Ground
Zero – Noah's Flood
by Phillip Day
There are literally scores of legends existing throughout
the world which tell of a cataclysmic flood that destroyed civilisation.
Though these stories are ancient and from all parts of the world, they
do appear to describe the same event. Dr. John Morris writes:
“Over the years, I have collected more than 200
of these stories, originally reported by various missionaries, anthropologists
and ethnologists. While the differences are not always trivial, the common
essence of the stories is instructive as compiled below:
- Is there a favored family? 88%
- Were they forewarned? 66%
- Is flood due to wickedness of man? 66%
- Is catastrophe only a flood? 95%
- Was flood global? 95%
- Is survival due to a boat? 70%
- Were animals also saved? 67%
- Did animals play any part? 73%
- Did survivors land on a mountain? 57%
- Was the geography local? 82%
- Were birds sent out? 35%
- Was the rainbow mentioned? 7%
- Did survivors offer a sacrifice? 13%
- Were specifically eight persons saved? 9%
Putting them all back together, the story would
read something like this: Once there was a worldwide flood, sent by God
to judge the wickedness of man. But there was one righteous family which
was forewarned of the coming flood. They built a boat on which they survived
the flood along with the animals. As the flood ended, their boat landed
on a high mountain from which they descended and repopulated the whole
Earth.”1
This is the tale taught at Sunday school today. Another
source writes:
“Stories of the Nochian Flood have been found in
almost every civilization in the world. Dr. Aaron Smith of the University
of Greensboro collected a complete history of the literature on Noah’s
Ark. He found 80,000 works in 72 languages about the Flood. About 70,000
of them mention the wreckage of the Ark.” 2
In the Chaldean given by Berosus, Xisuthrus is saved
from the Flood by building a boat. In Hindu legend, it was Satyavrata
in the ark. The Shoo-King, one of China’s ancient sacred books, describes
the ‘Great Water’ reaching the tops of the mountains. The Parsees say
that when the Earth became wicked, God destroyed it with a deluge. The
Zend-Avesta, the oldest sacred book of the Persians, describes the Flood.
In Greek mythology, it is Deucalion with his wife, Pyrrha, who step forth
from the ark onto a new and desolate Earth. In Celt-lore, Drayan and Droyvach
survive the Flood to colonise Britain. The Scandanavian Edda speaks of
Coxcox, his wife and six others surviving a worldwide Flood. These and
many other tales from countries all over the world substantially agree
with the Bible’s story of Noah and his family surviving the destruction
of the old world and re-establishing the new.
Some scientists believe that the Flood was a local
event (the Black Sea theory). In that case, why instruct Noah to build
an ark if the Flood will be regional? Why not tell Noah and his family
to move to a different location? God does not. The plans for the Ark’s
monumental construction are passed to Noah, who is told he has a grace
period in which to build it, during which he must attempt to persuade
the population to clean up their act and repent (1 Peter 3:18-20). The
inference is that Noah preached on the Flood for 120 years (Gen 6:3; Jasher
5:11), so the Flood was, by no stretch of the imagination, unknown to
the inhabitants of the Earth at that time. They were doubtless staggered
when it happened.
In Origins, I cover the theories I believe hold
the best scientific merit for what may have happened, based on the observational
evidence left to us today. I have collected Flood evidence for the past
twenty years and believe it is possible to get close to the truth. We
have colossal and very bizarre evidence, some of which we I cover in my
new book, Origins. We have those mammoths and ‘dragons’ (dinosaurs)
buried in compromising positions by the thousand. A whale on its tail
at Lompoc. Billions of clams found in the closed position indicating they
were buried alive, even on mountains. Giant dragonflies, cockroaches,
flies and other insects found fossilised. Flood legends all over the world.
A population of just 6.7 billion today, pointing to only 4,000–5,000 years’
growth. Some scientists surmise a 50% higher oxygen content on the pre-Flood
Earth and a uniform, warm climate.3 An Ice Age. Ice covering
lush, semi-tropical vegetation, the ice caps. A wandering magnetic pole.
The Earth tilted over at 23.5o, beset with Chandler’s Wobble, suggesting
something hit it. Damage all over the moon, and yet no-one has ever seen
a major impact on the moon. Damage on Mars and Mercury. The rings of Saturn
still separating in the Poynting-Robertson effect, indicating they are
not billions of years old. Dozens of anthropic indicators pointing to
a young Earth. Huge forests and coal deposits found under hundreds of
feet of ice in Alaska and Antarctica. And on and on and on.
Whatever caused the Flood, massive damage to the Earth’s
crust would have resulted, releasing the power of continental super-quakes,
huge tsunamis and constant volcanic activity from the Earth’s furious
energies. Today the planet is still settling, as evidenced by moving tectonic
plates and continued earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and tsunamis. The
disaster in Haiti this week is yet another example of this. Earth has
been cracked badly.
