and land animals, therefore, are descendants of those
that were on the Ark.
In like manner, all of the present tribes and nations of men are descended from Noah's family.
"These are the three sons of Noah; and of them was the whole earth overspread."
(Genesis 9:19)
As both animals and man later radiated out from Mount Ararat, they found open
country ahead of them.
They could move east into Asia, west into Europe, south into Africa.
Some of their descendants found a land bridge across what is now the Bering Straits
into the Americas.
Others found a similar land bridge down the Malaysian Straits into New Guinea
and perhaps into Australia.
Such land bridges are known geologically to have existed during the Ice Age,
when there was a considerable lowering of sea level due to the vast amounts of water
stored in great ice sheets.
Modern computer studies have shown, interestingly, that the geographical center
of the earth' s land areas is located within a short distance of Mount Ararat,
a "coincidence" that can hardly be other than providential.
Lack of competition permitted animal populations to multiply very rapidly; so there was much
incentive for the different groups to keep pressing forward until they found
an ecological niche for which they were more suited than other groups.
These conditions (rapid multiplication, small inbreeding populations, rapidly changing
environments) were ideal to permit rapid variation to take place in each kind (not evolution,
but rather opportunity for the originally created variational potential latent in the genetic system
of each kind to become expressed openly indistinct varieties).
Consequently, different variety is (or even species, and perhaps genera, in some cases,
as arbitrarily defined by modern taxonomists) could rapidly develop and become established
in appropriate environments.
Although God had implanted genetic factors for wide-ranging adjustment and variation
in each created kind (especially was this true in the case of the "clean" kinds),
permitting them to adjust to many different environments,
nevertheless this potential variation was limited.
Never could one kind change so much that it would become a different kind;
"after its kind" was the divine principle.
Since the environment was so drastically different after the Flood, there were many kinds
of animals, especially those that were highly specialized or unusually large,
that found it difficult to adjust.
Finally, after a number of generations, these became extinct.
Included in this group for the dinosaurs, the pteronodos, the creodonts, the glyptodons,
and other bizarre creatures of the past.
Many of these extinctions probably took place during the Ice Age.
The sharp change in temperatures follow the Flood, occasioned by the precipitation
of the vapor canopy that had maintained the greenhouse effect over the world,
led to the buildup of great thicknesses of snow and ice near the polar regions.
These eventually radiated out in the form of tremendous ice sheets, covering northern Europe
and reaching down into the northern third of the United States in this hemisphere.
The Ice Age probably lasted several hundred or 1000 years (not several million years,
as believed by evolutionary geologists) and undoubtedly had a profound effect
on the earth's animal kinds.
Genesis 8:28: "And Noah builded an altar unto the Lord; and took of every clean beast,
and of every clean fowl, and offered burnt offerings on the altar."
With such a forbidding and uncompromising scene before him, and with an apparently
imminent danger that the great rains and upheavals might start again at any time,
Noah quite properly turned his thoughts toward God.
Ever since Eden, the way of access to God had been through the offering of an animal sacrifice;
accordingly, Noah had taken one extra animal of each "clean" kind on the Ark for this purpose.
He proceeded immediately to build an altar (possibly after descending to the lower slopes
of Mount Ararat) and to offer up burnt offerings of every clean animal and every clean bird.
This is the first mention of "altar" in the Bible, and these were sacrifices
of both praise and propitiation.
Noah gave thanksgiving for deliverance from the corruption of the and the antediluvian world
and preservation through the Flood, and also made intercession for his descendants
in the new world, that their lives might be protected and the earth not again destroyed.
This was, no doubt, a very considerable and generous offering of animals on the part of Noah.
The clean animals presumably represented mainly the domesticable animals,
the ones from which Noah would have the greatest need and for which
he had the greatest love and compassion.
In effect, he was giving to God one-seventh of all his flocks.
This required a lot of faith, but Noah also had much for which to praise and prayed,
and he had long since proved himself to be a man of strong faith.
Genesis 8:21: "And the Lord smelled a sweet savor; and the Lord said in his heart,
I will not again curse the ground anymore for man's sake; for the imagination of man's heart
is evil from his youth: neither will I again smite any more every thing living, as I have done."
"And the Lord smelled a sweet savor."
That is, He heard and respected the believing – though perhaps unspoken – prayer of Noah,
represented by the incense rising from the smoke of the burnt offering.
Generations yet unborn, including our own, have benefited from Noah's sacrifice
of intercession, and God's response to it.
First of all, God will relieve their immediate apprehensions by promising never again
to destroy all life on the earth, smiting the earth with such a devastating curse
as it had just experienced.
