03_06 The Flood and Plate Tectonics

Document #03_06, The Flood and the Mechanics of Plate Tectonics, is a scientific paper produced by the author of the propheciesofjesus.com website. It looks at the BIG picture here on earth, and brings you up to date on the real truth that the Bible is…
the Word of God.

The Biblical Flood and The Mechanics of Plate Tectonics

Archaeology has proven almost all of the historical places and stories of the Bible to be true. There remains but two Biblical events not proven. Creation, and the Flood. This paper is regarding the latter.

Let’s begin by clearing up the search for Noah’s Ark. Because of the sheer number of newsworthy events at the time, the real discovery of Noah’s Ark back in the 1980’s was not given the acclaim and the interest it deserved. Ignorant of the discovery, people are still focused on finding the ark on the slopes of Mount Ararat! Following, is the history of the discovery:
In 1960, Life Magazine published an arial photograph of a boat-shaped form on the side of a mountain 13.5 km from Mount Ararat.
A young, Seventh-day Adventist, aspiring archaeologist, Ron Wyatt, decided that he would go and research for himself if this could be the remains of Noah’s Ark. He read in the Bible that the Ark ended up “in the mountains of Ararat,” rather than
specifically “on Mount Ararat.” Biblically, a range of mountains received the name of the most prominent of them. A case in point, Mount Carmel, in the north of Israel, includes a number of peaks, and we have some difficulty choosing where Elijah brought the whole population of the 10 Tribes of the divided kingdom, to confront the worship of the Pagan god, Baal. Was it right near the Mediterranean Sea, or was it close to Jezreel, where King Ahab lived?
Some distance intervenes.
When Ron Wyatt was able, he went to find this site in Turkey. Once there, he measured the form. It was too great a length! You can imagine, Noah’s Ark must have been the largest wooden ship ever made. How could this, if it was a ship, actually surpass the length expected for Noah’s Ark? Being a faithful Bible student, Ron studied the possible explanations for the difference. The ship’s length was calculated by the length of the Hebrew cubit [from elbow to tip of the extended hand]. He found the answer quickly: Preconception.
Definition? “An idea or opinion formed or conceived in advance of careful
investigation.”

Moses wrote the books that include Genesis during the 40 years of wandering in the wilderness. He died at the end of those 40 years. Moses was educated in Egypt! He would be familiar only with the Egyptian cubit. The Hebrew cubit came into being much later, when Israel had become a nation in the Promised Land. When calculated by the Egyptian cubit, the ship form was almost exactly the right length: not 450 feet, but 515 feet long! An absolutely enormous wooden ship!
Then he discovered that there was lots of metal holding the original ship together. Ron discovered that Noah was the 10th generation from Adam. The Bible records in Genesis chapter 4, that in the 4th generation from Adam was a man called Tubal-cain,
“an instructor of every artificer in brass [an alloy of tin and copper] and iron!”

Noah’s ship, this ship form on the side of a mountain “in the mountains of Ararat,” was held together by a great deal of iron, which, when shown up from the surface by X-ray technology, revealed 13 keels, dramatically proving the form to be a ship! Noah’s Ark! Much more proved that to be so, but suffice it to here leave it at that. See Ron Wyatt, Noah’s Ark, on Google search.

So, we have Noah’s Ark. Now, if possible, we must prove the Flood. The answer came from an odd source in science. Cartography – the art of making maps. Back in 1915, a man named Wegener – a German geologist, while studying cartography – noticed that it appeared that South America was an almost perfect fit up against the west side of Africa. He formulated the theory that the two of them were once fully together, even though an ocean, the Atlantic, now separates them. He further formulated that North America was also originally a part of Europe. His theory was proven correct when seismic mapping technology developed, and the edges of the Grand Banks [a ledge under the ocean that is the true eastern edge of the continents of South America and North America, and also the western edge of Africa] were mapped. It was found that South America fit to within one percent against Africa! The proven theory of Plate Tectonics [moving huge plates of earth’s crust] followed, and we now know that major earthquakes are the result of subduction, or forcing under, of one plate by another, usually a continental plate [such as North America subducting the Pacific Ocean plate, causing breaks in either one of the plates, resulting in earthquakes].

The question arises, and it impacts the proving of the Flood, how, and why, do these plates move? What force is causing them to move? The very theory of the age of the earth being millions of years is the result of a ridiculous theory called the theory of uniformity. Since North and South America are still moving West at about one centimeter a year, measure the distance across the Atlantic Ocean, multiply by one centimeter a year, and you have millions of years! Real evidence refuted this [again] preconception.

