Cse Seminar 6(2003) the Hovind Theory — Kent Hovind

The Hovind Theory and Evangelism Against Evolution

Well, thank you for joining us. It's an honor to be here at Tennessee Temple University. All three of my kids went to school here. I almost went to school here. I was registered and enrolled and went to Midwestern instead.

Midwestern Baptist College, but it's good to be here in Chattanooga, Tennessee. I'm going to share with you this morning what we call the Hovind Theory. What caused the Flood in the days of Noah? I think Christians better have a good answer to the skeptics and scoffers.

If you do any kind of evangelism at all, if you try to win anybody to the Lord, you're going to run into people who have a big obstacle to overcome called Evolution Theory. They've all been taught for years and years and years that the earth is billions of years old.

It took billions of years to form the different layers of geologic strata. And you're going to have to overcome all that if you're going to win them to the Lord. First thing a missionary has to do is learn the language so he can talk to the people he's trying to reach.

And I think we as Christians better learn some of the language and be able to reach the people we're trying to reach in this community. And around the world for that matter. Now, the Bible teaches the earth is about 6 ,000 years old, not billions of years old.

If that's true, then we better explain some things. How do we get these giant canyons on earth, like Grand Canyon, even canyons on Mars, bigger than Grand Canyon? How do we explain that? How do we explain the frozen mammoths?

The big, huge, hairy, hippy elephants that are frozen, standing up, some of them? Where did all the water for the Flood come from? Where did the water go after the Flood was over? These are fair questions that the atheists are asking.

And we better have an answer for them. Where does the Ice Age fit into the Bible? Why do kangaroos end up only in Australia? Where was the Garden of Eden? What did God do before the creation? I mean, there are thousands of questions that we as Christians are going to come up against as we deal with the loss, trying to bring them to Christ.

It is my prayer that this session, our video number 6 of our series, the Hovind Theory, will give you an outline or a theory of world history that will give you the skeleton to hang the meat on. This is just a theory.

I'm not particularly attached to any particular theories. If somebody finds something wrong, I'll change it. But a lot of people have influenced this. So far, after 16 years of preaching and teaching on this topic, I have not found any serious flaws with the theory.

So if you come up with some, please let me know. We're going to cover three main things today. The creation, which we covered earlier on Seminar Part 2. Just touch on that. The curse, God put a curse on the ground.

And then the catastrophe, the Flood. What caused the Flood in the days of Noah? We start off with the creation. The Bible says, in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. Before the Flood came, the Bible says, the people lived to be over 900 years old.

You realize you could learn a lot in 900 years? Many people have never even thought of this, but Adam spoke every language in the world. Because there was only one. And he was married to the prettiest girl in the world too, by the way.

Things were very different before the Flood came. We cover all that on video tape, number 2 of our series. So get that Seminar 2 if you don't have that one. The Bible says in 2 Peter chapter 3, knowing this first, there shall come in the last days scoffers.

Did you know there are people that scoff at the Bible? And the reason they scoff, it says, is because of their lust. They don't want God telling them what to do. That's the bottom line every single time.

I've never seen an exception to that. After doing over 90 debates at universities, and about 7 ,000 radio and TV call and talk shows, I'm convinced the only reason people scoff at the Scriptures is because of their lust.

There's no scientific reason to reject the Bible, and there's no scientific reason to accept evolution. But they just don't like God telling them what to do. Bottom line. The scoffers are going to say, where is the promise of His coming?

For since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation. This is called the Uniformitarian Doctrine. The way things are happening now is the way they've always been happening.

Long, slow, gradual processes. We cover more on that on videotape number 4. The Bible says the scoffers are willingly ignorant. Willingly ignorant. In the Greek that means dumb on purpose. The scoffers are willingly ignorant of how God made the heavens.

And notice heaven is plural. And how the earth was standing in the water and out of the water. We cover more on that on videotape number 2 of our series. What the Garden of Eden was like. But the scoffers are ignorant of the creation, and they're ignorant of the Flood.

