In this lesson, we discuss the theory of Catastrophic Plate Tectonics as we explore how the Flood event reshaped the earth’s geology, geography, and topography.
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good morning to you all today is our last lesson on the flood and in today’s lesson we’re talking about how the flood reshaped the Earth reshaping the earth now last week we talked about where we focused on the arc itself why the ark was an amazingly perfect vessel for handling the flood using the long qubit what were the dimensions of the arc and feet if you remember that’s right 510 feet long how wide not 51 feet wide that’s the other dimension it is 85 feet wide and 51 feet high so 510 feet long 85 feet wide 51 feet high now to put that in perspective using American football the length of the arc was about one and a half football fields if you include the end zones the width of the arc was about half the width of a football field so think about the width of a football field The Arc would have been half of that and then the height was about the same height of three goal posts stacked on top of each other if you think about those field goal posts at the end of a football field imagine three of those stacked on top of each other and you have about the height of the arc here’s another image comparing the arc’s length and height to other ships see the Santa Maria from Christopher Columbus the largest wooden ship ever built the Wyoming or rather the longest wooden ship ever built the Titanic and the Queen Mary second which is a modern cruise liner I see the length of the arc compared to those ships a very big vessel Arc would have actually been the longest wooden vessel ever built now some today object to the accuracy of the flood account because they say the ark has a giant wooden box could not have weathered such a catastrophe but as we discussed last week there’s good reason first of all to believe the ark was not a box why yeah Ron well boxes do float but boxes there’s something about the flood that wouldn’t have been that a box would not handle very well yes Roy that’s right a box would not Orient itself very well to wind and waves and so keep getting slapped on the side and rocked violently which would be dangerous for the inhabitants inside so there’s that reason for believing that it wasn’t a box are there other reasons one criticism say that again bill that’s right the Bible doesn’t actually say that it’s a box the word for Ark used for the ark there in Genesis we don’t know the meaning of that word but the closest meaning that we can probably come up with is Lifeboat rather than box also we certainly realize that not all the details of the Ark are recorded in Genesis 6 where we get the arc description many details are recorded very um accurate and fascinating details are recorded like the dimensions of the arc but nonetheless not all the details are recorded of the dimensions that are recorded however those are the dimensions of a ship a ship that was designed to move through the water if you simply were designing something to float you wouldn’t have used the dimensions or at least from our thinking you wouldn’t have used the dimensions that the arc actually consisted of so a number of reasons why we we can say the Arc was probably not a box now God could have miraculously preserved a box-shaped Arc but we have a good reason to believe that it was shaped like a ship as an ancient ship what were some likely features of the ark that made it perfect for enduring flood waters what were some of the features yeah Craig that’s right it didn’t leak because it used a special kind of planking system do you recall the planking system we think they used Julie or no that’s not does anybody remember mortise and tendon planking very labor intensive um you have to if you want the particular details about how that works I’m afraid to um I can only point you to some articles because it does get pretty technical but a very effective way of keeping the arc strong but also dry because large wooden vessels in modern times they were notoriously leaky but they used a very different method of planking so we have mortise and tendon planking whatever some other features of the arc that made it strong against the flood say that again well there was no sale but there was something like a sale that would have been helpful why was it important to have something that would um stick up yeah Joe that’s right so internet wasn’t necessarily on the bow in in Answers in Genesis version of the Arc it is on the bow the front of the vessel but somewhere on the ship you probably have a obstruction some kind of fin it could have been a sail but sail would have been a little bit hard to maintain something that would catch the wind and that’s important because if you can catch the wind the wind will push the ark and until the arc is moving in the direction of the wind which means that the wind will no longer be battering the arc on the sides it will be pushing the arc along through the waters which is going to make the ride a lot more comfortable same thing for the water we need something to catch the water and so that’s why there is a probably a fixed Rudder on the back of the arc also called a skeg same concept as the waves push against the arc they’re going to change the direction of the arc until the arc is moving in the direction of the Waves so it’s a much safer much more comfortable ride as it’s being pushed by the winds and waves in this in the same direction that the waves and wind are going these features are on Ancient ships and so it’s not very much of a logical leap for us to um to suggest that they were also on Noah’s Ark now such an arc would definitely have been seaworthy and a testament to the great wisdom of God others object however to the Ark on different grounds they say even if seaworthy the ark could not have contained all of the animal species of the world especially the dinosaurs well how can we respond to that objection yes Joe that’s right so for especially the big animals there would have been some wisdom about how old and how big of a size the animal you would bring on the ark it would probably had younger smaller versions of dinosaurs and some of the bigger animals on the Earth though not all animals are that big the average size of an animal in the Earth today is less than a sheep but what else what’s another reason that we can say well your objection actually is groundless yes