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"But behold, when the time cometh that they shall dwindle in unbelief, after they have received so great blesings from the hand of the Lord - having a knowledge of the creation of the earth, and all men, knowing the great and marvelous works of the Lord from the creation of the world; having power given them to do all things b faith; having all the commandments from the beginning, and having been brought by his infinite goodness into tthis precious land of promise - behold, I say, if the day shall come that they will reject the Holy One of israel, the true Messiah, their Redeemer and thieir God, behold, the judgments of him that is just shall rest upon them." II Nephi 1:10
Geological
Every so often our congregation, located in the super flat former rice fields of Katy, Texas, sings a hymn where the words to the first verse are:
| "Firm as the mountains around us,
Stalwart and brave we stand
On the rock our fathers planted
For us in this goodly land-
The rock of honor and virtue,
Of faith in the living God.
They raised his banner triumphant-
Over the desert sod."3.137 |
As a geologist, I have always seen the topographical contradiction. Yet I am quick to point out to friends the fact some of the largest mountains in the world surround our church under the clay gumbo making up the Katy prairie. These mountains are Gulf Coast salt domes, many of which have elevation changes of 25,000+ feet (7,500+ meters). By comparison, Mount Everest is 29,035 feet tall (8,850 meters). The issue for us mere mortals is we can not look out our back window and see these massive salt domes "around us." Rather, we use remote imaging tools like reflection seismology to see these giant mountains (see Figure 44). With 3-D seismic and interactive workstation technologies, we can nicely "see" the tops of these salt domes (see Figure 45).
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paradoxes