See the world was overflowed with water and perished. The two things the scoffers are ignorant of are the creation, about 6 ,000 years ago, and the Flood, about 4 ,400 years ago. They don't want to admit God created the world, because that would mean He owns it and He makes the rules.

And they don't want to admit there was a Flood, because that means He has the authority to judge His creation. And I think we as Christians better have a good understanding of what that creation was like, and what that Flood did to the world, so we can understand how things are today, and be better prepared to evangelize this world we're called on to reach.

Creation, Judgment, and the Curse on the Ground

Now the scoffers are also ignorant of the coming judgment. There's a judgment coming soon folks, to a city near you. Well the scoffers don't like the creation idea, they don't like the Flood idea, and they sure don't like the coming judgment idea.

But if we can get a good understanding on these three, I think we'll be more effective in our evangelism of this world. The Bible teaches the world was created about 6 ,000 years ago, and God made a perfect creation.

Dinosaurs lived with Adam and Eve. It was a wonderful place. We cover that on Seminar 2. And then God put a curse on the ground because of their sin. The Lord said, Adam where are you? He was hiding of course, because of his sin.

He said, have you eaten of the tree that I commanded you should not eat of it? Adam's first response, God said, Adam, have you eaten of the tree? Adam says, the woman that you gave me. He tries to pass the buck, you know.

Well God, this is really your fault that I did this, you know. Because if you hadn't given her to me, I wouldn't have this problem. And if you hadn't made her in the first place, we wouldn't have this problem.

Everybody does that, they try to pass the buck, you know. Lord, the woman that you made, in other words God, it's her fault and your fault. But finally he confessed and said, yes, I ate of the tree. And then he said to the woman, what have you done?

And she said, well the serpent, implying that you made, tricked me and I ate. She finally reluctantly confessed. And then God said to the serpent, you are going to be cursed and crawl on your belly all your life.

He said to the woman, one of your curses is that the man is going to rule over you. It's one of the curses, girls. The husband gets to be the boss, OK. And it is a curse in many cases. And to the man he said, I'm going to curse the ground for your sake.

Curse it as the ground for thy sake. This is a fascinating verse. God said, Adam, I'm going to curse the ground for your own good. It's good that the ground is cursed because now you have to work for a living.

This is going to keep you busy. You're going to work all day, you're going to go home tired. What if God provided everything for everybody all the time? And you never had to work a moment in your life.

All we do is sit around and think up ways to get in trouble. That's one of the problems with welfare. The Bible says God's welfare program is real simple. If you don't work, you don't eat. That was my welfare program with my kids growing up.

You don't work, you don't eat. Plain and simple. It doesn't take long. They get their chores done. In the morning you give them a list of things to do. You know, make your bed, do your homework, blah, blah, blah.

You sit down for supper. You all pray together. Lord bless the bunch as they crunch the lunch, amen. And you look, oh, stop right before anybody eats. Let's see, notice son, your bedroom is not clean.

And daughter, your homework is not done. So you guys go finish that and come on back and eat when you're done. You only have to do that once to get their attention. You don't work, you don't eat. That's God's welfare program.

But in America we have a serious problem because we pay people to not work. And God said, cursed is the ground for thy sake. Work is one of the best things for you. It's wonderful therapy. The Lord said, in the sweat of thy face thou shalt eat bread.

And then you're going to return to the dust when it's over. You're going to die. Then along came the flood in the days of Noah. Genesis chapter 6. This is mostly what we're going to focus on today. God saw the wickedness of man was great in the earth.

And the imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth. And it grieved him at his heart. And the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth, both man and beast and creeping things.

For it repenteth me that I have made them. And the earth was filled with violence. Everybody was wicked. And God said, that's it. Noah, go build a boat. And God said, make thee an ark. And Noah said to his boys, hey boys, go for wood.

