Whence the Supply of Gas, Oil, and Coal?
THE natural gas produced in the United States during the year 1914, according to the United States Geological Survey, amounted to 591,866,733,000 cubic feet, and was valued at $94,115,524. These figures represent an excess of 10,000,000 cubic feet over the record of 1913. Scientific men have many theories in regard to the origin of this gas, as well as for that of the oil and coal that are found so abundantly in various parts of the earth. But we submit for the reflection of the candid thinker, that the Bible story of the Flood presents a clear foundation on which to build a scientific demonstration of the sources from which these supplies of oil, coal, and gas come. The immense quantities of animal and vegetable matter that were destroyed at the time of the Flood, and that were covered up near the surface by the water and the storm that God caused to sweep over the earth at that time, have, in the course of the centuries, been transformed into these materials; because all are agreed that these minerals result from animal and vegetable matter. There are some great scientists who, like the profound head of the department of geology in Oberlin College, consider that the only ground upon which we can account for the conditions over the surface of the earth at the present time, is the theory of a universal flood, as taught by the Bible.