As we know, the Earth is presently on a 23.5 degree axis. My "original" thought is that the Earth was once on a 0 degree axis with the whole planet in a relatively temperate zone and then a catastrophe occurred which caused the Earth to be on its present axis.

This catastrophe, I believe (original thoughts, right) was caused by a large meteor impacting the earth in the Yucatan peninsula area where Belize is presently. (might also help towards an explanation for the sudden disappearance of the Mayans). This dramatic shift in the Earth's axis would explain why we find frozen mammoths in Siberia with unchewed food in their mouths and evidence of temperate zone flora beneath the ice caps.

This could also explain a dynamic shift in tectonic plates that could have caused a flood and possible worldwide earthquakes, volcanic eruptions with their secondary and tertiary effects causing the extinction of large animals like dinosaurs and most of the antediluvian population.

I also think the firmament was possibly a distinct solidlike covering in the inner atmosphere that held back a significant amount of water. Hence the Biblical torrents of rain coming from above and below.

Before you rip my theory to shreds, please remember this is a forum for "original" ideas. I can prove none of what I said but after years of thinking about this stuff, this is the best I can come up with.

Alex

Dear Friends,

The earth has pretty much been at its present tilt. There is evidence though that, at some point in the past, the earth was temporaly tilted from it 23.5 degree tilt. The earth has been recovering from that catastrophe. And it was probably caused by a large group of asteroids hitting the earth simultaneously in mass. I would suggest it was the cause for the flood and all which were the result of the flood and since.

Sincerely,
The Seeker

I like your thoughts, Alex. This morning, I've been considering the effect that the New Jerusalem will have on the "tilt". Wondering if it's just the missing piece that we need to align us as God originally purposed. (Double and triple entendres intended.) Also, how is it that the tree of life is now in heaven and not on earth? Is it that perhaps when God took it back--so to speak--that it misaligned the earth? And, did He do it knowingly?

Good thoughts!

This is somewhat unrelated and not quite original, but I once heard an Adventist astronomer theorize that the asteroid belt is the remnants of a planet that was destroyed around the time of the flood.

Anyway...

I think the earth was originally largely the same climate all over, but it was tilted during the flood.

I'm not sure about the water canopy theory... how would they have seen the sun, moon, and stars clearly if there were a massive ocean miles above them before the flood?

Maybe the ocean was a little further than the sun and moon!

:)

Then how did it fall during the flood?

Or is it still there? O_O

ALEX

WELL those are some interesting questions and
thoughts but I AM sure that it all started
when sin come into being not just ADAM and EVE
were affected but all animals and plants were
affected so I am sure the earth was affected as well

dgrimm60

SIVARTM

I AM sure that the flood was a major part of the
earth getting out of balance....

dgrimm60

I think the firmament was like nothing we presently know now. Some have surmised that it was crystallized metal only a few inches thick or a translucent canopy made of materials that allowed visibility of the heavenly bodies?

There's quite a bit of firmament talk in Genesis. But the narrative specifics are left for us to speculate about, which we are doing here. Exactly how all of this happened and are there any remnants left for us to research, I don't know.

But I do know I like rolling all of this around in my head from time to time. And that time is now. I guess all this climate change stuff has acted as a catalyst for me?

Alex (must google "firmament")

I always thought the firmament was just the sky, and on the second day of creation a lot of water evaporated into the atmosphere... or something. *shrugs*

By the way, Aubrey, your idea about the Tree of Life made me think of the mythological World Tree.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_tree

AUBREY

I am sure GOD knew what HE was doing when HE took
the tree away from then earth

dgrimm60

I kind of remember at some point in life a minister saying that the tilt or axis of the earth did change after the Flood. Not sure who this was, but I'm guessing it was one of the pastors that I had back in my teenage years. Or it could have been Doug Batchelor? But not sure.

pk

SIVARTM

THANK you for this link and it was interesting
about what different cultures thought about the tree...

dgrimm60

Yeah dgrimm60, I know you're right. I was really thinking aloud: did He do it knowingly, with the purpose of misaligning our planet, of setting us askew and off-balance? It was a rhetorical question.

Umm... only one flaw: an earth that was not tilted on its axis would *not* have a nice temperate climate all over. It would have no seasons, and would therefore consist of large zones of permanent deep-freeze around the poles, quite narrow temperate zones (much narrower than now) and a broad zone of constant hellish heat around the equator. However it got that way, it's precisly our tilt that makes life on earth as pleasant is it is over as much of the earth's surface as it is...

