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What do God and your next trip to the gas pump have in common? The latter brings you face to face with the Former and leaves you in His interrogatory presence. How so?
Compton's electronic encyclopedia tells us. First, it tells us that gasoline comes from petroleum. Next it tells us that petroleum is a nonrenewable resource. Third, it tells us that proven resources began at approximately one trillion barrels, of which about 43 percent has already been used up. Fourth, it tells us that petroleum is made up of "ancient dead plant and animal material". Fifth, it tells us that the distribution of oil beneath the surface of the earth's crust has been basically world-wide. And, finally, it tells us that the deepest producing oil well is in Oklahoma and is just over 24,000 feet deep.
What does any of this have to do with God's "interrogatory presence"? To answer, let me explain what I mean by God's "interrogatory presence". I mean that God is going to ask you to explain your relationship to Him on the basis of the fact that you were willing to buy gasoline. His "interrogatory presence" simply means you will be asked by Him to explain the attitude you have taken toward Him on the basis of certain facts you know. If you didn't know that gasoline comes from petroleum that is pumped from depths of over four miles beneath the surface of the ground before you started this article, you do now. So, knowing, you are now subject to the questions.
First question: how is it that petroleum is a nonrenewable resource? A foolish segment of the scientific community keeps telling us that we know all we know about our world on the basis of uniformitarianism (the so-called natural processes have always operated at uniform rates and there has never been any major cataclysm that would skew our understanding significantly--empiricism extrapolated over time). But these same foolish people now tell us that petroleum is a nonrenewable resource. That means it was made once and will not be made again. So much for uniformitarianism!
Next question: how many trillion tons of dead plant and animal matter does it take to make a trillion barrels of crude? Since most plants and animals distill down to a mere fraction of their live weight after death, it would take multiple trillions of tons of plant and animal matter to form what we know we already have in proven reserves.
Next question: how did entire jungles of massive plant and animal growth get put 24,000 feet under ground in large enough pockets of accumulation to produce the huge pools of billions of barrels of crude that we know are there? Remember, uniformitarianism says that plants and animals die like we observe them today. That means that they die, turn to dust, and refuse to be the future petroleum sources of tomorrow. In order for whole massive jungles of plants and animals to have been buried in vast pockets of death up to 24,000 feet under the crust of the earth, they first had to have been on the surface of that crust. Then something had to have happened to put them miles beneath that crust.
Next question: for those who want to speculate that some massive meteor hit the planet and drove whole jungles miles deep into the planet, how do you explain the rather uniform distribution over the whole earth? And if we had multiple impacts of that sort to explain the uniform distribution, where does your doctrine of uniformitarianism go?
The plain facts are these. Uniformitarianism is a crock. The purchase of gasoline makes us subject to the logical questions of why we are willing to buy God's gas and use it for our agendas and not admit that He has used it as a witness of the truth of His Word in which He told us about the cataclysmic upheaval of a world wide flood that broke up the crust of the predeluvian world, sank it to all kinds of variable depths including depths below the floors of our current oceans, and then washed trillions of tons of sediment and rocks over the top of it. And, on the basis of that witness, He gave us another witness: that Jesus would come again when the world got to the same state of affairs as the Noahic generation. His interrogatory presence is coming and you will be asked the questions, so put your thinking cap on and gird up the loins of your mind so you can acquit yourself in an honorable way.