The Bible describes the creation of the sky this way, "And God said, "Let there be a vault between the waters to separate water from water." So God made the vault and separated the water under the vault from the water above it. And it was so. God called the vault "sky." And there was evening, and there was morning-the second day."
According to the Bible, there was once a water vapor canopy above the 'vault' or sky that enveloped the globe creating a worldwide greenhouse effect. This would have produced a sub tropical climate from pole to pole. Rich vegetation would have covered the earth everywhere. This water vapor canopy would have filtered out harmful ultraviolet radiation, allowing men and animals to live much longer. This primitive environment was destroyed by the flood described in Genesis,
"In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the second month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep burst open, and the floodgates of the sky were opened. And the rain fell upon the earth for forty days and forty nights....
According to the Bible, there was once a water vapor canopy above the 'vault' or sky that enveloped the globe creating a worldwide greenhouse effect. This would have produced a sub tropical climate from pole to pole. Rich vegetation would have covered the earth everywhere. This water vapor canopy would have filtered out harmful ultraviolet radiation, allowing men and animals to live much longer. This primitive environment was destroyed by the flood described in Genesis,
"In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the second month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep burst open, and the floodgates of the sky were opened. And the rain fell upon the earth for forty days and forty nights....
And the waters prevailed and increased greatly upon the earth... so that all the high mountains everywhere under the heavens were covered.... And the water prevailed upon the earth one hundred and fifty days.... and the water receded steadily from the earth.... And in the second month, on the twenty-seventh day of the month, the earth was dry."
What Caused the Flood?
What might have caused the flood? For Christians the obvious answer is the judgment of God against wicked mankind. But how did it take place? Given what we know from geology, geography, and climatology, we might construct the following scenario:
We must start by acknowledging that no present day phenomenon can account for the massive forces of nature that accompanied the flood. The world that exists today is drastically different from the one God created. For one thing, we have four seasons. The first time seasons are mentioned in the Bible is after the flood. After Noah and his family disembarked from the Ark, God said,
"As long as the earth endures,
seedtime and harvest,
cold and heat,
summer and winter,
day and night
will never cease."
The four seasons were a new feature of the post-flood world. What could have caused the seasons? The seasons exist because the earth is tipped at an angle of 22.5 degrees on its axis. It is possible that the earth spun on an upright axis before the flood. Some cataclysmic event may have changed the axis in order to cause the breakup of the waters above the 'vault' or sky and the resulting deluge of rain. One such possible event was the monster asteroid that made the crater off the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico. Such a collision may have been powerful enough to tip the earth on its axis causing the breakup of the celestial waters and starting the cycle of seasons mentioned for the first time in Genesis 8:22.
The force of an asteroid would have triggered tremendous earthquakes for the first time in earth's history, causing the waters of the deep to burst forth as described in Genesis 7:11, "In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, on the seventeenth day of the second month-on that day all the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened. And rain fell on the earth forty days and forty nights."
Onset of the Ice Age
Volcanoes would have begun spewing ash into the atmosphere, obscuring the sun, cooling the earth, and bringing torrential rains. Michael Oard, author of "Frozen in Time" says, "Interbedded within the sedimentary rocks is evidence of incredible volcanic activity that has no parallel today...It appears that at the end of the Flood the world was covered by huge volumes of volcanic ash and gas that had spewed into the atmosphere. The abundant ash and gas trapped in the stratosphere would act as an "anti-greenhouse. Instead of warming the earth, it would have reflected sunlight back into space and cooled it."
At the same time the land masses cooled with falling ambient temperatures, the warm waters that had been released from underground would have caused an increase in the temperature of the seas. The result would have been decades of extraordinary snowfalls as the warm air masses from the sea met the cold air over land in the higher latitudes. This began the formation of massive sheets of ice that covered North America, Europe and Northern Asia. Mr. Oard says that the amount of volcanic ash released was so great that it caused even summer temperatures to cool enough to sustain glaciation over a period of many years.
Where Did All The Water Go?
The reason water covered all the dry land during the forty days of rainfall and subsequent runoff was that drainage could not keep pace with the huge volumes of water produced by the collapse of the water vapor canopy and the release of the subterranean waters. As the book of Genesis says regarding what happened after the flood, "the water receded steadily from the earth." So even though water reached as high as the tops of the highest mountains, it is not as though the entire earth was a lake. There were still ocean basins adequate to accommodate the runoff from the flood.
So where did all the water go that covered the earth? Given the median depth of the Ocean at 15,000 feet and the median height of dry land at 2250 feet, just a moderate rise in the levels of the oceans would have created enough overflow to cover the entire landmass of earth. These waters would have been readily absorbed by the oceans once the deluge stopped, raising sea levels and covering large portions of what had been dry land before the flood.
Much of the water was locked in massive glaciers that covered the northern hemisphere as a result of the sudden onslaught of prolonged cold weather following the flood. Geologists tell us that the oceans were 120 meters (over 500 feet) lower during the ice age, exposing large portions of the continental shelves. Anthropologists agree, surmising that the North American continent was connected by a 1000 mile wide land bridge to Siberia over which primitive populations migrated. Today this land mass is buried beneath 100 to 165 feet of the Bering Strait. Given this land bridge was higher than sea level to begin with, the rise in sea level after the Ice Age would have been sufficient to accommodate all of the glacial runoff produced by warming temperatures. Many generations must have elapsed between the flood and the creation of the Bering Strait to give ancient peoples enough time to migrate all the way from Mt. Ararat in Turkey to Siberia and on to the North American Continent.
Fossil fuels are found in many parts of the world offshore along continental shelves. Since fossils are the ancient remains of plant and animal life, it is clear that the continental shelves were once exposed.
