The Deluge, by the prophet James J. Strang

[Page 1]

THE DELUGE

Its Natural Causes—Changes Accompanying It—

Certainty As A Fact In Science

By James J. Strang

To one well acquainted with the surface and appearance of the earth, the extent of its continents, and the height of its moun­tains, nothing would be more difficult to conceive possible than an universal deluge. Yet are we required, not merely by the tra­ditions of nearly all nations, but by our faith in the sacred oracles, to believe that such an event has taken place in the time past.

I propose, in a brief essay, to show that such an event, however impossible it may be now, was, at the creation, quite possible; and beyond the mere testimony of historic writing, to show from the geologic struc­ture of the earth, and its planetary arrange­ment, that it has occurred.

The great difficulty in believing in the verity of an universal deluge arises from the impossibility of obtaining water to produce it. Water will naturally and forever seek its own level. The mass of the waters find their common level at the surface of the ocean. If all the lakes, rivers and fountains of wa­ter were drained into the ocean, they would suffice to raise it but a very few feet‑-prob­ably not more than two or three. But the highest mountains are elevated some five miles above the level of the ocean. From what source was the water supplied that deluged these mountains?

This is the great question concerning the deluge. This we propose to answer, not merely to the fanatical, but to the philo­sophical, in a manner perfectly satisfactory to the rational and thinking.

Any one will readily admit that such an event as an universal deluge must have ef­fected great changes; and must also have been produced by means of great changes of some kind or other.‑Though the earth in its present condition could not be del­uged, was it not so created that it could be deluged as easily as any other great event in nature could be produced?

Gen. i. 1, 6, 7, 8, 9, l0.‑"In the begin­ning God created the heaven and the earth. And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. And God called the firmament heaven. And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so. And God called the dry land earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he seas."

By this short account it appears that the earth was not created as it now is, with its surface one vast ocean, broken by two con­tinents, and specked with innumerable is­lands. It was a vast surface of land, with here and there in its deepest valleys a gath­ering together of waters called seas. The great body of water which has filled up these seas till they join together in one vast ocean was then the waters "above the firmament." For God formed the firmament, that is, the natural heavens, dividing the waters above it from the waters below it.

There was, then, at the creation, a vast body of water above the firmament. That water should thus be held above the firma­ment cannot be regarded as incredible, since the planet Jupiter is found by modern as­tronomers to be thus situated at the present time. It has its belts or rings of aqueous matter constantly surrounding it, and the centripetal and centrifugal attractions which keep all the planets in their proper orbits would, as they do in the case of the planet Jupiter, keep this water at the proper eleva­tion above the earth. So it did not require any act of violence to the laws of nature to keep a great body of the water above the firmament, and therefore off from the earth, leaving the principal part of the earth dry land, fit for the habitation of man, for whom it seems most peculiarly designed.

The planet Jupiter has no change of sea­sons; no natural division into zones. The plane of its equator and ecliptic are identi­cal, and its days and nights are continually of the same length. And, though astrono­mers have not observed the fact, it is never­theless a demonstrable truth, that its nights are distinguished from its days by a very moderate degree of darkness, quite insuffi­cient to break off men's ordinary avocation. For the reflections of light upon the inter­nal surface of its rings must extend its twi­light quite round its circumference.‑-So, too, when the earth was in like manner sur­rounded by its waters above the firmament, it could not properly be said that day and night alternated, but evening and morning alternated.‑-There was no night there.

It is an interesting fact in this connec­tion that all mention of natural events and of the habits of the antediluvians confirm us in the opinion that previous to the del­uge there was no change of season, no burning heat, or freezing cold, but a perpetual harvest in spring time.

It is nowhere mentioned that any of the Antediluvians lived in houses. True, one tribe, "dwelt in tents." Gen. iv. 20. Yet this is spoken of as a marked peculiarity which distinguished them from other tribes. I may safely affirm further that the sacred writer did not originally assert that the sons of Jabal dwelt in "tents," but only that they dwelt in changeable habitations. They were herdsmen; or, in the simply language of the sacred historian, "such as have cattle," and wandered about from place to place, dwell­ing where inclination led them, instead of cities or fixed places, where various tribes constantly dwelt.

