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In 2010, June 29th on the Hebrew calendar is Shiva Asar B'Tammuz - the 17th of Tammuz, the beginning of the Three Weeks of mourning leading up to Tisha B'Av (9th of Av) on July 20th.  

The 9th of Av is a familiar date for Jewish grief.  On both occasions when foreigners destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem, they did it on the 9th of Av.  Many other tragedies befell Israel on this date throughout history.  The 9th of Av is not alone, however. Another date, the 17th of Tammuz, has also been filled with suffering.  On June 29th, many observant Jews will fast to commemorate five tragedies that befell Israel on 17 Tammuz throughout history.

On 17 Tammuz:

• Moses broke the tablets of the Law after seeing the people dancing around the golden calf they had made while he was on Mt. Sinai. (Exodus 32:19).  The LORD later replaced the tablets (Exodus 34);
  
• The daily sacrifice ended during Nebuchadnezzar's siege of Jerusalem for lack of sheep and other sacrificial animals;
  
• The Romans broke through the walls of Jerusalem shortly before the 2nd Temple was destroyed in A.D. 70;
  
• Years prior to the Great Revolt, the Roman general Apostumus burned a scroll of the Torah;
  
• An idol was erected in the Temple.

The three week period between the 17th of Tammuz and the 9th of Av is called Bein Hametzarim - "between the troubles". On the Sabbath during the Three Weeks, passages on the Temple's destruction and the exile of the Jewish people are read from Isaiah and Jeremiah.  During this period of time, Orthodox and other observant Jews refrain from the following:

• wearing new clothes
• listening to music
• bathing for pleasure
• shaving or hair cutting
• weddings
• drinking wine or eating meat
• long journeys

While the Fasts of Tammuz and Av (the 4th and 5th months) are a time of mourning, many Jews believe that after the future redemption of Israel, these days of mourning will be turned into days of feasts and rejoicing.  As the LORD told the prophet Zechariah:

The fast of the fourth month, and the fast of the fifth, and the fast of the seventh, and the fast of the tenth, shall be to the house of Judah joy and gladness, and cheerful feasts; therefore love the truth and peace." (Zech 8:19).

The earth is commonly estimated to be about 4.6 billion years old, and the oldest rocks on earth have been dated to 4.28 billion years ago. (Zircons found from grains in Western Australia are considered slightly older - 4.36 billion years old.) Geologists depend on radiometric age dating to give dates to different strata and the rocks and bones and artifacts found in those layers. Most will say that the dating methods have been confirmed over and over again, but there are questions about whether the dating methods used are reliable and whether they give scientists true dates - or whether they give dates that fit those secular geologists' preconceived ideas.

Meteorites:
During its history, the earth has suffered constant change. Erosion, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, catastrophes change the surface of the earth, melting rocks, grinding them up and spitting them back out in different forms than they had when they started. Because geologists have a difficult time finding truly ancient earth rocks, they have dated meteorites - assumed to have formed at the same time as the earth (and the rest of the solar system)  in order to give a reliable age for the earth.

Those who trust in radiometric dating methods point to G. Brent Dalrymple's 1991 book The Age of the Earth, in which he lists the ages of various chondrite samples age-dated through several methods. Dalrymple shows that the dates of chondrite samples derived through different methods all give similar ages. A list of samples dated by the rubidium-strontium (Rb-Sr) method gives dates in a range from 4.37 +/- 0.34 billion years to 4.59 +/- 0.06 billion years. Samarium-neodymium (Sm-Nd) dating of chondrites gives a date of 4.21 +/- 0.76 billion years, and both eucrites dated by lutetium-hafnium (Lu-Hf) and iron dated by rhenium-osmium (Re-Os) gives dates of 4.57 billion years. Dalrymple lists other sets of samples and shows that the samples consistently date between 4.29 billion and 4.57 billion years, regardless of the dating method used.