George exactly if we’re not supposed to bring no was not instructed to bring of every species but of every kind so it wouldn’t have taken tigers and lions and leopards it would have just taken two cats they were probably the cat kind look different than it does today you probably didn’t even have those variations so the amount of animals he had to bring the bring on the ark was much more manageable because he was only bringing of the kinds and it was not difficult for Noah to or or let me ask it this way was it difficult for Noah to find and gather all these animals that’s right the text is actually explicit it says God will bring the animals God brought the animals to Noah so actually God was the one who was applying the wisdom selecting which animals for Noah to bring on the ark which age and which size Etc so there was actually plenty of room on the ark for Noah his family and the animals and of course more people those who would repent and be saved from the flood so that’s what we talked about last week any questions about the ark yes Carol that’s right there was Pitch not only on the bottom but inside and out of the Ark and that was part of what would keep the wood dry and keep it from flexing and keep it from or keep water from coming inside so yes pitch was another important feature of the Ark other questions okay well a global violent flood would have needed a well-designed Arc to endure it however a global violent flood would also have greatly impacted the geology and topography of our world over the centuries scientists have observed many mysterious details in our planet’s geology for instance you have sediment layers that are consistent across entire continents or large parts of consonants the same layers laid down in the same way you also in certain places have folds and rock layers that surprisingly did not cause the rock layers to break there’s a smooth bend a smooth fold which is which is strange because you would expect that there was something that forced The Rock layers up violently they would fracture also consonants appear to have fit together at one time and then you also have Marine fossils on high mountain peaks so these are puzzles for geologists how did these things come to be well most secular scientists are going to give an answer based on what fundamental assumption that’s right uniformitarianism they will say something along the lines of everything we see is the result of very slow processes over millions of years they are the same processes that we observe today but we know we know that something happened in the past that makes uniformitarianism a false assumption what happened the flood and creation two very um non are not non-natural I guess you could say Supernatural events certainly not like what we see today for answering any geological question one must take into account the word of God if you don’t factor in creation and the flood when you’re studying rocks your interpretation is likely going to be faulty because you’re starting with assumptions that are false once we factor in Creation in the flood however we still are left with the question how do we explain these puzzles yes we know creation happened we know the flood happened but how did it produce how did those things produce the geology that we see in our world now even though sometimes we cannot say more than God did it I don’t know how God did it creationists creation geologists and creation scientists have come up with very plausible models various models to explain in a way consistent with the Bible’s details why the world and its geology is the way that we see it today so actually in today’s class I want to present to you such a model I want to present you a geological model for explaining how the flood is responsible for The Rock layers and the Continental forms and positions that we see today and this model is called continents or catastrophic plate tectonics catastrophic plate tectonics it’s a geological model a theory this isn’t fact but it’s a model for explaining what we see now this model was first proposed by Antonio Snyder a creation geologist in 1859 based on the scriptures and his observation that the consonants looked like they once had fit together they had once been connected Snyder really should be the one credited with the concept with the first idea of continental drift the idea that the consonants move but for whatever reason history gives that honor to a different geologist Alfred Wegener a secular geologist who proposed that idea again in 1912.
even then the theory was not very very much accepted it was only until scientific advances in the 1960s that the idea of consonants moving plate tectonics really caught on and the theory of continental drift has been refined very much since then but we’re talking about catastrophic plate tectonics not slight movements but huge violent movements and these were what caused the flood and they explained how the world came about from the flood well certainly not authoritative like scripture this model gives a reasonable explanation for where the Waters of the flood came from where they went after the flood and why the world’s rocks and consonants look the way they do the science of this topic can get a little dense but let’s do our best to see if we can get a basic grasp of this model and of its relevant Concepts Concepts understanding this Theory will be helpful for responding to certain skeptical questions but also hopefully will fill us with awe fill us with awe at our powerful Creator who did Judge the world and will judge the world let’s pray ask God’s blessing on this time God lord it is amazing as we discover more of your word I mean more of your world through scientific observation we see more of your great wisdom we see more of your great power in creation we recognize that our science and our scientific models are fallible God but we thank you that your word is infallible and we want to base any of our ideas any of our scientific interpretations from your word and in a way consistent with your word so God I pray that you give me the ability to explain well this model and I pray God that we would indeed be provoked to awe over you in Jesus name amen let’s start by reminding ourselves of just a couple of the details from from the flood account so open your Bibles to Genesis chapter 7.
these details are going to be relevant for any geological model or any explaining model that has to do with the flood Genesis 7 verses 10 to 12.