On Everest, petrified clams have been discovered in
the closed position above 20,000 feet. You’ve got to be able to explain
that. Elsewhere, giant oysters have been discovered 11.5 feet wide. The
Express Times reports:
“Palaeontologist Arturo Vildezola rests on a giant
fossilized oyster Tuesday in Acostambo, Peru, where more than 500 fossilized
giant oysters were found 2 miles above sea level. The discovery of the
oysters, which are 11.5 feet wide and 661 pounds, reinforces the scientific
theory that 200 million years ago the Andes Mountains were covered by
the ocean.”4
Or perhaps it reinforces the theory that these oysters
grew large in the unique pre-Flood conditions (‘Eden’), were caught up
in the Flood and buried alive in soft sediment (the closed position),
and then the mountains arose. Other archaeological finds paint an extraordinary
picture:
“Fossil ferns have been discovered the size of trees
and horsetails once shot up over thirty feet tall. There were cockroaches
about two feet long, as well as crickets, grasshoppers and monstrous spiders
that thrived in a land of endless summer. Dragonflies with a three-foot
wingspan skimmed over swamps in which eight-foot beavers and sixty-foot
cattails flourished. Beetles once grew to be the size of a baseball mitt
and climbed up conifers that towered a hundred feet high. The fossil record
is replete with examples of immense creatures that flourished in the past.
Fossil hunters in Uruguay uncovered the remains of a one-ton rat. The
rodent would have been roughly the size of an economy car and its head
alone would have been larger than a cow! Huge rodents like the giant guinea
pig grew as big as a modern rhinoceros while the ancient rhino grew as
big as a two-story building (there is an 18 foot tall rhino in the University
of Nebraska Museum.)”5
In Origins I cover the canopy theory which some scientists
believe may account for the longevity, fabled size of pre-Flood humans
and creatures, extreme proliferation of vegetation discovered, and one
of the destructive forces of the Flood I discuss in the book. Kent Hovind
cites the discovery of a baleen whale skeleton 80 feet long found buried
at an upward angle in diatomaceous earth at Lompoc, California, near the
San Andreas Fault. How long would a whale have to balance on its tail
for the layers to deposit around it under evolutionary processes? What
other explanation properly accounts for this find?
“Whales, dolphins, trillions of fish and even pterodactyls
have been found preserved in diatomaceous [fossil] earth.”6
Hovind believes the lack of human fossils can best
be explained by the fact that humans would have been the last to die in
the Flood, would not have been buried, and thus rotted apart. Nevertheless,
about 4,000 sets of fossilized human remains have been found. Around the
world, fossilized graveyards are common for dinosaurs and smaller animals.
Most of the carcasses rotted. Dr. Don Patton writes:
“Skeletons of ten perfectly modern humans have been
excavated from fifty eight feet down in the Dakota Sandstone, over an
area spanning about 50 by 100 feet. This formation is a member of the
Lower Cretaceous, supposedly 140 million years old. It is known for its
dinosaurs and is the same formation found at Dinosaur National Monument.
At least four of the ten individuals are female. One is an infant. Some
of the bones are articulated.7 Some are not, appearing
to have been washed into place. No obvious tools or artifacts were found
associated with the bones. The bulldozer driver who uncovered the first
bones in 1971 expresses certainty that there were no tunnels or cracks
in the extremely hard overlying layers of rock. The bones are partially
replaced with malachite (a green mineral) and turquoise, thus appropriately
named ‘Malachite Man’.
The evidence appears obvious that these 10 men,
women and children were buried rapidly by some catastrophe, like a flood.
Articulated skeletons indicate rapid burial. Some propose to explain these
bones by arguing that they were mining when the mine collapsed. However
there is no indication of tunnels, and woman and small children would
not likely be included in a mining operation. Additionally, no tools have
been found and there are no crushed bones which would be expected if the
mine caved in. Another explanation is that this is a mass grave and they
were buried. This cannot be true because the living would have to dig
a grave 50-100 feet deep through extremely hard sandstone layers. The
modern mining operation was halted in the 1970’s because the sandstone
was so hard it was destroying the bulldozers. These humans appear to have
been buried by the same catastrophe that buried dinosaurs in this continent-spanning
formation. Humans and dinosaurs must have lived at the same time.”8
Rush hour
During the Flood, swirling trees would have formed huge log-jams and become
buried and compressed into coal. As the water relocated to the opening
trenches and the waters assuaged, the washout would have been dramatic.
If you take the video tour of the Grand Canyon at the end of this article,
you’ll see clear evidence of this in the canyon walls and plain.
Mountain ranges follow coastlines. Dr. Walt Brown believes
this is because they were formed at the same time. If you examine the
continental shelves, it appears there was less water than today. Russia
and Alaska would have been connected. Australia to Indonesia. Ireland
and Britain connected to Europe, and so on. In the centuries following
the Flood, as the ice melted and raised the ocean levels, the geography
of the continents would change. Some lands, such Australia, Britain and
Ireland become islands with their indigenous animals. Ongoing erosion
continues. Niagara Falls breaks rocks every year and moves back, carving
its canyon. How long has it been doing that? Thanet was still an island
off Kent, England at the time of the Battle of Hastings (1066). The silting
continued after, and the last ships navigated the Wantsum Channel in the
1600’s before Thanet became part of mainland Britain. The sea is a global
system. If Thanet had been around for ‘millions of years’, why did the
Wantsum not close up long ago because of the deposition of silts?
