Christian Essays

“We are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it” – Thomas Jefferson.

Most children are brought up to believe that the earth and the universe are very old, that is, millions or billions of years old, but there is a large amount of scientific evidence which indicates that this conclusion is totally wrong. Much of the evidence indicates that the earth and universe are in fact only a few thousand years old.

Here is some of that evidence.

THE ROTATIONAL SPEED OF GALAXIES

The stars of our galaxy, the Milky Way, rotate around the galactic centre at different speeds. The inner ones rotate faster than the outer ones. From observations, including those made by the Hubble telescope, many scientists have realised that the shape of our galaxy does not match its proposed age, which is usually measured in billions of years.

If our galaxy is as old as 10 billion years, it should not have its present spiral shape, but instead should be a featureless mass of scattered stars.

This observed phenomena is called the “winding-up dilemma” and many theories have been proposed for it, all of which have come and gone as more evidence comes to hand.

The most logical conclusion is that our galaxy is really very young, and that it was formed and set in motion only a very short time ago – perhaps only a few thousand years – otherwise it would not have its present shape.

COMETS DISINTEGRATE QUICKLY

Comets are usually said to be the same age as our solar system, which is usually said to be about 5 billion years. The presence of comets totally contradicts this.

Comets which orbit close to our sun always lose a huge amount of their material. Even the biggest comet possible could not last much longer than 100,000 years at this rate, yet the average maximum age for a comet is about 10,000 years. If our solar system is as old as some scientists say, there should not be any comets in it.

Possible theories to explain this problem are that :

1. comets might come from an unobserved ‘Oort cloud’ which is said to be well beyond the orbit of Pluto,

2. comets might come from improbable interactions between passing stars which might knock them into our solar system,

3. comets might come from some sort of planetary effect.

So far none of these three theories have been substantiated by any observed or calculated proof.

The best conclusion which explains the presence of comets is that they are very young – perhaps only a few thousand years – otherwise they would not be there.

MUD ON THE SEA FLOOR

Every year, water and winds erode about 25 billion tons of dirt and rock from the continents. This material is washed down from the land by rivers and deposited on the floor of the ocean, where it accumulates as sediment on the hard basaltic ocean floor. The average depth of all the mud in the whole ocean, including the continental shelves, is less than 400 metres.

How old is the earth? Some theories say about three billion years. If the earth is three billion years old we should expect to find sedimentary layers several kilometres deep, but of course we do not. The present depth of sediment is consistent with a very young earth.

One theory for getting rid of the sediment is plate tectonic subduction. This means that the sea floor slides slowly beneath the continents, taking some sediment with it (about 1 or 2 cm per year). This process removes about 1 billion tons per year. Obviously, this leave about 24 billions tons to account for, which does not exist.

SODIUM IN SEA WATER

Every year, rivers carry about 450 million tons of sodium off the land and into the sea. Only 27% of this sodium leaves the sea in different ways, leaving the remaining 73% in the oceans. This means that the sodium content of the oceans must be steadily increasing, which presents a very difficult problem to those who say that the oceans, along with the earth are three billion years old.

The oceans should be outstandingly salty today if they are as old as the theories say they are, but if the earth is relatively young, then present saltiness (salinity) is about what we should expect to find.

EARTH”S DECAYING MAGNETIC FIELD

The total energy stored in the earth’s magnetic field has steadily decreased by a factor of 2.7 over the past 1000 years. If the earth is as old as some theories would have us believe, the magnetic field should have long disappeared, but if the earth is only a few thousand years old, the present magnetic field is exactly what we would expect to find.

BENT STRATA

In many mountainous areas, strata thousands of metres thick are bent and folded into hairpin shapes. The usual theory is that, millions of years ago, these strata were buried as relatively horizontal or straight layers of sediment, and then later bent, but modern observers have noted that the bending has not cracked or disrupted the layers.

The only possible explanation for this is that the layers of strata were formed very quickly, and bent into their present shapes very soon after they were formed. This means that the formations must be very young. Since no such formation of similar bent strata is occurring today, the formation of these shapes must also have been quite recent, perhaps only a few thousand years ago – otherwise they would not exist.

RADIOHALOS

Radio halos are rings of colour which form around microscopic bits of radioactive minerals in rock crystals. They are records of radioactive decay.

For example Polonium-210 radiohalos in three different layers of rock in the Colorado plateau indicate that they were each deposited within months of each other. The usual estimate for their deposition is hundreds of millions of years, but the radiohalos would not be the way they are if time periods of this size were allowed for.

HELIUM

All naturally occurring families of radioactive elements generate helium as they decay. If such decay took place through billions of years, much helium should be in the earth’s atmosphere. At the same time, helium is being lost all the time to space, but at a very low rate.

Working with the amount of helium being produced and the amount being lost, we find that earth’s atmosphere has only 0.05% of the amount of helium it would have accumulated if the earth is several billion years old. Logically, the earth must be much younger that the theories say it is.

Another measurement of the age of the earth can be calculated from the rate of radioactive decay in deep, hot rocks. These rocks are supposed to be billions of years old, yet their helium has still not escaped into the atmosphere as it should have by now.

The helium retention of these rocks shows that they must be only a few thousands of years old, otherwise they would not contain so much helium.

paleontologists

STONE AGE SKELETONS

Man, that is theoretical primitive Man, is supposed to have been on earth for millions of years. The Stone Age, as it is called, was supposed to have lasted about 100,000 years, during which time Cro-Magnon and Neanderthal men were supposed to have numbered around 10 million. All that time they were burying their dead with artefacts.

