Welcome to Anchored by Truth brought to you by Crystal Sea Books. In John 14:6, Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” The goal of Anchored by Truth is to encourage everyone to grow in the Christian faith by anchoring themselves to the secure truth found in the inspired, inerrant, and infallible word of God.

Script:

For 40 days the rain poured down without stopping. And the water became deeper and deeper, until the boat started floating high above the ground. Finally, the mighty flood was so deep that even the highest mountain peaks were about seven meters below the surface of the water.

Genesis, chapter 7, verses 17 through 20, Contemporary English Version

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VK: Hello! I’m Victoria K. Welcome to Anchored by Truth brought to you by Crystal Sea Books. We’re very glad to be with you today as we continue the series we recently started on Anchored by Truth, that we are calling “10 Facts Every Christian Needs to Know.” In the studio today we have RD Fierro. RD is an author and the founder of Crystal Sea Books and he is the one picking the facts we are covering in this series. RD, why did you entitle this series “10 Facts Every Christian Needs to Know?” I’m sure many listeners would think that there are far more than just 10 facts that are pertinent to the Christian faith. There are surely thousands of facts that are important to a thorough understanding of Christianity. Just on what we’ve covered here on Anchored by Truth we’ve probably talked about hundreds or thousands of facts that help demonstrate that the Bible is the inspired, inerrant, and infallible word of God.

RD: Well, I would also like to say hello to all the listeners joining us here today on Anchored by Truth whether they are listening to the broadcast or the podcast. You’re absolutely right that there are thousands or maybe tens of thousands of facts that are relevant to the Christian faith. But I’m not sure a series entitled “1,000 facts you need to know” would be very appealing to most listeners. Most people today are so busy that they really need help with sorting through the huge volume of information that comes at them through a media-charged, internet-driven world. So, that’s what we do on Anchored by Truth. We sort through a lot of information and try to select items that listeners can grasp readily and hold onto to build their faith.

VK: We know that for many people today just getting to work and dinner on the table can feel like an accomplishment. And we know that there are a lot of Christians who have a sincere desire to strengthen and deepen their faith but the urgencies of life can derail those intentions. We want to help people fulfill that ambition of growing in their faith while they continue to keep up with all of their other priorities.

RD: And as we talked about last time not all information, not all facts, have an equal bearing on important faith matters. For instance, the Bible tells us that there were 70 descendants of Jacob that went down into Egypt at the start of the Israelites sojourn there. That’s just a simple historical fact we learn about from Exodus, chapter 1, verse 5. The Bible also tells us that God created the heavens and the earth – again a straightforward historical fact. Both of those facts are relevant to our faith but I don’t think most people would regard them as being equally relevant to our understanding of God. The most important historical fact of all time is unquestionably the fact of Jesus’ resurrection because the validity of the entire Christian faith is dependent on that one fact. The point is that we have to be discerning when we look at, and especially when we communicate, our faith. It’s good to know about the Hebrews period of captivity in Egypt and subsequent deliverance, but it’s more important for everyone to know that Jesus died for their sins and that He rose from the dead proving the Father was pleased with His sacrifice.

VK: What we want people to understand is that there are certain facts that are critical to them understanding and having confidence in their faith. At one point in our history people accepted much about the Christian faith without much controversy. But those days are past. Today, just about every substantive point of our Christian faith is being attacked by somebody somewhere. And there is no book of the Bible that is attacked more than the book of Genesis, the first book of the Bible. It’s become very plain over the past 200 years that part of Satan’s plan is to destroy confidence in God as Creator. Satan knows that if he can get people to doubt God as being necessary to the existence of the universe he can then get people to doubt God in every other meaningful way. That’s why Satan has been unrelenting in promoting the idea that universe could spring into being from a “big bang” and that life could spring into being by the random collision of inanimate particles.

RD: Yes. But the bad news for Satan is that the truth is opposed to him. And more and more people are waking up to that fact. Empirical observations of the universe tell us that the assumptions behind the big bang aren’t tenable and the assumptions behind random, chaotic activity produced the specified complexity of life aren’t either. That’s why we began with the first two facts that we did.

VK: The first fact that we discussed that every Christian needs to know is that science confirms that the universe and earth are thousands of years old, not millions or billions of years old. The second fact that we covered was that the complexity of life makes it impossible that life could have arisen as a result of the random collision of atoms and molecules – even if you could explain the existence of the atoms and molecules to begin with. We started with those two facts because they get to the heart of whether the opening chapters of the book of Genesis – which are the opening chapters of the Bible – is, in fact, true. So, where do you want to go next? What is fact number 3?