We've got to build a boat. And so they went and got all this wood, and they built a big boat. And we cover more on that. People said, oh wait a minute, why would God make a flood for the whole world? Why not just kill all the bad people?

Isn't that kind of cruel to destroy the whole world? I mean, after all, the penguins didn't sin. Well, no, God destroyed the whole world. I think there are some things to consider about this flood. Number one, the flood left evidence where a miracle would not.

If God had just said, OK, I want everybody to die except Noah and his family. What evidence would be left behind from that? The effects are here today for us to see and remember the judgment of God on sin.

Plus, when God told Noah to build the boat, it gave everybody warning time. Here's Noah out there, probably for who knows how long. Some people say seven years, some people say 120 years. The Bible doesn't say.

But Noah was building this ark for a long time. People were watching him put this big boat together and said, Noah, are you crazy? What are you doing? He said, man, it's going to rain. Now keep in mind, it probably, I don't think you can prove this dogmatically, but it probably never rained before the flood came.

So Noah was preaching about something that had never happened. He said, hey guys, guess what? Rain is going to fall out of the sky. Everybody's looking around saying, yeah, right, that's never happened.

They thought he was nuts. Hey, we're doing the same thing today as Christians. We're going around saying, hey, one of these days an angel is going to come down with the Lord, and they're going to come to the clouds and blow a trumpet.

And the Southern Baptists rise first, you know, the dead in Christ go first. And then the rest of us are going to take off for heaven. And everybody's looking at us saying, yeah, right. Nobody's ever heard a trumpet blow from a cloud and saw people take off for the clouds.

I mean, that's just never happened. We're preaching that something's going to happen that has never happened in the history of humanity. That's what Noah was doing. He was preaching something's going to happen, and what he's preaching about had never happened.

So while he's preaching, this gave people a chance to repent. People say, wait a minute, how could the world flood? Could it rain enough to cover Mount Everest? I was in a debate one time, and this skeptic stood up, and he said, Hovind, do you realize when it rains, it releases heat into the atmosphere?

I said, yes, sir. I taught physics. It's called the latent heat of condensation. What's your question? He said, well, if it rained enough to cover Mount Everest, the heat would cook the entire world. I said, you are exactly right.

He said, but don't you think it rained enough to cover Mount Everest? I said, no, I've never said that. He said, well, do you think Mount Everest was covered? I said, well, I don't think Mount Everest was there.

I don't think the mountains even formed until late in the flood. The Bible covers that in Psalm 104. We'll get into that later when we talk about the mountain ranges forming on this planet. But no, I don't think it rained enough to cover Mount Everest.

I don't know any Christians that teach that. I think what happened was, the whole world was covered with water. But the water didn't come from rain. Very little water for the flood came from rain. So they built up this straw man that if it rained enough to cover Mount Everest, it would cook the world.

And that's correct, but it's an artificial argument. That's not where the water came from. There are several theories about what caused the flood in the days of Noah. I'm going to share with you my theory in a few minutes.

The Hovind theory of what may have caused it. We call it that because I don't want anybody else to have to take the blame for it if it's wrong. I will take the blame if it's wrong. And this will not be super evangelistic.

It's just a matter of giving you some scientific evidence to put things together in your mind and say, wow, maybe that's what happened. And give you an answer to some of the skeptics and scoffers and atheists.

The Hydroplate Theory and Subterranean Waters

But we need to understand a couple of things. The original creation was very different. The Bible says there was not only the earth, but there was water in the crust of the earth. Under the crust of the earth, actually.

Psalm 24 says, The earth is the Lord's, He founded it upon the seas. That's an interesting verse. The earth was built on top of the water. Psalm 133, He gathereth the waters of the sea together as a heap, He layeth up the depth in storehouses.

What today is in the oceans on the surface used to be in the crust of the earth, stored up in big subterranean chambers. Psalm 136, He stretched out the earth above the waters. You better read that verse very carefully.

