With all the hysteria over President Trump pulling out of the Paris Accord how about God’s timing for this daily devotional?
After the Flood, Noah stepped out of the ark into a forbidding
environment. Underneath Noah’s feet were thousands of feet of
mud and sand in which the animals and plants from the pre-flood
world were buried. The unstable Earth was struggling to reestablish
new plants. Super volcanoes were belching ash and lava over vast
regions while earthquakes still rocked the land. It took centuries for
the Earth’s climate to transition from the wettest period in history to
today’s climate.
Thousands of volcanoes and rapid continental movement during the
Flood caused the oceans to warm up to 80oF (or higher), whereas the
average ocean temperature today is 39oF. These warm oceans, next
to cold continents, created violent storms. Enormous hurricanes
(called hypercanes) drew water from the oceans and dumped it onto
the land, filling depressions, causing lakes to overflow, and cutting
deep canyons through newly laid sediment layers. These intense
rains also saturated the ground, allowing groundwater to rapidly
carve enormous cave formations; these caves would take hundreds of
thousands of years to form at today’s rate.
As the oceans cooled and precipitation declined, the world’s
reforested areas started to dry out and change to grasslands.
Meanwhile, at high latitudes and mountain tops, the precipitation fell
as snow and ice. Ice built up rapidly, and the Earth’s one and only
ice age developed, lowering ocean levels up to 300 feet! Oncet he
oceans cooled to present day temperatures (many hundreds of years
after the flood ended), the air circulation changed on Earth. This
shift formed the deserts in a belt around the world, about 30 degrees
north and south of the equator.
Minor climate changes (all too commonly promoted in an effort
to gain political power) are insignificant compared to the dramatic
changes experienced upon this planet in the last 4,000 years. The
post-flood world was truly an ever-changing and dynamic place.