now we’ve read through this passage before I’m not going to take time to read it again this morning but feel free to scan the text for a moment what two sources of water are mentioned in the text for bringing the flood on the Earth that’s right we have The Fountains of the great deep and we have the floodgates of the sky and we noted that these are figurative Expressions but what do they refer to yes Danielle down and then also maybe that’s right so water sources from under the Earth probably in the oceans because it says great deep and that’s a that’s a phrase in Hebrew that’s always connected with oceans so we have a a water source from under the oceans and we have a water source from the sky probably rain yeah that seems plain enough but what exactly is this Oceanic water source and where exactly did this rain come from well let’s see if we can get a little bit closer to answering that now there’s a fair amount of debate let’s talk about the rain first there’s a fair amount of debate on the nature of the flood’s rain now some believe that there had been no rain on the earth up to this point that with the flood God caused rain to appear for the first time on the earth now there is some biblical support for this where can we go to in the Bible to support the idea there was no rain Before the Flood yes Dania very good excellent observation Danielle you may remember from our earlier lessons before the fall we are told that there was no rain on the Earth but that God sent a mist or a Subterranean water source to water the Earth or at least the Garden of Eden so there was certainly no rain then but what else can we say that another reason to suggest there was no rain Before the Flood at Julie writes the rainbow would be very relevant because God says I set my bow in the clouds it’s a reminder I’ll never send a flood again now Rainbows are produced by rain it’s produced by water vapor in the air that refracts the light presumably if there were rain before the flood then there also would have been rainbows Before the Flood because rain produces rainbows but it’d be strange for God to say I’m making a new promise about the rainbow even though the rainbow was there before the flood but now don’t worry I won’t send another flood that would be odd the rainbows seem to be only something that we’re after the flood now could God have produced rain without rainbows yes but in terms of suggesting whether there is rain before the flood or not that is another reason to to think that there was not rain Before the Flood however there is one problem with this if there was no rain before the flood then why does God promise Adam in Genesis 3 that weeds were now going to flourish because as Danielle mentioned Moses tells us in Genesis chapter 2 there was no rain on the earth and therefore no plants that thrive with rain you remember we talked some at some length about those two terms planted the field and shrub of the field shrub of the field meaning a weed weeds flourish and Rain irregular water source now why would God say to Adam in chapter 3 thorns and thistles are now going to come from the ground you’re now going to have to be dealing with weeds does it produce weeds rain we’re not actually part of his experience so and there is some difficulty saying for sure whether there was rain Before the Flood another thing that we should keep in mind when thinking about the flood’s rain some also said that the rain was actually a special rain that came from a canopy a canopy of water that once surrounded the Earth so imagine Earth encased in this barrier of water and the flood then God would have released this canopy of water and it would have fallen as a massive torrent to the Earth very much like releasing floodgates in the sky so there’s this canopy of water that was above the Earth and God suddenly lets it Go and it All Falls Down now this is also has some support from the scriptures it’s partly based off of a statement that you may remember from Genesis 1. when God’s describing the creation of the earth what does he say that may suggest a canopy of water around the Earth very good bill so Genesis 1 6-8 I’ll reread that section for you it says then God said let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters and let it separate the waters from the waters God made the expanse separated the waters which were below the expanse from the waters which were above the expanse and it was so God called the expanse heaven and there is evening and there is morning a second day now this is this statement is mystified biblical interpreters a bit over over time because where are the waters above the Earth we know the expanse is called heaven or it’s called sky but what are the waters above the Earth and for this reason some have suggested well there was actually a barrier of water a canopy of water that surrounded the Earth and it was established at creation and this canopy is thought to have created unique conditions on the pre-flood Earth that promoted long life spans you may notice or you may know that after the flood man’s life spans rapidly decline and in this model the idea is well with the canopy gone you no longer have those life-sustaining conditions those wonderful life-sustaining conditions however you may remember from previous classes I’ve mentioned you there are many scientific problems with a water canopy it’s hard to make any sort of model work that that contains or uses a canopy of water around the earth the most notable problem is that the greenhouse effect in such a world with a canopy would have been out of control today actually when we think about the greenhouse effect we hear about greenhouse gases and things that heat the Earth but the thing the gas that causes the most greenhouse effect today is water vapor and it’s it makes up the majority of our greenhouse gases if we had a water canopy the Earth would have been way too hot way too hot for anyone to survive now it’s possible that God had mechanisms in place with this water canopy that we simply don’t know about and he could have made it work but we cannot say confidently that there was a water canopy despite those verses in Genesis 1 to talk about the waters being separated so I bring those up to you just so that we can keep them in mind what I’m going to propose you today about where the rains came from is based off of the model I mentioned the catastrophic plate tectonics there’s a different idea about where the wind the rains came from and I want to introduce it to you by actually showing you a little video clip this is from Answers in Genesis a little reimagining of what the beginning of the flood was like so it’s a two-minute video flood initiation and as you watch the video pay attention to how the clouds form you may be thinking that you’re looking at tidal waves at first but you’re not you’re actually looking at massive rapid cloud