>>I think Hayward's book is tremendous, and I said so in a fairly long review
published in March, 1987, in our faculty quarterly, Pro Rege. As I indicate
above, I have questions about the *fiat* theory. But I stand by the last
sentence of my review: "It is quite possible that years from now we will look
back and realize that this was a landmark book, one that changed the
debate."<<
I want to add a personal note to this endorsement. For years I struggled to
understand how the geologic data I worked with everyday could be fit into a
Biblical perspective. I would listen to ICR, have discussions with some of
their graduates that I had hired, but no one could give me a model which
allowed me to unite into one cloth what I believed on Sunday and what I was
forced to believe by the data Monday through Friday. Recently I took a poll
of my ICR graduate friends who have worked in the oil industry. I asked them
one question.
"From your oil industry experience, did any fact that you were taught at
ICR, which challenged current geological thinking, turn out in the long run
to be true? ,"
That is a very simple question. One man who works for Shell grew real silent
on the phone, sighed and softly said 'No!' A very close friend that I had
hired at Arco, after hearing the question, exclaimed, "Wait a minute. There
has to be one!" But he could not name one. I can not name one. No one else
could either. One man I could not reach, to ask that question, had a crisis
of faith about two years after coming into the oil industry. I do not know
what his spiritual state is now but he was in bad shape the last time I
talked to him.
When I could no longer put off my own crisis of faith, when I was on the very
verge of becoming an atheist, it was Alan Hayward's wonderful Days of
Proclamation view which pulled me back from the edge. This view had the power
to unite the data with the Scripture. Without that I would now be an
atheist. There is much in the book I agree with and much I disagree with but
his book was very important in keeping me in the faith. While his book may
not have changed the debate totally yet, it did change my life.
glenn