Welcome to Science, Scripture, and Salvation, a radio ministry of the Institute for Creation Research. In this program, we want to encourage you in your Christian faith by showing how scientific evidence supports the Bible, particularly the Genesis account. The book of Genesis lays the foundation for all matters addressed in the rest of the Bible. The nature of God, His sovereignty in creation, man's purpose, sin, marriage, family, and why we need a Savior are all introduced and explained in Genesis. When we see that the first and most foundational book of the Bible can be trusted in all matters, including science, it builds confidence in the rest of the inspired word all the way to Revelation.
I'm Frank Sherwin, zoologist and research associate with the Institute for Creation Research. Join me for today's show of Science, Scripture, and Salvation. 2 Peter 3 says, There shall come in the last day scoffers saying, Where is the promise of his coming? For since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation. Peter continues in verse 5, For this they willingly are ignorant of.
That by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water. Whereby the world that then was being overflowed with water. Perished. Today, we're talking about the massive explosion of Mount St. Helens, May 18th, 1980, and the 1982 explosion as well.
Can these explosions, followed by volcanic mud flows and rapid ecological recovery, tell us anything about the Genesis flood? Geologist doctor Steve Austin said, and I quote, that eruption became the geologic event of the twentieth century. Mount St. Helens was not the largest volcano episode of the last century. but it became the most informative.
May eighteenth, nineteen eighty, was the explosive day that convinced many geologists that catastrophic geological processes need to be reintroduced into geologic thinking. The lesson became obvious. Uniformitarianism and Darwinism were thwarting the practice of geology. End quote.
So why does the Institute for Creation Research study the Mount St. Helens eruption?
Well, there's three main reasons. From it we have learned a great deal about the origin of rocks and geologic features. Secondly, Mount St. Helens can give a glimpse into Earth's geologic power as we expand our thinking into the wide scale of the Genesis flood. And Number three, The Mount Saint Helens catastrophe becomes a scale model for the great flood of Noah's Day.
So there were four stages of the Mount Saint Helens eruption. Stage number one was an earthquake, five point one for fifteen seconds. Number two, the landslide was the largest recorded in history. Third, the massive lateral explosion that occurred, and number four, pyroclastic flows, several hundred miles per hour.
Well, Live Science May of 2010 said, and I quote, the 1980 outburst, a colossal event by modern volcano standards, killed 57 people as rocky debris, scalding hot steam and gas, swept down the volcano slope at more than 680 miles an hour and reached temperatures of 572 degrees Fahrenheit. It also hurled about five hundred and forty million tons of ash into the air. the force of water flashing to steam blew the top thirteen hundred feet off the north side of the volcano. Within ten minutes the eruption column reached an altitude of twelve miles, according to civilian pilots who were in the area at the time. The Mount St.
Helens nineteen eighty eruption was the most destructive in recorded US history, unleashing the same energy as four hundred million tons of TNT or approximately twenty thousand Hiroshima sized atom bombs. The northward directed blast that occurred on that fateful morning created a fifteen to nineteen mile fan shaped path of devastation. In just six minutes it levelled three point two billion bored feet of prime forest, enough lumber to build six hundred and forty thousand houses. The area covered was in excess of a hundred and fifty square miles about a hundred and seventy five thousand wild and domestic animals unfortunately perished, and there was over a billion dollars worth of damage. Part of the rock slide debris catastrophically displaced the water of Spirit Lake, six miles from the Mount Saint Helens summit, producing waves up to eight hundred and fifty feet high on the north shore.
As the water returned to its basin, it scoured slopes of trees and soil, and, together with the material from the initial eruption, produced a three hundred and twenty foot thick deposit on the bottom of Spirit Lake. doctor John Morris said This eruption provided remarkable insight into the great flood of Noah's Day, for it produced geologic products and landforms that mirror those stemming from the flood. Its results, said doctor Morris, included up to six hundred feet of water deposited sediments, which look strikingly like those found worldwide in the greater geologic record. There is a deep eroded canyon through those sediments that has been dubbed the Little Grand Canyon, a one fortieth scale model of the Grand Canyon in northern Arizona. There is also a log mat of about four million trees, a forest that was catastrophically ripped from the ground and is now floating in nearby Spirit Lake.
a thick peat layer accumulating under the mat that is poised to become a coal deposit. And finally, upright floating logs that have the signature appearance of the petrified forest at Yellowstone National Park.