That brings me to the purpose of this document. The prevailing theory today for explaining the movement of these plates, is that there must be currents in the magma that makes up the inside of the sphere we live on, called Earth.

We are on a crust on the outside of the sphere of magma [molten rock, metals, etc.] that varies like about one kilometer thick under the ocean, to like as much as twelve kilometers thick on the continents. As is now fully believed, all of the continents were originally together in one piece, called Pangaea, on one side of the sphere [visualize no Atlantic Ocean] and only the Pacific Ocean on the other side of the sphere.

God Himself asks [Job 38, verses 4 to 7]:
“Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Declare, if you have understanding. Who laid the measures thereof, if you know? Or who has stretched the line upon it?” “Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened? Or who laid the corner stone thereof, when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy?”

Let us consider some of the evidences God has allowed us to discover in these last days, to counter the skepticism of so many whether the Bible is the Word of God or not.
Our world has been found to wobble, now, a mere 3 degrees on its axis. In the distant past, it must have wobbled a great deal more. Geology has revealed that the flora and fauna in evidence in northern Canada was sub-tropical in the past! Ditto in northern Asia. How could most of the earth be covered with sub-tropical vegetation almost to the poles? Only if the earth wobbled so extensively that as the sun shone upon it every day, a number of times per day [probably] it shone on the far north, then on the middle [the equator] then on the far south, and back again, every day, as the earth wobbled back and forth. No other explanation has yet been found.It is easy to speculate, on this evidence, that God made the earth that way, which would make it more hospitable to life world-wide. Imagine no winter months here in Canada! I suggest that the world was made, imperfectly balanced, to result in a near perfect climate! Visualize Pangaea, on one side of the sphere, a crust like up to 12 kilometers thick, opposing like a one-kilometer thick ocean bottom on the other side of the sphere! The sphere would be majorly out of balance. Add to that the fact that the earth spins on its axis [causing day and night] on the surface at the equator, rotating at nearly 1000 miles and hour! Do these facts suggest something to you about the cause of the Flood? They certainly do to me. Let me explain.

When I was growing up, technology was not what it is today. Today, if you have a tire out of balance, you put it on a computerized machine that tells you exactly how to add weights to the edge of the wheel that the tire is put on, to balance the tire. You see, a tire is formed from a strip that is put together end to end to make a tire. Where the ends are overlapped makes a heavier spot on the circle that makes a tire. To balance that extra weight, a weight is added to the opposite side, at the wheel edge, to compensate.
Often, in the old days, weight had to be added to the inside of the wheel as well, to keep the wheel from wobbling at speed, which causes a “shimmy” you can feel in the car, that you knew was caused by a wobble.
When you feel an imbalanced tire “bouncing” it is because centrifugal force [from spinning at speed] causes the heavier point [where the ends of the strip of tire overlap] to bulge out. The tire bounces every time that bulge hits the pavement. That spot very quickly wears out, so the problem must be remedied.

When I was a boy, the local service station would take your assembled tire and wheel, when it was imbalanced, and put it on an axle end sticking out horizontally from a base. The wheel was bolted securely to the axle end. The bearing on the axle would allow the heaviest point of the tire to rotate to the bottom, so the service man would simply find a point where the tire would immediately rotate toward the bottom (closest to the floor) and let it rotate back and forth till it stopped at the lowest point. Judging by how fast the tire rotated downward, the service man would guess how heavy a weight was needed, choose one (each one has a spring clip) and hammer it onto the upper edge of the metal wheel, opposite the heaviest point of the tire. He would then rotate the wheel 90 degrees (1/4 turn) and see if it would still rotate on the axle when let go. If it rotated up or down, he would cut a small piece off the lead weight, or add another small weight, till the wheel would no longer rotate because of one point being heavier than another. Pretty primitive, but that was OK for 30 miles an hour.

Soon, however, we were going 60 miles an hour on highways. Technology developed to improve the amount of perfection needed.

However, big truck tires going 60 miles an hour became a real challenge to permanently balance. Such large weights were needed, that at speed, centrifugal force would throw off the large weights. The best spring clips couldn’t hold them on. An out of balance tire that had thrown its balance weight off (on an 18-wheeler truck) would not be noticed till it had destroyed the tire! (an all too common loss). We used to see lots of large pieces of such destroyed tires along the highways.

