THE THIRD DAY (The Year of the World 32,128 B.C.)

“And God said: Let the waters under the heavens be collected unto one place, and let the dry land appear, and it was so. And God called the dry land Earth [soil — surface of the ground] and the reservoir of the waters called he Seas, and God saw that it was good. And God said: Let the earth bring forth tender sprout-age, the herb yielding seed after its kind and the tree yielding fruit whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so … and God saw that it was good. And the evening and the morning were the Third Day.” (Gen 1: 9-13)

Geology fully corroborates this record. It points out to us that, as the earth’s crust cooled, the weight of the waters would tend to make it kink and buckle–some parts being depressed became the depths of the seas, other portions forced up constituted mountain ranges–not suddenly, but gradually, one range following another. We are not to suppose that all these changes took place even in the seven thousand years of this third epoch-day; but, rather, that it merely witnessed the beginning of the work necessary as preparatory to the beginning of vegetation; for evidently geology is correct in claiming that some great changes of this nature are of comparatively recent date.

Even within a century we have had small examples of this power: and we shall not be surprised if in the future we shall witness further paroxysms of nature; for we are in another transition period–the opening of the millennial age, for which changed conditions are requisite. (Climate change being one of those requisites changes in preparation for the new age).

In the first photo above we have an example of land emerging from the sea as an underwater volcano erupts; magma from within the mantle pushes up the earth’s crust resulting in the formation of an undersea volcano. Over time the volcano emerges from beneath the sea, and an island is born (second picture below).

The photo below taken off Papua New Guinea in the Pacific Ocean is of a nearly 3.5 mile oval-shaped, reef-fringed island known as Baluan. The island emerged from the sea as a stratovolcano or “composite volcano” of Pleistocene age, rising to a height of 833 feet above sea level at the rim of the half mile wide Saboma Crater (the egg shaped depression at the center of the island). The thickly wooded slopes are generally smooth, but are broken on the northeast by a pyroclastic cone known as Batapona Mountain (492 feet). Warm springs occurring at various coastal locations are the only signs of geothermal activity at the present time.

As the waters drained off into the seas, vegetation sprang forth–each after its own class or kind, with seed in itself to reproduce its own kind only. This matter is so fixed by the laws of the Creator that although horticulture can and does do much to give variety in perfection, yet it cannot change the kind. The different families of vegetables will no more unite and blend than will the various animal families. This shows a design-not merely of a Creator, but an intelligent one.

The account does not say that God made so many different kinds of vegetation, but that under divine command the earth brought forth these various kinds, nothing in the account would interfere with an evolutionary theory as respects vegetation.

Geology agrees that vegetation preceded the higher forms of animal life. It agrees, too, that in this early period vegetation was extremely rank–that mosses and ferns and vines grew immensely larger and more rapidly then than now, because the atmosphere was extremely full of carbonic and nitrogenous gases–so full of them that breathing animals could not then have flourished. Plants, which now grow only a few inches or a few feet high even at the equator, may then have attained a growth of forty to eighty feet, and sometimes two or three feet in diameter, as is demonstrated by fossil remains. Under the conditions known to have then obtained, their growth would not only be immense, but must also have been very rapid. (Fossilized trees lacked growth rings signifying that the climate was stable and unchanging.)

The fact that plants were able to survive at this time gives evidence that although there was yet no direct sun light as of yet, the canopy still obstructing a direct view of the heavens, nevertheless enough light filtered through to produce photosynthesis necessary to the growth of vegetation.

Note the diffusion of light which has filtered its way through the immense canopy of clouds surrounding Venus. In the first photo above a filter was probably employed thus the yellow tint, the second photo below however is a better approximation of conditions.

Whereas on earth the highest cloud tops can reach up to 7.5 miles on Venus the cloud ceiling reaches up to 43.5 miles above the surface. The first 20-25 miles of the atmosphere is relatively clear and consists mostly of carbon dioxide and sulfuric acid haze above that the cloud mass thickens extending another 15-20 miles, choking off direct sun light .

At this period, geologists claim, our coal beds were formed: plants and mosses, having a great affinity for carbonic acid gas, stored up within themselves the carbon, forming coal, preparing thus our present coal deposits while purifying the atmosphere for the animal life of the later epoch-days. These vast peat bogs and moss-beds, in turn, were covered over by sand, clay, etc., washed over them by further upheavals and depressions of the earth’s surface, by tidal waves and by other descending “rings” of the waters above the firmament. Practically the same procedure must have been oft repeated, too; for we find coal-beds one above another with various strata of clay, sand, limestone, etc., between.

“As plants thrived in the tropical climate they began to produce lignin, a bark-like substance that gave them the structural support needed to grow to gigantic proportions. Yet lignin posed a perplexing problem for the environment. Because it was a new substance and a very tough one at that, there were no microbes that could consume it. The normal mechanisms of decay were thrown out of sorts. As trees died or were toppled in storms, their trunks and branches collected on the forest floor, the pile becoming deeper and deeper as millions of years rolled by (?) with no method for breaking down the lignin. Buried by time and compressed by tectonic forces, these layers would become the vast coal deposits that would later bring about the industrial revolution and our modern age; thus the period acquired its name, carboniferous, meaning “coal bearing”.

“Oxygen reached its highest level of any age: 35% compared to modern day measurements of 21%, while in contrast Carbon Dioxide was the lowest in history (until modern times). The vast amounts of vegetation pulled CO2 from the air and it remain locked in their stalks and stems even upon death. The microbes crucial in the process of decay were overwhelmed, the plants did not decompose and huge amounts of CO2 remained trapped within the plant matter. As the plants were turned into coal, the CO2 would remain buried for ages until released in our modern age by the burning of coal.” (“The Carboniferous Period”, J.E. Morris July 2010)

“Plants in this early period thrived under ever-increasing levels of carbon dioxide (plants require CO2 for photosynthesis). As plants spread upon the landscape they produced oxygen as a byproduct of their metabolic processes. Throughout the Silurian the oxygen levels continued to increase, causing problems for plants which suffer when oxygen levels are high. By the Middle Silurian, the CO2 levels began to fall and the plants began to endure stresses which forced them to either adapt (possibly shrink in size, growth) or perish.”  (“The Silurian Period”, J.E. Morris July 2010)

Evening and morning, the third 7,000-year epoch-day (21,000 years into creation), accomplished its part in preparing the world, according to the divine design.

Here we must diverge from the common or orthodox view as respects the carboniferous era and the production of coal. As stated orthodoxy holds that the great coal fields found throughout the world are the product of vegetation, and that this process (which supposedly took millions of years to accomplish) took place roughly 300 million years ago, this of course would put it at variance with the Word of the Lord, which (in conjunction with the 7000 year days, based on the true bible chronology) implies that the creation of vegetation is of a much more recent era, not something which took place 450-700 million years ago as our evolutionary friends would have us believe, but rather 30,000 years ago.

It is our belief that the production of coal had little to do with vegetation, and is likewise of a much more recent occurrence. We hold that all the necessary elements prerequisite to the production of coal (carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and Sulfur), were all to be found in sufficient quantities in the canopy which encircled the early earth and that these were deposited as a result of the breaking down of various layers of this canopy over time.

In our next post we will elaborate a bit further on this issue.