August 24 marked the 1,941st anniversary of the world-famous eruption of Mount Vesuvius, making the annual date “Vesuvius Day.” Even to date, this was one of the largest volcanic explosions in recorded history, wiping out the Roman cities of Pompeii, Herculaneum, and Stabiae. Creation scientists would argue that the actual largest volcanic eruptions happened about four millennia prior to Vesuvius, when the earth was rocked by the cataclysmic event of Noah’s Flood. We’ll discuss that a little more in a few weeks, but this week I wanted to point out the common effects of both a worldwide flood and a large single-volcano eruption, namely in the way we can learn from the sedimentary rock formed in the aftermath of each type of event.

What is sedimentary rock?
Billions of dead things buried in rock layers laid down by water all over the earth.

To tell you more about sedimentary rock, I reached out to my friend Russ Miller, the Off Grid Creationist, for a short interview. Russ has lots of experience at the Grand Canyon and Grand Staircase, as he has been leading Christian-based tours since 2004 and has been teaching on the topic since 2001. He’s taken several thousand people on his tours and has even rafted the entire length of the Canyon a dozen times, including a nine-day trip with a group of ten geologists. Although nobody can really know the whole Grand Canyon, his extensive experience and biblical perspective helped clear some things up for me. I hope you will enjoy reading his answers to my questions too!
 
TK: How was the Grand Canyon formed?
Russ Miller: The region’s geology could be described as being convoluted. Missing layers, layers interspersed with massive lava flows, and even layers with a mix of sandstone and limestone pose a lot of questions. But considering the massive amounts of stratified sediments that have been removed, combined with the lack of evidence as to where the missing sediments have been deposited, the Global Flood from the days of Noah best explains the formation of the Grand Canyon and the Grand Staircase.

Even then, there are several viable options as to how the Canyon formed. One holds that retreating flood waters removed the missing strata, more than a mile deep in some areas, leaving behind the Grand Staircase, just prior to the formation of the Kaibab Upwarp. Then the upwarp acted as a huge earthen dam that trapped some of the late floodwaters. Later, the dam collected runoff from the Colorado Plateau until the waters it held breached the upwarp and cascaded through, eroding Grand Canyon in a matter of days. Another theory holds that retreating flood waters removed the missing mile-plus of strata from the Grand Staircase region, and as the waters began to dissipate, a water channel formed which cut into the Colorado Plateau and carved Grand Canyon through the upwarp at the end of the global flood. There are other viable hypotheses as well, and ongoing research is trying to determine which option is the most likely to have occurred.
 
TK: How do modern day volcanic eruptions help us understand the sedimentary rock that was the result of Noah’s Flood?

Russ Miller: For one, in volcanic eruptions and their aftermath, we’ve been able to observe several events that created finely stratified sedimentary layers in a matter of minutes. Old-earth beliefs, which have provided the foundation for Darwinism, Naturalism, Humanism, and the various compromised positions held in Christian circles today, are all based on the belief that the earth’s crustal sedimentary layers formed slowly over millions of years of time rather than quickly during the Global Flood. Thus, such a flood destroys all death-before-Adam beliefs.
Also, the radiometric dating failures on lava flows and rock, observed to have formed as a result of recent volcanic activity, bring into serious question the ancient ages assigned to the sedimentary layers via the Geologic Time Scale. This opens the door for the correct starting paradigm regarding the formation of the earth’s sedimentary layers: the Global Flood that occurred during the days of Noah.
 
TK: So now we understand that the majority of the Grand Canyon is made up of sedimentary rock that was laid down by waters of Noah’s Flood, but what is under the sedimentary rock?

Russ Miller: There are ten primary sedimentary layers that make up the walls of Grand Canyon and below them, in certain areas, are the Grand Canyon Super Group strata. Below the stratified layers seen in the walls of the Grand Canyon are non-stratified igneous and metamorphic rocks which include various schists and granites. For the sake of discussion, let’s focus on where the Tapeats Sandstone, the lowest of the ten primary layers, sits atop the non-stratified basement rock in the lower regions of the Canyon.
I believe the flood waters eroded sediments and that the moving waters separated those sediments by grain size, weight and density before depositing them to form the sedimentary layers that make up the crust of the earth today. Non-stratified rocks reveal where the erosional event ended, leaving behind what was there prior to the Global Flood: original creation rock.
At Grand Canyon, the Tapeats Sandstone sits atop non-stratified creation rock and reveals where creation physically met with God’s judgement. In fact, I can take you to where you can put your thumb on creation rock and your fingers on flood layers. Powerful proof in favor of the truth of God and His Word.
 
TK: Can you tell us a little more about your ministry?

