The Atom Speaks: And Echoes The Word Of God

By D. Lee Chesnut and Leech Illustrators

“The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament showeth his handiwork. Day unto day uttereth speech and night unto night showeth knowledge. There is no speech nor language where their voice is not heard. Their line is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world....” (From the 19th Psalm)

For thousands of years, man has had the benefit of this unfailing and majestic language of the universe as a testimony to God’s greatness and to his planning on what is, to us, an infinite scale. We have also, in the Bible, the preserved record of the birth, the life, the death and the resurrection of Christ, followed by his ascension into heaven and his promised eventual return to earth; and we have, in the Bible, a full and clear statement of the purpose of Christ with respect to man….

If the heavens have declared the glory of God for thousands of years, may it not be the role of God’s infinitesimally small universe—the atom—to speak to us now of the plan of God in addition to giving us new vistas of the glory of God? And would this not be a peculiarly appropriate and forceful means for God to choose in speaking to this age of highly intelligent, self-reliant more than God-reliant people?

If so, and if the Bible has truly been God’s faithful word to man through the centuries, then nuclear science cannot be at disharmony with the Bible. And so it is, the author believes, that the atom speaks and echoes the Word of God.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Braunfell Books
• Release date: Nov 8, 2022
• ISBN: 9781839749599

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© Braunfell Books 2022, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.

Publisher’s Note

Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

TABLE OF CONTENTS 1

DEDICATION 4

PREFACE 5

IN EXPLANATION 6

Dangerous Thresholds 8

CHAPTER 1—DANGEROUS THRESHOLDS 8

Meet the Atoms 10

CHAPTER 2—MEET THE ATOMS 10

In the Beginning 17

CHAPTER 3—IN THE BEGINNING 17

The Power of God 30

CHAPTER 4—THE POWER OF GOD 30

The Atomic Bomb 41

CHAPTER 5—THE ATOMIC BOMB 41

God’s Chain Reaction 47

CHAPTER 6—GOD’S CHAIN REACTION 47

The Hydrogen Bomb 55

CHAPTER 7—THE HYDROGEN BOMB 55

Transmutation 61

CHAPTER 8—TRANSMUTATION 61

Atom Smashers 71

CHAPTER 9—ATOM SMASHERS 71

The New Heaven and the New Earth 85

CHAPTER 10—THE NEW HEAVEN AND THE NEW EARTH 85

Scriptural Authority 87

CHAPTER 11—SCRIPTURAL AUTHORITY 87

Christ’s Words 92

CHAPTER 12—CHRIST’S WORDS 92

Analogies 104

CHAPTER 13—ANALOGIES 104

REDEMPTION 104

THE TRINITY 105

MIRACLES 107

CONTRADICTIONS 109

CHRIST—BOTH GOD AND MAN 110

ETERNAL—IMMORTAL 112

GOD NO RESPECTER OF PERSONS 113

THE LOVE—OR WRATH—OF GOD 114

REVIVAL 115

GOD’S BOOKKEEPING 118

ONE FINAL CAUTION 121

APPENDIX 125

Introduction 125

Note 1: Creation and Annihilation. 126

Note 2: Designed for Dissolution 127

Note 3: The Hydrogen Bomb 129

BIBLIOGRAPHY 130

BIBLIOGRAPHY 131

THE ATOM SPEAKS

—AND ECHOES THE WORD OF GOD

BY

D. LEE CHESNUT

DEDICATION

To thousands of friends and business associates with whom I have lived and worked for thirty-one years. More important than all our business is this one proposition:

When the roll is called up yonder, will we—each one of us—be there?

PREFACE

The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament showeth his handiwork. Day unto day uttereth speech and night unto night showeth knowledge. There is no speech nor language where their voice is not heard. Their line is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.... (From the 19th Psalm)

For thousands of years, man has had the benefit of this unfailing and majestic language of the universe as a testimony to God’s greatness and to his planning on what is, to us, an infinite scale. We have also, in the Bible, the preserved record of the birth, the life, the death and the resurrection of Christ, followed by his ascension into heaven and his promised eventual return to earth; and we have, in the Bible, a full and clear statement of the purpose of Christ with respect to man.

But can we truthfully say that we really believe that the world has come closer to God—that we are more nearly fulfilling the purposes of God—as the centuries have passed? Or do we see more of want and need, more of strife and misunderstanding and war, more of uncertain fear of the ultimate future?

What is wrong? Could it be that we are either misreading God’s word, or that reading it correctly, we choose to disbelieve it? Could it be that we have been building our house—whether it be personal or national or international—on an uncertain and, in fact, a trembling foundation of the composite of our own bright ideas, rather than upon the solid rock of God’s instructions to us?

If the heavens have declared the glory of God for thousands of years, may it not be the role of God’s infinitesimally small universe—the atom—to speak to us now of the plan of God in addition to giving us new vistas of the glory of God? And would this not be a peculiarly appropriate and forceful means for God to choose in speaking to this age of highly intelligent, self-reliant more than God-reliant people?

If so, and if the Bible has truly been God’s faithful word to man through the centuries, then nuclear science cannot be at disharmony with the Bible. And so it is, the author believes, that the atom speaks and echoes the Word of God.

—The Author

IN EXPLANATION

During World War II my work related to an important product of the modern electronics industry—two-way radio communication equipment as used by the armed services and the civilian protective agencies. In 1944, I had been asked by friends of the University Club of Syracuse, New York, to try to explain electronics and its true significance to them in everyday English and picture-language. I asked for three months’ preparatory time, did some extensive reading and classifying of material, and at the appointed time gave my first chalk talk on this subject to the club.