Non-Repeating Natural Phenomenon
Scientists seek to explain all natural phenomena in terms of familiar forces. They say the present is the key to the past. But the natural forces that caused the ice age are nowhere in evidence today. Such cooling could only be caused by natural forces on a scale we have never seen in historical times. And that makes sense because the flood was a unique outpouring of God's wrath that He promised never to repeat.
The Apostle Peter describes the nay sayers this way, "Above all, you must understand that in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires. They will say, "Where is this 'coming' he promised? Ever since our ancestors died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation." But they deliberately forget that long ago by God's word the heavens came into being and the earth was formed out of water and by water. By these waters also the world of that time was deluged and destroyed. By the same word the present heavens and earth are reserved for fire, being kept for the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly."
Article Source: Craig L Olson
What Caused the Flood?
What might have caused the flood? For Christians the obvious answer is the judgment of God against wicked mankind. But how did it take place? Given what we know from geology, geography, and climatology, we might construct the following scenario:
We must start by acknowledging that no present day phenomenon can account for the massive forces of nature that accompanied the flood. The world that exists today is drastically different from the one God created. For one thing, we have four seasons. The first time seasons are mentioned in the Bible is after the flood. After Noah and his family disembarked from the Ark, God said,
"As long as the earth endures,
seedtime and harvest,
cold and heat,
summer and winter,
day and night
will never cease."
The four seasons were a new feature of the post-flood world. What could have caused the seasons? The seasons exist because the earth is tipped at an angle of 22.5 degrees on its axis. It is possible that the earth spun on an upright axis before the flood. Some cataclysmic event may have changed the axis in order to cause the breakup of the waters above the 'vault' or sky and the resulting deluge of rain. One such possible event was the monster asteroid that made the crater off the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico. Such a collision may have been powerful enough to tip the earth on its axis causing the breakup of the celestial waters and starting the cycle of seasons mentioned for the first time in Genesis 8:22.
The force of an asteroid would have triggered tremendous earthquakes for the first time in earth's history, causing the waters of the deep to burst forth as described in Genesis 7:11, "In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, on the seventeenth day of the second month-on that day all the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened. And rain fell on the earth forty days and forty nights."
Onset of the Ice Age
Volcanoes would have begun spewing ash into the atmosphere, obscuring the sun, cooling the earth, and bringing torrential rains. Michael Oard, author of "Frozen in Time" says, "Interbedded within the sedimentary rocks is evidence of incredible volcanic activity that has no parallel today...It appears that at the end of the Flood the world was covered by huge volumes of volcanic ash and gas that had spewed into the atmosphere. The abundant ash and gas trapped in the stratosphere would act as an "anti-greenhouse. Instead of warming the earth, it would have reflected sunlight back into space and cooled it."
At the same time the land masses cooled with falling ambient temperatures, the warm waters that had been released from underground would have caused an increase in the temperature of the seas. The result would have been decades of extraordinary snowfalls as the warm air masses from the sea met the cold air over land in the higher latitudes. This began the formation of massive sheets of ice that covered North America, Europe and Northern Asia. Mr. Oard says that the amount of volcanic ash released was so great that it caused even summer temperatures to cool enough to sustain glaciation over a period of many years.
Where Did All The Water Go?
The reason water covered all the dry land during the forty days of rainfall and subsequent runoff was that drainage could not keep pace with the huge volumes of water produced by the collapse of the water vapor canopy and the release of the subterranean waters. As the book of Genesis says regarding what happened after the flood, "the water receded steadily from the earth." So even though water reached as high as the tops of the highest mountains, it is not as though the entire earth was a lake. There were still ocean basins adequate to accommodate the runoff from the flood.
So where did all the water go that covered the earth? Given the median depth of the Ocean at 15,000 feet and the median height of dry land at 2250 feet, just a moderate rise in the levels of the oceans would have created enough overflow to cover the entire landmass of earth. These waters would have been readily absorbed by the oceans once the deluge stopped, raising sea levels and covering large portions of what had been dry land before the flood.
Much of the water was locked in massive glaciers that covered the northern hemisphere as a result of the sudden onslaught of prolonged cold weather following the flood. Geologists tell us that the oceans were 120 meters (over 500 feet) lower during the ice age, exposing large portions of the continental shelves. Anthropologists agree, surmising that the North American continent was connected by a 1000 mile wide land bridge to Siberia over which primitive populations migrated. Today this land mass is buried beneath 100 to 165 feet of the Bering Strait. Given this land bridge was higher than sea level to begin with, the rise in sea level after the Ice Age would have been sufficient to accommodate all of the glacial runoff produced by warming temperatures. Many generations must have elapsed between the flood and the creation of the Bering Strait to give ancient peoples enough time to migrate all the way from Mt. Ararat in Turkey to Siberia and on to the North American Continent.
Fossil fuels are found in many parts of the world offshore along continental shelves. Since fossils are the ancient remains of plant and animal life, it is clear that the continental shelves were once exposed.
Non-Repeating Natural Phenomenon
Scientists seek to explain all natural phenomena in terms of familiar forces. They say the present is the key to the past. But the natural forces that caused the ice age are nowhere in evidence today. Such cooling could only be caused by natural forces on a scale we have never seen in historical times. And that makes sense because the flood was a unique outpouring of God's wrath that He promised never to repeat.
The Apostle Peter describes the nay sayers this way, "Above all, you must understand that in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires. They will say, "Where is this 'coming' he promised? Ever since our ancestors died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation." But they deliberately forget that long ago by God's word the heavens came into being and the earth was formed out of water and by water. By these waters also the world of that time was deluged and destroyed. By the same word the present heavens and earth are reserved for fire, being kept for the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly."
Article Source: Craig L Olson
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