While looking over the Petrified Forest in NE Arizona in 2005, the longevity of wood, now transformed into stone, was set at two different ages—220 and 225 million years. Here we have a huge longevity gap of 5 million years. That’s a long gap. If evolutionists are so certain of their findings, and they are, why are they incapable of reaching a consensus as to longevity?

They can’t even agree on how long it took man to evolve from the ape family, and why the ape family did not counterevolve into extinction when man came upon the scene. I find this rather puzzling and disturbing. The bottom line is that their findings are suspect. It is my firm persuasion that the speculative theology of evolution is utterly unworthy of reflection, except to expose it for what it is—godless theology. It is pregnant with fairy tales, filled with segments of the imagination, and spilling over with fantasies.

Just so with petrified wood. The global Flood of Noah’s day contained all of the components to change wood into stone. Our entire world experienced a kind of havoc unequaled in human history. To persuade you of that fact, I recommend that you go to your local Library and check out The Flood, by Professor Alfred M. Regwinkel (Concordia Publishing House, St. Louis, 1951).

Professor Regwinkel submits evidence that the convulsions of the earth during the Flood transformed our planet drastically, including climatic changes. The changes were global. He includes photos of the beasts that once roamed our earth, including a photo of a Beresovka Mammoth, in the flesh, mounted exactly as found in northern Siberia, in 1846. Siberia, a frozen piece of ground today, had a mild climate before the Flood. The evidence is there.

Wood can petrify quickly, and that no informed geologist would say it takes an excessively long time, certainly less time than it takes for wood to decay in a given environment. Wood can be petrified by two basic processes, both of which usually involve burial in volcanic ash. This ash decomposes in the presence of water, enriching the groundwater with silica.

In the first type of petrification, the wood decays in a hot, silica-rich environment. As each molecule of wood decomposes and is carried away, it is replaced by a molecule of silica. Eventually the replacement is complete, with the mineral impurities in the silica being responsible for an array of beautiful colors in the final product.

This type of petrified wood can be polished, and often becomes an object of incredible beauty. Once silicification is complete, there is no organic material remaining, but since on occasion the light and dark portions of the tree’s growth rings may decay at different rates, hints of the tree rings may be preserved if the minerals present change over time. Many of the petrified trees found in the Petrified Forest of Arizona are of this type.

The other type of petrification involves the total infiltration of the porous wood by silica-rich water. The silica (or in a few cases calcite, or a combination of both) plugs up the pores, preventing complete decay. This allows individual cells to be remarkably well preserved, and in many cases the tree ring pattern can easily be seen. The petrified trees in Yellowstone Park are of this type, with tree rings readily visible.

As is now well known, wood can petrify rapidly. Several laboratory experiments have devised ways in which this can be done, mirroring natural settings. (See Sigleo, 1978 Organic Geochemistry of Silicified Wood, Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, vol. 42, pp. 1397-1405, and Leo and Barghoorn, 1976, Silicification of Wood, Botanical Museum Leaflets, vol. 25, no. 1, Harvard University, 47 pp.)

Wood can also be petrified in field settings. During one field experiment, researchers dangled a block of wood down inside an alkaline spring in Yellowstone Park to see what effect this hot, silica-rich environment would have. In just one year, substantial petrification had occurred. I recently read an advertisement in a magazine for real “hardwood floors.” The company was petrifying wood commercially. The point is, it does not take long ages to petrify wood, it just takes the right conditions.

These conditions, with abundant hot waters (i.e., “fountains of the great deep,” Genesis 7:11) and rampant volcanism, would be met during the flood of Noah’s day and the centuries following.

I have never known an evolutionist who, when biblical evidence contradicts his views, did not respond, “But that’s not to be taken literally!” This is their way out of their dilemma. I can take the same logic the evolutionist uses and “prove” that Jesus was a fairy tale prophet and Mary His earthly mother a figurative Cinderella.

Now, when the evolutionist shows me that Jesus was not a fairy tale prophet and His mother not a symbolic Cinderella, I will adopt his same logic and verify that the global flood was literal, not symbolic or figurative.

Jesus called wicked King Herod a fox (Luke 13:32). Common sense informs us that Jesus here is using figurative or symbolic language, for Herod was not a four-legged fox. He was sly like a fox. The books of Daniel and Revelation are pregnant with symbolic language, as well as Ezekiel and other portions of scripture.

The problem is, some of us who profess to know the meaning of scripture find it difficult to distinguish the literal from the figurative. But it can be done, if we examine the context and compare it to other portions of scripture that address the same subject and/or subjects. If one portion of scripture, which we understand to be symbolic, collides with other portions of scripture on the same subject, which we understand to be literal, the fault lies in our method of interpretation.