Russ Miller: Our ministry is basically my wife, Joanna, and I. We went into fulltime creation ministry back in 2000, and since then God has allowed me to share thousands of church service messages; author five creation-oriented books, including COSΤ; write and illustrate two kids’ coloring books; develop twenty PowerPoint seminars, our Grand Canyon & Grand Staircase tours, and “Off Grid Creationist” videos; and more. I’ve shared on college campuses and at national conferences, and I’ve appeared on many worldwide Christian television programs: always encouraging people to believe the Bible—word for word and cover to cover.
Though raised in a Christian home, I strayed from God during college (I have over 170 college credits), where I was an all-division baseball player. I was on my “road to Damascus” when, at the age of thirty, I felt the Holy Spirit nudging me to return to Him and I started attending church again. Ten years passed, and I became a church Trustee, though still believing that God had used “millions of years leading to evolution” to develop His creation. During this time, I also spent eighteen years developing a nationwide management firm while building houses “on the side.” Then I obtained video tapes of several creation speakers and God used them to light a fire in me to study the creation-evolution issues, obtaining knowledge from creation speakers, scientists, and even the die-hard Darwinian faithful.
I felt God’s calling to do something more important than making money, and in late 2000, I gave my business to a valuable co-worker and began Creation, Evolution & Science Ministries.
 
TK: Thank you, Russ Miller, for taking the time to answer my questions!
 
If you’re looking for a way to avoid being sedentary, a visit to the Grand Canyon could be just what you need! And you could even let Russ give you an up-close tour of the sedimentary layers. Find out more at creationministries.org.
 
Don’t just take our word for it! Visit YouFormedMe.com/geology/sedimentary.html to read, watch, and listen to supporting research and commentary from scientists, doctors, theologians, and more!
This blog is from a special series of “Creation Fun Facts” by Terri Kammerzell, starting from June 10, 2020. Read the introduction at TruthOfGenesis.com/blogs/building-a-biblical-defense-of-creation.

Happy Senior Citizen’s Day! Did you know that President Ronald Reagan declared this a national holiday in 1988, and two years later the United Nations made it a world holiday, to be observed on August 21 each year? The day is to help raise awareness of issues that affect the older and (usually) wiser generations. You can celebrate the day by taking some time to bring cheer to your own aged relatives or find some others who need it. In 2020, although the opportunity for physical contact might be less, the need to cheer these folks is undoubtedly greater.

While you may want to refrain from calling them such names as “fogie” or “fossil,” I, nevertheless, thought it would be a good week to introduce my Fun Fact about the fossil record:

What is the fossil record?
The fossil record is a “recording” of history found in sedimentary layers and made of fossils, which are the remains or traces of plants and animals found in rocks.

As I mentioned in my first blog, posted on June 10, these Fun Facts I’m introducing to you are “evidence” or “science” -based. But it’s important for us to understand that there is another perspective to Creation apologetics: presuppositional. The best way to explain the difference is that we all—believers and unbelievers—live on the same planet and have access to the same evidence. How we interpret that evidence depends on our worldview (which is a network of our pre-assumed beliefs). It’s kind of like the prescription of the glasses you wear which makes your view of things a little (or sometimes a lot) different than other people’s views. The fossil record is probably the best Fun Fact I have to illustrate this.

The fossil record is a “recording” of fossils, and that is undeniable. But your worldview will determine how you view that recording, and even how you view those fossils. It happens to be through the lens of Scripture and a biblical view of origins that we are able to explain the fossil record more clearly and with fewer unanswered questions.

I’ve known some Christians who believe that an evolutionary approach to explaining the origins of the world is incongruent with the Bible, but they’ve never taken time to learn of the confidence we have in the evidence which actually supports the biblical account. Instead, they try to dismiss whole truths and categories of science because they assume that evolutionists have “created” them to support their humanistic ideas. It’s so important to be able to know the difference between real science, real evidence, and faulty interpretations. One example is natural selection. Many people have often attributed natural selection to Charles Darwin, suggesting he made up that idea and it is the equivalent of evolution. However, natural selection is a scientific process that was discovered long before Charles Darwin.  In reality, it is just the predetermined variability within a kind allowed by a creatures DNA code. He just manipulated it to try to prove his erroneous ideas. We’ll talk more about that later when we discuss other Fun Facts.

The fossil record is another example of this, though. Some Christians don’t understand that fossils do exist and that there actually is a recording of them. They assume that evolutionists have made up their existence. Fossils and fossil layers do exist. It’s our worldview that determines how we explain their existence.

