As people become Christians

Dario A Giraldo (giraldo@wln.com)
Thu, 12 Jun 1997 22:52:27 -0700

For a breath of fresh air, here is an excerpt for the current edition (June
16, 1997) of US News & World Report magazine. The article begins with
having a caption in the cover with the words "God's Geophisics".

Read it all ye old earthers/universers and Noah flood doubters. This
brother gets national exposure and has the academia credentials (EE from
Princeton and PhD in Geophisics from UCLA). To top it off he works at Los
Alamos Nat'l Lab of the US Dept. of Energy. So he can't be label an
ignorant, unlearned and unskilled Christian as some here in this forum seem
to think of us who literally believe The Bible and see the world in black
and white.

Remembering than in latter days the redeemed will overcome the acussers of
the brethren by the word of their testimony (among other things).

Page 56...
"Fifty three years old and 6 feet tall,
he grew up on a farm near Lubbock, Texas,
the eldest of four children. His father
was a professor of animal nutrition at
Texas Tech, and his family was, as he
tells it, essentially agnostic...

But that changed as he moved deeper into
Christianity, which brought him to
the "conviction ... that indeed there had
been a major catastrophe in the Earth's
past that accounts for a large fraction of
the geological features we observe at the
Earth's surface today:'

Baumgardner believes that around
6,000 years ago, when "God saw that the
wickedness of man was great in the Earth"
(Genesis 6:5), he caused an enormous
blob of hot mantle material to come rush-
ing up at incredible velocity through the
underwater midocean ridges. The materi-
al ballooned, displacing a tidal wave of sea
water over the continents. This, Baum-
gardner says, was the flood on which
Noah sailed, the water covering the moun-
tains and destroying "every living sub-
stance ... which was upon the face of the
ground, both man, and cattle:' Then, after
150 days (Genesis 7:24), the bubble re-
treated with equal speed into the Earth,
and the continents began re-emerging
above the water, sending the runoff back
to the oceans at around 100 miles an hour.
(A very fast river with a huge erosion ca-
pacity runs at only about 10 miles an
hour.) Baumgardner says that this runoff
would have been sufficient to create the
Grand Canyon and other massive geologic
features and to deposit the various sedi-
mentary layers in about one week.

The science Baumgardner uses to ac-
count for these extraordinary happenings
is a sort of niche physics called runaway
subduction. A theory proposed in the
1960s under another name by a physicist
at General Electric, runaway subduction
posits that the potential energy in the cold,
heavy crust of the Earth is like the poten-
tial energy in a rock held above the
ground. Drop the rock, and its potential
energy is turned by gravity into kinetic en-
ergy, and into heat when it hits the
ground. As gravity pulls the rock, so it
pulls the gigantic, heavy plates of ocean
floor under the continents into the hot-
ter, lighter mantle, which is silicate rock..."

On the other comments of atheists, long time ago I learned that the best
approach with them is to pray for them (that is if one truly cares) and let
God deal with them.

Carl Sagan already met the God of Abraham he didn't believe in and the
Jesus he rejected. Just like every other human will. The only detail is
that finding this little bit of news after leaving earth is too late and it
is a situation that is irreversible. But that is a decision that each
human will make and will win or lose by the way he/she chooses.

Too many souls are hungry and searching that are ready to receive Christ
to waste time with individuals whose only purpose is just like Elymas with
Paul. Besides The Lord sent His followers to be witness and to shake the
dust off their sandals when they aren't welcomed and go on. We aren't soul
winners or converters, that is the task of The Holy Spririt.

When I'll meet Jesus face to face I'll give account of my actions. He
clearly spoke and wrote against engaging in endless and pointless
discussions of 'so called science'. What's going to be my answer when He
asks why I engaged in this activity ad nauseaum ?

One thing is to exchange ideas and another to go on and on and on with the
same concepts back and forth without any clearly defined goal or objective
? Will anybody really think than a fellow who stops believing in God
because Genesis doesn't rime with his understanding of how it all came into
existence will change because an extra e-mail ?

My belief in God is based on a daily relationship with Him. The first 12
chapters of Genesis aren't a doctoral paper on creation but a brief
explanation of certain events. How it all began is a mystery and whether
you are labeled an evolutionist, Darwinist, OEC or YEC doen't bring you any
closer to solving the puzzle.

As someone who was purchased by Christ and who no longer lives for me but
for Him, I must give account of my time and how it is being used.

Sincerely,

Dario Giraldo
Lacey, Washington (The other one, the beautiful)