A few thousand years after creation and the Curse the people of Earth had grown to be very wicked and violent and God decided to judge them through a massive Climate Catastrophe, which caused global depopulation of all air-breathing land creatures including mankind. The great global Flood in Noah’s day was in fact judgment on all creation.
In preparation for the Flood God commanded Noah to take breeding pairs of all air-breathing, land animals and winged creatures onto the Ark to preserve them for repopulating the post Flood world. If the Flood was going to be only a local event that makes no sense at all.
The key biblical text reads as follows:
11 In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of the heavens were opened. 12 And rain fell upon the earth forty days and forty nights. 13 On the very same day Noah and his sons, Shem and Ham and Japheth, and Noah’s wife and the three wives of his sons with them entered the ark, 14 they and every beast, according to its kind, and all the livestock according to their kinds, and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth, according to its kind, and every bird, according to its kind, every winged creature. 15 They went into the ark with Noah, two and two of all flesh in which there was the breath of life. 16 And those that entered, male and female of all flesh, went in as God had commanded him. And the LORD shut him in.
Genesis 7:11-12 ESV
The Earth was broken up with massive volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, mountain forming events and massively high tsunamis. The Ark was built according to the Creator’s design to withstand and survive that catastrophe in the global floodwaters.
It rained for 40 days and nights but more importantly the great deep was opened up and water from the oceans moved across the continents. They covered the highest mountains by the 150 day mark of the Flood (Genesis 7:19). After that time the waters receded off the Earth (Genesis 8:3), a process which took seven more months.
As that water moved back into the deep ocean basins towards the end of the Flood the ocean basins sank as the mountains rose. In this passage from Psalm 104 we read:
6 You covered it with the deep as with a garment; The waters were standing above the mountains. 7 At Your rebuke they fled, At the sound of Your thunder they hurried away. 8 The mountains rose; the valleys sank down To the place which You established for them. 9 You set a boundary that they may not pass over, So that they will not return to cover the earth.
Psalms 104:6-9 NASB95
Analysis of the original Hebrew, as well as Greek and some other translations of Psalm 104:8, and the context, confirm that this key verse is referring to earth movements (tectonic activity) at the close of, and soon after, the Flood when the mountains rose and the waters retreated. This the conclusion of Hebrew expert Charles Taylor. Here is a pdf of his 1998 paper.
Differential Vertical Tectonics
The Earth was totally covered with water, so the only way for the water to drain from the continents into the oceans is for the continents to rise and the ocean floors to sink as described in Psalm 104. Mike Oard described the process.
The top part of the earth, called the crust, sits on top of the mantle (about 3,000 km (1,900 miles) thick), which in turn sits on the earth’s iron core. The continental crust is about 40 km (25 miles) thick, while the thickness of the oceanic crust is only around 7 km (5 miles). Up-and-down movement of the crust during Noah’s Flood, called differential vertical tectonics, explains how the waters drained from the continents. On a smaller scale, mountain ranges would have risen and valleys sunk.
As the continental crust rose and the ocean floors sank, the floodwater covering the globe drained off, causing massive erosion of the continents. By the time the floodwaters had fully receded, the surface had been transformed into its present shape. After that, Noah and all those with him left the Ark, 371 days after the Flood had begun (Genesis 8:18–19).
As the ocean basins began to sink, the water flowed across the continents in wide sheets, shaving the surface flat. Geologists call such features ‘planation surfaces’. The runoff eroded the uplifting mountains, transporting the rock debris across the continent, and rounding any hard, resistant rocks into boulders and gravel. Large deposits of well-rounded quartzite rocks are found at numerous places in the northwest United States and adjacent Canada.
Toward the end of the Flood, mountain ranges began to emerge above the water and the runoff became more channelized. These flowed across mountain ranges, ridges, and plateaus, eroding gorges from one side of the barrier to the other, a feature called a water gap, through which a river or stream now passes.
Mike Oard’s model is called Differential Vertical Tectonics and it explains a lot. Below I describe John Baumgardner’s model of Catastrophic Plate Tectonics. That also has good observational evidence and explanatory power to explain the events of the flood. Both models are based on real physics. However these are models and should be treated as such. Some aspects of both models could also be true. They describe different aspects of the Earth’s crust and oceans during the Flood. However, we should hold to models lightly while holding to God’s Word tightly.
