Were the Oceans Once in the Skies?
It is interesting to note that there are several references in the Bible to “the Glory of the North.” What glory is there now in the north? True, if you go far enough northward you are introduced to the Aurora Borealis. But it is scarcely possible that in an archaic day when man would have traveled sufficiently far to behold the Northern Lights and report them in literature supposed to originate in and around the Mediterranean. Furthermore, people in the north and south temperate zones, or near the equator, would not be able to witness the Aurora Borealis the water-canopy would intervene. What then, really was in the north that it called for so much adulation in song and story?
Just this: If you had been a man or woman in those early times in the North Temperate Zone, and turned your eyes northward, you would have been able to look out under the northern termination of the engulfing water-canopy as through a colossal horseshoe. The further northwards you traveled, the greater and higher would this horseshoe become. If you actually got into the Arctic Circle you would discover that it was really no horseshoe at all but a titanic circle. Coming in aslant under the canopy would be the sun’s oblique rays, striking the opposite wall of that canopy and diffusing a spectacle of unsurpassed splendor. Great arches of rainbow colors, ring telescoping into ring, must have met the eyes of men in the north— as though they were looking at the inside of a colossal tunnel that widened toward its entrance in iridescent glory.
Thus was the earth “lighted” before man knew the sun as a “created” orb.
AND YET, of the whole stupendous earth-processes that have gone on over countless generations, authenticating Holy Writ, not one theologian in a thousand knows the first fundamental.
Consider this: God said let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. It is all a senseless hodge-podge of words until we realize that in the Beginning a vast water-ocean swirled high overhead. And proofs are not lacking in philology that the heavenly waters were real.
The Hebrew word for firmament is Shimayem. Translated literally it means: “The shining waters overhead.” The Greek-Aryan translation of the word for heaven, Ouranos, means “watery heavens.” The Hindu offers us Varuna. From it comes the German word for water, Wasser, which translated again into English gives Water. Veruna again means “watery heavens.” No matter what language you explore, or what folklore you probe, you find in them all, in some form or other, the implication that at one time a vast water-ocean hung suspended overhead, that it fell and precipitated a flood that destroyed all living things.
Go into academic hypotheses and try to find how strata was laid down in their peculiar order over the whole earth, and no logical explanation is forthcoming that is not a blind rationalization until you accredit this theory of ring and belt formation. Consider Holy Writ further—
It says: God made the firmament and said, let the waters of the heavens be gathered into one place, and let the dry land appear. Now how could “waters of the heavens” be gathered into one place and cause the literal appearance of dry land—a purely terrestrial phenomenon? No wonder the atheists make such fine sport with Christian students trying to explain mysteries to which they have no key. The waters of the heavens were gathered into one place: to-wit, the high equatorial belt 17,000 miles in the skies, and when they were so suspended, the dry land beneath them could then appear. The moment they came down, however, the dry land would vanish—which was precisely what did happen in the Flood of Noah, and perhaps many floods antedating that of Noah.
The appearance of the “dry land” was obviously the cooling of the earth’s crust while the water was still swirling in the upper atmosphere. Not only was the earth cooling by the application of interstellar refrigeration applied as the telluric rings and belts grew thinner, but the braking influence of the moon was gradually causing its speed to diminish to a point where the lower water-belts were falling and administering terrific water absorption to the molten surface.
Consider this tremendous thirst of the earth. We ordinarily think of the earth as retaining its water in oceans, lakes, and rivers, on its crust. But there is also another known condition too frequently overlooked: the evident disposition of the cooling and contracting earth to absorb or draw the waters into its rock-forming crust as they fell to its surface. It is not difficult to determine how much water, or moisture, a heated stone of any kind will absorb as it cools, so that we can give a reasonable and just approximation of the amount of water existing in the various rock formations of the globe. Even solid lime rock contains from one-half to one per cent of water; coals vary from five to twelve per cent, iron ores from one to six per cent. Some sandstones contain from six to ten per cent, clays much more, while granite, mica, feldspar, and even solid quartz crystals, contain water in different amounts. In our deepest caves and mines, some of them far below the ocean’s level, water is found running down and into the bosom of the earth.
This proves that the solid crust is still imbibing the waters of the oceans with a quenchless thirst, and that coming ages must diminish their volume and depth. If no more than a single barrel of water is absorbed in a day} a sufficient number of days will cause the solid earth to appropriate all the waters now upon its surface.
Dana estimated that the oceans all over the globe would be four hundred feet deeper if those imbibed waters were returned to them. Many of the Atlantic and Gulf States would thereby be entirely submerged. New York City, Philadelphia, and New Orleans, would be more than two hundred feet under water. Three-quarters of the islands of the earth would be submerged, and a vast portion of Europe and Africa would be one great sweep of waters.