Yeah...but, it might have been different at the origin of creation. I mean, you know, I wasn't there. It might have been temperate all over the earth. It's fun to guess and to think of the possibilities. Even if they do sound absurd to the current trend of reasoning.

The firmament is the big mystery. What it was and what it did we will never know until heaven's gates.

Bravus, you might be right, what do I know? I'm just speculating wildly but the way EGW describes the antediluvian world in P&P it seemed to be topographically and temperature-wise different than it is now?

And now that I mention this, I'll never forget Dr. Geraty (famed Adventist archeologist) if anyone has found artifacts from the antediluvian period and he answered "No" with a very pregnant pause that made me read between the lines that all of this has either been intentionally shrouded from modern man or it lies within the realm of things we categorize as "mystery?"

Alex

Check this out:


. Check out this link:



http://www.sentex.net/~tcc/fsearch.html

Alex

I didn't mean to put a damper on the discussion, at all. I think it's just that we invoke things as dramatic as an axis tipp a bit too lightly in talking about the Flood. And what's all this stuff with asteroids? Wasn't the Flood meant to be a divine miracle? If it was just a natural disaster that was kind of post hoc ascribed to God's action, that changes the meaning of the whole thing! (I have the same objection to people who explain away the crossing of the Red Sea as a tidal/wind event, the manna as acacia gum and so on... explaining miracles explains them away!)

Not sure that I'm following you, bravus. Are you saying that the 'miracles' described in the Bible must be that and not a natural event interpreted as such because people did not understand nature as we do today?

Yes, that's it. A miracle kind of by definition has to be a supernatural event. If it's merely a natural event misinterpreted, it's not a miracle at all. Then Jesus was not really dead and wasn't really raised, and as Paul said, we are 'of all people most miserable'.

I would understand a miracle to also include divine manipulation of natural laws and events. That we do not know of supernatural laws and supernatural means of harnessing or manipulating them does not diminish my view and understanding of events and actions beyond my comprehension as miraculous. To ancient man, television or airplanes or computers or ... would seem nothing short of supernatural magic, miracles, if you will.

Some time ago I watched a fascinating documentary on the History Channel "explaining" plausible "natural" causes of the plagues in Egypt prior to the exodus of the Israelites. I am not troubled that God could harness the forces of nature to his purposes.

Tom

True, but if He really can create universes with a word, creating a heap of water and then vanishing it again would be easy-peasy. And so on. And if he can't, then how do we distinguish His judgements from simple natural disasters. Presumably you don't believe Katrina was to punish America... why not? You see the problem?

A massive meteor shower during the flood is plausible. It certainly would help explain all the craters on the Moon. The mountain ranges that exist today probably did not exist prior to the Flood. The Flood was likely a tectonic event which started in motion the forces that would create the world's mountain ranges.

I am inclined to accept without being troubled that events described in the Bible and attributed to God's judgment or action were natural events which God merely used for his purposes. I think ancient men blamed or credit him for many things, as we do today, that were not necessarily or directly his doing. The Bible was written by men from their point of view and not by God from his point of view. We have a hint of his perspective at times, as in Job, but mostly it is written by men. From their perspective, as devote believers in God, willingly credited God for things they otherwise could not explain or understand.

But it is not that God is the detached and uninvolved Deity sitting idle on his throne watching passively all that unfolds. I have often said that I believe that God is the undisputed master of taking absolutely anything no matter how bad, useless or disastrous and using it for his purposes - a sows ear into a silk purse of divine cosmic proportions. I think it quite plausible that God could see a massive asteroid on a collision course with earth, more than 120 years travel distance out, that would unleash a life changing chain of events that would completely alter earth's climate, weather, atmosphere, tectonic plates, axis, natural balance and even the course of its natural history. God could make a choice to divert it and save earth a cosmic disaster of complete destruction leaving mankind utterly unaware of his intervention. Or he could seek to warn those who were open to him and listening to trust him with a rescue in which they could make a simple choice to believe and trust Him even in the face of completely unforseen and unknowable future global disaster.

Or it could have happened exactly as the words Moses wrote down of the oral history handed down through the generations of his ancestors, the ancient people of the Middle East. Either way, my faith in God is unmoved and unshaken.

Just wondering aloud*: Would these natural events also include creation, itself? Is God a Divine Opportunist?
___________________________________
* No response needed nor requested.

