WHEN DID 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!