Physics: Photos from the Red Planet: Fascination with Mars

From Koinonia House

Technical > Physics > Fascination With Mars

This past April all sorts of real scientists, as well as hobbyists and amateurs around the world, were treated to the first NASA images of the Cydonia region of Mars since 1976. This time NASA loaded the raw data on web pages which were mirrored around the world as soon as the Mars Global Surveyor orbiting camera had relayed the stored data to earth. Within a few hours, processed and refined images were also posted for all the world to see and to study.

It is the Cydonia region of Mars where, in 1976, much-published images of a humanoid face, pyramidal mountains and what looked like a “city” and a “fort” had been seen.

I was first involved in studying these anomalous Viking images back in 1983 when my company, SRI International, sponsored a computer conference of scientists to study all the available data from a cross-disciplinary point of view. One of our concerns was that NASA had dismissed the Face as obviously just a trick of shadows and lighting. It seemed clear to us that NASA did not (and we did not) have enough actual data to take such a dogmatic position. Suppose these strange pictures were telling us about some ancient civilization on Mars? It was a far-out idea, but who could be certain? (See “Mars the Mysterious,” Personal UPDATE 8/97, pp. 11-14.)

There has certainly been a lot of wild speculation about the Face on Mars in the past 22 years! But there has also been much legitimate review of the data and many quality journal articles published by reputable scientists.

In 1992 Professor Stan McDaniel of Sonoma State University in California organized a special committee of scientists which made a strong case for the possibility that the anomalies on Mars might not be natural.¹

So a great flurry of e-mail crossed my desk just after the release of the new Cydonia images. At first, many of my colleagues who were committed to the belief that the artifacts were non-natural seemed very disappointed. Had NASA been right all along? However, a careful look at the new images (on the following pages) showed that there were still many unexplained symmetries at the site of the Face. Plus, triangular, rectangular, and repeating structures were still to be seen in Cydonia. Many strange things on Mars are surely natural without a doubt. Cellular features are very much like ice-wedge polygons found in frozen Arctic soils. But are some of the strange features on Mars still bearing muted evidence that intelligent beings once lived there?

To me, Mars is more fascinating than ever, and I myself still think some of the strange features on Mars may be artificial. We may have to wait for actual “ground-truth”-information at some future date-to be certain about this.

Our sister planet has lost its atmosphere in the past. The water from once-flowing streams, and perhaps even seas, has been lost to space or is frozen in the ground. Mars has evidently suffered some great catastrophe in its past. (See “Exploding Planets and Ancient Catastrophes,” Personal UPDATE, 5/97, pp. 8-13.) But Venus is geologically fascinating also, and the outer planets and their moons are in the news as well.

Scientific curiosity – a desire to know and understand the universe in which we live – is a God-given characteristic in mankind. The accumulation and systemization of knowledge is not forbidden to man by our Creator, rather it is encouraged – except in the area of the occult, which is off limits to us. Psalm 115:15 says, “The heavens are the LORD’s heavens, but the earth he has given to the sons of men.” To some this seems to suggest that we are presently limited in what we can learn about our planetary neighbors and the universe as a whole.

The limitations are probably practical ones, including the enormous cost of space exploration, the new technology required, and the vast distances to be reached. We are indeed in an era of rapidly exploding knowledge about just about everything, but we are also very near to the end of the age. Our civilization will probably come to a crashing collapse from multiple causes long before we can get much farther into space.

The story of the Bible focuses on the redemption of a lost race on earth. It is on this one, unique planet that God placed one man and one woman. They bore the Creator’s likeness and His very image. It is on our planet that evil came into the human race through fallen angels who inhabit the spiritual realm of the created cosmos. Earth is a visited planet, because God Himself came here. Taking on the form of a man, the Son of God identified with our race, becoming one of us as a child born in Bethlehem. Yeshua was taught, trained and prepared until He took our sins upon Himself and died in our place on a cruel cross just outside the city walls of Jerusalem.

There is much more we wish the Bible had told us about creation – about the planets and outer space and the marvels of our world. But God’s self-disclosure of His Person in Christ and in the Bible is, in that sense, sparse. We wait for the rest of the story to be told to us.

And, surely, our generation is obsessed with the possibility of life on other planets. Today’s new scientific research seems to be driven more by yesterday’s science fiction than by a desire to tackle and solve the problems of overpopulation, the dangers of biological, chemical, and nuclear war, and the imminent danger of a last terrible world war in the Middle East.

Indeed, the Bible makes it very clear that our planet is to be visited again from outer space-very soon. When the Man, Jesus, who has been placed in charge of all of creation makes His return appearance, He will not show up in Cydonia on Mars but on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem. It is He and He alone who holds the future in His hands. It is He who will guide His followers into all the mysteries of creation and of life. Knowing Him personally, which he invites us to do, is surely the most important secret in the universe. It is Jesus who said:

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1. See The Case for the Face: Scientists Examine the Evidence for Alien Artifacts on Mars, Stanley V. McDaniel and Monica Rix Paxson, ed. 1998, Adventures Unlimited Press, One Adventure Place, Kempton, IL, 60946.

   Related Websites:

   http://cmex-www.arc.nasa.gov (Center for Mars Exploration. Includes links to most of the major Pathfinder and Global Surveyor sites.)

   http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/education/education_home.html (Educational and space image resources from National Space Science Data Center.)

   http://www.psrw.com/http://www.psrw.com/~markc/marshome.html (Face on Mars homepage from Mark Carlotto, also has copies of his referenced journal articles.)

   http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov (Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Planetary Photojournal-many beautiful images and extensive data from all of the planets.)

   http://barsoom.msss.com (Malin Space Science Systems Mars images. Global Surveyor images and analysis from the MGS Camera operator.)

   http://www.mcdanielreport.com (Stanley McDaniel discusses the science and politics of Cydonia.)

The Mysteries of the Planet Mars – Chuck Missler Is there life on the Planet Mars? Are there monuments on Mars? What about the mile-wide Face on Mars? Click for more information – Audio Cassette

Signs in the Heavens – Chuck MisslerWhat we know as the Signs of the Zodiac is known in Hebrew as the Mazzeroth. Click for more information – Audio Cassette

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Physics and the Bible: What Is Light?

From Koinonia House

Technical > Physics > What Is Light?

Physics and the Bible: What Is Light? by Lambert Dolphin Lambert Dolphin, Physicist Website

Human vision is utterly amazing in its ability to receive and process a wealth of information concerning levels of light intensity, colors, motion, and stereoscopic depth of field. However, as wonderful as our eyesight is, we are able to see only electromagnetic waves between 400 and 700 nanometers (4 to 7 x 10^-9 m) in wavelength.

Young Isaac Newton in 1666 used a prism to break visible white light  into the rainbow colors of the spectrum, giving impetus to the development of what is now the vast science of optics. Discovery of the wave nature of light soon led to the realization that our universe is permeated with electromagnetic waves ranging in wavelength over at least 16 orders of magnitude – from ultra low-frequency radio waves, which are tens of kilometers in wavelength, to cosmic rays with wave crests and troughs only a millionth of a millionth (10^-12 ) meter apart.

Just in our century, science has quickly extended the range of the eye for explorative purposes. Many different kinds of electronic sensing instruments now tell us vastly more about the cosmos than our eyes alone can tell us directly.

Light from the sun arrives at the top of the earth’s atmosphere at a power level of about one kilowatt per square meter. It is this heat and light from a modest star (surface temperature only 5500 degrees C), that all life processes on earth are ultimately driven. Without the sun’s constant energy input, our planet would quickly radiate away its latent heat and freeze us and everything else very solid in short order.

Heat and light from the sun are obvious, but we are unaware of cosmic rays penetrating our bodies at the rate of perhaps 10 per second. Nor do we realize that radio and television signals from a hundred stations fill our living rooms. Many of these “rays” pass through our bodies unimpeded. Light waves, radio waves, heat signals,  X-rays, and the like, are electromagnetic (EM) radiation – all forms of which can transmit energy and carry useful information even across vast reaches of “empty” space. The signal speed of EM waves ranges upwards to a maximum value which is the current speed of light, ~3 x 10⁸ meters/sec.

In this century has also come the realization that we can equally well describe light and other EM radiation as if it were corpuscular in nature. EM radiation is a result of moving electrical charges (currents), and all forms of EM radiation can be described mathematically as consisting of streaming photons. Each photon constituting a “particle” of light has an energy equal to Planck’s constant times the speed of light divided by the wavelength. (Photons are very small, yet the human eye is sufficiently sensitive that we can sometimes detect even a single light photon with dark-adapted eyes).

Whether one uses a wave model or a particle model for light is largely a matter of convenience for the physicist. The concept of “wave-particle duality” is well established by experimental evidence and the excellent models of Quantum Mechanics.

Gravitational forces seem to us to be powerful, because it is gravity which holds us to the earth’s surface and makes us work hard to lift and move things. But the force of gravity is actually some 42 orders of magnitude weaker (10^-42) than the electrical forces which generate light waves and radio waves!

Because of this huge difference in energy levels, we actually know little about gravity. For instance, many scientists have tacitly assumed that gravity signals, and the force of gravity between masses, are communicated (“mediated”) back and forth by streams of photons traveling at the velocity of light – some have assumed that gravity will be explained as arising from some type of EM wave. But as we saw in the March issue of Personal UPDATE, it is now more probable that gravitational forces are communicated by particles called gravitons, which are very much smaller than photons.¹

Furthermore, the speed of gravitons is apparently some ten orders of magnitude higher than the current speed of light. This raises the possibility of space travel throughout the entire known universe in very reasonable time periods. From energy considerations (in the universe considered as a whole entity) it now appears that the speed of light initially had the same high value as gravity still has, but the speed of light has decreased whereas the speed of gravity has not. [Ed. note: Many competent scientists disagree with the theory that the speed of light has decreased.]

A great frontier lies before us now in better understanding gravity. For example, we cannot as yet be certain whether the hypothesized gravity waves are transverse in nature (as are EM waves), or compressional (like sound waves).

Suffice it to say that energy and information can be transmitted across the universe by means others than ordinary photons. That is, energy and information transmission in the physical world is probably not always electromagnetic in nature.

(And this is not taking into account how prayer and spiritual forces travel between God, men and the angels – about which we know next to nothing.)

On the First Day of creation week, having brought into existence space, time and matter, the second creative act of God was (I believe) the creation of light. Light was spoken into existence by the Second Person of the godhead, Jesus, the Logos or Word of God:

And God said, ‘Let there be light’ and there was light.

I like to think of this second event in God’s work of creating everything as the making of a vast energy source. The Lord then incorporated potential and kinetic energy reservoirs in many forms into His universe as He constructed things during the six days of creation. These energy endowments would allow the universe to function indefinitely with built-in power supplies. (Before The Fall I think this energy supply also included means of replenishment of reserves to make up for dissipation and losses).

The statement “Let there be light” may mean (in my opinion) “Let there be energy of all wavelengths and in all forms.” I believe it was from these four working substances created on Day One-(1) space, (2) time, (3) matter and (4) energy-that God constructed (and filled) the universe we live in.²In His work as Creator, the Son of God was the “master craftsman” of Proverbs 8.

