The Land of Israel is sitting on the western edge of the Arabian Tectonic Plate as it slides north/south along the side of the African Plate, which is pushing into the Anatolian Tectonic Plate, also north and south. Yet the Anatolian Plate is sliding east and west along the Eurasian Plate. As can be imagined, this is a very unstable part of the world and the site of some of the major catastrophic disasters recorded in the history of man.

The yellow circles are areas where earthquakes greater than 7.4M have occurred in the last 4000 years and the red triangles are known volcanic sites.

IV Book of Ezra – “Thou didst bow down the heavens, didst make the earth quake, and convulsed the world. Thou didst cause the deeps to tremble and didst alarm the spheres.” (IV Ezra (Trans. Box), in the Apocrypha and Pseudepigraphy of the Old Testament, ed. R.H. Charles)

Velikovsky on Exodus and Mount Sinai: “The earth groaned; for weeks now all its strata had been disarranged, its orbit distorted, its world quarters displaced, its oceans thrown upon its continents, its seas turned into deserts, its mountains up heaved, its islands submerged, its rivers running upstream – a world flowing with lava, shattered by meteorites, with yawning chasms, burning naphtha, vomiting volcanoes, quaking ground, a world enshrouded in an atmosphere filled with smoke and vapor.

Twisting of strata and building of mountains, earthquakes and rumbling of volcanoes joined in an infernal din. It was a voice not only in the desert of Sinai; the entire world must have heard it. “The sky and the earth resounded ….mountains and hills were moved” says the Midrash.”

Major Biblical Earthquakes in the OT
Taken in part by Dr. Stephen A. Austin’s works on the Institute for Creation Research

www.icr.org/pubs

One of the quickest ways to see the handprint of the Lord of hosts with his people, the children of Israel is to look at their history of catastrophes and how they perceived the Lord becoming involved in their lives. Let us look at eighteen examples.

1. Day Three of Creation Week - the water rises up

In the Book of Genesis, the record depicts that the waters over the face of the earth were collected into oceanic basins and the continents appeared.

Gen. 1:9 – “Then God said, “Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appeared” and it was so. And God called the dry land Earth, and the gathering together of the waters He called Seas. And God saw that it was good.”

For the global shifts to take place with the uplifting of the continental plates and the subduction of the heavier basaltic plates, earthquakes and volcanic activity were involved in this remodeling of the surface of the earth. To the BibleSearchers, this involved the formation of a Pangaean Garden of Eden. The philosophical basis of geology

Psalms 104:5-6 – “You who laid the foundations of the earth, so that it should not be moved forever, You covered it with the deep as with a garment; the waters stood above the mountains.(before Creation) At your rebuke they fled; at the voice of Your thunder they hastened away. They went up over the mountains. They went down into the valleys, to the place which You founded for them (the seas and oceans). You have set a boundary that they may not pass over, that they may not return to cover the earth.

According to scripture the angelic world was involved if nothing more than an observational and supporting role in the creation event.

Job 38:4-7 – “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell Me if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements? Surely you know! OR who stretched the line upon it? To what were its foundations fastened? Or who laid its cornerstone, when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?

2. Noah's Flood

Genesis 7:11 – “In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep were broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened. And the rain was on the earth forty days and forty nights.

The effect of God’s judgment in the Noachian Flood was the rupturing of the tectonic plates and the waters under the earth; the massive fountains beneath the continental crusts erupted, flooding over the surface of the earth. The flooding came from two sources, from the top down (rain) and the bottom up (rupturing of the tectonic plates). At good source to understand this process is an article by geologist and sedimentologist Art Chadwich Ph.D. called A Creation/Flood Model.

Noah and the Great Flood is presently on the website in a five part series under World of the Ancients. With our present understanding of the continental plate tectonics, this massive catastrophic event was caused in part by earth rending earthquakes and volcanoes.

3. The Days of Peleg

Genesis 10:25, 1 Chronicles 1:19 – To Eber were born two sons; the name of one was Peleg, for in his days the earth was divided; and his brother’s name was Joktan.

Book of Jasher 7:19 – “To Eber were born two children; the name of one was Peleg, for in his days the sons of men were divided, and in the latter days, the earth was divided. And the name of the second was Yoktan, meaning that in his day the lives of the sons of men were diminished and lessened.

