The Genesis flood serves as a pivotal event separating the pre-flood world from the present, fundamentally altering the planet's geology and geography. Psalm 104 describes the flood as waters covering even the pre-flood mountains, which then rapidly receded as the mountains rose and basins sank, establishing boundaries for the oceans. This catastrophic event, distinct from creation, demonstrates God's sovereignty and judgment, not as a solution to human sin, but as a powerful display of His authority over the earth. The fossil record, found in mountains and canyons, provides evidence of sudden burial and the distinct reproduction of kinds, supporting the biblical accounts of creation and the flood, and ultimately pointing to God as the Creator and sustainer of all.
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dedication and humble, gracious hospitality on the part of some of you in your home, not just this time, but when we were here a year and a half ago for three Sunday nights, and the assurance that you folks do know how to approach the throne of grace and to make your petitions known. Thank you for including us in your prayers for the days to come as we travel here and there. and attempt to help God's people to begin intensive discipleship in the whole Council of God, even if it's just one young person that is open and willing and ready to be taught.
The precious word that Paul, of course, entrusted, for example, to Timothy, long ago as a pattern for us to follow. We do hope that you will take a look at a book we have back there called Gold Under Fire, one of the finest studies of Christians under Affliction. It was one of our students at Grace Seminary, who has now for many years been a faithful pastor, and it was a privilege to have a little part in that work. We trust that if you know people who are being afflicted, and physically and other ways that this might be an encouragement to them.
And thank you for all your words of encouragement to us these days. As we go around this country, we find less and less interest in the deep things of God, and all of us want to be sensitized, don't we, to the intricate, precious detail, the little things of Scripture that, of course, make up the big things. And we can't say, well, all of this is too difficult and too complex. Well, the Holy Spirit must not have thought so because he put it into this book and said, you search the Scriptures daily to see if these things are so. And so tonight, dear friends, we come to our somewhat complex topic of the Genesis flood and modern geology.
And I invite you to turn to Psalm psalm one of the great nature psalms of the Old Testament in which God outlines for us the whole history of the world in three parts part one verses one to five the creation of the world part two which we looked at briefly last night the destruction of that world at the time of the Genesis flood in the days of Noah, verses six to nine. And then the world since the flood, verses ten through thirty-five.
So you notice human history, world history, according to this psalm, written three thousand years ago, it has three parts. Are you ready? Pre-flood, flood, and post-flood. antidiluvian, diluvian, post-diluvian. Well, thank God there's another way now to divide history. It's called BC and AD. Guess who brought that about? Yes, before Christ and Anno Domini, the year of our Lord. But still that's true that God has the world's history now divided into those particular parts that we have just mentioned.
Now this chart is available to you on the table in an enlarged paper edition with more details added, or in the plastic notebook edition, because we have found it so helpful to students of the Bible to have an overview. In other words, to be able to see the whole picture, to get an overview of the woods before we look at the individual trees of the forest, as it were. And so you see these dividing points in history, in Earth history. That first very good world before the fall may have lasted as little as a month for a number of reasons that I won't develop right now. But it didn't take long for Adam and Eve to show their true colors, did it?
And every one of us repeat performances of that rebellion every hour we live. Well, that ended with a catastrophe called the curse of God from which this world has never yet fully recovered. And that introduced the second world system. We're going to do a little focusing here. That second system is called by the Apostle Peter the world that then was, that is, before the flood. And that lasted a great deal longer, didn't it? One thousand six hundred and fifty-six years. That was the worst world system this planet had yet known.
resulting, of course, in such global depravity and demonism that only one family was left that trusted God. And that ended with another catastrophe, the Genesis flood, the year-long mountain-covering deluge. And that introduced the third system, which we are now in, which the Apostle Peter calls the present heavens and earth, that began at the flood and will end at the second coming of Christ. Now, of course, there are various distinctions within this third system, the Noaic covenant, of course, and then the Abrahamic covenant, the Mosaic covenant, and the New Covenant, and so forth. And even on the day of Pentecost, the church age was inaugurated and it ends in the Seventy-three of Daniel.