formation so let’s watch and then I’ll explain a little bit what we’re seeing foreign okay so the video is a little intense but the flood must have truly been a terrifying event now as I said you may have been thinking you’re looking at a tidal wave the whole time the whole time but no those were clouds in the video what causes the clouds to form yeah Julie exactly so water vapor is caused by some sort of eruption in the ocean it shoots into the air and immediately starts forming clouds and those clouds quickly spread across the Earth what else do these eruptions cause you may have noted destroying the sailors at sea that’s right so Global magnitude tsunamis you see a tidal wave that sweeps that boat away with the the splitting of the the Ocean Air we’re looking at an earthquake or a title or that causes a tidal wave I may have also noticed that the earth looks a little bit different you can switch back to the presentation the earth looks a little bit different in the video how does it look different that’s right in the video the Earth is just one consonant one solid land mass so we’re beginning to see some of the some features of the model for catastrophic plate tectonics now let me explain this a little bit more detail what exactly is this model and how does it suppose the flood took place but before that we need to review a little bit about tectonic plates I don’t know if you remember this from elementary school or whenever you study a little bit about geology but you may remember the outside of the Earth is made of what we call a crust various moving plates of rock it’s what we live on these plates don’t move to much today but they do move which is why we call them tectonic plates tectonic has to do with movement plate it’s the section of rock they do move does anybody know how today how about how far plates move per year about one to two inches there are different plates move at slightly different speeds they only move about one to two inches per year now their movement is responsible for what natural disasters earthquakes and they’re also part of volcanic activity their movement in causes volcanic activity now there are seven or eight major plates today you can see that in the bottom right picture there and depending on how you define the term there are 70 major plates and a number of minor plates and these are all plates they are the crust or they are they contain the Earth’s crust all of this crust all these plates they float on an extremely hot semi-fluid section of rock called the mantle you see that in the top left picture you have the inner core the outer core of the earth and then the mantle and these plates the crust of the earth floats on top of this mantle now the mantle is Rock but it’s really hot and it has some fluid-like properties the tectonic plates they have two kinds of crust on them there’s continental and oceanic crust and you can guess the difference if it’s in the ocean it’s oceanic crust if it’s Continental it’s continental crust now they’re made up slightly differently slightly different kinds of rocks and those types of crust oceanic crust is thinner and denser than continental crust so thinner but more compact has a higher density of rock so whenever a plate with an oceanic crust runs into a plate with continental crust because the plates move right sometimes they move towards each other whenever those two types of crust encounter one another the plate with the oceanic crust goes under the plate with the continental crust the plate with the oceanic crust actually starts sinking down back into the mantle and it’s going to melt there it’s going to disappear this process is called subduction subduction and you see a picture of that in the bottom left the Lost section of plates the one that the oceanic crust is it’s going back into the mantle it is immediately replaced on the other side of the plate from my new material from the mantle that comes up and forms the new crust have you ever heard of a mid-ocean ridge mid-ocean ridges are mountain chains that formed on the ocean floor where two plates connect or where two plates collide with each other and it’s at these sea ridges that new sea floor is generated new material from the mantle comes up at these Rifts at these ridges and it spreads ever so slowly to um to make up for the oceanic crust that disappeared in back into the mantle so you always have a notion floor part of it if it encounters continental crust it disappears back into the mantle while on the other side new mantle material comes up and forms new seafloor they call this C4 seafloor spreading and it’s observable today but again it’s very slow with me so far okay now this is really relevant for the model I’m just about to explain to you Before the Flood according to this Theory there was only one consonant which both secular and Creations geologists have a name for and the name is rodinia which comes from the Russian rodina meaning motherland many creationists see biblical support actually for one land mass originally in Genesis 1 9. that’s where God gathers the waters I’ll quote the verse for you Genesis 1 9 says let the waters or then God said let the waters below the heavens be gathered into one place and let the dry land appear and it was so how does that show one land mass well the thinking is this the waters gathered into one place and implies that the land was also gathered into one place because otherwise the water would have to be gathered into several places that’s the thinking so anyways in this model there was one original land mass which we call rodinia and the flood began when the Earth’s plates the various plates on the earth violently split apart from one another in the ocean opening massive ocean Rifts now flood begins when the plates the Earth’s plates the Earth tectonic plates split in the ocean and as the sections of oceanic crust moved away from one another they moved towards the continental crust right and hot material from the mantle where the plates moved apart pours through the breach we’re going to get new sea floor so hot mantle material but a lot of hot mantle material pours through the breeches and it pours through all over the Earth because all of the continents were splitting from one another and so you have these opening of ocean risks all over the Earth and this hot mantle material extremely hot mantle material immediately vaporizes deep ocean water and sends it Skyward this is what you saw in the video the water shoots into the sky and quickly creates huge amounts of rain clouds these rain clouds start to pour their contents onto the Earth and more and more steam is ejected into the air as more and more mantle materials being pushed up where these Rifts occurred and therefore the rain keeps being reinforced it therefore rains steadily and heavily over 40 days and 40 nights on the earth as the Bible says so that’s the idea