RD: Fact number 3 that Christians should know is that there is solid scientific evidence that the tallest mountains on earth were underwater at one time. Ammonite fossils (squids with coiled shells) are found in limestone layers, high up in the Himalayas in Nepal, near the top of Mount Everest. This, of course, supports the Biblical account of the global flood described in the Bible. Now the fact that marine fossils are found near the summit of Mt. Everest does not mean that Mount Everest was there before the flood. So, the ocean waters didn’t have to rise to over 29,000 feet (8,840 m) above current sea level to cover it. Instead, the sedimentary layers now making up the Himalayas were first deposited on the continent during the flood. Those layers then buckled and uplifted at the end of the flood to form the towering Himalayan mountains seen today.

VK: Fossils are one of the best evidences of a global flood, especially when you consider where many fossils are found. For example, we don’t find marine creatures, such as fish, clams, and corals, buried and fossilized on the sea floor where they once lived. Instead, we find most of them buried in sedimentary rocks on the continents and even on high mountains. For that to happen, the ocean waters had to totally flood the continents. And that’s exactly what the Bible describes during the global flood. But, the mere fact that fossils of marine creatures are found high in the Himalayas does not mean that all geologists accept the idea of a Biblical, worldwide flood, does it?

RD: No. It doesn’t. Secular geologists will acknowledge that the Himalayas were underwater at one time. They really can’t deny that. But they have an entirely different hypothesis for why we find marine fossils on Mt. Everest.

VK: And that hypothesis would be...

RD: Secular geologists explain the presence of the Everest marine fossils something like this. The marine creature fossils on Mt Everest were formed in a shallow part of the ocean during the Ordovician [OR-DUH-VI-SHUN] Period – that is over 400 million years ago. Conventional scientists say the Ordovician Period lasted for almost 45 million years, starting around 490 million years ago. And they believe it ended 445 million years ago. During this period, the belief is that the area north of the tropics was almost entirely ocean. They believe that most of the world's land was collected into a southern supercontinent called Gondwana [GUN-DWAH-NAH].

VK: And many scientists believe that the area that contains the Himalaya mountains today was once attached to that supercontinent, right?

VK: And the scientists believe that the collision of those continents resulted in a massive uplift of the earth’s crust. So, they think that the sedimentary rocks that formed part of northern India were pushed upwards by these colossal tectonic forces. These sedimentary rocks contained the fossils that are now found on top of Mt Everest. And, in fact, NASA believes that the presence of limestone and marine fossils lifted from the once shallow sea bed to the top of the Himalayas is evidence that plate tectonics is a viable explanation for why the earth’s surface appears the way it does. Geologists also say the Himalayas continue to rise as a result of the colliding tectonic plates.

RD: Yes. So, the views by conventional, secular geologists and the views by Christian geologists agree in certain respects. Both groups agree that the Himalayas were at one point under water. Both groups agree that there are tectonic plates that support the earth’s continents that have moved in the past and likely still move. There is general agreement that at one time there was a much larger land mass in existence that has now separated into what we call continents. Both groups agree that the Himalayas were formed by uplift forces. The chief areas of disagreement are on the time frames and the proximate causes of the uplift.

VK: Secular geologists believe the tectonic and geological activity that formed the current continents and the Himalayas occurred over tens or hundreds of millions of years. Christian geologists believe that the Genesis flood accounted for the separation of the supercontinent when - as the New International Version puts it -“springs of the great deep burst forth.” That’s Genesis, chapter 7, verse 11. Many Christian geologists believe in what is called “Catastrophic Plate Tectonics.” One implication of Catastrophic Plate Tectonics is that the movement of the tectonic plates would be substantially faster than today.

RD: Yes. We don’t have time today to go into the mechanics of Catastrophic Plate Tectonics but anyone who wants to investigate it further can get a copy of Dr. Jonathan Sarfati’s commentary on the first 11 chapters of Genesis which is called The Genesis Account. One consequence of this much faster tectonic plate movement is that the continents we see today would have arrived in their current positions in a much shorter period of time and the uplift forces would be acting on material that was still soft enough to be pushed upward relatively quickly.

VK: It’s called Catastrophic Plate Tectonics because in comparison with the things we see going on around us today the forces in play, the activity on the earth’s surface, and the movement of rocks and sediment would have been truly catastrophic – both in size and timing. Of course a lot of this movement was going on under the water so an ocean liner sized ark would have still been able to float and remain a refuge for its passengers.

RD: And we can also note that the phenomenon of high-altitude marine fossils isn’t unique to the Himalayas. Whale fossils and evidence of other marine animals have been found in many other mountain ranges such as high in the Andes, for example.

VK: So, we have these two competing views of how these marine fossils could be found close to the top of the highest mountain on earth. Is there any way to determine which of the views is most likely to be correct?

