Landscape by Dr. Abidan Shah

LANDSCAPE by Dr. Shah, Clearview Church, Henderson,  NC

Introduction:  How many of you have been to Grandfather Mountain? Our family has been there a number of times, and also our youth group and college and career group. It is almost 6000 feet high, the highest peak this side of the Blue Ridge Mountains. It also has the mile high swinging bridge, the highest in America. You can see for miles from there. North Carolina is really blessed in that it has 4 geological regions: Outer coastal plain, Inner coastal plain, the Piedmont, and the Blue Ridge. Each region has its own landforms, soil, plants, and animals. We are in the Piedmont (foot of the mountains). Grandfather Mountain falls in the Blue Ridge Mountains, which are part of the Appalachian chain. In today’s message, we will see how our landscape is connected to the Genesis account of creation in our series on apologetics titled “Contend.” The big questions are “how did these mountains and various landforms come to be?” “how’s all this connected to the Genesis account of creation?” Main point: The whole creation testifies to the handiwork of God. Even the earth, the mountains and the valleys, the plains and the plateaus, give testimony to God’s power and majesty. No wonder that when the Pharisees told Jesus to rebuke his disciples for crying “Hosanna,” he replied, “if these should keep silent, the stones would immediately cry out.”

Genesis 1       9 Then God said, “Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear”; and it was so. 10 And God called the dry land Earth, and the gathering together of the waters He called Seas. And God saw that it was good.

Context: Last week, we briefly touched on this passage, and I brought up what is referred to as the transformation-from-water-model for the origin of the earth. According to this theory, much of the watery matrix remained water as we know today, and God caused the others “to be transformed into the basic elements and compounds such as silicon and carbon” and “separated these elements from the rest of the waters which resulted in the appearance of the dry land” (Kulikovsky). But, there’s more in that verse that we need to focus on. Listen again to verse 9 Then God said, “Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.” Also, verse 10 “And God called the dryland Earth, and the gathering together of the waters He called Seas.” Remember: the details do matter. Both the words for “gather” (kawah) and for “appear” (raah) imply action. In other words, there may have been great movements that would have caused mountains to appear and the basins to open for the waters to go into. It may very well be that there was one supercontinent that was later broken apart. By the way, one year before Darwin came out with his “Origin of the Species,” a creation scientist by the name of Snider-Pellegrini proposed in 1858 that there was one land mass originally, and it was broken up into separate continents during Noah’s Flood. Later, Alfred Wegener (1880-1930) proposed a slow continental drift by showing how the continents fit together as a jigsaw puzzle and other evidence from rock formation and fossil records. Initially, it was not accepted, but, since then, it is proposed that plate tectonics may have caused this supercontinent Rodinia to break apart. I’m okay with plate tectonics, if were talking about Catastrophic Plate Tectonics, not Uniformitarian Plate Tectonics. We will see what that means later when we come to Noah’s Flood. Nevertheless, there are passages in the Bible that support some kind of movement on that third day when water was gathered and land appeared:

• Job 38. 4 “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell Me, if you have understanding. 5 Who determined its measurements? Surely you know! Or who stretched the line upon it? 6 To what were its foundations fastened? Or who laid its cornerstone, 7 When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy? 8 “Or who shut in the sea with doors, when it burst forth and issued from the womb; 9 When I made the clouds its garment, and thick darkness its swaddling band; 10 When I fixed My limit for it, and set bars and doors; 11 When I said, “This far you may come, but no farther, And here your proud waves must stop!’
• Psalm 104 5 You who laid the foundations of the earth, so that it should not be moved forever, 6 You covered it with the deep as with a garment; the waters stood above the mountains. 7 At Your rebuke they fled; at the voice of Your thunder they hastened away. 8 They went up over the mountains; they went down into the valleys, to the place which You founded for them. 9 You have set a boundary that they may not pass over, that they may not return to cover the earth. 10 He sends the springs into the valleys; they flow among the hills. By the way, this was creation week, becausePsalm 104 goes on 11 “They give drink to every beast of the field; the wild donkeys quench their thirst. 12 By them the birds of the heavens have their home; they sing among the branches. 13 He waters the hills from His upper chambers; the earth is satisfied with the fruit of Your works. 14 He causes the grass to grow for the cattle, and vegetation for the service of man, that he may bring forth food from the earth.”

