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Physicists have discovered that everything in the universe was created in less than one second. Blink your eyes once. There. It is done. It is impossible for any of us to comprehend the kind of mind-boggling energy necessary to bring about such a massive event. Our most powerful thermonuclear explosions are but sparks off a flint. Christians believe that everything that exists was created out of nothing by the Almighty God, not by natural forces, but by His spiritual power. Thus, it is apparent that spiritual power is the most potent force in the universe—none other was extant. Few physicists will give heed to this truth. I understand, and I appreciate their study. They want to explain how it happened. To just simply say, “God created it,” is insufficient. Truly, it is a worthy task. But, as Johannes Kepler wrote, “The chief aim of all investigations of the external world should be to discover the rational order and harmony which has been imposed on it by God and which He revealed to us in the language of mathematics” Astronomis Nova de Motibus (1609). But the genius, Kepler, is ignored in contemporary physics. Attempting to follow this dictum is an unpopular endeavor. Well, we shall pray for them, that they will stop denying and suppressing the truth.
What we experience every day—the kind of power we experience every day—is natural power. We cannot ignore it and shouldn’t. This power is infinitely miniscule compared to God’s; nevertheless, we are so frail that even this paltry force dominates our lives. Let’s start with gravity, shall we? Or perhaps electromagnetic force, which holds atoms together. We could go on, of course. Jesus, who possesses all available spiritual power, and thus the most potent, performed only small displays of it when He was on earth. Nevertheless, these acts plainly revealed His dominion over gravity, light, and material substance. He walked on water. He stilled the storm. He was transfigured on the Mount. He changed a few barley loaves and fish into enough food to feed thousands of people. He healed the sick which required changes in physical human bodies. He changed water into wine. He raised three dead people. That would require a re-creation of dead brain and body cells. Jesus did not perform immense acts of power, just to exhibit power for power’s sake. He performed acts of grace and glorified His Father.
Now, consider this natural conclusion to our discussion so far: The Lord God Almighty is perfect in power. Nothing whatsoever in the universe or on the earth is impossible for Him: “Then the word of the LORD came to Jeremiah, saying, ‘Behold, I am the LORD, the God of all flesh; is anything too difficult for Me?’”(Jeremiah 32:26–27).1
If anything was too difficult for Him, He would not be God.
I trust this truth will encourage those who pray for the sick. The Lord is able to change the material substance of the human body. In truth, He created it.
However, you have probably noticed the quest for human power in cultures. People lust for it. Minorities want it. White people want it. Both men and women want it. LGBTQ folks want it. We exalt people who are trying to achieve or have achieved earthly power. This is the way the world thinks.
It is all they have.
I encourage the Christian reader not to seek earthly power unless he or she is certain that power is solely to glorify the Lord and bring others to the knowledge of God. Natural power is dangerous, and very few wielded it well in the Bible. We are instructed to lower ourselves and follow Jesus sacrificially, not raise ourselves. “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?” (Matthew 16:24–26).
Our great, glorious goal—the goal that brings God delight—is to understand and know Him. “Thus says the LORD: ‘Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the LORD’” (Jeremiah 9:23–24).
1All Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. (2016). Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles.
Gif courtesy giphy.com
New American Standard Bible: 1995 update. (1995). (Je 32:25–27). La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation.
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I just don’t get it. If I watch a nature show on the BBC or Nature or some such network and see amazing videos of amazing creatures (For this, I thank the videographers and the networks, sincerely.), I sicken of hearing, over and over, ad nauseum, how Nature or Evolution provided this and that creature with the tools to survive or mate or do whatever the creature is doing. Now, if one were to ask a person how this is done, he or she would say, “It happens over time, millions and millions of years.” That’s it. That’s the answer. We dreamily imagine foggy time and grand, magical nature, and, there it is.
Case closed.
Now go away, you science-denying Neanderthal.
Recently, I had a discussion about evolution with an agnostic evolutionist. Nice guy. He had the same answer to my questions about how creatures evolved that I wrote above. So, I asked, “Do you realize how much that sounds like magical thinking to me?” He quickly answered, “Do you realize how much of what you believe sounds like magical thinking to me?”
I responded, “Looks like we’re both magical thinkers.”
Yes. I am a Christian, and I will go ahead and admit that to an atheist or agnostic, when I say that the sovereign Lord God created all things, it sounds like magical thinking to them. What I wish such a person would confess in return is that their “scientific” answers sound like magical thinking as well. I wish they would acknowledge that they don’t have the answers to how the fantastic creation we see around us every day came into being instead of stating it as fact.
