At Noah's birth, his father Lamech foresaw the lessening of the Curse: "He [Noah] will comfort us in the labor and painful toil of our hands caused by the ground the LORD has cursed" (Gen. 5:29).

That the Curse was indeed eased in Noah's time is verified in the Noahic Covenant given immediately after the Flood to all mankind: "Never again will I curse the ground because of man, even though every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done. As long as the earth endures, seed time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease" (Gen. 8:21-22).

We know that God is not speaking in an absolute sense of the Curse being lifted. It is not until the future time of the New Heavens and the New Earth that the Curse will be totally rescinded (Rev. 22:3). We still have the diminished Curse on the Earth today involving local floods, volcanic activity, hurricanes, tsunamis, famines, tornadoes, earthquakes, etc. in sizable amounts. This strongly implies far more intense geologic and ecologic activities on the pre-Flood Earth when the intensified Curse during the long pre-Flood time climaxed in the worldwide, catastrophic GFE.

Significantly Matthew 24:37-39 reveals the wickedness of the world just before the time of Christ's return will be similar to the time before the GFE. It is precisely here that God says He will revoke the Noahic covenant with mankind and once again curse the Earth in various stupendous ways, ending with a universal destruction by fire (Isaiah 24; II Peter 3:10-13).

Perhaps we can say, to rephrase an old expression: "The future is the key to the past." Anytime that God directly must punish mankind for sins left unpunished by civil governments, great disaster happens upon the land and its peoples.

It has been said: "It is the floods and the fires, the battles and the bombardments, the eruptions and the earthquakes which have preserved so much of the human story" [1, p. 55]

The CCC geologic model understands the effects from the Curse on the Earth contributed greatly to the Earth's rock and fossil record, especially in pre-Flood times.

References

  1. Ager, Derek V., The Nature of the Stratigraphical Record (Second Edition), 1981, John Wiley & Sons, New York .