Good evening, church. Glad to be back with you again. If you were here this morning, I spoke about biblical archaeology in Egypt, which is one of the things that I have a big passion and love to do in some of my background. Tonight, though, we're going to talk a little bit about the Grand Canyon. A show of hands, how many of you guys have been to the Grand Canyon before? Let's see. All right. Now, how many of you have never been to the Grand Canyon? There's a lot of people, Jim, that we've got to come out and have come see us and hang out. So my name is Nate Loper, and I get to serve as the executive director for a ministry organization called Canyon Ministries. And so we have been serving at the Grand Canyon National Park for 27 years now, providing daily Christian tours. So every single day, except for Sundays, We have daily tours on the south rim of the Grand Canyon, and we take people out there to showcase the glory of God that is on display for millions of people every year that come to that place. Currently, we serve about 4,000 people each and every year at the Grand Canyon National Park that join us on trips and tours. So not only do we do these rim tours, we also do river trips. Pastor Jim has been out there on one of those trips and a few other people from the crew here. So we've been doing river trips out there. We do hikes. We do backpacking trips down in and across the Grand Canyon. We basically try to cover this canyon from top to bottom and everywhere in between. And since I see that we have a number of folks here who have not yet been to the Grand Canyon, let me help you guys by helping you come out and see us. And so I'm speaking for a few times out here this week, and we're also giving away a free rim tour of the Grand Canyon. All you got to do is scan that little code there or go to canyonministries.org slash win. You can do it right now. It's okay. Pull your cell phone out. And if you'll enter for that, we are giving away a free rim tour to somebody during the speaking engagement, this time that I have out here for a few days. So again, this morning, we talked about biblical archeology. And if you weren't here this morning to hear that, or you wanna listen to it again, or have more time of discussion and Q&A, I'm also presenting that same talk tomorrow night and Tuesday with the Midwest Creation Fellowship. And that's with Ken Funk. Where's Ken at? Raise your hand, Ken. Right over here, so if you don't know him, get to know him. They have fantastic monthly creation speakers at the Midwest Creation Fellowship. And you can find out more details and information about that at MidwestCreationFellowship.org. But I'll be speaking out there tomorrow night and the following night about that as well, about biblical archaeology in Egypt. So if you missed it this morning, don't worry. I'm in the area for a couple more days. But again, tonight, we're talking about the Grand Canyon. And so again, we love the Grand Canyon. If you've ever seen that place, you know exactly why. It is spectacular. And so we go out there, we provide not just a tour of pointing at rocks and talking about trees and rocks and things like that, but we use the Grand Canyon to showcase the glory of God. Because with Canyon Ministries, we believe that God's word, the Bible, is true cover to cover. Amen? We believe that the events in Genesis really did happen like the Bible describes. So when it describes a creation event, we believe that really happened. When it describes a global flood in the days of Noah, we absolutely believe that happened. Why? First of all, because God's Word says it did. And second, because we see the evidence in God's world that backs that up. And so we see that. So we take people on a creation perspective, a biblical perspective of the Grand Canyon. And like I shared with you guys this morning, we do that through so many different trips and adventures and tours. It's exciting. I tell people, oftentimes, I have the best job in the world. You know, you may have a really great job, you may love your job, but if your job is rafting the Grand Canyon and taking thousands of people every year to come and see this place and seeing the wow and the aha moment when they actually not only see the Grand Canyon, but they understand why we have it and what it means to us, the significance of a place like that, I tell you what, guys, I've got the best job in the world. Come out, come hang out with us, come see these amazing places. Now as I look around the room tonight, we also have a mixed age group, right? So we've got some older ones and we've got some younger ones. So because of that, we're gonna have a lot of fun tonight too, okay? We're not gonna, you know, we're gonna get fun, we're gonna get excited about that because, let me tell you, if the kids aren't having fun, nobody's having fun, right? I know how that is as a parent. If my kids are squirrely and they're not having fun, it's not fun. So we're gonna kinda keep the teaching tonight to two different levels, right? So we're gonna have a lot of fun and exciting stuff, but I wanna share with you guys some of the things that I am passionate about when it comes to the Grand Canyon. Because we serve at the Grand Canyon as a voice in the wilderness. And in this case, it's a literal wilderness that we are in. So we're out there, declaring