Title: 13
Author: JBG
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© 2001  Joe Griffin

01-23-01.JSH-430 /

The Inscrutable Question: The Geologic Time Scale Compared with the Biblical Time Line of World History in Gen 1:1-3
	12.	Geologists categorize prehistoric time into eras, periods, and epochs.  The eras are Precambrian, Paleozoic, Mesozoic, and Cenozoic.  Each of the last three is subcategorized into various periods and these periods into epochs.
	13.	We are going to learn that Genesis 1:1 contains the Precambrian, Paleozoic, and Mesozoic Eras plus the Cenozoic Era into its Tertiary Period.
	14.	Further, we will note that Genesis 1:2 contains the Pleistocene Epoch of the Quaternary Period of the Cenozoic Era.
	15.	Finally, Genesis 1:3 contains the Holocene Epoch of the Quaternary Period of the Cenozoic Era.
	16.	Now in order to do this I first of all want to give you a comment by a theologian and then follow it up with a couple of excerpts from the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
Rimmer, Harry.  Modern Science and the Genesis Record.  (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1937), 29:
None of our present species of living creatures can be traced back to the Pleistocene period, which is the age just preceding the appearance of man.  Moses and geology are in accord on that conclusion.
This vast period which Moses covers in the second verse of Genesis, geology calls the great Ice Age.  There is absolute proof in this science that the entire earth once suffered an overwhelming cataclysm, when ice and water covered the entire face of the globe.
What Dr. Rimmer observed in his book published in 1937 remains true today as is evidenced by excerpts from the Encyclopaedia Britannica which, you must remember, always presents its articles from the viewpoint of uniformitarianism.
Encyclopaedia Britannica, 15 ed., s.v. “Pleistocene Epoch”:
Pleistocene / PLY-sta-Seen/ events ended about 10,000 years ago.  The Pleistocene is the span of time during which man as a species evolved from advanced apelike forms to his present condition.  It was a time of great change on the continents; at least four times, and possibly five, vast continental ice sheets moved across the landmasses of the Northern Hemisphere, profoundly altering the landscape and affecting not only the climate but also the distribution of plants and animals.  The glacial periods were times of lowered worldwide sea levels because the ice bound up water upon the surface of the land.
The close of the Pleistocene in North America and elsewhere witnessed a great wave of extinction that affected many mammals, especially those of large size, and severely depleted the variety and numbers of the large mammal community.  These extinctions may be related both to the advent of man and to ecological factors.
Although the perfection of Genesis 1:1 is restored in Genesis 1:3 and following, the Lord did not recreate the same specific piscatorial, reptilian, mammalian, and avian classes.   The creatures which populated the planet into the early Quaternary Period were all destroyed by the cataclysm which occurred in Genesis 1:2 and their remains were blazoned into the earth’s strata as fossils.
The kinds of animals that existed prior to Genesis 1:2 and the “Ice Age” Epoch are discussed in:
Encyclopaedia Britannica, 15^th ed., s.v. “dinosaur”:
Dinosaur, a term popularly used for the members of a great series of reptiles that were the dominant land animals during most of the Mesozoic Era, the age of the reptiles, but became extinct at its close.  The term, derived from the Greek, meaning “terrible lizard,” refers to the gigantic proportions of these beasts, some of them the largest animals that ever walked the Earth.  A considerable number of dinosaurs were flesh eaters, but a majority abandoned this primitive reptilian mode of life for a herbivorous diet.
Dinosaurs first appeared in the latter third of the latter Triassic [Period] (the first of three periods in the Mesozoic Era) and are common in red-rock deposits of that age in Europe, North America, western China, and South America.  For most of the following Jurassic Period the sediments are dominantly marine, the dinosaur remains are consequently rare.
Most types of dinosaurs continued to flourish until the very latest phases of the Cretaceous Period (the third and last period of the Mesozoic Era).  Then they disappear completely from the geologic record.  The Cenozoic Era, which appears to follow closely in time, show not the slightest trace of a dinosaur.  What caused this sudden extinction?  The answer is not at all clear.  There is no really satisfactory explanation for the sudden and complete extinction of the most spectacular animal fauna the Earth has ever known.
	17.	But the satisfactory explanation is the principle of catastrophism, which was proffered by early-nineteenth-century French naturalist Georges Cuvier who studied fossil mammals and reptiles and, in the early 1800s, published works on paleontology attributing fossil succession to a series of natural catastrophes rather than to evolution.  Some information on Cuvier is important to our discussion.
Encyclopaedia Britannica, 15^th ed., s.v. “Baron Georges Cuvier”:
Cuvier discerned a remarkable sequence in the creatures he exhumed.  The deeper, more remote strata contained animal remains that were far less similar to animals now living.  He summarized his conclusion in book form in 1825 as The Discourse on the Revolutions of the Globe.  Cuvier assumed a relatively short time span for the Earth but was impressed by the vast changes that undoubtedly had occurred in its geologic past.
