The Neptunian, or Water Theory of Creation

by J. M. Woodman

21. Two thousand years ago, science established the Ptolemaic theory of Astronomy. It taught it for eighteen hundred years, when the Copernican theory forced its way to the front. And now, it is evident, the true theory was clearly taught in God’s first book of Inspiration, called Scripture. A few years since, Elihu, as a learned professor, would take a piece of granite in his hand, and learnedly talk of the crystals formed, as it slowly cooled, as the first crust formed upon the sea of lava.

22. Now, the same professor talks to his class of the sedimentary nature of the rock, and the crystals formed under great pressure in the deep sea. Four thousand years ago, the Bible gave this knowledge to the world. For some cause, Job is reticent while Elihu speaks. He speaks as a “beast of power, rising up out of the earth.” But God has something to say as to who shall stand in the coming ages. Piety will stand up, and God will answer as by the power of the whirlwind. Chap. 38. “Gird up now thy loins like a man, for I will demand of thee, and answer thou me. Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? Declare, if thou hast understanding. Who hath laid the measures thereof, if thou knowest, or who hath stretched the line upon it? Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened, or who laid the cornerstone thereof?” Marginal reading “made the cornerstone to sink.” Balancing order, in exact equipose, is proclaimed in science. “Not one star could be spared,” say the Solons of Philosophy, “without throwing all into the greatest confusion.” The balancing of the primary gases, as each sun gathered in the beginning, was seen by Job. “When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy.”

23. The great under-waters were once imprisoned as though shut behind doors. “Or who shut up the sea with doors when it brake forth as if it had issued out of the womb?” Rotundity of the Earth is here given with the inside water. He saw the young Earth first “clothed in a garment of clouds,” and “thick darkness a swaddling band about it.” He saw the “foundations of the earth breaking up,” as the flood in Noah’s day poured in over the earth. “And brake up the decreed place for it,” and set new “bars and doors.” A change of polarity, and when it took place, is seen. “Hast thou commanded the morning since thy days, and caused the day-spring to know his place, that it might take hold of the ends of the earth, that the wicked might be shaken out of it?” When have the wicked been shaken out of it, but when “all the fountains of the great deep were broken up?” The finishing touch is added to the Copernican system. “It is turned as clay to the seal.” Allusion is made to the clay on the potter’s wheel rotating to a fixed seal shaping the same. In contrast to its present motion, he saw a former condition with pole pointing to the sun. This was a motion that never exchanged the darkness for light, nor light for darkness, but both remained stationary. “Where is the way where light dwelleth? and as for darkness, where is the place thereof, that thou shouldst take it to the bound thereof, and that thou shouldst know the paths to the house thereof?” He saw the contrasted appearance of the former earth to her present contour. “The waters are hid as with a stone.” Altogether, the land hemisphere covered the under-waters; “and the face of the deep is frozen.” The face of the deep in the southern hemisphere of the ancient earth was locked in darkness and perpetual ice. He had asked the question, “Out of whose womb came the ice?” Where was it born? This is one of the most perplexing questions in science.

24. Where was the ice born that once plowed such deep furrows over hill and dale, that climbed the rugged mountain, and filled ancient river beds with three thousand feet of drift? In vain do you ask where the ice came from that scooped out the Yosemite Valley, or laid the deep beds of water-washed pebbles along the Sierra Nevada mountains. God has answered it in giving the ancient polarity, by which the mighty deep of one half the globe was covered with ice. Again, “Who hath divided a watercourse for the overflowing of waters, or a way for the lightning of the thunder?” Our earth is a magnet. The way of the lightning produces spiral effects on plants and cyclones from the equator to each pole. The earth being divided, forming the Atlantic Ocean, and the pole being locally changed on the globe, a new way for the lightning is formed. This poem is wonderful for its flights of prophetic views. The vision, from comprehending the phenomena attending the globe in its antediluvian state, now changes to a mode of communication by telegraph of our own time. To identify the century in which it would appear, he resorted to the third clock of the heavens, measured by precession. He noticed that beautiful cluster of stars called the Pleiades at the usual time of Zenith measurement, in the evening, standing over the January thaw, followed in a few days with Orion’s belt in the same place. At the time of Job’s captivity the Pleiades rose to the Zenith on the 10th day of November. By the slow action of precession they have moved eastward, until now they come to the Zenith on the second day of January. Only eighteen days elapse before Orion’s belt stands in the Zenith to look down on sealed rivers, as the thaw is over.

25. “Canst thou bind the sweet influences of the Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion?” The time in this poetic allusion is our present century. The phenomena seen is employing lightning as a messenger. “Canst thou send lightnings that they may go, and say unto thee, Here we are?” Proceeding to give the habits and instincts of a few representative animals in natural history, Job proposed to sit down and say no more.

26. But God proposed to gird him for the description of two representative fossil animals of the Middle and Tertiary ages. For the ruling king of saurians, he described Ichthyosaurus under the title of Leviathan. For the king of the Myocene period he described the Megathareum under the title of Behemoth. God opens the understanding of Job’s three mistaken friends, and makes demands for repentance and reparation. Job becomes their intercessor. The captivity of Piety ends here. The “times of the gentiles are fulfilled.” “The sanctuary is cleansed.” “Babylon is fallen.” “The white horse appears, and Jesus reigns King of kings and Lord of lords.”

27. Now commences the grandest era of Job’s life. It is double in prosperity to all going before. The time for its continuance is very long. The universal respect that will be shown the church, the voluntary contributions in liberal free-will offerings, the abundance of peace and prosperity, are well diagrammed and set forth in the closing events of Job’s life.

Elihu will still talk of the “Twilight of Christianity,” but faith is looking for the dawn of Christ’s triumph, when the dragon, “like lightning,” must “fall from the heavens,” and nations will hail with joy the reign of righteousness.

“Lift up your heads, O ye gates; and be ye lifted up ye everlasting doors; and the King of glory shall come in.

“Who is this King of glory? The Lord, strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle. The Lord of hosts; he is the King of glory.”