The Exodus
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What about the ice age?
The only clear evidence we have is for ONE ice age. It can
still be seen in such things as glaciers and the u-shaped
valleys that they carved. Or did they? Some scientists are
beginning to believe that the rapid assuaging of the waters
after the flood were responsible for many of the u-shaped
valleys, the top soil being stripped by the rapid flowing
waters.
It is also believed by some that the ice shields
were formed in place and melted in place, with only
small episodes of sliding. Underwater mass flows traveling
at speeds of more than 50 mph can produce tillite-like
deposits, as well as striated bedrock, including the striated
stones in the �tillite.� Such mass water flows would be
expected following a massive global Flood. All the top
soil, loose rocks and other debris present in the water
would create a tremendous abrasive effect. We will discuss
all of this in more detail.
For an Ice Age to develop, where ice actually accumulates
on land, the oceans need to be warm at the mid and high
latitudes. The land masses need to be cold, especially in
summer. The warm oceans would evaporate lots of water.
Clouds would form and move across the cold land masses.
Cold continents would result in the water precipitating as
snow rather than rain and would prevent the snow from
thawing during the brief summer months. The ice would
accumulate very quickly.
Long-ice-age theories involve a slow cooling down of the
earth, but this would not generate an ice age. If the oceans
and land both cooled down at the same rate, by the time
everything was cold enough so that the snow didn�t melt
during summer, evaporation from the oceans would be insufficient
to produce enough snow to generate the massive
ice sheets. A frozen desert could result, not an ice age.
The global flood described in the Bible, however, does provide
a simple mechanism for an ice age. At the end of the flood,
we would expect warm oceans. Why? During the flood
there would have been hot subterranean water pouring
into the pre-flood ocean, plus there would be heat energy
released through volcanic activity. There is evidence that
the ocean waters were in fact warmer just before the Ice Age,
as recorded by the oxygen isotopes in the shells of tiny marine
animals called foraminifera.
The Bible tells us in Genesis 8:11:
�..the underground waters burst forth on the earth, and the rain
fell in mighty torrents from the sky.�
This would have resulted
in many volcanoes, earthquakes and tidal waves! Once the
waters covered the earth, God caused a mighty wind to blow
and He closed the underground water sources as the land began
to dry off. Where did all the water go? There would have been
a grand shuffling of the earth! Mountains were raised high
and deep basins were formed to contain much of the water
until, after many months, Noah and the animals could leave
the ark on dry land. Of course, a lot of water would have been
evaporated by the winds.
Large amounts of volcanic dust and aerosols from residual
volcanic eruptions at the end of and after the Flood would
have reflected solar radiation back into space, causing low
temperatures over land, and especially causing the summers
to be cold. Dust and aerosols slowly settle out of the atmosphere,
but continued post-flood volcanism would have replen-
ished these for hundreds of years following the Flood. In
support of this, there is evidence of continued widespread
volcanism in the large quantities of volcanic rocks among so
called �Pleistocene� sediments, which probably formed soon
after the flood.
Using standard knowledge of atmospheric circulation, we see
that the warm oceans after the Flood, and the rates of cooling
at the poles, would have driven extreme atmospheric convection.
This would have created an enormous polar hurricane-like storm system
covering a large portion of the Arctic. This
system could have functioned for much of the 500-year period
up to the glacial maximum. Such circulation patterns would
have delivered vast amounts of snow to the higher latitudes.
They would quickly have become ice sheets, spreading firstly
over the continents, and then later over the oceans as the
water cooled down towards the end of the glacial period.
Our ice-age map gives you an idea of the areas that
were covered by ice during the maximum period of glaciation
caused by the Ice Age. Later, as the glaciers started melting and
land became visible, the land dried out and turned into vast dry
deserts. After years of being buried under the ice, there was no
vegetation.
There seems to be a possible reference to this Ice Age in the
book of Job, an ancient book in the Bible. Job most likely lived
in the waning years of the Ice Age. He lived in the land of Uz.
Bible scholars agree that Job probably lived during the period
of time between the Tower of Babel episode and Abraham.