This looks like convincing evidence that the earth is truly about 4.6 billion years old and the dating methods work reliably, (even though the Rb-Sr dating has a margin of error of 340 million years and Sm-Nd of 760 million years). Dalrymple's results appear to be fairly consistent in giving the earth an age of well over 4 billion years.

As we noted last week, however, the use of these dating methods depends on a number of assumptions. When these methods give dates hundreds of millions of years apart, even without taking the margins of error into consideration, we can reasonably hesitate to put our full faith in them. On tests of rocks considered much younger, those result differences really matter.

Grand Canyon:
Despite claims to the contrary, dating methods do not always give consistent dates, and can give widely different results for samples of rocks from the same layers.

In 2005, geologist Andrew Snelling and creationist researchers had multiple samples of Grand Canyon basalts age-dated using at least three of the main radiometric dating methods, and found the tests gave discordant results. The Cardenas Basalt samples gave an age of 516 (+/-30) million years when dated by the K-Ar method, 1111 (+/-80) million years when dated by the Rb-Sr method, and 1588 (+/-170) million years when dated with the Sm-Nd method. The range in dates for just the Cardenas Basalt was therefore more than a billion years. That's a huge range considering the low age-date for the basalt was "only" 516 million years.

The Grand Canyon Brahma amphibolites samples dated by the Rb-Sr, Ur-Pb, and Sm-Nd methods gave ages that ranged from 1240 to1883 million years ago. In a couple of cases, layers farther down in the Grand Canyon (and therefore relatively older) were dated younger than layers higher up. These results, and other similar tests by Steve Austin and other creationists (see links below), have demonstrated that these dating methods are not necessarily as reliable as old earth geologists often claim.

Assuming A Great Age:
One of the problems with using the Rb-Sr or K-Ar or other certain age-dating methods is that they do not give accurate ages for items that are young. Andrew Snelling reports that in 1996, samples were taken from 20th century lava flows on New Zealand's Mt Ngauruhoe - "two each from the 11 February 1949, 4 June 1954, and 14 July 1954 flows and from the 19 February 1975 avalanche deposits, and three from the 30 June 1954 flow..." The samples were sent to Geochron Laboratories in Cambridge, Mass for whole-rock potassium-argon (K–Ar) dating. Even though the rocks were from lava flows less than 50 years old, the samples gave greatly exaggerated dates for the rocks.

Snelling reports, "The 'ages' range from <0.27 to 3.5 (± 0.2) million years for rocks which were observed to have cooled from lavas 25–50 years ago. One sample from each flow yielded 'ages' of <0.27 or <0.29 million years while all the other samples gave 'ages' of millions of years. "

Geologists complain that this sort of testing is ridiculous to do because everybody knows that K-Ar dating will not give accurate dates for extremely young rocks. Ah, and that's just the problem. When geologists do tests of ancient rocks, they assume extremely old ages, and so they use age-dating methods that would be appropriate for extremely old rocks. If the rocks truly aren't that old, how can geologists know? What would indicate to a lab that the correct date is the lower date rather than the 3.5 million year date? If they used dating methods appropriate for young rocks, would those give relatively consistent young ages for the rocks?

Speed of Light and Inflated Dates:
While there are definitely some difficulties with the age-dating methods, Andrew Snelling believes they can still be useful for the most part in giving relative dates - that is, determining that this sample is older than that sample.

Some young-earth physicists like Lambert Dolphin, Barry Setterfield, and Trevor Norman argue that these dating methods are not wrong in theory - but they give wildly exaggerated dates because radioactive decay rates have slowed down over time. The speed of light has a direct effect on the atom and atomic decay rates. These physicists argue that the speed of light has been slowing down, affecting the rate of radioactive decay. If decay rates were much higher in the past, then dating-methods based on today's rates of change would be inflated.