It's a very complex system that is even longer, of course, than that second world. But when the third system ends, it'll be another catastrophe, Armageddon. And of course the climax of the Seventy-three of Daniel with all opposition destroyed, Satan, demons, and unbelievers in mankind. And that inaugurates the thousand-year kingdom, which in Latin we call the millennium, the thousand-year reign of Christ. And that ends in a catastrophe with a vast majority of human beings following Satan again. because they were born, you see, to believing parents here, but they didn't accept the Lord Jesus.
And you'll have a world filled with billions of Judas Iscariot outwardly conforming but inwardly hating Jesus, waiting for Satan's leadership. And so that'll end with what? The elements melting in fervent heat and the whole known universe, of course, fleeing away from him that sits upon the throne and giving way to the fifth and final and forever world system called Jesus. the new heavens and the new earth. Now friends, I think we can see, this is a very lively presentation here. Of course I realize we're in Florida. I think we can see the significance of the Genesis flood in this panorama.
You notice here that that Genesis flood separated the pre-flood world system, and even that one, from the world that we now live in today, and it brought tremendous changes to the angelic world, to the human world, and to the geologic world of topography and geography, and that's what we're going to look at with God's help right now. Listen to how Psalm, one oh four describes what happened in the year of the flood. Are you ready? Verse six, speaking of the earth that God had created.
Psalm one oh four, verse six. Thou did cover it, the earth, with the deep, to home, the ocean depths, as were the garment. In other words, God threw a whole blanket of water over that planet in the days of Noah. You say, well, really? How deep was that water? Look, the waters were standing above the mountain. Now those... were't the mountains we have today, like Mount Everest and the Himalayas and the Alps and the Andes, no, those we will see in the next couple of verses, rose after the flood. But pre-flood mountains were all totally covered with water. And of course, if you were on the moon when the flood struck planet Earth, what would you have seen?
You would have seen a beautiful planet suspended in the blackness of space with blue oceans and green continents seeming jungles No ice caps, no deserts, no clouds to obscure the earth either before the flood. But to your amazement, as you kept watching that planet up there, all the green within six short weeks would disappear and nothing left but blue. A shoreless ocean. No matter how hard you looked though, you couldn't see a tiny rectangular box floating on that shoreless ocean, in which the whole human race existed. with representatives of all air-breathing animals that, of course, were God's means to repopulate the post-flood world.
You say, well, I can't believe that there was such a catastrophe. Well, friends, I want to ask the Lord a couple of questions here, and I hope you'll join me tonight. And I know they're good ones because he's going to answer them in the next two verses. He must have known that that's it. By the way, did you notice something here? Of all the things... that God knew were important to us about that flood, you know, how people survived in the ark and how long it lasted and the release of the ravens and the doves and all those other questions. The one major issue God knows we will be haunted by is how deep was the deluge. And he answers it again, all the mountains of the pre-flood world were covered.
That settles it. But I have a couple questions, Lord, please. And here's the first one. If all the mountains of the world were covered with water, where did the water go when the flood ended? Did it evaporate? Was it annihilated? It isn't covering the whole world today. And, Lord, I have another question. This is a typical twentieth-century question. How many millions of years did it take for that shoreless ocean to become the present distribution of lakes and rivers and seas? You know, that's how modern geologists solve all Earth's history problems. Just throw millions of years at something and everything is resolved. Now God is going to surprise us.
He always does. Are you ready for his answers? Especially that second one. Look at verse seven. At thy rebuke they, those mountain-covering waters, fled. At the sound of thy thunder they hurried away. Does that sound like millions of years? No. Something stupendous took place to cause those waters to rush away. Well, what happened and where did they go? Next verse. Now this is more difficult to see. Some Bible translations, I'm afraid, are not that clear here. Verse eight, what really happened was the mountains went up and the valleys or basins sank down.
