DESTRUCTION UNDERFOOT

Coming down to earth from outer space, we see that the earth has not been spared from catastrophe. Over all the earth we find layers of rock formed from mud and debris deposited in the waters of Noah's Flood thousands of years ago. The Flood catastrophe was so disastrous that the sediments left behind average over one mile in depth over all the earth's surface. Today these sediments exist as hardened rock layers covering the globe.

Even the Bible claims that the Flood was very destructive. Genesis 6:13 states that the Flood in fact was deliberately destructive. God sent the Flood to "destroy . . . the earth," to destroy the evil of mankind that had built up in the years before the

Flood. It is the divine origin of the Flood and the judgment brought by the Flood that causes some people to reject the very idea of the Flood altogether. The Bible claims in 2 Peter 3:5-6 that this rejection of the Flood would be common during history. But there is no doubt that the earth has been hurt by catastrophes, and that Noah's Flood is the best way of explaining much of the damage the earth has suffered.

For example, beds of fossil-bearing rocks around the world contain huge fossil trees. These fossil trees are often over ten feet tall, and because they are surrounded by many layers or strata of rock, they are called polystrate trees. Clearly, had the rock layers required thousands or millions of years to form, then the upper portions of a polystrate tree would have decayed before being covered and fossilized. Not one polystrate tree would be entombed in all of its strata for us to see today. Fossils like these trees piercing many strata show that rock formation and fossil formation were rapid, and did not take millions or even thousands of years.

There are other evidences that fossilization and rock formation have been very rapid. Fossils exist of small creatures such as insects -- centipedes, ticks, cockroaches. Insects have many soft and delicate parts, yet the fossils preserve these intricate details. Had fossilization been slow, the soft features of these insects would not have been preserved. The preservation process must be more rapid than the rate of decay, and the decay of these insect parts takes only a few days! We can understand this kind of rapid process as part of the cataclysmic Flood, but not as the result of gradual burial and preservation over eons of time (see Note 3).

Fossil footprints also show the rapid action of the Flood. Some of the best known fossil footprints are from the Paluxy riverbed in Texas. People disagree on the identity of these particular tracks. Some claim that dinosaur and human prints are found here together, and some claim that only dinosaur tracks are found in the Paluxy riverbed. But whatever the identity of these tracks, the very fact that they exist at all, as fossilized footprints in rock-hardened mud, is evidence of rapid burial, preservation and fossilization. Never does a mud print last long enough under ordinary conditions to be buried, let alone be fossilized.

Many exotic fossils also show the rapidity of geologic processes. There are fossil skeletons of fish with smaller fossil fish inside. These are cases where a large fish had eaten a smaller fish just before they were both buried. The smaller fish would have been digested in a few hours unless burial and preservation took place even more rapidly than the digestive process (see Note 4). Clearly, fossilization is a very rapid event, and we can safely assert that Noah's Flood is the best way to explain such rapid processes.