If this is so, then there should be about 4 billion bodies available to examine. Buried bones can last for many thousands of years – some scientists (paleontologists) say well over 100,000 years in good conditions, yet there are hardly any bones to be found.

Only a few thousand bodies and a handful of artefacts have been found so far – this implies that the so-called Stone Age was only a few hundred years, which means that earth’s history is a lot shorter than many people believe.

HUMAN POPULATION

In modern times human populations are seen to be increasing consistently at more than 1% per year. Allowing for disease, famine, war and so forth, and taking a much more conservative figure of 0.5% every year, we can work backwards to estimate the population of the world in the past. At the rate chosen, it would take only about 4,000 to 5,000 years, starting with four couples, to reach present world population figures.

RADIOMETRIC DATING METHODS

Carbon-dating is often used to determine the age of an object, but contrary to popular belief, carbon-dating has nothing to do with millions of years. Even with the best analytical equipment available today, the carbon-dating method can be used only to make estimates to an upper limit of 100,000 years.

What usually happens is that those who operate the carbon-dating system calibrate the measurements with great age already built into it. An assumption is made that the substance or object to be tested is already x number of years old, so this is added to the final answer, thus supposedly providing support for what was already assumed.

Carbon-dating can only date things which contain organic carbon – which rules out most fossil bones.

As an example of how unreliable carbon dating methods are : Carbon dating of wood found under lava, which came from the Rangitoto eruption about 200 years ago gave it about the correct age. But when the lava on top of the wood was tested, the result gave it an age of half a million years. How can the lava be older than the wood under it?

As an example of how unreliable carbon-dating is :

living mulluscs have had their shells carbon dated at 2,300 years,

new wood was dated at 10,000 years,

mortar from Oxford castle which is about 800 years old was dated as 7370 years,

and freshly killed seals were dated as 1300 years

while mummified seals only 30 years old were dated as 4,600 years.

How too, can a dating method which is so far out with known dates, be used to measure things in terms of millions of years?

FOSSILS

What is a fossil? Usually, it is a plant or animals which has been buried quickly and thoroughly by water-borne sediment. Most fossils show evidence of rapid burial because the impression made by softer tissue is still there.

Fossils are said to be millions of years old, yet some fossil bones have been found with the remains of blood cells still in them. How can this be, if the bones are millions of years old? The evidence points to a recent event, otherwise decay would have obliterated the tissues completely.

UNDERSEA RIVER-MOUTHS

When rivers reach the sea, they usually continue into the water, dropping their sediments in a fan-shape. The Nile is an obvious example of this, where the delta is used clearly seen on an atlas.

The average rate of silt-dumping under the sea can be measured, and projections made forward and backward in time, which in turn can give us an estimate of the age of the river.

At present average rates, the fan-shaped deposits should be enormously bigger than they are, if the earth is as old as we are told. But if the earth is only a few thousand years old, and present rates of erosion and silt-dumping have remained constant, then the earth must be only a few thousand years old.

PRESSURE OF OIL FIELDS

Rocks around oil beds are not stable. measurements have shown that they gradually give way to the enormous pressures exerted by the oil beds under and inside them. If oil is as old as we are usually told it is, then it should not be trapped so securely under the rock – but if oil beds are only a few thousand years old, then we should find them as they are at present.

The powerful pressures found within oil beds indicates that they and the rock they are a part of were formed about 10,000 years ago.

(It is also known that oil and coal can be produced in a matter of weeks or even hours in the case of oil, using heat and pressure.)

LAND EROSION

Present-day rates of erosion can be quite rapid. Some mountain ranges are being eroded away at 2 to 3 cm per year. This may not sound much, but multiply it over a few million years and the entire mountain range is gone. Even allowing for upthrust forces of the earth’s crust, the present shape of the earth, given a few million years, should not be what we see today.

But if the earth is only a few thousand years old, and given that erosion has been relatively unchanged, the present shape of the earth is what we would expect to find.

FORMATION OF COAL

Coal (and oil and gas) are called fossil fuels because they can be burned by Man. Coal is the remains of wood, mainly trees, which were buried very quickly and covered, or sealed, thus preventing the usual breakdown of the cellulose – as we see when a tree falls to the ground in a forest. Under the seal of sediment, the wood turns black and becomes coal.

How is a coal field formed. It must be a rapid event, because natural processes are quick to recycle wood if they are allowed to proceed. Coal fields are often very thick, sometimes whole kilometres thick, representing millions and millions of buried trees.

One theory has it coal is formed by forests constantly dropping leaf and twig litter, which builds up over millions of years. Nowhere in the world has this been seen to be happening. What usually happens is that the litter becomes humus, on which the successive generations of trees feed, thus keeping the layer of humus much the same over thousands of years.

Coal fields are full of tree trunks, which lie at all angles, as if they were tumbled and pushed roughly together. Often the trunks stand vertically through other layers, which shows that rapid burial took place, otherwise the upper part of the trunk would have long decayed.

Coal also often contains marine fossils, which shows that it was not formed in a fresh-water swamp.

Because coal does not require millions of years to form, its presence indicates that the earth may be much younger than some people would believe.

All the above can be said of oil too.

METEORITE DUST

Space researchers were worried that when the first vehicles, or the first men landed on the moon, they would sink into something like 60 metres of dust. This figure was arrived at by a simple calculation based on the presumed age of the earth and moon times the amount of meteorite and cosmic dust dropping down.