And thus what happened to the waters? Look at the end of verse eight. They went to the place which thou didst establish for them. Thou didst set a boundary that they may not pass over, that they may not return. to cover the earth. Now perhaps this simplified diagram will enable us to get the picture here. What happened was the reversal of what happened a year earlier at the beginning of the flood. You remember Genesis seven eleven says that in that particular day of Noah's life, God supernaturally broke up all the fountains of the great deep.
All those vast juvenile waters with great upheavals and the ocean basins were lifted up with a corresponding depression of the continent so that within six short weeks all those mountains were totally covered with water. And by the way, there's plenty of water on this planet to do that, no problem. If the whole surface of this Earth were smooth, there would be ten thousand feet of water on every square foot of planet Earth. Three hundred and thirty million cubic miles of water. The only planet we know of in the universe that has lakes and rivers and oceans of liquid water.
But what happened when the flood ended? Just the opposite. Those mountains went back up again and the basin sank back down again. And so God said, I'm going to set a boundary here. that those oceans will never again pass over, cross over, and cover the earth. Now friends, this is obviously then a discussion of the Genesis flood, not something that happened in Genesis one. This is what happened in Genesis six, seven, eight, and nine. And it's the same thing that Isaiah talked about two hundred years later. You don't have to turn, but please listen to what Isaiah said about this event. Isaiah chapter fifty-four.
God assured his people by using the Genesis flood as his model. For this, my covenant with you, Israel, is like the days of Noah to me, when I swore that the waters of Noah should not flood the earth again. And so have I sworn that I will not be angry with you, nor will I rebuke you, for the mountains may be removed and the hills may shake, but my righteousness will not be removed from you. And my covenant of peace will not be shaken, says the Lord who has compassion on you. He will keep his Abrahamic covenant to ethnic Israel, friends, because he doesn't make covenants and then break them.
Now, friends, that's an amazing statement through Isaiah, verse nine. And helps us to see, therefore, exactly what happens here in Psalm one hundred and four. This is none other than what? Than the rainbow covenant of Genesis nine. Where God said, those waters will never again cover the earth. And the rainbow is my sign. It's a visible guarantee that I'm very serious about that. And we're so thankful here in Florida that no matter how wicked we are and how much we deserve judgment, the oceans will never rise again and cover us all.
And the real bad news about that is the reason God gives in Genesis eight. Never again will I destroy the earth as I have done, saith the Lord, for man is wicked from his youth up. A million floods would never modify human depravity. Oh, no. Were that bad? Yes. In fact, here's worse news. Even the Genesis flood didn't solve the sin problem. Because inside of Noah's ark were eight sin natures. which after the flood propagated into depraved people that blasting God at the Tower of Babel and later even crucified God's own Son. And by the way, the worst human that will ever live on this planet is about to appear, and his name is the Beast.
And he also is a descendant of the survivors of the flood. You see what the Bible says, friends? Water can't save anybody. Saptismal water, flood water. No, no, only the blood of the God man can separate us from the wrath of God. And so the Genesis flood was not intended to solve the human sin problem. What was it for? Very important. God wrote a Psalm to tell us. Psalm twenty nine. Here's what it says. The Lord sat enthroned as king upon thee flood. And yes, he is enthroned as king forever.
It was his reluctant, sad display of absolute sovereignty over the world to demonstrate forever that he's in charge of planet Earth, not ourselves, or even Satan. That's his rare work, friends, global judgment. And he's going to have to do it again at the end of this age, isn't he? though global judgment wasn't to save people, it was to show them that God is sovereign and God is the king and God is in charge of the world. And he will tolerate rebellion and blasphemy only up to a point and then destruction.
Now friends, in the light of what Scripture says about that flood scenario and where the waters went, they went down here and they went down rapidly. because of a vast sudden change of the contours and topography of this planet whereby continents suddenly rose and basins sank down and the whole crust of the earth was wrenched and twisted and is still uncoiling in the various earthquake zones of this planet Earth. But let's take a guided tour, shall we, of this planet, with God as our teacher. And let's go down to the ocean shore, shall we? Not far from here. And when you go, take two things, please.