That's given us a powerful clue of what the original creation was like. And then the fountains of the deep broke open. The water that used to be in the crust went shooting to the surface when the fountains of the deep broke open.

The Bible says in Job 38, Who shut up the sea with doors when it break forth, when it issued out of the womb? Boy, I tell you what, if you've never seen a baby born, when the water comes breaking out of the womb, it is an amazing process.

One of my friends was in college. His wife was standing there cooking breakfast in the kitchen, and her water broke. Just like she wet her pants all over the floor. Her husband came running in. What happened?

What happened? He slipped and broke his arm. She had to drive him to the hospital to get his arm set. What a mess when babies are born. I delivered one of my kids at home. When the water issues out of the womb, it is a royal mess.

He's telling us here in the book of Job, God is talking here in chapter 38. When that water issued out of the earth, it just burst out of the earth. It goes on, it says, And break up for it my decreed place, and set bars and doors, and said, Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further, and here shall thy proud waves be stayed.

I believe the earth broke up at the time of the flood. And we still have the scars all over the planet where this happened. They're called fault lines. I lived right by the San Andreas Fault. I've studied the Hayward Fault, the New Madrid Fault, the Golden Fault.

None of them are my fault, but I've studied them. There's no question the earth is busted up into plates. And there's no question these plates are moving. And when they move, it causes tsunamis, and earthquakes, and volcanoes.

There's no question that stuff happens. The question is, when did this happen to the earth? I think it happened about 4 ,400 years ago, at the very beginning of the flood. And evolutionists will say, don't you see, that's proof of Pangaea.

These continents fit together. Can't you see how South America and Africa seem to be a fit? Well, you know, hold on a minute. How many of you have ever heard of Pangaea? They teach this in the textbooks like it's some kind of fact.

You know, all the continents used to fit together. I say, guys, now wait a minute. There's a couple of things you ought to consider about this Pangaea theory, before you get too excited. First of all, they'll say, South America and Africa seem to fit.

Yeah, my house and the neighbor's house would fit too, if you slid them together. What does that prove? Nothing. It doesn't prove the street oozed up in between them, and the houses slid apart. It's a pure coincidence.

The shape of these continents is an absolute pure coincidence based upon the water level. The evidence they use for continental drift is interesting. They'll say, the shapes of the continents seem to fit.

Similar fossils are found in opposite sides of the ocean. Well, that may be true. But it's also true those same fossils are found literally all over the world. Those fossils found all over the world is just as much evidence of a flood.

I mean a worldwide flood. How far could the dead animals float around? Quite a ways, right? And then they'll say there are magnetic reversals in the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Well, now hold on a minute. They don't tell you they shrank Africa nearly 35 or 40 percent to make them fit, do they?

They don't tell you that Mexico and Central America are gone. Hey, Señor, ¿qué pasa? ¿Dónde está Mexico? Panamá, Costa Rica, Guatemala. They don't tell you that Europe and South America were rotated counter-clockwise, and Africa was rotated clockwise to make them fit.

And they also don't tell you what I think ought to be obvious to a kindergartner. Did you know, if you took the water out of the oceans, you would notice there is dirt underneath. I mean, the oceans actually have a bottom to them.

How many knew that already? I mean, they do have a bottom. So people say, do you think the continents were ever connected? I say, well, duh, they're still connected right now. What do you mean, were they connected?

Hello, they're still connected. They've always been connected. The earth has a crust. The low places are full of water, I understand. But textbooks say, well, yes, there are magnetic reversals at the bottom of this mid-Atlantic ridge.

Well, that's simply baloney. There are no reversed polarity areas, unless it's where rocks flipped over when the fountains of the deep broke open. That may have happened in some areas. But this is a lie, talking about magnetic reversals.

Even one author wrote in a book, Deep Crustal Drilling in the North Atlantic Ocean, Science Magazine, Volume 204. He said, It's clear the simple model of uniformly magnetized crustal blocks of alternating polarity does not represent reality.