the name of Jesus to all who will hear. And so not only do we directly have about 4,000 people that join us on our tours, many days we're out there teaching on the rim of the Grand Canyon, and many other people, not even part of our tour group, will come and listen. They will stop by, and they will listen in, and they'll start to hear about the Grand Canyon, some exciting things. And then as they're gathering around, I'm kind of watching the scene. I'm kind of saying a few things that might draw them in, like about the rapids down below and adventures. And they're coming in. Now we start talking about how this canyon was formed. And we start talking about a global flood. We start presenting, actually, a gospel message. Before you know it, my group of five or six people has turned into 20 people. And a whole bunch of other people now just heard a gospel presentation in the Grand Canyon National Park. Pretty exciting place. We love this place because, in my opinion, there is no better place on the planet to see and to study and to understand what we call flood geology. And that is a belief and an understanding that the majority of the geological features we see on the surface of our planet were formed and deposited and somewhat sculpted, perhaps, by the flood in Noah's day. And if you've ever been to the Grand Canyon, you know that place is spectacular. That place is very unique. And in fact, I think President Teddy Roosevelt said it best. He said, in the Grand Canyon, Arizona has a natural wonder which is in kind absolutely unparalleled throughout the rest of the world. And if you know, because you've been there, you know what I'm talking about. There is a canyon in Arizona that is unlike any place on the rest of the planet. It is incredible. This Grand Canyon is 277 miles long. It is 10 to 18 miles wide. It is over a mile deep in some places. And this giant scar within the earth exposes over 6,000 feet of the geological record, about 4,000 feet of which we believe was deposited during the year-long flood in Noah's day. And when you understand what the Bible has to say about the flood, you realize that this is the largest geological change that the world has seen before or since. A major, huge catastrophe is what the Bible is describing. So we use a place like the Grand Canyon to showcase the glory of God. We use the Grand Canyon to showcase that God's Word is true, and those events of the judgment in Genesis is true. And if the judgment in Genesis is true, then the judgment coming in Revelation is also true. But you know what that means? We have, just in the days of Noah, where there was an ark provided as a means of salvation, we have today a means of salvation through Jesus Christ, which is the door of our salvation. Amen? That door is open. And so we use the Grand Canyon for the glory of God. We use the Grand Canyon to showcase His power. We use the Grand Canyon and we invite people throughout the world to come and see this place and to take a step back and say, wow, God is good. So when we look at the Grand Canyon, if we examine some of the rocks and some of the geology, we're going to kind of do a little rock talk tonight, shall we? We'll kind of get into some of these rock layers and get to identify them. And when we do tours at the Grand Canyon, our shortest tour is actually four hours long, okay? So you guys ready? Four hours, we're going to be here tonight. Buckle up. Not really. How about the three-hour tour, no? Gilligan, no? Okay, we're not doing any three-hour tours tonight either. But what we are gonna do tonight is give you guys kind of the fire hose version of flood geology. And what that means is I'm gonna try to pack in a whole bunch of stuff really quickly, and hopefully you'll let some of this sink in. And if you have questions, feel free to reach out to us, canyonministries.org. Find us, ask those questions, go to great ministry partners like Answers in Genesis. They have fantastic answers to many of these questions we're talking about tonight. But I do want to talk a little bit about some of these rocks. In particular, one of these rock layers called the Tepitz Sandstone. So if you look at this image on the right-hand side, you look about halfway down where those two kind of arrows join, there's kind of a yellowish rock layer that we call the Tepitz Sandstone. Now this layer of rock comes together and it's joining together where there are tilted, angled rocks you see down below. the kind of Precambrian or Precambrian rocks. And then above that, we have what we call the Paleozoic rocks. Precambrian basically means without fossils. That's kind of a simple way to think about it. And then we begin to get the fossil record. Well, we have tilted angled rocks that come together and flat horizontal rocks like you see here in this diagram, the geology of the Grand Canyon. And as much as I would love to talk about everything in the Grand Canyon, we are not going to be able to cover all of that tonight. We do as long as nine-day river trips in the Grand Canyon, and even on a nine-day river trip, we still can't cover everything we could. I have spent well over a thousand tour days in the Grand Canyon National Park myself, and guess what? I'm still learning new things all the time. not just because the Grand Canyon is so vast and amazing, but because the one who