If – as it was correctly reasoned – the moon had been there for millions of years, there should be a large quantity of dust on the surface, sufficient to soak up any moon lander – hence the large, round feet on the lander, to help prevent it from sinking in.

If, on the other hand, the earth and moon were very young, perhaps only a few thousand years old, the amount of dust on the moon should be almost insignificant.

As we all know now, the astronauts found a very thin layer of dust, which shows that the moon is probably very young.

THERMODYNAMICS

It is a fact that all natural processes tend to go from a higher energy level to a lower energy level. To illustrate this, take a brand new car. It arrives as a fully organised machine, with everything working, clean and complete – but leave it outside for a few years and drive it for a while and it gradually falls apart. The paint work flakes off, the plastic perishes and cracks, the tyres wear down . . . eventually it rusts away and is no longer a car.

The world and the universe show the same process. Whole, complete systems are gradually winding down, or falling apart. Galaxies are flying apart. The earth is cooling. The gravitational forces in the earth are weakening. Animal and plant species are disappearing with no new species taking their places. The land is eroding away. The seas are becoming saltier. The atmosphere is degrading.

It should be obvious that a system which is slowly winding down must have, at some point in the past, been ‘wound up’ to start it all off. It should also be obvious that no disorganised collection of things is working the other way today – that is, nowhere do we find the opposite to the laws of thermodynamics. Disorder never forms into order without some external help. (For example, a house left to itself, will not keep itself clean and tidy without an intelligent organiser).

CONCLUSION

Reasons why people believe that the earth is millions of years old :

1. They were taught it at school,

2. They think science in general teaches this unanimously

3. They get this message from books, videos, movies, advertising, television programs, songs, paintings, and they hear it from experts in teaching positions,

4. They hardly ever hear the other side of the argument

There are many theories about the exact geological history of the world. Those which come from the Uniformitarian point of view maintain that most of the present land forms were caused by small forces acting over long periods – millions of years. Those which come from the Creationist point of view maintain that the same landforms are largely the result of large forces acting over short periods – thousands of years. The division is between slow and steady, or fast and sudden.

These two points of view stand at opposite sides of a line, and there is no way they can be reconciled. Because of the many in-built assumptions within each point of view there is no bridge between them, no agreement, no synthesis. Either the world is young or it is extremely old. Either there have been global catastrophes or there have not.

There is a theory, which has been promoted by many scientists and writers, that Mankind’s history goes back tens of thousands of years, and that, at some time in the distant past, the south magnetic pole slipped, or the land mass itself slipped, causing global flooding and vast amounts of damage and death. One such theorist is Graham Hancock, author of ‘Fingerprints of the Gods’, a book in which he suggests that many huge-stone ruins in Egypt (i.e. the three main pyramids, etc) and South America, (Aztec, Olmec, Inca) and elsewhere, are the remains of an ancient civilisation which was destroyed by a sudden disaster, caused by the continent of Antarctica slipping south, or something else equally devastating.

This theory tries to combine the ancient-Earth view, with the periodic-disaster view. Despite its many interesting features, it goes against the Biblical chronology, and undermines many of the Bible’s basic teachings.

Before dealing with the many aspects of the debate, we will summarise the sequence of geological history of planet Earth as it is presented by the Bible. After that we will look at the opposing views, as presented by those who think in terms of millions of years.

Biblical chronology covering the very early history of Man is not absolutely clear. There is some leeway as to exact dates and years – the Bible has not gone to any great lengths to describe landforms or geological processes, nor has it listed the exact direction of human migrations, or the cultures, architecture or skills of these people.  Yet despite the brief and general account, every detail in the inspired text which we do have is exact and full of meaning.

1. Creation week (started about 4004 BC – Bullinger’s Companion Bible date)

2. The family line from Adam to Noah.

3. The global Flood (about 2350 BC)

4. The repopulation of the world in one area from Noah’s descendants.

5. The tower of Babel dispersal of people in separate language groups.

6. Somewhere during the post-flood time an Ice Age occurred which lasted about 500 years.

7. Nations grew and developed from then on, in their separate lands, sometimes thriving, sometimes decaying and disappearing.

8. About the year 1000 AD world population began to burgeon.

Every single part of the above summary is currently being attacked by Uniformitarian views.

Working with what we know (or from what we can safely assume to be true) we will now consider some of the Bible details.

1. Creation week (started about 4004 BC – Bullinger’s Companion Bible date)

Adam and Eve were created by God. They were supremely perfect and pure. There was no slow development of their minds, no educational process. They were instantly able to think, speak and behave like their Creator.

Adam spoke to God immediately. We know this because when God created the animals on day six, He brought them to Adam “to see what he would call them” (Gen. 2:19). Naming animals implies creative thinking, also scientific classification, and memory. It is one thing to invent a few thousand names, it another thing to remember all those names. Yet Adam, and presumably Eve, were able to establish their own order on Nature.

That God can impart knowledge without the need for someone to learn it is also clear from the case of Solomon, who was given wisdom. “And God gave Solomon wisdom and understanding exceeding much, and largeness of heart, even as the sand that is on the sea shore.” 1 Kings 4:29. When the queen of Sheba tested his knowledge, we are told : “Solomon told her all her questions: there was not any thing hid from the king, which he told her not.” 1 Kings 10:3

Working from this revealed truth, we may conjecture that Adam and Eve were brilliant intellectuals. All the sciences were open to them. Either by examination or thought processes they were able to understand a vast amount of what we call science.