So here are some highlighted findings for you to keep in mind about the fossil record, in terms of how it actually supports the biblical accounts of Creation and the global Flood:

• What Makes up the Fossil Record: More specifically, the fossil record is made up of large horizontal layers, deposited by moving fluid. The layers, or strata, are classified vertically by primary material deposited in them, which has distinct colors and textures that differentiate layer from layer. The layers were deposited on a continental scale, so that we see the same layers in the Grand Canyon as we see in the eastern states and other locations across North America. Additionally, we find comparable layers on other continents all over the world. Not all layers exist in all places, but where the sedimentary layers do exist, the layers are always in the same order.
  
  
• Evidence for Rapid Burial: Evolutionists would suggest that the fossil record was laid down slowly, over millions of years. However, in order for fossilization of a living organism to occur, it has to happen rapidly. In fact, most organisms that die do not fossilize. Instead, they are eaten, scavenged, or recycled back into their environment. So, a fossil is only formed when the organism dies and is buried rapidly, such as would have occurred during Noah’s Flood. In fact, evidence of rapid burial includes fossils of animals who were in the middle of a fight, animals in the process of eating other animals, and even animals giving birth! What’s more, some animals fossilized so swiftly that their soft parts still remain. We especially see this in the discoveries of dinosaur soft tissue with red blood cells. Soft tissue cannot last more than a few thousand years, which means there is no way the sedimentary rock layers containing them can be millions of years old. (We’ll talk about this more at a later date this year too.)
  
  
• More Rapid Burial Evidence in Trackways: Trackways are the evidence of movement, like footprints, of animals. Scientists have found that when examining the fossil record layers from bottom to top, as new layers introduce the fossils of new animal kinds, the first layers contain those animals’ trackways. That means that in one layer, an animal’s footprints—not its hard parts—are fossilized. Then, in the layer above it, the animal’s hard parts are fossilized. There is no way that there could have been a long period of time between the fossilization of an animal’s trackways and its hard parts. That had to have happened rapidly. What’s more, in many of the trackway fossils, scientists have found evidence in the heel-and-toe patterns that the animals were walking or climbing (or running) away from the direction the water current was carrying them. (This is particularly noteworthy in higher layers that were supposedly “desert deposits” laid down with little to no water. There was clearly a strong current carrying these animals.)
  
  
• Order Within the Layers: Evolutionary geologists make claims that the layers of the fossil record resemble ages, suggesting the fossils contained in them are those of organisms that died over specific and progressing time periods. However, if the fossil record had been formed rapidly during a global flood, what we would expect to find is that the lower layers contain the fossils of marine life (shells, clams, trilobites, worms, etc.). The higher you go up the layers, you would expect to find a mix of marine and terrestrial organisms with a greater percentage of terrestrial animals the higher the layer. Guess what the fossil record contains? Lower layers that contain the fossils of marine life with higher layers that contain a mix of sea and terrestrial animals. Instead of each layer representing eras of time of elongated history, it is more likely that each layer represents a stage of the Genesis Flood, and even a geographical location of the types of organisms that were living in and then rapidly buried during each stage.
  
  
• No Transitional Fossils: Finally, for Darwinian evolution to be true, the fossil record should have evidence of transitional fossils. However, there are no transitional fossils. The fossils always show that chickens produce chickens, zebras produce zebras, turtles produce turtles. Animals reproduce after their own kind, just as God ordered them to do in the Bible. No transitional fossils.

Scientific models are based on good, testable hypotheses. When it comes down to it, the fossil record is much more congruent with the hypotheses scientists make based on the historical narrative of the Bible rather than on the fictional alternative of naturalistic evolutionary processes.

Next week, we’ll cover the topic of sedimentary rock. I had a health coach who was also a science teacher and seemed to be confused between the terms “sedimentary” and “sedentary.” Every week she encouraged me not to be sedimentary. Today, I’m encouraging you to visit a senior citizen dear to you and help keep them from becoming too sedentary.
 

Don’t just take my word for it! Visit YouFormedMe.com/geology/fossilRecord.html to read, watch, and listen to supporting research and commentary from scientists, doctors, theologians, and more!
This blog is from a special series of “Creation Fun Facts” by Terri Kammerzell, starting from June 10, 2020. Read the introduction at TruthOfGenesis.com/blogs/building-a-biblical-defense-of-creation.

At the end of May, my family took a trip to the Ark Encounter which is located in Williamstown, Kentucky.  We were headed to South Carolina for an end of the school year vacation, and had been wanting to see this life-sized reconstruction of Noah’s ark.  I like to gather the most information that I can before a trip like this, and so I went to the Ark Encounter’s website to get more details to plan our day.  Their website was helpful, but I had some general questions like would I get cold inside?  How long would it take to get through?  Where could we stay overnight?  Here are my top ten tips for making your trip to visit this new attraction easier!