Bravus, I would go along with TW's explanation about miracles. I have read several books making a case for natural events being the cause in ancient history. I came to the conclusion, they did not rule out God, because they were natural events. I think christianity wants all miracles so that they may have less faith in science. I see God and the laws of science, physics, etc, as co-existing...I certainly don't understand them all!!!

The way I see this is that God works within His own laws - both moral and physical. Can't help it if we aren't aware of all of His laws, at least not yet anyway.

Now if He decides to do one of His platonic wonders, like thinking or speaking stuff into existence, I say "good for God!" It's interesting to note that God "said" everything into existence until He "made" man, then He "planted" the Garden.

I could never figure out why and how God did stuff? I simply categorize it to His inscrutability and leave it at that.

But back to my initial premise - I have a gut feeling that this planet wasn't always looking like it does now and if EGW is correct about the importance of electricity and magnetism (Einstein was curious about these things also) then just maybe my axis hypothesis might have some "juice" to it?

Note: "juice" as in electric current - did you get it?

Alex

If it was 'the same' we would never have seasons, and I think the sabbath would be at the same time for everyone. (in the same time zone)

This is a question that I would like to ask Bravus. You said that no tilt would mean no seasons and very hot and cold regions. I'm wondering if the earth were tilted twice as much to say 50+ degrees would that mean a much larger temperate zone?

Thanks,
Don

Apparently the flood threw everything out of whack. Some believe that it was caused by Mars getting too close to the earth. Before then, a year was 360 days, and there was no tilt.

Good question, Don. I think to some extent it might, but the amount of sunlight coming in is constant, so there are limits - and the seasons would be much more extreme. Think Alaska or Norway in winter and hotter than Central Australia in summer...

The way the earth is now is actually *extremely* well adapted for life. I think God knows that, which is why I think it was this way from the start. A vertical axis requires a heap of ad hoc tweaks to work at all, while 23 degrees works great.

Stan, nope, we'd still be having time zones - that's about the earth's daily rotation on its axis, not yearly rotation around the sun...

Tallmark... where in the Bible do we find any of that stuff? The creation story is specific enough to mention when plants are made but the same book of the Bible doesn't bother to mention a close call with Mars?

There is also the role of the firmament - whatever that was. Some creationists have made a vapor-type of canopy and played with computer models to see what that would do. There is speculation that such a canopy would have evened out temperatures across the globe.

That would be what I meant by 'ad hoc tweaks'.

It's creating a solution to a non-problem: we have no evidence at all, Biblical or otherwise, that the axis was ever perpendicular to the plane of the ecliptic ('upright') and there's no reason to assume it was except perhaps our innate sense of neatness. So we assume it was, for no reason, then have to solve the problem we just created.

I have never come across this idea of the flood causing the Earth's axis to tilt in any of what I have seen. I have heard it mentioned before in Adventist circles but only by lay people. Doing a Google search I did find these links.

The Pre-Flood 360 Day Calendar & the Second Coming


The Hydroplate Theory: An Overview

I don't know how widely held these theories are within creationist circles. As I mentioned, I haven't seen them in print in any of the published material I have read.

:)


Dear Alex,

I very much commend you on your interest in this area of research! Congratulations!






Re the ‘axis of the earth’ and ‘axis shift…’

As for me, I have found it extremely fruitful and satisfying to study into this line of research over the years of my lifetime. Perhaps I may suggest some of my most favorite authors and books for further stimulating thought and enlightenment?:

• 
  1. Earth in Upheaval by Immanuel Velikovsky
  
  2. Pole Shift by John White
  
  3. Worlds in Collision by Immanuel Velikovsky

I think that if you were to read those books and in that order you’d be getting the most satisfaction out of them. And in my book that is no small understatement…!

Please enjoy!