When they sinned they fell, spiritually, morally and intellectually, but a huge amount of this original store of understanding remained with them. They lived for centuries after that, which enabled them to teach new generations. This implies that the pre-Flood civilisation was highly-advanced – perhaps more advanced than any civilization after the Flood up to today.

There is an intriguing thought, found in Ecclesiastes, that “The thing that has been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.

Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new? it has been already of old time, which was before us.

There is no remembrance of former things; neither shall there be any remembrance of things that are to come with those that shall come after.” Ecclesiastes 1:9,10,11

When Adam and Eve were driven from the Garden, or orchard, God posted a guard. “So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.” Genesis 3:24

We are not told why the Garden had only one entrance, nor what cherubim are, or what the flaming sword looked like, but the memory of that method of eviction must have been unforgettable for those who saw it. Obviously anyone who tried to enter the Garden again would be killed – something which relates to the death of the Saviour for all of Adam’s offspring in approx. 30 AD.

What did the Earth look like at that time?

One view is that the land was clumped together into a single vast continent. “And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together to one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.” Genesis 1:9

There is no clue given as to the shape or size of this single land mass. It could have been 90% of the surface, or 50%. It could have been entirely low-lying hills and gently rolling countryside, or something quite radical, like a southern hemisphere only comprising land and a northern hemisphere of water.

Before Adam and Eve sinned many of today’s laws of physics did not operate the way they do now. We can only guess at the pre-sin conditions.

Miracles give us a hint as to how life on Earth may have been before sin. In all miracles God intervenes and reverses or cancels ‘natural’ laws. As C.S.Lewis said of the resurrection “Death working backwards” – quite the opposite direction to the direction which all processes in living things move today.

Two notable miracles : the Israelites wore clothes and shoes for 40 years without wearing them out -  “And I have led you forty years in the wilderness: your clothes are not waxen old upon you, and your shoe is not waxen old upon your foot.”  Deuteronomy 29:5

Regeneration of atrophied or non-existent cells : “Then Abraham fell upon his face, and laughed, and said in his heart, Shall a child be born to him that is an hundred years old? and shall Sarah, that is ninety years old, bear?” Genesis 17:17

2. The family line from Adam to Noah.

Adam and Eve had “sons and daughters” (Gen. 5:4). In fact every male named in the family tree is said to have had “sons and daughters”, except Noah, whom are told, had three sons.  The fact that he alone had only 3 sons and no other children, is significant, because it is pointed out several times.

Cain married one of his sisters. At that time there were no laws against incest because the genetically pure, but laws were brought in later by God, because post-Flood life was in the process of disintegration, as it still is today.

The pre-Flood average age, based on the list of names between Adam and Noah is impressive.

Adam 800

Seth 807

Enosh 905

Cainan 910

Mahalaleel 895

Jared 962

Enoch 365 (cut short)

Methuselah 969

Lamech 777

Noah 950. He was 500 before the Flood, and lived 350 years after it.

The average age was 834, but the effect of all this longevity was an overlap of generations. We assume that all these men had children who also lived to similar ages. This would mean that Adam was still alive during the lives of Seth, Enosh, Cainan, Mahalaleel, Jared, Enoch, Methuselah and Lamech. In fact, going on the Biblical ages, When Adam was 950 he could have spoken to Methuselah, who lived right through to the Flood. This means that Methuselah could have met and spoken to Noah, Shem, Ham and Japeth, as well as many of the other people who had met the other men in the list.

The fact that generations lived longer is important. It is also important that many people in those days had the opportunity to learn straight from the very people who had met Adam and Eve. The sons and daughters of this mighty race were intellectually developed, genetically healthy, and they all lived in a world which was conducive to prosperity. The population had every advantage, and, I am sure, burgeoned.

Given that conditions were extremely conducive to population growth in pre-Flood times, we can make some reasonable assumptions.

Man has always been a tool-maker.

He has always sought technologies which will make his life easier.

He tends to build things which reflect his values or needs.

Man tends to turn away from God to religion or other substitutes.

Pre-Flood civilisation was a technologically advanced, highly sophisticated ‘modern’ culture, which increased rapidly in the arts and sciences, astrology and superstition, secularism and anti-God behaviour. It was a civilisation which had everything materially, but which had no love or God or interest in obeying him.

“And as it was in the days of Noe, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man.

They did eat, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, and the flood came, and destroyed them all.” Luke 17:26,27

Genesis 4 provides further insights into the technologies of pre-Flood times.

Cain “built a city”

Jabal was the “father of such as dwell in tents, and of such as have cattle” – this implies weaving, manufacture of ropes, cords and connecting devices. Animal husbandry, livestock management, breeding programs.

Jubal was “the father of all such as handle the harp and organ (pipes). To make such instruments one needs to understand shaping of objects, vibration distances, tones, composition, perhaps notation. The fashioning of musical instruments implies creative dance and musical events.

Tubal-cain was “an instructor of every artificer in brass and iron”. This implies knowledge of ore-extraction, smelting, refining, the making of alloys.

There is divided thought over the word “brass”.

Unger says the word is likely to be “bronze” – an alloy of copper and tin, while brass is an alloy of copper and zinc. The fact remains however that this metal was produced and used long before the Flood.

“Iron” is undisputed. Unfortunately, iron oxidises rapidly when it is wet, which means that all but the purest iron made by past civilisations has disappeared.

The next very significant point to notice about this pre-Flood civilisation is the fact that one man and three sons were able to build a colossal, ocean-going vessel called an Ark. This alone should make us sit up and think about what those pre-Flood people were capable of.

