Fossils and Rocks: Record of Creation and the Flood with Dr. Andrew Snelling

Fossils are any remains, traces or imprints of plants or animals that have been preserved in the Earth’s rock layers from the past. Thus, fossils teach us about animals and plants that lived in the past.

As described in Genesis 1, the animals and plants were created instantly by God, fully-formed and fully-functioning right from the start. Genesis 1 also tells us God created the animals and plants to reproduce “after their kinds.” The fossil animals and plants appear in the rock layers fully-formed and fully-functioning with no supposed evolutionary ancestors. And once they appear in the rock layers, they don’t change in successive layers but stay the same and are the same today, having reproduced “after their kinds.”

The fossil animals and plants are found very well preserved, often with exquisite details. Such preservation requires that the animals and plants must be buried rapidly so that they do not rot or are not eaten by scavengers. Thus, rapid burial in a catastrophe is necessary for fossilization, and, since the fossils are found globally, the evidence is consistent with the biblical Flood. No local flood has ever covered all the high hills and the mountains “under the whole heavens,” so the Genesis Flood had to be global. And we find today billions of dead things (fossils) that were buried (rapidly) in rock layers laid down by water (sedimentary rock layers) all over the Earth. We also find the fossils in massive accumulations called graveyards, some of which are in extensive layers that can be traced right across continents and from continent to continent.

Fossils and the rock layers that contain them are thus records of both creation and the Flood. But does it really matter whether as Christians we believe this testimony of the fossils? Jesus the Creator Himself said: “If you believed Moses, you would believe me; for he wrote of me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words?” (John 5:46-47). Moses wrote about creation and the Flood, so Jesus is saying we need to believe what Moses has told us. If we cannot trust Genesis on creation and the Flood, then how can we trust God’s offer of salvation through Christ’s death on the Cross (John 3:16)?

This event is free with paid Ark Encounter admission or Ark Encounter membership. Seating is first come, first served.