From Tehom to Sheol
When Noah was six hundred years old, on the seventeenth day of the second month all the outlets of the vast body of water beneath the earth burst open, all the floodgates of the sky were opened, and rain fell on the earth for forty days and nights.
(Genesis 7:11-12) Good News Translation
Amos tells us that the great deep was devoured by fire, and that’s a conclusion which we can deduce from our spherical hollow Earth model based around a gravitational singularity.
We’ve made the point more than once that it’s necessary to know the end from the beginning, and the beginning from the end. It’s not possible to deduce what the original Earth looked like from physical evidence alone, but our model of the original Earth has to be able to accommodate changes through natural processes to become the planet that we live on today.
We all have the same evidence. Our choice of paradigm determines what we think it’s evidence of.
– Matty’s Razor
The process by which the Earth has changed over time is called history. Humans have lived on the Earth throughout this time. Humans survived all of the catastrophes which have changed the Earth, otherwise no one would be here today.
At the end of the third day the Earth was a hollow sphere. The majority of the open space inside it was filled with water. It’s referred to as the great deep which is a translation of the Hebrew word tehom.
The present day Earth is considerably smaller and the open space inside it isn’t filled with water. The area between the lower mantle and the surface of hell is referred to as a great gulf and it is part of sheol, the underworld realm of the dead. At some point the great deep became a great gulf. Tehom became sheol. We can identify the event when this occurred as Noah’s flood, and we can deduce that the outlets of the vast body of water beneath the earth, the fountains of the great deep, were the key to the transition.
The ultimate cause of this catastrophe was the working out of God’s will, but a direct causal factor was the expansion of hell. All aspects of the tehom/sheol transition will be developed in detail in the appropriate sections of this devotional.
The outlets of the water beneath the earth and the floodgates of the sky were closed. The rain stopped.
(Genesis 8:2) Good News Translation
Did God know that the Earth would have to be flooded? On one hand, of course He did, He’s God. But were the fountains of the great deep created for the purpose of flooding the Earth? That has a rather sinister edge to it.
We take the position that God made creation to be the best that it could be. He gave it every opportunity to succeed that He could give it. The flood was a tragic event which resulted from the creation falling into sin. There’s a causal chain of events from the fall of man to the moment at which the fountains of the great deep burst open which we’ll discuss in the devotional for the month of August. However, we have to remember the deep regret which God felt at having created mankind, and what he justifiably decided had to be done about it:
Faith is believing in something that you can’t see, because of evidence.
– Faith, definition
When the Lord saw how wicked everyone on earth was and how evil their thoughts were all the time, he was sorry that he had ever made them and put them on the earth. He was so filled with regret that he said, “I will wipe out these people I have created, and also the animals and the birds, because I am sorry that I made any of them.” But the Lord was pleased with Noah.
(Genesis 6:5-8) Good News Translation
Using logic we can explain the two possible ways to resolve this conundrum:
- IF God saw the wickedness of man,
- AND decided to take action,
- THEN the fountains of the great deep were established either:
- as a hedge against this outcome or,
- they existed for an unrelated reason.
Understanding WHY God made creation allows us to realize that hell is the default outcome of a physical process which has been established to separate light from darkness, good from evil. God has personally intervened in the history of humanity, in the person of Jesus Christ, to make his appeal to us that we choose light instead of darkness. He made the way for us to be able to avoid the default outcome. We can use logic to determine which of the two options above are compatible with this premise:
- IF this premise is correct, that the fountains of the great deep weren’t created for the purpose of destroying the Earth with a flood,
- AND it’s consistent with the broad narrative of scripture,
- THEN there’s another reason for their existence.
In Matty’s Paradigm the purpose of the fountains of the great deep was to allow the waters of the deep to drain into the interior of the Earth as the dry land was spread out on the third day. The fountains of the great deep have a purpose and function which predates the fall of man. God isn’t being mean.
So here’s the thing: IF our premise is correct then there must be scriptural support for the tehom/sheol transition when the waters of the great deep were driven off and the open space becomes known as a great gulf. Guess what? There is.
Salvation
- Call upon the name of Jesus Christ,
- believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead,
- confess your sin.
I had another vision from the Sovereign Lord. In it I saw him preparing to punish his people with fire. The fire burned up the great ocean under the earth and started to burn up the land.
(Amos 7:4) Good News Translation
Our model allows us to deduce the necessity of a major transition in the physical characteristics of the Earth, in this case the boiling off of the great deep so that the great gulf between core and mantle becomes open space. This is a logical conclusion but it’s a profound development which, if it’s real, ought to be in scripture. Guess what? It is.
Once again we find that because our model is theoretically and physically sound, which is to say it’s based on the Word of God and it accounts for all physical evidence. This is an application of Hypothesis 22.
From Tehom to Sheol – Navigation
| Section | Title | Scripture |
| 1 | From Tehom to Sheol | Genesis 7:11-12 |
| Tehom | Psalms 71:20 | |
| Tehom became Sheol | Amos 7:4 | |
| Tehom was Wet. Sheol is Dry | Luke 16:23, 26 | |
| Salvation | Romans 10:9-10 |
Read through the Bible in a year
| Reading plan | March 25 | |
| Linear | 2 Samuel 10-12 | |
| Chronological | Joshua 9-11 |
Matty's Paradigm 