Focus On Creation by Denis Dreves

The eruption of Mt St Helens in 1980, and then the second eruption in 1982, when water, mud and ash flowing at 40 MPH (64 km/h) carved out “The Little Grand Canyon”, (about 1/40th the size of the Grand Canyon), 140 feet (43 meters) deep in a single day, is now well known to Biblical Creationists. Many highly qualified creationist geologists have done research there and published their findings.

But how has this affected the mainstream scientists who traditionally believe in long age uniformitarian geology?

I was a little surprised recently when I picked up a copy of the Mar/Apr Canadian Geographic magazine while waiting in a doctor’s office, and read the following article. The writer of the article and the scientists involved are not “young earth creationists”, and I will need to give only highlights of the article for brevity.

The title was “Volcano Alley”, by Andrew Findlay. The subject area is our local Garibaldi area and Mt Meager. The writer is travelling with a highly qualified volcanologist, Professor Kelly Russell, from the UBC dept. of earth, ocean, and atmospheric sciences, who is the leader of a team of scientists researching the volcanism of the area, and they have published a peer-reviewed paper in 2014 in the Bulletin of Volcanology.

The following is a verbal discussion between Findlay and Russell. The two men are on location and looking at Keystone Falls where the Lillooet River flows through a narrow 100 meter deep canyon. “What do you think caused this canyon to form?” asks Russell, and goes on to say, “conventional wisdom suggests that it’s simply the result of the persistent erosive powers of the glacier fed Lillooet River.” Not so simple, he says.

Professor Russell goes on to explain that the last eruption of Mt Meager was 2,400 years ago, sending a plume of ash 17 km skyward, and the ash reaching 400 km northwest as far as Jasper, Alberta. He compares the eruption to that of Mt St Helens, then goes on to describe how the canyon formed at Keystone Falls.

“Viscous lava and ash oozing down the mountainside… forming a natural dam on the Lillooet River. Over a period of 40-70 days a lake formed… but the reservoir didn’t last. Water infiltrated the deposits at the top of the dam causing it to suddenly fail and release a flood that would have been biblical in its intensity. Over a period of between 10-20 hours the torrent eroded a 2.5 km long canyon…”

Then Professor Russell makes this statement.
“GRADUALISM IS OUT. Catastrophism is in!”

The greatest catastrophe in history was the Great Flood of Noah’s time. In that year-long global event “all the fountains of the great deep were broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened” (Genesis 7: 11), and in the years that followed as massive amounts of water trapped inland broke through still soft natural dams (similar to Mt St Helens and the event described here by Dr Russell), quickly carving out canyons as they made their way to the sea. This can adequately account for most what we see in our world today.

The Bible is accurate and can be trusted!