Previous to the deluge men wore cloth­ing, it is true; but this was merely to cover themselves for shame, (Gen. iii. 7, 21,) and not to protect from inclement weather; and the ideas of heat and cold are nowhere named or alluded to till after the deluge. Seed time and harvest, cold and heat, sum­mer and winter, rain and drought are all ideas originating with the deluge. At the time of the creation we are told that it did not rain, but that God caused a mist to go up from the earth, and water it. Gen. ii. 6.

When the flood abated from the earth, God "spake unto Noah, and to his sons with him saying, And I, behold, I establish my covenant with you, and with your seed af­ter you; and with every living creature that is with you, of the fowl, of the cattle, and of every beast of the earth with you; from all that go out of the ark, to every beast of the earth. And I will establish my covenant with you: neither shall all flesh be cut off any more by the waters of a flood: neither shall there any more be a flood to destroy the earth. And God said, This is the token of the covenant which I make between me and you; and every living creature that is with you, for perpetual generations: I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth. And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow shall be seen in the cloud: And I will re­member my covenant which is between me and you, and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall no more become a flood to destroy all flesh. And the bow shall be in the cloud, and I will look upon it, that I may remember the everlasting cov­enant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is upon the earth." Gen. ix. 8 to 16.

Thus it appears that the rainbow was not known till after the deluge. Yet any one having the slightest acquaintance with the laws of light can readily see that there could be no rain but the rainbow would ap­pear to those who were on the sunny side of the storm. It is vain to pretend that the rain­bow was miraculously introduced. It is pro­duced by well known natural causes; causes existing in the nature of light itself, and therefore coeval with it. The non‑existence of the rainbow previous to the deluge, there­fore pre‑supposes the non‑existence of rain, and of clouds high above the earth.

To account for all these facts, so differ­ent from what we find in the present state of the earth, we have only to give credence to the account of the creation in Genesis that God made a firmament to divide the waters above the firmament from the water below, and that he gave the earth the same manner of motion with the planet Jupiter, which has its firmament dividing its wa­ters in the same manner.

The waters around the earth protected the equatorial regions from the burning heat, and the reflected rays from the sides of the rings made up for the loss of heat by the obliquity of the sun's rays in the polar regions. The water was so near above that mists did not rise into clouds; but if the ten­dency to ascend was strong, the mists would be attracted to the waters above.‑If not strong enough for that, they watered the earth in dews, which, falling on the earth every day, always watered without every drenching it with the poles of the earth always per­pendicular to the ecliptic, there could be no change of seasons; and the warmth and moisture of every part of the earth gave it universal and perpetual fruitfulness. In the cultivation of the soil man had only to con­tend with thorns and thistles, (Gen. iii. 18,) which, like the fruits, were everywhere spontaneous. With such a climate the growth of plants could not but be exuberant in every part of the earth; and, considering these facts, the geological remains of equa­torial plants of enormous size, near the poles, can no longer surprise us.

Corresponding to this theory the sacred historian, speaking of the coming of the flood, says, "the same day were all the foun­tains of the great deep broken up, and the WINDOWS OF HEAVEN WERE OPENED." The opening of the windows of heaven can mean nothing but the pour­ing down of the waters above the firmament.

As to the means by which the waters were precipitated to the earth, it does not become me to speak dogmatically. But it is enough to know that a large comet passing in the immediate vicinity of the earth would be cause sufficient to incline down the wa­ters by deranging the balance of centripetal and centrifugal attraction, and thus deluge the earth and produce an alternation of sea­sons by one single act.

There could be no bow before the del­uge, for there was no rain. There could be none during the deluge, for there was no rain. There could be none during the deluge, for the rain was then universal, and there was no sunny side on which to form a bow.

But as soon as the deluge was finished, God set the bow in the cloud; not by creat­ing a new law of light, but only by that change of circumstances which brought it into action. The law of light by which the refraction of the sun's rays at a certain angle produces the rainbow is doubtless eternal--immutable‑-essential to the existence of light itself, and therefore could not have been produced by the exercise of creative power even, at the time of the deluge. It must have been in existence as a scientific truth as long as light had a being.

The same act which precipitated the waters above the firmament to the earth, also broke up the fountains of the great deep. For the attractive power of a comet or other heavenly body sufficient to change the position of the earth in its orbit would pro­duce a tide even in the [Page 2] inland seas of the Antediluvian earth sufficient to inundate all the low grounds about their shores.