of where the rain came from but meanwhile something is happening in the ocean something more is happening in the oceans the splitting oceanic crusts while being reinforced by the mantle they are encountering the Continental cross Center therefore being subducted ocean crust is more dense than continental crust so it always goes underneath it as a subductive plates dive into the mantle however they destabilize the upper mantle and they cause this whole process of subduction to accelerate and creationists call this runaway subduction the subduction process begins to move faster and faster and faster and faster because the mantle becomes more and more destabilized and as the crust moves faster the mantle gets more destabilized and cause the crust move faster and faster and faster until accelerates to high speeds and the whole process is moving like a conveyor belt more and more oceanic crust is getting subducted underneath the continental crust at top speed well just for comparison the plates today move about one to two inches per year but according to this runaway subduction model which has been tested with sophisticated computer programs the plates during the flood moved at about one to two meters per second so today they move one to two inches per year but then they’re moving one to two meters per second because of this process of one-way subduction and it wasn’t just the oceanic crust that was moving the continents themselves began to move because they too float on top of this mantle the mantle is being destabilized you have these currents of heat moving in the mantle and they cause the crust on top of the mantle the plates on top of the mantle wherever they are to move as well so the Earth’s consonants also began to move at top speeds of about one to two meters per second and so we get the breakup of this continent of rodinia and um we’re going to get these consonants moving all over the place as Creations like to say this was no continental drift it was Continental Sprint these consonants were moving very rapidly the original consonant as I said broke apart and as the flood went on these fragmented pieces would eventually collide together again but at this point the world was flooded so you may see in the picture there rodinia you can see the land mass the original land mass but in Pangea the whole earth looks blue that’s because these consonants were colliding together but underwater these and when sections of continental crust Collide they don’t subduct one doesn’t go underneath the other usually or rather their crust is compressed and forced upward forming what kind of land mass mountains mountains this is where we get many of our mountains but by this time while this Continental Collision is happening underneath the water already the consonants have new deposits on them new sediment deposits on them and Within These deposits are creatures buried in the sediment so therefore as these new mountains were formed what was already on top of the mountains fossils especially Marine fossils because they were there those fossils were stuck in the sediment and they were put all over these consonants when the consonants formed new mountains the fossils that were already in the sediment they just went to the top of those mountains which explains why we find them there today so those pieces collided with one another but then they split apart again they continue to move until they reached about today’s present positions and they took their new mountains with them and we can actually see today some of the results of these Continental collisions you can see Mountain chains that actually continue from one continent to the next even though they’re separated by an ocean this is you see in this picture the Appalachian Mountains in North America actually continue right in a mountain chain with the British Isles and Scandinavia the Caledonian mountains this is where those continents had collided during the flood when the the tectonic plates were moving around when they temporarily reformed a new consonant Pangea the consonants as I said with some of the original land mass were also given new layers of rock and sediment by the flood as the waters pass over them so that’s why the land masses if you if we go back to the previous picture and the land masses look or they contain different or they contain more sediment more soil than they did or that they did originally or they contain different soil some of the original continents would have sunk into the mantle but anyways so those consonants move to where they where they are today or close to where they are today but it wasn’t just the rain falling all over the Earth that was causing flooding we do have the consonants moving and we do have the steam going into the air and causing massive rainfall but the sea levels themselves were also Rising well why are the sea levels Rising it’s not at least in this model it’s not that water was being pumped through the Earth’s crust rather is that the sea floor itself was Rising the sea floor itself was Rising well how could that be well as I mentioned oceanic crust were quickly diving beneath sections of continental crust and entering the hot mantle but you can’t simply have no ocean floor hot rock from the mantle came through the Gap left behind by these Rifts and they they took over the ground of the retreating ocean crust so just like today when we talk about subduction whenever you have oceanic crust going beneath the consonant on the other side you have new crust being formed with hot material from the mantle however this was happening rapidly and hot mantle rock is less dense than cold ocean crust Rock which means that the new hot ocean floor was going to float higher on the mantle than the previous cold ocean floor okay that may sound a little bit confusing I’ll say it again and then I’ll explain it with an analogy because hot mantle Rock was rapidly replacing the ocean crust floor and this hot mantle rock is less dense than the previous floor of cold crust rock that means the new ocean floor was going to float higher on the mantle than the previous cold ocean floor now how could that be well let me explain using aluminum foil think about aluminum foil if you take a sheet of aluminum foil crumble it into a ball and drop it in the water what happens to it wait what it stinks no it doesn’t float aluminum it is a pretty light metal but if you’re crumpled into a ball it sinks if you don’t believe me you can try it at home now why does an aluminum ball sink it does have to do with gravity but it’s more than that exactly this is this is what we talk about with buoyancy right the density of aluminum the compactness of aluminum is higher than the density of water therefore it sinks in water and if you couple aluminum into a ball you have that high density however if you take the same size sheet of aluminum and form it into