made it is incomprehensible. We can never fully understand God. So every day with God is brand new. He is new every morning. So every day I go to the Grand Canyon, I learn something new about our Creator God. So tonight we're going to talk a little bit about this. We're going to talk about this flood geology. And tonight I hope to explain to you guys three rock solid evidences for a global flood as seen at the Grand Canyon. Things that we look at and we examine. So going back to this geological diagram that kind of tepites sandstone where the tilted rocks meet the flat rocks. We have a fantastic feature that we find there. That feature is known as the Great Unconformity. Okay? Now here's a long word, and I'm sorry, but we're going to learn a few things tonight. So we're going to need everybody's participation with this. So I need you guys to say, Great Unconformity. One, two, three. Fantastic. Now, don't worry, you guys. That's one of the longest, biggest words I'm going to teach you tonight. Don't worry. Don't worry, kids. You got it. Adults, don't worry either. But the great unconformity. What is an unconformity? Well, an unconformity is a geological term that basically means a section where the rocks do not match or do not meet up. And it oftentimes represents an erosional boundary, where there's a tremendous amount of erosion between two different contact points. When we look at the Grand Canyon, we can see this great unconformity where the rocks do not conform, they don't match up. We see this great unconformity where the tilted rocks meet the flat horizontal rocks. So if you've seen that diagram, angled rocks down below, flat rocks straight across. Now, what is going on here with this great unconformity? This is a major mystery to many geologists. If you watch shows on the National Geographic Discovery History Channel, if they're talking about Grand Canyon, oftentimes somebody's going to mention the Great Unconformity and what a major mystery it is. because the Great Unconformity represents a tremendous erosional boundary. The tilted, angled rocks you see down below should continue rising on up toward the top, but something has happened to cut them off straight across and then stack up 4,000 feet of water-laid sedimentary rocks on top of there. Now, what was that massive erosional mechanism? What was that erosional event? Let's talk about it. If you're standing on the rim of the Grand Canyon, this is from a picture I took at Lippin Point, looking down below where the Colorado River is, you can see the kind of pinkish, tilted, angled rocks down by the river. And then about halfway up, you get to see that Tapeats Sandstone, the beginning of that erosional boundary. If you come on a seven or nine day river trip with us, we'll take you to places like Blacktail Canyon, where I know Pastor Jim has been and the rest of the crew here. You go to Blacktail Canyon and you get up close and personal with this erosional boundary. In this image, you can see the completely different angle of the rocks down below compared to the rocks above, right? Everybody see that? This is the erosional boundary. This is the great unconformity that we find there. And so we take people into places like Blacktail to get up close and personal. Because when we look at this massive erosional boundary, it tells us that something has happened here on a huge, huge scale. And of course, that event, that mechanism of erosion we're talking about, is the beginning of the flood in Noah's day. So we take people to this great unconformity. Here you can see Dr. Andrew Snelling with Answers in Genesis putting his hands on the beginning of that Tepit sandstone, the beginning of the flood in Noah's day, with the rocks underneath there from creation and then the rocks above there from the beginning of destruction in Noah's day. It's a very powerful and moving place. To have one hand on creation, one hand on destruction, side by side. So we take people in that we talk about this great unconformity, this massive erosional boundary, and we talk about how it's a big mystery to most geologists. Because some kind of massive erosion has taken place here. Now, what does that erosion look like? When you look up close, it is a fine, pretty well knife-edged boundary, some undulation here and there. But what we're seeing is a scouring of the landscape. And when you look at the beginning of that Tapeats Sandstone, you will notice lots and lots of rocks broken up, lots of rocks included right at that erosional boundary. In fact, you look at some of those rocks, some of those rocks are nicely rounded smooth. Now, you guys are a pretty clever bunch here tonight. Where do we typically find round, smooth stones today? If you're looking for nicely rounded rocks, where are you gonna go look? In riverbeds, bingo. Where did David go to look for those smooth stones to slay Goliath? He went down to the brook or the stream, right? Why was that? Well, David was no geologist, but he was smart enough to know fast-moving water tumbles these rocks, knocking off the sharp edges, rounding them smooth. So we typically find round, smooth stones where we find fast-moving water. So when we examine this great unconformity, this erosional boundary line, and we find numerous rounded rocks and stones embedded within there, what does that tell us