……




Re the word ‘firmament’ and more…

As to Genesis 1, verses 3 and 6 - and these thoughts of mine are not based on any of the above references - I believe we are all too much underestimating the scope of what the creation there recorded was all about. I believe that I can make the most out of the creation story by recognizing that verse 3 pertains to the creation of all electro-magnetic radiation, that is, where ‘light,’ as we generally think of it, is merely that part of the spectrum that happens to be visible to the eyes of men, and that verse 6 pertains to the precipitation of a liquid phase out of an initially all steam and rapidly expanding universe that was, accordingly, also very rapidly cooling down. That is, the ‘firmament’ represent the boundary layer between the gaseous phase and between the liquid phase, more familiar perhaps to most of us in terms of the word ‘surface’ as in ‘the surface of the water…’

Backing up to verse 1, that is Genesis 1:1, and considering more closely the real essence of the Hebrew words corresponding to ‘heaven’ and ‘earth,’ I believe I am getting closest to the truth of the matter by looking at the Hebrew word for ‘heaven,’ not as ‘shamajim’ but as ‘shemim,’ that is, the masculine plural of the singular ‘shem’ meaning ‘name, title, word…,’ that is, an abstract symbol representing something real in the physical world of substance. That is, to me, the first thing God created, ‘heaven,’ was the plan of action before the action itself, not excluding the claiming of title and copyrights to the results of all of that. The ‘earth’ then, being referenced in Genesis 1:1, would be that something which is nothing less than the medium within which the waves of electro-magnetism travel. An old, somewhat obsolete, term for that medium, that substance, that ‘earth’ would be ‘the ether.’ I believe the most advanced science today, within this area of research, have revived these ideas of old, but that they are using another word than ‘ether’ to describe that very solid medium within which electromagnetic particles are traveling.

As you can see, it follows that on the third day of creation a third phase appeared, solids, and as soon as solids could and did exist, then the essence of life could also be brought into existence, that is, such matter, such solids, as DNA, amino acids, proteins, fats, carbohydrates, and all such other fundamental building blocks of life as are necessary for every living cell and for grass, herbs, and trees to come into being (verse 11.)

Now, that having been said, what is more natural than for the further precipitation of matter to produce ever larger bodies of solids, that is, such as are being described by the words ‘the greater light… the lesser light… [and] the stars…’ (verse 16.)

Praise the Lord, him that made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and the fountains of waters, Yahweh Elohim, our Creator, owner, Savior, and Redeemer!

Peace to all our families and homes,

Tree of Life ©



:)

Scientist are saying the recent 8.8 Quake moved the earth 3" off its axis and shortened the day by a few millionths. The land under the city was lifted up by 6 feet. Makes one wonder about some of the past quakes, before measurements, did to the earth. Mother nature seems to able to alter this planet very easily.

So Co from this info it kind of says to me at least that the flood could've put the axis of the earth on a tilt. Since I would guess that when waters came from under the earth they were probably quite a number of earthquakes and maybe as big or bigger that 8.8?

pk

Two thoughts. Even if a huge astroid/meteor hit the earth it wouldn't cause the sudden freezing at the poles that fast that a dinosaur would still have uneaten food in his mouth.

Second, when the earthquake his Chile it was reported that the tilt of the earth was affected. hhhmmmmm

the earthquake "hit" Chile. see above

ever think that maybe it was God's hand and not an asteroid??

I know I have no problem believing it wasn't an asteroid.

pk

Or that God tossed the asteroid at the earth...

I still have no clue why anyone is assuming it was ever *not* tilted. The tilt sets this planet up perfectly for life, as so many other features of the planet, the solar system and the universe do. Don't you think God knows that, and created it so it would work right from the start? Why on earth would he first create a planet with an axis at right angles to the plane of the ecliptic, then add a 'firmament' to make it sort of work... then later on decide 'oh, maybe I should have tilted it after all'? Heaps of unbiblical speculation, when both Scripture and Occam's Razor suggest that the best explanation is that earth *was* always tilted.

Perhaps the redistribution of water on the Earth during the Deluge affected its rotational momentum and length of day, or increased its wobble. Velikovsky, I believe, claimed that the floodwater came from an outside source, Mars.

I know the basic theory has been more or less debunked, but I can still picture the pre-flood Earth surrounded by a layer of water sandwiched between two concentric spherical force fields. The pressure exerted on the water would have been so great that it would have remained a transparent liquid, even in the frigid temperatures of space. There would have to be holes in the set up for ventilation to occur, I suppose, otherwise, the surface of the planet might have been more like the inside of an oven. Once the force fields were turned off or otherwise degraded, water would tend to cascade from the sky in great sheets like waterfalls as it was released.

The force-field idea can also explain the walls of water on either side of them as hundreds of thousands of people on foot crossed a sea while walking on dry land.

All of the "miracles" in the Bible are likely demonstrations of a technology we are unfamiliar with. We could read that as "alien" technology, produced by beings not from this world whom humans have turned into Gods.

Mind boggling!