Peleg was the fifth generation descendant from Noah. Of all the descendants, yet it was Peleg in which a commentary statement was made, ‘for in his days the earth was divided.” Many theologians have claimed that this statement is in reference to the division of the sons of Noah at the Fall of Babel episode, yet the scripture is clear, ‘the Earth was divided.” For BibleSearchers this is significant. A literal interpretation is always preferred unless the Lord of hosts claims that it is symbolic and especially is the symbol is interpreted.

Since the names of Hebrew, as well as most inhabitants, were significant to a specific character or event in their life, it would be interesting to note what “Jared” means in Hebrew. Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible (#6388) states that Peleg actually means, “earthquake”. How coincidental? The clues are right in front of our eyes. Yet, Jared actually comes from a primary root word called, Palag, called paw-lag’ meaning to split or divide. Let it come at face value, earthquake, split and divide and add ‘for in his days the earth was divided, we have a major catastrophic event recorded in human history.

Comparing the textual references from Genesis to the Book of Jasher, we see a subtle difference and a marked contrast. In Jasher, we note, that in Jared’s days, the sons of men were divided and the earth was not divided until the latter days of his life, close to his death. On the other hand, his brother, Joktan, the upheavals resulting in the cataclysmic changes that altered the environment around the earth resulted in the marked diminishing of the length of the lives of his descendants.

Whereas the fountains of the deep were broken up in the Flood of Noah, the one continent world, known in geological terms as Pangaea, was still intact. A human, in the days of Noah and Jared could walk from the eastern coast of China, across Eurasia, the continent of the Americas without having to cross any oceans. That’s correct; the world was one continent, Pangaea. We will be talking about this continent called Pangaea later in The Catastrophic Destruction of Pangaea.

4. Sodom and Gomorrah

Genesis 19:23 – “The sun had risen upon the earth when Lot entered Zoar. Then the Lord rained brimstone and fire on Sodom and Gomorrah, from the Lord out of the Heavens. So He overthrew those cities, all the plain, all the inhabitants of the cities, and what grew on the ground. But his wife looked back behind him, and she became a pillar of salt.

And Abraham went early in the morning to the place where he had stood before the Lord. Then he looked toward Sodom and Gomorrah and toward all the land of the plain and He saw, and behold, the smoke of the land which went up like the smoke of a furnace.

The catastrophe at the Vale of Siddim, the valley of the cities of the plains has every

element of a volcanic eruption, but it was much more. Unknown to Abraham, he was a living witness for only a few miles away the formation of the largest rift or fissure in the mantle of any continent on this earth was in progress, the Great Rift of Africa.

We do not know whether this rifting began at the border of Lebanon and went south or began at the southwestern coastline of Africa at Beira, on the coast Mozambique at the fracture point of where the unique island of Madagascar split off the African continent. So did this rift work up through the Red Sea to the Vail of Siddim? We do not have evidence of Abraham’s reaction or response to this event, but the proximity of where he was living; the impact of this event would have physically affected him and all of his family.

(Cross section by José F. Vigil from This Dynamic Planet -- a wall map produced jointly by the U.S. Geological Survey, the Smithsonian Institution, and the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory.)

The 4000 mile (6,400 kilometers) length of the Great Rift Valley dwarfs the famous 780 miles of the San Andreas rift along the California coast and maintains an average width of 30 – 40 miles. Geologists date the rift to the era of the Pliocene Epoch. It was caused by a deep, linear, transcurrent or what is called a strike-slip fault along the Arabian and the African Plates. Yet the geologists date is to some 2 million to 7 million years ago.

So what are creationists to think? If we can believe the theories of the speed of light is decaying by astrophysicist, Barry Setterfield Ph.D., then this decay is what is called the red shift in the universe since the Creation Event. To Setterfield, the speed of light has slowed down 10 million times (10,000,000) to its present stable state of 167,000 miles per second.

The issue of light-speed in the early cosmos is one that has received some attention recently in several peer-reviewed journals. Starting in December 1987, the Russian physicist V. S. Troitskii from the Radiophysical Research Institute in Gorky published a twenty-two page analysis in Astrophysics and Space Science regarding the problems cosmologists faced with the early universe. He looked at a possible solution if it was accepted that light-speed continuously decreased over the lifetime of the cosmos, and the associated atomic constants varied synchronously. He suggested that, at the origin of the cosmos, light might have traveled at 10¹⁰ times its current speed, or 1 billion times faster. He also concluded that the cosmos was static and not expanding.