The activity of creation week involved many separate actions by all the Persons of the godhead, as can be seen by the numerous action verbs in Chapter One which refer to God.

Many good people will probably not agree with my own interpretation of the opening verses of Genesis – so I won’t be dogmatic about the model I have just suggested. Dozens of books and hundreds of scholarly theological papers have disputed exactly how to interpret these opening verses of Holy Writ and I don’t claim to have the final word by any means. The important point is that light, as we know it and understand it in the physical world, was created by God on the First Day of creation.

The Bible says that “God is Light” and this is not the same as saying “Light is God.” If we claimed that the Light shining forth on Day One of creation week was simply God Himself we would have major problems – because God is a Spirit and He does not directly emit protons or waves! Such a hypothesis as saying that the Light of Day One came from God Himself puts us on the fast road to pantheism, which we must refute. The God of the Bible is separate from, and transcends, His creation.

Because God is Light, a more profound problem appears when we consider other passages in the Bible which speak figuratively of light, and of spiritual light. Writing to Timothy, Paul the Apostle tells that God, “alone has immortality, [and that He] dwells in unapproachable light, whom no man has seen or can see.” (1 Tim 6:16). Moses, who enjoyed a very intimate relationship with God, on one occasion asked God that He might see Him as he was:

And Moses said, “Please, show me Your glory.”

Then God said, “I will make all My goodness pass before you, and I will proclaim the name of the LORD before you. I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.”

But God said, “You cannot see My face; for no man shall see Me, and live.” And the LORD said, “Here is a place by Me, and you shall stand on the rock. So it shall be, while My glory passes by, that I will put you in the cleft of the rock, and will cover you with My hand while I pass by. Then I will take away My hand, and you shall see My back; but My face shall not be seen.” (Exodus 33:18-23)

The whole point about God’s being Light is that the splendor and radiance of His immediate presence is so intense it must be veiled in clouds of thick darkness. Otherwise mere mortals would be burned to a crisp if they came into the unveiled presence of His effulgent power.

Spiritual realities are more permanent and more substantial than the shadows they cast into our physical world. Jesus is likened to the rising Day Star and called by Malachi the “Sun of Righteousness” – symbols which suggest to us that His true splendor is greater than that of any star or any known source of light and power in our physical world.

Revelation describes the face of Jesus as shining like the sun in full strength (Rev 1:16).

Light is a common symbol in the Bible for truth as opposed to ignorance and error. “Enlightenment” means true understanding and comprehension in the inner man. It was Jesus who declared, to the consternation of his enemies, “I am the light of the world. He who follows Me shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life.” (John 8:12).

So in some way there is a connection in Scripture between spiritual light and life itself! The New Testament furthermore insists that the man Christ Jesus is the exact visible expression of God the invisible. It is by knowing Jesus that we who once were “sons of darkness” become “sons of light.” Unlike Moses we are invited to look full into the face of Jesus:

…we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, all this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit. (2 Cor 3:18)

God, were His Light unveiled, would fill and flood the entire universe with His presence to such a degree that there could be no ordinary night time anywhere. Therefore the spiritual world where He dwells, surrounding us on all sides, a world in which the material creation is embedded, is not only more solid than our world, it is also brighter – it is full of light in fact. Living as we do at present in a world still relatively dark, we await the coming of the Dawn.
Sources:

S.R. Filonovich, The Greatest Speed, 1983, Mir Publishers, 2 Pervy Rizhsky Pereulok, 1-110 GSP, Moscow, 129820. A good discussion of the physics of light at an elementary level.

Sobil, Michael L., Light, 1987, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

Bova, Ben, The Beauty of Light, 1988, John Wiley and Sons, New York.

1. Gravitons are probably on the order of a Planck length in size, L* = (hG/c³)^0.5 = 1.6 x 10^-33 cm. In current thinking on the nature of the vacuum, space has a granular structure and is composed of particles emerging from and vanishing back into the background sea of Zero Point Energy. The “Planck density” of these particles is at the present time about 4 x 10⁹³ gms per cubic centimeter, incredibly greater than known particle densities encountered in the atomic nucleus which do not exceed 10¹⁴ g/cm³ , or water which is only 1 g/cm³ . As we noted in an earlier article, the Planck density would have been smaller still in the early history of the universe assuming a decreasing velocity of light over time. A good discussion of these issues is given by Gerardus D. Bouw on his web pages, www.baldwinw.edu/~gbouw/g/index.html. I recommend his discussion on the plenum aether whether or not one agrees with Dr. Bouw’s views on Geocentricity.
2. I have tried to clarify the events of creation week in my current thinking in my article “The Uniqueness of Creation Week,” available on my web pages. I reserve the right to learn and grow and change my views!

The Creator Beyond Time & Space Audio Series – Chuck Missler and Dr. Mark EastmanIncludes: The Creator Beyond Time and Space, The Bible: An Extraterrestrial Message, Immanuel: The Deity of Messiah and The Divine Watchmaker Click for more information – Audio Cassette

Stretching the Heavens and the Dilation of Time – Chuck MisslerThis includes an exclusive interview with Barry Setterfield whose controversial discoveries concerning the slowing down of the speed of light may yet disrupt the previous dictums of modern physics. Click for more information – Audio Cassette

Genesis – MP3 Commentary – Chuck MisslerRecent breakthroughs in the fields of physics, technology and biology led Chuck Missler to update and re-record this wonderful study in Genesis. Click for more information – MP3 on CD-ROM

Genesis and the Big Bang – Chuck MisslerRecent discoveries in the fields of astronomy, astrophysics, particle physics, and molecular biology have cast a new light on the traditional accounts of Genesis One. Click for more information – Audio Cassette

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Physics and the Bible: Faster Than The Speed of Light

From Koinonia House

Technical > Physics > Faster Than The Speed Of Light

Superman was able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, he was more powerful than a locomotive, and he was said to be able to travel faster than a speeding bullet.

The speed of a bullet is no big deal in these days of supersonic aircraft and spacecraft. Yet our fastest space vehicles do no better than one one-hundred thousandth of the current speed of light.

Overcoming gravity (the weakest of all the forces of physics) still takes lots of push and power. The moon remains many days away and the planets many months when traveling as fast as current chemical rocket technology allows.

The nearest star is 4 x 10¹⁷ meters away, and the current estimated size for the entire universe is greater than that by ten orders of magnitude or so (about 10²⁶ meters). For a long time the hope of space travel has been left almost entirely in the hands of the science fiction writers.

Yet with God there are invariably hidden truths waiting to be discovered that make the best that men can imagine seem like kindergarten.

Newtonian mechanics imposes no maximum upper limit to attainable velocities in the universe, but Einstein’s relativity theory does. As charged particles are pushed up near the present speed of light they grow heavier, and more and more energy input is required to gain a smaller and smaller increment of increased velocity.

At the Stanford Linear Accelerator (SLAC), near where I live, electrons injected in the accelerator reach 99.999% of the velocity of light in the first few feet of travel, and then they ride, traveling radio waves for two miles down a long evacuated pipe, gaining virtually no additional speed, but mostly acquiring mass (and therefore energy). There is no reason to doubt the highly successful and well-verified theory of relativity in this regard. One can point to countless examples of proven relativistic effects whenever charged particles are involved.

Physicist Hal Puthoff¹ has recently suggested that the ability of a spacecraft to modify the properties of space in its immediate vicinity could allow it to travel faster than light. This is because the speed of light is simply a measure of two properties of the medium of space, or the vacuum: permeability and permittivity. It has been tacitly assumed by some theoreticians that the speed of light might be a measure not only of the electrical properties of space, but the mechanical properties of space as well. It now turns out that this is probably not the case!

A very exciting possibility has now come into the light. It has long been known that gravitational forces apparently act instantaneously over the entire universe. Why this should be so is simply glossed over and ignored in every generation of physics classes and in countless technical papers.

One way to understand this is to consider what is called “the classical aberration of light”-which was discovered by Bradley in 1728. In fact, aberration data became one of the early methods for measuring the speed of light. Light from the sun requires 8.3 minutes to travel from the sun to the earth during which time the sun and the earth have moved as much as 20 arc seconds with respect to each other.

Similarly, light from the stars arrives at an angle which can be as much as 20 arc seconds because the earth is moving with respect to the stars. It is by carefully measuring these aberration angles, and knowing the relative velocities involved, that Bradley made excellent and trustworthy measurements of the velocity of light 250 years ago.

However, during the time interval it takes light to travel from the sun to the earth, the sun and the earth have kept in touch with each other “instantaneously”-or at least very much faster than c! In fact every mass in the universe communicates with all other masses in the universe in a time frame that makes the present speed of light seem like the velocity of molasses on a cold day!

Astronomer Tom Van Flandern has recently detailed all the evidence that shows that gravitational forces, unlike light, operate with no measurable aberration!²

But Van Flandern shows that there are sound reasons for believing that the “speed of gravity” is not infinite. By carefully studying the observable data, Van Flandern now concludes that the speed of gravity is greater than or equal to the present speed of light by a factor of 2 x 10¹⁰.

This velocity (6 x 10¹⁸ meters per second) turns out to be just below Barry Setterfield’s latest estimate of the speed of light everywhere in the universe on Day Two of creation week! Setterfield arrives at this initial velocity of light on the basis of the maximum observed Hubble constant, which gives an initial value of c that turns out to be 2.54 x 10¹⁰ times the present value.³

Since creation week, the diameter of the universe has been constant (a static universe) and the speed of light has dropped precipitously to its present value-following decay curves we can now piece together with some confidence based on (a) measured values of c for the last 300 years, (b) corrections to known radioactive decay dates which go back to approximately 2000 B.C., and (c) the observed quantization of the red shift of light from distant galaxies for the time period from creation to about the time of Abraham.

As the universe aged, the free space permittivity and permeability increased and c decreased – but the velocity of gravity may not be tied to the permittivity and permeability of free space!

If this is the case, the velocity of gravity stayed at the original velocity of c. If we can produce a propulsion system based on gravitational principles rather than electromagnetic or chemical ones, we could travel at absolutely enormous speeds-we could hope to push a space craft anywhere in the universe, very literally at warp speeds beyond what even the Starship Enterprise could produce!

By the way, this discussion solely relates to the physical part of the created universe. For now we must defer discussion about how angels travel and communicate – they are spiritual beings. And we must postpone speculation about what we followers of Jesus the Lord may find ourselves capable of doing when we don our new resurrection bodies (these bodies are, after all, “not of this creation”-but spiritual bodies-see 1 Corinthians 15).

If Van Flandern and Setterfield are correct, space travel may indeed be just around the corner! A fringe benefit is that we may at last have clues to help us begin to understand the well-documented behavior of countless UFOs, whose velocity and acceleration behavior has thus far defied explanation by conventional physics.