RD: That’s an excellent question.

VK: Thank you. I’m good with questions.

RD: In fact, that is THE QUESTION because it goes straight to the heart of the reason we’re doing this “10 Facts Every Christian Should Know” series. As in so many cases we are faced with competing truth claims. The Bible tells us about a global flood but the secular contention is that there was no flood and the earth’s features we see were produced slowly, gradually, and uniformly.

VK: Uniformitarianism says that the present is the key to the past. The rate of uplift and tectonic plate movement we see today is the same rate that has always existed.

RD: Exactly. So, let’s go back to the time periods we heard about earlier. The secular notion is that the fossils themselves were formed in shallow water over 400 million years ago and then moved to their current location approximately 35 to 55 million years ago. That’s what conventional scientists tell us. But there is a huge problem with the conventional view.

VK: And that is?

RD: Erosion.

VK: Erosion can be defined as “the group of natural processes, including weathering, dissolution, abrasion, corrosion, and transportation, by which material is worn away from the earth's surface.” Erosion simply means that every day every inch of the earth’s surface is being scoured or scraped and eventually all of that material will wind up in a body of water somewhere. While wind and mechanical activity produces some erosion, Water is the main culprit that dissolves many minerals, and loosens soil and rock from the landscape, transporting them to the ocean. Day after day, year after year, like an endless procession of freight trains, the rivers of the world cart unimaginable tons of decomposed rock across the continents and dump it in the ocean. By comparison, the amount removed by winds, glaciers and ocean waves pounding the coastline is small.

RD: Water can do its eroding work once it falls as rain or snow which will eventually collect in a drainage basin. By sampling the mouth of the river, we can measure the volume of water discharged from the basin and the amount of sediment it carries. It’s not easy to measure exact volumes of erosion but, nevertheless, sedimentologists have researched many of the world’s rivers and calculated how fast the land is disappearing. The measurements show that some rivers are excavating their basins by over 3 feet of height in 1,000 years, while others move less than a tenth of an inch in 1,000 years. The average height reduction for all the continents of the world is about 2.4 inches) per 1,000 years.

VK: There’s a good article about the problem erosion presents for the idea of continents or land masses being hundreds of millions of years old on creation.com – the website for Creation Ministries International. That article points out that if erosion has continued at the average rate the North American continent would have been levelled in 10 million years This is a ridiculously short time compared with the supposed 2.5-billion-year age for the continents. Even at the slowest estimated rate of four one-hundredths of reduction per 1,000 years, the continents should have vanished long ago. Continents have an average height of about 2,000 feet. And erosion will be faster in areas where there are steep slopes and deep valleys such as mountain ranges.

RD: These rates not only erode the idea of billion-year-old continents but also crumble the concept of ancient mountains. Erosion rates of 39 inches per 1,000 years are common in the alpine regions of Papua New Guinea, Mexico, and the Himalayas. One of the fastest recorded regional height reductions is 750 inches per 1,000 years from a volcano in Papua New Guinea. The Yellow River in China could flatten a plateau as high as Everest in 10 million years. Mountain ranges in western Europe and the Appalachians of eastern North America are even harder to explain because they are not as high as Everest, yet are supposed to be several hundred million years old. If erosion has been going on for this long, these mountains should not exist.

VK: So, if erosion is a problem for even explaining the existence of mountain ranges at all it’s a bigger problem for how delicate structures such as fossils could still exist near the tops of very high mountains – such as the shellfish fossils near the top of Mount Everest.

RD: Yes. And the problems for the conventional explanation just keep compounding. One explanation for how high mountains could still exist even after 10’s or hundreds of millions of years have passed is that uplift activity is still occurring. But this doesn’t help with the assertion that the shellfish fossils which are embedded in sediment layers began being lifted out of the ocean 30 to 50 million years ago. Even the secular scientists believe these fossils were initially formed in a relatively shallow sea. They had to be covered by sediment. Otherwise they would have disintegrated long ago. But even if uplift had been going on steadily for 50 million years keeping Everest at the same height the sediments containing the fossils would have eroded long ago. Under that scenario the mountains might be there but the fossils wouldn’t be.

VK: The point is that when we’re trying to decide whether the conventional, secular explanation for the existence of shellfish fossils on Mount Everest or the Biblical explanation is more likely the secular explanation has one huge problem that the Biblical explanation does not: erosion. Uniformitarianism says that the present is the key to the past and things are taking place today the way they have always taken place. But if that’s true then erosion has been taking place the entire time at the same rate that it is today. But erosion taking place for tens of millions of years poses enormous questions for things that we see around us today – like high mountains with crisp, sharp peaks and marine fossils near those peaks.