Recent work by Dr. Thomas Van Flandern of the US Naval Observatory in Washington examined data from lunar laser ranging using atomic clocks, and compared their data with data from dynamical, or orbital, clocks. From this comparison of data, he concluded that

"the number of atomic seconds in a dynamical interval is becoming fewer. Presumably, if the result has any generality to it, this means that atomic phenomena are slowing down with respect to dynamical phenomena" ([71]. (T. C. Van Flandern, "Is the Gravitational Constant Changing?", Precision Measurements and Fundamental Constants II, NBS (US) Special Publication 617, B. N. Taylor and W. D. Phillips eds., pp.625-627, 1984. cited by Barry Setterfield)

Dr.Van Flandern was also involved in setting the parameters for running the clocks in the Global Positioning System of satellites used for navigation around the world. When he compared his clock determinant with the dynamic standard, it showed that the atomic phenomenon was slowing up to the year of 1980. According to Setterfield, the ‘c’ decay curve apparently bottomed out around 1980 AD and may have started to increase again.

Since the speed of light is the recognized constant for Time, and affects all atomic ‘constants’ used in science since the moment of the Big Bang to this day then from the scientific evidence of the decay of the speed of light geological time has decayed from the moment of the Big Bang. Setterfield took this information and recalculated the historical story of man as recorded in the Bible. As such he was able to define a relationship between the dates of biblical historical time of the age of man and compare it with atomic or geological time.

In this instance, 2-7 millions years in geological time would be the years of Peleg and Reu, when the scripture stated that in the days of Peleg, the earth was divided. From that date the great rift division began at the time between Peleg and his son Reu about 3005-2875 BCE. The implications are that this rifting began about five generations before Abraham and finished at the time of the destruction of the Sodom and Gomorrah.

The works of Barry Setterfield Ph.D. are obviously controversial, but they do answer a question that has been plaguing short age creationists for years on how to relate to the difference between geological time and historical time. The following is a time chart on the age of the patriarchs of the Old Testament in historical and geological times.

Barry Setterfield's Old Testament Chronology

PATRIARCH	Age at Birth of son and son's name	Son's Birth AC	Son's Birth BC	Patriarch’s Life Span (years)	Patriarch’s Life Span (Dates BC)	Atomic Time BP at Patriarch's Birth	Light Speed (times present value)
Creation	0 Adam	0	5792	-	-
Adam	230 Seth	230	5562	930	5792-4862	14.8 billion	10.6 million
Seth	205 Enos	435	5357	912	5562-4650	12.5 billion
Enos	190 Cainaan	625	5167	905	5357-4452	10.1 billion
Cainaan	170 Mahalaleel	795	4997	910	5167-4257	8.96 billion
Mahalaleel	165 Jared	960	4832	895	4997-4102	7.62 billion
Jared	162 Enoch	1122	4670	962	4832-3870	6.42 billion
Enoch	165 Methusaleh	1287	4505	365	4670-4305	5.34 billion
Methusaleh	187 Lamech	1474	4318	969	4505-3536	4.35 billion	5.8 million
Lamech	182 Noah	1656	4136	777	4318-3541	3.35 billion
Noah	502 Shem	2158	3634	950	4136-3186	2.5 billion	4.3 million
FLOOD	Approximately 2256 years after Creation or about 3536 BC					650 million	2 million
Shem	100 Arphaxad	2258	3534	600	3634-3034	816 million
Arphaxad	135 Cainan	2393	3399	535	3534-2999	596 million
Cainan	130 Salah	2523	3269	460	3399-2939	358 million
Salah	130 Eber	2653	3139	433	3269-2836	196 million	1.1 million
Eber	134 Peleg	2787	3005	404	3139-2735	97 million	615,000
Peleg	130 Reu	2917	2875	339	3005-2666	63 million
Reu	132 Serug	3049	2743	339	2875-2536	1 million	78,000
Serug	130 Nahor	3179	2613	330	2743-2413	5000
Nahor	179 Terah	3358	2434	208	2613-2405
Terah	130 Abram	3488	2304	205	2434-2229
Abraham	100 Isaac	3588	2204	175	2304-2129		c ~ c (now)
Isaac	60 Jacob	3648	2144	180	2204-2024
Jacob	91 Joseph	3739	2053	147	2144-1997

All along this great rift system from the Jordan River to southeastern Africa are evidence of deep depressions and wall-like cliffs as it carves a deep scar into the surface of the earth. All along this depression are relics of extinct or dormant volcanoes, evidence of the action of three tectonic plates moving away from each other.

What we do know from Biblical records is that the Vail of Siddim was already a valley and a fresh water lake fed by the runoff of Mount Herman down the Jordan River. From there the Great Rift traverses down the Gulf of Agaba into the Red Sea and into the Danakil Depression in Ethiopia call the “Hell hole of Creation.

