QUESTIONS ANSWERED

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 2, 1868

QUESTIONS ANSWERED.

To M. D. Your first query is sufficiently noticed in the work on “Objections to the Visions.”

Your next quotes and remarks as follows:

“Before the flood there were immense forests. The trees were many times larger than any trees which we now see. They were of great durability. They would know nothing of decay for hundreds of years. At the time of the flood, these forests were torn up or broken down and buried in the earth. In some places large quantities of these immense trees were thrown together and covered with stones and earth, by the commotions of the flood; they have since petrified and become coal, which accounts for the large coal beds now found,” &c. Sp. Gifts, Vol. iii, p. 79.

“Now then, does not wood, when it is petrified, become stone? And even did it become coal, how do you account for the immense coal mines found in the arctic zone? There are islands there with hardly soil enough to cover them, which are simply nothing but coal, being extensive coal mines, and situated in a latitude where it is so cold that there is only a few stunted shrubs and bushes that grow there. Now you will admit that the light and warmth of the sun are necessary to produce any material growth of vegetation, and how could such immense trees have grown there? Either the axis of the earth has been changed—it has been thrown off its axis, and afterward gained another axis, and that would not account for coal mines in other parts of the globe—or else God did not finish the work which he had done, when he rested upon the seventh day.”

Permit us to speak plainly, yet kindly, as a subject demands wherein our greatest interests are at stake. Your difficulties as presented in your questions are, it seems to us, entirely speculative; based on assumptions concerning climate and vegetation before the flood; not seeming to regard the great commotion and changes of the face of nature by that event. We know that a mere rise in a river deposits vastly more wood in a certain locality than could be grown in that locality. Now if you had any data by which to judge of the changes wrought by the flood, it would not be necessary to suppose and infer as you do. So people have supposed that there is not surface enough on the earth to bury the dead of past generations, but simple calculation explodes the fancy.

If the Lord had inverted or changed a law of nature, as you seem to think would follow a certain fact, we cannot see how that would prove that he did not finish his work in six days. God made man, afterward gave him life; and afterward punished him with a deprivation of life; and will again raise him from the dead. Would you thence infer that he did not entirely make man on that sixth day? You might with as much propriety as to infer as you do. Has any one ever determined the amount of coal in the earth, or the proportion of the earth’s bulk which is coal? You must grant it cannot be done. Why then draw a conclusion based on such an impossibility?

You speak of wood petrifying and becoming stone, as if you doubted that wood ever became coal. The American Encyclopedia says, “There is a remarkable gradation from bituminated wood to perfect coal. In some varieties, the structure, and even the remains, of plants are apparent, and its chemical composition agrees with that of vegetable matter.” Or if your difficulty is on the term “petrify,” see Webster on fossil. Are you prepared to show that petrifications always present the same characteristics and appearances? If not, the controversy is groundless.

And we would entreat you not to suffer your mind to be tried till there appears a difficulty based on a certain data. This question may not appear important in itself, yet if it is liable to destroy our confidence in that which the Lord has spoken to us, it is important that we move carefully, and distrust everything of a conjectural nature, but in humility seek that wisdom which cometh from above.

To L. A. G. For remarks on Luke xvi, 9, see Testimony No. 5, p. 19, &c.