Tonight we have the distinct pleasure of introducing to you two people who are very special to me. Dr. George Vandeman, noted TV lecturer and minister will introduce Dr. Bob Gentry well known physicist for NASA and the space agency. The reason for this is that Elder Vandeman is the person that led Bob in learning about God and His love.

        It is with a great deal of pleasure that I introduce a personal friend to you, pastor George Vandeman.

        Thank you Devon, I have looked forward to coming here ever since you invited me and Dr. Bob. What I will share with you by way of introducing Bob is taken from my little booklet, "Seeing is Believing," Chapter Four entitled "Footprints in Stone." This has to do with direct geological evidence supporting an instant creation. If you want more details, Bob has written a detailed account in a book entitled "Creation's Tiny Mystery."

FINGERPRINTS IN STONE:

        The year 1968 was a bitter pill to swallow. January stormed in with the North Korean capture of the USS Pueblo and the shocking Tet Offensive in Vietnam. Springtime cursed us with the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy. Summer brought no relief as the Vietnam peace talks dragged on and anti-war protests intensified!

        No doubt about it, 1968 was a year we would just as soon forget. That is, except for Christmas Eve. A beacon of hope came to us that night, the thrill of accomplishment. For the first time in history men were orbiting the moon. And they were Americans! We could hardly believe our eyes as television relayed the dramatic lunar vista beneath Apollo 8. Astronauts Frank Borman, James Lovell and William Anders sent their Christmas greetings from a quarter million miles away. Then they read to us the first chapter of an old Book. Comforting words, somehow familiar and yet nearly forgotten: 'In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.'

        The New York Times, commenting on that Scripture reading from lunar orbit, observed, 'Somehow it was exactly right.' Yes, what could have been more appropriate for our astronauts than to recognize that the blue sphere they looked back upon exists not by accident, but because God put it here?

        Some months after the mission of Apollo 8, I learned of a rather unusual incident that had taken place that Christmas Eve. Naturally, many reporters were present at the Space Center in Houston, some of them from foreign nations. Among them were two from a country without a Christian background. These men had been deeply impressed as the astronauts read from Genesis. The stark splendor of those grand words touched their minds and hearts.

        Not realizing they had been listening to Scripture, they asked someone from NASA if a script from which the astronauts read might be available. The American official replied with a meaningful smile, 'Why, yes, when you get back to your hotel room, just open the drawer of your nightstand. You will find a book bound in black. The script from which the astronauts read is on the very first page.'

        "In the beginning God created." Strange as it may seem, many Christians in America are not as moved by these immortal words as those atheist journalists were. Even many church-going scientists and educators, searching for the origins of life, find themselves unable to accept any answer that points to a Creator. They would gladly spend millions of dollars probing outer space to find our roots. They would welcome some ancient legend or embrace some dusty artifact, but not the Bible account of Creation!

        They seem to enjoy bobbing like corks on the sea of uncertainty. If they knew something for sure, they couldn't speculate anymore. All this to escape a Creator! All this to escape moral responsibility?

        I'm convinced that doubting God's Word is not just a problem of logic. It's more a problem of attitude. Human nature wants to 'do its own thing,' although we might not want to admit it. So we hide our doubts amid intellectual verbiage.

        It was Aldous Huxley who said, "The philosopher who finds no meaning in the world is not concerned exclusively with a problem in pure metaphysics, he is also concerned to prove that there is no valid reason why he personally should not do as he wants to do" (Ends and Means, p. 315).

        You see, if there is a Creator, then we stand accountable before Him who gave us life. But if we are only sophisticated animals arriving here by chance, then we have no responsibility. We can do as we please. Or at least whatever we can get away with.

        No doubt about it, a God powerful enough to create is unpopular in scientific circles. But lately we hear words of unrest among scientists. Not a few have come to realize that life is too complex to have sprung unannounced from a puddle of chemicals sparked by random lightning bolts. Here and there we find movement toward the Genesis account, what one writer calls "a sheepish resort" to the idea of a Creator. Some scientists now boldly declare their faith in the Bible account of creation. One of them, Robert Gentry, has caused quite a stir among his peers by his discovery of what one evolutionist calls "a tiny mystery."

