Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.

• Romans 1:18-20

Boilerplate

I’m Harold Dykstra.  I’m retired, but I go to food bank distributions all over Tracy and talk to people that need someone who will listen to their story.  My time is well spent.  A police lieutenant suggested that I write down the conversations that I had with an angel.  I did not know she was an angel at the time.  The angel, for a little over a year, indwelled a life-sized posable action figure my children bought me, so that I would not be perceived as travelling alone.  And in a way, she was training me for what I do while talking to the needy.  She probed my heart to find out what I believed and how I express love for others.  She changed my life.  Since she was a doll that had come to life, we came up with the term ‘other living.’  She was not a human, an animal, or even a plant, but she was definitely living, and very vibrant.  Oh, excuse me, angels have no gender, but the angel indwelled a doll named Bountiful Babs.  After seeing the angel in that form for over a year, I cannot see her in my mind in any other form.

This Week’s Question

In the last episode, Babs learned that humans are saved by Grace through faith.  Really, she looked through some of the lists of names and never found Babs or Harold, so since our family line is not there, then how?  But that did not address the fact that she is ‘other living.’

But after I made a sales call at a customer in Kennewick, Washington, it would be a while before I had a sales call in Casper, Wyoming.  So, I took Babs to Coeur d’Alene, Idaho.  We then went through Yellowstone National Park and Grand Tetons National Park.

While in Yellowstone, we were awaiting the Old faithful Geyser eruption, and she said, “How can anyone see all this beauty and then deny that there is a God?  This could not all happen by mere chance.  This is far too awesome.  There are mountains, waterfalls, geysers, hot pools, mud pots and then pastures where the animals graze.  There are so many animals, large and small.  All right here.”

I said, “But in Romans 1, God’s wrath burns against us because our wickedness tries to suppress the truth.”

Babs asked, “Okay, then, how did Yellowstone Park get the way that it is without God?”

I joked, “Ulysses S. Grant signed the bill that made Yellowstone a Park in 1872.”  It looked like Old Faithful was erupting from Babs’ ears, so I got serious.  “There were some pseudo scientists in the 1800s, both named Charles, but do not put all the blame on them.  If the world was not eager to accept a theory and then call it fact without any evidence, there could have been many others ready to publish.  Charles Lyell was a lawyer who attended Geology Society’s meetings.  He published a book that within his writings, he claimed the reason for doing so.  He wanted to create a theory that freed science from the trap of the biblical narrative.  He proposed that to take mud and turn it into rock takes intense pressure for millions of years.  He had no proof, but he published.  The result is that Geology texts ever since quote a text which quotes a text which eventually quotes Lyell’s book.  A lot of words in print, but no proof.  Then Charles Darwin became bored with school, especially the scientific method.  He got aboard the HMS Beagle as a gentleman, a naturalist.  He may have at least studied naturalism, but he studied extracurricular activities a lot more, never completing his studies.  He had read Lyell’s book and wanted the same thing for biology.”

“One of Darwin’s key theories is natural selection.  He came very close to inventing is own god, calling it Nature, who makes the determination of how creatures will evolve, under the rule of the survival of the fittest.  Now in all that, what do you see?”

Babs said, “It sounded like a couple of unbelievers who were picking at straws to do exactly what Romans 1 was making God intensely angry.  Their wickedness was suppressing the truth.”

I nodded, “Yes, Babs, but unbelievers were grasping at any straw they could, and these two Charlies had made persuading arguments, full of holes, but at the progression of science at that time, there were holes in any theory.  But once unbelievers grab onto something, they do not let go.  Have you heard of the scientist who discovered viable soft tissue, containing blood, in dinosaur bones?”

Babs shrugged, “No, tell me.”

I smiled, “She said that if you made a slide of human blood, you could come back and the sample would be degraded beyond recognition in a few days, but here is soft tissue with blood in a dinosaur fossil that is millions of years old.  Do you see?  Faced with evidence that disproves the theory she works under, she could not let go of a disproved theory in favor of something that might point toward her theory being wrong and the Bible being correct.  This is not a science argument.  It is a worldview argument.  Or it is God’s Holy Word against scientists who deny the evidence that is now being dug up with instrumentation that can prove them wrong.”

Babs asked, “But what of these scientists that are indoctrinated into incorrect theories?”

I answered, “Paul goes on in Romans to state that God’s invisible qualities were His eternal power and His divine nature, not Nature as a force unto itself without design.  And those qualities were clearly seen.  Thus, they will not have an excuse.”

Babs scrunched her nose, “But you are an engineer.  You are a scientist.  Does that make you against God’s Will?”

I laughed, “When I went to school, my professors said that if I could not prove what I said by lab experiment, it was not science.  Thus, Creation and Evolution are both belief systems and need to be treated as such.  In calculating what a customer needs to do a job within a mill, the company I work for uses known and proven science to do it.  We do not need to hope that a Big Bang will come along for our design to work.  We know our design will work.  No wild unproven theories.  No hopeful guesswork.  And thinking of hopeful guesswork, it’s about time.”

And at that moment, Old Faithful spewed hot water high into the air.

I suggested to Babs, “Let’s get us something to eat.  Then we can go to the Lodge for the night.  Then, we’ll go south to the Grand Tetons tomorrow and onto my sales call.  Then we’ll cross over into Utah for more sales calls.  Our mini vacation has almost come to a close, but I agree with you Babs.  You look at all this and I see nothing but God’s very inventive handiwork.  It pains me to see all these people who believe the lies and think this happened over millions of years, all by chance.  I like God’s plan.  That plan gives us purpose.”

Babs said, “And our purpose is to see all this and glorify God for creating it.”

“Well said, my travel buddy.”

Credits

All these conversations remind me of my conversations with my wife.  We would talk about anything and everything.  And most of the time, it sounded like a discussion in a Sunday school class.

My wife and I went to Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons a couple of times.  The photo was at Yellowstone in 1975, near the falls, I think, but the focus of my camera was on something I thought equally beautiful.  You can go to Yellowstone every few years and a few things have changed, not by evolution, but by the tectonic plates moving, revealing new gaps to the surface.  In one case, my wife and I had marveled at a beautiful emerald green hot pool, a small one but gorgeous.  We returned to find a brown mud pit there.  No more clear water and no longer green.  A ranger saw the puzzled looks on our faces and explained that the transformation had occurred a couple of years before we returned, and a lot of return visitors became confused by that change just as we had been confused.

For information on scientific discoveries that refute Evolution, and point toward the biblical narrative, you can find episodes of Origins on Youtube from the Cornerstone Television Network.

As each episode is completed, the host says, “We know what the Bible says is true and the proof is all around you.”

But the Bible is also true, the wickedness of mankind will do what they can to suppress the truth, especially when that wickedness manifests itself in not believing in God.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.