What they show you in your textbooks is not reality. Now, Walt Brown has a great book called, In the Beginning. I disagree with Walt Brown on a couple of key things. He's a friend of mine and a brilliant man.

He has a Ph .D. in physics, taught at the Air Force Academy for years. Has a website, creationscience .com, but I highly recommend his book in spite of our minor disagreements. He's got some great stuff on here on magnetic reversals.

No, there are no magnetic reversals, only stronger and weaker magnetism. It's actually a jumbled up mess down there at the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. See, the earth has lost 10 of its magnetic strength in the last 150 years.

It's lost 40 of its strength in the last 1 ,000 years. It's pretty overwhelming evidence that the earth's magnetic field is getting weaker. What does that mean? Well, that means it used to be stronger.

And if the earth's magnetic field is getting weaker, this creates a problem. Because if you go back in time, about 25 ,000 years, the magnetic strength would have been too great for life to exist here, because of the heat generated.

And so the evolutionists have to find an answer for the problem. Hey, we're watching the magnetic field decline, so it must be going through reversals. It has never been observed to reverse. It's only been observed to decline.

I think Walt Brown has the best theory on continental drift. Let me play this for you real quickly. This is what's called the Hydroplate Theory by Dr. Brown. To me, it answers a lot of questions.

We can see on our planet 17 very strange features that can now be systematically explained as a result of a cataclysmic global flood, whose waters erupted from subterranean chambers with an energy release exceeding the explosion of 10 billion hydrogen bombs.

This explanation shows us just how rapidly major mountains formed. It explains the coal and oil deposits, rapid continental drift, why ocean floors have huge trenches and hundreds of canyons and volcanoes.

It explains the formation of the layered strata and most of the fossil record, the so-called ice ages, and major land canyons, especially the Grand Canyon. The pre-flood earth probably had one very large supercontinent containing lush vegetation, seas, rivers, and minor mountains.

According to the Hydroplate Theory, the pre-flood earth had a lot of subterranean water. About half of what is now in our oceans. This water was in interconnected chambers forming a thin spherical shell about half a mile thick, perhaps 10 miles below the earth's surface.

Increasing pressure in the subterranean water chamber stretched the overlying crust just as a balloon stretches when the pressure inside increases. Failure in the crust began with a microscopic crack which grew in both directions at about three miles per second.

The crack, following the path of least resistance, encircled the globe in about two hours. As the crack raced around the earth, the overlying crust opened up like a rip in a tightly stretched cloth. The subterranean water was under extreme pressure because of the weight of the 10 miles of rock pressing down on it.

So the water exploded violently out of the rupture. Calculations show that all along this globe encircling crack, fountains of water jetted supersonically over 20 miles into the atmosphere. The spray from this enormous fountain produced torrential rains such as the earth has never experienced before or after.

The Bible states that all the fountains of the great deep burst open on one day. And it describes these events about four and a half thousand years ago, which we can now tie together scientifically in cause and effect order as the hydroplate theory.

The fountains of the great deep and the expanding steam produced violent winds. Some of the water jetting high above the cold stratosphere froze into supercooled ice crystals and produced some massive ice dumps, burying, suffocating, and instantly freezing many animals.

The high pressure fountains eroded the rock on both sides of the crack and even threw up the limey contents of many pre-flood seas. Huge volumes of sediments settled out of this muddy water all over the earth.

These sediments trapped and buried plants and animals, forming the fossil record. The flooding uprooted vegetation, moving it to regions where it accumulated and quickly became coal and oil by processes we can duplicate in the laboratory today.

Experiments show that as erosion widened the rupture, its width became so great that the compressed rock beneath the subterranean chamber sprung upward, giving birth to the mid-oceanic ridge that wraps around the earth like the seam of a baseball.