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1. JSE Review by H. E. Puthoff, Ph.D., Institute for Advanced Studies at Austin, Austin, TX 78759. Available on my web pages, http://www.ldolphin.org/hill.html. Puthoff reviews the book Synopsis of Unconventional Flying Objects, by Paul Hill, Hampton Roads Publ. Co., Charlottesville, VA, 1995 (ISBN 1-57174-027-9). The latter is an outstanding analysis of possible UFO propulsion schemes by a retired a Chief Scientist-Manager at NASA’s Langley Research Center.
2. 2.Tom Van Flandern, “The Speed of Gravity: What the Experiments Say”, Meta Research Bulletin, Vol. 6 No. 4, December 15, 1997. See http://www.metaresearch.org.

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Geology and the Bible: The Great Mediterranean Sea

From Koinonia House

Technical > Physics > The Great Mediterranean Sea

While quite a few new scientific discoveries make the evening news, Time or Newsweek, or merit an hour program on the Discovery Channel, other important finds are neglected. Perhaps some things are too hard to fit into the prevailing secular scientific world view or have consequences that don’t seem to mesh with evidence from other sources. This article deals with a much-neglected discovery in the latter category.

A Strange Discovery

Forty years ago sonar studies through the Mediterranean Sea and into the sea floor below revealed a strange reflecting layer 100-200 meters below the bottom and unexpected stratification of the sediments. Buried sub-bottom salt domes were also detected. The seismic data were tantalizing enough to merit a Deep Sea Drilling Project (DSDP) by the Glomar Challenger, beginning in 1970. ^{1 2}

This amazing ship was equipped with side thrusters for accurate position control and a drilling rig capable of core sampling the sea floor even through water several miles deep. The first core samples off the coast of Barcelona, Spain did not yield sands, gravels and muds as expected, but gypsum, oceanic basalt, small fossil shells and hardened ocean oozes.

The fossils were those one would expect from a shallow salty lagoon, or a surface evaporation pond, yet the water depth at the drilling site was 2000 meters deep!

Subsequent drilling revealed that the floor of the Mediterranean most everywhere was underlain with layers of evaporites, and more fossils such as blue green algae, which can live only in sunlit waters. The fossils dated from the end of the Miocene Epoch and were all 5 to 6 million years old on the atomic time scale.

The researchers were reluctantly, but excitedly, driven to the conclusion that the Mediterranean Sea had dried up and refilled a dozen times in a million years. Since the Mediterranean basin is as much as 16,000 feet deep, the dry sea floor must have been an incredibly hot desert for long periods of time. The lowest place on earth nowadays is the Dead Sea, which is only 1300 feet below sea level.

Further studies confirmed that deep gorges in solid rock (now filled with ocean sediments and then river muds) lay under the Nile River and the Rhone River, suggesting that these rivers were once great torrents, steeply dropping water into the empty Mediterranean basin. (However, other filled-in gorges are also found around the world and are not unique to the Mediterranean).

Best of all, the researchers imagined a prehistoric waterfall at the Straits of Gibraltar bringing in Atlantic ocean water with the volume of a hundred Victoria Falls or a thousand Niagaras at intervals lasting a hundred years or more.

Another Explanation

Did the Mediterranean Sea really dry up? Was it once a very hot and dry desert? Probably not. There is another possible explanation for the vast salt and mineral deposits found at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea.

Let us explore Australian astronomer Barry Setterfield’s hypothesis that atomic time and ordinary calendar time are related by the velocity of light.

Using Setterfield’s red-shift data to give us the expected value of c (the speed of light) for events some millions of years ago in atomic time, we find that the 5 to 6 million years BP (before the present) in atomic time was between 2875 and 2825 B.C. in ordinary dynamical time! ³ The salt sediments in the Mediterranean would then have been deposited in a mere 75 years, not over a million years-too short a time period for evaporation and refilling processes in the basin.

A tight reading of Old Testament genealogies suggests that the Flood of Noah and the accompanying sudden continental breakup took place only hundreds of years before these salt-depositional events in the Mediterranean. (Setterfield’s date for the Flood turns out to be 3536 B.C.).

What happened to cause the Flood of Noah? Most of the water for the Flood did not come from the atmosphere-the so-called vapor canopy could have held only a few tens of feet of water. It was the “fountains of the deep” that released the waters of the Deluge, suddenly and abruptly, covering the entire surface of our planet for a year and wiping out all of mankind except for eight persons safe on the Ark of Noah. ⁴

As originally created, our universe was evidently not characterized by the Second Law of Thermodynamics-the Law of science which describes how the physical world is running down, falling apart and decaying. It is also quite possible that there was no radioactive decay of the higher-ordered atomic elements before the Fall. It seems reasonable to suppose that natural radioactivity was switched on as a result of the fall of man or the fall of the angels subsequent to creation week.

Setterfield has shown that the total energy released by radioactive decay processes is independent of c, the velocity of light. However, assuming radioactivity was indeed switched on suddenly, the shorter-lived radioactive isotopes would have begun to decay rapidly, so there could have been a season of rapid crustal heating during earth’s early history. ⁵

Walter Brown, ⁶ John Baumgardner, and others have proposed a very rapid rupturing of the crust at the time of the Flood. Radioactive decay of the shorter-lived isotopes would have superheated the waters in the crust of the earth.

These waters erupting through thousands of feet of water above them would have been very hot-many hundreds of degrees Centigrade. Coming into contact with the colder ocean waters, the hot water from the crust could have precipitated the salt layers found under the Mediterranean. Living creatures on the surface could well have been killed suddenly, raining debris to the sea floor to add to the salts being rapidly precipitated out in a series of violent events.

The Mediterranean basin is already known for its vigorous past vulcanism (Santorini, Vesuvius, Stromboli, etc.). During the years the earth was recovering from the Flood of Noah it is quite possible that what we now know as deep ocean “black smokers” were present everywhere under the Mediterranean Sea. They could be responsible for the huge copper deposits under Cyprus and the vast salt layers under the Mediterranean sea floor. ⁷

Of course, rapid weather and climate changes were probably taking place during that same time as well. As soon as nature’s upheavals had slowed, the civilization of Egypt could have rapidly expanded and European civilization soon after as well.

Earth’s history appears to have been marked by catastrophes and disasters that were denied vehemently in previous generations by secular science. Catastrophes now seem inescapable. Kenneth Hsü’s book (see endnote 1) is exciting reading no matter how you interpret his amazing research results. Walt Brown’s book is must reading also for the well-informed who want to form a Biblically based scientific world view.

Above all else, our Creator invites us to learn and understand and to inquire of him-the universe has a more remarkable history than we first imagine and we do not yet know very much at all about the world we live in.

Thus says the LORD who made the earth, the LORD who formed it to establish it-the LORD is his name: Call to me and I will answer you, and will tell you great and hidden things which you have not known.
Jeremiah 33:2,3

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1. Hsü, K. J., The Mediterranean was a Desert: A Voyage of the Glomar CHALLENGER . Princeton University Press, 1983, 216 p.
2. The Mediterranean is the world’s largest inland sea. It lies between the continents of Europe and Africa and is bounded on the east by the westernmost stretches of Asia. Its length is about 4,025 km (2,500 miles), its average width 805 km (500 miles), and its area about 2,965,500 sq km (1,145,000 sq mi). The greatest depth, 5,092 m (16,706 ft), is in the Matapan Trench of the Ionian Basin. The mean depth is about 1,525 m (5,000 ft). (Grolier Encyclopedia, 1996.)
3. Setterfield, Barry, Creation and Catastrophe, 1993. Available from Box 318, Blackwood 5051, South Australia. Also see www.ldolphin.org/constcs.html.
4. See my article, “The Terrible Flood of Noah”, in Personal UPDATE, 6/97, pp.8-13.
5. Radioactive heating is thought to be the main source of earth’s interior heat. A core meltdown within the earth with a subsequent redistribution of the elements in the core and crust is a popular model among leading geologists today. See “Questions Concerning the Early History of the Earth”  at www.ldolphin.org/Early.html
6. Brown, Walter, Ph.D., In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood.  On-line book as well as ordering information at www.creationscience.com

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Physics and the Bible: When the Universe Became Fuzzy

From Koinonia House

Technical > Physics > When The Universe Became Fuzzy

Physics and the Bible: When the Universe Became Fuzzy by Lambert Dolphin Lambert Dolphin, Physicist Website

The “Clockwork Universe”

Classical Physics reached its apex in Sir Isaac Newton’s day (1642-1727). The “Clockwork Universe” was so tightly linked together that the chains of cause and effect – which we called “determinism” – were obvious to everyone.

God was in His heaven and watchfully controlled everything down to the smallest detail. The same universal laws of physics prevailed within the miniature universe of the atom and beyond the furthermost star.

In 1801 Thomas Young reported his famous double-slit experiment with light beams. If light were corpuscular, photons directed at the slits should divide equally and exit the other side uniformly. Instead, Young found interference patterns that cleared showed light was a wave phenomenon. Soon, electric and magnetic fields were discovered and the propagation of light waves was accounted for eloquently by James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879).

By the turn of this century it was clear that light and atomic particles behaved at times as if they were bunched-up wave packets, and at other times like rigid billiard balls.

Quantum Mechanics

An obscure clerk in a Swiss patent office began to turn things upside-down in 1905. The young Albert Einstein explained the photoelectric effect. Light shining on certain chemically coated surfaces resulted in the emission of electrons, in numbers proportional to the light intensity but not at constant velocities.

Einstein’s paper came the same year that Max Planck (1858-1947) explained “blackbody” radiation-light emission from heated surfaces.

Building on the work of Wein, Stefan, and Boltzmann, Planck’s formula showed that the intensity of radiated light from a heated object involved quantum jumps within the atoms of the surface-and these were statistically distributed. His formula contained a new constant, Planck’s constant, h (6.6 x 10^-24 joule-second).

The next surprise was that light photons, though massless, carried momentum and energy-and photon energy and momentum were quantized. When atoms emit photons, they do so only at discrete wavelengths. The energy of photons could be calculated from the simple formula, E = hf = hc/l where h is Planck’s constant, c the velocity of light, f the frequency of the light and l, the wavelength. Soon a mathematical model for atomic particles known as “Quantum Mechanics” was developed.¹

This theory has been spectacularly successful, but it has disturbed some theologians who see the probability based calculations of QM as undermining the principle of determinism.

Though quantum mechanics dismissed the notion of so-called “hidden variables,” this does not mean that God has lost control of things. “Chance” is not an entity that does things-it is philosophically meaningless, for example, to say that “time plus chance” has brought our universe into being or brought order out of chaos.² In spite of the complex probability-based models of QM, God still is in full control.³

Very upsetting discoveries have been made about photons (and now other particles) from quantum mechanics: apparently one particle is able to communicate information with another particle after the particles have been separated by time and distance-as much as 10 km in a recent experiment!⁴

But this communication is “instantaneous”-or at least much faster than the speed of light. This leads to the hypothesis that two particles separated by time and space in our ordinary four-dimensional world may be at the same point in hyperspace-they may be connected in a higher dimension.