Some hills exhibit what look like water flows and fans coming down the slopes, of the kind produced when water shapes its path. Almost all such rock is classified as ‘sedimentary’ - in other words, flood sediment. Angled strata bend in some of these rock formations. Hard rock does not bend this way without cracking. As you’ll see, curving strata run for miles at the Grand Canyon, compressed as drying mud into sedimentary rock. Sandstone and limestone features are an obvious product of the Flood, says geologist John Morris, and indeed contain in their womb billions of fossils in silent witness to the violence of this worldwide disaster.9
The end
One can only imagine what it must have been like to witness such incredible
forces first-hand. Panic must have set in among the Earth’s inhabitants
as everyone – man, woman, child and beast – attempted to flee the rising
waters until there was no high ground left to run to. It could have taken
months for the last creatures to die. The eight on the boat could only
have an inkling of the huge changes underway below them. As the Earth’s
crust folded and sank, great ocean trenches opened, into which the waters
rushed. Massive forces upthrust new geological features into mountains,
which even today bear the horizontal striations of hydrologic sorting
and washout. Animals would have been buried in sludge according to density.
Evolutionists maintain that birds evolved last because their remains are
found on top, yet birds are the last creatures to die in a Flood and their
bones are hollow so they float. Dr. John Morris writes:
“Evidence for catastrophism
abounds…. Many leading geologists now even identify themselves as ‘neo-catastrophists’,
and have begun to invoke large-scale, dynamic processes for the production
of geologic layers and Earth features. Consider for a moment the perspective
of Dr.Derek Ager, former President of the British Geologists’ Association.
While attempting to distance himself from creationist geologists who believe
in Noah’s Flood, he has spearheaded a revival in geology back towards
flood processes. “The hurricane, the flood or tsunami may do more in an
hour or a day than the ordinary processes of nature have achieved in a
thousand years…. In other words, the history of any one part of the Earth,
like the life of a soldier, consists of long periods of boredom and short
periods of terror.”’10
This is hugely significant.
Some geologists have come to view the geologic layers – for instance in
the Grand and Bryce Canyons – as hydrologically (water) sorted strata,
yet continue to hold the view that the Earth is billions of years old.
The standard evolutionary stance is uniformitarian – that such layers
were formed slowly and progressively with the speed of processes observed
today (wind, rain, storm erosion, etc.). Morris disputes this:
“One way to show that only
a short time elasped between the deposition of one bed and the deposition
of an overlying bed is to show that the various surface features present
on the top surface of the lower bed would not last long if exposed. Therefore,
these features had to be covered rather quickly before they had a chance
to erode or be destroyed.
One very common feature,
seen in many rock layers in many locations, is the presence of ‘ripple
marks’, formed as water moves over a surface. These can frequently be
seen on a beach after the tide has receded, and can also be seen on the
ocean bottom where a particular current direction dominates. In many other
situations we see what has been called ‘raindrop impressions’, although
these ‘raindrop marks’ may actually be blisters formed as air bubbles
escaped from rapidly deposited sediments under water. Animal tracks are
also common. In any case, these features, which had to be formed in soft
sediment, are very fragile and if present on any surface, unconsidated
material or hard rock, will not last very long. Keep in mind that almost
every sedimentary rock layer was deposited under water. Every geologist
agrees with this.”11
GRAND
CANYON TOUR
Why not make up your own mind? Using the last FPV HD video technology,
have a cruise around Arizona’s Grand Canyon and view the hydrologically
sorted layers for yourself (best viewed in full-screen). There was a catastrophe
here. Something big happened. And the tragedy in Haiti this week, I believe,
only points to further residual effects of the greatest catastrophe ever
to have befallen our planet.
© Origins by Phillip Day
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2.www.allaboutcreation.org/global-flood-faq.htm
3.“Many Arctic dinosaurs have been found. The bones of at least three dinosaur species and two other reptiles have been recovered from a site in the Alaskan tundra by researchers from the University of California at Berkeley. The dinosaur bones were first discovered at the site by Shell Oil Company in 1961, but Shell did not reveal the find until last year. Researchers say the fossil finds indicate both young and old dinosaurs were at the Alaska site in great numbers, and represent the first find of dinosaurs at such high, cold altitudes. This adds further weight to the idea that the Earth has had a period of time which was far more uniform in warm tropical-like conditions than it is at the present.” (Science News, 31st August 1985)
4.Express Times, (Eastern PA), 2nd March 2001, p.A2
5. www.genesispark.com/genpark/large/large.htm
6. Hovind, Kent, Creation seminar series, op. cit.
7.Connected together as in life.
8. www.bible.ca/tracks/articulated-fossils.htm