Let’s start with what is called the Big Bang. This is a puzzle for which they simply have no answer. “Ex nihilo nihil fit.” “Out of nothing, nothing comes.” It is true, isn’t it? But here we are, with time and gravity and mass and electromagnetism and quarks and neutrinos and dark energy and dark matter and nuclear fusion and Goldilocks Earth and all living things.
Living things. This is the next one they simply cannot answer. Oh, they answer, readily enough. The Primordial Pool. Time plus chance. We go to foggy, magical dreamworld. Some organic materials globbed together and, um, lightning struck, and, um, well, something happened. The Spark of Life.
Three major problems here. What they say “just happened” has never been duplicated in a laboratory. All these wonderfully intelligent scientists—I’m not being sarcastic—they really are wonderfully intelligent—with all the technology available, cannot create life from adding electricity to a murky, globby pool. What astounds me is that they think that even though they cannot do it with intelligent, creative minds and tech, that it just happened without an intelligent, creative mind.
The second major problem is that, in order for a creature to pass down its characteristics to the next generation, genetics must be in play. But how do genes evolve? If a glob in a murky pool struck by just the right amount of electricity from lightning (A bit of a stretch if you think about it. Perhaps you’ve noticed that creatures struck by lightning are always affected negatively.), sparked to life, how would it pass on its “life”? Genetics would have to evolve within that very first “creature.” How on earth would that happen?
The third ginormous problem is genetic mutations which evolutionists maintain lead to positive evolutionary changes. If we close our eyes and go to dreamy, magical-thinking world, we can somehow believe that, given millions and millions of years, there was one mutation that was positive which lead to another mutation which was positive and so on. But how does a wing evolve? A bump on some creature? How does that increase the creature’s ability to survive? How does an eye evolve? From some light sensitive spot? How does it connect to the brain? We could ask such questions about the evolution of bioluminescence—well, shall we add just about everything else? How about ants that cut grass, use it to cultivate algae, and then eat that algae? Large brains, those ants. How about bats and sea creatures that use echolocation? Monarch butterflies that have both a sun compass and a magnetic compass? We’ll just skip how a caterpillar dissolves in a cocoon and comes out a completely different creature with long, spindly legs, antennae, and wings.
Concrete answers, please. Please just start at the murky pool—I’ll give you a pass on ex nihilo nihil fit—and tell me what happened. I know. You have a theory. Just stop talking as if it were a fact.
Murky pool. Go.
Think I haven’t been nice? Well, the Lord is less so:
“The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’ They are corrupt, doing abominable iniquity; there is none who does good” (Psalm 53:1). 1
1All Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. (2016). Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles.
Gif courtesy giphy.com
I like watching television shows about the universe. I appreciate the efforts of scientists to help us understand how big the earth, sun and the planets are in relation to other objects in the universe, as well as how immense the distances are.
But I gotta admit, in spite of all their best efforts, I just can’t really comprehend it. I mean, I understand the videos and model mock-ups, but…it’s just too much for my little brain to handle. They say there are hundreds of billions of galaxies in the universe, and each galaxy has hundreds of billions of stars. To me, a thousand of something is a lot. I wasn’t personally familiar with over a hundred thousand dollars until we bought our third house. A million? A billion? I don’t have a million or a billion of anything. I’ve never even counted to a million and don’t intend to. So, when they start throwing around numbers like hundreds of billions, my mind goes blank.
Okay, so maybe I’m dumb. Clueless. But it seems sure that I’m faithless. I’m not happy to confess to you that whenever I’ve read the Genesis account of creation, I’ve read the following verse with a sense of, “Well, hmm, I’m not sure.”
“And God made the expanse and separated the waters that were under the expanse from the waters that were above the expanse. And it was so” (Genesis 1:7).
So, I’ve asked the Father to forgive me, because it turns out that He knew what He was talking about. I’m embarrassed to even write this, but I don’t know how else to say it.
It turns out there is water “above the expanse,” and a lot of it—140 trillion times the amount of water in our oceans. The number is so huge that I can’t grasp it. Well, maybe you can. I’m on record here as confessing that I’m both dumb and unbelieving.
Here’s the article from the NASA site. Be prepared to have your jaw drop.
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/universe/features/universe20110722.html
The universe is clumpy. Just thought you might want to know.