Similar weird and wonderful things seem to occur with gravitational forces: apparently all objects in the universe are “in touch” with each other instantly as far as ravity is concerned, yet ordinarily information signals can not travel from point A to point B faster than the speed of light.⁵

At latest count at least 11 higher dimensions have been invoked in the mathematical models that attempt to tie together the Laws of Physics.⁶

Physicists like to keep things simple: to do as little work as possible, they follow “Occam’s Razor”⁷ and have a sense of elegance and beauty about nature. Therefore simple theories are to be preferred to complex theories-and if possible a Grand Unified Theory (GUT) would be wonderful to discover. GUTs attempt to link together the four forces of physics⁸ and the fundamental constants – c, the velocity of light; e, the charge on the electron; h, Planck’s constant; and, G, the gravitational constant. When one brings quantum mechanics into attempts to unify the laws of physics, Planck’s constant is found to define the “fuzziness,” or the “grain size” of the universe. Thus the smallest meaningful length is (Gh/c³)^1/2 = 10^-35 meters. The smallest time increment of time is the Planck time, 10^-42 seconds, the Planck mass, (hc/G²)^1/2 = 10¹⁹ Gev, etc.

Quantum mechanics furthermore has revealed that attempts to make measurements-for instance, on an atom-would disturb the atom such that precision in one type of measurement automatically meant fuzziness in another parameter.

If one wanted to locate an electron’s location accurately by means of a measuring apparatus, the apparatus disturbed the environment; precision in position measurement meant the electron’s momentum became proportionally uncertain. The same was true for particle momentum and time and for angular momentum and spin angle as pairs of variables. Planck’s famous Uncertainty Principle can be expressed as DpDx  h/4þ or DE Dt D h/4þ (read, “the uncertainty in momentum times the uncertainty in position is greater than or equal to Planck’s constant, h,” etc.).

The phenomenon is not unlike the work of a pollster who sets out to measure public opinion. If he is hasty, works rapidly, but alerts the public so that they become opinionated, and if his sampling methods are not careful, he will get results quickly, but his results will not likely be very representative of the true state of public sentiment on the topic. A second pollster who takes a longer time to collect his data, works quietly, and takes care so as not to alert people ahead of time will get better results.

Recently, QM has been applied to cosmology in attempts to unravel the early history of our universe-assuming the basic Big Bang model is correct-and assuming the speed of light is a fixed constant in time!

All of the above discussion is based on the assumption-since Einstein-that the speed of light, c, is indeed a fixed constant. However as we noted in our earlier Personal UPDATE articles on the aether, the velocity of light, c, is determined by the properties of space – and space may be a very real medium after all. When all of the available measurements of c are carefully studied-using the best possible methods of statistical analysis-the result is that the speed of light has apparently decreased in the past 300 years-with a statistical confidence level of at least 95%.⁹

Some have thought that a non-constant c would lead to an unstable universe, but so far no papers have been presented that show that changing c would disturb the basic operation or stability of the cosmos. In fact, several theoretical papers have suggested that the velocity of light after the second day of creation week-when God stretched out the aether-had an initial value of about 5 x 10⁸ times greater than the present value of 3 x 10⁸ meters/sec.

As far as this writer has been able to understand, changing c mostly affects the run rate of atomic clocks versus ordinary (Newtonian) dynamical time. Thus the universe appears to be 10 – 20 billion years old in atomic time, when in reality it was all created only thousands of years ago.

We began this discussion by mentioning the relationship between Planck’s constant, c, and the wavelength (or frequency) of photons emitted from orbital transitions within the atom: E = hf = hc/l.

Astronomers measure wavelength of light from distant stars (not frequency) and wavelengths of stellar light are known to be invariant with time, as is the “fine-structure constant” a= e²/hc = 1/137. This means that hc is a fixed constant, invariant with time. But if c was much higher in the past, then h was a much smaller number than it is now – h and c are inversely proportional.

Therefore, the universe was less “fuzzy” in the beginning, quantum mechanical effects would have been negligible, and Planck length and time were even smaller than they are now (they are already very small numbers)! The universe was more “certain” in the past, and more “orderly” than it is now! This increased uncertainty in the physical world is, of course, paralleled by the inexorable deterioration of the human condition due to sin as revealed in the Bible.

Of course a decrease in the value of Planck’s constant by 10 orders of magnitude in the past pretty well shoots down Quantum Cosmology as a viable model. (There are many other reasons for discarding Big Bang cosmology anyway!)

The laws of physics have been disrupted in the past by the fall of the angels and the fall of man as we have pointed out in this series. One cannot take observations of the present universe for 50 or 100 years and extrapolate the results back to t = 0. This will give the wrong answer-the real history of our universe is not based on “uniformitarian” principles (2 Peter 3:4).

The Big Bang model also ignores the many steps God took to create the raw material of our universe and to mold and fashion it over a unique period of time (144 hours) called “creation week.” During creation week the universe, being uncompleted, was not yet set in motion. It was “Under Construction”-the Laws of Effects went into effect for the first time after the Seventh Day. And the original creation has been since drastically disrupted by cosmic forces of evil.

In any case, the mysteries of our universe only deepen as we understand more and benefit from God’s unfolding (“general”) revelation hidden in nature, as well as by new light on his (“special”) revelation given to us in Holy Writ:

O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! “For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor?” “Or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid?” For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory for ever. Amen.

Romans 11:33-36

* * *

1. Edward Speyer, Six Roads from Newton: Great Discoveries in Physics, John Wiley and Sons, New York, 1994.
2. For more on the amazing world of chaos-where hidden patterns of order have been discovered, see Chaos: Making a New Science, by James Gleick, Viking, NY, 1987, and also Can Order Come out of Chaos, by Henry M. Morris and John D. Morris, Institute of Creation Research, San Diego, June 1997. Available at http://www.ldolphin.org/chaos.html
3. R. C. Sproul, Not a Chance: The Myth of Chance in Modern Science & Cosmology, Baker Books, Grand Rapids MI, 1994 and Not By Chance: Shattering the Modern Theory of Evolution, by Lee Spetner, Ph.D., The Judaica Press, Brooklyn, 1997.
4. Malcolm W. Browne, “Far Apart: Two Particles Respond Faster Than Light, The New York Times, July 22, 1997, p. C1.
5. On the Speed of Gravity, by Tom Van Flandern, Galilean Electrodynam- ics, vol. 4., no. 2, March/April 1993. 141 Rhinecliff St. Arlington, MA 02174.
6. The New Physics, Paul Davies, Ed., Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge 1989.
7. Occam’s razor is a logical principle attributed to philosopher-theologian William of Occam (c. 1285-1349). The principle states that we should not increase, beyond what is necessary, the number of entities required to explain anything, or that we should not make more assumptions than the minimum needed. This principle is often called the principle of parsimony.
8. The “strong” nuclear and “weak” nuclear forces operate at ranges of the order of the size of the nucleus; i.e., < 10^-15 meters. The other important forces in physics are the electromagnetic force (between charged particles) and gravity. The latter two forces are active out to infinite distances between objects, but decrease as the inverse square of the distance. Gravity (attractive only) is weaker than electromagnetic forces (either attractive or repulsive), by a factor of 38 orders of magnitude (10^-38)!
9. All of the available data on c, two statistical analyses and some preliminary explanations may be found at http://www.ldolphin.org/constc.shtml. Only those constants that have units of time in them are apparently changing. (The speed of light has units of distance divided by time. Planck’s constant has units or work times time). The speed of light seems to have dropped precipitously until about the time of Abraham (c. 2150 BC) and then decreased slowly with an exponential tail down to the modern epoch.

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The Creator Beyond Time & Space Audio Series – Chuck Missler and Dr. Mark EastmanIncludes: The Creator Beyond Time and Space, The Bible: An Extraterrestrial Message, Immanuel: The Deity of Messiah and The Divine Watchmaker Click for more information – Audio Cassette

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Physics and the Bible: The Terrible Flood of Noah

From Koinonia House

Technical > Physics > The Terrible Flood Of Noah

Physics and the Bible: The Terrible Flood of Noah by Lambert Dolphin Lambert Dolphin, Physicist Website

The 104th Psalm is a beautiful hymn about creation that complements the information given to us in Genesis and elsewhere in the Bible. Here, as in other Scriptures, the origin of the universe and our planet is not pictured as a massive explosion (such as a Big Bang) but as an orderly series of events in which everything was crafted by the hands of an artisan, a Master Builder.

Before the Fall

The early earth after creation is nowhere pictured as a place of smoking volcanoes, sulfureous fumes and violent quakes. The Apostle Peter quite simply says that the earth “was formed out of water and by means of water” (2 Peter 3:5). The whole purpose of creation was to produce an environment-a habitat-for man. In fact, the universe was designed for man to manage and govern (Gen 1:26-31, Heb 2:6-8). All this has changed as far as we are concerned-Adam forfeited his rightful place as steward over the creation. The world we live in has been ruined, and the human race in its ongoing rebellion against God continues to require interventions by God when He calls men into courts of judgment. God’s last major judgment was the Flood of Noah-and this great disaster was actually not very long ago in the history of our race.

Seventy-one percent of the earth’s surface today is indeed water-the oceans average 3.8 kilometers deep. Only 29% of the earth’s surface is land-whose average elevation is only 623 meters! If all the continents and land masses were leveled into the sea using a giant bulldozer, nearly two miles of water would cover our entire earth. Glaciers and ice caps hold about two percent of earth’s water; were they all to melt, sea levels around the world would rise 40 meters-a big problem for many large sea-level cities should this happen. The earth’s atmosphere today holds only about two inches of precipitable water-this is constantly being replenished by the hydrologic cycle.¹

Before the Flood

The earth before the Flood of Noah was a very different place! Our long years of educational brainwashing in the mythology of evolutionary theory and an old-earth has numbed us to the clear testimony of the Bible that God’s intervention in human affairs during the time of Noah, the tenth man from Adam, changed things forever on our planet.² Since Old Testament chronologies are actually quite complete, we can date the Flood as most likely occurring between 2500 B.C. and 3400 B.C.- depending on our choice of the Masoretic Hebrew text or the Greek Septuagint of the Old Testament, respectively. The earth before the Flood seems to have possessed a uniform sub-tropical climate. There may have been no rainfall, no ice and snow, and no major seasonal changes. (For instance, palm tree fossils have been found in Alaska, frozen warm-climate mammoths in Siberia, and coal in Antarctica.) The oceans would have been much warmer, and earth’s rivers and streams may well have originated in powerful springs-such as the spring that supplied the four rivers of Eden.

I personally subscribe to a vapor canopy model of earth’s atmosphere before the Flood, which could have provided the greenhouse effect for a worldwide mild climate. But vapor canopy models are very limited by basic thermodynamic considerations. In his classic pioneering study,³ Joseph Dillow suggested a pre-Flood atmospheric pressure at sea level twice the present value-a big help to the extinct flying reptile Pteranadon, who would probably not get off the ground in today’s atmosphere. But too much water vapor in the upper atmosphere before the Flood would obscure the stars, and even the sun and moon, because of perpetual cloud cover. And for the atmosphere to support the weight of additional water vapor, the surface temperature would have to rise rapidly toward the boiling point of water. Condensation of water vapor during very heavy, prolonged rainfall would release enormous amounts of latent heat of condensation.

