This is the online edition of In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood, 8th Edition (2008), by Dr. Walt Brown. It is designed to be read online.
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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 of organisms as fossils in layered rocks; the crumpling of major mountains; fossils of sea creatures on every major mountain range; the jigsaw fit of the continents; the formation of strange features on the ocean floor; the gouging out of canyons; comets, asteroids, and meteorites; and hundreds of other features. One can place many of these consequences 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 20 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 379 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, resting on a layer of 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.) [See pages 383–388.] |
| The flood begins suddenly with all the fountains of the great deep1 bursting open on one day. “Geshem rain” begins. (Gen 7:11) |
Rupture Phase: A crack propagates around the earth in about 2 hours, releasing subterranean water. Fountains of muddy, pulsating water and rocks jet high above the earth. 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 234–318.] |
| 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. Animals and plants are buried in sediments from the muddy water. |
| 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.2 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, they are crushed, thickened, buckled, and heated in a gigantic compression event. Overthrusting occurs in some places. Continents take on present shape. As major mountains form, 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 form. Large continental canyons form by the breaching of natural dams. |
| 371st Day: Ark off-loaded. (Gen 8:15–19) |
|
| 371st Day to the present. [See Endnote 12 on page 357.] |
The following verses speak of subterranean water. Taken collectively, they appear to 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 ...3 [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 ...4
2. These subterranean waters burst forth bringing on the flood.
- Genesis 7:11–12. ... the fountains of the great deep burst open,5 and the floodgates6 of the sky were opened. And rain fell ...7
- 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 may suggest that an even larger hailstorm than the one God inflicted on Pharaoh occurred before Egypt became a nation. If so, that earlier hailstorm was presumably during the flood.]8
4. After the 40-day avalanche of rain ended, the waters continued to rise until the 150th day.
- Genesis 7:12. And the [geshem (see Endnote 6)] rain fell upon the earth for forty days and forty nights.9
- Genesis 7:18–19, 24. ... the water prevailed10 and increased greatly ... so all the high mountains everywhere under the heavens were covered. ... and the waters prevailed for one hundred and fifty days.
5. During the compression event, the continents crushed and thickened and mountains dramatically rose, each in minutes. 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 water] may not pass over; that they may not return to cover the earth.11
- 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 22 on page 164, Figure 143 on page 268, and “Did the Preflood Earth Have a 30-Day Lunar Month?” on page 435.]