GOD SPOKE AND IT WAS DONE
by
Everett C. DeVelde
That the origin of all things in the physical universe is God is the clear testimony
of Scripture. From Hebrews 11:3 we understand that visible things, things that have mass,
were prepared by the word of God. In fact, space, time, energy and mass, all of
which characterize the universe in which we live were prepared by the word of God. God
spoke and it was done (Genesis 1; Psalm 33:6-9, 148:1-6).
It hardly seems possible that thirty years ago I was living in Huntsville, Alabama,
designing electronic equipment for the Apollo moon mission. I was employed by the Federal
Systems Division of IBM as a staff engineer and performed much of my work at
the Marshall Space Flight Center. Never before had such a talented community of
scientists and engineers been assembled for so ambitious and demanding an assignment, that of
placing men on the moon. It was an assignment I carried out with considerable relish,
because it was extremely interesting to me.
There were design review meetings and pep talks by Wernher von Braun which
were intended to encourage us in our work and give us direction. There were frequent
discussions among my associates and myself concerning what we would find on the moon. If
the moon was more than 4 billion years old we would expect to find a great deal of dust on the
surface and if this was indeed the case how should the Lunar Excursion Module
(LEM) be designed? Should we provide it with large pads which would support its weight in
50 meters or so of dust? Should we design a landing profile that included a hover to
blow away the dust with the exhaust gases of the rocket engine?
It was suggested that because there was no atmosphere on the moon micrometeorites
striking it over billions of years would pulverize its surface into dust. Rocks, too, would be
smooth as pebbles are smoothed by tumbling in water over a period of time. We don't observe
such phenomena on the earth because our atmosphere burns up the micrometeorites before
they strike the earth. Then there was the issue of life forms on the moon. Should we take
extraordinary measures to protect the Astronauts from strange diseases or try to keep them
from infecting the moon with theirs? No one had ever seen the other side of the moon and if
there were life forms perhaps they lived where we couldn't see them. I remember some wild
speculation about this.
When Apollo 11 Astronaut Armstrong took "one small step for a man, one giant leap for
mankind" his boot sank only a fraction of an inch into the lunar soil. At the site of the Apollo
11 landing there was very little dust in evidence. The LEM was carefully sterilized to prevent
infection of the moon by micro organisms from earth and upon returning to the earth the
Astronauts were confined to an isolation chamber for observation. No moon life forms were
found in evidence either on the Astronauts or in the samples they brought from the moon. At
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this point the moon appeared to be sterile and relatively young, but perhaps there was dust
elsewhere.
The eighth man to walk on the moon was Apollo 15 Astronaut James Irwin
who professed to be a Christian. Jim has gone to be with the Lord now but he visited Grove
City College, where I am presently teaching, and presented me with the very unusual
opportunity of playing racquetball with him and talking at length about his experience on the
moon and his search for Noah's Ark. Jim as you may remember used the "Lunar Rover," a sort
of dune buggy, to explore a much larger and different area of the moon than Apollo 11. As a
geologist, Jim confirmed the absence of any appreciable dust and that the lunar structures he
was able to study did not appear to be of great age. In addition studies of the internal
temperature of the moon did not support the view that the moon was old but that it was
completely dead.
The opinion that these data indicate a long antiquity is simply a theory that some
have proposed. My view is that God created a mature earth, moon and sun. Accordingly he
created the moon with mares already formed and the regolith already compacted and it has not
been there very long in that state. The alternative, that the moon mares were formed by meteor
bombardment, is impossible, given that the orbit of the moon is nearly circular and its rotation is
geosynchronous. The small amount of powdery surface material indicates that God placed this
mature moon in its place as the lesser of two great lights about 10 to 13 thousand years ago. Why
this dating? This is the approximate date of the formation of Adam if the genealogies in Genesis
5 and 11 contain relationships that are not father-son which is probably the case.
All of this raises the question of the origin of the moon. If in fact, the moon is dead
then it is difficult to believe that it was the product of the "Big Bang." According to this
very popular theory of the origin of the universe, all of the mass in the universe was
compressed into single location billions of years ago. It suddenly blew apart with a
huge fire ball forming the various pieces of mass we call stars. From one of these stars
known as the sun came the earth and the other planets of our solar system. The moon
then came from the earth perhaps from what is now the Pacific ocean. If so it must have
come from the earth before life forms existed because the moon appears to be sterile and
no fossils have been located there. But other considerations also make this theory of the
origin of the earth and moon impossible.
