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figure a cubit at about 18 inches, the water level would have dropped 270 inches during this time
or, to round it off, 4 inches a day. Now, and realize this, if the Flood depth was 29,050 feet
(348,600 inches) and the water level dropped 4 inches a day -- it would take 87,150 days to get
back down to normal sea level. That's almost 239 years!! The Bible figures the whole time of the
Flood as around ONE YEAR in duration -- not 239 years! A number of Bible scholars have com-
mented on this impossible scenario.

You don't have to be a rocket scientist to discern that all of this argues AGAINST the idea
that the Flood waters covered the highest mountains to the depth of 15 cubits. Rather, it strongly
suggests that Noah's flood was of REGIONAL proportions.

At this time, at the beginning of a new millennium, we are concerned about the green-house
effect that threatens to melt the polar ice caps if the global warming trend continues. But even if it
does, only the coastal areas of the continents will be flooded when the ice caps have melted. Cer-
tainly the highest mountains on earth will not be under water. To have a universal flood that covers
the highest mountains defies all logic and the very laws that YEHOVAH Himself put into place!

Different Topography Before the Flood?

The four different Hebrew verbs used in Genesis 8, verses 1-8 to describe the receding of
the flood waters clearly indicate, as we have seen, that these waters DRAINED off the land into
the oceans of the world. This being so, the waters of the Flood are still to be found within the
aquifers and troposphere and oceans of planet Earth. Since the total water content of the earth is
only 22 percent of what would be needed for a complete global submergence, it is quite obvious
the Genesis flood could NOT have covered the entire planet by 15 cubits.

The argument I keep hearing against this conclusion is that before the Flood there were no
high mountains or deep oceans. According to this argument the present-day relief of the earth's sur-
face is said to have been generated in a period of just a few months during the Flood. Could this be
true? There are several major problems with such a suggestion:

1/. It contradicts a vast body of geological data.
2/. It contradicts a vast body of geophysical data, at the same time requiring such cataclysmic ef-
fects as to render highly unlikely Noah's survival in an ark.
3/. It overlooks the geophysical difficulties of a planet with a smooth surface.
4/. It contradicts our observations of tectonics. The mechanisms that drive tectonic plate move-
ments have extremely long time constants, so long that the effects of such a catastrophe would eas-
ily be measurable to this day. Since they are not, the conclusion must be that the flood was not
globally earth encompassing.
5/. It contradicts the vast fossil deposits of the earth.

Most Flood theories deal with the water after the Flood by proposing that it became our
present oceans. With the present topography of the earth this would be a sheer impossibility. The
earth's terrain, according to this theory, was much, much flatter during the Flood and, through cata-
clysms, the mountains were pushed up and the ocean basins lowered. It has been proposed that the
cataclysms were caused by the earth's crust sliding around on a cushion of water. But how could

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