Interpreting Landscape from a Biblical View. National Parks are full of explanatory information about mountains. From the Blue Ridge in the East to the Sierras in the West, nearly 100% park information explains what you see in terms of evolution. This means no God, no worldwide flood as described in Genesis, and hundreds of thousands of years of gradual changes that yield what we see. It may come as a shock to some, but this is a conjecture based on a world view that is based on gradual change. A much better explanation for the things we see is the effects of the Genesis Flood. The upheaval was a long catastrophic event (lasting over a year) and it took several hundred years (including an ice age in certain places) for conditions to settle. For a larger treatment of the subject, we recommend studying the many articles at www.creation.com or download the free course from this site (the Creation Study under the Files Gallery). Using a biblical view, we will confine ourselves in this article to a few mountains and why they appear as they do.
The Mountains. Many mountains in the United States are beautiful and majestic. They are also an obvious part of the Flood’s signature since they were parts of the surface of the earth that were raised, buckled, or thrust up quickly. The mountains on land that are most familiar to us in the continental United States are the Appalachians in the East and the Rockies in the West. The High Sierras, on the Western side of the Rockies, show dramatic upthrust, like the areas near Mt Whitney that are shown in the pictures above and below. These mountains were thrust up later in the Flood period because they are sharp, jagged, and appear much less affected by water. Peaks were not overrun and destroyed by overrunning debris laden waters. This is in contrast to the Appalachians, which were subjected to over-running flood waters earlier in the receding flood period. So they are (in a sense) ground down. Stark stone faces of the High Sierras are breathtaking because of their height and steepness. In a sense, they are a permanent monument for a latter period of the Flood event.
Effects of Receding Waters on the East Side of the Sierras. If you travel through sections of the desert valley at the base of the Eastern side of the High Sierras, you can see that the sharp peaks were not radically affected by flood waters. You can see sharp furrows in the sides of the mountains and fans of sand and rock that emergy near the base of the mountains. Once the climate stabilized, the area became much dryer, reducing large erosion effects. As a result, we can still see relatively well-preserved land features from the aftermath of the Flood just a few hundred miles from the West coast (now the home region for numerous deserts). At the base of many of the mountains you can also see fans of loose sand and soil that are now covered with desert foliage. Huge bolders are rounded and strewn over the surface, like those in the picture below. It takes a lot of debris-filled water to move rocks this large, but the forces like these can round rock quickly. As water levels dropped rapidly, rounded bolders were left strewn over the surface.
Walk the Terrain to Learn and Teach. We provide educational helps in this ministry so we are always thinking in terms of teachers and children learning by what they can see and touch. With a biblical view of the earth and the Genesis flood, much of the general terrain that is so accessible in the United States can be a teaching point on the effects of the Genesis flood. These things are badly needed in a country where the only information people see in institutions and parks is predicated on an evolutionary view of the earth. Why not provide a biblical view to children of terrain features so they have some idea that there is a plausible and biblical view for what they see? If you have opportunity to travel on the desert side of the Sierras in California, observe these same features and use them for your own learning as well as your children. You can also couple the opportunity with a reading of Psalm 104:5-13, which references the flood event and mountains.Sources of Information. There are good sources of information on the Genesis Flood and its aftermath. We mentioned www.creation.com, but other ministries like Answers in Genesis and the Institute for Creation Research also have good materials. Once a person learns of the effects of the biblical view of creation events and applies it to geography, it provides a sensible explanation of many major mountain features that are popular to visit and are often part of national parks and forests. Some Christian textbooks can be a general help if they adhere to a biblical view of creation, but they often do not provide detailed geographical examples.