However, in spite of these difficulties, a modest vapor canopy – perhaps holding 40 feet of rain water – may have existed prior to the deluge of the Flood.

The Flood

Most of the water for the great Flood of Noah came from the so-called “fountains of the great deep” (Gen 7:11). This source of water is mentioned before the rain from the “windows of heaven.”

During the formation of the earth on the second and third days of creation, large quantities of water were evidently placed between the earth’s crust and mantle in what might be called giant subterranean reservoirs. This water was probably under high pressure to begin with (causing artesian springs and geysers to abound), but after the fall of man and the angels-when some of the heavier atomic elements were apparently made unstable by reduced nuclear binding forces so that radioactive decay commenced – the shorter-lived isotopes could well have heated the subsurface to a point of criticality where it could scarcely be contained by the strength of the overlying crust. We mentioned this in last month’s article as a possible cause for the explosion of a planet where the asteroid belt now is found.

Extensive volcanic activity may have occurred at the same time-the fountains of the great deep were thus broken open and volcanic ash hurtling into the stratosphere could have collapsed the vapor canopy by dispersing condensation nuclei around which raindrops formed.⁴

[Incidentally, gravitational compaction of the earth at the time of earth's formation would not have raised the interior temperature above 1000 degrees C, yet the earth's core-present temperature about 4300 degrees-has evidently melted and overturned in the past. Radioactive heating is believed to have supplied the extra energy needed - see http://www.ldolphin.org/Early.html]

The Flood in Noah’s time was certainly a direct act of judgment by God on a world which had become thoroughly and continually evil:

“Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the Lord was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart. And the Lord said, ‘I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, from man to animals to creeping things and to birds of the sky; for I am sorry that I have made them.’” (Genesis 6:5-7)

Since God is in full control of nature-there are no “accidents” in God’s universe-the exact mechanisms the Lord used to initiate the Flood need not preoccupy our attention. Erudite scientific models for the geophysical processes that accompanied the Flood have been presented at three Pittsburgh International Conferences on Creation⁵- the proceedings are available and highly recommended. Dr. Walter Brown’s outstanding book on the Flood, which can be found on the Internet,⁶ especially concentrates on possible mechanisms for the bursting open of the fountains of the great deep.

Was the Flood Global?

The Hebrew language has several words to describe ordinary floods, but Genesis 7-11 uses the unique word mabbul (found only elsewhere in Psalm 29:10). When Hebrew scholars put the Old Testament into Greek, they chose the Greek word kataklusmos, from the verb “to inundate,” in place of the Hebrew mabbul. All the language of Genesis, and especially the words of the Apostle Peter, give us the clearest possible picture of a worldwide, cataclysmic, universal disaster from which only eight human beings escaped with their lives. Warning of false teachers and strong-willed skeptics, Peter tells us:

“For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to pits of darkness, reserved for judgment; and did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a preacher of righteousness, with seven others, when He brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly… Know this first of all, that in the last days mockers will come with their mocking, following after their own lusts, and saying, ‘Where is the promise of His coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all continues just as it was from the beginning of creation.’ For when they maintain this, it escapes their notice that by the word of God the heavens existed long ago and the earth was formed out of water and by water, through which the world at that time was destroyed, being flooded with water. But the present heavens and earth by His Word are being reserved for fire, kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men…” (2 Peter 2:4-5, 3:3-7)

Noah and his sons (and perhaps some hired hands) probably had less than 76 years to build the Ark in which Noah’s family and selected animals were to find refuge from the Flood. We know the size of the Ark from Genesis 6:14-16, and many fine books have been written in recent years⁷ analyzing the design and adequacies of this great barge. The Ark is said to have landed on the Mountains of Ararat in Eastern Turkey after the Flood. Many amazing search expeditions^<8 have been launched in our century, though all have thus far been inconclusive.

There would be no need to labor many decades building a boat to escape a local flood-simple flight to the next valley or to a nearby mountain would have sufficed. Nor would a local flood require such an elaborate plan to save representative animal species.

Scripture is clear: the purpose of the Flood was to judge and destroy a decadent, thoroughly evil human civilization that probably numbered some billions of individuals – along with their cities and all the infrastructures.

Noah escaped not because he was blameless (justified by his faith as we are), but because he (and his family) responded to God’s mercy and grace. A good many other individuals who lived in the 1655-2255 years between Adam and Noah no doubt responded to the gospel preached by Adam, by Enoch, and by others who knew the Lord. But by the time of the Flood, apparently the entire “civilized” world had become totally unresponsive to the offer of God’s free salvation. Crazy Noah kept on building his weird boat on dry land-far from the ocean-in a country where it never rained! He probably endured constant mocking, scorn and ridicule up until the end. Noah’s friends were welcome to find refuge on the Ark by faith in God, but no one else believed God’s clear warnings.

“And all flesh that moved on the earth perished, birds and cattle and beasts and every swarming thing that swarms upon the earth, and all mankind; of all that was on the dry land, all in whose nostrils was the breath of the spirit of life, died. Thus He blotted out every living thing that was upon the face of the land, from man to animals to creeping things and to birds of the sky, and they were blotted out from the earth; and only Noah was left, together with those that were with him in the ark. And the water prevailed upon the earth one hundred and fifty days….” (Genesis 7:21-24)

The Ark finally landed on the very same day of the Hebrew calendar that Jesus Christ would be raised from the dead about three millennia later in history, taking into account the calendar change in Exodus 12. The subterranean caverns of the great deep collapsed, so that the waters receded into what are now our deep ocean basins.

With the tremendous weight of water removed from the land, isostatic rebound allowed great mountains, capped with sediments, to “float” up on the underlying mantle below the crust. (Mountains before the Flood were most likely much lower than they are now.) Seeds sprouted, life began again, and Noah and his family left the Ark to repopulate the earth under a new covenant with God (Gen 8:18-9:17). Four men and four women, who knew and loved the living God personally, began to repopulate the earth. They started with only meager resources and animals from the Ark – plus the bountiful grace of God

After the Flood

The post-Flood climate was now very different – assuming the collapse of the vapor canopy. An ice-age followed. Earth’s original one continent broke up and spread apart (rapid continental drift)- either during the Flood-or as some believe during the days of Peleg, perhaps 100-600 years later.⁹ The dinosaurs, once contemporary with men, rapidly died out, quite possibly from a separate disaster not long after the Flood. Storms, natural disasters and great seasonal weather changes set in during the years immediately following the Flood as well.

Everything was different, yet life survived, recovered and proliferated. Great civilizations were built up again in a matter of only hundreds of years.

Next month our plan is to look at world population statistics and growth rates for both the ancient world and for the past few hundred years, especially guided by the vast pre-Flood knowledge accumulated by the eight Flood survivors with life spans of 300+ years and the long life experiences of post-Flood peoples with similar longevities. The mathematics and census data lead to an inescapable conclusion: Our earth has surely again reached a critical time on God’s calendar of events for world history. Another great and terrible judgment most certainly lies just ahead. As God provided an Ark of Refuge in the Days of Noah, so He invites all to find eternal safe harbor and refuge through a personal relationship with His Son, Jesus Christ the Lord. We are invited to come “into” the Body of Christ by faith and thereby to find rescue and everlasting life.

“And just as it happened in the days of Noah, so it shall be also in the days of the Son of Man: they were eating, they were drinking, they were marrying, they were being given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all. It was the same as happened in the days of Lot: they were eating, they were drinking, they were buying, they were selling, they were planting, they were building; but on the day that Lot went out from Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven and destroyed them all.” It will be just the same on the day that the Son of Man is revealed.” (Luke 17:26-30)

Time is running out!

* * *

1. Michael J. Oart, An Ice Age Caused by the Genesis Flood, Institute for Creation Research, Box 2667, El Cajon, CA 92021, 1990 ( http://www.icr.org/ ).
2. For a history of how evolutionary theory and old-earth geology developed as parallel world-views that sought from their inception to replace a Biblical world-view, see Ian T. Taylor, In the Minds of Men: Darwin and the New World Order, Bible-Science Association, PO Box 260, Zimmerman, MN 55398-0260 (1-800-422-4253).
3. Joseph Dillow, The Waters Above: Earth’s Preflood Vapor Canopy, Moody Press, Chicago IL, 1982.
4. Setterfield, Barry, Creation and Catastrophe, 80-page monograph plus color wall chart. Summary: http://www.ldolphin.org/catastrophe.html.
5. Proceedings of the [1st, 2nd, and 3rd] International Conference(s) on Creationism, Creation Science Fellowship, 362 Ashland Ave., Pittsburgh, PA 15228.
6. 6. Walter Brown, Ph.D., In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood, Center for Scientific Creation, on-line or in book form: http://www.indirect.com/www/wbrown/.
7. John Woodmorappe, Noah’s Ark: A Feasibility Study, Institute of Creation Research, Box 2667, El Cajon, CA 92021, 1990 (http://www.icr.org).
8. Noah’s Ark Home Page (B. J. Corbin), http://www.beachin.net/~bjcorbin/noahsark/; The Search for Noah’s Ark (Matthew Kneisler), http://users.aol.com/mkneisler/noah/nahome.htm ; The Noah’s Ark Project (Douglas Peterson), http://user.mc.net/dougp/noahs_ark/ : Christian Information Ministry (Noah’s Ark, Creation, Theology; Richardson, TX) http://www.fni.com/cim/index.html .
9. Watson, John A., “The Division of the Earth in Peleg’s Day: Tectonic or Linguistics,” Creation Ex Nihilo Technical Journal, Vol 11, Part 1, 1997, P.O. Box 6302, Acacia Ridge, D.C. Queensland 4110, Australia.

   Flood Related Web Sites:
   Creation Evidence Museum (Dr. Carl E. Baugh), http://www.creationevidence.org/ ;
   Creation, Dinosaurs and the Flood (Charlie Liebert), http://www.sixdaycreation.com/ ;
   The Paluxy Dinosaur/Man track Controversy (Glen J. Kuban), http://members.aol.com/Paluxy2/paluxy.htm .

Flood of Noah – Chuck MisslerDiscover the surprising answers to these questions and learn what Jesus meant when He said: As the days of Noah were, so shall the days of the coming of the Son of Man be. Click for more information – Audio Cassette

Genesis – MP3 Commentary – Chuck MisslerRecent breakthroughs in the fields of physics, technology and biology led Chuck Missler to update and re-record this wonderful study in Genesis. Click for more information – MP3 on CD-ROM

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Physics and the Bible: Is Empty Space Empty?

From Koinonia House

Technical > Physics > Is Empty Space Empty?

Last month we reviewed passages in the New Testament that refer to God’s creation of the universe. We learned that all created things in the material and spiritual realms were created through Jesus, the eternal Son of God. Also, everything was created for Jesus – He is the heir of all things.

Third, the moment-by-moment control of the universe is determined in minutest detail by God-down from the Throne of God through the ranks of angels and into the created order.