The continental plates, the hydroplates, still with lubricating water beneath them, slid downhill away from the rising mid-Atlantic ridge. After the massive, slowly accelerating continental plates reached speeds of about 45 miles an hour, they ran into resistances, compressed, crushed, thickened, and buckled.

The portions of the hydroplates that buckled up formed fountains. Those that buckled down formed ocean trenches. This is why these features are generally parallel to the oceanic ridges from which they slid.

The hydroplates, in sliding away from the oceanic ridges, opened up very deep ocean basins into which the floodwaters retreated. Every continental basin was naturally left brimful of water, producing many post-flood lakes.

Each lake that grew from rainfall or drainage from higher elevations spilled over its rim at the lowest point of the rim. That eroded a little notch in the rim, allowing even more water to flow through the notch faster, cutting the soft, flood-deposited sediments even deeper.

This process accelerated until all the lake's water dumped through a very deep slit, forming a canyon. The largest of these was the Grand Canyon. North and east of the Grand Canyon was a huge lake that I have identified and named Grand Lake.

Its dumping released more water than is in all five of the Great Lakes combined. Grand Lake spilled over its rim, eroded its dam, 20 miles south of Page, Arizona, catastrophically forming the Grand Canyon within a few weeks.

There. That is Walt Brown's hydroplate theory, which to me makes the most sense of anything I've seen. It explains several things. If the crack would widen around the Mid-Atlantic Ridge as the water is shooting out, it's going to spread out, allowing the basalt underneath to bulge up, which is precisely what happens.

As the basalt bulges up, it's going to get cracks in it, and it's also going to slide the super-imposing plates away from them. They're going to slide and run into something else. It would explain the compressed mountains we see in, for instance, British Columbia, where the mountains are smashed from the end.

I mean the wrinkles go up and down. It's like somebody pushed carpet up against the wall, causing it to wrinkle. I think Christians need to have an answer for those kinds of things, and this is one of the possible answers.

When the basalt cracked, the water would rush into the crack, cooling it down. And cool rock holds a magnetic field. Hot rock will lose a magnetic field. So when they found what they said were magnetic reversals at the bottom of the ocean floor, they're actually finding the old cracks where the basalt broke.

Because there were going to be warmer and cooler areas from simply the water rushing in. Those cracks are probably now all full of sediments. So don't let them tell you there are magnetic reversals. There may be a few from the rocks flipping over at the Flood.

But I think a much better theory is the hydroplate theory. So as the continents were sliding away, some places are going to be sucked under, plate subduction. Now Baumgardner has a great theory on plate subduction.

I think his ties in here also that the plates would tend to be sucked down. You ever stir pudding up and it gets a film on top? If you push in on the film on the pudding, it will sink to the bottom and drag the rest of it with it.

Magma does the same thing from a volcano. When it cools down, the lava gets a hard crust. And then if it sinks in one place, it will drag a whole sheet of magma, of lava with it. This probably happened also during the Flood.

See, the continents are eroding. When it rains, you have landslides, mudslides, erosion, mass wasting, ground crete. All of those things are happening continually. Like last night in the thunderstorm here.

I'm sure a lot of erosion took place around Chattanooga. Well, this mud is going to wash into the ocean. So two things are happening. The mountains are getting shorter. The oceans are filling in. But at the current rate of erosion, the continents are going to erode flat in 14 million years.

So the evolutionists have a serious problem. They have to explain two things. Why aren't the oceans full of mud? Because there is only a few thousand years worth of mud in the oceans. And why haven't the mountains eroded away yet?

That's why this Pangaea Theory is so important to them. Because they can say, oh, it's being recycled. They'll say, the ocean floor doesn't have much mud because it gets pulled under and remelted. And it comes up again in the middle.

So it's being recycled. Well, that may be. But there's another reason. It may be there's not much mud down there because it's not millions of years old. Plates are moving. There's not much question about that.

