The Fossils' Tale

by Henry M. Morris III, D.Min.

“Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished.” (2 Peter 3:6)

Billions of dead creatures are entombed in cubic miles of water-deposited rock layers. The story they tell is hotly debated in our educational institutions. But one thing is very clear—sometime in our planet’s past “all flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, and every man: All in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land, died” (Genesis 7:21-22).

If life sprang into being from non-life, and if that life, once generated, changed over time into more and more complex systems, then those events must have happened outside of our current environment. Since we do not find evidence of such large biological changes happening in the present, we must look to find it among the fossils preserved for us in the planet’s sedimentary deposits.

At first glance, all would agree that these enormous deposits speak of a vast water catastrophe that inundated the entire planet. The Bible tells us that such a planet-covering water catastrophe did take place (Genesis 7:11-12, 19).

Those who refuse to accept the biblical record must deny that such a flood ever took place. They must also attempt to tell a story (without God in the story) of processes and conditions that could produce the worldwide deposits of sedimentary rock and the billions of fossils they contain. Job understood that we should “speak to the earth, and it shall teach thee: and the fishes of the sea shall declare unto thee. Who knoweth not in all these that the hand of the LORD hath wrought this?” (Job 12:8-9). HMM III

Adapted from Unlocking the Mysteries of Genesis by Dr. Henry Morris III.

This article was originally published August, 2016. "The Fossils' Tale", Institute for Creation Research, https://www.icr.org/article/fossils-tale (accessed April 23, 2024).