We also saw in our last study that active force fields applied from outside the known, physical universe are required to hold everything together in a stable configuration. This is succinctly stated by the Apostle Paul in Colossians, “In Christ all things cohere (are held together).”

This month we’ll look at a related subject – the likelihood that external energy flows into our known universe from outside on a continual basis. This energy appears literally out of nowhere; that is, from empty space – “the vacuum.”

History of the Aether

Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) taught that the physical world was made up of four elements: air, earth, fire and water. Tying these together (so that the “elements” intercommunicated) was a “subtle” medium, a fifth element-the aether (pron. E-ther). This element was later known as the vacuum (Latin: vacuus, “empty”).

In a sense, the aether was the substratum of the material world. The Greeks believed that “nature abhors a vacuum” so they could not imagine space as being totally empty. They also believed the stars were suspended from, or attached to, a rotating crystalline shell at a fixed distance from the earth. When some of the “stars” (planets) were observed to be moving with respect to the “fixed” stars, a series of rotating crystal spheres was postulated.

The earth was believed to be fixed, immovable, and at the center of the cosmos. Not until the 16th century were these Greek (Ptolemaic) ideas challenged by the Copernican revolution. And until Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) challenged the notion, the velocity of light was assumed by most everyone to be infinite, so the nature of the space between the earth and the crystal spheres was not of great concern.

Solid or Empty Space?

Rene Descartes (1596-1640) championed the theory that the aether was a plenum, from the Greek word meaning “full.” Because it was so difficult for the scientists of that era to understand “action at a distance,” Descartes imagined that a very dense medium of very small particles pervaded everything. This medium was capable of transmitting force from one object to another by collisions. The aether “particles” were in constant motion and there were no spaces between the particles. In a sense the aether was more solid than matter, yet invisible. Descartes’ universe was purely a “mechanical universe” and his theories were soon superseded.

In 1644, Galileo’s former secretary, Evangelista Torricelli, filled a long glass tube with mercury. Inverting the tube into a dish of mercury he observed that the mercury dropped some 30 inches at the closed upper end of the tube, thereby creating what was obviously a vacuum. Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) took this work even further and soon everyone was convinced that the vacuum of space was empty after all.

If light were corpuscular in nature, as some believed, it was not difficult to image light “particles” (we now call them photons) that could traverse a pure vacuum without the necessity of a real medium pervading space.

But other experiments soon began to show that light was a wave phenomenon. Of course waves could travel through the plenum aether by collisions, however at the time only compressional waves were imagined. [Sound waves or seismic waves are compressional in nature, for instance, but light waves proved to be transverse.]

In parallel with all these growing controversies, the velocity of light was finally measured by Olaf Roemer in 1675 and found to be finite, although the values he obtained were a few percent higher than the present value of 299,792.4358 km/sec.

Maxwell’s Equations

By the time of Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727), the aether was believed by many scientists to be “luminiferous.” That is, the aether was said to be more fluid than solid, though it was elastic, and therefore it was a medium which would support waves. James Clerk Maxwell (1839-1879) enjoyed great success when he found a set of equations which beautifully described how light waves could travel through such a luminiferous aether. He showed that light waves are composed of oscillating electric and magnetic vectors in an x-y plane for a wave traveling in the z-direction. For a wave to exist at all, it is natural to suppose that there is some sort of supporting medium. Such a medium must possess elasticity (a spring-like property) and also inertia (a mass-like property). In fact, the velocity of a wave in any medium is equal to the square root of the stiffness divided by the density of the medium.

In the case of electromagnetic waves (gamma rays, x-rays, radio waves, heat, and light of various wavelengths), Maxwell found that the aether possessed an electric-field scaling parameter, called “dielectric permittivity,” and a magnetic-field scaling parameter, called permeability, such that the velocity of light was equal to one over the square root of permeability times permittivity.

In support of the notion that the aether was a real medium, it was observed that empty space behaved like a transmission line with a “characteristic impedance” of 377 ohms (which is the ratio of permeability to permittivity for “free space.”)

Maxwell’s equations also explained how light slows down in glass, in gases, and in water-because media other than the vacuum had differing permeability and permittivity. The aether was once again thought of as a very real medium which could be stretched or compressed-it had resilience or compliance and inertia. Yet no known physical substance had a stiffness to mass density ratio anywhere near 9 x 1016, which was required of the aether as a medium. The aether appeared to possess elasticity but negligible inertia.

Michelson and Morley

The idea that some kind of aether medium existed prevailed until 1887, when Michelson and Morley utilized an interferometer in an attempt to detect the relative motion of the earth and the aether-the aether must be viscous and should be dragged along at least partially with the earth.

According to 19th century preconceptions, the velocity of the earth going around the sun should be about 30 km/sec. Yet when the measurements were made, no motion of the earth relative to the aether could be detected. In other words, the aether apparently did not exist. Until Einstein’s Theory of Relativity was published in 1905, the negative result of the “M-M” experiment baffled scientists.

Einstein’s Theory

Einstein showed that the velocity of light has the same value in all reference frames, whatever their velocity may be relative to other frames. From this point modern physics took off in the direction of Special and General Relativity Theory, and Quantum Mechanics.

For many scientists the notion that an actual aether medium existed was simply discarded. Yet the apparent non-existence of an aether raised many other problems, and the “M-M” experiment is not the end of the story.

”Zero-Point” Energy

If all the air molecules are pumped out of a chamber, the chamber still contains residual radiation (electromagnetic noise from stars, x-rays, and heat radiation). Even before quantum mechanics, it was shown by classical radiation theory that if the temperature of the container is lowered to absolute zero, there remains a residual amount of thermal energy that can not by any means be removed. This residual energy in an empty container at absolute zero was named “zero-point energy (ZPE).”

Contemporary physicist Dr. Hal E. Putoff notes that the “vacuum” is a vast reservoir of seething energy out of which particles are being formed and annihilated constantly. The energy potentials in the vacuum are staggering, but most of the time the forces involved balance each other out to zero. Zero point energy, he says… “is the energy of empty space… Finally when quantum theory was developed, it became absolutely clear that space, if you look at it in a microscopic scale, is more like the base of a waterfall with a lot of frothy, seething activity going on, rather than just something like a placid, empty space… This is, by the way, not a fringe concept. It is a basic underlying concept in modern quantum theory.”

Putoff continues, “When the idea of the hydrogen atom was first put forward… one of the questions at the time was: why doesn’t the electron simply radiate its energy away and spiral into the nucleus, in a way similar to the way our satellites have certain losses and spiral into the planet? At the time, the answer was simply, well it is just the magic of quantum theory, it doesn’t obey classical rules, and for some reason hydrogen atoms are like little perpetual motion machines. But in fact, from the standpoint of the zero point energy approach… indeed you expect an electron in a hydrogen atom to radiate its energy away, but it picks up energy from the background zero point energy and therefore is sustained by it. What that means in terms of physics is that it shows why atoms can be seen as perpetual motion machines; it is just that they always have an energy input from the background to make up for the losses.”

Australian Astronomer Barry Setterfield has, in the past year, picked up on this latest theory of the vacuum to explain the red shift of light from distant galaxies. Arizona astronomer William Tifft’s research has recently shown that red-shifted light from the stars is quantized-this turns out to be also related to ZPE.

Setterfield’s new model also takes into account the evidence that the velocity of light is not a fixed constant. Setterfield concludes that the universe is not expanding at all (as the Big Bang model has long supposed) but is static (it has a fixed diameter).

The original energy input of outside energy on Day Two of creation-when God stretched out the firmament to its maximum expanse-accounts for the red-shift and the subsequent velocity of light decrease! Setterfield has also provided a rough calculation at the rate at which “outside” energy from the “vacuum” would have to be fed into the universe per cubic meter per second if Hal Putoff is correct, and electrons orbiting the nucleus do radiate energy after all. The compensatory energy that must be constantly supplied from the vacuum is a staggering 1.071 x 10¹¹⁷ kilowatts per cubic meter! (That’s a 1 followed by 117 zeroes.)

It is an old tenet of philosophy that ex nihilo nihil fit – out of nothing nothing comes. To imagine that vast amounts of energy flow into our physical universe from nowhere, from empty space, out of the “vacuum,” at first appears impossible. To save the day, we must resort either to magic or we must seek some rational explanation in Biblical revelation. The latter is not hard to do.

The Second Day of Creation

On the Second Day of creation week:
God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament and separated the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament. And it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, a second day. (Gen 1:6-8)
The Hebrew word usually translated as firmament (raqia) strongly suggests an originally superdense medium stretched out very thin (“like a tent”) on the second day of creation week. This means that what God created on Day One and Two was time, matter, energy, and space (the aether). These, evidently, are the building blocks from which He constructed the universe.

A careful examination of Biblical references to the terms “firmament,” “the heavens” and “the heavenly places” and how they are used will show that the Bible depicts the spiritual realm as more solid, more substantial, and more permanent than the present observable, “material” world.

When God created the universe he created it “two-storied.” The spiritual realm is where the angels dwell. It is so much more solid and substantial and permanent than our fading material world that we can best describe ourselves as ghosts in a shadow-like world surrounded and embedded in the more substantial world of the spirit.

This view of heaven is beautifully portrayed by C.S. Lewis in his fictional study, The Great Divorce.

Thinking of heaven as more solid than the material world suggests the aether is intensely solid, with objects in the physical world being akin to voids in the plenum of space. It is as if we had come full circle all the way back to Descartes!

What Is Aether Made of?

If the vacuum is not no-thing, what is the aether made of? It can not be pure spirit or even “condensed spirit” or we would be flirting with pantheism, because God is a Spirit, the angels and men are created spirits, and each of these is a “life-form.” But the aether is not alive.

The aether does appear to have real metric properties which can change as space is expanded or contracted-it appears to be a substance that is more a part of the created spiritual world than a tangible physical substance.

Is the aether the substrate, the boundary layer, between our physical material world and the created world of the spirit (called in Scripture “the heavenly places”)? This is probably not an unreasonable working hypothesis.

God’s Energetic Involvement

From behind the curtains of our present world, God supplies not only force but also energy to sustain the created order. In more ways than one we owe not only our lives, but the moment-by-moment sustenance of the physical universe to His energetic involvement.

Knowing the Creator, personally, gives us every reason to feel secure and to stand in awe of Almighty God, who has by no means left us alone in the cosmos-its very existence is a direct expression of His power and His will!

* * *

1. Barnes, Thomas G., Space Medium, Geo/Space Research Foundation, El Paso TX, 1986. The mysterious properties of the aether as a medium are discussed in this excellent book by a well-known Christian physicist.
2. Boyer, Timothy H., “The Classical Vacuum,” Scientific American, August 1985.
3. Greiner, Walter, and Hamilton, Joseph,”Is the Vacuum Really Empty?” American Science, Mar-Apr. 1980.
4. The Complete Works of Francis A. Schaeffer: A Christian World-view, Crossway Books, Wheaton IL, 1982.
5. Whittaker, Sir Edmund, A History of the Theories of the Aether and Electricity, Dover Publications, New York NY, 1989.