To build an Ark implies a great knowledge of many things. God gave only the dimensions, but He did not explain to Noah how to build it. He knew that pre-Flood people were already technologically advanced enough to do that part. (In a similar way God told Moses to build a Tabernacle, and Solomon to build a Temple, giving the dimensions only.)

Trees had to be selected, felled, and milled. Wood had to be  measured, shaped, cut, fastened and interlocked. Scaffolding had to be raised. Metal was probably used in many different ways too. We assume that nails were used.

The ability to make fire is also assumed because Noah made a sacrifice after the Flood and offered “burnt offerings” to God (Gen. 8:20)

The point I am making here is that the Flood did not necessarily wipe out the intelligence, memories and abilities of the human race, reducing them to ‘stone age’ subsistence. There was probably a strong continuity through the Flood year, and a re-establishment of similar skills and technology straight after the Flood. Shem Ham and Japeth, and their wives, and Noah, were all part of the pre-Flood generation. We are not told whether any of Noah’s family were godly, though we would like to think they were. (Lot’s wife was given the opportunity to escape the judgement yet she was not godly.) But even if they were godly, there is no law which determines that children of godly parents will be the same as their parents, in fact the fact that God had to destroy Sodom and the other four cities, shows that the descendants of a godly man may quickly become an offensive to God.

3. The global Flood (about 2350 BC)

The evidence for a global Flood is quite easy to find, and there are many books which lay this evidence out clearly. Sedimentary rocks, billions of fossils, vast areas of volcanic material, riverbeds which go down into the sea, oil and coal deposits . . . there is no shortage of evidence.

The question is, however, in what way and to what extent did the pre-Flood geological appearance and the post-Flood geological appearance differ?

If the sea before the Flood was “gathered together into one place” was there a time when the land, which was also gathered together in another place, separated, split into pieces, and moved to its present position – to become the continents we are familiar with today? The Bible does not say this happened, but the seas are not presently gathered together into one place, so something must have happened during or after the Flood.

There is a view (that the land moved), in Genesis 10:25 – “And to Eber were born two sons: the name of one was Peleg; for in his days was the earth divided.” Peleg means ‘division’. Divided means ‘to cleave’. But what the verse probably means is that during Peleg’s lifetime the different nations were separated and began to settle in what they came to regard as their own lands. (Territories) This is the first indication of post-Flood nationalism, a later cause of many political and religious wars.

If the continents moved rapidly, sliding on the softer material under them (magma) they would have generated enormous waves. These tidal mountains of water, perhaps as high as 2 miles, would have crashed over the land, pulverising and destroying virtually everything in their path. Is it likely that God would describe this ‘second Flood’ in one small, and ambiguous verse about one of Shem’s sons?

We are not ruling out the possibility of the continents moving, but perhaps their speed was such that catastrophic waves were avoided?

4. The repopulation of the world in one area from Noah’s descendants.

Following the Flood, the population of the world began again. Noah’s family produced the first generation. Noah live another 350 years. If this was the normal lifespan at this time, many of the children would have seen the children of several more generations before they died. This would have been similar to pre-Flood times, except now the average age limit was dropping fast. Very few people after the Flood made it past 300 years.

Shem’s line :

Shem 500

Arphaxad 403

Salah 403

Eber 430

Peleg 209

Reu 207

Serug 200

Nahor 119

Terah 205

Abraham 175

An average age of 285 as compared to a pre-Flood average of 834 years. Today the average age seems to have levelled out at about 75-80, which shows that the human race is not what it used to be. The deterioration may be due to diet, climate, genes or some other factor, or a combination of factors.

From this time on some historical records are available, be they clay tablets, inscriptions in stone, artefacts, buildings or oral traditions carried by myth and legend.

Giants.

One other important ingredient in the Bible account is the mention that, before the Flood, angels cohabited with humans and produced “giants”. It is not within the scope of this essay to examine whether angels and humans can interbreed, or to look in detail at the matter. The main thing is the Bible says that the offspring of this deliberate angelic interbreeding program were beings called “Nephilim” – men of great power, physically, intellectually and spiritually.   ( There were giants (Nephilim) in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.” Genesis 6:4)

The “and also after that” supplies the basis for the Canaanite opposition to Israel. It also suggests that these “giants” may have been the basis of many of the legends which have been handed down to us, of giants, ogres and other monsters, or gods and goddesses. In the same way, eye-witness accounts of dinosaurs have been passed down in terms of ‘flying serpents’, and ‘dragons’. (For Old testament references to “giants” see Num.13:33, Deut.2:11,20, 3:11,13, Josh.12:4,13:12, 15:8, 17:15, and 18:16. For a New testament reference see Jude 1:6) These giants were also called Anakim, Emim and Zamzummim.

Now if the view that these “giants” were living amongst the human race before and after the Flood is correct, we have to revise our understanding of the history of the early world. Just as we have to include dinosaurs in the Ark, and dinosaurs in the world after the Flood, we also have to include these Nephilim before and after the Flood. They were there in Canaan, waiting for Israel – Gen. 12:6, 13:7. Having failed to destroy Adam and Eve, satan tried to destroy the first settlement of humans. Failing that, he next tried to destroy Abraham, Lot and then Israel. But the giants fell, Goliath being one of them, Og another. Without the inclusion of these giants, there are many puzzling things which have to be explained in other ways.