        It is now time for Bob to come up and tell his story. Come on up here Dr. Bob and share your experience with these good people.

        Thank you Elder Vandeman. It is with much pleasure that I share with you good people what the Lord has done in my life and the way He has led me. I grew up in a Christian home believing the Biblical account of life's origins. But while taking a freshman biology course at the University of Florida, I began doubting the Scriptures. By the time I finished my studies there, I had become a theistic evolutionist—one who disbelieves the Genesis creation account but still believes God exists.

        One day an agnostic friend recommended that I watch a television program called "It Is Written." I had no idea religion was involved until I tuned in to the telecast the next Sunday evening. But as a result I became a regular viewer. When Elder Vandeman visited Orlando in the spring of 1959 to conduct some lectures, my wife and I invited him to our home.

        We discussed creation and evolution. He expressed to me his conviction that those who discard the account of Genesis also discredit the rest of the Bible. For instance, the Ten Commandments teach beyond question that God created the world in six literal days. We looked at the fourth commandment together:

        "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall do no work...for in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth....Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it." (Exodus 20:8-II)

        This Sabbath commandment directly challenged my confidence in evolution. I had been trying to maintain faith in the Bible by equating the six days of creation with six long geological eras, but now realized that if such were the case the fourth commandment would be saying something like this:

        "Six billion years you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh billion year is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall do no work...for in six billion years the Lord made heaven and earth... and rested the seventh billion year, Therefore the Lord blessed the seventh billion year and hallowed it."

        That gets a little ridiculous, wouldn't you say? I thought so too. So now I had a puzzle to solve. The Sabbath commandment proved that Genesis 1 required six, twenty-four-hour days in the creation week. But science seemed to indicate otherwise—radiometric dating appeared to prove the earth to be billions of years old. This conflict between Scripture and science caused quite a dilemma for me. At first I thought I must either reject the Bible as reliable or surrender my belief in science. Instead, I decided to search out the scientific evidence to see for myself if it could be reconciled with the creation account of the Lord's Word.

        I began to realize that the case for evolution rested on shaky ground. Everything depended upon a questionable assumption known as the "UNIFORMITARIAN PRINCIPLE." This theory supposes that the universe evolved through the ages by means of physical laws that have never changed. If evidence could be found disproving this supposed uniformity, the evolutionary theory would fall apart. Geologists would have no basis for assuming that radioactive decay has been constant throughout history, no basis for believing the earth has existed for billions of years.

        With these thoughts churning in my mind, I moved my family to the Atlanta area. There I taught physics while pursuing graduate studies at the Georgia Institute of Technology. My quest for truth led me to investigate radioactive halos. (These are imprints of radioactivity in rocks which reveal the radiation present long ago when the earth came into existence.) But the department chairman wasn't enthusiastic about this new area of study. For a year he tried to discourage me.

        Finally he said to me, "Look, the time has come for me to tell you frankly. If you want to do this research, fine, but you can't do it at Georgia Tech. I don't think you're going to find anything. But what if you did? If you published evidence that disrupted the evolutionary time scale, what would happen to Georgia Tech? You would be an embarrassment to everyone." With that I knew I could not continue at Georgia Tech. Under those circumstances I had to forfeit my doctoral dreams.

        It was the summer of 1964 and I found himself nearly destitute, without a regular income. We had exhausted our savings as well as funds borrowed from relatives in launching new research into those promising radioactive halos. We were determined to continue this quest for truth, regardless of the consequences.

        For the next few months things remained rather bleak for us. Nothing much happened in my research. But then I began noticing under the microscope that certain rocks had unusual ring patterns. These mysterious 'radiohalos' showed evidence of radioactivity with a fleeting existence, lasting just a very brief time and then disappearing.

        Let me explain it so you can understand it. Suppose I have a glass of water and I put an Alka Seltzer tablet in it. The bubbles flow out and then disappear within just a few seconds. Either I freeze that water instantly and catch the bubbles in transit, or else they're gone forever.