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Friday or Wednesday? The Day of Debt

From Koinonia House

Technical > Resurrection > The Day Of Debt

Friday or Wednesday? The Day of Debt by Chuck Missler

The observances of Good Friday and Easter Sunday have perpetuated the traditional chronology that the crucifixion took place on a Friday, and that the Lord’s body was buried on that day at about 6:00 p.m., and that he rose from the dead early on the following Sunday morning.

There are some, however, that feel this tradition is at variance with the Scriptural record.  The traditional view seems to conflict with certain prophetic and legal facts.

“Three Days”

One of the problems is reckoning “three days” between Friday evening and Sunday morning.  I was once co-hosting a national TV show which had the famed apologist John Warwick Montgomery as a guest.  This issue came up, and John rendered the traditional rationalization, pointing out that the Jews reckoned a partial day as a whole day.

I turned to my co-host and explained, “You must remember that John is an attorney, and that’s the way they bill!”

(John almost fell out of his chair laughing – he hadn’t realized that I was well aware of his distinguished legal background.)

But the difficulty remains.  Our Lord’s definitive statement is one of the problems:

For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.   -Matthew 12:40

The mention of nights, as well as the number of days, makes it hard to render this as simply an idiomatic rhetorical device rather than a statement of fact.

Further, when Paul declares the resurrection of Christ to be “according to the Scriptures” in 1 Corinthians 15:4, if this isn’t an allusion to Jonah 1:17, then where else?  (Perhaps, in Genesis 22, the three days between the “death” of Isaac – when the commandment came – and his “return” to Abraham may have been the macrocode, or typological allusion, that Paul might have had in mind.¹ )

Intensifying this controversy was the “three days” issue at the trial of Jesus.

Now the chief priests, and elders, and all the council, sought false witness against Jesus, to put him to death; But found none: yea, though many false witnesses came, [yet] found they none. At the last came two false witnesses, And said, This [fellow] said, I am able to destroy the temple of God, and to build it in three days. -Matthew 26:59-61

What did Jesus really say?

Destroy this temple, [of His body] and in three days I will raise it up.  -John 2:19

The same phrase reoccurs in the gospels a dozen times.² It also seems to frequently reoccur in prophetic patterns.³

The Sabbaths

Nowhere in the Gospels does it assert that Christ was crucified on a Friday.  In Mark 15:42, it refers to “…the day before the sabbath.”  This may be the root of the misunderstanding.

The Jews had other sabbaths in addition to the weekly shabbat (Saturday).  In addition to the weekly sabbaths, there were seven “high sabbaths” each year, and the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, the 15th of Nisan, was one of them.⁴

Further, Matthew 28:1 should read, “At the end of the sabbaths ,”⁵ (which is plural in the Greek), implying there was a plurality of sabbaths that week.

If Passover, the 14th of Nisan, fell earlier in the week, the 15th could have been any day prior to Saturday, the weekly sabbath.  “When the sabbaths were past” would, of course, be Sunday (actually, Saturday after sundown), in accordance to the Feast of First Fruits.  (Some hold to a Thursday crucifixion on a similar basis.)

The 17th of Nisan

Jesus had declared that He would be in the grave three days, and yet was to be resurrected “on the morrow after the sabbath,” on the day of the Feast of First Fruits.⁶

It is interesting that the authorities, anxious to get the body off the cross before sundown, unknowingly were fulfilling God’s predetermined plan, “according to the Scriptures.”⁷

Noah’s flood ended on the 17th day of the 7th month.⁸ This month becomes the 1st month at the institution of the Passover.⁹ Our new beginning in Christ was on the anniversary of the Earth’s “new beginning” under Noah!

Israel’s new beginning, the crossing of the Red Sea, is believed to have been on the 17th of Nisan.  Also, in their flight after Passover, Israel retrieved the body of Joseph from his tomb.  After Passover, Jesus was retrieved from another Joseph’s tomb on this date.

The Jericho Journey

Another problem with a Friday crucifixion is John 12:1: “Then Jesus six days before the Passover came to Bethany…” (from Jericho).  If the Friday view can be accepted, then six days earlier was the weekly shabbat , and on this day such a journey was legally out of the question for a devout Jew.

Summary

As for the Friday or Wednesday issue, there are many good scholars on each side of this controversy.  I personally have become rather cynical toward any tradition that is not supported by Scripture.

Good Friday is the “traditional” view.  The Wednesday crucifixion is known as the “reconstructed view.”  This article is intended to stimulate study and constructive conversation during this precious season.  One attempt to reconcile the chronology of the entire week is shown in the inset boxes [Friday-Tuesday] and [Wednesday-Sunday].

The important thing is that the tomb was empty .  The authorities made sure that this was indisputable. Indeed, He is risen!

The most important chapter in the Bible is 1 Corinthians 15.  We encourage you to study it very carefully.  (Also, note our special briefing packages, Agony of Love and From Here to Eternity.)

*  *  *

Next month we’ll explore the issue of “The Seventh Day.”  Anyone who thinks that it’s simple to resolve the “Sunday Sabbath” hasn’t studied it.

The Easter Story – DVD – Chuck MisslerMost reasonably informed Christians are well aware that many of the traditions that surround the Christmas holidays have pagan origins and very little correlation with the actual events as recorded in the Bible. Click for more information – DVD

1. Hebrews 11:17-19; Genesis 22:2-4, 8, 14.  See Cosmic Codes , Chapter 12 for a exposition of this astonishing “Macrocode.”
2. Matthew 27:40; 27:63; 16:21; 17:23; 20:19; Mark 8:31; 9:31; 10:34; 14:58; 15:29; Luke 9:22; 18:33.
3. The deliverance of Isaac after three days at Abraham’s offering, Genesis 22; the crossing of Israel after Passover, etc.  Also prominent in Joseph’s prophecies (also introducing the bread and wine!) Genesis 40:12-19; (Cf. 42:17!); Moses’ darkness upon Egypt three days, Exodus 10:22, 23; three days without water in the wilderness, Exodus 15:22; Paul was without sight for three days, Acts 9:9.
4. Exodus 12:16; Leviticus 23:5-7; Numbers  28:17.
5. Jay P. Green, The Interlinear Bible, Hendrickson Publishers, Peabody MA 1985, p.766.  Also, C. I. Scofield, Scofield Study Bible , notes on Matthew 28:1:  The term is plural in the Greek.
6. Leviticus  23:10-11.
7. 1 Corinthians 15:3-4.  See our briefing package, The Feasts of Israel, to explore the prophetic implications of these amazing elements of God’s plan for mankind.
8. Genesis 8:4.
9. Exodus 12:2.

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A Biblical Mystery: His Unfamiliar Face

From Koinonia House

Technical > Resurrection > His Unfamiliar Face

After Jesus’ resurrection, why did people always seem to have difficulty recognizing Him? We can’t help but notice something strange about Jesus’ post-resurrection appearances.

Sunday Morning

That early Sunday morning, even Mary fails to recognize Jesus at first.¹ She mistakes Him for the gardener-until she hears His voice. She was no casual acquaintance: a few days earlier she washed His feet with her tears! Why didn’t she know who He was until she heard His voice? It seems that “Mary!” prompted her recognition.²

Sunday Afternoon

Later that afternoon, Jesus joined two disciples on the Emmaus Road, and for seven miles He gives them an Old Testament Bible study.³

Although “their eyes were holden that they should not know Him,” the Bible doesn’t really explain what this means.⁴ In any case, they did recognize Him when He broke the bread at dinner. (This itself is odd, since it was the role of the host-not the guest-to break the bread.) Their tip-off was in viewing the nail prints in His hands. (They confirmed this later that evening.)

Sunday Evening

These two disciples join the gathering that evening in the upper room and confirm His appearance, emphasizing that it was in the breaking of the bread that they realized who He was.⁵ Why not during the seven-mile walk? What is going on here?

When Jesus ultimately emerges in their midst, we find them all terrified.⁶ Astonished, of course, but why frightened? For some reason they don’t recognize Him until they examine His wounds! Why?

The Galilean Breakfast

Perhaps the most puzzling thing occurs later at the Sea of Galilee.⁷ When they join Him for that early morning breakfast on the seashore, John makes the strangest remark: “And none of the disciples durst ask him, Who art thou? knowing that it was the Lord.”⁸ What does that mean?

A Possible Clue

We should remember that the Bible is a single, integrated message — 66 books, penned by over 40 authors over thousands of years, but in which every detail is there by supernatural engineering. Thus, we also need to recognize that:

the New Testament is in the Old Testament concealed;

the Old Testament is in the New Testament revealed.

There are many surprising insights and details in the Old Testament which amplify the New, including some astonishing physical descriptions.

A familiar example is Psalm 22, which reads as if it were dictated by Jesus Himself as He hung on the cross. He describes His pain, the piercing of His hands and feet;⁹ He quotes the taunts of the crowd¹⁰ and observes the parting of His clothes,¹¹ etc. The Psalm even opens and closes with His first and final words from the cross.¹²

Another such passage is Isaiah 53.¹³ This passage, sometimes called “The Holy of Holies of the Old Testament,” highlights the implications of the cross as eloquently as any of Paul’s epistles. In Isaiah 52:14, however, it specifies that the extent of the abuse left Jesus hardly even looking human.

Yet another most disturbing detail appears a page earlier:

I gave my back to the smiters, and my cheeks to them that plucked off the hair. Isaiah 50:6

This seems to indicate that the Roman soldiers ripped off His beard! No wonder His friends had trouble recognizing Him!

I had an occasion some years ago to work with a software specialist who wore a very full beard. One day he came to work with it shaved off. I almost didn’t recognize him! It is surprising what a difference a single feature like that can make.

(And this didn’t involve any scar tissue or other evidences of abuse resulting from treatment received at the hands of vicious Roman soldiers.)

An Emblem of Love

I am reminded of a young mother whose face was badly disfigured. Her little girl was continually ridiculed by the children in school because of her mother’s appearance. (You know how cruel children can be.)

When the little girl was old enough, the mother explained to her that when she was a baby there was a dreadful fire in the apartment and, although the mother was able to save the little girl, the mother herself suffered very severe burns in the process. From that day on, the little girl was no longer embarrassed about her mother. Every time she looked into her mother’s face it was a reminder of just how much she was loved.

Is it possible that, in addition to the nail prints, there were additional scars-perhaps where His beard used to be-that caused their difficulty in recognizing Him? Are they still there? Does Jesus still bear the marks of His humiliation?

In the Book of Revelation, John is propelled forward in time some several thousand years and is granted a vision of the throne of God. In Revelation 5 we find “the lamb as it had been slain,” apparently still bearing the scars of the cross.¹⁴ They say that the only man-made things in heaven are His scars.

When Jesus returns to rule Israel, He proclaims, “And they shall look upon me whom they have pierced.”¹⁵

The marks of His humiliation are also the marks of His glory. Furthermore, I’m sure the most significant aspects of the cross were not the physical or physiological aspects. I believe it will take us an eternity to even begin to understand what it cost Him that we might be with Him.

