Below is the online edition of In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood,
by Dr. Walt Brown.
Copyright © Center for Scientific Creation. All rights reserved.
Click here to order the hardbound 8th edition (2008) and other material.
Is the Hydroplate Theory Consistent with the Bible?
Without hearing from eyewitnesses, police can usually reconstruct the general outlines of an automobile accident by carefully studying skid marks and wreckage. So also, some details of the flood can be pieced together by studying its wreckage. However, good witnesses provide details consistent with the physical evidence as well as information we could never learn otherwise.
For example, the flood was initiated by God as a consequence of man’s sin. We may never understand the precise event that God used (or allowed) to physically trigger the flood; however, once started, other events must have occurred whose consequences, or “wreckage,” we can still see. Examples include earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, rapid burial and preservation of trillions upon trillions of fossils in layered rocks; crumpled mountains; marine fossils on every major mountain range; the jigsaw fit of the continents; strange features on the ocean floor; the ring of fire and earth’s core, gouged out canyons; comets, asteroids, and meteorites; earth’s radioactivity; and hundreds of other consequences. One can place these events in a cause-and-effect sequence that (1) conforms to scientific laws, (2) best explains details of these observations, and (3) provides a greater understanding of this global cataclysm. That is the purpose of the hydroplate theory.
Table 23 shows the close correspondence between the biblical description of the flood and the hydroplate theory.
| Biblical Chronology |
Hydroplate Theory |
|---|---|
| Day 2 of Creation Week: The earth was covered by water. (Gen 1:2) Then “a raqia” separated liquid water above from liquid water below. (Gen 1:6–7) |
The Initial Condition: A layer of water was below the earth’s crust (a raqia, or pressed-out solid). [See “What Does ‘Raqia’ Mean?” on page 447 for further details.] |
| Day 3 of Creation Week: The waters below the heavens are gathered into one place, and the dry land appears. (Gen 1:9) |
Water above the crust drains into depressions and dry land appears. (A rock crust, 200 million square miles in area and resting on a layer of trapped subterranean water, will automatically deform. Portions will sink to the subterranean chamber floor and resemble tapered pillars; the displaced water will lift other portions of the crust.)1 |
| About 1,656 years later, the flood begins suddenly with all the fountains of the great deep2 bursting open on one day. “Geshem3 rain” begins. (Gen 7:11) |
Rupture Phase: Tidal pumping heats the subterranean water to the point where it becomes supercritical and slowly weakens the crust. Eventually, a tension crack propagates around the earth in about 2 hours, releasing subterranean water. Fountains of muddy water and rocks jet high above the earth and quickly become extremely cold—almost absolute zero (-460°F).4 Mammoths are frozen in supercold, muddy hail falling from above the atmosphere. Comets, asteroids, and meteoroids form from some of the high velocity water and rocks that escape earth. [See pages 244–333.] |
| 40 days and 40 nights of “geshem rain” ends. (Gen 7:4,12) |
Flood Phase: Rising flood waters blanket and suppress the jetting of the fountains of the great deep. Sediments from the muddy water bury (and eventually fossilize) plants and animals. |
| Flood waters rose until the 150th day, when they covered all preflood mountains. (Gen 7:19–24) |
High-pressure water continues to gush up into the flood waters. Liquefaction sorts sediments and dead plants and animals. Salt domes, coal, and oil begin forming. |
|
150th Day: A wind passes over the earth. Waters begin to slowly subside.5 Ark lands on the mountains of Ararat. (Gen 8:1–4) |
Continental-Drift Phase: Mid-Atlantic Ridge buckles up; Atlantic floor rises and western Pacific subsides, so the hydroplates accelerate downhill, sliding on a layer of lubricating water. |
| When the massive hydroplates decelerate and crash, they are crushed, thickened, buckled, and heated in a gigantic compression event.6 Overthrusting occurs in some places. Continents take on present shape. As mountains buckle upward, air is displaced, causing a great wind. The earth begins a slow 35°–45° roll, so the poles shift. |
|
| 150th — 371st Day: Passengers stay on Ark. |
Recovery Phase: Hostile environment: earthquakes begin; inner earth melts; ocean trenches, ring of fire, and methane hydrates form; flood basalts and volcanoes erupt; water drains; continents shift; vegetation reestablished; and Ice Age begins. Lowered sea level facilitates land migration and allows the formation of tablemounts and submarine canyons. Plateaus are lifted hydraulically. Breaching of natural dams carve large continental canyons, such as the Grand Canyon. |
| 371st Day: Ark off-loaded. (Gen 8:15–19) |
|
The following verses speak of events similar to those described in the hydroplate theory. Taken collectively, they provide support for the statements in bold below. Some passages may be metaphors referring to ancient demonstrations of God’s power.