Unless the physicists get on the ball and build a good time machine, not one of us can go back in time and watch the formation of the earth and its familiar geologic wonders.   Yet, we believe we already have a good account of what happened.  The first five books of the Bible were written by a man who glowed after his encounters with the I AM (Exd 34:29-30) and who spoke with God "face to face" (Exd 33:11).   While secular scientists scoff at divine revelation, we have confidence that it is truly the best way to know what happened at the beginning of the world.

The 104th Psalm is a beautiful hymn about creation that complements the information given to us in Genesis and elsewhere in the Bible. Here, as in other Scriptures, the origin of the universe and our planet is not pictured as a massive explosion (such as a Big Bang) but as an orderly series of events in which everything was crafted by the hands of an artisan, a Master Builder.

The early earth after creation is nowhere pictured as a place of smoking volcanoes, sulfureous fumes and violent quakes. The Apostle Peter quite simply says that the earth "was formed out of water and by means of water" (2 Peter 3:5).

Seventy-one percent of the earth's surface today is indeed water - the oceans average 3.8 kilometers deep. Only 29% of the earth's surface is land - whose average elevation is only 623 meters! If all the continents and land masses were leveled into the sea using a giant bulldozer, nearly two miles of water would cover our entire earth. Glaciers and ice caps hold about two percent of earth's water; were they all to melt, sea levels around the world would rise 40 meters - a big problem for many large sea-level cities should this happen. The earth's atmosphere today holds only about two inches of precipitable water - this is constantly being replenished by the hydrologic cycle.

Before the Flood
The earth before the Flood of Noah was a very different place! God's intervention in human affairs during the time of Noah, the tenth man from Adam, changed things forever on our planet. The earth before the Flood seems to have possessed a uniform sub-tropical climate. There may have been no rainfall, no ice and snow, and no major seasonal changes. (For instance, palm tree fossils have been found in Alaska, frozen warm-climate mammoths in Siberia, and coal in Antarctica.) The oceans would have been much warmer, and earth's rivers and streams may well have originated in powerful springs-such as the spring that supplied the four rivers of Eden.

In his classic pioneering study,The Waters Above: Earth's Preflood Vapor Canopy Joseph Dillow suggested a pre-Flood atmospheric pressure at sea level twice the present value - a big help to the extinct flying reptile Pteranadon, who would probably not get off the ground in today's atmosphere. But too much water vapor in the upper atmosphere before the Flood would obscure the stars, and even the sun and moon, because of perpetual cloud cover. And for the atmosphere to support the weight of additional water vapor, the surface temperature would have to rise rapidly toward the boiling point of water. Condensation of water vapor during very heavy, prolonged rainfall would release enormous amounts of latent heat of condensation.

However, in spite of these difficulties, a modest vapor canopy - perhaps holding 40 feet of rain water - may have existed prior to the deluge of the Flood.

The Flood
Most of the water for the great Flood of Noah came from the so-called "fountains of the great deep" (Gen 7:11). This source of water is mentioned before the rain from the "windows of heaven."

During the formation of the earth on the second and third days of creation, large quantities of water were evidently placed between the earth's crust and mantle in what might be called giant subterranean reservoirs. This water was probably under high pressure to begin with (causing artesian springs and geysers to abound), but after the fall of man and the angels - when some of the heavier atomic elements were apparently made unstable by reduced nuclear binding forces so that radioactive decay commenced - the shorter-lived isotopes could well have heated the subsurface to a point of criticality where it could scarcely be contained by the strength of the overlying crust.

Extensive volcanic activity may have occurred at the same time - the fountains of the great deep were thus broken open and volcanic ash hurtling into the stratosphere could have collapsed the vapor canopy by dispersing condensation nuclei around which raindrops formed.

[Incidentally, gravitational compaction of the earth at the time of earth's formation would not have raised the interior temperature above 1000 degrees C, yet the earth's core-present temperature about 4300 degrees - has evidently melted and overturned in the past. Radioactive heating is believed to have supplied the extra energy needed.]