A question will be raised, how does it happen that the water does not now cover the whole earth? For, says the sacred writer, "the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth, and all the high hills that were under the whole heavens were covered. Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail, and the mountains were covered." Gen. vii. 19, 20.

This objection is predicated upon the theory that the water stood at a dead level fifteen cubits above the tops of the moun­tains. Such a theory is not warranted by the language of the sacred historian. The waters prevailed fifteen cubits where the writer speaks of probably where the ark was; but in regard to the high hills and the tops of the mountains, we are only assured that they were covered. After this (Gen. viii.) we learn that the waters abated, but we do not learn that any part of them were returned to the heavens, or in any way re­moved, except by abating; that is, sinking down to their natural level. In thus sinking down the present division of land and wa­ter, with some slight differences, was doubt­less formed, without any diminution of the quantity of water, which, in the act of pre­cipitation, "covered the tops of the highest mountains," so as to destroy everything "that had the breath of life."

After the deluge, the Lord said, "I will not any more curse the ground for man's sake, neither will I again smite every living thing, as I have done." And the earth hav­ing lost its perennial productiveness, in the alternation of seasons, which was estab­lished by the change of the direction of the earth's axis, he promised farther, (Gen. viii. 22,) "While the earth remaineth, seed time and harvest, and cold and heat, and sum­mer and winter, and day and night shall not cease." This is the first mention in all hu­man records, of any such changes.‑-They were new facts, founded on the new state of the earth, and the promise was that the earth should not be any farther cursed, so as to take away the advantages it then possessed. Agreeing with this hypothesis is the fact that throughout all northern Europe and Asia the skeletons of elephants and other animals peculiar to the tropics are found in vast abundance. Indeed, not many years since the carcass of an elephant was dis­covered embedded in a vast mass of ice near North Cape in Norway, in a state of nearly perfect preservation. It was first brought to light by the sliding on of a vast avalanche, undermined by the constant washing of the sea. The flesh was being devoured by the bears as fast as it thawed out, but so perfect was its preservation that almost the entire hide, as well as the skeleton, were preserved for the royal museum. This carcass, previ­ous to the abrasion of the ice, was imbed­ded several hundred feet beneath the sur­face of snow and ice, where it had been left at the abating of the waters of the deluge, frozen by the first frosts, and covered by the first snows ever witnessed on the earth.

There are places where the waters are constantly wearing away the coasts of Greenland, and imbedded in ice, and cov­ered with snows, are cane brakes as regular as any on the Mississippi, and of as luxuri­ant a growth as those of Central America. These must have grown, as the animals lived, at a period when the polar regions had a tropical climate; that is, in the Ante­diluvian world.

In the Delta of the Mississippi, the Niger and several other large rivers, forests are found standing where they grew, buried in the alluvial which has been accumulating for ages, and remaining perfect in their structure to about sea level. Those forests are extensive in Louisiana, and in the lower part of the State the trees are found entire. Further up the tops are rotted away down to sea level, but in either places if you dig down to the roots they are found to stand in the soil where they grew.‑-These forests must have grown when the surface of the ocean was below where their roots now are.

Geologists have attempted to account for the existence of these forests by supposing that the ground has sunk since they grew. But it is a well known fact that the down ­sinking and up‑rising of the earth goes on so very slowly as to be scarcely perceptible in a generation.‑-Consequently if these grounds had merely sunk by the burning out of internal fires, (as the countries bor­dering on the German ocean are supposed to be,) the forests would have utterly wasted long before the waters rose over them so as to preserve them.

Unquestionably these forests are Ante­diluvian. They grew on their present level, and were drowned out and preserved from decay by the waters of the ocean, which was filled up at the subsiding of the deluge so as to cover them; those portions of the for­est not entirely submerged rotting off near the surface of the water, and preserved merely the stumps. The annual deposit of mud since that time have filled up these narrow and shallow portions of the ocean, and made Deltas where were formerly the estuaries of the great rivers.

This hypothesis stands with the account given by the sacred historian, both of the creation, the history of the antediluvians and the deluge. It agrees with a vast mass of facts discovered by the scientific in modern times in the geology of the earth. It makes the flood a possible and probable fact, which would otherwise be incredible and impos­sible. And I submit that the various facts and circumstances referred to in the course of this article, show it not merely possible and probable, but true."