1. Large quantities of subterranean water existed in the ancient past.
- Psalm 24:2. ... He has founded it [the earth] upon the seas ...
- Psalm 33:7. ... He gathers the waters of the sea together as a heap; He lays up the deeps in storehouses ... (A storehouse is a closed container that preserves something you may use later. God used that water when He brought it forth as a flood. Many storehouses, or interconnected chambers, held the subterranean water.)
- Psalm 104:3. He lays the beams of His upper chambers in the waters ...7 [Pillars were formed.]
- Psalm 136:6. ... [He] spread out the earth above the waters ...
- II Peter 3:5. ... the earth was formed out of water and by water ...1
2. These subterranean waters, under growing and very extreme pressure, burst forth bringing on the flood.
- Genesis 7:11–12. ... the fountains of the great deep burst open,8 and the floodgates9 of the sky were opened. And rain fell ...10
- Job 38:8–11. ... who enclosed the sea with doors, when bursting forth, it went out from the womb; when I made a cloud its garment ...
- Psalm 18:15. ... the channels of water appeared, and the foundations of the world were laid bare ...
- Proverbs 3:20. ... the deeps were broken up and the skies dripped dew ...
3. A massive hailstorm occurred.
- Exodus 9:18, 24. ... I will send a very heavy hail, such as has not been seen in Egypt from the day it was founded until now. ... So there was hail, and fire flashing continually in the midst of the hail, very severe, such as had not been in all the land of Egypt since it became a nation. [Both verses suggest that an even larger hail and lightning storm than the one God inflicted on Pharaoh occurred before Egypt became a nation. If so, that more powerful hail and lightning storm was presumably during the flood.]11
4. After 40 days and 40 nights, the avalanche of rain (geshem3 rain) stopped, because the layer of water rising on the earth blanketed and suppressed the high jetting of the fountains of the great deep. However, high-pressure, subterranean waters continued to gush out and add to the rising flood water. On the 150th day, the flood waters covered all the sinking1 preflood mountains. Then the floodgates were closed by the hydroplates slowly settling onto the chamber floor, pinching shut the outward flowing water.
- Genesis 7:12. And the [geshem (see Endnote 9)] rain fell upon the earth for forty days and forty nights.
- Genesis 7:18–19, 24. ... the water prevailed12 and increased greatly ... so all the high mountains everywhere under the heavens were covered. ... and the waters prevailed for one hundred and fifty days.
- Genesis 8:2. Also, the fountains of the deep and the floodgates of the sky were closed, and the rain from the sky was restrained.
5. During the compression event, the continents crushed and thickened and mountains dramatically rose, each in minutes.6 Then the flood waters receded.
- Psalm 104:6b–9. ... the waters were standing above the mountains. At Thy rebuke they fled; at the sound of Thy thunder they hurried away. The mountains rose; the valleys sank down to the place which Thou didst establish for them. Thou didst set a boundary that they [the waters] may not pass over; that they may not return to cover the earth.13
- A possible description of some events in earth’s early history may be found in Proverbs 8:22–29.
6. Before the flood, the Earth probably had a 360-day year and may have had a 30-day lunar month. As Genesis 1:14–16a states, the Sun and Moon were created as “very good” time keepers. The 150th day of the flood was exactly 5 months after the fountains of the great deep broke loose. [See Genesis 7:11, 7:24, and 8:4.] Five 30-day months would be 150 days; twelve 30-day months would be 360 days. The flood very likely altered a 30-day lunar orbit. [See Endnote 32 on page 174, Figure 153 on page 280, and "Did the Preflood Earth Have a 30-Day Lunar Month?" on page 504.]