Catastrophic Plate Tectonics
Dr. John Baumgardner is the primary author of the development of the theory of Catastrophic Plate Tectonics (CPT) as a mechanism of the Flood. In the following I have excerpted from an excellent summary of CPT from Part 3 of Jane Albright’s “Noah’s Flood – The Bible, the Science & the Controversy”, which may be found here as a pdf.
Uniformitarian Plate Tectonics (PT), the dominant theory of today’s secular geologists, attempts to explain the stages of drift of the continental plates carrying the continents from a single supercontinent some 250 million years ago to the current configuration we see today. See Fig. 6 below. Catastrophic Plate Tectonics (CPT) is similar but with a difference in that CPT occurs rapidly moving the continents in approximately one year of the biblical deluge.
PT seeks to describe the observed motion of the earth’s relatively thin and rigid outer-most surface, referred to as the lithosphere. The lithosphere is viewed as comprising multiple tectonic plates, which move relative to each other atop the
underlying rock (the mantle) at about the same rate that your fingernail grows. In school, many of us learned (and some schools still teach) that this movement is in response to conveyor belt-like circulation in the mantle below. Today, however, geologists believe that mantle convection is secondary to “slab pull” (See Fig. 4). In other words, the main force responsible for moving the plates is the weight of the slabs that fall downward into the mantle.As the plates descend, magma (melted rock inside the earth) rises up through faults (cracks in the crust) at the Mid-Ocean Ridge (MOR) and solidifies to form new ocean floor, which then moves horizontally in opposite directions away from the ridge. This hypothesized formation of new oceanic lithosphere is called seafloor spreading.
If new ocean lithosphere is being formed and the earth’s size stays the same, old ocean lithosphere must dive back into the earth somewhere else, a process referred to as subduction.
Most subduction today is said to occur at the Pacific Ocean trenches, generating the earthquakes and volcanic activity associated with the Pacific Ocean’s “Ring of Fire.” PT is the currently accepted secular paradigm for geological processes, past and present, and is largely taught as fact in our schools and universities, despite known problems with the theory.
By definition, the uniformitarian framework of plate tectonics denies the occurrence of a past cataclysm such as a global flood, which could have rapidly created prominent features on Earth such as the MOR, ocean trenches, sedimentary layers averaging one mile in thickness on the continents, and the fossil record. Instead, PT maintains that these features are the products of millions and billions of years of tectonic movement.
In contrast to uniformitarian plate tectonics, advocates of Catastrophic Plate Tectonics (CPT) maintain that, although the basic processes of secular Plate Tectonic Theory, namely, seafloor spreading and subduction, are valid and can be observed today, these processes have not operated at near present rates over millions and billions of years. Instead, they assert that a vast amount of plate motion occurred during a tectonic upheaval only a few thousands of years ago as part of the Genesis Flood.
Many people are aware of the idea that the continents of the earth can be fitted together like a giant jigsaw puzzle. This idea is connected to the study of the mantle and crust of our planet in what is called plate tectonics. The earth’s continents are made of material that is lighter than the hot mantle material upon which they “float”.
Evolutionary earth scientists suppose that the plates have been moving for billions of years at a very slow rate. The rate of the movement of these plates today may be of the order of centimetres per year.
Modern uniformitarian geology posits that the “present is the key to the past”. Therefore they claim that one can extrapolate the very slow observed motion of the continents back over billions of years.
In [John Baumgardner’s] model the motion of the continental plates was not cm/year but much much faster during the Genesis flood such that the continents separated from a single supercontinent (Pangea) into what we have today. John [Baumgardner] developed his CPT model using supercomputers and a complex simulation of the entire planet. The model involves a physical process whereby the Earth’s sea floor was rapidly subducted causing a spreading of the mid-Atlantic ridge resulting in the movement of the Earth’s continents. This process started the global flood about 4,500 years ago and lasted for about one year.
Windows of Heaven Opened
In John Baumgardner’s CPT model the rain coming down from the windows of heaven was the result of superheated steam ejected from the mid-Atlantic ridge with some 60,000 km (40,000 mi) of volcanism. As the mid-Atlantic ridge rose up (as shown in Fig. 5) causing extruded magna to come in contact with the ocean waters, the hot magma instantly boiled the water which was ejected as steam under enormous pressure.
In my model the ‘waters above’ from Day 2 of creation week resulted in an inner ring of icy asteroid or cometary material in Earth orbit. See The Physics of Creation | Day 2. That inner ring might have looked something like that shown in Fig. 7. However in the illustration the size of the ring (or disk) is highly exaggerated. There is also a second disk much farther out beyond the orbit of Neptune of similar icy materials, which formed the Kuiper Belt, which has been in solar orbit since Day 4.