The curse of Genesis 8:21 is not primarily the Flood, but the curse of Genesis 3:17,
which will prevail until the new earth of Revelation 22:3 is created.
This is evident in the language that is so similar in both cases ("curse the ground
for man's sake," where "man" is the same word as "Adam").
God was not removing the Curse at this time (which the Lord had cursed – Genesis 5:29),
but rather promising that there would never again be a world-wide judgment
on man's dominion, such as the Edenic law of death or of the Noahic visitation of death,
both of which had affected the entire earth.
God would neither curse the ground again with an additional curse to the one promised
in Eden, nor again destroy every thing living, as He had done with the Flood.
The reason for this from us at first seems strange: "for of the imagination
of man's heart is evil from his youth."
This would seem to be justification for smiting the earth, rather than for promising
not to do so, except for the great paradox of the love and grace of God.
Here is a testimony both to what theologians call original sin and universal depravity,
and also to God's redeeming mercy.
Because man is helpless to save himself – his very thoughts born and nurtured in sin
– he desperately needs the grace of God.
On this basis of an atoning sacrifice, God's salvation and blessing are received by faith.
So, for the very reason that man is completely unable to save himself,
therefore God saves him!
Truly, He is the God of all grace!
Noah had "found grace in the eyes of the Lord" (Genesis 6:8) and, through his faithful
obedience and his believing sacrifice, so have multitudes of his descendants.
He did, indeed, "comfort us concerning our work and toil of our hands,
because of the ground which the Lord hath cursed" (Genesis 5:29).
Although there would never again be a worldwide judgment on either the ground
or on men living, as long as the earth continued in its present form,
there would, of course, be a perpetual testimony to both,
easily seen by all men yet to come.
The testimony of the Curse is found in the structure of the basic laws of science,
the laws of thermodynamics.
The testimony of the Flood is seen everywhere in the structure of the rocks
of the earth crustal surface, the worldwide fossil graveyard,
and the universal evidence of catastrophism.
Man's perverse and depraved nature has somehow distorted both into a system
of evolution and uniformity.
As Peter says, he is "willfully ignorant" (2 Peter 3) 5).
Nevertheless the evidence is there, everywhere, for all who have eyes to see.
"God is long-suffering to usward not willing that any should perish,
but that all should come to repentance." (2 Peter 3:9)
Genesis 8:22: "While the earth remaineth, seed-time and harvest,
and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease."
The duration of God's gracious promise to Noah would be "as long as the earth remaineth.
Some day, however, "the day of the Lord will come."
At that time, "the earth also in the works that are therein shall be burned up." (2 Peter 3:10)
Then the very elements will disintegrate and all the effects of the Curse on these elements
removed before they are brought together again (Revelation 21:1-5; 22:3; Romans 8:21).
The fossils in the rocks, along with the other worldwide witnesses of the cataclysmic Flood
will also disintegrate and disappear.
However, until that day uniformity and physical processes can be counted on.
Most of the earth's natural processes depend, in one way or another, on the constancy
of the earth's rotation and its solar orbital revolution, continuing all diurnal and annual cycles,
especially the new hydrologic and climatologogic cycles.
The earth's physical features had been vastly changed by the Flood and its physical
processes modified in various ways.
The present hydrologic cycle was gradually established, with the energy of the solar radiation
serving to draw up water by evaporation from the oceans and then move it inland by the winds,
whence it can condense into clouds and fall to the ground as rain or snow,
finally to run off to the rivers or groundwater channels back to the ocean again.
This present hydrologic cycle marvelously provides for the maintenance of life
on the present earth in many ways.
It's ministry is often mentioned in the Bible, and always with remarkable scientific accuracy
(for example, note Psalm 33:7; 135:7; Ecclesiastes 1:6, 7; Job 26:8; 36:27, 28; Isaiah 55:10).
Although the new hydrologic cycle would produce rains, and sometimes floods,
God assured Noah that there would never again be a worldwide flood which would destroy
all life on the land.
In fact, He assured him that a regular order of nature, with a fixed sequence of seasons
and a fixed cycle of day and night, would prevail from that time on.
So, that regularity of nature which modern scientists have formalized as their
"principle of uniformity" was instituted by God after the Flood.
The seasons, heat and cold, day and night, are now controlled primarily by the sun,
which actually supplies all the energy for the earth's physical processes.
The earth's orbital revolution about the sun, its axial rotation and inclination,
and it's marvelous atmosphere also help establish these constants of nature,
which in turn control most other geological processes.
Thus the promised uniformity of the seasons and the daily cycle implies essential uniformity
of all other natural process.
Of course, it is only these present processes which modern scientists can actually observe,
describe, and analyze.
The present – not the past or the future – is the proper domain of true science.
This concludes chapter 8.
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