Blog

by Steve Risner

Let’s continue this encounter with the ark. I'm enjoying delving into the ark and the Flood and the feasibility as well as the repercussions of such a terrific and terrible event. Last week we touched on some of the things they may have happened during the year-long catastrophe that we can hardly imagine. The Flood was an event to which there truly is no comparison. We can't possibly know all the terrible things that went on during this time.

The largest flood in recorded history, second only to the Flood of Noah's day, were the floods that hit China in the early 1930's. These floods were the result of a long drought followed by heavy snowfall and a lot of rain (2 feet of rain fell in just a month). Estimates range widely, but as many as 4 million died. These floods were for a short time in a small location (relatively speaking compared to the earth). Imagine if it were 500 times larger and several times longer! This is closer to the scope of the global Flood of Noah's day. If you're one of those who want to tell Bible-believing Christians why the earth doesn't look right for the Flood to have happened or for it to have been global, realize that it's hard to take you seriously when you make such farcical statements. We can't possibly know what the deluge would have done or how it actually transpired. We can make some guesses and glean from history, but to “know” very much is not likely.

We can surmise that the Flood resulted in tectonic activity and possibly volcanism because of passages like Psalm 104:8. This would have led to mountain uplift, continental drift, and possibly the Ice Age. The Flood would have caused untold amounts of sediment and erosion. The ash in the air from volcanism would have caused the air to cool, as it would block out a percentage of the sun. This has happened on a much smaller scale all over the world many times. This cooler climate mixed with the warmer ocean water would lead to huge amounts of snowfall. This huge amount of snow fall would lead to glaciation and BAM! we've got an Ice Age. Tsunamis would have pounded the lands. This would lead to waves of sediment being laid down and then receding with another layer coming behind rather quickly and receding again. Now we have an explanation for sediment layers and why some span entire continents. With the tectonic activity and continents being ripped apart and slamming into each other, we now have cause for mountain ranges and sedimentary layers that would be found all over the globe—layers that contain the same “stuff” and made from the same type of rock.

Let's focus in today on the Ice Age. The Ice Age is clearly something that occurred. Secular scientists will allege there were at least 5 or as many as 50 ice ages, but Biblical creationists disagree. The evidence for a single Ice Age a few thousand years ago actually seems to be stronger than the evidence for multiple ice ages. Secular scientists acknowledge that physical glacial evidence for these supposed multiple ice ages is generally absent. They appeal to sea shell chemistry to support their claims, but this fails to account for variables we cannot possibly know. Evidence suggests that the earth was a fairly warm place until the Ice Age. By Ice Age, I mean the time when huge sheets of ice covered much of the Northern Hemisphere. Antarctica was likely already buried in ice by this time. But it appears that there are not multiple times in earth's history that we see temperatures go up and then down and up and down enough to warrant multiple episodes of huge glaciation and melting.

The Ice Age probably started about a hundred years or so after the Flood—around the time of the dispersion from Babel. It probably lasted several hundred years (roughly 500 years of accumulation and 200 years of melting) and covered up to 30% of the earth's land mass post Flood (as we have no idea how much land there was prior to the Flood).

The increased volcanic activity would have probably lasted for some time after the Flood, as the earth's crust slowly solidified and became less volatile. Dust and aerosols would have remained in the air for years, reflecting sunlight back into space and causing much lower temperatures, especially over large areas of land. This mixed with the warmed oceans resulting from such massive amounts of volcanic activity and tectonic movements would have meant untold amounts of snow fall which would have accumulated into huge ice sheets over time. There is a great deal of evidence that there were extreme amounts of volcanic activity during the Ice Age. Warm oceans would produce more precipitation which would fall over the cooling land masses as snow. Because of currents and winds, the snow would be pushed to the poles and middle latitudes. Michael Oard, a specialist in atmospheric science, says, “Warm water and cold continents are a recipe for powerful and continuous snowstorms, whose behavior can be estimated using basic weather principles.” In other words, the Flood gives us the perfect conditions for an Ice Age. It stands to reason that, from the data that's been collected concerning glacial formation and retreat, that it wouldn't take thousands or millions of years for an ice age to manifest. We can look at the ice accumulation in Greenland for support for the short periods of time it takes to acquire a great deal of ice.

What is fascinating is that the Ice Age would have allowed for massive amounts of migration of animals and man. The enormous glacier sheets would siphon off a great deal of ocean water, causing sea level to much lower than it is now. It's often mentioned that northern Asians walked across the Bering Strait and eventually became the people group we call the Native Americans. What is rarely mentioned (at least to my recall) is that during the Ice Age, the Bering Strait would have been dry land and close to 1000 miles wide! Animals and humans could easily have walked across the grassy area and made it to North America and, later, to South America. People once lived between England and the European mainland in an area known as Doggerland. Artifacts are sometimes pulled up from the sea floor from these people. Because sea level was probably close to 350 feet lower than it is now, there were massive land bridges all over the earth, connecting areas now separated by water. Lower sea levels would expose passages from Asia to Australia as well and would likely connect many islands around the world, although, obviously, not all of them. This would make the migration of animals and humans very easy as they could have walked nearly anywhere. It makes me marvel at the awesome wisdom of our God that He would split the lands up, allow for them to be connected for a time while man and animals dispersed, and then had a mechanism to separate them again. This forced a great deal of diversity into the biology of the planet as well as a great deal of diversity in our cultures.

The melting at the end of the Ice Age would have again changed the landscape dramatically. Land bridges would be lost. Ice dams would break, causing more flooding. These events and others would have isolated populations, contributing to biodiversity.

I find that the evidence here backs the Biblical account amazingly. We find the Bible records an event that quite easily can account for the time in our history known as the Ice Age. This time allowed for a great deal of dispersion of man and animals, but it also may have resulted in some animals not making it long after the Flood due to climate changes. I'm in awe at how well the Bible fits with the science we've acquired and the history we've recorded.

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