The key point of this model is that the Earth system was created in a gravitationally unstable equilibrium condition. This was part of the Creator’s foreseeing the future and He prepared for it. It is an out working of the established laws of physics and not any new physics.
At the commencement of the Flood the instability was resolved and the Earth system lost a lot of stored potential energy as the ‘waters above’ collapsed raining down from heaven. In addition the continental plates also developed a runaway subduction of the sea floor as the denser material was pulled into the mantle. This also was due to a created gravitational instability in the Earth’s crust/mantle from Day 3.
Rotational Axis of Earth
I have already discussed the tilt of the spin or rotational axis of the Earth in The Physics of Creation | Day 4. Here it is worth making some additional comments.
The Lord speaking through the prophet Isaiah pronounced judgment on the inhabitants of the land.
18 And it shall be, he who flees from the sound of terror shall fall into the pit. And he who comes up out of the midst of the pit shall be taken in the snare. For the windows from on high are opened, and the earth’s foundations quake.
19 The earth is breaking, breaking! The earth is crashing, crashing! The earth is tottering, tottering.
20 Like a drunken one, the earth is staggering, staggering! And it rocks to and fro like a hut. And its transgression is heavy on it; and it shall fall, and not rise again.Isaiah 24:18-20 KJ3
It is possible that this uses the same language as used of the great Flood. The transgressions or sins of man were great before the Flood as they were at the time of the prophet Isaiah. The windows on high (of heaven) are opened and the Earth’s foundations quake (were broken up).
The Earth here is a reference to the inhabitants but this may be an application of what physically happened at the Flood. The prophet would have been well familiar with the Flood events and he used the same language.
If so, the tilt of the Earth’s rotational axis may have increased. An increase means a greater angle from the normal to the ecliptic. This would make the differences in the seasons, summer and winter, much more significant (Psalms 74:17).
The rotational axis moved a little from its former position, which is called a precession. It now sits at about 23.4 degrees. Due to the enormous angular momentum of the planet any change in the orientation of the rotational axis would require some catastrophic intervention, even to move it just 1 degree. A single comet impact could not do it.
Perhaps all the icy cometary material impacted the spinning planet at the same time the ocean floors catastrophically sank. This sent a massive amount of heavy material into the mantle. It also pushed the ocean waters across the continents.
Slippage at the junction of the outer core and mantle created an enormous and chaotic disturbance in the liquid iron of the outer core. That had two possible effects.
One effect was a chaotic term added to the angular momentum of the planet causing the rotational axis to wobble, or nutate. That nutation is still occurring but greatly damped down to its current value. Hence a description of staggering like a drunk person is very apt.
Nutation is a small, irregular oscillation superimposed on the precession, with a current period of 18.6 years and an amplitude of approximately 9.2 arcseconds.
Another effect was turbulence in the electric currents in the outer core giving rise to magnetic-field-axis shifts including magnetic pole flips. That is when the magnetic North and South poles flip and that happened many times during the one year of the Flood.
Evidence for this is seen today in alternating magnetic polarization of minerals in some cooled lava flows. These have been interpreted by a creationist model to have occurred on a weekly timescale during the Flood. Details are found here. But that does not mean the rotational axis of the planet flipped. That would be impossible. Nothing living could survive that.
Satellite data from the European Space Agency (ESA) in recent times has provided evidence of a mysterious anomaly weakening Earth’s magnetic field, which is continuing to grow. The vast, developing phenomenon, called the South Atlantic Anomaly could be attributed to swirling motions in the molten iron inside Earth’s outer core. I asked Dr. Humphreys for a comment on this, he responded.
The present decrease in South Atlantic Anomaly is probably due to the decay and perturbation of small loops of current left over from the large disturbances in the flood year, when the field was reversing itself rapidly.
See also The Mysterious Weakening of Earth’s Magnetic Field Explained.
Post-Flood World
Considering the lush growing environment in the pre-Flood world how different is the post Flood world? That is easy to answer. Just look around you.
The whole planet is covered in fossil evidence in kilometer thick sedimentary layers, which were laid down by water. Fossils are evidence of death, death in the floodwaters.