Keep in mind that all this is happened in one day. From the uniformitarian geological calculation millions of years of earth’s history is being compressed in one day or maybe even 6 days. In other words, the mountains and the valleys, the oceans and the rivers are being formed at infinitely rapid speed. It was all catastrophic! There was erosion, sedimentation, and deposition starting from creation week. There is no comparison to our time because this was such a unique period in earth’s history. That world is gone since the Flood – 2 Peter 3       5 For this they willfully forget: that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of water and in the water, 6 by which the world that then existed perished, being flooded with water.

We began with a glimpse of the Grandfather Mountain. How does all this tie in? (from Michael Oard and Andrew Snelling) The Appalachian Mountains go all the way from central Alabama to northeastward to Newfoundland, southeast Canada. The whole chain is about 1500 miles long and between 100 to 310 miles wide in places. If you go by the museum, it will tell you that the mountains are millions of years old because they have been eroded and smoothed out with time. Also, the Appalachian are mostly Paleozoic sedimentary rock. It is claimed that the Rocky Mountains are younger because they rise so high and are still jagged. But, as you saw in the video, the Appalachian Mountains, especially at Grandfather Mountain, are very jagged in places. Secular geologists attribute this to an uplift 8.5 million years ago. There are slow uplifts, known as epeirogeny and fast ones called orogeny. Christian geologists who are just as qualified also look at the data and they see that much of the erosion came after the Flood. They also believe, as I mentioned earlier, that there was a supercontinent that split apart at the Flood due to plate tectonics. These large chunks “moved around rapidly, smashing into each other before slowing down to a crawl in their current location” (Snelling). We’ll see all that when we come to Great Flood. The Appalachian is made from mostly sandstone, a sedimentary rock. This was changed under intense pressure when the continents collided. Some places this was more intense than others. You can see the impact from the continents colliding in the ridges all around. The lower level of rocks (bedrock) was metamorphosed because of the molten material from below that came up and hardened. This was during Creation Week. These were pushed up when the continents collided. This was during the Flood. You can see the lower level also because of this. Starting in Cherokee area, you can see the basement rocks, but further up, you can see the sandstone

From Dr. Snelling’s trip to the Smoky Mountains:

1. Cades Cove

Cades Cove, the most popular destination in the park, is a beautiful valley with historic log cabins and barns. The valley floor consists of limestone formed during the Flood (which is now deeply weathered), one of the few locations Flood deposits are exposed. The surrounding hills are made of pre-Flood rocks (look for gray, coarse sandstone), pushed up when Africa rammed into North America during the Flood.

2. Newfound Gap

Newfound Gap is the lowest opening through the Smoky Mountain chain. The open view offers the most spectacular mountain vistas in the park. Like most of the rocks in the park, the sandstones near the overlook belong to the Ocoee Supergroup, which existed before the Flood but got crumpled when continents collided.

3. Clingman’s Dome

The highest point on the Appalachian Trail is 6,643 feet elevation. An observation tower provides 360-degree views of the rolling, forest-covered mountains formed during the Flood when continents collided. Look for gray rocks with coarse white grains around the parking lot and along the hiking path. They’re pre-Flood Thunderhead Sandstone, metamorphosed by the continental collision.

4. Chimney Tops

Chimney Tops is named for its unique dual-humped peak, one of the few bare summits in the Smokies. These pre-Flood rocks were pushed up and metamorphosed during the Flood. As these rocks weathered over the centuries, this harder capstone (made of slate, not sandstone) remained.

Job 12       7 “But now ask the beasts, and they will teach you; and the birds of the air, and they will tell you; 8 Or speak to the earth, and it will teach you; and the fish of the sea will explain to you. 9 Who among all these does not know that the hand of the LORD has done this.”

God’s handiwork is all around. He is present and he is not silent. Can you see him? Can you see his handiwork? Are you saved? He cares for you.