He was born of a woman so that we could be born of God.
He humbled Himself so that we could be lifted up.
He became a servant so that we could be made co-heirs.
He suffered rejection so that we could become His friends.

How precious our Redeemer is! Have you really thanked Him lately?

1. John 20:11-18.
2. John 20:16.
3. Luke 24:13-32.
4. Luke 24:16, 31.
5. Luke 24:35, 39.
6. Luke 24:36, 37.
7. John 21:1-12.
8. John 21:12.
9. Psalm 22:16.
10. Psalm 22:7, 8.
11. Psalm 22:18.
12. Psalm 22:1: “My God, My God, Why hast thou forsaken me?” (The only time He didn’t call Him Father!) Cf. Matthew 27:46; Mark 15:34. Psalm 22:31: “He hath done this”; or, better, “It is complete,” “It is finished.” Tetelestai: “Paid in full.” John 19:30.
13. Beginning, actually, at Isaiah 52:13ff.
14. Revelation 5:1-5.

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Medical Aspects of The Crucifixion: The Agony of Love

From Koinonia House

Technical > Resurrection > The Agony Of Love

Medical Aspects of The Crucifixion: The Agony of Love by Dr. Mark Eastman

On the evening before His crucifixion Jesus was gathered with His disciples in the upper room, sharing with them some of the most intimate truths of His entire ministry. As He discussed the love of the Father and His love for His disciples he declared:

Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. John 15:13

Though they did not realize it at the time, the disciples were only hours from the practical realization of this truth. One of the subtle evidences of the supernatural origin of the Biblical text is that astonishing events are often described in extremely brief narratives.

This is perhaps best illustrated in the matter-of-fact way in which the crucifixion of Jesus Christ-the most pivotal event in the history of the universe-is described in the Gospel accounts.

After Jesus was examined and declared to be without fault by the Roman Procurator Pontius Pilate, he delivered Him to be judged by the assembled crowd. When the opportunity arose to decide the destiny of Jesus, the crowd and the Jewish leadership cried out saying, “Crucify Him, crucify Him.” ¹

The horrifying events of the next six hours were preceded by the simple words:

Then delivered he Him therefore unto them to be crucified. And they took Jesus, and led him away. John 19:16

“Great Drops of Blood”

The physical suffering of Jesus began in the Garden of Gethsemane on the evening before His crucifixion. While the disciples slept, the Gospel of Luke records that the LORD “being in an agony he prayed more earnestly: and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground.”²

The notion that someone could actually sweat blood seems contrived. However, there is a rare but recognized condition called hematohydrosis, in which capillary blood vessels that feed the sweat glands rupture, causing them to express blood. This usually occurs under conditions of extreme physical or emotional stress. Jesus wasn’t sweating blood because he was afraid of the physical pain of the cross. Indeed, the book of Hebrews tells us that Jesus looked forward to the cross:

Looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Hebrews 12:2

The Trials

After Jesus’ arrest they led Him away to the High Priest Caiaphas, where the Scribes and elders were assembled. During this inquisition we are told that “some began to spit on Him, and to blindfold Him, and to beat Him, and to say to Him, ‘Prophesy!’ And the officers struck Him with the palms of their hands.”³

Beatings about the face received by a blindfolded individual cause even worse trauma because the victim cannot “roll with the punches.” In the hours that followed Jesus received two additional beatings at the hands of Roman soldiers.⁴ Severe disfigurement of the face would certainly have resulted from the brutal treatment. It is likely that the eyelids were swollen shut as a result of such beatings. This was done in fulfillment of Isaiah 52:13-14:

Behold, my servant shall deal prudently, he shall be exalted and extolled, and be very high. As many were astonished at thee; his visage was so marred more than any man, and his form more than the sons of men.

The Scourging

After His trial before Pontius Pilate, Jesus was scourged (flogged) by the Roman guards. This process typically involved a whip with numerous leather thongs, 18-24 inches long, with bits of metal, bone or glass embedded in the leather. At times they would use an iron rod to beat the prisoner. According to Jewish custom, a prisoner was usually flogged 39 times (Forty minus one was a sign of Jewish mercy!)

Scourging was an extreme form of punishment. The skin on the victim’s back was usually shredded, thus exposing the underlying muscle and skeletal structures. Severe blood loss and dehydration were the rule. Many victims died from such scourging.

After the scourging of Jesus, the Roman soldiers beat Him a second time with their hands and with a reed. Then they put on him a “crown of thorns.”

Jesus had not drunk since the night before, so the combination of the beatings, the crown of thorns, and the scourging would have set into motion an irreversible process of severe dehydration and cardiorespiratory failure. All of this was done so that the prophecy of Isaiah would be fulfilled:

I gave my back to the smiters, and my cheeks to them that plucked off the hair: I hid not my face from shame and spitting. Isaiah 50:6

And:

But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. Isaiah 53:5

Crucifixion

Crucifixion was invented by the Persians between 300-400 b.c. It was “perfected” by the Romans in the first century b.c. It is arguably the most painful death ever invented by man and is where we get our term “excruciating.” It was reserved primarily for the most vicious of criminals.

The most common device used for crucifixion was a wooden cross, which consisted of an upright pole permanently fixed in the ground with a removable crossbar, usually weighing between 75-100 lbs. Victims of crucifixion were typically stripped naked and their clothing divided by the Roman guards. In Jesus’ case this was done in fulfillment of Psalm 22:18, “They divide My garments among them, and for My clothing they cast lots.”

As a gesture of “Roman kindness” the prisoner was offered a mixture of vinegar (gall) and wine as a mild anesthetic. This anesthetic was refused by Jesus.⁵ Consequently, He bore it all! The Apostle Peter stated of Jesus:

Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed. 1 Peter 2:24

The victim was then placed on his back, arms stretched out and nailed to the cross bar. The nails, which were generally about 7-9 inches long, were placed between the bones of the forearm (the radius and ulna) and the small bones of the hands (the carpal bones). (Figure 1.)

The placement of the nail at this point had several effects. First it ensured that the victim would indeed hang there until dead. Secondly, a nail placed at this point would sever the largest nerve in the hand called the median nerve.

The severing of this nerve is a medical catastrophe. In addition to severe burning pain the destruction of this nerve causes permanent paralysis of the hand. Furthermore, by nailing the victim at this point in the wrist, there would be minimal bleeding and there would be no bones broken! Thus scriptures were fulfilled:

I can count all my bones: they look and stare upon me. Psalm 22:17He keepeth all his bones: not one of them is broken. Psalm 34:20

The positioning of the feet is probably the most critical part of the mechanics of crucifixion. First the knees were flexed about 45 degrees and the feet were flexed (bent downward) an additional 45 degrees until they were parallel the vertical pole. An iron nail about 7-9 inches long was driven through the feet between the 2nd and 3rd metatarsal bones. In this position the nail would sever the dorsal pedal artery of the foot, but the resultant bleeding would be insufficient to cause death.

The Catastrophic Result

The resulting position on the cross sets up a horrific sequence of events which results in a slow, painful death. Having been pinned to the cross, the victim now has an impossible position to maintain. (Figure 2)

With the knees flexed at about 45 degrees, the victim must bear his weight with the muscles of the thigh. However, this is an almost impossible task-try to stand with your knees flexed at 45 degrees for 5 minutes. As the strength of the legs gives out, the weight of the body must now be borne by the arms and shoulders. The result is that within a few minutes of being placed on the cross, the shoulders will become dislocated. Minutes later the elbows and wrists become dislocated. The result of these dislocations is that the arms are as much as 6-9 inches longer than normal.

With the arms dislocated, considerable body weight is transferred to the chest, causing the rib cage to be elevated in a state of perpetual inhalation. Consequently, in order to exhale the victim must push down on his feet to allow the rib muscles to relax. The problem is that the victim cannot push very long because the legs are extremely fatigued. As time goes on, the victim is less and less able to bear weight on the legs, causing further dislocation of the arms and further raising of the chest wall, making breathing more and more difficult.

The result of this process is a series of catastrophic physiological effects. Because the victim cannot maintain adequate ventilation of the lungs, the blood oxygen level begins to diminish and the blood carbon dioxide (CO₂) level begins to rise. This rising CO₂ level stimulates the heart to beat faster in order to increase the delivery of oxygen and the removal of CO₂.

However, due to the pinning of the victim and the limitations of oxygen delivery, the victim cannot deliver more oxygen and the rising heart rate only increases oxygen demand. So this process sets up a vicious cycle of increasing oxygen demand-which cannot be met-followed by an ever increasing heart rate. After several hours the heart begins to fail, the lungs collapse and fill up with fluid, which further decreases oxygen delivery to the tissues. The blood loss and hyperventilation combines to cause severe dehydration. That’s why Jesus said, “I thirst.”⁶

Over a period of several hours the combination of collapsing lungs, a failing heart, dehydration, and the inability to get adequate oxygen supplies to the tissues cause the eventual death of the victim. The victim, in effect, cannot breath properly and slowly suffocates to death. In cases of severe cardiac stress, such as crucifixion, a victim’s heart can even burst. This process is called “Cardiac Rupture.” Therefore it could be said that Jesus died of a “broken heart!”

To slow the process of death the executioners put a small wooden seat on the cross, which would allow the victim the privilege of bearing his weight on his buttocks. The effect of this was that it could take up to nine days to die on a cross.

When the Romans wanted to expedite death they would simply break the legs of the victim, causing him to suffocate in a matter of minutes. At three o’clock in the afternoon Jesus said, “Tetelastai,” meaning “it is finished.” Then He gave up the ghost. When the soldiers came to Jesus to break His legs, He was already dead. Not a bone of Him was broken!

How Should We Then Live?

I realize that it is difficult to read of the details of Jesus’ physical sufferings. And yet, when we realize that He looked forward, on our behalf, to the cross, we are overwhelmed with His practical demonstration of love and, hopefully, a personal realization of our unworthiness. How should we then live? I believe that the Apostle Paul said it best:

Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Philippians 2:5-11

1. John 19:6.
2. Luke 22:44.
3. Mark 14:65.
4. Matthew 27; Luke 23.
5. Matthew 27:34.
6. John 19:28.

The Agony of Love – Chuck Missler What really happened at the crucifixion? How can one who is immortal die? How can eternity be compressed into six hours? What really held Jesus’ body to the cross? Click for more information – Audio Cassette

From Here to Eternity – Chuck MisslerOur physical bodies are made up of about 17 elements – the same 17 that are found in the ground. Jesus’ resurrection body was transformed to transcend time and space. Click for more information – Audio Cassette

The Romance of Redemption – Ruth – Chuck MisslerWhat does this famous love story from the Old Testament have to do with the Feast of Pentecost? Click for more information – Audio Cassette

Footprints of the Messiah – Chuck MisslerWhat Old Testament Bible Study is mentioned twelve times in one book of the Bible, is given by seven different people and is almost never given today? Click for more information – Audio Cassette

The Feasts of Israel – Chuck Missler / Dan StolebargerThe Feasts of Israel, set by God, are not only commemorative in a historical context, but are also prophetic. Click for more information – Audio Cassette

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