a raft shape with upturned sides and then put it in water what happens to it it floats like that little picture down there but it’s aluminum right it weighs the same amount it has the same mass as your crumple ball why does the aluminum raft float well the upturn signs yeah they prevent water from getting into the boat but it’s not really just about the shape or not simply about the sides exactly it’s that’s right it’s still about density it’s about density the density is much lower in your aluminum raft because what is filling the space of your object besides aluminum air and air is much less dense than water and this is why heavy steel ships can nonetheless float on water it’s because they contain a lot in their space that is not heavier than water they contain air they contain other things that are less dense than water now I’m going to relate this back to what we’re just talking about in just a moment but two more points as long as an object’s density is less than water’s density what would that object do when it encounters water it will always flip as long as the density is less than water it will continue to float unless something changes its density and makes it heavier or makes it more dense than water but let’s say we have two objects one that is half the density of water and one that is a quarter of the density of water both of the objects will float but what will be the difference in how they float one of them is going to float higher on the water which one the less dense material right they’ll both float but one will float higher on the water and it’s the one with the less density now let’s take that back to what I was just saying about the mantle I said earlier that all the tectonic plates float on top of the Earth’s mantle but when a Plate’s crust becomes replaced by another set of crust that is less dense is the plate going to float higher on the mantle or lower on the mantle it’s going to float higher it’s the same concept we now have a less dense ocean floor and it’s already floating on the mantle but because it’s now its density is less compared to the previous set of crust that crust is now going to float higher on the mantle so the new oceanic floor is higher on the mantle meaning that the water above this ocean floor has to go where it has to go up and has to go towards the continents because if the sea floor is moving up well then the sea level has to move up now imagine today if all the oceans floor everywhere suddenly went up by about I don’t know 20 meters what would happen massive floods tsunamis too but massive floods that is a lot of water being pushed up and it has to go somewhere and one of the web articles from Answers in Genesis the author mentions a poignant fact if you were to level out the Earth’s terrain if you raise the ocean basins and lower the mountains on the continents do you know what you get you get the world entirely covered by water we already know that our world is mostly water 75 of our world is water God didn’t actually need to pump new water on the earth to flood everything all he had to do was raise the sea floor and that’s exactly what massive plate movement would do because the hot mantle material would replace the surface of the ocean floor and if it was done rapidly and hot material is going to be less dense and therefore the sea floor is going to rise so that’s the idea where the water came from in this catastrophic plate tectonic model you have steam going into the air and causing rain but you also have the sea floor Rising which is going to cause flooding all over the Earth but as we were just saying tectonic plate activity would have also produced tsunamis because what always happens whenever you have the plates moving from each other or encountering one another earthquakes and you have earthquakes in water or volcanic activity in water you get tsunamis you get tidal waves and these plates were moving continually or at least for a good portion of the flood so that would have produced tsunami after tsunami wave after wave being or surging towards the consonants there’s no way a person or a creature could have just floated through the rising Waters if they were already on a boat say you may say well couldn’t they have just survived the flood no not with the tidal waves that were continually coming at the consonants any craft not specifically prepared for the flood would have been destroyed and move over the ark was prepared for the flood and it was probably built away from the coast so the tsunami waves would not have devastated it like it would other crafts that were already at sea so no other boats would have survived the flood so during the flood according to this model massive plate movement caused rising sea levels tidal waves and torrential rain and the surging of these Waters over the land picked up a lot of rock and sediments and they deposited it on the land and of course they buried many creatures when they did so even creatures that were mid-bite or mid-birth we actually see both of those in the fossil record that must have been a very rapid burial eventually all this chaos comes to an end because what must have eventually happened to the hot seafloor that would have caused the waters to recede oh cool right that’s what he does he possibly constantly dissipates it constantly transfers itself and so this hot sea floor would eventually cool because the heat was being transferred into the water in other places and so it cools and forms new ocean crust and its density increases therefore if the oceanic crust density increases it’s going to sink back down a little bit more on the mantle meaning the seafloor levels sink and consequently the sea levels sink so as the ocean floor cooled the sea level would go back down eventually the oceanic plates I’m not the oceanic plates the oceanic crust would finish subducting the plates would stop moving towards the continents they had totally the oceanic crust had totally disappeared into the mantle and so that runaway subduction came to an end and therefore the Continental movement is greatly slowed or stopped and with no more hot mantle material pouring into the ocean because that process of runaway subduction was greatly slowed and came to a stop the steam fountains that were constantly pouring water into the air they too ceased the waters all over the Earth then we’re flowing back into the ocean so sea level was going down the basins the ocean basins had become deeper once again and the rain had stopped so all that water is going to try and find its way back to the ocean it’s going to keep on going down the topography to get back into the ocean and as they did so what are the waters going to do they’re going to erode the surface of the land they’re going to carry a lot of that sediment they’re going to carry part of the earth back into the water and that some of the water though is going