Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.  Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

• Genesis 1:1-2

The Spirit and the bride say, “Come!” And let the one who hears say, “Come!” Let the one who is thirsty come; and let the one who wishes take the free gift of the water of life.

• Revelation 22:17

“There is one point on which scientists and creationists agree: that there once was no universe even remotely comparable to the one in which we now live, but that it was created at a finite time and place.  The scientific community has an obligation to search for the beginning of the physical universe, using all the tools they think will assist in that search.  In the last forty to fifty years, considerable work has been done to advance that search and to answer some of the other mysteries still unresolved. New bodies of work have been advanced to address these problems; of these, the questions of the ‘primeval atom,’ dark matter, dark energy, and the nature of the Higgs boson are paramount.  The Spirit will forever remain a mystery to scientific enquiry.  Scientists have no way to deal with things that aren’t related to atoms, nor can they explain the source of the power or energy needed to produce the universe.”

• Ruffin I. Rackley, God’s Physical Record of Creation

As for the Scriptures, these are the first and last mentions of the word “Spirit” in the Bible (NIV).  The Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit, is mentioned in the second verse, hovering over creation before there was any life there, and there are four verses after the Spirit is last mentioned in Revelation.

And as my uncle, if you noticed the same last name, mentions in his book, a very short book and easy to read, the scientific community has a problem explaining anything dealing with the Spirit.  You cannot hook up a meter and measure how much Spirit is in the room.  My uncle mentions later in the book that science has “discovered” the Big Bang, or at least postulated it, but they have no answer for how it happened, and they refuse to accept a “why.”

You see, if there was no Creator, then the laws of chemistry and physics must apply.  Miracles, then, could never happen.  Matter (those physical building blocks of everything) cannot be created or destroyed.  But the Big Bang says that happened.  My uncle explains in common language how it happened, to a point.  Also, scientists say that energy cannot be created or destroyed.

You say, “I have a log on the fire.  When it burns, the log is destroyed and the fire from the log produces heat that was not there before.”

But let’s look at that.  Combustion (fire) consumes fuel to produce heat, but not really.  The heat is contained in the fuel.  No one would deny that the fuel contains the heat when we pump fuel into our automobiles, but the same is true about that log.  To grow the tree that once contained that log on the fire, a lot of energy was used.  Carbon from carbon dioxide and hydrogen from water combine into complex hydrocarbon strings that form each individual fiber in the tree.  When an ignition source and oxygen are present, the log can burn.  But the matter is not destroyed.  Carbon dioxide and water vapor are created from the oxygen and the wood fiber combining.  The heat that is released is the available heat that the log already had within it, contained in the hot carbon dioxide and water vapor.  There will be a little ash left over also.  The Bible speaks of from “dust to dust” as it pertains to humans, but the same is true about almost anything, or rust to rust, etc.

So, we can change the form of the energy and we can change the form of the matter.  We cannot create or destroy the matter or energy.  But the Big Bang took trillions of trillions of trillions of bits of matter and energy to create the universe.

Thus, natural science falls apart in saying that something came from nothing, for by the rules that scientists say cannot be violated, it is impossible to do that.

I do not agree with everything that my uncle said.  I am a scientist who is also a creationist.  While in his book he draws a deep line in the sand between the two, he does mention that some creationists are not totally blind to science.  Forgive him.  He is a lifelong geologist, and quite an accomplished member of the profession.

But there are a lot of scientists within the past twenty years who are discovering that deep time (millions of years) and evolution as a means to describe the origins of life are not even scientific, a disproved theory at best.

But where does that leave my uncle’s book?  There are millions of people who have been taught evolution and millions of years as fact.  The secular media pound that concept daily.  For those who cannot accept a seven-day creation, six days and a day of rest, the book is an excellent book on how an almighty sovereign God first created matter and energy.  Then God used His sovereignty over what was created to expand that out into a universe, still adding to creation even today.  My uncle simply does not mention any “how” when it comes to the creation of life and various plant and animal species (being a rock guy), but he does mention that God breathed His likeness into man.

It is a bridge between the modern idea of the origin of all things and the biblical record, a means to answer that question of where the energy and matter came from without fighting over how long it took.  Then, as more evidence emerges, they might realize that God could have really done it in six days, but we can save that for future articles.

If you want to discover what scientists jokingly call the “God” particle due to how hard it is to find it, otherwise known as the Higgs’ Boson, my uncle explains it in layman’s terms. The book is fascinating, starting with quarks and the Higgs’ Boson and ending with an ever-expanding universe, our need for a Savior, and the path forward.

The book is now available on Amazon.  I preordered the book, and my copy is scheduled to arrive in a week’s time.  How did I quote from it already?  My uncle sent me an advanced copy.  My wife and I are praying over who gets the extra copy, the one not signed by the author.

I believe that God could have created everything in six days.  There are a few questions that I still have about that, but those can be resolved by faith.  And the saving faith, as my uncle mentions in the book, is the faith that Jesus came to earth; He died for our sins; and that if we believe and trust in Him, we will be saved.  The sovereign God who created the heavens and the earth is still sovereign.  God loves you.  God is still expanding the universe, but He takes the time to count every hair on your head.  He has infinite capacity in doing both at the same time.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.