Want a New Ocean? Wait a Few Minutes
A satellite image of the Horn of Africa.
Usually geological time means eons of waiting around. Like me returning phone calls. Not so in the Afar Triangle in eastern Africa, where two major tectonic plates border each other. As the African and Arabian plates drift apart, they are creating a new ocean… while you wait. From a Spiegel Online article:
"Geologist Dereje Ayalew and his colleagues from Addis Ababa University were amazed -- and frightened. They had only just stepped out of their helicopter onto the desert plains of central Ethiopia when the ground began to shake under their feet. The pilot shouted for the scientists to get back to the helicopter. And then it happened: the Earth split open. Crevices began racing toward the researchers like a zipper opening up. After a few seconds, the ground stopped moving, and after they had recovered from their shock, Ayalew and his colleagues realized they had just witnessed history. For the first time ever, human beings were able to witness the first stages in the birth of an ocean."
And it's continuing to happen. Locals report crevices opening up and super hot fumes spewing out of some of them. Très cool.
Afar Triangle:Depression
The Afar Triangle is at the juncture of three rift valleys: the Red Sea, Aden, and African rift cracks in the earth’s crust. This juncture is called a “triple point” in geological jargon.
These three large pieces of the earth’s crust (Identified as the African, Arabian, and Somalian Plates) are slowly spreading apart from one another and, in the wake of their movement, are leaving behind a sinking depression in the crust of the earth, a depression identified as the Afar Triangle or Depression.
The Afar Depression has not always existed. At one time it was merely a structural weakness in the crust of the earth where converging intersections of faults were made at angles which approached the perpendicular.
But a tremendous shaking and upheaval in the earth’s crust at these intersections caused the formation of an active triple point depression at their juncture, and the spreading, particularly northward toward Israel, has been the most active on the Red Sea floor.
The geological history of this rift structure, in chronological sequence, is as follows: (1) First the Gulf of Aden begin to rip apart, (2) Then the African Rift began to spread, (3) Then the Red Sea Floor began to actively spread, (4) Then the Gulf of Suez torn apart from the Sinai, and finally, (5) The Gulf of Aqabah (Eilat) torn away from the Arabian Plate.
The next section that will rip apart is the land of Israel from Eilat to the intersection of the Plain of Jezreel with the Jordan River Valley, a distance of some 1600 furlongs (185 miles).
At the present time there exists a pattern of normal faults in the Jerusalem area similar to those that led to the initial formation of the Afar Depression.
I believe that, when God rips open the Arabah fault northward for 185 miles, the associated shaking and upheaval in the earth’s crust will produce a small Afar like depression on the eastern lee of the Mount of Olives. For want of a better name, I refer to it as the Zechariah Triangle or Depression.
For a full exposition of this ripping of the Jordan River Valley go to
http://www.tribulationperiod.com/.
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