Now it's time for a short break. I'll return with some final words on this topic in a moment. From sharks to butterflies, bats to orangutans, we can't help but marvel at the stunning and amusing creatures God has made. If you and your kids enjoy learning about animals, then you'll love our book, Guide to Animals, with its beautiful full-color images and fascinating facts. Published by the Institute for Creation Research, Guide to Animals provides answers to many popular questions about the animal kingdom.
How do chameleons change colors? How do jellyfish live without a brain? And what happened to the dinosaurs and other extinct animals? Guide to Animals shows how everything that can slither, crawl, soar, or swim displays the handiwork of God. Order your copy of Guide to Animals from the Institute for Creation Research by calling 800-628-7640 or visiting icr.org.
That's 800-628-7640 or visiting icr.org. Welcome back to Science, Scripture, and Salvation, a radio ministry of the Institute for Creation Research. With the 1980 Mount St. Helens eruption, much of what young Earth geologists have said has been vindicated. As Dr.
John Morris of ICR stated, Quote: The comparison between a recent volcanic eruption and the flood may seem tenuous. Until one realizes that the flood, while dominantly a hydraulic cataclysm, was also triggered and energized by a tectonic convulsion of earth's surface. The first mechanism God used to judge the earth was when all the fountains of the great deep were broken up, Genesis chapter seven and verse eleven, sending massive waves and mud flows across the continents, no doubt accompanied by mega-volcanic eruptions. Do we see such expenditure of wave energy today?
Well, absolutely. Live Science reported, and I quote, in 2013, a super typhoon struck the Philippines, causing catastrophic damage. Testifying to the storm's power, scientists have discovered hundreds of massive boulders that were washed ashore during the storm, some as large as nine meters long and weighing 163 metric tons. The rocks are thought to have been pushed along by what are called infragravity waves that result when several smaller waves are combined. Becky Oskin said in December of twenty fourteen that this super typhoon carried a hundred and eighty ton limestone boulders one hundred and fifty feet up on the beach, the largest transport recorded in recent times.
showing the kind of energy that's expended by moving water, the same kind of energy we would maintain that occurred during the Genesis flood. In February of twenty fifteen, Science Daily stated, and I quote, extreme flood events have the potential to cause catastrophic landscape change in short periods of time. Edwin Baines, of the University of Edinburgh School of Geo Sciences, who led the study, said, and I quote We think of natural environments as being formed over thousands of years, but sometimes they are shaped very suddenly. Flood geologists say that these secular scientists are certainly on the right track, and this is a much better way to interpret past earth history by a sudden cataclysmic event called the Genesis flood.
Well, another example would be a large canyon in Iceland that was formed in just a matter of days by extreme floods. Could this also be true with, for example, features that we find at Grand Canyon in northern Arizona? Unlike Mount St. Helens, no one saw Grand Canyon form, and there are still fundamental questions that secular scientists are asking. In spite of over a century of work on Grand Canyon, there are still fundamental questions about the age of Grand Canyon and the processes that have formed it.
Thus begins a paper in the November 2007 issue of the Geological Society of America. Dr. Carlstom said in Nature Geoscience in 2014, and I quote, the timing of formation of Grand Canyon is vigorously debated.
Well, regarding Grand Canyon, a bottom layer of sediments called the Tipite Sandstone is what Genesis flood geologists believe was one of the first layers of sediments to be laid down during the Genesis flood. The sandstone is located above the great unconformity and is littered with huge boulders of what is called Chinumo quartzite. It has been suggested that the force of the flood was so great that it broke off huge boulders of this incredibly hard rock, picking them up and carrying them for miles before finally dropping them.
Now that's a lot of geologic work over a short period of time. With all the unknowns hounding secular geologists regarding the age and mechanism of Grand Canyon, it's suggested that since we observe Mount Saint Helens and the incredible forces involved in both erosion and sedimentation, perhaps Just perhaps we can extrapolate and view Grand Canyon in the same catastrophic manner that does not include the philosophy of uniformitarianism. In fact, everything that we saw at Mount Saint Helens was rapid. Rapid erosion, rapid deposition, and rapid recovery of the environment all point to the biblical model of creation. Thank you for joining us on Science, Scripture, and Salvation, a radio ministry of the Institute for Creation Research.
That's all the time we have for our program today, but we would love to connect with you through our website at icr.org. For over 45 years, ICR has equipped believers with evidence of the Bible's accuracy and authority by showing how science supports the Genesis creation account. Our scientists research the evidence for creation and communicate their findings through books, articles, DVD series, and conferences. Please visit our website at icr.org for more information about the latest scientific discoveries, to subscribe to our free magazine and devotional, and to locate our next creation conference at a venue near you. All of this and more at icr.org.
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