The Grand Canyon is an utterly breathtaking and amazing sight. But there is something even more amazing than that: the Grand Staircase. As you travel about 150 miles north from the Grand Canyon, you see a much more extensive climb of plateau to plateau than climbing the Grand Canyon itself. From the Vermillion Cliffs in Utah into Zion Canyon and further up to Bryce Canyon, we have a total about 9-11 thousand feet of layers to climb once you get out and away from the Grand Canyon. But it gets much more interesting than that.
The Grand Canyon’s depth is over 5000 feet. There is another 10,000+ feet of layers that should be on top of the canyon. So take twice the depth of the Canyon and add that to the top of the rim. We can’t imagine that. But this butte in the picture above is evidence that these layers extended from Utah to far south beyond the Grand Canyon. Another butte, Red Butte, which is south of the main entrance (my only picture from the bus of that butte is not very good, so I’m not going to share that here) is also evidence of the extension of these layers. I did not get a picture of it, but I noticed while at Desert Point, where Cedar Butte is clearly visible, that far to the north is another butte that takes a good eye to spot.
Now here is what is very interesting of these buttes. They sit ON TOP of the layer I stood on when I took that photo. Yet, I was looking down upon those 900-foot-tall buttes. How is that possible? Simple: The ground we were standing on was uplifted by what we call the “Kaibab Uplift.” That is why the Colorado River starts at only 3000 feet of elevation, but the South Rim is at 7000+ feet and the North Rim is at 8000+ feet. We have a mile of “uplift” in the Colorado Plateau and the Grand Canyon cuts through this uplift, never actually dropping below the main valley surrounding it.
So why point out these buttes? If you have been to the Canyon, you may have noticed there is virtually no mention whatsoever of these two buttes, especially at Desert Point where this picture was taken. Instead of a plaque describing the Cedar Butte (the plaque faces it), there is a memorial of where two planes crashed into each other near that viewpoint. Why would this butte have no mention? Because they are evidence of these layers which we only start to see 70+ miles north extending at least as far as the Canyon and very possibly way south to past Flagstaff. With the exception of these buttes, the 9-11 thousand+ feet of layers are completely MISSING! The buttes are all we have left. The Grand Canyon, as massive as it is, only has about 900 cubic miles missing. The missing Grand Staircase layers account for over 130,000 cubic miles. That means the missing Grand Staircase layers have a volume of 140x that which is missing from the Grand Canyon. And the literature by the Grand Canyon Park makes no mention of these buttes or the missing two miles of layers from the top of the canyon.
There is a critical follow up question. Where are the layers? If the Colorado River carved it all, we can’t find the Grand Canyon debris downriver except for a few small places outside Phoenix or San Diego, but what we have there would hardly fill a dump truck (yes, I am exaggerating, but the fact remains the extreme bulk of the missing rocks are still missing). Let’s again examine the secular claims and the Biblical claims.
The secular claims argue that in the final stages of forming the layers, the entire Colorado Plateau uplifted while under the latest cycle of rising and falling seas. This time, the uplift was so big that it caused the ocean to run off and take off those two miles of sediments with it. This is a concept called “sheet erosion,” where a massive amount of water cleans out a whole sheet of rock layers. Now, what’s amazing is that this sounds exactly like the Flood models. Since the Grand Canyon media does NOT include any of this information, that means the secular models are just now coming to realize this (parks are like textbooks, they are way behind on actual facts). This makes me wonder if the secular and old earth geologists are actually trying to copy notes from the Flood geologists, all the while making mockery of the flood geologists. In the academic world, that’s called plagiarism (this would not be the first time they’ve done it either). The Flood models would call for the rising of the land towards the tail end of the flood and the ocean floors sinking producing the massive and extensive runoff that would carve out those layers and somehow leaving those buttes behind (this could have been a supernatural act). Again, the secularists would never have considered a “catastrophe” like this until Mt. St. Helens forced them to, and Flood Geologists were well on top of things at that point. So why are the secular models looking more and more like the Flood Geologist claims, except without the Flood?
What also stands out to me on these buttes is that they are flat. They’re completely planed off. What natural mechanism has the ability to shave off a mountain like that? Take notice that there are mountains all over the world that are shaved off like this. Only fast-moving water filled with rocks and grains could do that. And what kind of mechanism could produce such fast-moving water? Noah’s Flood. The secularists know this, but despite all the evidence and even the fact that their own models closely resemble what would happen if there was a global flood, they still reject it from being an option. Why is that? Why are so many scientists so hardened and so adamant that there could not be a global flood?
The answer is simple: 2 Peter 3:3-7. They are willingly ignorant of the Flood, proclaiming that all that is happening today is what has happened all in the past, forgetting that the world of Noah’s Day perished by water. It’s intentional. They refuse to recognize the Flood because the Flood was no mere water disaster. It was God’s judgment upon sinful, wicked men. This was a big point we emphasized on this trip. There is such a great beauty to the Grand Canyon, but it’s a monument not merely to catastrophe but to judgment. It was a judgment so severe that God only let one option for salvation to be present: Noah’s Ark. That judgment with one escape is the first clear picture of the Gospel and that our final judgment will not be a mere local event but universal. The entire population will face the final judgment just as the entire population (not just a localized area) faced the judgment of the Flood. If the idea of a global flood was not tied to the Bible and the Gospel, no one would dare question it. Scientists accept a global flood idea on Mars with no water present. Mars’ version of the Grand Canyon, which is far bigger, was obviously cut by water. Yet on earth when 70% of the planet is covered in water, it could not be a global flood? It’s obviously not the science that holding them back.
Next week, I’ll share about the river raft tour through Glen Canyon before I wrap up this series on why we need to understand the important of origins and the Flood.
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