The significance of the great Genesis flood

Scripture is unambiguous about the worldwide flood described in the Bible. “And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth; and all the high hills, that were under the whole heaven, were covered” (Gen. 7:19).¹ This was a major event in the “short” time chronology of life on earth, as depicted in Scripture as well.

In contrast, millions of people, including many Christians, reject that story, opting instead for an evolutionary model of origins, believing that the sediments and fossils (which also can be explained by the worldwide flood) were deposited gradually over billions of years as life slowly evolved.

To resolve the conflict, most of the leading Christian churches have sought a compromise between both views: God took billions of years to create life on earth, and He used an evolutionary process to do so. Many theologians suggest that the first 11 chapters of Genesis, which include Creation and the Flood accounts, are merely allegorical. So, though using the Bible, these people seek to harmonize it the best they can with what modern science says about origins.

The question that all people, especially Christians, need to ask is, How well does this compromise work?

It does not. And what follows shows why.

Biblical problems

The first 11 chapters of Genesis are written as factual history, not an allegory. If Genesis 1–11 is an allegory, why not consider all the rest of the Bible as allegory, up to and including Jesus’ death on the cross, which, in Christian theology, is inseparable from the biblical Creation account?

God directly spoke and wrote the Ten Commandments, and in them, He says that “in six days the Lord made heaven and earth” (Exod. 20:11; 31:17). But why would God say—right in the heart of His moral law—that He created the world in six days when He really did it in billions of years?

Leading authorities in the Bible, such as Jesus, Peter, and Paul (Matt. 24:37, 38; 1 Pet. 3:20; Heb. 11:7), also talked about the Flood account as a fact.

The Bible states that man’s sin introduced evil into the world (Gen. 3:17–19; Rom. 5:12). But in the long-ages models, the fossils are interpreted to mean that rampant death and predation predated humankind for billions of years, even though a worldwide flood can account for them as well. Also, the Bible indicates that God’s creation was “very good” (Gen. 1:31); billions of years of death and suffering is anything but very good.

Despite these theological problems against rejection of the worldwide flood, important scientific evidence actually favors one.²

The layers question

Geologists group similar layers of rocks into major units called formations. Five of these formations in northern Utah are identified in figure 1. These formations appear layered on one another in the same sequence over widespread areas, ranging from 50,000 square miles (130,000 square kilometers) for the Cedar Mountain Formation to 386,000 square miles (1,000,000 square kilometers) for the Morrison Formation (figure 2).

These formations are relatively very thin. The Morrison averages 300 feet (100 meters) in thickness. Proportionately, if it were represented by a sheet of paper, its thickness would be less than that of the paper. The whitish Dakota formation (figure 1) is even thinner, averaging about 100 feet (30 meters) in thickness, but is spread over 330,000 square miles (850,000 square kilometers) (figure 3). Meanwhile, a geologic principle called the law of original horizontality states that sediments are deposited horizontally or nearly horizontally.

What, then, is the issue?

These widespread flat formations were deposited one on top of another over large flat areas of the continents. Present major catastrophic floods from rivers do not appear to deposit such copious quantities of unique sediment in a flat pattern over such flat topography. In other words, the widespread flat distribution of these formations and their subunits is different from the usual slow deposition that we now see from rivers and streams and local floods over usually irregular topography.

Figure 4, for example, shows the iconic eroded Grand Canyon of the Colorado River in Arizona, where we see 13 formations, all but one minor one lying essentially flat, one on top of another. Note that many of the layers, including very thin ones, can be followed across most of the picture. Almost all of these formations extend well over 50,000 square miles (125,000 square kilometers), and most well beyond that into several states. A pioneering geologist who did not endorse the Genesis flood commented about the Grand Canyon layers: “Nowhere have we found thus far what may be called a local deposit.”³

The red arrows in figure 4 point to the vertical sides of remains from the Redwall Limestone Formation, which, originally, before erosion, lay horizontally across the whole region. The Redwall has four superimposed subunits, each with its characteristic fossils, which are reported to extend well beyond the 50,000 square miles (125,000 square kilometers) of the Grand Canyon Plateau region,⁴ thus suggesting incredibly flat topography, as expected from rapid gigantic horizontal flood activity—but not by commonly seen in floods today. That is, Noah’s flood better explains this phenomenon than typical floods do.

Erosion rates

Everyone knows about erosion. But what few know is that our continents erode way too fast to permit survival over the suggested geological eons. A dozen studies about how fast our continents are currently being eroded into the oceans⁵ indicate that continents should be washed away to sea level in about 10 million years. This means that, over the billions of years proposed for our continents, they could have been eroded to sea level hundreds of times.

Some argue that the reason we still have eroding mountains and continents is that they are being renewed from below. This cannot be correct because we still have much of the geologic layers, from very ancient to recent, still present on the continents, and we have yet to go through even one complete cycle of erosion and renewal.

Erosion rates are a serious challenge to the proposed long geologic ages.

The gaps

The challenge of erosion rates is further substantiated in places where major parts of the geologic layers are missing (gaps) from the expected fossil sequence. The white arrows in figure 4 of the Grand Canyon point to three of these gaps. When the layers above and below the gaps are flat, geologists call these flat gaps paraconformities. Many millions of years of no deposition of layers are postulated to have caused these gaps.

The problem for the long geological ages is that, over millions of years of no deposition, you would expect abundant irregular erosion. However, the gaps, such as seen in the Grand Canyon here, are essentially flat, indicating that the proposed millions of years never occurred.

The erosion problem can be extreme. For instance, in the Grand Canyon, the geological Ordovician and Silurian periods and more, representing over 100 million years of no deposition, are missing (figure 1, lowest white arrow). Average rates of erosion during that time would result in 4 miles (6 kilometers) of downward erosion, which is three times the depth of the Grand Canyon. Paradoxically, in referring to this huge gap, one of the leading researchers of the Grand Canyon states, “Here, the unconformity [paraconformity], even though representing more than 100 million years may be difficult to locate.”⁶

Paraconformities, however, are no problem in the context of the Genesis flood, which rapidly laid down most of the geologic sedimentary layers. The flatness of paraconformities challenges the proposed long geologic ages.⁷

Conclusion

The worldwide Genesis flood is the key event that, in the context of God’s recent six-day Creation, explains the major part of the sedimentary layers of the earth and their fossils. Evidence that it occurred includes incredibly widespread flat formations, rates of erosion that are so fast they negate the putative long geologic ages, the essential absence of erosion at the flat gaps that authenticate fast deposition of sediments, and an overwhelming dominance of flood accounts in the folk literature.

In fact, there is more evidence of this kind,⁸ resulting in a significant body of scientific and historical data that is hard to explain by prevailing models of earth science but that fit very nicely with the biblical flood account.

In short, those who feel compelled to “harmonize” the Bible with long ages should not. There is no need to because, contrary to the popular hype, many good reasons exist to reject that model for the history of the earth. The biblical flood explains the evidence better than does the long-age theory.

Figure 1. Five widespread formations exposed in a cliff north of Vernal, Utah. Frontier Formation; Mowry Formation; Dakota Formation; Cedar Mountain Formation; Morrison Formation.

Figure 2. Distribution of the Morrison Formation in the Western United States.

Figure 3. Distribution of the Dakota Formation in the Western United States.

Figure 4. The Grand Canyon of the Colorado River. Red arrows point to remnants of the Redwall Limestone Formation. The three white arrows point to three “flat gaps” (paraconformities) and the assumed amount of time when there was no deposition. Ma = millions of years.