Sunday Message: The earthquake that changed the world

This morning, I was listening to a Creation Science show talking about a specific debate between the secular scientists that don't believe in the "young" earth" shown in the Bible, but in an "old earth" that says that life is millions of years old.  I don't want to get into that debate, because, like the Creation scientists say, "We weren't there".  What I do want to talk about is what it says in the one thing we can go by- the Bible.

Now on the one hand, you can use Psalm 90 and 2 Peter 3 to say, "Since to God a thousand years is like a day" to argue that the six days of creation are symbolic.  But I'm going to go against that for two reasons.  One, because in Genesis 1:4-5:

Gen 1:4  And God saw the light, that it was good, and God separated between the light and darkness. 
Gen 1:5  And God called the light, Day. And He called the darkness, Night. And there was evening, and there was morning the first day. 

...God establishes time.  Why bother if He's not going to use it as a measurement for man?  And second, if we are going to accept the extreme ages of Adam's genealogy in Genesis 5, then we pretty much have to accept the Days of Genesis 1 as approximate days.

Which I do.  So having established I accept these ages and why, I want to shift back for a second to the scientific argument.  Most science chronology is based in radiocarbon dating.  Basically, they count the amount of a certain radioactive form of carbon atoms in an ancient object.  If you have a certain amount of this form (called an isotope) TODAY (note my emphasis), we know exactly how long it would take half of that amount to decay away, leaving inert material.  That time is called a half-life.  So scientists measure the isotope, make an estimate of how much of it there SHOULD HAVE been when it was new (ie living material), and then figure out how many times you'd have to cut that in half to get to where it is now.  Add those times up, and you have your age, right?

But it's not that easy, and the Bible shows you why.  First of all, everybody who's read the genealogies knows that ages dropped precipitously after the Flood.  Noah lived to 950; by the time you go ten generations- something over 200 years, by the chronology in Genesis 11- Abraham lived 175 years, a drop of over 80%.   Something FUNDAMENTALLY changed the conditions on earth after the Flood.  Further evidence of that is that Noah no more got off the Ark and God told him that he and his would have to become meat eaters as well as plant eaters- there would be something missing in the nutrition gained from plants from here on.

But I'm going to show you that this wasn't the LAST fundamental change.  I want you to stop and think a moment.  Genesis 7 tells us that the Flood itself was a two pronged event.  First, the "fountains of heaven were opened"- many believe that Genesis 1:7 involved the creation of a protective liquid canopy around the earth, and this canopy's collapse led to rain beyond anything we can see or imagine.  The second prong of the Flood is that "the fountains of the deep were opened up"- that a great expanse of pressurized, underground water ( causing the mists that watered the earth in Genesis 2) then broke loose.  After which two things had to happen- the waters had to gather in what became the ocean basins- which is IN the Bible- and the earth's crust, no longer supported by the pressurized water, would have to shift and collapse- which isn't in the Bible.

Or, isn't it?

One of my favorite verses is Genesis 10:25:

Gen 10:25  And two sons were born to Eber; the name of the one was Peleg, for in his days the earth was divided; and his brother's name was Joktan. 

Now, Peleg was the sixth generation from Noah, born 101 years after the Flood.  By this time, it can be assumed (but since Ham's lineage was not given ages as Shem's was, we're just guessing) that this is around the time Nimrod started the Tower of Babel, and thus this "division" is merely the division of peoples after God divided the tongues.  That is NOT what the Bible says.

Genesis specifically speaks in the Babel story of God dividing the tongues, and the people dispersing as a result.  In the verse above, "earth" means "earth".  And Peleg?  Peleg means, "earthquake".

The earth was physically divided here- maybe the 'plate tectonics' that science believes happened over billions of years (because they cannot accept the 'young earth' or the worldwide Flood despite EVERY people having it in their mythologies), maybe not.  But let me show you what else we CAN know from the Bible.

After the trauma of the Flood, ages went from the 950 years of Noah to the 500 of his son Shem- a drop of 52%.  After Shem, there came Arphaxad (438 years), Salah (433), and Eber, the father of Peleg (464).  Then came the earthquake, and Peleg... and Peleg lived to 239 years.  A drop of 51%.

Just a fluke?  Peleg's son Reu also lived 239 years, his grandson Serug 230, his great-grandson Nahor 148 (the anomaly that proves the rule) and Abraham's father Terah 205.

The earth was FUNDAMENTALLY changed by Peleg's "earthquake", and it is reflected in the SUDDEN drop in ages, as the change after the Flood was.  What were these changes?  I haven't a clue.

BUT... if these two events changed the world so fundamentally, how can we believe that the world's physical properties- like, say, the half-life of radioactive carbon- weren't changed as well?  Answer- we can't, and neither can 'old earth' scientists.  Whatever happened, you really have two choices- believe God's Word, which gives us dates that science can't disprove, or trust science, which gives us dates they can't prove.