scientifically, geologically, observationally? What does that tell us about the way that Tepit sandstone was deposited? It tells us, who said that? It was deposited by water, but not just any old water, by fast-moving water, right? So we can look at this, and scientifically, geologically, observationally, we can determine this, to Pete Samson, was deposited by fast-moving water. But here's the real kicker, the real interesting thing. Not only do we find smooth stones and pebbles and smaller rocks, rounded, smooth, embedded within there. Guys, at this unconformity boundary, we find entire boulders left behind in there. We're talking about massive, huge boulders. I mean, house-sized boulders. Now, what kind of force or power of water is needed to move entire house-sized boulders, rounding them smooth? We're not just talking about fast-moving water, we are talking about a lot of fast-moving water, powerful moving water. And I don't know what the exact definition that Webster gives in the dictionary for a flood, but I think it has something to do with a lot of fast-moving water moving across the landscape, right? So you might even say, here in the Grand Canyon, we have direct physical evidence for a lot of fast-moving water, and you might simply say, Flood. And guess what? That is what all geologists agree on. Whether they believe in a global flood or they think that maybe there was millions of years of slow, gradual erosion. In the published literature, what they say is, we don't know what happened during this great unconformity time period or anything like that. But at some point, there must have been a tremendous water event. That's in the published literature. Why? Because the evidence is undeniable. Why? Because the rocks cry out. We examine those rocks. We put our minds at work. We look at God's word, and we realize this big, fast-moving water event, this is the flood in Noah's day. So that first great evidence that we see at the Grand Canyon for a global flood is this great unconformity, fantastic erosional boundary. Now, when we go back and look at that exact same place again, looking back at that same unconformity, where that same Tapeat Sandstone comes into place, we have another amazing mystery that comes into view. This is known as the Cambrian Explosion, or the Cambrian Explosion of Life. Anybody ever heard of that before? Can we talk about before we had pre-Cambrian and Cambrian rocks? Basically, the pre-Cambrian rocks contain no real fossil record really. Where we see the Cambrian explosion, we find an explosion within the fossil record that represents nearly every major phyla of life known to man. An explosion within the fossil record. That Cambrian explosion, in other words, no fossils, no fossils, no fossils, no fossils, then boom, an explosion within the fossil record. Going from hardly anything, like below this boundary line, hardly anything, like some single cell organisms, some cyanobacteria, blue-green algae mats, and things like stromatolites that we see even today forming in calm and placid seas. But we don't see fossils on a huge grand scale. We don't find the death and burial that we would expect from a global flood in Noah's day. But suddenly, right here where we have an explosion of erosion with that great unconformity, we not only have an explosion of erosion, we have this Cambrian explosion of the fossil record. which is one of the largest mysteries of evolutionary biology. It is one that they still have trouble trying to explain today. Because this physical feature, an explosion within the fossil record, this is a physical feature found worldwide. If you have a worldwide feature, maybe that worldwide feature required a worldwide mechanism, a worldwide event. Keep that in mind. So we see this explosion within the fossil record, which is exactly what we would expect to find if there really truly was a global flood in Noah's day. You know, Ken Ham, Answers in Genesis, if you know him, or Buddy Davis, who recently passed away, but has a great song, you know, thinking about the global flood, if we really did have a flood in Noah's day, you would expect to find billions of dead things buried in rock layers, laid down by water all over the earth. That's what you would expect to find, right? What is it we find when we actually go and take a look? We find billions of dead things buried in rock layers, laid down by water all over the earth. The earth is covered by a massive watery graveyard from that catastrophe in Noah's day. That's what the fossil record represents. And it goes opposite of the predicted model of evolution, which says at the bottom most layers we should only find simple single-cell organisms, and then gradually, eventually, working our way up through the fossil record, we should see a nice, steady, gradual transition of evolutionary life. But friends, that's not what we find. What we find is pretty much nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, then boom, an explosion within that fossil record. That's not evolution over millions of years. That explosion, we believe, is the explosive, powerful force of the flood in Noah's day. And if you have not read the Genesis account of the flood in Genesis chapter 7 recently, go back and take a look. Genesis 7-11 describes the beginning of the flood, not just as mere raindrops. You know, we kind of get