On my trip to the Grand Canyon I saw many spectacular rock formations.  Well, technically a person could say that I lived in a spectacular rock formation for several days.  This week I want to show you one of my favorite rock formations that I saw up-close at the Grand Canyon.  There are three main geologically significant features in the Grand Canyon – the basement rock, the layers, and the canyon that has cut through them.  The “Great Unconformity” (see picture) shows us all three of those features at once.

Basement rock is pretty much creation rock.  This type of rock is generally very dark in color and high in iron content.  When God created the earth He made basement rock and put thick coating of softer sediment on top of it (plants cannot grow very well in basement rock).  When God sent the world wide flood of His holy judgment, the waters swept up over the land, scraping off everything that was on top of the basement rock (including people animals, and sediment).  Later on during the flood, sediment was deposited into layers.  The Grand Canyon was probably carved close to the end of the flood, when the waters were draining off the land, or possibly shortly after the flood when the earth was still going through the “aftershock” of the flood.

The “Great Unconformity” is the boundary between the basement rock (creation rock) and the first sedimentary layers (flood layers).  An unconformity (pronounced un-cun-form-itty) is a space between layers that show that something happened between those layers to erode whatever was on top of the bottom layer and keep the next layer from being deposited.  Secular geologists would tell you that hundreds of millions of years passed between these layers.  But, what really happened in the “Great Unconformity”?  It was the beginning of the flood.  It was an incredible experience for me to touch both halves of the “Great Unconformity” at once.  Creation rock reminds us that God loves us and created us in His image, and that first flood layer reminds us that God is just and will punish sin, while leaving a way of redemption (the ark in the flood and Jesus today) if we are willing to jump on board.