His work gave new prestige to the old concept of catastrophism according to which a series of “revolutions,” or catastrophes—sudden land upheavals and floods—had destroyed entire species of organisms and carved out the present features of the Earth.  He believed that the area laid waste by these spectacular [convulsions], of which Noah’s flood was the most recent and dramatic, was sometimes repopulated by migration of animals from an area that had been spared.  Catastrophism remained a major geologic doctrine until it was shown that slow changes over long periods of time could explain the features of the Earth.
	18.	Yet Cuvier was not alone, for among his contemporaries there was considerable agreement as there was among other nineteenth century geologists.  Dr. Rimmer quotes several on the subject of catastrophism.  I will introduce each with a brief biographical sketch from Webster’s New Biographical Dictionary.
1)	Jean Louis Agassiz /ah-ga-see/, 1807-1873:
McHenry, Robert (ed.).  Webster’s New Biographical Dictionary.  (Springfield: Merriam-Webster, 1983), 13:
American naturalist; associated with Cuvier; professor of natural history at the Lawrence Scientific School at Harvard University (1847-1873).
Rimmer, Modern Science and the Genesis Record, 30:
Agassiz: “During the greatest expanse of the ice fields, there were but a few mountain peaks rising above them, where the mountains were below six thousand feet, the ice seems to have passed entirely over them!”
2)	James Dwight Dana /DAY-na/, 1813-1895:
McHenry, Webster’s, 258:
American geologist and naturalist.  Editor American Journal of Science from 1840.  Professor of natural history from 1849-64, and professor of geology and mineralogy from 1864-90 at Yale University.  Leading American geologist of the day.
Rimmer, Modern Science, 29:
Dana: “The accumulation of ice over North America must at least have been four to five thousand feet thick, with hundreds of feet of snow above this.”
3)	Sir John William Dawson, 1820-1899:
McHenry, Webster’s, 266:
Canadian geologist.  Professor of geology and principal from 1855-1893 at McGill University.  Opponent of the Darwinian explanation of the origin of life forms.
Rimmer,  Modern Science, 30:
Dawson: “The drift of glacial deposits in eastern America necessitates the conclusion that, in the period of extreme refrigeration, the greater part of the land was under water, and such hills and mountains that protruded were little ‘Greenlands,’ covered with ice, and sending down glaciers into the sea.  As the glacial period advanced, this latter condition prevailed until the waters stood more than a thousand feet deep over the plains of Europe.”
4)	Sir Henry Thomas De la Beche /DEL-ah-Besh/, 1796-1855:
McHenry, Webster’s, 270:
English geologist.  Appointed first director of Geological Survey of Great Britain in1835.  Influenced establishment of the Museum of Practical Geology and the Royal School of Mines in 1851.
Rimmer, Modern Science, 30:
De la Beche: “There appears good evidence that those parts of France adjoining the English Channel, were submerged to a depth of more than a thousand feet.”
		5)	Gideon Algernon Mantell /Man-TELL/, 1790-1852:
McHenry, Webster’s, 649:
English geologist and paleontologist.  Studied paleontology of the Mesozoic Era, especially the Cretaceous Period.  Discovered the first four of the five genera of dinosaurs known in his time.
Rimmer, Modern Science, 30:
Mantell: “The phenomenon of glacial drift must have been effected when the present dry land was beneath the sea, and the subaqueous currents and icebergs were in active motion.”
		6)	Sir Roderick Impey Murchison, 1792-1871:
McHenry, Webster’s, 718:
British geologist.  Secretary and president between 1827-1843 of the Geological Society.  Director general of Geological Survey and director of the Royal School of Mines in 1855.  Founded in 1871 the chair of geology and mineralogy at Edinburgh.  [An expert on the Paleozoic Era.]
Rimmer, Modern Science, 30:
Merchison: “During the glacial period, the low countries of north Europe were, it is well known, covered by an Arctic sea.  In short, … Berne must have been covered by waters that bathed the foot of the Alps.”
	19.	Dr. Rimmer concludes his discussion with the following analysis:
Rimmer, Modern Science, 30:
Now we must admit, that so far as Moses was concerned, he was absolutely unlearned in modern science.  Geology was not dreamed of until several thousands of years after Moses had died: how then is this ancient Book in such marvelous accord with the modern school of geology?  It is impossible that Moses could have achieved this knowledge by natural means.  The only possible explanation is that he, like the other men whose writings are preserved in the pages of the sacred Scripture, “spoke as he was moved by the Spirit of God!”
	20.	As best they could, these nineteenth-century geologists were able to discover the catastrophes that were divinely imposed upon this earth and were content to endorse the biblical concept of divine intervention.
	21.	What they discerned from the geologic record was the effect the first divinely imposed catastrophe had on this earth: instant unleashing of the waters of the oceans, the creation of mountain ranges, and the freezing of these waters before they could recede by the withdrawal of all electromagnetic radiation.
	22.	The end result was that the earth was encapsulated in a pitch-black “swaddling band” of ice, or if you prefer, the Pleistocene Epoch’s “Ice Age.”

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