For forty days the flood kept coming on the earth, and as the waters increased they lifted the ark high above the earth. The waters rose and increased greatly on the earth, and the ark floated on the surface of the water. They rose greatly on the earth, and all the high mountains under the entire heavens were covered. The waters rose and covered the mountains to a depth of more than fifteen cubits. Every living thing that moved on land perished—birds, livestock, wild animals, all the creatures that swarm over the earth, and all mankind. Everything on dry land that had the breath of life in its nostrils died. Every living thing on the face of the earth was wiped out; people and animals and the creatures that move along the ground and the birds were wiped from the earth. Only Noah was left, and those with him in the ark.
The waters flooded the earth for a hundred and fifty days.
- Genesis 7:17-24
But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and the livestock that were with him in the ark, and he sent a wind over the earth, and the waters receded. Now the springs of the deep and the floodgates of the heavens had been closed, and the rain had stopped falling from the sky. The water receded steadily from the earth. At the end of the hundred and fifty days the water had gone down, and on the seventeenth day of the seventh month the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat. The waters continued to recede until the tenth month, and on the first day of the tenth month the tops of the mountains became visible.
After forty days Noah opened a window he had made in the ark and sent out a raven, and it kept flying back and forth until the water had dried up from the earth. Then he sent out a dove to see if the water had receded from the surface of the ground. But the dove could find nowhere to perch because there was water over all the surface of the earth; so it returned to Noah in the ark. He reached out his hand and took the dove and brought it back to himself in the ark. He waited seven more days and again sent out the dove from the ark. When the dove returned to him in the evening, there in its beak was a freshly plucked olive leaf! Then Noah knew that the water had receded from the earth. He waited seven more days and sent the dove out again, but this time it did not return to him.
By the first day of the first month of Noah’s six hundred and first year, the water had dried up from the earth. Noah then removed the covering from the ark and saw that the surface of the ground was dry. By the twenty-seventh day of the second month the earth was completely dry.
- Genesis 8:1-14
On the fourteenth night we were still being driven across the Adriatic Sea, when about midnight the sailors sensed they were approaching land. They took soundings and found that the water was a hundred and twenty feet deep. A short time later they took soundings again and found it was ninety feet deep. Fearing that we would be dashed against the rocks, they dropped four anchors from the stern and prayed for daylight.
- Acts 27:27-29
Boilerplate
I’m Harold Dykstra. I’m retired, but I go to food bank distributions all over Tracy and talk to people that need someone who will listen to their story. My time is well spent. A police lieutenant suggested that I write down the conversations that I had with an angel. I did not know she was an angel at the time. The angel, for a little over a year, indwelled a life-sized posable action figure my children bought me, so that I would not be perceived as travelling alone. And in a way, she was training me for what I do while talking to the needy. She probed my heart to find out what I believed and how I express love for others. She changed my life. Since she was a doll that had come to life, we came up with the term ‘other living.’ She was not a human, an animal, or even a plant, but she was definitely living, and very vibrant. Oh, excuse me, angels have no gender, but the angel indwelled a doll named Bountiful Babs. After seeing the angel in that form for over a year, I cannot see her in my mind in any other form.
This Week’s Question
In the last episode, Babs saw the grandeur of Yellowstone National Park and the mountains we had driven through. She wondered how anyone could not believe that God had done all this Creation.
But then after a couple of sales calls in Wyoming and a few in northern Utah, I called into the office to announce a few days of vacation. I took Babs to southern Utah and northern Arizona. We went to the national parks at Bryce Canyon, Zion, and the Grand Canyon.
One morning, Babs was sitting at the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, not far from our cabin. She had a puzzled look on her face.
“Babs,” I asked, “What is on that ever-inquisitive mind of yours?”
Babs replied, “Things don’t add up in Genesis 8. They run aground on Mount Ararat, but then it is two months and more before the mountains are visible. How can that be?”
“Let’s look at the Apostle Paul’s shipwreck near the end of the book of Acts.” I said, “How deep were the soundings when the sailors feared they would be ripped apart by the rocks?”
Babs scrunched her nose. “They took soundings, and it was 120 feet. But then a short time later it was 90 feet. That’s when they dropped four anchors. They were afraid they would hit the rocks.”