In the arena where the Great Rift splits into a Western Rift it hosts some of the deepest lakes in the world (up to 1,560 meters deep) and between it and the western wall is a depression hosting the second largest inland body of water, the famous Lake Victoria filled with up to 200 to 250 centimeter of rain per year.

Atlantic Ridge under the Atlantic Ocean

Like the Atlantic Ridge, the Great Rift is actually part of a mid-oceanic ridge system consisting of submerged mountain ranges encircling the globe. The northern extension of the Indian Ocean ridge moves through the Red Sea over to the Mediterranean Sea and into the Atlantic Ocean. The African Rift Valley is but an extension of the Red Sea Rift encircling into the continent of Africa, while the Dead Sea and Jordan Valley rift is an extension into the Mediterranean Sea, the former Valley of the River of Styx, which itself is has over 300 megalithic sites of ancient cities submerged within its waters.

The floor of the valley between the Eastern and the Western Rifts boasts some of Africa’s most beautiful topography of lakes, plains, deserts, volcanoes with cliffs or escarpment rising on the edges upward to 3,000 feet from the floor of the valley and along the margins of the rifts.

Mount Kilimanjaro in Kenya

Yet, in the Mau Escarpment in Kenya, the mountain ranges rise in spectacular walls as high as 9,000 feet (2,700 meters) above the valley floor, which include some of the earth’s most majestic scenery which include Mount Kilimanjaro, Mount Kenya, and Mount Margherita.

The rift enters the country of Kenya, which begins with Lake Rudolf into and proceeds through a series of small lakes, Baringo, Bogoria, Nakuru, Elmentaita, Naivasha and Magadi. into Tanzania at Lake Natron

Lake Natron

This lake is a soda lake near the Gelai caldera in Tanzania and the home of the firebird, called the flamingo. Flamingos seem to adapt to certain lakes in order the ‘read’ the nature of the water. Due to huge underground springs, a flooded valley can be heated up to a 140 degrees which would cook a flamingo settling into its waters. These underground cauldrons are an indication of the giant lava flumes circulating under the raft. Commercially the lakes are harvested for sodium carbonate used in making paper, ceramics and glass.

Flamingos over Lake Natron

The western branch on the other hand traverses along the borders of Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania, and the DR Congo. Here the first watersheds of the famous Nile River begin, coming from the lakes Albert, Edward, Kivu, and Tanganyika, and the Virunga-Rwenzori forest and mountain range (shown in this picture to the left), which serves as among the first watersheds for the Nile River.

The slipping of the plates is a continuing process. Abraham was an early witness to this massive geological phenomenon but the earthquakes that we will discuss later will be a continuation of this same process. In the Jordan valley, the major fault lines runs and is still active. The effects have left dramatic cliffs and the continuous threat of earthquakes.

Flamingos on Lake Natron

Left in the same position as the Dead Sea, the Kenyan rift valley is the largest and deepest, also with no outlet into the sea. Its lakes are shallow and with the evaporation of the water, it leaves behind salts with high soda content. Lake Magadi is almost solid soda whereas Lakes Nakuru and Elmenteita have substantial soda flats. Yet nearby the Lakes Turkana and Baringo have fresh underwater springs and the water stays fresh enough to maintain a rich fish while supporting a large variety of bird, fish and plant life.

Even today there is still some seismic activity. The major and most dramatic mountains are volcanic in origin such as Mt. Kilimanjaro, Mt. Kenya (which was once higher than Mt. Kilimanjaro, which is geologically younger), Mt. Meru, Mt. Elgon, the Virunga Volcanoes and the Crater Highlands. In Virunga, Zaire in 1979, the world witnessed this eruption.

Mount Kilimanjaro in Kenya at the base of the Great Rift Valley

Some scientist are saying today that we are still seeing the formation of what will eventually be another sea, such as the Atlantic, in which the rifting causing the separation of the African and the Arabian tectonic plates will eventually be torn away and the Indian Ocean will flood away making the easternmost corner of Africa, called the Horn of Africa, a large island.

In 1978, just before the Virunga, Zaire volcano, scientists noted the formation of volcanic cones along the inlet called Ghoubet Kharab, "the devil's throat," in Djibouti. Here we see the same formations noted at the bottom of the Atlantic Rift, called seamounts.