But that doesn't prove they've always been moving. And it doesn't prove the rate has always been the same as we see today. I think students should be told there are other options than what they're being taught in school.

Now I live right by Interstate 10 in Pensacola, Florida. Interstate 10 runs all the way from Los Angeles to Jacksonville, Florida. If I see somebody headed east on Interstate 10 at 70 miles an hour, does that prove they started in Los Angeles four days ago?

No, they might have just got on at the last exit, right? And just because we see these continents moving a little bit today, does not prove anything long-term historically. Don't fall for that propaganda.

The Continental Drift Theory is designed to avoid two problems for the evolutionists. One, the magnetic field is getting weaker. Number two, there's very little sediment in the ocean. And another explanation for that might be that the Bible is right, and the earth is not billions of years old.

The Ice Age, Frozen Mammoths, and the Hovind Theory

People say, where does the Ice Age fit into the Bible? There certainly was an Ice Age. There's not much question. Ice came all the way down to Kansas City, Missouri. How many of you are from Ohio, or Indiana, or Michigan, or Minnesota, or one of these states that are covered by ice?

They used to be covered by ice. Actually, this time of year they are still covered by ice. There's all kinds of evidence around those states that you can prove there really was an Ice Age. When ice pushes out, it piles up a pile of rocks in front of it.

When the rocks are left there, when the ice melts back, it's called a terminal moraine. If it pushes the rocks to the side, it's called a lateral moraine. When the ice melts back, it leaves behind lakes called kettle lakes.

Minnesota, the land of 10 ,000 lakes, is full of kettle lakes. As the ice melts back, the ground actually lifts up. Because the weight is gone, the ground may lift up quite a ways. That's called isostatic rebound.

There is no question those things actually happen. The question for the Christian is, where does this fit into the Bible? And what froze the mammoths? Some of the big, hairy, hippy elephants that are found frozen, standing up.

Food still in their teeth. What happened to the mammoths? One year it was reported that 20 ,000 mammoth tusks were extracted from the ground. Just one year, 20 ,000 tusks. Estimates are that 5 million mammoths perished in one catastrophe.

These red dots indicate where frozen mammoths have been found. The yellow dots indicate where frozen rhinoceros have been found. What happened to the mammoths? Well, some of the mammoths are frozen in the upright position.

Their undigested food in their stomach and mouth is an interesting situation. They died of suffocation. There is no water found in the lungs. The small ice crystals in the blood indicate they probably froze in less than five hours.

That requires something less than 300 below zero. Now it never gets 300 below zero on earth. The coldest temperature ever recorded from National Geographic is minus 127 degrees. That's pretty chilly. But that's not cold enough to freeze the mammoths.

What happened to freeze the mammoths? In 1999 I was preaching in Alaska. I took a little tour on a boat to see the Portage Glacier. I'm standing next to this guy on the boat. I got talking to him, trying to witness to him.

I said, what do you do for a living? He said, well, I drill for oil in Barrow, Alaska, near Barrow, Alaska. I said, well, when you drill down, do you find anything interesting down there? He said, you wouldn't believe the stuff we drill into down there.

He said, just a few months ago we were drilling down. We drilled through 1 ,000 feet of permanently frozen ground called permafrost. And we started bringing up pieces of wood. And we always take whatever comes out of the well and lay it out on the ground.

So we can get a core sample of what we are drilling through to know the formation. He said, we drilled straight through a tree that was standing up. The tree was 300 feet tall, standing up under 1 ,000 feet of permanently frozen ground.

Well, I preached in Barrow, Alaska a couple of years ago. There is only one tree in Barrow, Alaska. And it is about this tall in a Chinese restaurant. And they struggle to keep it alive. Because they don't get much sun up there for months at a time.

There are no trees outside in Barrow, Alaska. There are certainly no trees 300 feet tall. There are very few trees in the world that are 300 feet tall. How do you get a tree 300 feet tall, standing up under 1 ,000 feet of permanently frozen ground?