10.  ARRIVE EARLY  We arrived right at opening time, pulling into their parking lot at nine a.m..  They have good parking attendants that helped us find a spot, and directed us to the ticket booth.  There were long lines and a bus loading to take people to the Ark by the time we walked over. 
 
9.  BUY TICKETS IN ADVANCE   While there were lines (about 5 family units long) at each of the many windows, the window to process tickets that were pre-purchased had a much shorter line. 
 
8.  DRESS IN LAYERS  I wondered what the temperature would be like in the Ark.  The weather outside on the day we were there was beautiful (mid 70’s by afternoon).  The inside of the ark felt comfortable to me, like the outdoor temperature.  I had dressed in a zip-up sweatshirt and a t-shirt.  In the morning I was glad to have the two layers, and by the afternoon I had the sweatshirt tied around my waist.
 
7.  EAT AT EMZARA’S  I LOVE a good meal.  On vacation we tend to stay in places that have kitchens, to save on money, and eat in instead of dining out.  We only had a few meals out on our ten day trip, and the buffet lunch at Emzara’s was one of them.  I had read many reviews on Trip Advisor saying this restaurant’s buffet, that is a few hundred feet from the Ark itself, was fantastic and they were right!  Lunch is $12.99 for adults, $9.99 for 60+, $5.99 for 5-12 yr., and under 5 free.  There is a combination price where lunch and dinner are $19.99 for adults, $16.99 for 60+, and $9.99 for 5-12 yr. olds.  If you think you'll stay long enough to eat twice this is the way to go!
 
6.  PLAN FOR 6 HOURS  By the time we got to the Ark itself (after paying for our tickets, taking the bus to the Ark, and then doing a short video for this website) it was 10:00 a.m..  We went through the first and second floors by 12:45 p.m..  Then we stopped to eat lunch. We went to the gift shop for about a half hour after lunch, and then finished the day by 3:30 after touring the third floor.  This was a little over six hours.  I wouldn’t say we sped through, but I also wouldn’t say we hit everything.  By the third floor we were a little tired, and my son and I skipped a few exhibits because they were crowded. 
 
5.  FEEL FREE TO SKIP THE PICTURE ON THE WAY IN  When you first enter the ark you go up a long ramp.  At the top they have two professional photographers taking pictures of the groups that enter (family units, big groups, singles, etc.).  We did not want to pay for a picture taken by them so we just walked to the front of the line, and walked past the photographers when they were stopped for a second.  It would have slowed us down, probably another twenty minutes, to stand in line and wait for a picture we didn’t want as there were about 15-20 groups of people in front of us.
 
4.  SNACKS ARE AVAILABLE ON DIFFERENT LEVELS OF THE ARK  We brought in our own water bottles, but there are snacks on the Ark.  Our 12 year old son got two things on the second floor snack stand.  It was good to see they offer healthy things like hummus and crackers, or yogurt.  (Although our son chose potato chips!) The prices are, as you would probably expect, high.
 
3.  PREPARE FOR CROWDS  I asked the lady checking out my wares at the Gift Shop if they were particularly busy the day we were there.  It was Memorial Day weekend, and it just seemed like everywhere we went in the complex there was a crowd.  She replied, “Oh no, this is not busy at all.  We’re expecting a much bigger crowd tomorrow.”  If our day was a normal, or light traffic, day it was still crowded by my standards.  I personally don’t love crowds, but the Ark’s busyness didn’t bother me at all.  However, I didn’t like having to fight the crowds at each exhibit, and you would have to move at the pace everyone else was moving in the exhibits because they would get tightly packed. 
 
2.  ENJOY THE MOVIES  We all really enjoyed the movies on the second and third floors.  The creators of the films tied the two together in theme, so it made it even more enjoyable to laugh at the characters and see them developed in each story line.  There are long, wooden benches to sit on to see the movies, and you can come and go as you like with the films playing on a continuous loop. 
 
1.  DOING ONE WAS ENOUGH  One of the biggest questions we had was could we do both the Ark Encounter and the Creation Museum in one day?  Dave and I had been to the Creation Museum, but our 12 year old has not.  We considered trying to fit them both in on the same day.  I am REALLY glad we didn’t.  There is so much information at each of the two places, plus they are not right next to each other (under an hour’s drive).  One was enough!
 
Overall, we loved our experience at the Ark Encounter.  I think we all would say it was not only one of the best days of our vacation, but also of our summer!  We hope everyone has the chance to go, at least once.  If you have been to the Ark Encounter would you let us know in the comment section?   If you have any tips to add to our list please let us know!