Seamounts at Ghoubet Kharab “the devil’s throat” in Djibouti

So the process of faulting, contracting upheavals, valley formation, warping lava plumes erupting through the earth’s crust still occur to this day. Yet in the land of Abraham, the evidence shows that the geologically youngest rocks are found in the Rift Valley. These include soft siltstones, mudstones which have replaced the extensive valley of beautiful lake once upon a time called the Valley of Siddim and the home of Lot, the nephew of Abraham.

Recently scientists have been watching the molten core at the center of the earth. This core is as hot as the sun and the magma convection currents rise and fall from the core to the earth’s crust much like a lava lamp. What is known is that the core of the earth, smaller than the crust of the earth spins at a faster rate. This spinning will cause the soft magma to twist and spiral and feeds like an electric generator. The reason: the twisting and spiraling of the magma rising from the molten iron core acts like an electric dynamo resembling the copper wire winding in an electric generator. Mega voltages of electric currents flow up to the surface of the earth between the positive and the negative poles. As such the magnetic field surrounding the earth is produced by the electric current flowing upwards from the molten core within this planet. Recent evidence of hot spots within the Pacific Ocean which are causing the El Nino and the El Nina planetary weather changes are a result of this dynamic process in the center of the earth.

5. The Plagues in Egypt

In the midst of the 16^th century BCE, one of the greatest volcanic explosions known to mankind, a group of slaves escaped from their masters, the Egyptians and changed forever the word called “restoration”.

Moses, the heir apparent to the throne of Egypt was born about 1665 BCE and fled Egypt in 1625 BCE, only to return at the age of 80 years, about 1585 BCE.

The Eruption of Thera and the Volcanic Ash spreading over the Nile Delta at the time of the Exodus

It was here that he led his people, the children of Jacob, out of the land of Egypt and set them marching toward their Promise Land, the land of Palestine. This was close to the time of the 13^th dynasty in the Middle Kingdom and just prior to the chaos in the land when the Hyksos took over the land.

The plagues as recorded in Exodus record a phenomenon that eventually wrecked the economy and military power of Egypt, wiping out the 13^th dynasty and allowing foreign rule to take over the land of Egypt.

In the archives in Leiden, Netherlands, a papyrus document called the Ipuwer Papyrus gives what appears to be an Egyptian account of the Exodus. Let us look at a comparison of this amazing papyrus and the Exodus account of Moses and the children of Israel leaving Egypt.

The Papyrus Ipuwer The Hebrew Exodus prior to the

And the Exodus Events arrival of the Amalekites

2:5-6

"Plague is throughout the land. Blood is everywhere." 'The nomes are laid waste: a foreign tribe from abroad has come into Egypt.'

7:21

"... there is blood throughout all the land of Egypt."

2:13

"He who places his brother in the ground is everywhere."

12:30

"... there was not a house where there was not one dead. ... there was a great cry in Egypt."

3:1

"Forsooth, the desert is throughout the land. The nomes are laid waste. A foreign tribe from abroad has come to Egypt."

3:10-13

"That is our water! That is our happiness! What shall we do in respect thereof? All is ruin."

7:21

"... and the river stank."

3:14

"It is groaning that is throughout the land, mingled with lamentations."

12:12

"... this night ... against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment."

4:4

"Forsooth, those who were in the place of embalmment are laid on the high ground."

12:29

"And it came to pass, that at midnight the Lord smote all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the first born of Pharaoh that sat on his throne unto the first born of the captive that was in the dungeon."

4:14

"Trees are destroyed. ... Years of noise [hrw]. There is no end to noise."

5:5

"All animals, their hearts weep. Cattle moan ..."

9:3

"... the hand of the Lord is upon thy cattle which is in the field ... there shall be a grievous moraine."

9:19

"... gather thy cattle and all that thou hast in the field ..."

5:12

"Forsooth, that has perished which yesterday was seen. The land is left over to its weariness like the cutting of flax."

5:14f

"Would that there might be an end of men, no conception, no birth! Oh, that the earth would cease from noise and tumult be no more!"

6:1

"No fruits nor herbs are found. ... hunger. ... Oh, that the earth would cease from noise, and tumult (uproar) be no more."

9:25

"... and the hail smote every herb of the field, and brake every tree of the field."

9:23-24

"... the fire ran along upon the ground. ... there was hail, and fire mingled with the hail, very grievous."

9:31-32

"... the flax and the barley was smitten: for the barley was in the ear, and the flax was boiled. But the wheat and the rye were not smitten: for they were not grown up."

7:1

"Behold, the fire has mounted up on high. Its burning goes forth against the enemies of the land. ... weep ... the earth is ... on every side ... weep."

7:4

"The residence is overturned in a minute."