When God spoke to Job, Job understood what God was talking
about! Just what did God say to Job? In Job 37:9-10 God says,
�The stormy wind comes from its chamber, and the driving
winds bring the cold. God�s breath sends the ice, freezing wide
expanses of water.�
In chapter 38:22-23 God says to Job, �Have
you visited the treasuries of the snow? Have you seen where the
hail is made and stored? I have reserved it for the time of trouble,
for the day of battle and war.�
In verses 29-30 God says, �Who
is the mother of the ice? Who gives birth to the frost from the
heavens? For the water turns to ice as hard as rock, and the surface
of the water freezes.� NLT
The migration of the descendants of Noah to the �plains of
Shinar,� where they built the Tower of Babel, could have been
partly due to the weather in the Araxes River Valley gradually
becoming too cold to grow proper crops and raise their vast
herds and flocks. When the Ark first landed in the Ararat mountains,
the land would have been lush and green from the moisture
in the ground and the return of the sun.
Some Creation Scientists
believe the weather would have been mild in winter with a cool
gentle sun in summer at that time, ideal conditions for starting
their crops and herds. It was spring when they left the Ark. The
Araxes River Valley is one of the most fertile valleys in the
world. Even today they grow better and larger vegetables than
anywhere else! God was ready for Noah and his family to begin
again to populate the earth.
After the Flood the animals quickly spread out over the earth going in many directions. The animal population would have rapidly
increased.
Bodies of thousands of woolly mammoths have been
discovered in the mid and northern latitudes. They, and many
other animals, including the many varieties of dinosaurs, have
become extinct because of the drastic climatic changes that
destroyed their habitats.
At that time there were no predators
preying on the woolly mammoths. Based on doubling rates of 10
years (observed in Africa) there should be no problem for the
population of woolly mammoths to reach many millions toward
the middle of the ice age, some 500 years after the flood.
Near the end of the ice age, as the ocean surface temperature
cooled at mid and high latitudes, and evaporation slowed; the ice
age climate would have changed to a drier, more continental
climate with more seasonal extremes. At this time permafrost
would begin developing, and the substrate would become boggier
in summer.
As this process continued, animals in Siberia would
tend to migrate closer to the Arctic Ocean, where the waters were
still unfrozen and the climate would have been less continental.
However, the changing climate finally caught up with them and
they ended up buried in the permafrost that has continued to this
day. There are many ways they could have been trapped and in-
terred into the permafrost. One is becoming trapped in bogs. Some
would have been trapped by flooding rivers that were draining the
ice sheets and were buried in fluvial or lacustrine deposits.
However, most of them were buried in muck and yedomas (loess)...
buried in wind-blown silt, which rapidly covered them wherever
they lay or stood! Much data support the wind-blown origin of
this sediment. The loess is rich in ground ice and ice wedges. The
ground ice formed by a segregation process in which layers and
denses of ice, sometimes clear and sometimes inter-mixed with
sediment, developed within the silt.
The loess is not thousands of
feet deep in Siberia and Alaska, as some have thought, but is a relatively
thin veneer that is widespread in Beringia (Northeastern
Russia and Alaska area). Some of the loess, especially in Alaska,
has been reworked by the downslope mass flow of water. Redisposition
of the loess has broken and twisted the vegetation and disarticulated the
mammal bones.
Most of the mammoths in the
Beringia area were killed and/or buried by dust storms and frozen
there by the cold. Storms of variable intensity likely blew from
time to time for a few hundred years near the end of the ice age.
The dust buried the remains very quickly. From the Dust Bowl era
in the United States, it is known that a dust storm can produce dust
drifts several meters high, burying tractors and partially covering
buildings.
It is possible that dust storms at the end of the ice age
were so intense that they could cover and suffocate a woolly
mammoth trying to survive the storm. The animal would have been
buried quickly, since his body would act like a snow fence. It is
not inconceivable that a few of these animals would have been left
in a standing position, braced by the dust around them.
The Perma-frost would then rise after the loess was deposited and rapidly freeze
the remains. This accounts for the rapid burial, which seems impossible
any other way. Broken bones could be explained by the shifting of the
ground ice and frozen sediment. Reasonable explanation
for all these mysteries are available within the context of a unique
post-flood ice age. Astral catastrophies, polar shifts and other such
exotic hypotheses are not needed.
A few of the woolly mammoths
drifted south in an effort to get away from the extreme climatic conditions
only to die in the deserts left behind by the receding ice and
snow. Remains of these animals have been found in Central North
America and in Central Asia.
Dinosaurs were among those that
drifted south from Alaska into Central North America where remains
are still being found today. Other animals survived and are found all
over the world, surviving in areas that support their lifestyle and
requirements. Many animals are on the verge of becoming extinct due
to the advance of mankind into their territories.
NOTE: All of the text given here is in chart form and comes as a
file when you purchase the map that goes with this text.
Click here to purchase map or the complete set.
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