The Flood in Noah's time was certainly a direct act of judgment by God on a world which had become thoroughly and continually evil:

Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the Lord was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart. And the Lord said, 'I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, from man to animals to creeping things and to birds of the sky; for I am sorry that I have made them.' (Genesis 6:5-7)

Since God is in full control of nature - there are no "accidents" in God's universe - the exact mechanisms the Lord used to initiate the Flood need not preoccupy our attention. Erudite scientific models for the geophysical processes that accompanied the Flood have been presented at three Pittsburgh International Conferences on Creation. Dr. Walter Brown's outstanding book on the Flood, In the Beginning, especially concentrates on possible mechanisms for the bursting open of the fountains of the great deep.

Was the Flood Global?
The Hebrew language has several words to describe ordinary floods, but Genesis 7-11 uses the unique word mabbul (found only elsewhere in Psalm 29:10). When Hebrew scholars put the Old Testament into Greek, they chose the Greek word kataklusmos, from the verb "to inundate," in place of the Hebrew mabbul. All the language of Genesis, and especially the words of the Apostle Peter, give us the clearest possible picture of a worldwide, cataclysmic, universal disaster from which only eight human beings escaped with their lives. Warning of false teachers and strong-willed skeptics, Peter tells us:

For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to pits of darkness, reserved for judgment; and did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a preacher of righteousness, with seven others, when He brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly... Know this first of all, that in the last days mockers will come with their mocking, following after their own lusts, and saying, 'Where is the promise of His coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all continues just as it was from the beginning of creation.' For when they maintain this, it escapes their notice that by the word of God the heavens existed long ago and the earth was formed out of water and by water, through which the world at that time was destroyed, being flooded with water. But the present heavens and earth by His Word are being reserved for fire, kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men...(2 Peter 2:4-5, 3:3-7)

There would be no need to labor many decades building a boat to escape a local flood - simple flight to the next valley or to a nearby mountain would have sufficed. Nor would a local flood require such an elaborate plan to save representative animal species.

Scripture is clear: the purpose of the Flood was to judge and destroy a decadent, thoroughly evil human civilization that probably numbered some billions of individuals - along with their cities and all the infrastructures.

Noah escaped not because he was blameless (justified by his faith as we are), but because he (and his family) responded to God's mercy and grace. A good many other individuals who lived in the 1655-2255 years between Adam and Noah no doubt responded to the gospel preached by Adam, by Enoch, and by others who knew the Lord. But by the time of the Flood, apparently the entire "civilized" world had become totally unresponsive to the offer of God's free salvation.

And all flesh that moved on the earth perished, birds and cattle and beasts and every swarming thing that swarms upon the earth, and all mankind; of all that was on the dry land, all in whose nostrils was the breath of the spirit of life, died. Thus He blotted out every living thing that was upon the face of the land, from man to animals to creeping things and to birds of the sky, and they were blotted out from the earth; and only Noah was left, together with those that were with him in the ark. And the water prevailed upon the earth one hundred and fifty days....(Genesis 7:21-24)

After The Flood:
The Ark finally landed on the very same day of the Hebrew calendar that Jesus Christ would be raised from the dead about three millennia later in history, taking into account the calendar change in Exodus 12. The subterranean caverns of the great deep collapsed, so that the waters receded into what are now our deep ocean basins.

With the tremendous weight of water removed from the land, isostatic rebound allowed great mountains, capped with sediments, to "float" up on the underlying mantle below the crust. (Mountains before the Flood were most likely much lower than they are now.) Seeds sprouted, life began again, and Noah and his family left the Ark to repopulate the earth under a new covenant with God (Gen 8:18-9:17). Four men and four women, who knew and loved the living God personally, began to repopulate the earth. They started with only meager resources and animals from the Ark - plus the bountiful grace of God.

[This article was excerpted from Lambert Dolphin's article, "The Terrible Flood of Noah" published by Koinonia House in June 1997.]