Clues from Crystals

A bright sapphire dangling from a gold chain glistens in the stage lights as the woman wearing the necklace begins to sing.   There is a constant dripping sound that breaks the silence in a dark cavern in South America where large quartz crystals await the day they are finally discovered.  In another part of the world, the ground trembles from the magma that is being forced up beneath its surface, and as that magma cools, it turns into granite.  Crystals of all different kinds, from rock salt to diamonds, have always fascinated people.  Some say that crystals take millions of years to form, but of course, since we know from the Bible that the universe has only been around for about six thousand years, the crystals could not have taken millions of years to form.  God created time, but He didn’t create that much time.

The general rule of geologists is “the bigger the crystals or grains the longer they took to form” or cool, if we are talking about igneous rocks.  However, scientists found an incredible exception to this rule in pegmatite, which forms when magma cools underground sometimes fairly rapidly.  Pegmatite can form grains up to tens of centimeters across (10 centimeters=4 inches), according to my geology textbook, and it forms giant grains quickly because pegmatite forms in water-rich magma.  The water surrounding the pegmatite helps the atoms to arrange themselves into crystals much quicker than it would without the water.  If you apply that concept to the flood, we can see pretty easily how rapid crystalization under flood waters can account for those millions of years worth of slow crystallization.  So you see, science continues to confirm the Bible, wherever you find the information.