        That's exactly what I was looking at under the microscope. Radioactivity in rapid transition, like those bubbles, had been quickly trapped in earth's foundation rocks. If those rocks had taken hundreds of thousands of years to cool and solidify, as evolutionists believe, these radiohalos could never have been formed. Something with such a fleeting existence must have been trapped in a matter of minutes. But how, I wondered.

        Finally one spring afternoon in 1965 I received my answer. I was home alone with my three children. The house was silent, it was our "quiet hour," and my boisterous little ones were asleep. I moved my borrowed microscope from the back room to the front of the house to reexamine those fascinating halos.

        Suddenly, as I stared into the microscope, two verses from Scripture flashed into my mind: "By the word of the Lord were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth.... For he spake, and it was done; he commanded, and it stood fast" (Psalm 33:6, 9).

        As I sat there stunned, a solution suggested itself. These radiohalos in earth's foundation rocks revealed radiation that had been active long ago but since had ceased. So what most geologists thought would have taken ages could have happened quite quickly. Could this be scientific evidence of an instantaneous creation event? Could these radiohalos, in a sense, be God's fingerprints?' As the thoughts sunk into my consciousness, I realized this was something really big! If this was true, the implications of this discovery were tremendous.

        I decided that I would test my findings by subjecting them to inspection by my peers in the world's most reputable scientific journals. But I knew that before anything could be published, it would have to survive cautious and critical analysis. And once in print, the article would be further scrutinized by evolutionists everywhere. Any errors in my methodology would be quickly exposed. In time I managed to publish more than twenty reports in noted scientific journals. The only criticism raised was; "This can't be true because evolution is true." But my conclusions remained intact, no one was able to find any fault with them.

        Note: Eventually Bob Gentry came to be recognized as the world's foremost authority in his particular subspecialty. The U.S. Atomic Energy Commission invited him to do research as a guest scientist at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

        It was October 27, 1981. I was at work in my office at Oak Ridge when the phone rang. The Attorney General's office from the state of Arkansas was calling. They needed me to testify at the forthcoming Arkansas creation trial as one of the science witnesses for the state. The teaching of creation in public schools had been opposed by the American Civil Liberties Union as being unscientific. I was asked to meet the challenge by presenting my scientific evidence for creation.

        My research was again subjected to more intense scrutiny by some of the world's most distinguished evolutionists. Then it came time for the ACLU's geologist to be cross-examined. Asked specifically about the fleeting existence of radioactive halos, he conceded that evolution had no satisfactory explanation for them. The courtroom listened in awe as he could only say, "Gentry has found a tiny mystery which scientists someday will solve."

        My friends, the testimony of earth's granite rock halos is creation's tiny mystery. I know that scientists will never solve it because the Creator of the universe has placed in those halos His eternal fingerprints. Evidence that cannot be contradicted. Many honest minds these days are becoming convinced about creation because of what the Lord led me to discover. Whether or not people accept the compelling data, one fact remains self-evident: It does matter what we believe about our beginnings. For what we believe about how we got here determines what we believe about God. If He has misled us in the Bible about creation, how can He be a God worth worshipping? And what we believe about our beginnings determines what we believe about the future. For if we discard the book of Genesis as myth and legend, why should we take the prophecies of Revelation seriously?

        I Thank you for your attention and time. May God bless you all.

        Thank you Bob for that inspiring testimony. I thank all of you for coming tonight. I know you feel like I do that it was well worth your time and effort. Gradually the pieces of the puzzle about creation are being fitted into place. When we are finished, the picture will be incontrovertible proof about God and His creation that evolutionist and the "no God" proponents will have no answer for. Proof that will show that all their claims are groundless falsehood. We are now just about half way through our lecture series and already we have presented enough evidence to convince anyone who wants to believe.

        Next week we are going to have another special guest with us, noted cosmologist Dan Smoot. His 17 year search for answers about the cosmos and the big bang theory, adds yet another piece of the puzzle into the picture puzzle supporting a finite Creator who created the universe instantaneously. You will not want to miss this most interesting evening. Until next week, thank you all for coming. I bid you all good night and God's speed.