7. The flood was a catastrophic event that involved far more that falling rain. The earth shook violently and was accompanied by continuous thunder; the erupting fountains of the great deep darkened the sky; some of the launched rocks fell back to earth as glowing hailstones; powerful electrical activity (generated by the fluttering crust and the piezoelectric effect) was unleashed, and torrents of water emerged from below.
- Psalm 18:7–15. Then the earth shook and quaked; and the foundations of the mountains were trembling and were shaken, ... He made darkness His hiding place, His canopy around Him, darkness of waters, thick clouds of the skies ... The Lord also thundered in the heavens, and the Most High uttered His voice, hailstones and coals of fire ... lightening flashes in abundance ... . Then the channels of water appeared, and the foundations of the world were laid bare ...
8. The Book of Jasher,14 (which means “The Book of the Upright”) is mentioned in Joshua 10:13 and II Samuel 1:18. Jasher 6:11 vividly describes the beginning of the flood.
And on that day, the Lord caused the whole earth to shake, and the sun darkened, and the foundations of the world raged, and the whole earth was moved violently, and the lightning flashed, and the thunder roared, and all the fountains in the earth were broken up, such as was not known to the inhabitants before; and God did this mighty act, in order to terrify the sons of men that, there might be no more evil upon earth.
No original manuscript of The Book of Jasher can be located today. At least three different books claim to be The Book of Jasher. All but one can be dismissed as bogus, based on linguistic and other problems. However, details in the 91 chapters in The Book of Jasher, translated in multiple languages from Hebrew in 1625, show that it is probably a copy of the book mentioned in Joshua and II Samuel.15
Jasher is not scripture, but conforms to the Bible at many points, provides interesting details, and was obviously well known when Joshua and Samuel were written. One also sees a fascinating flow of Hebrew and Egyptian history from creation to the entry into the Promised Land. Some parts are exaggerations that may have been inserted since the original Jasher was written. Wayne Simpson,14 who provides an extensive analysis of the book, believes it is a detailed record of Abraham’s family compiled by his descendants over many generations, with large sections contributed by Joseph when he was Vizier of Egypt—second only to Pharaoh. Certainly, Jasher is very ancient.
If you have read “The Origin of Earth’s Radioactivity” on pages 337–383, “the lightning flashed” in Jasher 6:11, Exodus 9:24, and Psalm 18:14 will carry special meaning, as will the fluttering of the crust and the pounding of pillars with the words “caused the whole earth to shake”, and “the foundations of the world raged.”
9. Isaiah (Is 24:18–20) uses terminology that likens a future global catastrophe to the destructiveness of the flood.
For the windows above are opened, and the foundations of the earth shake. The earth is broken asunder, The earth is split through, The earth is shaken violently. The earth reels to and fro like a drunkard ...
We know there will not be another global flood (Genesis 9:11), so Isaiah is not saying the future destruction will be by flood waters. But there are other similarities, which numerous commentators have noticed (as “an echo of the flood”). Keil and Delitzsch, in their highly respected Bible commentary, attribute the flood terminology to Isaiah’s purpose in describing this judgement as a direct act of God that totally destroys the earth. They also point out that the “foundations of the earth” are “the internal supports upon which the visible crust of the earth rests.”16 The hydroplate theory calls those supports pillars—the thousands of points where the crust, because of its varying density and thickness, touched the floor of the subterranean water chamber.
II Peter 3:5–7 likewise reminds us of the flood of Noah just before describing a future global destruction by fire. Also notice the similarity of Is 24:18–20 with Jasher 6:11.
Final Thoughts. Today, some people do not believe there was a catastrophic, global flood, visualize it as a mild event, or avoid discussing it because too many questions would be raised that they don’t believe can be answered or that will subject them to ridicule. The problem for most of us is grasping the almost unimaginable magnitude and power of the flood, which is difficult without a close study of the biblical texts and the scientific evidence from many disciplines.
Unfortunately, a few Christians and their organizations have contributed to a loss of meaning in the biblical description of the flood by teaching unscientific theories—such as the canopy theory or the catastrophic plate tectonic theory. Those theories require miracles that are not mentioned in the Bible and which do not fit with so many biblical details, such as “all the fountains of the great deep” that broke loose on one day. Almost any unscientific theory can be made to work if one could claim that a miracle solved their scientific problem.