Our Guest Bruce Malone

Sid: My guest Bruce Malone is a scientist; he’s a Chemical Engineer.  He’s worked at Dow Chemical.  What did you do at Dow Chemical Bruce?

Bruce: Well, I developed new products; my expertise has always been Research and Development.  And I worked at Dow for almost 30 years.

Sid: Okay, you were raised in a mainline church; God was irrelevant to you.  You got to college; whatever faith you had they knocked it out of you.  Why did you call yourself an agnostic?

Bruce: Well, God was just irrelevant; by the time I got through college I had been told 100’s of times that everything could be explained without God.  So there really didn’t seem to me any point going to church or donating towards churches when you could explain everything without Him.

Sid: No, no that’s not my question; my question is why did you just call yourself an atheist?

Bruce: Because as a scientist I like to think I have an open mind and even though I thought things could be explained without God it had never been proven to me that God didn’t exist either. So I thought that I had an open mind either way; He was just pretty much irrelevant.

Sid: Okay, so you married; you have your first son and then you develop a virus and you’re dying but what I understand is an amazing miracle happened.

Bruce:  Well, I think God who is real was trying to get my attention and He had to take me to the point of death for that to happen.  And that’s exactly right; I had double pneumonia; doctors could do nothing I was on 100% oxygen; I was still hallucinating and the doctors told my wife they should be prepared for me to die.  I continued to deteriorate day after day, and yet suddenly I just immediately started to get better.  There were many people praying for me and I wasn’t even aware of it at the time.  But the doctors had no explanation; the drugs had changed and suddenly I got better.

Sid: So 6 months later what were the circumstances that you decided to go from agnostic to believer?

Bruce:  Well, I started looking for a deeper meaning in life as many people that face life do; I mean is life just about collecting money and possessions and then you die and return to dust; and many friends were kind of pointing me in the direction that God was real.  And even more specifically that God had an entered into creation as Jesus Christ in order to make that bridge between sinful man back into His holy presence. And all of that made sense; everything Jesus said made sense; the miracles made sense; the turning around of the lives of His disciples made sense.

Sid: Well wait wait wait as a scientist how could that all make sense to you?

Bruce: Well, I’ll tell you what at the same time I started to look at the complexity to the creative world; the biological world and the universe.  And what I had been taught in school was not starting to really explain the order and the complexity of the creation.  So I started looking for a deeper meaning and that led me to what the Bible had to say about where everything came from.

Sid: But something really put it all together for you when coming to your church is someone giving a message on creationism.

Bruce:  Well, that’s exactly right and honestly remember now I have started to realize that Jesus is who He claimed to be the creator but I am still very much in a scientific mindset.  And the speaker came and amongst other things he started to show how the complexity of biology couldn’t have made itself.  But he also started to show the evidence that the rock layers of this planet had to be laid down rapidly, and we can talk further about that later.  But I realized that if there really had been this worldwide flood that the Bible had talked about as a real event of history, then that wiped out everything that I’d ever been taught about world history; about the age of things; about where biological life had come from because those rock layers would have been laid down rapidly.  It shook up my entire world view.

Sid: Now you started praying for wisdom on your job as a researcher for Dow Chemical in addition to being the top 100 inventors of the year award. You have designed ideas for over 18 patents that made the company millions of dollars.

Bruce: Well, let me back up an just tell you how all that came about; after becoming a Christian; after giving my life to the Lord I went before Him as a young Engineer with my company.  I’d only been with Dow for about 3 years, and I asked the Lord to give me some ideas that would make the company more successful, not necessarily for myself, but just because I had a job and I wanted to be a blessing to God in that area.  Within a week I had an idea of developing a new foam product that turned out to be a very high energy absorbent foam.  And one of the product spinoffs of this was an energy absorbing headliner that was used in automobiles.  The other inventions including a vacuum insulation foam used for organ transplant boxes and refrigeration walls.  And new types of wood plastic composite decking materials; all very practical inventions and what this did was confidence and incredibility as I than went out into the public to talk about the credibility of God’s word and the reliability of its model for creation and where everything came from.

Sid:  Now you ran into a bit of a crisis afterwards and you decided “Well, I read about Gideon I’m going to try a fleece; should I stay in this area; should I relocate?”  Tell me about the fleece.

Bruce: Well, let me just share that and this will take more than just 30 seconds.  You know there’s too many Christians or people who acknowledge the Lord’s existence that don’t really understand that God really does interact with our personal lives.  He really does care on a day to day basis what we’re doing on a personal day to day basis what we’re all about.  My company had decided to shutdown it’s research center; I had been in Grandville, Ohio for 17 years.  My roots had grown deep; I loved this area; we had been good stewards, we paid off our home; it was my desire just to stay in Grandville the rest of my life.  But when they shut down the research center the company offered to pay to move everybody to Midland, Michigan. I did not want to do this but most of all I wanted to do what God wanted me to do.  So I prayed fervently over it, and one day I was praying and I read this passage where Jesus says “He who leaves family, friends and home in this world they’ll be blessed in the next.”  And it just jumped off the page at me “Leave your home.”  And then through circumstances I applied for jobs that I should have been a shew in in the local area.  And lastly I kinda laid out a fleece and I said “Lord if you really want me to move I would love to have a very definite sign.”  What I would like is I go out and pray in the area around our Research Center; if you could bring a deer out right in front of me which was just doesn’t happen; normally deer would run off whenever you get near them I will know that I should be moving and not staying here, So I did just that I went out and I prayed and I walked through the fields and nothing happened.  I thought I think I know what God wants but I’m just not sure.  As I turned to walk back toward our building not 20 feet away a deer stood up in the grass and stared directly at me for about 5 to 10 seconds and then it bounded off into the grass.  And right before that happened I just sensed God’s presence and He told me, ”I have already told you what I want you to do”, in other words to move. “I have a purpose for you in Midland, Michigan.”  And it was was after that the deer stood up and it was like God saying “Even though I have ways of giving you My purpose and My guidance I love you enough I want you to know absolute for sure.”  And here was this deer that stood up and looked at me; God is still doing miracles today.

Sid: And Bruce you believe as I do that there is overwhelming evidence that evolution is not based on science.  Now as a scientist you started buying space in the local newspaper and running articles about the evidence that you have and you bumped into a real firestorm of criticism.

Bruce:  Oh you’re not a kidding. Sid you cannot present Biblical truth in our country in this day and age without it being strongly opposed.  And the more important the issue is the more the opposition becomes. The…

Sid: You also speak at universities; what goes on when you speak at universities on this subject?

Bruce: The same thing, you see even more than when I was growing up the children are being sent through our educational system showing only one viewpoint.  It’s almost as if you are trying to determine the truth of something is and the prosecution presents their entire case and then the judge says “Okay you’ve heard enough to and make your decision without ever having a chance to have heard the other viewpoint.”  That’s what’s happening in our school system.  The kids, the students, even the teachers are only hearing a natural process made everything viewpoint.  They never get to hear the evidence for a Designer behind it all.

Sid: Is it true it’s actually against the law to bring up creationism in schools?

Bruce:  The Supreme Court has repeatedly supported the idea because of a distortion of one of Thomas Jefferson’s letters where he mentioned the separation of church and state that no public school system can promote or even cast doubt on the idea of evolution.

Sid: Listen, we are in the last of the last of the last days as Bruce is going to show you from scripture a little later on in the week what was prophesied.  But want to rescue this generation of young people and even older people.