I smiled, “Right, Babs, they were more afraid of the rocks beneath the surface than they were afraid of the rocks that they could see. I have had friends speed up the river in a boat and the boat is sunk by hitting something beneath the surface, a rock, a stump, a submerged log. The boat, any boat, sinks into the water to a point where the buoyancy balances out. So, with any boat, the bottom will be below the surface. The ark ran aground near the highest peak in that group of mountains. Now, without any seismic activity, the waters would slowly go down. Then, they would see the mountain tops later.”
Babs asked, “What is seismic activity?”
I answered, “Well, you might think of earthquakes and tornadoes, but let’s look at the first few verses of Genesis 8. The springs of the deep were closed. So, no water from the aquifers that are down below us were pumping water up to the surface. Of course, the floodgates from heaven being closed meant that it wasn’t raining. Most experts think that most of the world’s seismic activity happened during the flood. One set of tectonic plates shifting to open the springs from beneath the surface, then more shifts in those plates to close those springs. But now what had been spring beneath the surface would then be giant empty caves. So, if the plates shift a third time, the water can go back underground. And every time those plate shift, plates from opposite directions hit each other and they create higher and higher mountains. Then, over the years after the flood had receded, the Himalayas and other really high mountain ranges could continue to get higher. So, the ark might have been near the peak of the Ararat mountains, but it might not be the peak at all after the mountains shifted a few more times. Of course, volcanoes can make a rapid change in the height of mountains. Those springs beneath the surface had to open and close and reopen, and then any water under pressure would have to again be closed. But pretty soon, all that massive movement slowed down to what we see today. God had acted upon His wrath. He had punished the people, and only the eight humans on the ark remained. It was sort of a ‘do over.’”
Babs said, “And it did not take them long to mess things up again. God sent them in different directions from the Tower of Babel.”
I shrugged, “I will accept that. God confused their language. Then the people naturally gathered based on common language and moved away from all those people of ‘foreign’ tongues. But that was a move God made. He told them to scatter over the whole earth, but they stayed together to build a tower and be equal with God. But God had promised not to destroy the earth’s population by flood again.”
Babs scrunched her nose again, “But what made the Grand Canyon?”
I laughed, “That is one thing that the Creationists and the non-believing scientists agree. The science books will say water over millions of years, but those who believe in the Bible will say that the water from the flood could have done it. But then, there would have been a global ice age after the flood. When the ice melted, then the water from the ice had to go somewhere.”
Babs brightened, “Like along the Yakima River in Washington state. This long ridge, and then there was this cut right through the ridge. Humans widened it to put the highway through, but how did the river burst through? I wondered that, but now it makes sense. All that ice pushed against that ridge, and then the water cut through the ridge to let the melt go through. I am sure that people who do not believe in the Bible would have some other explanation, but it makes sense to me. Thank you, Harold. Where are we going next?”
I suggested, “How about Moab, Utah and Arches National Park? We’ll drive through or pass a few ghost towns to reach the interstate…”
Babs gasped, “Will we see any ghosts?!”
I laughed, “No, a ghost town is a town where everyone moved away when the reason to build the town went away. If you have a drought, a farming town could become a ghost town. Abandoned buildings but no one living there. Mining towns often become ghost towns unless there is some other reason to keep some of the people there. When the mine has played out, people move on, leaving the empty buildings behind. The railroad built towns along the way, but when you did not have to resupply the water and fuel for the locomotive, or at least not as often, some of the towns were not needed anymore. In fact, some of the railroads carried the ore to the main lines, and those rail lines were not needed when the mines quit producing. But back to our trip. We will then drive through a mountain. We will drive through the Eisenhower tunnel and go down the mountain into the Mile-High city of Denver, Colorado.”
“That sounds so wonderful! More of God’s wonders to see!” Babs was bubbling with excitement.
Credits
All these conversations remind me of my conversations with my wife. We would talk about anything and everything. And most of the time, it sounded like a discussion in a Sunday school class.
My wife and I went to Zion, Bryce Canyon and Grand Canyon on one trip right after we got married. We went to Moab, Utah, and Arches National Park when our boys were young.
For information on scientific discoveries that refute Evolution, and point toward the biblical narrative, you can find episodes of Origins on Youtube from the Cornerstone Television Network. Here is an episode on the Grand Canyon.
As each episode is completed, the host says, “We know what the Bible says is true and the proof is all around you.”
Soli Deo Gloria. Only to God be the Glory.
Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley 
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