A German scientist came up with the answer – a complicated, but effective answer. Scientists learned that there is an opposite force acting when centrifugal force is happening. This force is called centripetal force.
They found that if they put a metal-filings-weighted gel inside the tire, as soon as the wheel began to turn at speed and centrifugal force began to act, so did centripetal force, and the moveable weighted gel would migrate to the light point on the tire. All they had to do was find the right amount of weighted gel to apply, and the problem was solved. The gel could not escape from the inside of the tire, thus the fix was permanent.

Now, apply what we have just learned to a spinning sphere, the world. To help you
visualize the idea, think of a world globe, with an imaginary tire tread around its middle, covering a wide band at the equator. Imagine Pangaea as the heavy point on the circumference. The sphere is rotating on its axis at 1000 miles per hour. Get the point? The sphere is terribly out of balance!
Unlike the tire, however, nothing can be thrown off the planet because of gravity. Gravity is so strong that the bump that would form was restricted in how great it would bulge at the heavy point. [That may be why continent plates are so thick when mountain chains were formed – like up to 12 kilometers thick, compared to like one kilometer thickness of ocean bottom!]
Since nothing could be thrown off of the sphere, such imbalance would result, not in bounce, like the tire every time the bulge hit the pavement, but in wobble! The worse the imbalance, the worse the wobble! This effect would be accented further by more weight south [or conversely, north] of the equator.
It seems that the axis is set. Also, note that centrifugal force does affect our world’s shape. It is not a perfectly round ball, but is bigger at the equator, where centrifugal force affects it most.
Now. Realize that God made the landmass Pangaea. God made the world wobble,
in order to provide perfect climate over most of the earth. God sustained the world like this. When He decided to not sustain that imbalanced state, to bring about the Flood, Pangaea broke apart, somewhere close to its middle, and the smaller pieces, unable to fly off the planet, migrated to the side opposite the heavy side of the sphere!! Centripetal force acted to move the parts that could move [North and South America] around the surface of the sphere, to where they would help balance the sphere!
Did they move on the magma? I think not, because of the Bible record. “The fountains of the great deep were broken up!” Genesis 7, verse 11. I think they moved initially on the water under the earth that allows us to find water almost anywhere by drilling down to it. Water would act as a lubricant for the land to slip upon, and as the continental plates rode upon the ocean bottom, the water between would act even more as a lubricant. As the continents left where they were, the waters, which had been under great pressure from the weight of the landmass above them, would be released like super geysers from everywhere, even up into the stratosphere, adding to the rain of the Flood. Volcanism (forming of volcanoes) would also result, after the weight of a continent moved away, leaving cracks in the earth’s crust that would allow magma to erupt from inside the sphere. This formed mountains all across the forming Atlantic Ocean, that were quenched by the tremendous flow of water (displaced by the moving continents) back into the space behind them, forming the Atlantic Ocean.
The space between North and South America allowed the greatest amount of
water flow from the Pacific Ocean ahead of the moving continents. Thus, by this quenching effect, the change of the climate because of the occlusion of the sun by smoke and ash in the stratosphere from volcanism was reduced, although still causing an extensive Ice Age (mainly from the poles toward the equator, instead of world wide, which would have wiped out every living thing, even after the flood). The Bible record teaches that the climate was indeed changed, and, it can be inferred also that the continents slid very fast, only slowing down as they came near the point where they would most balance the new earth. As they slowed, they began to fold the ocean bottom surface in front of them, forming the chains of mountains down the western sides of both North and South America, adding them to the continents and increasing
their effect on balancing of the sphere. The famed Burgess Shale, discovered at the summit of a high mountain in Canada’s Rocky Mountains, proved that the mountains were formed from the ocean bottom. The shale was full of fossils from the ocean bottom from before the flood.
Along the highway #1, in Alberta, there is a place where a number of mountains have been sheered off (practically in half) by a glacier, revealing that each mountain was formed by a fold of flat surface. The upper layers of these mountains reveal that great tidal flows laid down each layer. Looking either way from a point about where the middle mountain is, of those sheered off by the glacier, you can see that each layer gets thicker from one direction, then gets thicker from the opposite direction below it.

There is accumulating evidence that the Biblical Flood is an absolute reality. Noah’s Ark is certainly the most important. This paper, explaining the possible cause, physically, of the Flood, may help us to accept the reality of the Biblical Flood.

NOTE: Today’s plate tectonics may not be actuated by the same forces as
originally moved North and South America to their present position on the
globe.

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