that idea that sometimes, you know, cartoon version of the flood, where everyone's standing around the ark, making fun of Noah, and all of a sudden, there's a raindrop on somebody's shoulder, right? and another raindrop, and another raindrop, and they look up to the sky and they say, what in the world? It's starting to rain. Maybe Noah was right after all. But guys, that is not what the Bible actually describes the start of the flood to be all about. Genesis 7 verse 11 tells us the beginning of the flood is the fountains of the great deep, verse 4. That word great deep in the Hebrew, the word techom, referring to the ocean basin. So fountains like geysers coming up from the depths of the earth or the depths of the ocean basins, huge amounts of water welling up. And then it says the windows of heaven were opened, a tremendous downpour from above. That, my friends, is the beginning, the trigger of the flood in Noah's day as described by the Bible. We're talking about a huge amount of water, catastrophic death and burial right from the very beginning. This flood, the beginning of it, this is no pitter patter of rain, no drip drip drop little April showers. No, this is a huge catastrophic deluge of water. And as those waters begin to surge across the continents, those floodwaters are scouring the continents and scraping off the surface of the pre-flood world. And they're burying plants and animals rapidly so that these plants and animals are now becoming fossils because they're buried rapidly. They're not decaying. They're not decomposing. They are now becoming entombed with the correct conditions for fossils to form. So we see an explosion, this Cambrian explosion within the fossil record. Fantastic evidence of the flood, the second thing. The third thing we see at the Grand Canyon, again, going back to these same rock layers, we're gonna still stick with one single layer, that one single Tepit sandstone, just that one layer. Think about all the other layers we could talk about tonight. But we're just focusing on my favorite layer, that Tepit sandstone. And I want to talk to you about the extent of these sedimentary layers, like the extent of that sedimentary Tapeats sandstone. Looking at that layer of rock, when we're on tours of the Grand Canyon, it amazes people when I tell them that the rock we're seeing down at that Tapeats sandstone blankets the entire 277 miles of the Grand Canyon. Now remember, we've already determined scientifically, geologically, observationally, we've determined that Tepeat Sandstone was deposited by a fast-moving water event, aka a flood. So if we can say that Tepeat Sandstone was deposited by a flood, this is a 277-mile-wide flood. Now what kind of flooding events do we see happening today that are 277 miles wide? We don't see that, do we? That's because the present world is not the key to the past. Unlike some scientists would say, the present is the key to the past. If you want to understand Earth's ancient past, look at today's present mechanisms, present erosion rates, present uniformitarian principles. Friends, the present world we live in is not the key to the past. Rather, the past is the key to the present. If you want to understand why we have the world we have today, you need to understand what has happened in the past to get us here. So when we examine this rock layer, 277 mile wide flood to deposit this same rock layer, that is huge, right? But wait, there's more. Because then I tell them, well, wait a minute, not only do we see the same to Pete Sandstone covering the entirety of the Grand Canyon, this very same layer of rock can be mapped out across the entire state of Arizona. That flood just got a lot bigger, didn't it? So that flood's a lot bigger if it's the entire state of Arizona. But wait. There's more, because not only is that Tapeat Sandstone traced across the entire state of Arizona, that Tapeat Sandstone has been mapped out across the entire country. The yellow you see here shows you the mapped distribution of the Tapeat Sandstone across the United States. And if you notice, it actually goes further up into Canada, comes down into Mexico. It actually hooks up around all the way to Greenland. Now, if you have a continent-wide deposition of fast-moving water-laid sandstone, that's a lot of tongue twisters right there. But if you have something like that covering the entire continent, and that was deposited by a fast-moving water event, Well, friends, it doesn't take a whole lot of thinking about it to realize this is a continent-wide flood event that we're talking about. And we believe it actually extended all the way to the coast, but as the floodwaters receded, it scoured off that material all the way back down below. So we're talking about a continent-wide flood. Again, the present is not the key to the past. This shows us that, to Pete Sandstone, blanketing the entire continent, that, my friends, is a continent-sized flood. And that's pretty big, wouldn't you say? But wait! There's more. Because not only is that Tapeat Sandstone mapped out across the entire United States, we can trace that exact same rock layer all the way across North Africa. It goes through parts into Asia and through parts of Europe. It goes through southern Israel and through Jordan. Anybody here ever been to Jordan before? Anybody been to Petra? Anybody