to get trapped because we have new topography on the earth there are already some hills and mountains Before the Flood but they’re also new mountains and New pieces of topography After the flood so some water becomes trapped trapped into higher elevations forming large lakes but water continues to exert pressure especially on this new soft material and some of it is going to burst the boundaries of those Lakes and it’s going to rapidly Rush towards the ocean and when you have water and that bursts its boundaries and and starts moving through soft sediment and rock what’s that water going to create it’s going to carve that that soft rock it’s going to start creating canyons and valleys secular geologists they also suppose that water carves cannons and valleys but they say it’s just a little bit of water over a long period of time but we’re saying the opposite of that there’s a lot of water over a little bit of time now some Oceanic creatures would have gotten caught in The Lakes either the lakes that made their way back into the ocean of the lakes that didn’t and they just made a new life of it it’s where we got the the creatures that lived in our Lakes they just made it their new home so I think that pretty much covers the basics of catastrophic plate tectonics but let me summarize what happened during the flood equine to this model well it’s all about the tectonic plates shifting they split apart in the oceans they cause massive amounts of steam to pour into the air the steam condensed to create 40 days and nights of rain the new hot sea floor it caused the ocean levels to rise and lots of seismic activity the seismic activity caused continual tsunamis all over the Earth and all of this Continental on all this plate movement caused the consonants to move to Sprint to and away from one another and collide with one another and to create new Mountain chains surging Waters across the land deposited many layers of rock and sediment burying plants and animals and the receding Waters cause large amounts of erosion and carved out many canyons and valleys so if this is the way the Lord did it no matter the way he did it it was a Titanic Calamity the whole earth was put into an upheaval and it is a reminder of what the scriptures say it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the Living God it’s Hebrews 10 31.
the psalmist too was in awe of God’s power in the flood turn over to Psalm 104 for a second Psalm 104 verses 5 to 9 . this Psalm is a meditation of what or it’s a meditation on God’s power and God’s goodness part of the meditation is on what God did in the past in creation and in the flood and part of the meditation is about what God does in the present to sustain life and the section that we’re going to be looking at is about what God did in the past look starting at verse 5 will read we’ll read down to verse 9.
psalm 104.
verse 5 he established the Earth upon its foundations so that it will not totter forever and ever you covered it with the deep as with the Garment the waters were standing above the mountains at your rebuke they fled at the sound of your thunder they hurried away the mountains Rose the valley sank down to the place which you established for them you set a boundary that they may not pass over so that they will not return to cover the Earth I think the psalmist was thinking about the same things that we’re talking about today the flood reshaped the Earth now can we say that this is for sure the way that God did it can we say we know that it was catastrophic plate tectonics well no we can’t we certainly can’t say it like we can in the Bible we can’t hold to it like we do the things in the Bible but the reason I present this to you is because it’s an example of what we should be doing when it comes to science we start with the Bible and then look at what we observe today and propose a model that makes sense and that’s what catastrophic plate tectonics does now I’m sure that there there are imperfections in the model but it makes a lot of sense and if you want to hear more of the details definitely go to answers in genesis.org there’s plenty of articles some of them really technical but some of them not so technical plenty of articles that can talk about those different aspects now you may have questions now and I’d like to hear them and answer them hold on one second though I want to show you one other short video and then I’ll get to your questions this is a video that talks a little bit how the rock layers and fossils are best explained when you start from a global perspective of the flood and it ties into some of what we what I already shared with you so if we could load up the video on Rock layers it’s about four minutes foreign Rock layers are visible in mountains plateaus and canyons all over the world where did these Rock layers come from present processes aren’t the answer today sand and mud are usually deposited in thin layers along the outer edge of continents and the formation of fossils today is rare but somehow in the past thick layers of sand and mud were spread across entire continents and filled with well-preserved fossils Noah’s flood suggests a way to explain these puzzling features flooding the continents for example could carry sea creatures many hundreds of feet above present sea level Andrew Snelling is a PhD geologist from Australia who has spent over 30 years studying rocks working in the field and in the lab we find marine creatures buried at the top of the Grand Canyon which is over I’m all above sea level a global flood could carry sand and mud enormous distances some of the sand grinds that are in the Navajo Sandstone had to have come from the Appalachians but what river or what process today is carrying material from the Appalachians the the Southwest a global flood could quickly lay down thick layers of mud and sand burying even giant animals and tall trees we’ve got coal beds with trees sitting on them and these trees tree stumps go through many strata which means that before they could rot you have to have lots of sand and mud coming in quickly several places in the Grand Canyon four thousand feet of different types of of sand and mud and lime have been bent and they’ve been been bent while they’re still soft both the bottom layer and the top layer are all bent the same way which means that the whole sequence of four thousand feet of the of sand and mud and lime had to have been laid down very quickly By the Waters and then bent very soon afterwards a global flood could form thick layers across entire continents in the Grand Canyon area we’ve got Limestone there the red wall Limestone the same line stain can be found over here in the United Eastern United States a global flood could cut deeply and widely we’ve got this huge flat surface at the rim of the Grand Canyon which goes for thousands of square miles where waters on a great scale