Holy Scripture in your hand and heart as your lens. You know, you have to have an intra-heart lens implant, remember, to see what's out there with the Holy Spirit's sovereign transforming work through illumination based on justification. Thank you, Lord. I can see some things now. And I recommend you take your camera, too. And as you look at that vast ocean, you know what you see through this lens? You see the deepest ocean this planet has ever had. Why, before the flood, they were much shallower.
But now some oceans are thirty-six thousand feet deep, vastly deeper than the highest mountains are high. Well, thank you, Lord. I never would have known that. There was another kind of world before this one, before the flood. Thank you, Lord. And perhaps even more amazing, you're now looking at the last ocean the universe will ever see. Because that ocean, friends, will stay exactly where it is. It's locked in by those boundary lines guaranteed by the rainbow covenant, even through the Seventy-three Good Daniel, through the second coming of Christ, through the thousand-year kingdom.
And after the thousand years and the final rebellion, the whole world will disintegrate and the oceans will give up the dead that are in them and they'll all evaporate. And God will create a new earth, are you ready, in which there'll be no more sea at all. That's not the millennium, that's the eternal state. So take a picture. These are the deepest oceans and the last ones. And only God can give us those insights. But even more amazing, friends, let's have God guide us through a tour of his mountains, shall we?
Now, that's very difficult in Florida. I'm told that Keystone Heights is the second highest level in all of Florida. I'm having an oxygen problem here, I guess. But let's go to some big mountains. not just out in Colorado. Let's go to the Himalayas, to Mount Everest. And when we climb great mountains, let's take with us not only Holy Scripture and a camera, but a pickaxe, because when we get up there, friends, we're going to start digging in the rocks. And guess what's going to come out of the rocks? Amazing, fossilized fishes and other animals and plants.
And as you look at these carefully, do you know what you'll discover? They're all distinct, they're all unique, and they don't sort of just sort of merge into something else through the levels of geologic strata. No. Darwin said, we'll find those links someday, but they're still what? Missing. That proves, of course, visibly, confirms Genesis one. God designed all living things to reproduce exclusively and forever after their... kind. Thank you, Lord. But look closer at those fossils. How beautifully the delicate body parts are preserved in the impacted mud.
The crustaceans and even the invertebrates and flowers and plants and the scales and feathers. And that proves they were suddenly buried. before they had any chance to decompose and rot. And that points to a global catastrophe. I wonder what that could have been. Friends, there are trillions of fossils on this planet. Why in Southern California alone, there's a section of mountains with an estimated ten billion fossils. It's not that we can't find any fossils. They're everywhere. And all of them tell the same stories. Part one.
We always reproduce after our kind. Part two. We were rapidly, in fact, suddenly smashed and buried before we could be oxidized and decayed. Genesis creation, Genesis flood. They're telling their story. Okay? But there's another miracle you're looking at. Where are these fossils? There are tens of thousands of feet above the ocean. How did they get way up there? Well, I was taught at Princeton University in my course in historical geology that the mountains rose because of a combination of mysterious things called time and chance.
And I want my money back. God says, oh no, oh no you don't. You don't do that to my mountains. Turn back to Psalm ninety five and listen to what God wants you to know about his mountain. Psalm ninety five friend. Verse three. For the Lord is a great God and a great king above all God in whose hand are the depths of the earth. Now watch. The peaks of the mountains are his also and the sea is his. Why? For it was he who made it. and his hands formed the dry land. Really?
So what are we supposed to do now? Verse six, come, let us worship and bow down, and let us kneel before the Lord our maker, for he is our God. You don't look at the vast mountains of this planet and say, O time and chance, how great thou art. He is watching your mind, mouth, and heart. Give glory to him for his world system and how it happens. But you know there's something else we're not through folks. On tops of those mountains there's ice and snow. There never was before the flood. There was never rain precipitation. There were no clouds, just a vast vapor canopy apparently providing a global terrarium within which there were even warm temperatures everywhere.
