Pascal is a programming language.

Pascal is also a unit of pressure and it's used to measure internal pressure.

But Pascal is also our subject in this episode of five minutes in church history.

Well, that computer programming language

and that unit of pressure are named after Blaze Pascal.

He was French, a mathematician by training,

but a physicist, he tried his hand at inventions.

He was also a philosopher, a theologian, and we would even say an apologist.

He was born in 1623. He died in 1662. 39 years of life and those

years were rather full. Pascal has been described as a mind on fire, and that's what he was, as a teenager, he's

making breakthroughs in physics, and he's inventing and constructing prototypes of the mechanical calculator.

I'm not sure there was an area of geometry, math, physics, or physical science that he didn't

explore, that he didn't create something in or offer some new theorem that has stood through the centuries.

He was a true genius.

In 1654 he had an experience, a religious experience and as a result of this he wrote out this saying the

god of Abraham the god of Isaac the god of Jacob not the god of the philosophers

and the

scholars he actually wrote that on a piece of fabric and he had it sewn in to his jacket the interior

of his jacket and as he aged and changed jackets he would pull that piece of cloth

out and put it in his new

jacket and it wasn't discovered until after his death.

One of his servants was going through his things and found that testimony.

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