Five Building Blocks – Part 1
The subtitle of my book is “Dissolving the Barrier Between the Seen and the Unseen.”
During the next week or three (or ten), I’ll be doing a series of posts here about what I am calling the Five Building Blocks to dissolving that barrier.
Think of them as literal building blocks. I’ll be discussing five individual ideas that will finally come together in a holistic manner as we near the end. It will actually look like something solid to stand on. But near the beginning, I’m asking you to just take my word for it; these five building blocks will, indeed, come together eventually. The conversation is about understanding each of the building blocks as I develop them.
I’m going to keep comments open, hoping that perhaps some interesting conversations might ensue. In fact, I encourage it. I want to know what y’all think of this stuff.
So we might as well jump right in. It might actually require more than one post per building block. Not sure yet. Let’s just wing it…
Building block #1: Matter is energy.
Now, you scientific types are not at all impressed with that little but of trivia. After all, we’ve known that for almost a hundred years. In the early 1900s scientists were laying the foundation that would lead to Einstein’s work. He eventually gave us the famous equation which states that energy equals mass.
But remember, our discussions here are from a biblical paradigm, so what does that mean for us who believe that God created the universe?
The universe was not created out of nothing as some of our early church fathers taught us (they gave us the term “creation ex nihilo” or creation from nothing). No, the Bible teaches us that God actually created the universe from stuff which cannot be seen (“By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible“ Hebrews 11:3). The basic particles of matter from which all things are made are simply little vibrations of energy. Energy cannot be seen.
Now, common Newtonian physics cannot tell us anything about the behavior of matter at a subatomic level. Newtonian physics refers to the science of physics on a macro level, in other words, what happens when the cue ball strikes the eight ball at 20 mph, or what happens when a car with a crash test dummy crashes into a wall at 60 mph? This kind of physics deals with relatively big things that act like big blobs of solid matter. Sub-atomic particles do not act that way.
Individual particles change unpredictably. They manifest themselves in various ways depending on the experiment and measuring method. In Newtonian physics, a pound of armadillo is always a pound of armadillo. In quantum physics, an atom of armadillo might look like an atom of chicken soup three nanoseconds from now. Or something like that…
Back to the topic at hand. Matter is, very literally, energy. There is no such thing as tiny little balls of stuff in the center of an atom. No, it’s all quarks, tiny little spots of energy interacting with others in different configurations to form the various elements from which everything in the universe is made.
And it was all created by the Word and the Will of God.
God spoke and it came to be.
His intention brought forth the energy particles that built the universe.
Creation from that which cannot be seen.
The same miracle as when He fed 5,000 people with a couple loaves of bread. Creating more stuff than there was before out of nothing but energy particles. I don’t think Jesus needed to start with bread to make more bread. He could have turned rocks into bread, or even created bread “from nothing.” I believe this was simply an object lesson for his disciples, teaching them that what they had in their hands would always be enough when combined with the creative power of God.
Now, think about this: if there was nothing before God began creating, then He created the universe out of stuff which cannot be seen, then should not all the matter in the universe contain at least some kind of character, or signature, or intention of God’s personhood?
When an artist paints, she puts something of herself into her painting. It’s a vision she had inside her mind and it was uniquely hers. It could not possibly be described to someone else in enough detail to ensure that the other person could duplicate what the artist saw in her mind. It is very literally a part of her being recorded on the canvas.
When a musician writes a song, it is uniquely his. The words, the music, the chord progressions, the tone of his voice, the overall result cannot be perfectly duplicated by anyone else on earth.
And when God created the universe, it was His utterly unique vision that drove the creative process. No one else could have – or has since been able to – duplicate what He has done. After many thousands of years studying the universe we can’t even come close to comprehending what He did! God created, according to His own vision and goals, by simply speaking and desiring and commanding things to happen.
So this is the first building block. Let’s recap:
Building block #1: Matter is energy.
God spoke it into existence through His Words and His Intention.
The universe is a construction that is utterly unique to God’s own identity, vision and desire.
Aside from any negative effects of the fall of humankind, the universe perfectly represents what God wanted it to represent when He designed it and created it.
He created all the physical laws that govern the existence of the universe, including quantum physics and all the things that have yet to be discovered.
But most importantly, remember the building block: matter IS energy.
Now we put that block on the shelf. We’ll take it down later and build something with it.
Come back for more as we discuss Building Block #2 next time…
I stumbled on your new book via Google and have added it to my reading list – as a fellow engineer and science minded Christian, I am intrigued by what you have to say!
I wanted to reply to your post below about consciousness and matter. I recently heard an NPR interview with Sam Parnia, the expert behind a new book called “Erasing Death”. He explores the afterlife experiences people have who then live to tell about them. His research is purely scientific and secular and aimed at improving the chances of surviving heart attacks. Through his resuscitation research though, he has found that consciousness continues to exist after the brain stops functioning. I’d consider his work scientific evidence of the existence of the soul. Funny how far science has to come only to prove what the Bible (and other religions) have said all along…
Here’s a link to the book:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0062080601/
Appreciate your blog, as well as your book. Makes it easy for people to comprehend. I just wanted to add to your premise that who we are goes into what we create. I was recording a song in the studio, singing spontaneously to a instrumental piece that I had not heard prior to recording. I wanted to sing from what I was getting off of the music (yes, a bit bazaar, but felt that was the way to record the prophetic songs on Temple Dance). The fourth piece I could not get words for, only tongues and about a third of the way through a lament seemed to fall on me. So I kept it as a song of tongues because when I tried to do it again, I was stopped by Holy Spirit and seemed to be asked why I was doing that. In my mind I was arguing, well, who ever heard of a song that was just tongues on a cd ? A quick rebuttal came, And who made THAT rule ? HA ! I shrugged my shoulders and moved on to the next song.