The Flood was a Climate Catastrophe of the first order. What followed was an Ice Age and that took time for the Earth to recover from. Thus the quality of the environment for the living was greatly downgraded. Plants and animal life is in no way as abundant as it once was in the pre-Flood world.
That could be a reason why the effects of the Curse on human lifespans did not really kick in until the Flood. Besides genetic factors, environmental factors had a big bearing on that. See The Physics of the Curse.
However it is worth pointing out that dinosaurs went on the Ark, so dinosaurs must have come off the Ark. The biggest ones that are found as fossils are those buried in the floodwater sediments. No other flood has or will occur that could bury such creatures in the enormous numbers that have been found in fossil graveyards.
Perhaps the provision of various beasts on the Ark for the post-Flood world was a way the new founding population could feed itself up to the time that crops could be established.
Another text which seems to be in part describing the great Flood speaks of God supplying dragon meat for the survivors.
12 For God is my King of old, who works salvation in the midst of the land.
13 You broke the sea by Your strength; You burst the heads of sea-monsters [Hebrew: tannin, dragons] on the waters.
14 You crushed the heads of leviathan; You gave him to be food for the people of the wilderness.Psalms 74:12-14 KJ3
These are see-dragons or marine dinosaurs, but perhaps the same was true on the land. The Hebrew word לִויָתָן livyathan is left untranslated and rendered ‘leviathan’ in several English versions and texts.
Dragons lived on into the post-Flood world. The prophet Isaiah speaks of a marine dragon using language with a future tense, relative to his time.
1 In that day the LORD with his sore and great and strong sword shall punish leviathan the piercing serpent, even leviathan that crooked serpent; and he shall slay the dragon that is in the sea.
Isaiah 27:1 AKJV
The book of Job describes two different creatures that could be classed as dinosaurs: leviathan and behemoth.
1 Can you draw out the leviathan with a hook, or hold down his tongue with a cord? … 15 The rows of shields [scales] are his pride, shut up with a tight seal; 16 each one is close to another that no air can come between them;17 they are joined to one another; they clasp each other, and they cannot be separated. 18 His sneezings flash forth light, and his eyes are as the eyelids of the dawn. 19 Out of his mouth go burning torches; sparks of fire fly out. 20 Smoke goes out of his nostrils like a pot breathed out and reeds. 21 His breath kindles coals and the flame goes out from his mouth.
Job 41:1, 15-21 KJ3
The Hebrew word לִויָתָן livyathan (leviathan) is used for a fire-breathing dragon creature in Job 41. It had body armour made of scales and it breathed out smoke and fire. The description is the classic fire-breathing dragon of folk lore. Well, why not if they were once real living creatures?
Saint George killing a dragon is a story in Christian tradition that dates back more than a millennium. There may have been a element of truth in that, though the story morphed over time.
And then there is the behemoth!
15 Behold now behemoth, which I made with you; he eats grass as an ox.
16 See now, his strength is in his loins, and his force is in the navel of his belly.
17 He moves his tail like a cedar: the sinews of his stones are wrapped together.
18 His bones are as strong pieces of brass; his bones are like bars of iron.
19 He is the chief of the ways of God: he that made him can make his sword to approach to him.Job 40:15-19
The Hebrew word בְּהֵמוֹת bhemowth is left untranslated and rendered ‘behemoth’ in English in KJV and ESV and others. The note in ESV is that it is “a large animal, exact identity unknown”.
The description in the passage above sure sounds like a large sauropod dinosaur, a herbivore like the diplodocus.
Those sauropods were the largest land animals and fit description in Job 40. It also make more sense that they could survive in the lush plant environments that existed in the pre-Flood world but not in sparse post-Flood world. It is no wonder that they died off post-Flood. And those ones would never have been fossilised because there was no rapid flood burial event like the great deluge in Noah’s time.
The biblical records suggest a progressive trend towards a general degradation of the natural world from the creation to the present time. That is consistent with the 2nd Law of decay and the increase of sin and the concomitant actions of men.
Nevertheless the Creator, is all knowing and sees the future. He used the great Flood to providentially provide for mankind in the world that followed. He also provided an abundance of fossils all over the planet as evidence of His judgment on mankind.
Related Reading
- He Lays Up the Depth in Storehouses
- God’s Promise to All Mankind: Earth Will Never Again Be Globally Covered by Water
- As in the Days of Noah the Flood Waters are Rising
- So Shall Also the Coming of the Son of Man Be
- Documentary Film: The Ark and the Darkness
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