RD: Exactly. But erosion poses no problems for the Biblical explanation. Biblical geologists believe the Genesis flood occurred about 4,500 years ago. The fossils were formed when vast amounts of dirt, rock, and mud being moved around by the flood waters were laying down sediment layers very quickly all around the world. And fossils aren’t the only evidence that confirms the Genesis account of the global flood. An article on the Answers in Genesis website points out that there are countless billions of plant and animal fossils are found buried in extensive graveyards around the world. For example, billions of straight-shelled, chambered nautiloids of all different sizes are found fossilized with other marine creatures (crinoids, corals, brachiopods, gastropods, and bryozoans) in a 7 foot thick layer within the Redwall Limestone of Grand Canyon. This fossil graveyard stretches for 180 miles across northern Arizona and into southern Nevada, covering an area of at least 10,500 square miles. To form such a vast fossil graveyard required 24 cubic miles of lime sand and silt, flowing in a thick, soup-like slurry at more than 16 feet per second to catastrophically overwhelm and bury this huge, living population of nautiloids.

VK: Every continent contains sedimentary rock layers laid down by the catastrophic flood conditions. Many of these sediment layers can be traced all the way across continents and even between continents. For example, the chalk beds of southern England, well known as spectacular white cliffs along the coast, can be traced west and north across England and appear again in Northern Ireland. In the opposite direction, these same chalk beds can be traced across France, the Netherlands, Germany, Poland, southern Scandinavia, and other parts of Europe to Turkey and as far as Kazakhstan. The same chalk beds with the same fossils and the same distinctive layers above and below them are also found in the Midwest USA, from Nebraska to Texas, and from Alabama and Arkansas to Colorado. They also appear in the Perth Basin of Western Australia.

RD: Similarly, the sedimentary rock layers exposed in the walls of the Grand Canyon are not unique to that region. For almost 60 years, geologists have recognized that these strata belong to three very thick, distinctive sequences of sedimentary rock layers that can be traced across North America. The lowermost horizontal sedimentary layer in Grand Canyon is the Tapeats Sandstone. Along with its equivalents the Tapeats Sandstone covers much of the USA and parts of Canada and Greenland. But they can also be traced across North Africa and beyond to Israel, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia. Only ocean waters rising to sweep across the continents in the Genesis flood can explain these continental-scale sedimentary layers.

VK: All of those lines of evidence demonstrate the same thing. The highest mountains on earth were at one point under water. Of the two competing explanations for how that happened – the secular or the Biblical – the secular suffers from a major unanswered question. How could sedimentary layers persist in a hostile erosion environment for tens of millions of years? This challenge does not plague the Biblical explanation. Yet, the secular explanation is far and away the one that is chosen by most geologists today.

RD: And as we have said many times in this series that goes back to the compulsive power of a person’s starting set of axioms. Most scientists look at the age of the universe or earth from the starting point that it is billions of years old. That’s what their training and education have led them to believe. That’s what they had to believe to get their degrees, their funding, and their approval from colleagues. So, when they come to evidence that doesn’t agree with their starting axioms they start trying to find a suitable explanation for how their axioms can remain in place regardless of whether there is a reasonable explanation that fits the evidence but not the assumptions.

VK: Ideas have consequences. And one of those consequences is that certain ideas retain compulsive power over people’s minds and souls even when that idea is at odds with reality, with the truth. That’s why we must ensure that we are well-grounded and informed. First to ensure that we can sustain our own faith in times of trial and second to serve as the salt and life for a culture that dies without the light of truth. This sounds like a great time to go to the Lord in prayer. Today let’s listen to a prayer for our Christian brothers and sisters who live in lands that are hostile to the gospel and to their faith. And let’s remember always to pray regularly for them because the Bible assures that God hears and responds to the sincere prayers of His faithful children..

---- PRAYER FOR PERSECUTED CHRISTIANS

VK: Before we close we’d like to remind our audience that a lot of our radio episodes are linked together in series of topics so if they missed any episodes in this series or if they just want to hear one again, all of these episodes are available on your favorite podcast app. To find them just search on “Anchored by Truth by Crystal Sea Books.”

If you’d like to hear more, try out crystalseabooks.com where “We’re not perfect but our Boss is!”

(Opening Bible Quotes from the Contemporary English Version)

Genesis, chapter 7, verses 17 through 20, Contemporary English Version

Global Evidences of the Genesis Flood | Answers in Genesis

High & Dry Sea Creatures | Answers in Genesis

Eroding ages - creation.com

Cast doubt on God’s goodness

Deny God’s truth

Elevate self-importance

Establish a replacement in the mind and heart for God’s truth