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 materials.
Without hearing from eyewitnesses, police can usually reconstruct the general outlines of an automobile accident by carefully studying the evidence, such as skid marks and wreckage. So also, some details of the flood can be pieced together by studying its wreckage. Part II of this book has shown that the hydroplate theory is supported by ample scientific evidence. However, good witnesses provide details consistent with the physical evidence as well as information we might never learn elsewhere. Here, you will see that the hydroplate theory is also consistent with the Bible, which records eyewitness accounts of the flood.
For example, the flood was initiated by God because of man’s sin. We may never understand the precise event that God used (or allowed) to physically trigger the flood;1 however, once started, other events must have occurred whose consequences, or “wreckage,” we can still see. Examples include the jigsaw fit of the continents; rapid burial and preservation of trillions upon trillions of fossils in layered rocks; marine fossils on every major mountain range; crumpled mountains; coal, oil, and methane deposits; frozen mammoths; strange features on the ocean floor; earthquakes and volcanic eruptions; 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) explains details of these observations, and (3) provides a greater understanding of this global cataclysm. That is the purpose of the hydroplate theory.
Table 26 shows the close correspondence between the biblical description of the flood and the hydroplate theory.
| Biblical Chronology |
Hydroplate Theory |
|---|---|
| Day 2 of Creation Week: Water covered the earth. (Gen 1:2) Then “a raqia” separates liquid water above from liquid water below. (Gen 1:6–7) |
During Creation Week: A layer of water is placed below earth’s crust (a raqia, or pressed-out solid). [See “What Does ‘Raqia’ Mean?” on page 474 for further details.] |
| Day 3 of Creation Week: The waters below the heavens are gathered into one place, and 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 deform. Portions will sink to the subterranean chamber floor and resemble tapered pillars; the displaced water will lift other portions of the crust out of the water. Land will appear.)1 |
| On one day, 1,656 years after Creation (according to the Hebrew Bible), all the fountains of the great deep2 burst open and the flood begins. “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 252–348.] |
| The 40 days and 40 nights of “geshem rain” ends. (Gen 7:4,12) |
Flood Phase: Rising flood waters blanket and suppress the jetting fountains of the great deep. Sediments from the muddy water bury (and eventually fossilize) plants and animals. |
| Flood waters rise until the 150th day, when they cover 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, oil, and methane begin forming. |
|
150th Day: A wind passes over the earth. Waters slowly begin to 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 shapes. As mountains buckle upward, air is displaced, causing a great wind. The earth begins a slow 34°–57° roll, so the poles shift. [See pages 125–128.] |
|
| 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. Lower 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 following statements in bold. Some passages may be metaphors referring to ancient demonstrations of God’s power.
1. Large quantities of subterranean water existed in the ancient past.
2. These subterranean waters, under extreme pressure, burst forth, bringing on the flood.8
3. Some supercritical subterranean water is still jetting up from beneath the ocean floor. [See Figure 55 on page 123.][See page 120.]
4. The deepest recesses on the ocean floor are trenches. [See Figure 80 on page 149.][See page 120.]
5. A massive hailstorm occurred.
6. 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, 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.
7. During the compression event, the continents crushed and thickened and mountains dramatically rose, each in hours.6 Then the flood waters receded.
8. 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 may have altered a 30-day lunar orbit. [See Endnote 35 on page 176, Figure 158 on page 288, and "Did the Preflood Earth Have a 30-Day Lunar Month?" on page 530.]
9. The flood was a catastrophic event that involved far more than falling rain. The earth shook violently and was accompanied by continuous thunder; the erupting fountains of the great deep darkened the sky; some 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.
10. The Book of Jasher.15 Although not inspired scripture, The Book of Jasher (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 Book of Jasher, which contains 91 chapters and was translated from Hebrew in 1625, show that Jasher is probably a copy of the book mentioned in Joshua and II Samuel.16
Jasher is not scripture, but conforms historically 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 over 3,000 years of Hebrew and Egyptian history—from creation to the Israelites entry into the Promised Land. Some parts are exaggerations that may have been inserted since the original Jasher was written. Wayne Simpson,15 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, at least 2,300 years old.
If you have read “The Origin of Earth’s Radioactivity” on pages 350–395, “the lightning flashed” in Jasher 6:11, Exodus 9:24, and Psalm 18:14 will carry special meaning, as will the fluttering crust and pounding pillars with the words “caused the whole earth to shake,” and “the foundations of the world raged.”
10. 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 described 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.”17 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 also 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. If we accept the Bible’s eyewitness accounts of the flood, we should also be ready to give explanations for some obvious questions: Where did enough water come from to cover all the mountains on earth? Where did all that water go afterwards? After the flood, how could animals cross oceans and migrate to every continent on earth? Did it rain before the flood, and if not, how was the fertile earth watered, and what fed its rivers? How could such violent rain fall so rapidly at the beginning of the flood but end after 40 days, even though the flood waters rose and covered all the mountains on the 150th day of the flood? If the flood’s 40 days of rain formed by condensation, that rain should have stopped after a few days, because rain would have removed the condensation nuclei, necessary to form rain. The hydroplate theory answers these questions and others.
Today, some do not believe there was a catastrophic, global flood. They think it was a relatively mild, local event, or avoid discussing it because too many questions would be raised that they don’t believe can be answered or that might subject them to ridicule. The problem for most of us is grasping the flood’s almost unimaginable magnitude and power, 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 not mentioned in the Bible and contradict 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 we could claim that a miracle solved our scientific problem. [See Figure 225 on page 510.]