ICR:When did all the fossils die?  by John D. Morris, Ph.D.

   Beginning in the early 1800s, Christian leaders began to be
perplexed by the fossils. Their problem stemmed from the facts that: 1)
fossils appear to be the remains of once-living plants and animals; 2)
some scientists, such as James Hutton and Charles Lyell, claimed to
have "proven" that the fossils were laid down by slow and gradual
processes taking place over long periods of time; 3) a straightforward
reading of the Bible indicates that the creation was only thousands of
years ago, and that death was not a part of God's original plan, but
was introduced due to Adam and Eve's sin.

   Most scientists and theologians, up until this time, attributed the
fossils to the destruction of the earth by the Flood of Noah's day. But
once the concept of a very old earth began to gain support, something
had to be done with the fossils. Theologians led the way to general
acceptance of this idea by proposing a number of possibilities, each of
which claimed to salvage the Bible in the face of what they feared was
contrary evidence.

   Damaging compromising concepts included the idea that Noah's Flood
was only the last in a long series of world-altering catastrophes, with
most of the fossils dating from long-ago floods. Others began to
propose that the Flood of Noah was "tranquil," that it covered the
mountains without leaving any fossil or geologic trace, or held to a
local flood which covered only the Mesopotamian River Valley, with the
fossils predating that flood.

   C.l. Scofield popularized a view called the Gap Theory, which placed
vast eons of time between Verses 1 and 2 of Genesis 1, for, as he wrote
in his reference Bible, "Relegate fossils to the primitive creation,
and no conflict of science with the Genesis cosmogony remains" (Page
4). More popular compromises today are the Day-Age Theory, that the
days of Genesis were long periods of time during which the fossils were
laid down; and Theistic Evolution, which disregards Genesis altogether.
The up-and-coming compromise in evangelical seminaries today is the
Framework Hypothesis which holds that Genesis contains only spiritual
truth, but not scientific or historical truth. Each of these purports
to do away with the problem of fossils, but in reality, they only end
up distorting Scripture.

   What would lead Bible-believing Christians to accept speculations
about the past by men who live in the present, who don't know
everything, who weren't there in the past to see fossils laid down, and
who deny the Word of God to start with? Why would Christians seek to
twist the Bible to make it fit such speculations?

   The Bible is the record of One who does know everything about the
past and the present. In it, the Author plainly tells us that death
entered the world as a result of man's sinful actions. "The wages of
sin is death" (Romans 6:23). (See also Genesis 2:17, 3:19; Romans 5:12,
8:22; etc.)

   The Bible also tells us of the great worldwide Flood following the
entrance of death, which would necessarily have laid down great
deposits of water-borne sediments full of the dead remains of living
things. The sediments have now turned into sedimentary rock, and the
dead things have turned into fossils.

   We can't prove, from a strictly scientific perspective, the Flood of
Noah, but the nature of the fossil record is just what we would expect
to see from the record of the Bible. We would do well to trust the
testimony of the One who was there to see the fossils laid down, rather
than the speculations of those who weren't!
