Daily Devotional - January 22

Geology

The White Cliffs of Dover are an impressive sight. These stark white cliffs, over 1300 feet thick, are made of 98% pure, fine-grained calcium carbonate (commonly known as chalk). This sedimentary layer formed from the cells of microorganisms called foraminifera and common calcareous algae known as coccoliths and rhabdoliths. At today’s accumulation rate, millions of years would be needed to form a sedimentary layer this thick, and this is used as a prime example of why the rock layers of the earth must be millions of years old. But there are several problems with this assumption.

First of all, there is nowhere on earth today where chalk of this purity is forming. As plankton and algae die and slowly settle to the bottom of oceans, their shells become mixed with sediment and the remains of many other creatures. In order to form a pure layer of chalk, a massive amount of organisms would need to die, settle, and be buried extremely rapidly.

Second, the commonly quoted average accumulation rate (½ inch per thousand years) is characteristic of current conditions. Explosive growth of ocean microorganisms would have been common at various times during the Flood of Noah’s time. What typically limits the growth of algae in water are temperature, mixing, carbon dioxide concentration, and nitrogen nutrition sources. At unique locations during the Flood, enormous volumes of warm ocean waters would have been filled with nutrients from decaying vegetation and with massive amounts of CO2 from volcanic activity. All of this would have led to ideal conditions for explosive chalk-forming microorganism blooms. Today we only observe small localized bloom areas; during the Flood, there would have been large regional blooms resulting in the geological features we see today such as the White Cliffs of Dover. These blooms (with the organisms dying, settling to the bottom and being rapidly buried) would have happened in a matter of weeks, not millions of years! The White Cliffs of Dover proclaim that Noah’s Flood did happen, just as Scripture tells us.

Then I beheld all the work of God, that a man cannot find out the work that is done under the sun: because though a man labour to seek it out, yet he shall not find it; yea farther; though a wise man think to know it, yet shall he not be able to find it.

~ Ecclesiastes 8:17

Source: "Pearls in Paradise" by authors Bruce Malone and Jule Von Vett