If the moon came from the earth it would have passed through the Roche limit
and because the mass of the moon relative to the earth is so great it surely would have
disintegrated into an asteroid belt. Furthermore the orbital characteristics of the moon cannot be
explained by an earth origin. If it broke away from the earth it should rotate about its axis
in the same direction as the earth with the same rotational frequency but in fact the moon rotates
about its axis 27.32 times slower than the earth. Also its orbital characteristics forbid the theory
that the earth trapped the moon from outer space. Its orbit about the earth is too circular
for that to have happened. Indeed the moon could not have come into existence as the result of
a "big bang."
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Neither do the planets appear to have come from the sun. Venus spins opposite from the
direction of the sun. Uranus spins on an axis that is 90 degrees from the sun's axis. The earth
itself is tipped 23 degrees from the axis of the sun which of course creates the seasons.
Mercury appears to be devoid of an atmosphere and always presents the same surface to the sun,
and for that reason alone it could not have come from the sun. In addition the chemical
composition of the planets differs greatly from the sun which is 80% hydrogen, 18% helium and
2% other elements. Indeed, all of the planets have certain characteristics that indicate they did not
come from the sun and if so then they did not either derive from a "big bang."
When it comes to the sun one also wonders how it could possibly come from a great
primeval explosion. Its mass is composed of atoms that have an obvious design. The presence
of atomic building blocks with their protons, neutrons, electrons with their spin
states, leptons, mesons, neutrinos, quarks, etc. completely defy any physical
explanation. The more we know of them the more we are moved to admit that they were
designed by an all-powerful being. The origin of mass cannot be energy. Mass can by
fission or fusion liberate energy, but energy does not exist without mass.
Energy and mass of course are an inseparable system. To have kinetic energy one must
have mass. The Einstein equation (energy equals mass times the speed of light squared)
gives the kinetic energy of a particle that has no rest mass. With regard to mass that
exists at rest its kinetic energy is one half the mass times the velocity squared. Accordingly
if mass is zero so is energy, therefore energy does not exist without mass and therefore
God created mass with its atomic structure as a system together with its corresponding energy.
Neither can energy be created or destroyed by natural processes. The amount of energy in the
universe is fixed. If it cannot be created or destroyed where did it come from? Why is
there something and not nothing? The only rational answer is that YAHWEH God created it.
Indeed, that God created everything in the universe is the first statement of Scripture.
The universe consists of mass, space (which is not nothing since it contains an ether of various
fields), energy and time which together comprise the heavens and the earth. According to
Genesis chapter 1, the earth was a unique creation. It existed alone in the universe until the
fourth day when God created the sun, moon and stars. Clearly the earth, sun, moon and stars
did not derive one from the other but were created uniquely for signs, seasons, days and
years (Genesis 1:14-19). The earth was created first and then the other astronomical bodies
followed.
When God created the stars he created them with their light already arriving on the
earth else how could they be signs when they were created. The stars are used for
navigation because they are fixed in the heavens but they appear to be a great distance
from the earth, so much so that light from most of them would require hundreds of
millions of years to travel to the earth. If the universe is really that old then it follows that we
are not observing the universe as it actually is. In fact there may not be anything out there
at all but wavefronts of light striking the surface of the earth.
If we say that this amounts to deception, I would reply that God is all-powerful and
he can create anything he wishes to create. Furthermore, if God created a mature
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universe it would necessarily have the appearance of age. We must not read our specious flimsy
scientific theories into the Bible. The Bible tells us that God created the universe in a manner
that differs greatly from godless science but then God is all-powerful. If one does not
believe in an omnipotent God then one has no alternative but to theorize a big bang and long
eons of time but even so we are left with explaining the origin of the materials that exploded.
God created what is here, space, time, mass and energy, from absolutely nothing. There is
no need to resort to impossible scientific theories such as the "big bang" to account for the
existence of the physical universe. Neither is there any need to resort to long periods of
time to accommodate evolutionary development because the infinite omnipotent God spoke and
it was done.
When the sun and moon were created, earth seasons and tidal marshlands with their
unique ecosystems began. These things obviously were coincident with the creation of the
sun and moon and did not evolve. They were created uniquely by God (Job 38-40). All of the
"kinds" of living things were created by God, they did not evolve. Over my 34 years of
professional work in physics and electronics I have seen the scientific community move
significantly away from the sort of evolution proposed by Darwin, Lamark, and others. And the
data more and more support the view that all things came from God. They support a
catastrophic origin of all that is here.
Furthermore mankind are unique in all the universe and so is the plan of redemption. Let
us remember that God chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world, according to
Ephesians 1:4. He decreed the plan of redemption and then he created those who would be
involved with it for whom Christ was to die. I am not surprised that we hear no
messages from outer space. No one else is there because evolution did not produce the
universe, God did! God spoke and it was done.