The Fossilized Hats

Luke 19:40
“And He answered and said unto them, I tell you that, if these should hold their peace, the stones would immediately cry out.”

How long does it take to make a fossil? Most people think that it takes a long time, and that’s partly because we have been repeatedly told that fossils are millions of years old.

But experience – which is, after all, what science is all about – shows that it is not unusual for things to become stone very quickly under the proper conditions. The process of fossilization, where minerals replace the original material, is illustrated very nicely by a miner’s hat. A miner lost his hat in a mine in Australia; it was found 50 years later, completely turned to limestone. The hat is now in a mining museum in Tasmania. Even more dramatic is the bowler hat that was buried in a volcanic eruption in 1886 in New Zealand. When it was excavated – only 20 years later – it had been completely turned to stone. Just think for a moment, if these were not modern artifacts but, say, a fish, they might have been declared to be millions of years old!

Many, if not most, fossils were produced during the great flood of Noah’s time when plants and animals were quickly covered by sediment and water. They bear witness to God’s judgment of sin. And those fossil hats put into question the idea that we are the product of millions of years of evolution!

Prayer:
Dear Lord Jesus Christ, it is true that even the rocks bear witness to You as the Creating Word. Help me, too, to be a better witness for You. Amen.

Notes:
John Mackay. “Fossil Bolts and Fossil Hats.” Creation Ex Nihilo, Vol. 8, Nov., p. 10. Photo: Fossilized miner’s hat on display at a mining museum on Tasmania’s west coast.