Hydroplate University

Raised in an unbelieving home, Pastor Kevin Lea came to faith as a young sailor in the U.S. nuclear navy during the “Jesus Movement” of the 1970’s. Kevin relates, “At once, Jesus began changing my life, replacing an attitude of sin with a desire to serve the God who saved me.  I also felt a calling to spread the gospel of salvation as far and wide as I could.”  He immediately fell in love with studying the Bible, embracing the Scriptures as God’s true revelation and source of all that we need to live in harmony with our Creator.

After eight and a half years in the Navy and a term in Bible college, Kevin went to work in the Nuclear Engineering Department of Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Bremerton, Washington, teaching naval reactor plant design and operations to engineers. Because of his demonstrated ability to “think outside the box,” he was assigned to a nuclear process improvement task force with a commission to help solve nuclear overhaul schedule delays and cost overruns. The improvements he developed saved the Navy an estimated $2 million per year and led to his receiving the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard Professional/Technical Employee of the Year award in 1994. While at the Shipyard, Kevin completed college courses in engineering, math, and general / orbital physics. In 1993, Kevin was ordained as pastor and started a church plant in Port Orchard, resigning from the Shipyard in 1995 to serve full-time as pastor until his retirement in April 2026.

From the moment of his conversion, Kevin was convinced that the Bible was true. However, he struggled for many years to understand how the entire earth could be covered with water as Genesis states. That is, until a friend introduced him in 1990 to Dr. Walt Brown’s Hydroplate Theory (HPT), In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and Flood, then in its Fifth Edition. Excited to discover that the HPT answered so many of his questions, Kevin reached out to Dr. Brown, beginning a friendship and professional relationship that lasted until Dr. Brown’s passing in 2025. With the 2026 publication of the Ninth Edition of In the Beginning, Kevin felt the Lord’s leading to devote full-time to teaching the only biblically-consistent and scientifically-viable theory for the global flood. As we explore the HPT, chapter-by-chapter, Kevin will show how the Bible is completely reliable in every regard, address the false interpretations of scientific evidence that has crept into the church, and expose the lies of the evolutionary model.

Kevin Lea and Juanita, his wife of 50 years, live in Belfair, Washington. They have two grown sons, six grandchildren, and six great-grandchildren.

Upon graduating from high school, Bill left his home in southern California to pursue a flying career at the U.S. Air Force Academy, graduating in 1980 with a Bachelor’s Degree in Engineering Mechanics and a commission to attend undergraduate pilot training (UPT) at Laughlin AFB in Del Rio, TX. He graduated from UPT a year later with an assignment to fly the F-16.

While on active duty, Bill flew the F-16 and the T-38 for 9-½ years, also completing the Flight Safety Officer Course at the University of Southern California’s Institute of Safety and Systems Management during this time.He was the lead investigating officer in an investigation to determine the causes of a F-16 crash and to recommend changes to existing inspection procedures to prevent recurrence. In 1989 he separated from the active-duty Air Force, but continued his flying career at a major airline and with the Minnesota Air National Guard (MANG). He retired from the military in 2001 and from the commercial airline in 2022.

After becoming a Christian 1987, Bill soon came to understand that all the Bible says about creation and the flood is true. He then began worshipping God for the first time in his life by marveling at His power and creative genius as revealed through scientific discoveries.

Sharing the good news of salvation through Jesus Christ became very important to Bill, and he found that topics on science and the Bible, especially the Genesis Flood, often provided the opportunity to open those discussions. Being able to explain how the flood rapidly produced fossils and sedimentary layers was critical in trying to break through the strongholds of billions of years of evolution. In those early years, however, the only creationist explanation for the global flood he knew of was the Canopy Theory, a theory which he now views as woefully inadequate.

In the early 1990s, however, his wife Lori attended one of Dr. Walt Brown’s creation seminars in Duluth, MN one week while Bill was out of town for work. She purchased the Fifth Edition of “In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood” (ITB), and when he got home, Bill devoured the book. It all made so much sense, explaining even many of the earth’s features he saw from his cockpit. He called Walt with some questions, thus beginning a 30-plus year relationship during which Bill had many phone conversations with Walt about various aspects of the Hydroplate Theory (HPT), visited Walt and his wife Peggy in their home in Phoenix, helped edit subsequent editions of ITB, and organized a seminar and debate between Dr. Brown and a professor at the University of Minnesota Duluth. (You can view this debate between Dr. Walt Brown and Dr. James Fetzer below.) Bill has used the HPT in witnessing to his personal and professional colleagues and has taught on creation topics at multiple churches.

Bill and Lori, his wife of 44 years, live in Spearfish, South Dakota. They have two grown children and two grandchildren.

Walt Brown received a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he was a National Science Foundation Fellow. He has taught college courses in physics, mathematics, and computer science. Brown is a retired Air Force full colonel, West Point graduate, and former Army Ranger and paratrooper. Assignments during his 21 years of military service included: Director of Benét Laboratories (a major research, development, and engineering facility); tenured associate professor at the U.S. Air Force Academy; and Chief of Science and Technology Studies at the Air War College. For much of his life Walt Brown was an evolutionist, but after years of study, he became convinced of the scientific validity of creation and a global flood. Since retiring from the military, Dr. Brown has been the Director of the Center for Scientific Creation and has worked full time in research, writing, and teaching on creation and the flood.