5. The tower of Babel dispersal of people into separate language groups.

The evolutionary view of the origin of languages is that at some stage millions of years ago animals turned grunts into words, and from these crude sounds all the different languages and dialects in the world have sprung. The evidence does not support this view. What we find in the world are many extremely different language ‘families’, each with its own set of grammatical rules, words and meanings, but with very little in common  between each ‘family’ of language.  This is exactly what we would expect to find if the original language ‘families’ were created as separate and distinct entities.

Genesis 10:32 seems to indicate that the dispersion of people across the earth was generally along extended family lines. Since very little time had elapsed since the Flood there would not have been many clans, so there would not be a need for a huge number of new languages – perhaps only a few dozen.

As each language group spread over the planet, generation by generation, they became isolated from each other. Each separate language group developed its own culture, and civilisation, with a slow change in the language – as happens today. Different dialects developed and new words were added all the time.

6. Somewhere during the post-flood time an Ice Age occurred which lasted about 500 years.

Creationist literature usually insists that there is evidence for only one ice age, and that it was of short duration. Its likely cause was a combination of several factors:

1. During the Flood a large amount of water came up from underground. This would have heated the oceans and increased the evaporation rate, which would have led to more snow and the rapid build up of ice.

2. There was also volcanic activity, which would have added to the heating of the oceans, and a large amount of atmospheric dust. The dust would have reflected sunlight and added to the cooling of the planet’s atmosphere.

Before the Flood it seems (?) That there was a canopy of water surrounding the planet, (Gen. 1:6-8) which would have distributed heat reasonably well to all parts. After the Flood this canopy seems to have collapsed, leading to rapid freezing of north and south poles.

Based on this theory, we may have a scenario in which Noah’s descendants live through a cold period, with slowly retreating oceans as the water is lifted from the oceans and converted into vast ice sheets. This would have exposed land-bridges between land-masses, helping humans and animals migrate to distant parts of the world. (It is interesting to note that almost every land area in the world is connected to the Middle East along corridors of land)

At the end of the Ice Age, a great deal of water would have run off the land north and south, forming huge lakes and causing flooding as ice dams broke. There is a lot of evidence to support this.

That the oceans have been higher and lower than they are at present is supported by a lot of evidence. There are many cases of the ruins of human buildings and roads which are now found under sea water. The edges of continents and inland lakes bear the marks of different water-levels – ‘steps’- horizontal planes. There is a lot of evidence to show that huge areas of what is now desert used to be lakes and rivers, such as inland Australia. The Great Lakes of America show signs of having once been part of a single super-lake, and limestone in Egypt shows signs of erosion by extended periods of rain.

7. Nations grew and developed from then on, in their separate lands, sometimes thriving, sometimes decaying and disappearing.

The Readers Digest ‘The World’s Last Mysteries’ lists many civilisations which have come and gone, or risen and dwindled away. Chapter headings include ‘Strange stones of western Europe’, ‘Soul-statues of Corsica’, ‘The secrets of Stonehenge’, ‘The giants of Easter Island’, ‘Teotihuacan . . .’ ‘The lost empire of the Indus Valley’, ‘The silent stones of Tiahuanaco’, ‘The last refuge of the Incas’, ‘Pyramids in the Americas’, ‘When the Sahara was green’, ‘Splendour in the jungle at Angkor’, ‘The Olmecs . . .’, ‘The magnificent realm of the Mayas’, ‘Enigmatic messages of the Nazcas” and so on. At the back of the book are many mysterious finds, dating back to some time when humans built cities and then abandoned them. For example “It is now clear that Bahrain was the centre of a vanished empire . . .” And “ . . .in this inhospitable region at the mouth of the Amazon there are traces of a developed civilisation of Andean character . . .”, and ‘The culture of the Eskimos who now inhabit the region (Ungava Bay) appears to have nothing in common with the people who raised these stones . . .” and “It is now more than a hundred years since a priest, walking in a remote part of Hierro Island, discovered signs of writing engraved on the side of a cliff . . .” There are dozens of similar examples of the remains of human activity, found in odd places and remote parts of the planet – all evidence that humans migrated and settled everywhere after the dispersal from Babel.

8. About the year 1000 AD world population began to burgeon.

Given the right conditions – food, fertile soil, abundance of food, peace, etc, a human population can grow quickly.

Quoting from ‘In the Minds of Men’ by Ian Taylor:

“If humanity is really 3,5 million years old . . . then today’s world population can be predicted  . . . . for example, with a modest estimate of 2.2 children per average family, and an equally modest average generation life span of twenty years, and parents never living long enough to see their grandchildren, then the world population would have grown from a single family to 10 to the power of 2070 people alive at the end of the first million years  . .”

But demographers will say that, for millions of years the human population remains static. For example, when the bones of an Australian were found in Australia in 2001, and dated at 60,000 years, the explanation for why there were no remains of 60,000 years of human activity was : “ . . .how many indigenous people have ever lived in Australia.(?) It is a very large number. The statement on the 2% projection is obviously true using a compound interest formula. However, world population has never grown at anything like 2% per annum until very recently.”

In other words, even though a logical calculation shows that world population could not possibly be as low as it is today, given that humans have been living on this planet for so long, there must have been zero population growth for 3 million years. This, of course, is absurd. However, if we accept the Bible chronology, starting about 4,500 years ago with a family of eight, and given good conditions, we come to approximately the population we have today.

Some theories about early civilisations.

It has long puzzled many people as to how supposedly ‘primitive’ societies could build and invent with such vigour. The evidence is coming forward all the time that the further back we go, the more sophisticated the people were. Huge buildings, massive blocks of stone carved and drilled with apparent ease, ornate jewellery, machinery, metalworking, calendars, weapons, inventions of many kinds, art, music and astronomy. The list is almost endless.