When I went to Canada to mix the song with the people who sent me the soundtrack I learned that the particular piece that I could only sing tongues to and felt the lament was written originally to be the background for prayers to be prayed on behalf of the holocaust victims. I was amazed! My spirit had picked up the intent of the orchestrator who put the piece together. The music carried the author’s intent.
I’ve had many such experiences with music as well as art and dance. There truly is the essence of what is in the creators intent, being, essence, or perhaps a combination of all three.
……just as God’s essence, intent, His love and His thoughts were released as he spoke.
There is also a science known as voice mapping, a process by which they can tell 12 different things about you just be recording your voice as you speak for about 3-4 minutes. Most interesting. Your voice carries your beliefs. The frequencies in your voice contain the frequencies of what you believe…..that opens up a whole other volume of things that I’m not going into, lest I end up writing my own book here !! Sorry, but what you are blogging goes right along with the last 15 years of my journey that the Lord has been leading, and at times pushing me, into. Thanks for writing….
grace grace
JoAnn
I very much appreciate your book ‘Prayer, Quantum Physics and Hotel Mattresses’, it is a brilliant and priceless work describing the concept of the interface between physical substance and the realm of God’s Spirit – thus helpfully enabling one to rationally and more confidently apply personal faith for personal divine bodily healing miracles. This concept – plus my indispensable use of the Strong’s Hebrew/Greek individual word numbering system and dictionary and concordance for Bible study on the subject – have given me the objective rock-solid grip that I have been looking for for years in order to properly pursue the subject of divine bodily miracle healing (and with spectacular results for myself!). Thank you very much for your brave and pioneering efforts in this – and for the benefit of many.
Thanks Garry! Always great to hear how these ideas are helping others get a glimpse into the other side!
20 years after having become a Christian on Feb. 8/1973 I had serious occasion to need healings in my body that I knew medical science could not provide. In those first 20 years of growing as a Christian I got enormous help from the Bible in the broken character and personality side of my life; in those years I had read the Bible without the use of the Strong’s Hebrew/Greek individual word numbering system and dictionary and concordance and because of this I could not at all be certain that divine bodily miracle healing was something that a Christian could obtain in this lifetime. In the early 1990’s – and as a medical doctor – when I saw my personal need for divine bodily miracle healing I aggressively turned to use the Strong’s Hebrew/Greek word numbering system and dictionary and concordance as a necessary tool for obtaining personal certainty of faith in what the English text was saying in verses about divine bodily miracle healing. Soon after this I had heard about the latest amazing and detailed knowledge in quantum physics and it occurred to me that divine bodily miracle healing could not be expected to occur in the conceptual framework of atoms and chemistry (‘tiny hard marbles spinning around each other’) that pharmacologists and medical doctors are based in but that quantum physics could itself easily make explanation for divine bodily miracle healing . As I combined my Strong’s word study with the framework of quantum physics and with some Christian divine bodily miracle healing books I received my first divine bodily miracle healing from God in October 1994 ( 5-7 year history of severe heartburn from reflux esophagitis), my next divine healing was my lifelong seasonal asthma in June 1996; in July 2000 it was the complete rapid permanent disappearance of a large olecranon bursal cyst (‘ganglion’) on my right elbow that I had had for 6 months; since then I have received full divine healing of 8 months of prostatism and of stenosing tenosynovitis (‘trigger finger’) in the Fall of 2010 (and they have not come back); since 2009 I have received complete divine relief (either instantly or within 30 minutes) of all of nearly 90 scintillating scotomas (migraine) that I have had; on 2 separate occasions in 2011 I received spectacular instant [and I do mean INSTANT – it was in a literal flash of time, it was stunning to perceive the instantaneous and complete disappearance of the pain, spasm, weakness and fear!] divine healings of acute low back sprain; on Feb. 7/2016 I received an instant [and again I do mean INSTANT! – it was dreamily wonderful and I couldn’t stop smiling afterwards for the utter complete slickness of it!] divine healing (which to this day has not at all recurred) of what was my 3rd kidney stone attack in my life [my first one was in 2000 and the second was in 2004] which had been bothering me each day, for about an hour each day, for the previous 5-6 days. I am similarly looking to God to heal me of all other bodily diseases and injuries that may yet come upon me in all the years ahead. Quantum physics shows that all physical substance (including the tiny little ‘rock-hard marbles’ of protons, neutrons, electrons and photons that I was taught as themselves being ‘fundamentally indivisible’) is at a deeper level only pure energy; my present understanding and belief is that the Spirit of God is able to intelligently manipulate and to transform all of those energies in any and all ways that he chooses [something which pharmacists and medical doctors are not at all able to do] so as to be able to perform any and all divine bodily healing miracles and to bring the physically dead back to life and to cause the entire cosmos to disappear [as 2Pet.3:10-12 describes]; this is why your book ‘Prayer, Quantum Physics and Hotel Mattresses’ is utterly priceless and I would be so delighted to see you publish a sequel to it on the same subject. God bless you for your priceless and historic pioneering work, it is now becoming more and more common for teachers of Christian divine bodily miracle healing to confidently be referring to the conceptual framework of quantum physics.
Thank you, this is incredibly encouraging! God loves us so much, and it’s obvious that he wants his children to be well. That’s an amazing testimony!