Obviously, I found the electron so intertwined with the atom, and the atom so packed with thrilling new horizons, that the experience was a new and exciting adventure to me. Remember, this was before any of us—the general public—knew there was to be an atomic bomb, but there were already many well-written technical documents and articles concerning the amazing power that man had discovered within the atom, and these facts I tried to picture to my friends. Apparently the experience was an eye-opener to many of the members of the club and immediately I had half a dozen similar engagements in the Syracuse area. Subsequent events have added greatly to the widespread interest in this subject.

In parallel with all this, I began to see the close relationship between the basic facts of nuclear physics and certain very important Biblical precepts. I expounded along this line to a very good friend, Horace Dean, Director of the Christ for America movement, and as a result soon found myself scheduled as a speaker on the subject, Nuclear Science and the Bible, at a week of meetings held in May, 1946, at Washington, D.C., under the joint sponsorship of the National Fellowship for Spiritual Awakening and the Christian Businessmen’s Committee. In 1948, Dean Terrelle B. Crum of Providence Bible Institute, Providence, R. I., invited me to be guest lecturer for a three-day series of discussions on this subject with the students of the Institute, and a return engagement ensued for the spring of 1951.

During the intervening years, I have filled numerous speaking engagements to church groups in this northeastern area, as many as business and personal schedules would permit. Evidently this subject matter becomes of increasingly greater interest as each new step in nuclear research discloses an additional bit of the amazing pattern of the design of all things.

I am not a scientist. I have never had and do not hold government clearance whereby I would be in possession of any so-called government classified information. Any information given herein is definitely in the public domain, and where such subjects as the hydrogen bomb are discussed, I very frankly and gladly refer my readers to my sources of material—Science Illustrated, Scientific American, and Time magazines. Any contribution of a scientific nature which I may have made lies only in bringing together, from many published sources, what seem to be the important building blocks in the structure of the atom, and in presenting these in simple A-B-C picture language for the benefit of all of us who are not nuclear physicists.

Approximately half of the illustrations used in the text have been taken from General Electric Company files and I am grateful to the company for permitting me to use this material. Appropriate acknowledgement is included in the text where illustrations have been secured from other sources. Bruce Leech, of Leech Illustrators, New York City, has been unusually helpful in developing and producing the artwork visualizations.

Dangerous Thresholds

CHAPTER 1—DANGEROUS THRESHOLDS

THE HIROSHIMA atomic bomb triggered off many a chain reaction in human minds around the world. The public press, the radio, discussion groups, personal study and reflection concerning the final implications of this most baffling of all subjects, continue to sustain and increase this chain reaction in human minds.

In his original press release, August 6, 1945, President Truman told us that: ...the force from which the sun draws its power has been loosed against those who brought war to the Far East. And he added: It is a harnessing of the basic power of the universe.

If these statements were founded on substantial fact, man had forced his way into the possession of knowledge concerning one important phase of the basic pattern of at least our corner of the universe. And well might we stand in breathless awe, facing questioningly the new vista before us. One almost unconsciously draws a parallel between modern man with his new-found knowledge, and one Eve back in the Garden of Eden when she was tempted of the serpent to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The serpent had enticed her with these words: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall become as gods, knowing good and evil (Genesis 3:5). And Eve ate, and she gave to her husband and he did eat, and they both came into possession of the knowledge of good and evil. They were that much more like God. But they weren’t God and they didn’t know how to use their new knowledge, and so trouble began.

One who is familiar with the Bible thinks again in terms of the record in the fourteenth chapter of Isaiah where we are given the account of the fall of Lucifer, princely son of the morning, whose sin was that he said in his heart: I will ascend into the heaven. I will exalt my throne above the stars of God:...I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High. And the prophetic scripture immediately puts Lucifer in his place in these words: How art thou fallen from heaven...thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit. They that see thee shall narrowly look upon thee and consider thee saying: Is this the man that made the earth to tremble, that did shake kingdoms; that made the world as a wilderness and destroyed the cities thereof!...? That, according to the scriptures, was the fate of Lucifer, an angel of God, when he began to feel his oats and decided to move into the realm of God and take over.

One wonders.

One of our top military officials closely associated with the original World War II atomic bomb project apparently did some wondering too. The final page of the book, Atomic Energy for Military Purposes, commonly known as the Smyth Report, quotes Brig.-Gen. Thomas F. Farrell as follows, after he had observed the explosion of the experimental bomb in the desert lands of New Mexico:

The effects could well be called unprecedented, magnificent, beautiful, stupendous and terrifying....The lighting effects beggared description. The whole country was lighted by a searing light, with the intensity many times that of the midday sun....Thirty seconds after, the explosion came first, the air blast pressing hard against the people and things, to be followed almost immediately by the strong, sustained awesome roar which warned of doomsday and made us feel that we puny things were blasphemous to dare tamper with the forces heretofore reserved to the Almighty.

Meet the Atoms

CHAPTER 2—MEET THE ATOMS

MAN STANDS somewhere midway between the universe and the atom (Fig. 1). In a very real sense, both are well beyond his reach. He can see just enough of the one, the universe, to whet his imagination and his desire to see and to understand what is beyond that which he can see. The other, the atom, is by its smallness