Some explanations for this include :

1. Aliens from another planet came and ‘seeded’ the earth with humans.

2. Aliens tampered with primate DNA to produce humans.

3. Life came from somewhere in space, landed on earth, and from it all life evolved, with humans eventually emerging as a variety of ape with more intelligence.

4. Life evolved over millions of years, producing humans, who lived for millions of years before suddenly exploding into progress, science and so on.

However, none of these explanations stands up to scrutiny. The best explanation is the one the Bible gives :

God created humans and gave them dominion over Nature. The humans disobeyed God and lost their dominion. The humans reproduced and their offspring became a highly developed civilisation (with some crossbreeding with angels). God destroyed this primary colony, but the knowledge and skills were carried through by the survivors, giving them a head start in their own individual colonies around the world. But as generations came and went, the initial high beginnings gradually decayed and successive generations began to remember their ‘golden beginnings’ in terms of myths and stories, which they passed on to their children.

The evidence for this scenario is seen in the amazing buildings and technology which archaeologists are constantly finding in such places as Egypt, and South America (to name but two places out of many). Why did these early civilisations die out? I would hazard a guess – they were wicked. In every case we find signs of idolatry, superstition, astrology, human sacrifice, and other grotesque and horrible activities. As I see it, God’s tolerance has its limits, and no civilisation, no matter how sophisticated, can remain indefinitely before God moves in to punish it.

Where does Crustal Displacement fit into this?

Crustal displacement could have occurred during the Flood. It seems likely that the land masses were once joined into a single area, which later shifted and split apart. If this is the case, then the first crustal displacement took place during the Flood.

After the Flood, the land was quickly repopulated by plants and animals. Life developed on the fertile layer on top of the sedimentary rock laid down by the Flood – life lived on the surface of the world-wide ‘cemetery’ comprising past generations of plants, animals and humans. Scientists have discovered many types of bacteria living in the rock too – which could have got there as it was being laid down.

Post-Flood populations were not primitive. They began as highly intelligent, highly skilled groups, and then gradually degenerated, as knowledge they had brought with them from before the Flood was lost. Science was replaced by superstition and each civilisation crumbled and collapsed – leaving the enigmatic ruins for archaeologists to dig through today.

The continent of Antarctica, probably temperate and inhabited after the Flood seems to have undergone sudden and dramatic temperature changes. The remains of plants and animals have been found which do now grow there now. Maps have also been found (passed down and copied from copies) of the coastline of Antarctica, which look as if they were drawn at a time when there was no ice in the land. The maps are accurate compared to today’s satellite images, and drawn to an exact projection, allowing for the curvature of the earth.

Who drew these maps, and how did the map-makers know how to draw them, and how to navigate so well? It seems most likely that the cartographers were post-Flood humans. We already know that they were intelligent, technological, and scientific. Other groups of post-Flood humans settled in other parts of the world, doing equally sophisticated things. There is no need to postulate tens of thousands of years, or ancient civilisations. Compare the rate at which humans have developed between the 1800’s and the 1900’s. We have gone from horse and cart to atomic bomb in less than a single generation.

The Bible chronology allows very little time between the end of the Flood and the onset Ice Age for ‘snap-freezing’ a continent. If, on the other hand, the ‘snap-freezing’ took place after the Ice Age, we come to about 4000 years ago, or 2000 BC, which is within historical records.

There are two ways (as far as I can see) by which Antarctica could be ‘snap-frozen’.

1. Move the entire continent. But if this happened, the enormous waves generated would sweep around the world like a second Flood – a thing which God promised never to send again.

If this happened, there would probably be a domino effect, with other land-masses moving, and huge volcanic eruptions, leading to a frozen world, and the extinction of most of the life.

2. Shift the polar axis.

As to (1) the Bible tells us several things about the stability of the land-masses:

“While the earth remains, seed time and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.” Genesis 8:22

“And I will establish my covenant with you; neither shall all flesh be cut off any more by the waters of a flood; neither shall there any more be a flood to destroy the earth.” Genesis 9:11

“Fear before him, all the earth: the world also shall be stable, that it be not moved.”             1 Chronicles 16:30

“Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if you have understanding.

Who has laid the measures thereof, if you know? or who has stretched the line upon it?”

Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened? or who laid the corner stone thereof” Job 38:4,5,6

“Who laid the foundations of the earth, that it should not be removed for ever.

You covered it with the deep as with a garment: the waters stood above the mountains.

At Thy rebuke they fled; at the voice of Thy thunder they hastened away. They go up by the mountains; they go down by the valleys to the place which you have founded for them.

You have set a bound that they may not pass over; that they turn not again to cover the earth.”  Psalm 104:5-9

Obviously, the Bible makes it clear that the land-masses are stable and secure. There is no chance that they might suddenly go skidding away across the softer magma underneath. God has fastened them, or given them foundations, to prevent this very thing.

