Learning About Catastrophe

2 Peter 2:4-5
“For if God did not spare the angels who sinned, but cast them down to hell and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved for judgement, and did not spare the ancient world, but saved Noah, one of eight people, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood on the world of the ungodly…”

The great Flood at the time of Noah was more than simply the world’s biggest rainstorm. Scripture paints the picture of an upheaval across the face of the Earth that combined floods, landslides, volcanoes and earthquakes. As the ground literally danced with earthquakes of unimaginable intensity, hills and mountains would have flowed like pudding.

Is it possible that modern science has been blind to evidences of such upheaval? A few generations ago, geologists who believe in evolution saw no notable evidence of any great floods on Earth. Gradually they began to conclude that much of our sedimentary rock is the result of great floods.

More recently, they have started to notice evidence that mountains can literally collapse and flow like pudding. Some landslides are simple landslides where part of a mountain collapses. But sometimes the collapse turns into a flow that travels for many miles, even across flat ground. Take, for example, the Blackhawk slide at the southern edge of the Mojave Desert. Here, a mass of marble fell 1.5 kilometers down and then flowed another 9 kilometers across the nearly flat desert. One description says that it looks as if the mountain simply turned to chocolate milk. Once scientists understood that this happens, they began to recognize evidence showing that this phenomenon is not unusual.

As our scientific knowledge increases, the history recorded in the Bible becomes more dramatically illustrated – not disproved!

Prayer:
I pray, Lord, that as we near the time of Your return, I would be prepared, as was Noah for the flood. Help me to more intensely make my preparations, beginning today, so that I will not be caught unaware. Let my trust never waver from the forgiveness of sins that You have won for me. Amen.

Notes:
Monastersky, Richard. 1992. “When mountains fall.” Science News, v. 142, Aug. 29. p. 136.