over vast area just swept over it and swept Everything clean none of these processes deep white erosion or thick rapid layering our continent-wide distribution or lifting of marine organisms above sea level or sand carried across continents occur in the present a radically different processes are required such as occurred during noaa’s flood okay so that’s just a sampling of some of the geology that begins to make a little bit more sense once you factor the flood in now does the flood explain every single thing that we see in the geology no of course not but it is something that plays a huge role in what we see in the geological record record all right let me hear some questions yeah Danielle yes they um there’s actually I think one or two articles that address that specifically I’m trying to recall what the argument is um I can’t remember exactly but I know one of the things that they say is that there there are a lot of assumptions that we may make about humans and human fossils that aren’t necessarily true like we might think well why aren’t why aren’t humans buried with animals well it’s humans today don’t usually live right with animals we live separately and um you know humans may have been trying to do different things during the flood than um than animals would have so that they didn’t they didn’t become subject to the same rapid burial processes that the animals did it’s also possible that we do there are sections of or there are more larger sections of human fossils that we simply haven’t discovered yet basically there are a lot of unanswered questions when it comes to why are there there are a lot of things that we don’t know about that would factor into the question of why we don’t find that many human fossils and why we don’t find them buried with other usually buried with other animals we do find some human fossils and of course they are the subject of intense scrutiny today and that’s where we get a lot of a lot of the inferences about the transition States between apes and man and things like that but I would point you to a better answer would be from Answers in Genesis other questions yeah boy how long duration how many how long that would take to uh yes I didn’t in my preparation for today’s class I don’t look for that number specifically but one of the reasons why this model is held to by Answers in Genesis is because of the complex computer modeling by a guy named Dr Baumgardner and I think some of the other creation geologists where they basically simulated the conditions of the earth and we’re looking to see would you get the Continental Sprint that we think might have happened and you do you do get it and I’m sure that from that model they can say well this is where this is how long that process would have taken place and this is when that process would have stopped now I couldn’t get access to that video model I couldn’t I saw some presentations that were based on that model but I didn’t actually have access to the model itself that’s a good question then other questions yeah Steve yeah that’s a great question Steve what outside of God’s promise is there anything that that we can point to scientifically that’s preventing this from happening again and I don’t think we can I don’t think they’re conceivably if there were rapid plate tectonics again catastrophic plate tectonics then it would flood the Earth again but that’s right yeah so it would really only simply be God’s God’s mercy in that he keeps the the plates from moving more rapidly than they do I I do remember that one of the Articles or a number of the articles that I read I talked about today’s tectonic activity and volcanic activity it really just leftovers from the flood that it’s kind of like these are dim reminders of what happened then and if you ask well what was the mechanism that triggered the flood was it a buildup of certain gases in the Earth was it was did something hit the Earth from outer space it could have been those things but it could simply have been the Finger of God where he says you’re going to crack now and then that initiated the the seismic Calamity other questions yeah Andrew okay amount of conversion in terms of a long surveyor to circular okay so just repeat your comment Andrew that from what we can tell today the reason that the plates move has to do with the movement of the outer core inside the Earth as it interacts with the mantle and causes the the mantle to move to change a little bit and that causes the plates to move slightly now certainly you might be realizing or maybe you’re asking like well how do they know this how do they know the mantle is moving the outer core is moving because we’re not anywhere near those sections of the earth certainly that is something we have to factor in we are kind of looking from a distance about what’s going on inside the Earth but through various kinds of measurements and studies they can make some some interpretation of what’s going on inside the Earth if you have some more questions feel free to bring them up afterwards we’re out of time today this is our last lesson on the flood once again there’s many more questions related to the flood that I’m sure you have or that you’ve heard or maybe you will hear don’t feel bad if you don’t know the answer it’s totally fine for you to say someone I’m not sure but here’s a great place you can go or I’m not sure I’d like to do a little bit more research and get back to you that’s actually a gesture of sincerity I think that that would be really helpful but we hopefully today and from the other flood lessons gotten to basic knowledge so we can answer some some of the common skeptical questions when it comes to the flood you can find more on answers in genesis.org you can come talk with me afterwards we have one more week with our memory verse uh we’ll have to skip the application to questions but I’ll show you the memory I’ll show you the memory verse once again and then we’ll get a new memory verse next week somehow disconnected let me try that again there it is maybe you’ve memorized it already I was going to recite it today but we’re out of time we’ll do that and next class and we get our new memory verse next week though we move on to our next C in the seven C’s confusion fusionab battle because that only takes place about 100 Years After the flood let’s close in prayer oh God we we are in awe that your power God you are in total control of the earth and Lord it is only by your mercy that these plates don’t go out of control today and Lord that the Earth is not flooded once again but Lord you keep your promises and the rainbow is a reminder of that God we thank you for your gospel we thank you that there is good news that you are not simply the powerful judge but that you made a way and made a way for us to know you and be reconciled to you thank you Lord God bless the rest of service today amen