Charles F. Bowman

The author of the biblical history books, Charles F. (Chuck) Bowman, is neither a historian nor a theologian, but an engineer by profession with a BS and MS degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Tennessee. Mr. Bowman's most recent book "Engineering and Design of the Oriented Spray Cooling System" permits any competent engineer to design such a system. "Engineering of Power Plant and Industrial Cooling Water Systems" based on the extensive research conducted by and/or for the Tennessee Valley Authority into the problems associated with cooling water systems and "Thermal Engineering of Nuclear Power Station: Balance-of-Plant Systems" based on over 50 years of experience in the nuclear power industry (both recently co-authored with his son, Seth) serve as ready references to analyze common engineering problems in the areas of hydraulics, water chemistry, turbine cycle analysis, thermodynamics, and heat transfer in the balance-of-plant systems of nuclear power stations. How does a person become interested in engineering and the Bible? I don’t claim to be an expert on either subject, although I have spent all of my professional life working as an engineer. I recall reading the last paragraph in the chapter on entropy in my undergraduate thermodynamics text book by Van Wylen back in 1963. For the uninitiated, entropy is the measure of a system’s thermal energy that is unavailable for doing useful work. When one defines the system as the entire universe, Dr. Van Wylen concluded the following: “A final point to be made is that the second law of thermodynamics and the principle of increase in entropy have great philosophical implications. The question that arises is how did the universe get into the state of reduced entropy in the first place, since all natural processes known to us tend to increase entropy? Are there processes unknown to us, such as a ‘continual creation’ which tend to decrease entropy, and thus offset the increase in entropy associated with the natural processes known to us? On the other end of the scale the question that arises is what is the future of the universe? Will it come to a uniform temperature and maximum entropy, at which time life will be impossible? Quite obviously we cannot give conclusive answers to these questions on the basis of the second law only, but they are certainly topics that illustrate its philosophical implications. The author has found that the second law tends to increase his conviction that there is a Creator who has the answer for the future destiny of man and the universe.” This was a subject in which I was soon to become most interested. As a college senior, a mole on my chest was determined to be melanoma. A year later the melanoma had metastasized to my lymph system, and I was given less than six months to live. Thus my interest in God, as I was expecting to meet him soon. Happily Dr. Van Wylen has lived to find out the answer to some of his questions. He turned one hundred years of age in February 2020. Although through most of recorded history it was commonly believed that the universe has always existed, within the last half-century the scientific community has concluded that the universe was created by a “Big Bang”. Based upon the assumption that the natural laws as we know them have always been in operation, this conclusion was first posited based upon observations made by Edwin Hubble in 1929 and confirmed by the Hubble telescope. Therefore, since scientists may now track the movement of the stars and galaxies in the universe they have concluded that they all originated at the same point in the universe about 14 billion years ago when they were propelled onto their present course with a Big Bang from an infinitely dense, dimensionless point of pure energy. In 1998, scientist discovered that the universe is not only expanding but accelerating, driven by what they call "dark energy". The density of "dark energy" was found to be the same everywhere in the universe, so if the universe is expanding, energy is constantly being added to the known universe. So, the universe is not a closed system. To my knowledge, no scientist presumes to know anything about what happened before that point of singularity in time or from where the "dark energy" is coming. In his book, The Language of God, Francis S. Collins, the leader of the Genome Project that mapped the human genome, states “The Big Bang cries out for a divine explanation. It forces the conclusion that nature has a defined beginning… Only a supernatural force that is outside of space and time could have done that.” Collins states the following: “Altogether, there are fifteen physical constants whose values current theory is unable to predict. They are given: they simply have the value that they have. The list includes the speed of light, the strength of weak and strong nuclear forces, the various parameters associated with electromagnetism, and the force of gravity. The chance that all of these constants would take on the values necessary to result in a stable universe capable of sustaining complex life forms is almost infinitesimal.” Collins states that if the rate of expansion one second after the Big Bang had been smaller by even an infinitesimal amount, the universe would have re-collapsed before ever reaching its present size and that if the rate of expansion have been greater by an infinitesimal amount, stars and planets would not have been able to form. The late Stephen Hawking, the brilliant scientist and famous atheist is quoted as saying ”The odds against a universe like ours emerging out of something like the Big Bang are enormous. I think there are clearly religious implications.” He has stated in his book A Brief History of Time “It would be very difficult to explain why the universe should have begun in just this way, except as the act of a God who intended to create beings like us.” Based on his humanistic presupposition, Hawking’s explanation is that there must be an infinite number of universes, and we just happen to exist in the one that managed to survive. O.K., so God exists. I know this not only from the scientific evidence but also because for some unexplained reason He chose to heal me. So what is God like and what does He expect of me? For the answers to that, I turned to the Bible. The journey starting in 1966 has taken many years, but in 1995 while reading through the Old Testament I began making notes on interesting historical events as the notes became more extensive, I began to organize them in chronological order. (The Old Testament is not written in chronological order, and bits of history may be found in many of the books.) I realized that my notes formed the outline of a body of work that might be of value to others, thus Biblical History of the Old Testament. When I got to the New Testament, I realized that the four gospel accounts, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John and the book of Acts were written to record historical events. Since history is normally written chronologically, I have attempted to interweave the events recorded in these books in chronological order while keeping them in the same order as they appear in the respective gospel accounts. In that way the reader may grasp an overview of Jesus’ life and that of the early church. As I said before, I do not claim to be a theologian, and others may see the order of events slightly differently. In the rare occasions where I have expressed a personal opinion, I have clearly noted the fact with words like “perhaps”. As stated in the Postscript of Biblical History of the New Testament I believe that the answers to the questions “what is God like?” and “what does He expect of me?” may be found by others like me in the historical record of Jesus’ life and ministry. Perhaps that is why He chose to heal me.