The Forming and Dating of Rocks on the Earth

It is always interesting how people who think of themselves as knowledgeable of history and events so often become entrapped in the current thinking during the time of man that “things were always this way.” Take as an example, the rising of the Andes Mountains and the uplift of the central South American continent and its eastward tilt that formed its current appearance; or the rising of the Panama Isthmus, blocking off what had been the Great Panama Seaway.
    While most may not even now these events took place, geologists have written much about them and there is no question among scientists of the validity of the events. The problem lies in the time frame surrounding these well documented events.

At the age of 500, the Lord told Noah to build an ark It took him 100  years, along with his three sons, to complete the task

It is also interesting that among knowledgeable people, especially members of the Church who know and understand that Noah’s Flood took place, and that the Biblical time frame of that based on the ages of the Patriarch’s and the births of their listed sons to that of Noah (Genesis 5:3-29), who had three sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth when he was 500 years old when (Genesis 5:32; 6:10), which age occurred in 2344 BC, when he was told to build the Ark. It took 100 years, and when he was 600 years old, he was told to board the Ark (Genesis 7:11). It rained for forty days and forty nights (Genesis 7:12), and at the end of that forty days, the flood upon the Earth lifted the ark above the earth (Geness 7:17), and as the waters increased greatly on the Earth and all the high hills under heaven were covered, and the waters prevailed fifteen cubits upward and the mountains were covered (Genesis 7:19-20), and every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both man, and cattle and the creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven—only Noah remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark” (Genesis 7:21-23).
    The waters prevailed upon the Earth 150 days (genesis 7:24), in which they abated, and after 9½ months, Noah opened the window of the ark and sent out a dove, though the waters still prevailed on the whole earth ((Genesis 8:9). However, it was not until the 601^st year, in the first moth and first day, the waters were nearly dried up off the earth (Genesis 8:13), and in the 27^th day of the following month, the waters were gone completely (Genesis 8:14).
    Thus, in the year 2343 BC, Shem, Ham, and Japeth went forth from the ark and the settling of the Earth commenced. This was approximately 240 years before the Jaredites built that barges and crossed the Great Deep, or oceans to the land promised to them (Ether 2:13,16-17;6:4-12) .
    The point is, we either accept the scriptures or we do not. We cannot decide which scriptures we like and accept them, and decide which we do not like and reject those. The story of Noah is both well stated with details, and time frames. We know when the flood occurred and can place it within the time frame of secular history, knowing as we do that Adam preceded Noah by approximately 1656 years when he was ejected from the Garden of Eden.

It is claimed by geologists that it take upwards of 100 million years for a mountain to completely form during the shifting of Tectonic Plates

Therefore, claims of this world being millions or billions of years old is both inaccurate and fallacious. This, of course, makes the idea of mountains taking millions of years to form, rise, or erode is also deceptive and delusive. However, so deeply ingrained in man’s mind from the early 1800s (Lamarck 1820; Darwin 1858) until now, man has been conditioned for generations to think that the scriptures must be inaccurate because science has “proven” the age of the Earth to be 4.55 billion years old. At the same time, geologists have convinced us that it takes a very long time for anything in nature to occur—millions and millions of years, therefore the age of the Earth is verified by them. 
    In addition, many cannot accept the story of Noah, because he lived to 950 years of age, building the ark at the age of 500 to 600 years of age. We are conditioned to think life ceases between 80 to 110 years under normal circumstances. Yet, the early patriarchs lived ten times as long, and Christians and LDS in particular believe in living throughout eternity in the resurrection.
    However, the Lord has told us the age of the Earth since Adam left the garden of Eden, and we can track that information in the Genesis record which the Lord dictated to Moses (Moses 1:40) so we would have the truth and not be subject to the singular belief and speculation of scientists.
    As an example, science claims that the geological period is one of the several subdivisions of geologic time enabling cross-referencing of rocks and geologic events from place to place. A “geon” (geologic eon) are large, geological units of time, to represent either the span of the average geologic period, or the thickness of the average stratigraphic equivalent, a matter of 60,000,000 years, and 50,000 feet of clastic depositions. They traditionally subdivide earth history into a hierarchy of named intervals, eons, eras, periods, etc., which divisions are of equal rank but characteristically of unequal duration primarily based on its fossils, artifacts, or cultural content
    These periods form elements of a hierarchy of divisions into which geologists have split the Earth's history. This is all well and good, except we know from the Lord that the Earth itself is not as old as geologists claim certain rocks are, thus the idea of such reference of events is inaccurate and of no value to determine the age of the actual Earth—however, it does tell us how old parts of the universe are since these rocks were used in the forming of the Earth, and therefore are far older than the Earth itself. It would be like taking wood and nails from an 18^th century barn and using them to build a new, modern barn. While the wood and nails would be much older, the barn itself as newly finished would be nowhere near as old.

Matter unorganized in the Universe

  
Thus, we also know from modern-day revelations that when the Earth was first organized, “the Lord said: let us go down. And they went down at the beginning and that they, that is the Gods, organized and formed the heaven and the earth” (Abraham 4:1). That is, the heaven and the earth were formed by those under the Lord’s direction, all things of which the Earth was formed came from existing material, reorganized into this modern world.
    We also know that in that organizing and forming, “there was matter unorganized,” which they took and organized it into “a world like unto the other worlds we have heretofore formed,”—the global world form that is now this planet.
    The reason this is so important is simply that some scriptural information is not understandable when interpreted in the terms that some scientists claim are factual, like the age of the Earth, and therefore the various ancient ages of events that took place in the Earth’s pre-history.  It might be of interest to now in these divisions, it is claimed while the Earth formed about 4550 million years ago (4.55 billion), an event that is assigned to Geon 45. Rocks formed at 1851 million (1.851 Billion) or 1800 million (1.8 Billion) both belong to Geon 18. Thus, according to the geologic scale, rocks formed in a relatively short period. However, the rocks measured on the Earth vary over a very considerable difference.

A 4.03-billion year-old sample for the small Acasta River, an obscure little drainage up near Great Bear Lake, Northwest Territories in Canada (some age-dating now claims this material is 4.2 billion years old)

Thus we find from modern measurements that the ages of felsic rocks are generally between 2.5 and 3.8 billion years. Metasedimentary rock in Greenland has been dated to 3.7 billion years old; 4.1-billion-year-old zircon rocks have been found in Western Australia; In fact, the oldest known rock on Earth, part of the Acasta Gneiss of the Slave craton in northwestern Canadian Shield, is dated to 4.03 billion years old.
    If one wasn’t so conditioned to think in a geologic time frame, one might wonder why rocks in different areas, sometimes in the same area, are of different age. One might think that if the world was created at one time from one source, such as a “Big Bang,” that its parts would be dated to the same period—like a model car built in Detroit, you don’t find a 1920 fender, a 1954 hood, a 1987 trunk and a 1999 axel—you find all parts dated to the time when the car was built. Thus, one would expect that in the forming of primordial protons and neutrons from the quark-gluon plasma of the early Universe as it cooled below two trillion degrees that the result would be somewhat similar in time measurement when the following primordial protons and neutrons formed during the process known as Big Bang nucleosynthesis.
    Yet, nothing dated on the Earth of its origin is constant according to the geologic time scale—it varies over millions and millions of years, as well as billions and billions of years.
    On the other hand, with the Earth being formed out of various pieces of unorganized matter as the Lord has told us, the material coming from different uses at different times, the ages of individual pieces, such as rocks, would vary considerably as we find that it does.