ever seen Indiana Jones in the last crusade? Well, at the end of that movie, where they go to get the Holy Grail, that part, of course, is fake. But the stone temple that they're going into, we call the Treasury Room, that was carved out, we believe, by the Nabateans over 2,000 years ago. That Treasury Room, that stone temple you would see in Indiana Jones, or if you've been there to Petra, that is carved into the very same Tepit sandstone equivalent that we have at the Grand Canyon. Pretty amazing. And, in fact, anybody been to southern Israel? Been down to Timna area? Well, if you go to southern Israel, down around there, they have a region down there called Red Canyon. And look at the side-by-side geological comparison. On the left-hand side, you see a side canyon in the Grand Canyon called Blacktail Canyon, where we take people. On the right-hand side is Red Canyon in southern Israel. But look at the geological comparison. If I took away the labels on there, Any geologist that I know would have a hard time figuring out which of those two canyons is Grand Canyon, which is Israel. It's because it's the exact same Tapeats Sandstone equivalent across the world. Now, this is a not only continent-wide fast-moving water event, this is a cross-continental fast-moving water event. And again, it's a lot easier to simply say flood. Exactly. So the extent of these sedimentary layers is the third thing that I wanted to bring to you guys tonight. And again, this is just a snippet, just a tidbit of what you can learn at the Grand Canyon, where you can come and see and understand when it comes to flood geology. And even if you've seen the Grand Canyon 50 times, if you've never seen it from a biblical perspective, wow, your eyes will be opened to something brand new. Not only will you see it, but you'll be able to understand it. So the flood geology that we have on display at the Grand Canyon is spectacular. But why do we take people there? Why do we go on these adventures? It's not just to have a lot of fun. It's not just excitement. It really is because the Grand Canyon holds a message for every single person who would come out there to see it. Every year we get about four to five million people, sometimes six million people that come to see the Grand Canyon. In our hope and prayers, everybody who stands at the rim of that canyon would look across that vast expanse and would see something much bigger than themselves. They would see the glory of God on display, and that God would somehow, through the Holy Spirit, use that canyon to draw people to himself. We hope and pray that Canyon Ministries, as a voice in the wilderness, is used by God to declare the mighty name of Jesus in that canyon. And that name of Jesus would echo and resound from that canyon into the four corners of the earth. And so we join again with 4,000 people every year that come out there and say, wow, look at this place. And as a result of that, wow, look at how good God is. There's a message in the Grand Canyon. Because if you think about it, these rock layers that we stand upon, even the rock layers we have around here, they were deposited, we believe, during that flood in Noah's day. As beautiful as the Grand Canyon is, it is a direct representation, a direct visual thing of what we understand to be the destruction in the days of Noah. We are literally standing on top of a watery graveyard from that catastrophe of death and destruction. But as sobering as that is, and the reality is, yeah, these layers are full of fossils, dead and buried things, brought on because of the flood of Noah's day, really as a result of our sin and iniquity. That's why God sent the flood. You look at the death and burial around the world, it's because of the sin of mankind. Yet even when we look at that, and yet even when we realize that this canyon represents and shows us these layers of death and destruction and the wrath of God, even though we see the wrath of God on display, we also see the beauty of God on display. Amen? We see the beauty of God on display, and that tells us something about the character and the nature of who God is. Because if God can make something as magnificent as the Grand Canyon out of destruction and His wrath, Just think about how good his heart is, because what it reveals to us is God is all about the business of redemption and restoration, amen? God makes beauty from ashes. He has taken something that represents the destruction, and he's created something magnificent that draws millions of people every single year to come and see. So every day that I'm at the Grand Canyon, I see the promises of God. that he doesn't leave us in our sin, that God can create beauty even from those things. He draws us out of that place. He brings us into his kingdom. And we have a God who is all about the business of redemption and restoration. And so if you come out to the Grand Canyon to come see that with us, I encourage you guys, come see it, come learn about this place, because we want people that come to see it, not just to walk away saying, wow, that was neat. We want people to walk away saying, wow, God is incredible, and I want to share about that with everyone that I see. So we encourage people, use the Grand Canyon as a launch pad, as a springboard into sharing the gospel message about what that place represents.