And in northern Siberia they have found millions of mammoths. Some of them frozen solid with fresh buttercups still in mouth and stomach. They have found a dinosaur buried up in Alaska and elephants up there. In fact, one was given to me in Alaska one time, a mammoth tusk that man dug out of the banks of the Yukon. And in fact, in the north slope of Alaska, they found a plum tree perfectly frozen, ninety feet long, where almost nothing grows today. In Antarctica, huge coal seams, where nothing can grow today.
I wonder where Peter the Apostle got this concept. The world that then was being overflowed with water perished. Stupendous changes on this planet. Not before Adam was created, but one thousand six hundred and fifty-six years after Adam was created in the days of Noah. Now friends, it is very difficult to go to Siberia and look for mammoths. And then convenient to go to the north slope of Alaska. So God has provided for us here in America a wonderful place to see what he did at the deluge. You guessed it, the Grand Canyon of Arizona.
And friends, what an amazing place that is to see. Millions of people come from all the world to see the Grand Canyon of Arizona. But I do want to give you a word of warning here. When you stand at the edge of this canyon right here, be very careful. You mean I might stumble and fall down? Yes, but if you know Jesus, you'll very shortly be with him. I'll tell you a worse problem. You could fall into the clutches of an evolution-oriented national park guide. who will wipe out the knowledge of God totally from this magnificent display of his power.
And I'll tell you what he'll tell you, because this is what I've taught to believe. Ladies and gentlemen, you are now seeing one of the wonders of the world, and this formation took one billion years to form. And ladies and gentlemen, one billion years ago there was no canyon here at all. Just... a gigantic flat geosincline, five hundred thousand square miles, into which hundreds of rivers poured sediments evenly across this flat basin like batter and a pancake pan. And ladies and gentlemen, it rose above sea level and then millions of years later sank down and another layer was formed by more rivers on top of that first layer, layer number two.
Millions of more years went by. Then another layer and another. And friends, after five hundred million years, we have five thousand feet of layers over five hundred thousand square miles of Arizona, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico. And then, ladies and gentlemen, a river appeared and flashed through all those layers all the way to bedrock in five hundred million more years. The Grand Canyon. Everything you heard is impossible. I've learned that evolutionism has more faith to keep it propped up than creationism ever did.
Why, friends, there could never be a geosyncline absolutely flat covering five hundred thousand square miles. And even if there was, you couldn't have hundreds of rivers laying sediments evenly across it without forming deltas. And even if you could, you couldn't lift them up without tilting and buckling and eroding and twisting those layers. They wouldn't be absolutely flat like layers of pages of a book like this. And furthermore, you couldn't have one river slash through hardened rock creating steep canyon walls. No river in the world could do that. You say, well, sir, you sort of do have my attention now. Please tell me where the canyon came from.
Well, this is the greatest shock of all, friends. It had to be formed in one year. Why? Look, the layers are all horizontal from top to bottom. That's five thousand feet of layers. You say, well, how could that happen? Well, if you read God's Word, God will tell you there's a catastrophe of such stupendous proportions. the great masses of water swept across this planet day after day, lifting up, transporting and dumping sediment. And before they had a chance to be buckled or twisted at all or eroded, here comes another mass of sediment-saturated waters dumping its load on top of the first one, and then comes another, and another, and another.
And after months and months and months of this, you have in this region five thousand feet of superimposed layers, which then after the deluge was lifted up, cracked open, and the trapped inland waters rushed to newly deep and ocean basins gouging their way through soft, unconsolidated mud layers. You say, well, that would take a miracle. Of course. That's why God wrote about it and told us things we have never seen and never will. But God says, please believe me. Now, friends, It's dangerous to say to God, prove it. But in nineteen eighty, he did.
In Mount St. Helens in the state of Washington, a volcano exploded. One thousand four hundred feet at the top of Mount St. Helens blew up and great dependent masses of mud rushed down the north slope into a spirit lake below. pushing the water, eight hundred feet up the other slope, ripping off a million trees and dashed them down into the valley. And as the mud went down, it formed perfect layers like pages of a book, and trapped waters flashed through that and created a Grand Canyon scale one to forty in days. And you know what I'm saying? Lord, I don't want any more visual aids. That was a terrifying illustration of what God did at the deluge.