However Einstein and others have postulated that the land is not securely fixed :

“Albert Einstein investigated the possibility that the weight of the ice-caps, which are not symmetrically distributed about the pole, might cause (a displacement). Einstein wrote ‘The earth’s rotation acts on these unsymmetrically deposited masses, and produces centrifugal momentum that is transmitted to the rigid crust of the Earth. The constantly increasing centrifugal momentum produced this way will, when it reaches a certain point, produce a movement of the Earth’s crust over the Earth’s body, and this will displace the polar regions towards the equator’” (‘Fingerprints of the gods’ page 495)

2. Polar shift.

The post-Flood planet was very different to the pre-Flood planet. For one thing, the climate was different. Before the Flood there was no rain. All life apparently grew larger and lived longer. There is much fossil evidence of giant creatures which are related to their present-day diminutive relatives. Genetically humans were superior, being so close to their original perfect parents. The age-limits of pre-Flood humans reflects this. And there were giants, or hybrid humans, who probably possessed supernatural abilities, perhaps high IQ’s and probably great physical strength, which might explain why so many early buildings are so large.

For example, Og of Bashan – “For only Og king of Bashan remained of the remnant of giants; behold, his bedstead was a bedstead of iron; is it not in Rabbath of the children of Ammon? nine cubits was the length thereof, and four cubits the breadth of it, after the cubit of a man.” Deuteronomy 3:11. Bullinger puts a cubit at between 21 and 25 inches. Nine cubits = 189-225 inches, or  15 plus feet to 18 plus feet long by 7 to 8 feet wide.

Bullinger also notes that the dimensions of Og’s bedstead (or couch) are exactly the same as the measurement of Marduk in Babylon.

The geography was different. Mountains were pushed up rapidly. There is strong evidence that this is so. One evidence is the fact that where there is folding of strata, the folds re not cracked and shattered, as you might expect if the layers were bent while dry and hard. The fact that cracking is not seen indicates that the folding took place rapidly while the layers were still malleable. It also indicates that the layers were produced rapidly, and not over millions of years.

The language was different. Before the Flood all the people shared a common language, but soon after the Flood the Lord divided the people into language groups and sent them across the world to settle in different lands.

The theories which Graham Hancock puts forward in his book ‘Fingerprints of the gods’ are based on several assumptions :

1. Man is an evolved ape,

2. The Earth is millions of years old,

3. About 10,000 years ago a civilisation flourished in temperate Antarctica’s continent

4. That civilisation tried to share its technology and science with other civilisations

5. At some point in ancient history a near-global flood occurred, from which only a few humans survived, along with some animals and birds

6. Crustal displacement destroyed that flourishing civilisation, and sweeping the world with chaos and destruction

7. Many of the earliest monuments are remnants of this former civilisation.

8. Several Ice Ages followed a crustal displacement which also caused huge floods and volcanic devastation. The history of the world is a succession of disasters, reaching back into the remote past.

Problems with the theory:

1. Man was originally created perfect by God

2. The Earth is not much older than 6000 years

3. A pre-Flood civilisation flourished up to about 4,500 years ago.

4. After the Flood many highly sophisticated civilisations flourished in different parts of the world, all of them sprung from the same place – the mountains of Ararat.  The common thread which runs through many early civilisations is their common origin and sharing of common knowledge and beliefs

God has fixed the continents firmly to stop them from moving

5. A global Flood occurred, from which only 8 humans survived, along with some animals and birds

6. God has promised never to destroy the world again with water, however, a shift in the polar axis appears to have ‘snap-frozen’ Antarctica. This may have happened very soon after the Flood, and at the onset of the Ice Age.

7. Early monuments could have been built by post-Flood civilisations within the time-frame of Biblical chronology

8. The Bible doesn’t even mention any Ice Age, but there is evidence that ice sheets did, at one time, cover a huge area of the planet. However, the ice has retreated, and where it used to be, cities and people are now flourishing. The Bible does not allow for any ‘remote past’ for civilisation. All that has happened has happened within the last 4 and half thousand years.

Conclusion

There are many theories about the history of Man, and the sequence of events since he first began to leave his mark on the planet is difficult to unravel. Even the Bible leaves many areas undescribed. The only two things we have to go on are the Bible chronology and the evidence. If the two match, then we have a correct view. We know that the Bible is always accurate, so any findings we uncover must be placed within the Bible framework.

As a lay person, I am very aware of my almost complete lack of understanding on secular archaeology, history and so on, but I have the Bible. Through the years I have  found that it has always proved itself right on any matter on which it speaks, and I expect it will continue to do so.

Just because Graham Hancock’s book raises many questions as to the antiquity of Man, and poses many unanswerable questions, does not in itself prove the Bible incorrect. Over the last 2000 years many people have raised similar questions and produced many equally interesting theories, but all of them have fallen into line under the power of the accurate word of God. I have no doubt that Mr. Hancock’s theory, of a highly sophisticated race, who originated from Antarctica’s once temperate continent, who then built sophisticated monuments, navigated the world using accurate latitude and longitude, who mapped lands now buried under ice, who seemed to indicate that they were at least 10,000 years old, who worked stone as if it was soft clay or putty, who understood the precession of the constellations to an incredibly fine degree, who apparently mapped the world and represented highly significant mathematical principles in the dimensions of the oldest pyramids, whose homeland skidded south and stopped at the pole . . . has many features which need to be evaluated. But most of his conclusions do not fit with Bible chronology.

If anything, much of the evidence (apart from his theories) confirms the Bible, because it has been saying, since it was written, that Man began perfect and then fell. It has been saying that “there is nothing new under the sun” for thousands of years. It describes technology before the Flood, and explains the extent of the Flood, and the aftermath. It gives the origin of nations, and languages, the reason why the people migrated, and it hints at their high degree of inventiveness and ability. It also relates the influence of hybrids – the giants. All these things can explain the theories put forward by Mr. Hancock, without damaging the Bible chronology.

Many mysteries remain.