I mean, what happened at Mount St. Helens is nothing compared to what happened in the days of Noah to this planet. And as you look at these layers of trees ripped up, smashed, carbonized rapidly, coal can be formed within one hour with sufficient heat and pressure today. And as you see, all these fish fossils, billions of them, especially up toward Utah, You say, well, how did they all get there? I mean, they're perfectly preserved, twisted, and they're dying agony in this matrix of mud. And the answer is not they all happen to get sick at the same time, but they were smashed by some unique globe encircling catastrophe, because today no fishes are becoming fossil.
When a fish dies in the ocean, it sinks to the bottom and becomes a fossil? No. It's annihilated by scavengers. And that's how the ocean bottoms are kept by God from becoming great garbage dumps. And the same on the dry land. Millions of bison, buffalo roam the western prairies for centuries. Nobody's ever yet found a fossil of a buffalo out there. Because when the great animal dies on the prairie, it can't sink down and become a fossil. Why, it just simply disappears. Scavengers remove the flesh. and weathering day after day and night after night and changes humidity and temperature and the bones disintegrate in dust and blow away and that's it.
And the continents don't become garbage dumps either, do they? But when you start digging down on those western prairies, friends, all of a sudden huge skeletons come to light. Fifty, sixty, seventy, eighty, a hundred feet long, great dinosaur skeleton. Tyrannosaurus, Rex, name them all. And we asked, well, how did they get there? You know, and Job wanted to know that too, didn't he? He said in Job twelve, just, you know, ask the beasts, they'll teach you. Ask the birds, they'll tell you. Speak to the earth and it'll teach you. Don't go to professors.
Don't go to great schools and just look for yourself on one condition. that you have this book as your guide. See, the biblical account of creation in the flood is the frame of reference within which everything on this planet must be understood. And we say, Lord, I can see it now. These enormous reptiles living in their swamps were overwhelmed by masses of mud in the initial stages of the rising of the deluge. Of course, the people had all escaped. Where were they? They had all fled to the hills. They were picked off one by one and drowned. They never became fossils. Only the great ponderous animals and the fishes and the lower levels, you see, of the ecological zones in which they lived were smashed by the millions and fossilized.
They didn't say, let's get out of here. We're going to head to the hills. No. They were buried. And friends, we realize that under our feet are billions of fossilized creatures that have a message for us tonight. You want to hear them talk to you? Here it is. Tune in. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. And they were smashed because people sinned against the Lord. And the whole creation was made subject to vanity. And the Genesis flood was an implementation of that curse. And the animal kingdom will never fully recover.
Many marine creatures will never reappear. And of course, the second law of thermodynamics under the curse has wiped out thousands of magnificent animals that once roamed this planet. And God says, just open both eyes, especially through my word as your limb, and just see the marvels that I have accomplished according to my word. And I say, thank you, Lord. Help me to be teachable. Help me to see things through your eyes. Help me to honor you because only you can tell me how the world got here, what it's like, why, and where it's going. And above all, your solution to my problem is redemption through a Savior who alone can rescue us from the clutches of the darkness and depravity of Satan and to deliver us into the kingdom of his dear son.
Do you know Him, friend? Is He your Savior? Is He your key to truth and His precious word, your textbook for ultimate reality? May God bless you. Thank you, friends. Let's pray. Dear Father, you have so many wonderful things to tell us. Just make us teachable, humble enough to just listen to the ultimate teacher, the one who was there when it happened. the one who is infinitely concerned that we have the answers within which we can live our lives fruitfully, joyfully, and reflect your light into other people's hearts and minds as you give us opportunities.
How we thank you, Father, for these days together. Watch over us, we pray. You know our needs. We're frail, but they that wait upon the Lord will renew their strength and mount up with wings like eagles and run and not be weary. and walk and not faint. Guide us, we pray, in the light of this precious truth. We ask, in Jesus' name and for His glory. Amen.